Details
Latitude51.7687323 Longitude19.4569911 Start Date1953-01-01 End Date2023-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lodz, Poland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 24 August 1953
- Summary
- Polish-born, Sydney-trained poster and textile artist who used local iconography, notably kookaburras, in his artwork.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Feb-23
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2023-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by adding to it.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 15 September 1938
- Summary
- Painter and poet, Royston Harpur's work has consistently shown his admiration of Japanese Zen gestural abstract forms.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Feb-23
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2023-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1933
- Summary
- Wrobel was a private gallery curator (Woolloomooloo Art Gallery ) and collector working with her partner Fred Wrobel until his death. In 2003, she created the John Passmore Museum of Art to promote his work after an inheritance from the Passmore estate in 1989. Their museum collected broadly She was also instrumental in developing the Nightingale Museum, Sydney Hospital as well as the career of Percy Grainger (d.1961)
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-23
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-32.916667 Longitude151.75 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2023-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- He was born on 21 January 1928 in Newcastle, the son of Esma Agnes (née McCubbin) and Henry Olsen, who worked at the Cooee Clothing company. When he was seven his father was transfered to Sydney, where they lived at Bondi. Nevertheless he continued to hold deep visual memories of the industrial landscape of Newcastle. In Sydney he attended Paddington Junior Technical High until the outbreak of World War II when his father enlisted in the Army, his mother and sister stayed with relatives at Yass, and Olsen became a boarder at St Joseph’s Hunters Hill.After obtaining his Leaving Certificate in 1943 he worked as a clerk for Elders Smith, a job he loathed. His early talent for drawing was soon turned to good purpose as he became a freelance cartoonist and illustrator for a number of Sydney based publications.His first art classes at the Julian Ashton School in 1946 were to help him develop his illustrative skills. When he wanted to learn more about life drawing so enrolled in Dattilo Rubbo’s School. This was followed by a return to the Julian Ashton School in 1950.Always convivial, Olsen began to move in the circle of artists, writers and coffee drinkers who were congregating around Rowe Street as a sort of Sydney bohemia (many of these would later form the nucleus of “The Push”. He came to know Carl Plate’s Rowe Street Notanda Gallery with its art books and reproductions of European modern art. He decided to become a serious artist.He was aided in his ambition by the difficult but brilliant teacher, John Passmore, who taught at the Julian Ashton Art School from 1950 to 1954. In his old age Olsen recalled Passmore’s uncompromising rigour and his non-precious approach to materials. Olsen also took classes at East Sydney Technical College with the less bombastic Godfrey Miller. The 1950s was a time of renewed prosperity after the trauma of War and economic Depression. Young radical students, like Olsen, were keen to stake their claim as leaders of the avant garde. In 1953 he led a student demonstration against the conservative Trustees of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales, and was quoted in the press criticising the awarding of the Archibald Prize to William Dargie. Over two decades later, Olsen was himself seen as one of the more conservative Trustees of the same institution.In 1956 his work was selected for the prestigious Contemporary Australian paintings : Pacific Loan Exhibition on board Orient Line S.S. Orcades , an exhibition that took what was seen as the best Australian art on an ocean cruise as a form of cultural exchange. In December of the same year, Olsen joined with John Passmore, Ralph Balson, Robert Klippel, Eric Smith and William Rose in a group exhibition at Macquarie Galleries – Direction 1 . This exhibition was later credited with bringing Abstract Expressionism to Australia, although, with the exception of Klippel, none of the artists involved had any real knowledge of contemporary art activities in other countries.Olsen’s paintings, some based on moody readings of T.S.Eliot, so impressed the art critic of the Sydney Morning Herald, Paul Haefliger, that he encouraged the Sydney businessman Robert Shaw, to give him a private scholarship to Europe, on condition that he not be based in the UK. Instead he went to Paris, where he spent some months in 1957 learning etching in S.W. Hayter’s Atelier 17 Workshop in Paris, before travelling to Spain. By July 1958 he was in Majorca, where he based himself in a house in Deya to paint. He also worked as an apprentice chef, and developed a life long love of Mediterranean food, both its flavours and its appearance.The distilled essence of these Spanish years continued to flavour his art on his return to Sydney in 1960. Olsen’s paintings of the 1960s established him as one of the leading artists of his generation. He painted Spanish Encounter (Now in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales)shortly after his return while living in Victoria Street Woolloomooloo, in loose-knit creative community with many of Sydney’s leading younger artists. Later he stayed for some month’s at Paul Haefliger’s former house in the old gold mining town of Hill End, before eventually settling at Watson’s Bay with his young family. This was the seascape that inspired Entrance to the Seaport of Desire and other works, although these paintings were also celebrations of the hedonism of Sydney life. Even though he was now lauded as a major Australian artist, Olsen did not earn enough from his art to support his family, so supplemented his income by teaching at East Sydney Technical College, Desiderius Orban’s school, the Mary White Art School and lectured to Architecture students at the University of New South Wales. In 1968 he ran his own art school at the Bakery Art School, but this only lasted a year. In 1969 the Olsen family moved to Clifton Pugh’s collective of artists at Dunmoochin in Victoria. On their return to Sydney in 1971, Olsen bought a large property at Dural, north-west of Sydney,and here built a large house and studio. This was the base from which he ventured on many painting and drawing expeditions, including one memorable visit to Lake Eyre in flood, which became the subject of a major series of paintings and prints.In 1980 Olsen moved to Wagga Wagga to join fellow artist Noela Hjorth. Later they moved to Clarendon in the Adelaide Hills, where he lived and worked until the end of the relationship in 1987.He returned to Sydney’s artistic community in Paddington. In 1989 he moved to Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains with his fourth wife, Katherine. In 1999 they moved to a large property, Owlswood, near Bowral, and in 2011 to a seaside property at Avoca Beach on the Central Coast.John Olsen has been one of Australia’s most consistently honoured artists for most of his professional life. His work is represented in most Australian public collections and he has been the subject of a number of monographs. He was awarded an O.B.E. for services to the Arts in 1977 and an Order of Australia (A.O.) in 2001.In 2011 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Newcastle.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2023
- Born
- b. 21 January 1928
- Summary
- John Olsen's exuberant paintings, which were first exhibited in Sydney in the 1950s, are often celebrations of Sydney, Majorca, marine life, good food and sunshine. He is an abstract artist whose work remains grounded in the landscape or in evocations of poetry, a painter whose distinctive curvilinear style continually pays homage to the quality of a wanderingline.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Apr-23
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1991-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1991
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Feb-22
- Age at death
- 31
Details
Latitude-33.7620891 Longitude151.2150889 Start Date1968-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Forestville, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1968
- Summary
- Craig Ruddy was best known for his striking portraits of Aboriginal Australians. He came to fame after he was awarded the Archibald Prize in 2004 for his linear study of David Gulpilil.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-35.5302183 Longitude144.9597178 Start Date1959-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Deniliquin, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1959
- Summary
- Higgins was an ornithologist and photographer who, after an assistantship, became a managing editor over five volumes of the Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds (HANZAB).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, Shooter's Hill, SE London, England
- Biography
- painter, sketcher, printmaker, illustrator and animator. After studying art in the mid 1970s, Harding travelled through Europe, then returned to Australia, where he developed a reputation for his painterly images while also working in illustration and animation.
Brett Ballard, reviewing an exhibition in 2005, commented that “We can not think of Nicholas Harding without thinking of paint. Luscious, buttery paint. What Harding does with paint is important but of equal importance is what he paints. Harding is after all a painter of subjects…”
Among many awards and honours, Harding won both the Archibald and Dobell Prizes in 2001. He was a finalist in the Archibald 19 times. He undertook four residencies at the University of New South Wales College of Fine Arts’ Cicada Press since 2001.
David Marr remembered that he “worked and worked and worked all the time.”In 2022 he was awarded the Wynne Prize for his painting Eora, a painting that evoked the surviving beauty of the landscape around Sydney which Marr called “Nicholas at the peak of his powers”
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1956
- Summary
- painter, sketcher, printmaker, illustrator and animator. After studying art in the mid 1970s, Harding travelled through Europe, then returned to Australia, where he developed a reputation for his painterly images while also working in illustration and animation.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Nov-22
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude35.6892523 Longitude51.3896004 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tehran, Iran
- Biography
- Hossein Valamanesh combines cultural elements from two countries: his native Iran and Australia. The result is sculptural and installation-based work relating to memory, cultural dislocation, loss, and the progression of time. The work, simultaneously strong and subtle, and occasionally playful, has gentle and poetic resonances.
Hossein Valamanesh graduated from the School of Fine Art Painting in Tehran in 1970. He immigrated to Australia in 1973, arriving in Perth and travelling to Central Australia for four months, where he worked with Aboriginal children. In 1975, he began further studies in visual arts at the South Australian School of Art and, since graduating, has exhibited frequently in Australia and overseas, including Germany, Poland and Japan.
Hossein has completed a number of major public art projects in Australia and Japan, most notably for the Tachikawa Project, an urban precinct in Tokyo featuring 110 works by 90 major sculptors. In 1999, he collaborated with Angela Valamanesh to create the Memorial to the Great Irish Famine, An Gorta Mor , at Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney. He was one of the international artists invited to participate in the 2003 Echigo-Tsumari Necklace project organised by Art Front Gallery in Tokyo. Hossein has received numerous awards, including a fellowship residency in Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (1991) and, more recently, an Australia Council Fellowship. An Art & Australia monograph on his work, written by Paul Carter, was published in 1996. Two years later he won the Grand Prize at the 1998 Dacca Biennale in Bangladesh.
In mid-2001, 'Hossein Valamanesh: A Survey’ was held at the Art Gallery of South Australia; the accompanying catalogue contained essays by Sarah Thomas, Ian North and Paul Carter. In February 2002, 'Tracing the Shadow: Hossein Valamanesh’ was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Hossein’s work is included in most major public art collections in Australia. In 2006 he was living and working in Adelaide.
Writers:
Murray-Cree, Laura
Olivia Bolton
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 March 1949
- Summary
- Born in Iran, Hossein Valamanesh migrated to Australia in 1973. His sculptural and installation-based work, which combines cultural elements from Australia and his native Iran, relates to memory, cultural dislocation, loss, and the progression of time.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude50.1106444 Longitude8.6820917 Start Date1948-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Frankfurt, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1948
- Summary
- Meyer was a film-maker developing feature films such as "Flight of the Albatross" and documentaries for UNESCO and a series Schatze der Welt. He taught at AFTRS and was the recipient of a number of film awards during his career.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-33.9247222 Longitude151.1313889 Start Date1946-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Earlwood, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1946
- Summary
- Strachan was a documentary film-maker, active in the Sydney Film-makers Coop and the Feminist group "Lorraine" in Redfern. Together with Alessandro Cavadini, she formed Reddirt Films working with First Nations people. She moved to the USA in 1982, teaching film with periodic returns to Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude51.1371483 Longitude0.2673446 Start Date1944-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1944
- Summary
- Page arrived in Australia in 2002 after an international career as a photojournalist, primarily focussing on war photography.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Born Sydney 1943 and was first introduced to art at Cranbrook school with Justin O’Brien, where he also met his friend and collaborator Martin Sharp.
On leaving school Kingson studied architecture and arts at the University of New South Wales, but was more interested in drawing than design. However his studies led to a long friendship with Jan Utzon, the son of Jorn Utzon, the architect for the Sydney Opera House. When Utzon was effectively dismissed by the Askin government in 1966, Kingston was one of many who marched in protest.Peter Kingston’s first published cartoons were drawn for the student newspaper, Tharunka. Later he gravitated to OZ, which was dominated by the graphic style of his old school friend, Martin Sharp. His first exhibition was at Hyde Park with Mlck Glasheen and John Allen. Later her participated in the OZ Super Art Market exhibition at Clune Galleries. He also made experimental movies.
In 1971 he became one of the artists who created the communal Yellow House in Sydney’s Kings Cross. His most important work from this time was his contribution to the Stone Room, made for the Spring 1971 exhibition. He also created the Elephant house, made magic shows and participated In some of the performances.
His love of the whimsical nature of comic book heroes led him to make fantasy versions of the life of the Phantom, as well as Snugglepot & Cuddlepie. His mother once knitted a jumper showing his design of Superman unzipping his fly.
In the 1970s, along with Martin Sharp, Peter Kingston became an activist in the campaign to save Luna Park from the developers. He was a fierce campaigner for Sydney’s heritage, whether it be the remnant bush land near his Lavender Bay home or the ferries on Sydney Harbour. The Harbour, the bridge, the ferries and the beauty of moonlight on water, iconic buildings and the bushy foreshores became dominant subjects in his later paintings.Even as he was dying from lung cancer, he continued to campaign to save North Sydney’s modernist MLC building from the hands of the developers.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Olivia Bolton
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 8 May 1943
- Summary
- Sydney painter, printmaker and cartoonist. Kingston was one of the key figures in Martin Sharp’s Yellow House. Many of his works honoured comic strip heroes, especially the Phantom. He is also well known for paintings of Sydney Harbour ferries.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Sep-22
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.8772 Longitude151.1049 Start Date1942-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burwood, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 23 March 1942
- Summary
- Peter Powditch first began to paint and sculpt his celebrations of the beach and bikini culture in the late 1960s. He was also active as a teacher in several Sydney-based institutions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Feb-22
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-34.1347694 Longitude150.9931332 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waterfall, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1940
- Summary
- Webb was a lighting engineer and designer combining the science of lighting with aesthetic goals. Among his projects are the lighting programme for the 2000 Olympic Games Boulevard, the Sydney Opera House, City of Sydney street lighting and interior commissions for the Great Hall, Sydney University and St Mary's Cathedral crypt.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1937
- Summary
- Spate was a lecturer in art history at Sydney University with major publications on Australian and European artists (notably Monet). She was also involved in major exhibitions on French art in Australian galleries. As the Power Bequest professor and custodian, she was instrumental in the Bequest's transfer to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1936
- Summary
- Proudfoot trained as an architect, working for the NSW Government Architect (1960-1964), later taking up a lectureship at the UNSW. He is best known for his study of the Burley Griffin design of Canberra.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.7962 Longitude151.2827 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manly, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1935
- Summary
- Fitzwater began his career in radio broadcasting, then turning to TV with the ABC. In 1963, he began working with the BBC making over 20 films. In the 1970s, he created an experimental film on the career of Erik Satie with a multilayered soundscape and continued his sound work with poetry. He later developed a film process for dance with cameras moving with the performers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-34.4576958 Longitude149.4696713 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Crookwell, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1935
- Summary
- McIllree began her career as a fashion model, turning to photography ca.1958 with a photographic studio in Flinders Lane, Melbourne. She and Helen Homewood (also a model) ran a modelling agency as well.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toleworth Rise, London, England
- Biography
- Les Blakebrough’s career as a ceramicist began in 1957 when he was taken on as a pottery apprentice at the Sturt workshops in Mittagong, NSW. Since 1973 has has been based in Hobart. Throughout his career, production has been a central concern for Blakebrough, and in the 1990s he became particularly interested in how the handmade could be combined with limited industrial production.
In 1993 Blakebrough won a Churchill Fellowship to experience industrial processes in the factories of Royal Copenhagen (Denmark), Arabia (Finland) and Royal Worcester (UK). Between 1995-97, along with colleague Penny Smith, and with grants from the Australian Research Council, he established the Ceramic Research Unit at the University of Tasmania. This is capable of producing domestic ware in runs of up to 10 000 items. The porcelain clay used is Southern Ice, a clay that Blakebrough developed in the 1990s and is now manufactured by Clayworks Australia in Victoria.
Blakebrough‘s work was included in the exhibition 'Smart works: design and the handmade’ (2007), and several items are in the Museum’s permanent collection.
Writers:
Jonathan Holmes, Powerhouse Museum
staffcontributor
fishel
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- Renowned ceramicist and ceramics educator, first at Sturt Workshops, later in Hobart, Tasmania. Last studio in Coledale, NSW. Pioneer in Australian porcelain clay, described as Southern Ice Porcelain Clay.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-37.7572829 Longitude145.3456774 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2022-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lilydale, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1927
- Summary
- Ken Whisson combined a strong social conscience with an ascetic life style. His paintings and drawings were intuitive approaches to things seen and felt. He was given a major travelling retrospective ("As If") in 2012.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Feb-22
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1964-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 27 September 1964
- Summary
- Ewing is an artist and designer working in illustration, painting, graphic design and printmaker.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.7 December 2021
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-27.5610193 Longitude151.953351 Start Date1961-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1961
- Summary
- Pulbrook worked as a designer, photographer and writer. He worked for John Brumley and Associates, University of Qld and Canberra's AGPS Design Studio and other outlets in addition to his own work as a photographer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 2 November 1956
- Summary
- Irvine was an architect, based in Denver, Colorado since 2001. He worked on the Buri Khalifa, Dubai, did residential work in Kigali, Rwanda and was engaged in preservation work at the San Miguel Mission, San Miguel, California. His last position was with Stantec Urban Places, Planning and Urban Design Lead, Denver.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Jul-21
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1952-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Mandy Martin who first emerged as a political activist printmaker and painter, was born in Adelaide in 1952, the daughter of Peter Martin, a professor of Botany and Beryl Martin, a watercolor painter. She first studied at the South Australian School of Art from 1972 to 1975. She first came to prominence as one of the political activists in the Women’s art movement, and exhibited in Fantasy and Reality, alongside Jude Adams, Frances Phoenix and Toni Robertson. Her feminism was very much tinged with political activism. Some of her early works included posters against the Vietnam War and other acts of American imperialism. Along with fellow artists Ann Newmarch and Robert Boynes she became one of the activist of the Progressive Art Movement.After she moved to Canberra with her first husband, the artist Robert Boynes, she taught at the Canberra School of Art at the Australian National University from 1978 until 2003. In 1995 she relocated to Mandurama in rural New South Wales. She continued her close association with ANU, so much so that on her departure she was appointed a Fellow of the University until 2008 when she became Adjunct Professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, a position she held until 2018. The new appointment reflected the change in the focus of her art as she moved from a tough political and social critique to an equally rigorous commentary on how out fragile environment suffers from both climate change and mining.Many of her large-scale paintings served as a critique of the degradation of the land in both rural and urban Australia. In 1988, Red Ochre Grove, which has been described by Sasha Grishin as “an apocalyptic intense landscape”, was commissioned for the main committee room at the new Australian Parliament House.In 2017 a touring exhibition of her paintings demonstrated the fragility of land damaged by coal mining and poor management.Her later works included large scale installations, made in collaboration with her son, Alexander Boynes.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 18 November 1952
- Summary
- One of the activist women artists who emerged in the mid-1970s, later turned from overtly political posters and industrial landscapes to painting powerful landscapes of the Australian desert.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Jul-21
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand
- Biography
- Ray Rogers was born near Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand, in 1935. He worked in the petro-chemical industry but after discovering his affinity with the clay medium in 1969 he devoted himself to pottery and was initially self-taught. Initially he was an adherent to the Leach/Hamada tradition and held his first one man show in Auckland in 1974. He was an exhibiting member of the New Zealand Society of Potters, the Auckland Studio Potters, and is an Artist Member of the Academy of Fine Arts.
Rogers is especially noted for his exploitation of a pit firing technique. He studied this technique in California in 1980 and introduced it to New Zealand in 1981 and also to Australia, where he came to live after winning the Fletcher Brownbuilt International Award in 1983. His work is fired in a relatively primitive method, using a large pit dug into the ground. Wood and pots are layered within the pit, and then fired. Rogers continues to explore pit firing as the method sympathetic to the hand built forms he creates. Each piece is considered in order to maintain harmony with the vagaries of the fire where contrasts are achieved on the pots by the flame and heat of the fire.
He remarked of his works in the catalogue of 'Evolution of style: the decorative spirit in Australian contemporary crafts’ at the Craft Centre Gallery, Sydney, in 1985:
I am continuing to explore pit-firing as this Primitive method of firing best suits my work. Character is developed by the Resolution of each piece being kept in harmony with the Vagaries of the fire. One can observe the individuality, not only in the forms but also in the way hues and tones move across each surface. Sometimes the colours are subtle allowing the forms to speak for themselves. Black fungoid areas contrast with softer movements often referred to as Intergalactic. I endeavour to achieve contrasts that offer a challenge for the observer. There is new work in the exhibition showing a gradual change of direction. I like to move slowly as inspiration allows and believe that ones best work is achieved in this way.
During the early 1990s he began to experiment by introducing other organic materials and metallic salts such as silver chloride and bismuth nitrate to his firings. Metallic salts especially provided a lustrous surface and were fired up to five times to provide the depth of the desired effect.
Pit firing is a technique which began to attract many adherents over the succeeding years because of the striking colour variations that the firing can impart. Like Ray Roger’s work, the forms chosen are generally simple spherical forms to enhance the decorative, random effect of the flames. The high point of his career was probably in 1997 when he demonstrated his firing techniques at the 1997 International Ceramics Festivalat Aberystwyth in Wales.
Rogers was a member of the Potters Society of Australia for many years but resigned in 2003 as he had ceased his involvement with ceramics.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1935
- Summary
- Ray Rogers made a significant contribution to the ceramics medium in both New Zealand and Australia and was especially noted for introducing the pit-firing technique to both countries. His career spanned more than thirty years.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Mar-21
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude51.627422 Longitude-0.7484153 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- High Wycombe, United Kingdom
- Biography
- Gerald Easden FDIA (13/04/1934 – 17/09/2021)
Gerald Easden was a well-known designer who contributed greatly to many memorable design outcomes in Australia during his sixty-year career. He was a significant furniture designer, who also worked as an Interior Designer, and with many accomplishments in graphic design and the occasional foray into product design. He was an all rounder, and also a gentleman (this title followed him around over the years and was a lasting impression of his attitude and his behaviour).
Easden was born in High Wycombe in the United Kingdom in April 1934. Since High Wycombe was the centre of furniture design and manufacturing in Britain at this time, it was unsurprising that he enrolled at the Wycombe Technical Institute in Furniture and Interior Design, and graduated in 1950. He worked in the Drawing Offices of two large furniture manufacturers, Ercol and Parker Knoll from 1950 to 1957 (less two years National Service in the RAF).
He came to Australia in 1957 and worked in the Design Studio of Radio Corporation-Astor, and from 1958 to 1961 he was employed as a designer for Reliance Furniture, winning two Good Design Awards from the Victorian Guild of Furniture Manufacturers in 1960. He worked as an Interior Designer in the Victorian Public Works Department from 1961 to 1962, designing furniture and interiors for Government Offices, Courts and Hostels, before joining the Studio of the Commonwealth Department of Works, to design interiors and furniture for the cabins and public spaces of the Empress of Australia, which was built in Sydney as the Sydney to Hobart Ferry. During his tenure he also designed furniture for the Reserve Bank, for many Government Offices and the Melbourne and Sydney Airports.
In 1963, Easden was appointed Assistant University Designer for the Australian National University in Canberra. He worked closely with legendary designer Derek Wrigley OAM, University Designer, and deputised for Wrigley for six months to cover for his overseas study tour. Easden designed not only furniture for the University Halls of Residence, but he also devised graphics for university publications and catalogues for exhibitions, and oversaw the hanging of paintings for Sidney Nolan and John Percival exhibitions. He was a part time lecturer in charge of Interior Design at Canberra Technical College also.
In 1968 he married his wife Jenny in Canberra, and the couple moved to Melbourne, where he set up his freelance practice in South Yarra and then later in Toorak. His consultancy offered services in Interiors, Furniture, Exhibition and Graphic Design. Then in 1973 the family moved to Mitcham, where they were to live for the next forty-seven years.
He designed interiors for retail and duty free stores in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Cairns and Port Douglas. He also designed Exhibition Stands in Melbourne, Sydney. Germany, China and Japan, as well as interiors and furniture for restaurants, hotels, motels, offices and domestic clients. His Australian manufacturing clients included Aristoc, Fler, Module and Ausgum, as well as Chinese and Malaysian manufacturers with exports to the UK, Europe and the Middle East.Easden was a multi award winning designer, winning over twenty Good Design Awards and awarded ‘Modern Icon” status of Australian Furniture by the Australian Furniture Association in 2013. He was elected a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia in 1997, awarded a DIA Gold Citation in 2002, and inducted into the DIA Hall of Fame in 2018.
Easden was the consummate designer as his record attests, but he was also a loving husband and father, as well as a great colleague and friend. He is sadly missed by his wife Jenny and children Mark, Mandy, Rebecca and Ben.
A wonderful designer and a great gentleman has left the stage.
Geoff Fitzpatrick OAM, obituary, 3 November 2021
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2021
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 1 January 1934
- Summary
- Easden was a furniture and interior designer working across the industry in the UK, Victoria and Canberra. He had extensive experience designing furniture and interiors for the Commonwealth and State Public Service in Victoria and elsewhere. He also worked in design display for commercial retail in Australia and overseas and by the end of his career, had received 20+ Good Design awards.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-41.5936936 Longitude147.1215353 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Longford, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1933
- Summary
- Jolliffe was an animator and illustrator active in film, television and in her late career, digital work. She worked internationally with the CSIRO, Television Cartoons (TVC) and after 1979, established her studio "Jollification" in Sydney, later in Blackheath. She retired from animation after 2011.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 2 December 1932
- Summary
- London born Medical doctor, active as a painter and photographer in Tasmania from the 1970s including extensive documentary photography of the people of remote East Coast region of Fingal Valley.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Dec-21
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude56 Longitude10 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Denmark
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1929
- Summary
- Larsen, practicing first as a principal of Solvform, Copenhagen, later as a partnership Larsen and Lewers (Darani), Sydney. He had extensive experience in design education and was part of the Steering Committee that formed the Crafts Council of NSW in 1971.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-25 Longitude133 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Australia
- Biography
- Fish has produced logotypes, packaging, illustrations and TV commercials as well as award-winning Australian poster designs.
In 1951 Fish moved to London where he created posters for clients such as Cadbury’s and National Benzole, and record covers for Decca and Telefunken.The humour and drama of the European posters Fish found in Paris in the early 50s ‘ particularly the work of Leupin and Savignac ‘ fuelled his passion for the medium. ‘The most striking thing was the way they used ideas, because the idea is the lifeblood of a poster ‘ the visual penetrates the eye, but the idea penetrates the mind,’ said Fish.
Upon his return to Australia in 1954, Fish adopted the European-style poster ‘ designing and writing arresting posters for national and international clients including AWA, the Commonwealth Bank, Johnson & Johnson, NSW Tourism, P&O, Peek Freans, Qantas, Resch’s, Schweppes, STC and Tooth’s Beer. 1955’60 saw his work appear in prestigious international design publications such as Graphis and Modern Publicity. At this time, Fish shared a studio with renowned Australian sculptor Robert Klippel, with whom he also collaborated on various industrial and packaging design ventures.
In 1957, Gordon Andrews commissioned Fish to design two large murals for the Australian Department of Trade’s Food Fair in Köln, Germany. Fish and Andrews also formed part of the group of designers and architects who inaugurated the Sydney chapter of the Industrial Design Institute of Australia in 1958.
Shortly after his return to London in 1961, the Australian Treasury invited Fish to submit designs for the new decimal currency of the 1960s, however he reluctantly declined the commission owing to his commitments in the UK.
Back in Australia again in 1964, Fish co-founded the Kaleidoscope, a famously avant-garde antique shop in Sydney’s Woollahra, with wife Victoria and friend Grant Roberts. Its success was confirmed by its choice as the venue for Liza Minnelli’s Sydney-based television show.
By 1970, Fish was Creative Director (Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide) for the US agency, Compton International, winning a Bronze Lion at the Venice Film Festival for client British Airways with writer, John Flanagan. The same campaign also won a Silver Logie at the Chicago Film Institute in 1974. In 1976, Fish created standout poster campaigns for Harry M Miller’s productions of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Rocky Horror Show. The latter was awarded Poster of the Year by the Outdoor Advertising Association of Australia.
Joining advertising agency Fountain Huie Fish in 1976 as Partner, Fish went on to create an international campaign for TIME magazine in 1981 that utilised its iconic front cover. This was supported by the release of promotional ‘TIME’ watches to media buyers. Other FHF clients included Club Med and Lufthansa German Airlines. Upon the sale of the agency to Clemenger’s in 1987, Fish went on to design for Northwest Airlines (US), Pirelli and Citroën until his retirement in 2005.
Don Fish’s other significant passion is music. He recently created a series of over 100 cartoons based on classical music themes that ran for 10 years in the ABC magazine, 24 Hours. Today he is expanding on this series with a view to publication, along with composing and writing.
He lives in Sydney with his wife of 46 years, Victoria.
Writers:
Fish, Charlotte
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1 January 1929
- Summary
- Fish produced poster designs, logotypes, packaging, TV commercials and illustrations for major clients around the world, including Cadbury's, British Airways, Qantas and TIME Magazine. Founder member of Industrial Design Institute of Australia (1958). Creative director Compton International, principal of Fountain Huie Fish ad agency. Retired 2005.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Jul-21
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1927
- Summary
- Dunlop began his career in the Commonwealth Film Unit with a special emphasis on rural Australia, then documenting First Nations people in "People of the Australian Western Desert" (later the Martu "Desert People"); later working in Arnhem Land with the Yolngu people and others. This resulted in the Yarrkala Film Project. Much of his later work was editing and archiving ethnographic film records.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- Derek Wrigley (1924–2021) studied architecture and town planning at ManchesterCollege of Art & Design and Manchester University from 1940 to 1946. Heemigrated to Australia in 1947 and spent the next eight years lecfuring inarchitecture at the NSW University of Technology, initiating the first Building Science course in Australia. In 1950-51, he travelled to the UK, US and Hawaii to visit architecture schools. From 1949 to 1954, he designed and built two solar houses for himself, at 13 and 15 Burne Avenue, Dee Why. In 1957, he moved to Canberra to join furniture and industrial designer Fred Ward in the Design Unit of the Australian NationalUniversity and in 1962 became the ANU’s University Architect. initiating the concept of Total Design covering site planning, architecture, interior, landscape and graphic designWhile in Canberra, he designed and built more solar houses: at 14 Jansz Crescent, Griffith ACT (1958), RMB 901, Little Burra Road via Queanbeyan NSW (1975) and RMB 625 Candy Road, Burra NSW (1985, with Ben Wrigley). He was a founding member of the NSW and ACT branches of the Melbourne-based Society of Designers for Industry in 1955. In 1980 he was made a Life Fellow of its successor organisation, the Design Institute of Australia. He was also a co-founder of the Industrial Design Council of Australia in 1956 and a councillor for 30 years afterwards. He remains an activist for better quality design, more sustainable and solar housing (particularly retrofits). and designing buildings and equipment to suit disabled people. In 2004, he wrote and self-published the book Making Your Home Sustainable. In 1977, he retired from the ANU to design furniture for the High Court of Australia. He founded the ACT branch of Technical Aid to the Disabled in 1979 and was awarded the Order of Australia for his services to the disabled in 1982.Sources—Architecture and Arts and the Modern Home. 1955. ‘People: Derek F. Wrigley’. February. p11.—Derek Wrigley Design website www.derekwrigleydesign.id.au—Wrigley, Derek. 2004. Correspondence recorded by Davina Jackson, October.—Rosenfeldt, Ron. 1999. The History of the DIA. www.dia.org.au/history/dia_history.html
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 1924
- Summary
- Wrigley practiced architecture in the UK and Australia. Formerly employed as a lecturer Manchester College of Art, UK, lecturer at NSW University of Technology (now UNSW). He had several domestic architecture commissions in NSW. As an exhibition and furniture designer, he designed the UNIVER chair and settee for Aristoc. He was an original member of the Australian National University's Design Unit initiated by Fred Ward.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-21
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2021-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Dawn Fitzpatrick was born in Sydney, but grew up in Adelaide where she studied at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts. As with many of her generation her life was disrupted by World War II when she served in the WAAF. After the war she married, and in the public eye became defined by her daughter, the actress Kate Fitzpatrick.After moving to Sydney she began to show the fabric art she had long made. Her first exhibition was in 1975 with Lee McGorman in West Street Gallery, North Sydney. In 1977 she joined with Lee McGorman and her daughter Kate at Ace’s Art Shop at Edgecliff. She also designed costumes for the Old Tote Theatre company.
This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by completing it.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- Fitzpatrick is a textile artist, first exhibiting in Sydney in 1975. She also designs and makes theatre costumes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27-Oct-21
- Age at death
- 99
Details
Latitude-33.8611665 Longitude121.8885159 Start Date1965-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Esperance, WA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1965
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Sep-20
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude39.3077391 Longitude-76.4768667 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Maryland, Maryland, USA
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1950
- Summary
- Jon Lewis, photographer and film maker was one of many talented artists to emerge from Sydney's Yellow House. He was a passionate environmentalist, a founding member of Greenpeace and an active participant in its anti-whaling campaign. In 1999 he travelled to Timor-Leste to be a photographer witness to the events surrounding the vote for independence.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Dec-20
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Annette Bezor was born in Adelaide, the daughter of Alma Smith and Keith Bateman. After her parents’ divorce she changed her family name to “Bezor”, a name connected to her mother’s family.She left school at 14, embarrassed at the way schoolboys commented on her voluptuous appearance. In 1974 she enrolled at the South Australian School of Art, graduating in 1977. This placed her in both the male dominated context of the lecturers at the art school and the heady feminism of the Adelaide art scene of the 1970s. She later said that she spent most of her art school years in pyjamas, working in her bedroom at home, enabled by the encouragement of the feminists.After exhibiting her work to strong critical approval, she was awarded an Australia Council residency at the Cité international des artes in Paris, which she took up in 1987. Her subject matter changed to appropriating images of women from Classical painting, transforming them into highly sexually charges personas.
On her return to Adelaide she continued her career, with significant commercial and critical success. In 1994 she was commissioned by the Parliament of Victoria to to paint the official portrait of the former Victorian Premier, Joan Kirner.
She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer three years before her death on 9 January 2020, and held her final exhibition at Hill Smith Gallery, Adelaide, in October 2019.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1950
- Summary
- Annette Bezor was one of the new wave feminist artists to emerge in Adelaide in the 1970s. Her characteristic paintings were studies of voluptuously beautiful women, often inspired by 19th century visions of classical subjects.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Jan-20
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 13 December 1949
- Summary
- John Nixon's art is best described as radical minimalism. His tough non-objective approach to art was first developed in his student years and continued throughout his long career. As such he was a significant influence on many other artist, especially in Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Aug-20
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1947-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- Sally Couacaud is a curator, project manager, and former director of Artspace in Sydney. She was the inaugural Director of the Australian International Video Festival, and was one of the first curators in Australia to focus her critical attention on video and other forms of electronic media art.Some of her video curatorial projects include: Putting on an Act (Performance Space, Sydney); Terrorising the Code: Recent US Video, (Australian Centre for Photography and New Zealand tour); Looking with the Whole Body (AGNSW, Artspace, ACP, Powerhouse Museum); Aboriginal Video from Central Australia (Los Angles Festival); Satellite Cultures (New Museum, NYC); Videokunst in Australien – Auf dem Weg zu Teletopologien (Linz); Video Art in Australia (Fukui, Japan).She was also Curator of the Sydney Open Museum where she commissioned and managed the City of Sydney’s public art collection, including the Sculpture Walk. She also spent three months working with Art Front Gallery in Tokyo. Art Front was well known for its commissioning of site-specific art works and the close collaboration between artists, town planners and architects.
Writers:
Scanlines
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1947
- Summary
- Couacaud was a gallery director at Sydney's Artspace (1988-1992), later curator of public art, City of Sydney where she developed the city's Sydney Open Museum's "Sculpture Walk". She curated a number of other exhibitions internationally and in Australia, later initiating the inaugural Australian International Video Festival. In 2008, she moved to Mauritius, later returning to Sydney near the end of her life.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2020
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude51.2918693 Longitude-0.7539836 Start Date1946-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Farnborough, England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1946
- Summary
- Stennett was a designer active with the Australian Opera from 1969 when he came to Sydney as a costume designer for the Marriage of Figaro. As his career accelerated, he worked on international productions, returning often to the Australian Opera for design work. He retired from theatre in 1994 to tend his garden in Yoxford, Suffolk, England.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Jun-20
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1940
- Summary
- McLennan was a sound artist who developed his career through the ABC (beginning 1971), working as a producer, later with the ABC Arts Unit and the programmes "Surface Tension" then "Listening Room". He also performed as an actor, musical performer and mime.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-20
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1938
- Summary
- Little began her career as a fashion designer with a dress-making shop in 5-Ways, Paddington under the name Jeanne Mitchell. Her mother had worked as a tailor in Scotland. Little's fashion designs, often reproduced in Australian Womens Weekly, were the springboard for her later career as an entertainer on the stage and television where she designed most of her clothes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-20
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-32.2675086 Longitude150.8905694 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Muswellbrook, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1934
- Summary
- Frank Watters was one of the most influential figures in Australian art in the second half of the 20th century. From 1964-2018 he, along with Geoffrey and Alex Legge ran Sydney’s Watters Gallery. Watters was a founder member of Australian Commercial Galleries Association & one of the first gallery managers to practice droit de suite for their artists before it became law in 2009. His archive is in the Art Gallery of NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-May-20
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.0923817 Longitude148.8638613 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Molong, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Brian Sear (1932-2020)
The Australian industrial designer, Brian Sear, played a major role in the design of electronic consumer goods at Kriesler, a profitable Australian subsidiary of the Dutch corporation, Phillips. Born in Molong NSW, he began his career with a 1948 apprenticeship with the office of the architect M.V.E. Woodforde in his George Street studio, Sydney.
This designer-to-be spent two and one-half years with Woodforde while completing his leaving certificate at Sydney Technical College. During his studies, he read books by the American industrial designers Walter Dorian Teague and Raymond Loewy and began to look at industrial design rather than architecture.
Rather than enter the industrial design course (est.1949) at the Melbourne Technical College, Brian chose the UK and gained admission at Leicester College of Art sailing for Europe in January 1956. Although intent on Leicester, the Council of Industrial Design (COID), London, persuaded him to switch to a new course launching at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 1957.
The RCA’s first industrial design teachers were the head teacher F.C. Ashford and the Russian expatriate Naum Slutsky (1894-1965) (1). Ashford commented in an interview in 1956 that “nowhere else in Europe will there be a course [on] offer quite like ours.”
Brian Sear’s savings held out for two years of study at the RCA and now penniless, he decided to take the RCA diploma. In 1959, Sear re-emerged in Stockholm to study at Stockholm’s new “Konstfack” school (The official name of the school is Konstfackskolan, Stockholm) where a number of design options were on offer. He could study free in Sweden, but the programme specified that could not take employment. After his second year, however, Sear was awarded a Swedish scholarship and allowed to work until he completed the degree.
The designer returned to the UK after completing the Stockholm programme and took interim industrial design work (notably the silversmith Robert Welch for projects for J & J Wiggin) before returning to Australia in late 1963 and taking an industrial design position with Kriesler Australia working under Harry Widmer (1926-2002) (2). When Widmer left the firm around 1966, Brian inherited his role and became Kriesler’s design team leader. By the 1970s, according to Sear, the company’s design and marketing had led Kriesler to generous profits but market forces and the 1970s tariff reforms began to drain the industry’s profit margins.
By 1978, Sear had left Kriesler to found his own design firm, “Bits”, with designs in the IKEA style of flat-pack furniture for the childrens’ market segment. He maintained a retail outlet in the Westfield Centre, Parramatta until “Big Box” competitors such as IKEA overran his market.
Sear, imagining that the “Golden Era” of Australian industrial design was over, returned to architecture after 1982 providing an architecture and graphic corporate identify for the financial giant Australian Guarantee Corporation (AGC) Westpac. When AGC and Westpac separated in 1987, their corporate design section closed and the designer opted for retirement at the age of 55. Brian Sear lived in a small town south of Sydney and maintained an active career in drawing and persistently enters the annual Dobell Prize for Drawing at the Art Gallery of NSW.
[This edition of the biographical summary was amended, corrected and supplemented by the designer’s son, Tom Sear in 2022]
1: Naum Slutsky was a notable metalsmith and jeweller.
2: Widmer was an award-winning industrial designer but the dynamic character left the field to pursue music and theatre interests. Harry Widmer obituary, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 May 2002.
ends/
28 April 2011, 2022
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1 January 1932
- Summary
- Sear is an industrial designer with studies at the Royal College of Art, later, Konstfackskolan Stockholm, returning to Australia in 1963, working as a Senior industrial designer, Kriesler Radio, later design team leader. Sear also established "Bits" as a independent designer developing flat pack furniture.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-20
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- Owner of Beaver Galleries, Canberra, ACT.
Beaver is known for her promotion of fashion design. From 1976-88 she organised annual fashion parades titled 'The Second Skin’ parades.
This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1 January 1924
- Summary
- Owner of Beaver Galleries (est 1975), Canberra and a pioneer of craft-based exhibitions in the ACT. She studied design with Derek Wrigley at Canberra Technical College and was an active participant in the establishment of the Craft Association of the ACT (now Craft ACT).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-20
- Age at death
- 96
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2020-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- industrial designer, graphic artist and sculptor, came to Australia in the prison ship Dunera and was interned at Tatura (Vic.) where he either helped produce or produced alone the POW magazine, Brennessel Hinter Stacheldraht (Stinging Nettles Behind Barbed Wire ) – copy sold at Sotheby’s Rare Book sale, Melbourne, for $3,900. His monotype of the camp, Huts at Night 1941, is in the National Gallery of Australia. Other Dunera Boys who worked at Australasian Post included Frederick Schonbach and Klaus Friedeberger .
After his release Fabian went to Melbourne where he was the leader of a group of young German artists, several of whom contributed to Argus publications especially the Australasian Post (1946-47) under art editor Alan McCulloch along with Albert Tucker and McCulloch himself. (Craig Judd could not find any signed examples of his work in Post ). He worked as an advertising artist in Melbourne and contributed drawings and designs to Army Education publications. In 1950 he moved to London, worked as a designer and lectured at the London School of Printing. He returned to Melbourne in 1962 and commenced work as a sculptor, exhibiting there and in other Australian capital cities as well as London.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 5 November 1915
- Summary
- Industrial designer, graphic artist, sculptor and one of the "Dunera Boys" interned in Hay, NSW, during World War II. In 1950 Fabian moved to London where he worked as a designer and lectured at the London School of Printing. He returned to Melbourne in 1962.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Jan-20
- Age at death
- 105
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 16 November 1943
- Summary
- Caldersmith, a musical instrument maker, began his career as a high school science teacher, later taking a degree in aerophysics with further study in acoustics. His instrument work explored the properties of Australian timbers with colleagues and constructed and repaired instruments for noted musicians. From 1980, he was a full-time violin maker in Canberra, later moving his studio to rural locations.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Oct-19
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-28.3275 Longitude153.395833 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Murwillumbah, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 6 October 1938
- Summary
- Madonna Staunton, who spent all her working life in Brisbane, was best known for her precise, assemblages and collages, but she also painted. Her works are characterised by their small scale, and the way they encouraged viewers to contemplate their many visual possibilities.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Dec-19
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-2.4833826 Longitude117.8902853 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Indonesia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1936
- Summary
- Heins' design career began with architects Jenkins and McLuhan, Sydney, later working at Artes Studio, Sydney. He assumed the lead position of the Design Unit, Sebemo Building Contractors leaving in 1968 to establish his own design practice as Unicum Design. He also lectured at TAFE NSW in Randwick's interior design programme.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-19
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Derek Smith was born in England and trained as a ceramic designer and art teacher before emigrating to Australia in 1956.He taught at art schools in Hobart and Sydney, until 1973 when he managed the pottery studio at the Doulton Australia Factory at Chatswood. In 1976 he left Doulton to establish his Blackfriars Pottery in Chippendale.In 1984 he returned to Tasmania where he continued to produce his distinctive ceramics from his Oakwood studio at Mangalore.Shortly after his pottery was successfully shown in Chicago, he spent four years in Italy, before returning to Hobart.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1931
- Summary
- The English born Derek Smith emigrated to Australia as a young man and became a significant influence on younger potters in both New South Wales and Tasmania
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Feb-19
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-7.3279694 Longitude109.613911 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Java, Indonesia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1928
- Summary
- Altmann was a self-taught artist, working as a commercial artist in Brisbane, later in Sydney. He joined John Fairfax's Sydney Morning Herald in 1954 working there until retirement in 1986. He possessed a remarkable ability to visualise three-dimensional objects including buildings and urban settings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-19
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1927
- Summary
- Taylor was a sculptor, typically working in wood. He was head of sculpture at the School of Art, University of Tasmania, also becoming involved in the University's Design in Wood degree. From this engagement, he and Kevin Perkins were commissioned to design furniture for Parliament House, Canberra.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-19
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glenelg, Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, was born at Glenelg South Australian, the youngest of five children. Her father was the geologist and Antarctic explorer Cecil Madigan. She first developed her love of sculpture while at Walford House, Unley. She left school in 1938 because of illness. In 1939 she studied at the Girls Central Art School, Adelaide, having decided very early on to pursue a career as a sculptor. After moving to Sydney in 1940 Madigan attended night drawing classes at East Sydney Technical College under Liz Blaxland. In 1941 and 42 she studied sculpture under Lyndon Dadswell. On returning to Adelaide she completed three years of evening classes at the School of Art (1944-46)where her fellow students included Jeffrey Smart and Jacqueline Hick, while working at John Martin Department store by day. In 1947 she returned to East Sydney and completed her Diploma in Fine Art (Sculpture) in 1948. After marrying fellow student Jack Giles in 1949 and adopting his name, she won the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship in 1950, only the third sculptor to receive this award.
She left Australia in 1950 to study in Europe for three years, stopping at Bombay on the way where she saw the sculptures at Ellora Caves. Her first daughter, Mnemosyne was born in November of that year.She studied stone carving at the John Cass College, London, but most of this time was characterised by by extensive travel in Europe, including a year spent in Italy. Her second daughter, Celia, was born in 1953. The same year she returned to Australia via India, where she spent time drawing at both the Ellora and Ajanta caves. On her return to Australia the family settled in Adelaide, where she raised her daughters (her third daughter Alice was born in 1961) and taught pottery, painting and sculpture at various schools and at the School of Art. She completed a major commission, the Downer fountain for St Mark’s College, Adelaide, in 1964. With the end of her marriage Madigan returned to Sydney in 1973 and continued to sculpt and teach both at the East Sydney Technical College and at the Sculpture Centre. At this time she began her creative and personal partnership with the sculptor Robert Klippel ( they lived near each other but in separate houses). In the 1980s she experimented with assemblages-constructing works from small wooden machine pattern parts-before reverting to carving figurative works in wood and stone, the materials in which her most significant sculptures have been produced. She continued to draw, paint and produce collages in parallel with this.
Madigan was the recipient of of Australia Council grants in 1976 and 1985 and was the winner of the Wynne Prize in 1986, the first sculptor to receive the prize in over 50 years.
Since her first experience with an automatic drill-carving a stone female form in London in 1952-the female torso has been the focus of much of Rosemary Madigan’s work. Madigan has had an active career as both a teacher and sculptor since winning the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship in 1950 but it was only in the last decades that these compact and subtle torsos came to greater public prominence. She should also be better known as the creator of a number of the most compelling religious sculptures executed in Australia, for instance The Yellow Christ (1968).
An independent thinker, Madigan’s interests since her student years placed her somewhat outside the mainstream of Australian sculptural production. Yet her allegiance to the humanist tradition, with its adherence to the impact of the sculptor’s hand, has been of primary importance to the development of many of Australia’s modern sculptors.
Madigan’s exposure to Indian sculpture-beginning with a visit to the Bombay Museum on her way to Europe and three weeks spent drawing the Ellora cave sculptures on her way home-has been profoundly influential. It is not surprising that while in Europe in the early 1950s it was not the heritage of Henry Moore or the biomorphic visions of the immediate post-war generation of British sculptors which had lasting impact, but the `humanity and the down-to-earthness’ of Romanesque sculpture.
Critics have tended to assess Madigan’s art as a restrained homage to the preoccupations of an earlier generation of modern figurative sculptors, and indeed several of her most successful torsos share qualities intrinsic to Gaudier-Breszka’s work, for example. Nonetheless, although figurative concerns have largely remained central, the parameters of Madigan’s art are larger than such a characterisation would allow.
Torso (1954) is not based on the life model but on Madigan’s desire to explore and articulate generic human form. Executed in Adelaide, this was the first sculpture she completed after returning to Australia. In its stylised, attenuated form-somewhat removed from the spare late works-one is tempted to see the sinuous line of Indian sculpture. Madigan has said of it:
I think I was very concerned with understanding the body … not specifically as far as muscles went, but the way the inner structures-the rib cage and pelvis, two major inner structures-work together. Because I was so interested in the way it articulated, I didn’t deal with the arms or legs or head. I was not thinking of realism at all, but of the basic articulation: coping with a complex three dimensional form … I was never concerned to get a “type” of figure … I’m really only interested in the form.
Writers:
Edwards, Deborah
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 5 December 1926
- Summary
- South Australian born sculptor who concentrated on carving stone and wood to produce classically modern sculptures, mainly based on the human figure. Also an influential teacher of sculpture.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Feb-19
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by adding a biography
In 1984 Milton Moon was awarded Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to ceramics. Since then, he has received an Advance Australia Foundation Award (1992) as well as an Australian Artists Fellowship (1994-1998). Milton Moon has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and overseas, and is represented in public collections around the country.
Writers:
Nerina_Dunt
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1926
- Summary
- Milton Moon has been a key figure in developing close links between Japanese studio pottery and Australia. In 2012 he wrote: 'I remain concerned, if a little obsessed, with the challenge of making pots, which although belonging to a ceramic tradition of some eight thousand years or more, are undeniably and uniquely Australian.'
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Sep-19
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude47.4925 Longitude19.051389 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2019-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Budapest, Hungary
- Biography
- State Library of NSW biographical summary. “Georg N. Szirtes fled Hungary in 1949 to escape communist persecution as his father was a businessman. Surtees was also Jewish but despite persecution during World War II, his culture does not seem to have been a factor in his flight.
He arrived in Sydney, from Vienna, ca. 1951, taking the name George N. Surtees. Qualified as an artist, having trained in the Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest, he was also interested in industrial design. Initially he worked in Sydney for people like Paul Kafka but by the late 1950’s he struck out on his own, doing commercial display work. He also began to work as an interior designer.His heyday seems to have been the 1960’s-1970’s, when he did a lot of work for companies like Westfield, and Frank Lowy and John Saunders. He worked on the Boulevard Hotel in the early 1970’s and worked his Jewish networks, often called upon to design interiors reminiscent of the Eastern European interiors his clients had fled. He also worked as a graphic artist and examples of the range of his work are in this collection. Biographical note from Mitchell Library file.”
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1 January 1922
- Summary
- Surtees trained in Budapest and worked in Sydney in interior design, commercial display, furniture and other design-related work for commercial clients.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-19
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-33.8262187 Longitude150.9414378 Start Date1991-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Greystanes, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 26 February 1991
- Summary
- Jess Nolan was an emerging South Australian artist who died in 2018.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Jun-18
- Age at death
- 27
Details
Latitude-17.0568696 Longitude-64.9912286 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bolivia
- Biography
- Ruth(Ruthi)Eisner was born in Bolivia, in about 1940, to parents who had fled from Nazi Austria.When she was a teenager her family migrated to Australia, and she attended art school in Sydney. Her early subject matter included colourful scenes of people and markets remembered from her childhood in Bolivia. She exhibited, mainly at art societies in Ku-ing-gai and Turramurra for most of her life. She established a small studio based art class in her Turramurra home, encouraging her students to “kindly enjoy their creativity”.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2018
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. c.1940
- Summary
- Ruth Eisner was a child of refugees from Hitler who eventually settled in Sydney. While she exhibited in local art societies in Ku-ing-ai and Turramurra, she is principally remembered for being an inspirational teacher.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Oct-18
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Atnanker, Anmatyerr Country, Central Desert, NT, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1938
- Summary
- After first working in batik, Kwementyaye (Kathleen) Petyarre turned to painting in 1987. Her precise paintings of her country and her culture led to her becoming one of the most celebrated artists from the country around Utopia station.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Nov-18
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1938
- Summary
- Snow was one of the founders of BUGA UP, a loosely affiliated group of activists opposed to tobacco smoking & advertising. The group began ca.1979 & repurposed innumerable billboards & advertising hoardings; a spray can was the only requirement for admission to BUGA UP. In addition to his graphic work, Snow was also a letterpress printer and for some years, he printed the University of Sydney degrees for their Commencement.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-18
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1936
- Summary
- Muncaster was a designer working in costume design, notably costume developed for the Sydney Mardi Gras parade. He began designing costume for the parade in the early 1980s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-18
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, UK
- Biography
- Born in London in 1933. In 1952 she received a National Diploma of Art and Design from the Eastbourne College of Art, England, and in 1956 she gained an Interior Design Degree from the Royal college of Art in London, England. Before moving to Australia in 1961 Dorrough worked as an interior designer for Sir Hugh Casson in London and for a firm of architects (Harrison and Abramovitz) in New York City. In Australia, she worked in interior design for McConnell, Smith and Johnson and lectured in the architecture faculty at the UNSW. She later studied at the City Art Institute, Sydney, where she graduated with a Masters of Visual Art in 1984. In 2000 she studied Renaissance Painting Techniques at the Charlie Shead Studio School, Sydney, NSW.
She played a major role in the creation of the Crafts Council of Australia also designing their offices and the Crafts Council gallery, Sydney.
Dorrough works across different media including drawing, painting, printmaking (particularly etching) and sculpture. Dorrough is well known for her textile wall hangings, titled Twelve Hangings (1980) held in NSW Parliament House, depicting botanic images, as she is for her permanent mixed media installation of life-sized convict silhouettes, Convict Shadows (1991), at The Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney, NSW.
In 1987 Dorrough was awarded an Overseas Fellowship Grant Residency in Italy by the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council. In 1984 she received the Post Graduate Award for work towards her Masters Degree from the Commonwealth Department of Education. In 1978 Dorrough received a Senior Fellowship from the Craft Board of the Australia Council and in 1975 she was awarded a grant also from the Craft Board of the Australia Council. In 1956 Dorrough was awarded a Travelling Scholarship from the Royal College of Art, London, and she also won the Silver Medal from the College the same year.
Dorrough is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Ararat Gallery, Parliament House, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse), Queensland Art Gallery, West Australian Art Gallery, Tamworth Art Gallery, Wollongong Art Gallery, The Orange City Collection, Arts Victoria Festival Collection, Melbourne Stage College Collection, NSW Kindergarten Teachers Union Study Collection and the Historic Houses Trust.
Dorrough has completed commissions for the Regent Hotel, Sydney; Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney; Bond University, Queensland; IBM Australia; and NSW Parliament House, Sydney.
Writers:
Stella Downer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 1933
- Summary
- Dorrough was born in London where she worked as an interior designer. She came to Australia via New York and continued her interiors work while lecturing at the UNSW. After 1964, she began exploring textiles and other media. She is well known for her textile wall hangings and installations commissions.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2018
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Brian Smyth FDIA from South Australia is an Automotive Designer and is now retired.
Brian joined the Institute in 1963 and was President of the South Australian Council (possibly the second president replacing Hugh Whisson) from 1976 to 1979, and was made a Fellow in 1979. He spent ten years on the Administration Committee of the Design Council of Australia.
Brian joined Chrysler Australia in 1949 and was involved in the design of many vehicles including the Simca Station Wagon and the legendary Valiant. He also worked internationally and contributed to design programs in Detroit and also in South Africa.
When he left in 1977 it was noted that 'he left behind him at Chrysler Australia a well organized department with a number of trained stylists highly competent in the areas of clay modeling, colour and trim design, and general styling and design activities. Brian Smyth is a man of outstanding ability, experience and achievement in the field of industrial design.’ signed I.E. Webber, Deputy Chairman, Chrysler Australia.
http://www.dia.org.au/index.cfm?id=179
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1 January 1931
- Summary
- Smyth was an automotive designer working initially for Chrysler Australia. In 1959 he was their senior stylist and became involved in the introduction of the US Valiant model into Australia, later becoming involved in Valiant Charger model. He retired in 1977.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-18
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- Mirka Mora, the artist whose joie de vie enlivened Melbourne for many years, was born in Paris in 1928, the daughter of Lithuanian Jews, Leon Zelik and Celia Gelbein.After the Nazis invaded Paris she and her mother were arrested in the Velodrome d’Hiver roundup of 1942, the largest French deportation of Jews of the Holocaust, and taken by train to a concentration camp in Pithviers. Through a combination of fortunate events which included the kindness of strangers and her father’s ingenuity, they were released. Most of their fellow prisoners died at Auschwitz.In 1947 she married Georges Mora, who had been a fighter in the French Resistance and in 1951 they emigrated to Australia with their baby son Philippe, settling in Melbourne. They were by instinct urban dwellers so found an apartment at 9 Collins Street. It had a distinguished history as it had been used as a studio by Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin. They soon opened Mirka Cafe in Exhibition Street, where good food and sparking conversation made it a drawcard for Melbourne’s creative intelligentisia. Soon it was also exhibiting art painted by the habitués and their friends. Sunday Reed organized a rare exhibition of Joy Hester’s work. Charles Blackman held his first exhibition there. She combined her work in the cafe with parenthood, but always was making her art. She painted, drew, embroidered, made amusing lascivious dolls, decorated ceramics. There were no barriers with her art.In the late 1960s they moved to St Kilda to the Tolarno Hotel for which she painted murals. This morphed into the Tolarno Gallery, one of Melbourne’s leading art galleries. In 1970s, after multiple affairs by both parties she separated from Georges and later divorced, but remained close to him until his death.In 1978 she was commissioned to paint one of Melbourne’s Art Trams, a project by the state government in an effort to enliven the city. Her whimsical tram easily became the city’s favourite and in 1986 she was commissioned to create a ceramic mural at Flinders Street station. She also painted the foyer of Melbourne’s Playbox Theatre and in 2016 collaborated with the fashion designer Lisa Gorman.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 18 March 1928
- Summary
- Mirka Mora’s joyeous experimental art gave a bohemian flavour to Melbourne life, both with her former husband, the resistance fighter and restaurateur Georges, and then with her wide circle of friends and extended family.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27-Aug-18
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-33.7750987 Longitude151.2844815 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Harbord, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Charles Blackman was born in the Sydney harborside suburb of Harbord, the third child of Charles Cervic Blackman, a mechanical engineer, and his wife Marguerite Brown, who always preferred fantasy to reality. His father abandoned the family when the boy was four, leading his mother to work long hours at a waitress at Circular Quay – and when she could not cope the children were placed in Dalwood Homes. In primary school he was (briefly)taught by Rah Fizelle. He left school at 13, after an extended bout mumps which confined him to bed. His mother gave him paints to keep him occupied. In 1942 he was employed by the Sydney Sun, first as a copy boy and later as an art cadet. In about 1947 he enrolled in painting classes under Hayward Veal at the Meldrum School of Art, but did not find this to his taste. However he did enjoy the drawing classes at SORA (Studio of Realist Art)and the Sketch Club in Haymarket.The New Zealand poet, Lois Hunter, introduced him to modern art and he began to read twentieth century European literature. Her edition of Lautréamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror introduced him to the work of Odilon Redon. In 1948 he followed Hunter to Brisbane where he met other modernist artists and poets, including his future wife, Barbara Patterson. In 1951 Blackman and Patterson moved to Melbourne where they married, spending the following years. In 1952 Blackman came to the attention of the art patrons John and Sunday Reed, with whom he later quarrelled, as well as the art critic Alan McCulloch. Accounts of the unsolved murder of Barbara’s childhood friend, Betty Shanks, inspired his first series of schoolgirl paintings. Barbara was slowly going blind, and so he read to her children’s and fantasy literature, which came in turn to influence his own art, especially Alice in Wonderland. In 1959, encouraged by Bernard Smith, he joined with fellow artists to assert the value of the figurative image in the Antipodeans exhibition, and designed the exhibition poster. On seeing his paintings Sir Kenneth Clark suggested he exhibited in London.The Blackman family arrived in London on 2 February 1961, and soon joined the lively expatriate community of Australians. In 1966, missing the sunshine and the beaches, they returned to Australia, travelling first to Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane but ultimately to Sydney.In June 1978, in part because she was irritated by his constant infidelity, Barbara wrote a formal resignation from their marriage, giving him two weeks notice. Blackman subsequently painted a series of nightmare paintings, based in part on Fuseli’s horse, using the actress Kate Fitzpatrick as his model.A relationship with a 19 year old student, Genevieve de Couvreur, led to his second marriage. He continued to admire Barbara and at his 50th birthday presented her with the large canvas, Fifty Flowers (with a white cat in the corner).He first stayed at Buderim, on the Gold Coast, in 1979 and by 1981 was spending most of his time there, painting on themes of lovers, living in idyllic lush tropical beauty. In 1982 he collaborated with the Sydney Dance Company in Dialogues, Daisy Bates and later Spindrift for the Western Australian Ballet Company. In 1984, after the birth of their second child, Blackman and Genevieve separated.From 1985 he began to base much of his work on the butterflies and vegetation of north Queensland, travelling with the poet Al Alvarez. He also worked closely with the Sydney print workshop, Port Jackson Press.In 1989 he married Victoria Bower, whom he later also divorced. His later exhibitions of recent work were not well received by the critics, who noted their uneven quality and bulk production. However the 1993 retrospective, Charles Blackman: Schoolgirls and Angels at the National Gallery of Victoria, demonstrated the full range of his poetic vision.In his last years Blackman suffered from dementia and his affairs were managed by the Charles Blackman Trust, established by his accountant Tom Lowenstein. He died a week after his 90th birthday.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 12 August 1928
- Summary
- The Antipodean artist Charles Blackman was best known for his paintings of schoolgirls and the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland. He was a part of the circle of artists and writers who congregated at Heide, and in 1959 was one of the figurative artists who signed Bernard Smth’s Antipodean Manifesto.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Aug-18
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- William (Bill) Salmon was born in Geelong on 9 April 1928, but spent his early years on one of the properties managed by his father, John Walter Salmon. His mother, Clarice Bennett Taylor, encouraged him to think of a career in architecture, but he was not interested. His paternal grandfather had been a doctor in Creswick. Daryl Lindsay, another doctor’s son, was a family friend and encouraged the boy to think of art. As a compromise, after leaving Geelong College, he studied commercial art at Swinburne Technical College and worked for a time as a designer for Prestige Fabrics.After the War he travelled to London where he continued his studies at the Slade and then the Academia di Belle Arti, in Florence.In 1953 he and his first wife, Adele Love, returned to Australia where he taught for the South Australian School of Art. In 1958 they moved to Sydney where he taught at East Sydney Technical College while holding frequent exhibitions of his bush landscapes at Macquarie Galleries. Sydney enabled him to renew his friendship with David Strachan, whose father had also been a doctor at Creswick. Along with other similarly inclined artists, including Donald Friend and Russell Drysdale, they enjoyed frequent painting expeditions to the old gold mining town of Hill End.In 1963 when Jeffrey Smart relocated to Italy, he invited Salmon to take his place on the ABC’s radio program, The Argonauts. Salmon adopted the name Apelles for these broadcasts. He soon made the transition to television, presenting programs on Roundabout and On the Inside. His television interview subjects included Donald Friend, Sidney Nolan and Lloyd Rees. He also made programs on Fred Williams and John Olsen. In 1970 he married Rosemary Clynes.He remained committed to country life. He designed and built the house at his farm Goannamanna, near Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. The bush, with its trees and rocks of the mountains became the subject of many of his paintings. He was an active member of the local bushfire brigade and some of the subjects of his paintings were of landscapes regenerating after fire. In the early 1980s the family moved to a farm near Dungog, which also became the subject for his art.In his later years he became an innovative farmer, always aware of changes in the environment.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2019
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 9 April 1928
- Summary
- William Salmon described his art as emerging from the landscape. He trained initially in graphic arts at Swinburne Technical College and worked as a textile designer then studied in the UK and Italy before returning to Australia where he taught in SA and NSW. In 1963 he began to broadcast for the ABC's Argonauts children's program and also presented specialist art programs for ABC television.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Oct-18
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude53.7975 Longitude-1.543611 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leeds, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Donald Brook was born in what he later described as “an industrial slum” in Leeds, Yorkshire,on 8 January 1927. His father was a traveling salesman, a position that enabled the family to move to “a cultural wasteland of lower-middle class environment”. A series of scholarships enabled him to study electrical engineering but he left the degree before graduating and was conscripted into the British Army. After military service he enrolled in an art degree at the University of Durham, under Lawrence Gowing. His sculpture teacher, JR Murray McCheyne, introduced him to Scandinavian influences,but he was more influenced by the humanist approach of Germaine Richter, Reg Butler and Alberto Giacometti. On graduation he was awarded a scholarship to the British School in Athens, for Crete, but did not attend. Instead he travelled through Greece and Crete, admiring especially Cycladic sculptures. He then spent a year in Paris where he worked for the Societé CIAM. After returning to London he worked for a company making props for the film industry, including the armor for Richard Burton in Alexander The Great. It was at this time that he met his wife, Phyllis, a dancer.After a number of successful exhibitions, he was appointed to teach sculpture at what was to become the Ahmad’s Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria where he stayed for two years. On his return to London he held a number of successful exhibitions in London, before being approached to join the Digswell Trust in Hertfordshire. Here he worked in a community with Ralph Brown, Hans Coper, and Peter Collingwood. Henry Moore was a close neighbour.At Phyllis’s suggestion he applied to undertake a PhD in philosophy at the Australian National University, which he completed in 1967. They arrived in Canberra in 1962,where they found a small but lively intellectual community under the leadership of HC (Nugget) Coombs. His supervisor was the philosopher Bruce Benjamin. When Benjamin became ill with cancer the Brooks moved into the granny flat at the rear of the house and Phyllis cared for the children, including the future art historian, Roger Benajamin. It was at this time Brook began writing art criticism for the Canberra Times, under the editorship of John Douglas Pringle. He also designed exhibition spaces for temporary art exhibitions. While he was exhibiting in Canberra as well as at Gallery A in Melbourne and Sydney, Brook was also grappling with the problem of how art was regarded in relation to fashion. He started to see that many aesthetic judgements were best described as trivial.He was now looking for a regular source of income, so applied for a position at the Elam art school in Auckland. He did not take up the appointment as he was appointed senior lecturer at the newly formed Power Institute at the University of Sydney, where he commenced teaching in 1968. The same year he was appointed art critic of the Sydney Morning Herald. Although he had a fractious relationship with the professor, Bernard Smith, Brook made a lasting friendship with fellow lecturer David Saunders.Although he ceased making sculpture when he moved to Sydney University, this was where he made his first significant contribution to contemporary art. Along with Marr Grounds he established the Tin Sheds workshop, a joint venture between Fine Arts and Architecture to enable students to make art. Under their guidance the Tin Sheds becomes an effective nursery for conceptual art. The sculptor Bert Flugelman joined the Tin Sheds as tutor and also became a lifelong friend. These friends were especially valued in the years after 1968 when the Brook’s three year old son, Simon, was murdered – a crime that was to remain unsolved for almost 40 years.In 1969 Brook delivered the second Power Lecture,Flight From the Object, which became one of the most important contributions to conceptual art in Australia. Brook’s rigorous philosophical approach to art and ideas enabled his next appointment as the inaugural Professor of Fine Arts at Flinders University.In Adelaide in 1974 Brook initiated the creation of the artist run Experimental Art Foundation (EAF) with Ian North, Clifford Frith, Phil Noyce and Bert Flugelman (who had moved from Sydney at his suggestion). Brook retired from Flinders University in 1989, but continued to write, talk and mentor successive generations of artists until shortly before his death.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2018
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 8 January 1927
- Summary
- The. Yorkshire born Donald Brook first established a reputation as a sculptor, but his most significant impact on Australian art was as the intellectually rigorous critic, professor and art theorist whose ideas exerted a profound influence on at least two generations of Australian artists, curators and writers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Dec-18
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.0111111 Longitude151.7077778 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Redhead NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1925
- Summary
- Naughton was a painter primarily of "Outback" scenes and scenery. He began his career as a graphic designer and illustrator for advertising agencies in Australia and in the UK. He was Managing Director of he Nichols-Cumming agency in Sydney, later establishing Keith Naughton Studios. He closed the Studio by 1975 and went on the road painting. In the 1990s, he took up political cartooning for the Newcastle Herald.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-18
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude47.4925 Longitude19.051389 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Budapest, Hungary
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1921
- Summary
- Scheinberg was the principal of the Holdsworth Galleries, Woollahra, Sydney. The Holdsworth opened in 1969 and closed in 1995-96 on her retirement. Her papers associated with the Gallery were presented to the National Library of Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-18
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-38.3399766 Longitude143.5858537 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2018-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Colac, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 28 August 1920
- Summary
- Awarded MBE 1977 and AM, 1988 "For service to art as an illustrator of botanical specimens".
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Dec-18
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-32.7218138 Longitude152.1440889 Start Date1961-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nelson Bay, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1961
- Summary
- Herbert was a film maker, forming a company "Arcadia Pictures" with Sophie Jackson while attending the City Art Institute. After further training at AFTRS, Sydney, he produced a number of short films, features and TV series. He also worked on a number of films as art director, stylist and props acquisition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Jun-17
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- caricaturist, cartoonist, illustrator and painter, was born in Adelaide, but the family moved to Goroke in Western Victoria when he was nine months old then onto Condobolin. He moved to Sydney and studied at Beacon High School in 1967 then transferred to Newington College. A brilliant caricaturist, he began drawing cartoons professionally in 1983. He first drew for the Bulletin and for the Sydney Morning Herald , resigning from the latter in 1994 and moving to the Daily Telegraph-Mirror (swapping places with Suzanne White) . Now he is at the Australian .
By 1998 Leak had won 8 Gold Stanley Awards from the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club as Artist of the Year, including 1987-89, 1991-92, 1994 (Suzanne White won in 1990 and Eric Löbbecke in 1993) and 1996 [presumably also 1995 and 1997]. He was voted best caricaturist in 1989, 1991, 1994, best humorous illustrator in 1988-89, 1991, 1994, best general illustrator in 1987, 1989, and best cartoon done on the night in 1987 (awards listed only to 1993 in Lindesay: see also Inkspot ) He has also won 7 Walkley Awards for cartoon of the year, including 1996 (see Inkspot 28, Spring 1997). His paintings had been hung in the Archibald Prize 8 times by 1998 (more since) and he had both a portrait of Robert Hughes and a cartoon of cricketer Mark Taylor in the National Portrait Gallery.
Just quietly , Nurse and The man of action , published in the Australian on 21, 29 and 30 July 1997, were exhibited in Bringing the House Down: 12 Months of Australian Political Humour (Canberra: National Museum of Australia/ Old Parliament House [OPH] exhibition, 1997), cats 57, 9, 91. In 1998 he showed more cartoons and spoke about his work at the OPH cartooning seminar. He was also in Bringing the House Down 2001 (4 works) and doubtless in between. Included in State Library of New South Wales [SLNSW] exhibition Australians in black & white : (the most public art) in 1999, he gave a lecture at the library on 1 March 1999. He lectures and talks regularly, e.g. on radio, as well as publishing anthologies of his cartoons and occasionally writing on the subject. A selection of his cartoons, Drawing Blood , was published by Allan and Unwin in 1998.
He drew a version of 'for gorsake stop laughing’ for the Stanleys (Black and White Artists Club Awards) 1989 (SLNSW) – an acknowledged tribute to Stan Cross .
In 2002 Leak was hosting Radio National’s weekly arts’ program, 'Nighclub’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1956
- Summary
- Leak began his career with art lessons, briefly attending the Julian Ashton School, Sydney. In 1982, he began cartooning, working for the Bulletin, then the Sydney Morning Herald and News Ltd. He was a multiple entrant to the Archibald Portrait Prize and won multiple awards (Walkley, Stanley Award) for his illustrations and cartoons. He also published a novel and books of his cartoons.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude42.3636331 Longitude-87.8447938 Start Date1954-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waukegan, Illinois, USA
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1954
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2017
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-23.3782137 Longitude150.5134227 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1950
- Summary
- Irving, after brief training at Swinburne, he worked with Hector and Dorothy Crawford's film studio, Melbourne. With Claudia Karvan, he filmed "Love my Way" and was involved in film and TV productions such as "Newsfront, "Water Rats", "Mushrooms", "My Brilliant Career" and others. In retirement, he took up teaching at the Australian Film, TV and Radio School.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- When Peter Pinson was a student at North Sydney Boys High in the 1950s, art was not taught at this selective school. However a change in the school curriculum meant that from 1962 onwards all NSW school children would learn art and as a result many school leavers, including Pinson, were offered scholarships to train as high school art teachers.After completing his studies in art at East Sydney Technical College and Sydney Teachers College he was employed as an art teacher at Bathurst High. In 1964, his last year as a student, Pinson was awarded the watercolour prize in Sydney’s Mirror-Waratah Festival. He was encouraged to develop his art further, and the landscape around Bathurst became the subject of paintings he developed for the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship, which he was awarded in 1968.In London Pinson completed a Masters at the Royal College of Art. While he was in London Pinson became interested in Zen Buddhism, which was to become a significant influence on the way he approached art.On his return to Australia in 1971, Pinson taught at Wollongong Institute of Education before being appointed as Senior Education Officer at the National Gallery of Victoria.In 1977 he returned to Sydney as a senior lecturer in art in the innovative art education program at the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education. In 1991 when the college joined the University of New South Wales and was renamed College of Fine Arts, Pinson was appointed as an Associate Professor and was later promoted to Professor.Pinson was a thoughtful and supportive teacher, encouraging many artists at the start of their careers. His own art continued to show the influence of his London years, with intensely coloured works that reflected both his pleasure in the small details of domestic life and his love of visual and verbal puns.In 1986 he was appointed Offical Military Artist, an appointment that led him to visit military bases around Australia. The appointment led him to look again at the work the Surrealist Eric Thake had painted during in World War II. He saw similarities between his whimsical approach to art and that of Thake.Pinson preferred to work on paper, using water based acrylics. His interest in the medium led him to join the Australian Watercolour Institute, and in 2003 he was elected President.In his years at the College of Fine Arts Pinson also curated a number of exhibitions on distinguished Australian artists, many of whom were colleagues and friends. On his retirement he established an art gallery in Woollahra where he exhibited the work of many of his former colleagues and friends.In 2014 the gallery closed and Pinson spent his last years concentrating on his own art, described by David van Nunen as being “characterised by emphatic design; painterly surfaces; a generally subtle palette offset with passages of pungent colour; flatness; and a feeling for pattern that relates to synthetic cubism and art deco posters.”
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2017
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 9 October 1943
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Jun-17
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1942-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1942
- Summary
- Ceramist Liz Williams received an Australia Council grant for travel and research, which she undertook in Mexico and America in 1991. She was also an Australia Council Studio residency recipient, based in Barcelona during 1994-95. Williams has exhibited in Australia and overseas and is represented in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Mar-17
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude51.27452185 Longitude0.196116556 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sevenoaks, Kent, UK
- Biography
- Ti Parks was born in England in 1939. He studied painting and printmaking at Bromley College of Art in Kent and at the Slade School in London.
From 1964-1973 he lived in Melbourne and in 1973 he represented Australia at the 8ieme Biennale de Paris with a major photographic and collage work called “Polynesian 100.” The following year, in 1974, he was appointed Senior Visiting Lecturer at Elam School of Art in Auckland, New Zealand. He subsequently returned to London in 1975.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 15 March 1939
- Summary
- The experimental artist Ti Parks had a major influence on the development of conceptual art in Australia, especially in Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2017
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.6055342 Longitude150.821953 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Windsor, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Robin Norling, painter and draughtsman (particularly of the figure), teacher and gallery director, was born in Windsor, New South Wales, in 1939 but grew up in Taree, New South Wales. He studied at the National Art School, Sydney Teachers College and the Royal College of Art, London, UK.
In 1961, aged only twenty-two and still a student at Sydney Teacher’s College, he won the Sulman Prize, for a mural design, Sea movement and rocks . In 1962, having just started teaching art at Macquarie Boys High School, Norling was awarded the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship, which allowed him to travel to Europe and North Africa with his new wife, art teacher, Elaine Odgers. In 1966, the two of them began their slow return to Australia, driving through Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, immersing themselves in the many cultures they passed through.
On his return to Australia, Norling returned to secondary school teaching and, in 1970, was appointed as a lecturer in art education at Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education. In the same year he began writing and presenting a weekly ABC radio program aimed at youth, entitled Young World of Art , which ran for four years. From 1978 to 1986 he was senior education officer at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, during which time he curated a number of educational exhibitions, including Light and Shadow and Composition is Artist’s Glue. This position gave him a remarkable opportunity to study, at his leisure, some of the greatest paintings in the country, including works by less well-known artists such as the British Victorian painters Lord Frederick Leighton and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Norling realised that these artists were more than the sentimental storytellers that contemporary taste held them to be.
In 1986 Norling left his position at the Gallery and took up a position at Meadowbank College of TAFE, teaching painting and drawing. In 1997 he retired from teaching and returned to full-time painting. From 2000 he shared a studio and directorship of Patonga Bakehouse Gallery on the New South Wales Central Coast, with fellow artist Jocelyn Maughan.
Norling is represented in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Charles Sturt University (Goulburn campus) and the University of Sydney.
Acknowledgments to Peter Pinson, for his introduction to Robin Norling, Phillip Matthews, 2010, for much of the information contained herein.
Writers:
Cooper, JonathanPinson, Peter
Jonathan Cooper
Date written:
2017
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- Norling began his career in sign-writing, later training in painting at the National Art School, Sydney, and the Royal College of Art, London, UK. He was a secondary school teacher, lecturer at Alexander Mackie (later City Art Institute), Meadowbank TAFE, ABC presenter and educator at the Art Gallery of NSW. He also worked as a curator and writer during his diverse career.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude53.5111779 Longitude-2.937562183 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Maghull, Liverpool, England
- Biography
- Alun Leach-Jones was the eldest child of a Welsh elementary school teacher father and a Scottish mother. His parents had met in Liverpool, but shortly after Alun’s birth the family returned to his father’s home in rural North Wales where he became the local schoolmaster, and his son’s first teacher. Alun did not speak English until he was ten. In 1947 an uncle, who was recovering from the War, showed him how to paint watercolours. When the family returned to Liverpool, Alun joined his uncles’ Post Office club, and was commissioned to paint murals, his first professional experience. From the age of 14 he worked at the Solicitor’s Law Society, making illuminated manuscripts for presentation. A workmate, Ronald McKenzie, introduced him to art, and they travelled to Paris where he saw Gauguin, and to the Prado in Madrid. Art became increasingly important and he enrolled in evening classes at Liverpool College of Art. In 1959 Leach-Jones travelled to London to see New American Painting at the Tate, an exhibition that introduced him to Abstract Expressionism, and changed the way he thought about colour and form.The following year he travelled to Adelaide as an assisted immigrant, where he worked at various jobs including as a library assistant, before enrolling in night classes at the South Australian School of Art where he said his “real professional life started”. It was also where he met his wife, fellow artist Nola Jones. Kym Bonython noticed Leach-Jones’ constant visits to his gallery, and encouraged the budding artist by giving him a place to live in the gallery in return for assistance with installing exhibitions and caretaking duties. Leach-Jones’ interest in art books at the Mary Martin bookshop piqued the attention of Max Harris, who commissioned him to illustrate a book, and introduced him to Sidney Nolan which gave him a sense that art could be a career.The South Australian School of Art also led him to an interest in the possibilities of printmaking, led by Udo Sellbach, Karin Schepers and Geoffrey Brown.In 1964 Leach-Jones and his wife Nola travelled to England where she studied at the Chelsea School of Art, while he became involved in the Contemporary Art Society. He shared a studio with the English abstract painter Brian Plummer. Consequently he met other artists including Patrick Heron and Norbert Linton. London finessed his screen-printing technique and he started to make images of intricate abstract beauty, with the generic title “Noumenon”, which he described as “the idea of perceiving a purely intellectual entity”. He continued working in this direction on his return to Australia, this time to Melbourne, in 1964. The same year he held his first successful solo exhibition at Australian Galleries, which was soon followed by exhibitions in other cities. His meditative intricate abstract works led to him exhibiting in The Field in 1968 and being regarded as one of Australia’s leading abstract artists. In 1969 he represented Australia at the Bienale del Sao Paulo, in Brazil.The same year he was appointed as a teacher at the Prahran College of Advanced Education, also taught at the National Gallery of Victoria School. This was followed by an appointment at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1972 and the City Art Institute (later known as the College of Fine Arts, UNSW) in 1978. His significance as a printmaker was first recognised in 1967 when he was made a Print Patron of the Print Council of Australia, and his achievement in a British context was recognised in 1990 when he was made an Honorary Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, UK.The significance of Alun Leach-Jones as a printmaker as well as a painter was early recognised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Australia Council which, in 1974, chose him to exhibit at the Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi. This was followed by other exhibitions and residencies in Malaysia, Singapore and New York.In 1980 Leach-Jones undertook a residency in Berlin, at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanian. His studio was next to the death zone of the Wall, place of concrete, barbed wire and dead animals.From this came a turning point in his art, with the series “The Romance of Death” which was triggered in part by the efforts of those trying to cross the wall.
In the 1990s, influenced by what he described as 'Welsh melancholy’ he made a series grouped under the title “The Instruments for a Solitary Navigator”. He later described these as “like a slime trail left by the snail behind him”.In 1999, encouraged by his friends Lenton Parr and Robert Klippel, he began to make sculpture which was the subject of several of exhibitions in commercial galleries.Towards the end of his life there was a renewed interest in the mid-century Abstract artists and the way the daring young men who painted in precise colours had helped shape modern Australian art.
Writers:
AngelaTandori
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2017
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 3 January 1937
- Summary
- Alun Leach-Jones was one of the generation of artists who helped define Australian colourfield art in the 1960s. Hie first came to prominence exhibiting in The Field in 1968 with paintings of smooth intricate patterning, indicating a search for abstract transcendence. His ideas and his art easily transformed into silk screen prints and in his later years he also exhibited sculpture.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Dec-17
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help by adding more detail.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 24 September 1937
- Summary
- In the 1960s Melbourne artist became well known for his lively hard edge abstract paintings which were based on images discovered on cereal packets. Later he gave the same magnified scrutiny to knitting patterns and then elements of suburban culture. In 1970 he turned from painting to systematic photographic observation. Rooney has also written extensively on Australian art as art critic for both The Age and The Australian.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2017
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-32.256944 Longitude148.601111 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1935
- Summary
- Hall trained as an architect at Sydney University, later tutoring after 1963 in addition to his architectural practice. He also painted and drew, exhibiting with Barry Stern Gallery, Janet Clayton Gallery and others. In the 1980s, he began to build stringed instruments with An Morison and Isa Coello from workshops in Alexandria and elsewhere.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Sydney Ball was born on the 29th of October 1933 in Adelaide, South Australia, the son of Lillian and Sidney Ball. Because of his father’s war service he was awarded a repatriation scholarship to St Peter’s College. On leaving school he undertook a series of jobs including jackaroo and bank clerk.After enrolling in architectual studies with Wladyslaw Dutkiewicz at the Workers Education Association he began to work as an architectural draughtsman, a discipline that influenced his later work. He joined the Royal South Australian Art Society’s weekend classes, and began to think of studying art full time. After taking some classes with James Cant, John Dowie and Dora Chapman at the South Australian Institute, he realised he needed international experience in order to fully develop as an artist.In 1962 Ball travelled to New York and enrolled in classes at the Art Students League, studying lithography with Harry Sternberg and painting with Theodoros Stamos. He scoured both public art museums and commercial galleries, enticed by Matisse, as well as exhibitions by Hans Hofmann, Morris Louis and Mark Rothko. He exhibited at New York’s Westerly Gallery, and his work was favorably noted by Donald Judd.The young Australian moved easily into the New York Creative milieu. Stamos introduced him to his colleagues, including Willem de Kooning and Robert Motherwell. Subsequently he was invited to Mark Rothko’s house for Thanksgiving.In 1965 Ball returned to Australia via Japan, where he visited the shrines at Kyoto and Nara, sparking a lifelong interest in Asian philosophies and religions.On his return to Adelaide Ball was appointed lecturer at the South Australian School of Art, where one of his students was Margaret Worth who he later married. He exhibited with some critical success in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, which brought his work to the attention of John Stringer and Brian Finemore who were planning an exhibition of Australian colourfield art to open the new National Gallery of Victoria. As well as Ball’s work being included in the exhibition, he designed the lithograph exhibition poster.In 1969 the Ball family returned to New York, but the marriage ended in 1971. Ball came to know the critic Clement Greenberg and through him others American artists who shared his passion for pure colour, including Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski and Jack Bush. He especially admired Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko’s approach to colour. After Rothko’s suicide he was asked to clean the studio.In 1972 he returned to Australia, eventually settling in Sydney with an appointment a senior lecturer at the City Art Institute. He bought land at Glenorie, north of the city, and commissioned architect Glenn Murcutt to Design the house & studio which was completed in 1983. This became his base with his partner Lynne Eastaway until his death.He continued to explore different systems of belief and their visual expression, from China and Tibet, Korea, India and the paintings by Aboriginal artists in a cave near his home.After some years when abstract painting was out of favour, a revival of interest in both colour and the culture of the 1960s brought renewed attention to Ball’s art. In the last years of his life Ball’s work was included in a number of major survey exhibitions. In 2008 Anne Loxley curated a national touring exhibition, Sydney Ball: The Colour Paintings. Sydney Ball died on 5 March 2017, at home in Glenorie, two days after suffering a stroke.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 29 October 1933
- Summary
- The Adelaide born Sydney Ball was a painter of pure colour and abstract form, and one of the first of the post-World War II artists to understand that New York, not London was the place to see and explore new art.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Mar-17
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1933
- Summary
- Sydney Ball was one of the first of his generation to look to New York instead of Europe for inspiration. He consistently painted large abstract works in clear, pure colour.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2017
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1927
- Summary
- Grant was an industrial designer with studies at the Royal College of Art, London, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA. He designed work for Expo '67 Montreal, Toyo Kogia, Davis Furniture NY. He was the principal of Kjell Grant Design, Melbourne and has produced furniture for Innerspace and others. A designer lecturer at RMIT, Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude52.0809856 Longitude5.127683969 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Utrecht, Netherlands
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1925
- Summary
- Huveneers was a graphic designer beginning his career in the Netherlands, the UK, finally in Australia in 1968. Much of his work was in advertising and marketing and by 1970 he established a studio, Huveneers P/L. Amongst his commercial work was the corporate identify for Australia Post.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude16.8305877 Longitude96.2191864 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yangon (Rangoon), Burma
- Biography
- Image and short biographical entry in Australian Black-and-White Artists Club Book of Originals (1986), AGNSW (178.1988.1-102).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1 January 1925
- Summary
- Milligan was an illustrator for the Fairfax press in Sydney and a painter. He trained at Goldsmiths, University of London after the 1939-45 war. Arriving in Australia in 1951, he worked as a glassware engraver (probably for AGM), then worked for Fairfax. He also painted abstracts, took portrait commissions and illustrated books for his brother Spike Milligan.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2017
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-33.7569444 Longitude151.0775 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cheltenham, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1921
- Summary
- Brett was an internationally acclaimed marine painter. He appears to be a self-taught painter whose knowledge of ships and the sea came from an early career as a sailor on Australian coastal steamers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 96
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2017-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- painter, was born in Vienna in 1920, he and his family had lived in Warsaw until forced to flee in 1937 because of the Nazis. He worked in Melbourne 1937-48, where he was an active member of the Contemporary Art Society – and a communist – along with his friends Noel Counihan and Vic O’Connor . They painted the life they saw on Melbourne streets. He first exhibited with Boyd and Counihan at the University of Melbourne in 1939. Bernard Smith wrote in 1943 that Bergner, Boyd and Perceval constituted 'the most vital movement in Australian art today’. Some of Bergner’s paintings were the first to address the specific plight of Aboriginal Australians, according to Mellick. 'He recalled: “I did not know what an Aborigine was. He did not look like a Negro, more like a Jew… I painted these people with the faraway look in their eyes from generations before. They were displaced and I felt I identified with them.’ Works included Two Women 1942 (NGV) – one an Aboriginal.
One of the first things Bergner did in Melbourne was to set up a Yiddish theatre. His father Melech Ravitch was a Yiddish poet who had translated Kafka from German into Yiddish in the year of Kafka’s death (1924), but Bergner’s first strong engagement with Kafka was in Melbourne, as he later recalled (quoted Rubin and Mellick). Paintings after he moved to Israel permanently in 1948 continue to take themes from Kafka’s novels and short story 'Metamorphosis’, e.g. The Metamorphosis 1975 (artist’s collection). Retrospective exhibition, Israel, in 2000.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 October 1920
- Summary
- 20th century Melbourne painter. Contemporary of Boyd and Perceval and active member of Contemporary Art Society with Noel Counihan and Vic O'Connor. Bergner's paintings were among the 1st to address the specific plight of Indigenous Australians and later work took inspiration from the works of German writer Franz. In Tel Aviv, a member of a circle of artists centred in the popular Cafe Kassit, where he painted a large mural.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-37.247494 Longitude144.4552171 Start Date1962-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kyneton, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Silversmith Robert Foster set up F!NK and Co in 1994, joined by partner Gretel Harrison in 1997. Foster wanted a business that would support his one-off handmade works, starting with production of his now well-known aluminium F!NK water jug.
From the outset, F!NK was envisaged as a company of designers and many acknowledge Foster’s generosity and enthusiasm in providing them with a start. He insists on a close connection to the tooling part of the process to ‘maintain the sensitivity and integrity of the design’.
F!NK objects are now sold extensively in Australia and overseas. Increased demand for the F!NK water jug led Foster to explore offshore manufacturing, and he proceeded to have jug forms made in China, mostly for assembly in Australia.
Foster’s work is in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum, and was included in the Museum’s 2007 exhibition 'Smart works: design and the handmade’.
FROM THE DESIGN INSTITUTE OF AUSTRALIA’S HALL OF FAME AWARD 2019:
Robert Foster was born in Kyneton, Victoria to art teacher parents who also painted and made pottery. He studied gold and silversmithing at the Canberra School of Art, now ANU School of Art, under renown silversmiths Ragnar Hansen and Johannes Kuhnen. He graduated in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts (Visual) and a Post Graduate Diploma of Arts (Visual) in 1986. He went on to establish a studio, Fink & Co in 1993 and rapidly became a major figure in the ACT and national design industry.
Best known for designing tableware, lighting, furniture and other objects, he also had a number of major sculpture commissions including Ossolites in the foyer of the ActewAGL building in Canberra. Each piece he made is imbued with a distinctive personality and movement; objects ‘that might, Nutcracker-suite style, come to life as the owner sleeps.’
Foster’s iconic Fink jug epitomises his design ethos and technical prowess and is a landmark achievement in Australian design. When commissioned to create the jug by Canberra restaurant The Republic, Robert took aluminium tubing, an everyday yet sustainable material, and fashioned it into a sleek, economically-viable product. The original tooling involved old pieces of steel from his father’s tractor and wood from a fence post. The Fink jug now features in collections both nationally and internationally including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and major Australian institutions including the National Gallery of Australia.
He won numerous awards including the ANU Alumnus of the Year award in 2015. He regularly lectured, gave specialised workshops and was a key-note speaker at international conferences.
Following his untimely death in 2016, two grants were set up in Robert’s name to ensure his dedication to helping others continues. One is the ANU Robert Foster Gold & Silversmithing Honours Scholarship and the second is the Capital Arts Patron’s Organisation’s Robert Foster Memorial Award.
Writers:
Powerhouse Museum
staffcontributor
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. c.1962
- Summary
- Foster studied silversmithing at the Art School, ANU, founding the Canberra-based jewellery and household object design company F!NK + Co in 1993. In 1997, Gretel Harrison was a partner in FINK + Co. Foster was elected to the Design Institute of Australia's Hall of Fame in 2019.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1956
- Summary
- Patterson trained at Sydney Technical College & Sydney College of the Arts. She began costume work in TV, later moving into film. She frequently collaborated with directors Jane Campion and Gilliam Armstrong. Her earliest work was contemporary costume design (Sweet and Sour, Dancing Days) and as her career expanded, she moved into period costume & production design. (The Piano, Portrait of a Lady, Far From the Madding Crowd).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-33.37877205 Longitude147.9534388 Start Date1954-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Forbes, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- Ian Kenneth Willding was born at Forbes, NSW in 1954, the son of Kenneth Willding and Beryl (née McCarney). After initially training as a chef and working in Sydney, he moved to Adelaide in 1989. For the next sixteen years he worked as an artist in residence at the Suneden Special School. He also forged close links Nunga and gay communities, supplementing his income by working as a carer. Although he had left Forbes his art continued to reference memories of his childhood. His synaesthesia meant that these paintings, especially Dust of My Fathers (2008, have an immediacy in their evocation of times past.In 1996 he became involved in the Red House Group of community artists, an association that would last the rest of his life. His involvement in community arts led to his 2009 venture of curating Kumqwot, an exhibition of work by gay and lesbian artists. He held a number of solo exhibitions of his own work, notably Ceaseless Patterns of Being, which indicated his growing interest in Asian spiritual values, and Native Tongue III of 2009, which recalled the only time he ever heard Wiradjuri being spoken.In 2011 Tandanya Cultural Centre honoured him with a solo exhibition, Family Matters: A Wiradjuri Story in which he drew on his own research and his mother’s knowledge of their family history. He had always wanted to travel, but for most of his life such adventures had appeared to be impossible. Shortly before he died, he is friend Samuel Schmid travelled with him to Europe, going by train through Switzerland, Austria, Italy and Poland, seeing so much of the art that he had long admired in reproduction.In January 2017, just after he died, Adelaide’s Gallery M honoured him by showing Ian Willding, Retrospective.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2018
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 10 October 1954
- Summary
- Ian Willding, a Wiradjuri man, developed his art while working for many years at the Suneden Special School in Adelaide. His inspiration however came from his childhood in Forbes, in rural NSW. From 1996 onwards he was associated with the Red House Group of community artists, and also curated exhibitions of works by gay and lesbian artists.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Aug-16
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-31.6535192 Longitude116.6726927 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Northam, WA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- Conceptual artist concerned with the politics of representation, appropriation and particularly photography, working frequently with text, found images and assemblage.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Sep-16
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude29.974498 Longitude32.537086 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Suez, Egypt
- Biography
- Emanuel Raftoplouos was born in Suez, the multicultural seaport city in north-west Egypt. His mother, who had Italian heritage spoke to him in Italian, while his father, whose heritage was Greek, spoke in Greek. He was educated at the British school which gave him an easy command of English. It was here that he was introduced to painting and drawing.In 1956, in the lead up to the Suez crisis, his family made the prudent decision to leave Egypt and emigrate to Australia, where they settled in Sydney. Although he wanted to study art, his father wished for him to have a profession. The compromise was that he enrol in architecture at the University of Sydney. However Raft, as he had renamed himself, surreptitiously enrolled in painting classes at Bissieta’s art school. Architecture was soon abandoned.In 1959 he sailed for Milan, where he studied at the Brere Academy, where Bissietta had also studied. Here he was joined by Philipa Watkins, who he had met as a fellow art student in Sydney. Together they travelled to London, the standard destination for young Australians visiting Europe. Raft began to exhibit paintings burnt and seared with a blow-torch, as well as elaborate jewellery, which he called “wearable sculpture”. These were well received in both Australia and England. In 1968 two of his paintings were selected for the National Gallery of Victoria’s landmark The Field exhibition. The following year his marriage to Watkins ended.In 1978, three years after his second marriage to the designer Helen Thaw, Raft and his family settled permanently in Sydney. Although he had a successful career in England, teaching as well as making art, he missed the sun. He joked “the rising damp was too much for me”.In 1981 he was appointed lecturer in art at the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education, a position he held until his retirement in 1996 as it transformed into the City Art Institute and the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. He bought a house in the country near Lot, in France, where he stayed in the European summers. After Helen died in 2008 there was less travel.
His third wife, the sculptor and jeweller Sylvia Ross, was a long time colleague at the College of Fine Arts. In 2015 as the National Gallery of Victoria prepared to revisit The Field for its 50th year celebration, the curators discovered that several works were missing. Raft’s two Monoliths”, in the collection of Kym Bonython, had been destroyed some years before in Adelaide’s Black Thursday bushfires. He agreed to recreate them. As Raft was weakened by leukaemia the works were completed with the assistance of fellow artist and former student David Eastwood.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 7 February 1938
- Summary
- The Egyptian born Emanuel Raft brought a cosmopolitan perspecive to the way he approached painting, sculpture and design. He was also a teacher and mentor who influenced generations of students.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-May-16
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1937
- Summary
- Stitt was an artist, illustrator, graphic designer and animator trained at Melbourne Technical College (later RMIT) and began working in film in the late 1950s. As his career evolved, he also began working as a cartoonist. Later in his career, he turned to animation and special effects. He was often engaged in the film industry working with Philip Adams and Fred Schepisi.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude40 Longitude-100 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- USA
- Biography
- George Henry Freedman, (6 March 1936–21 July 2016) was Australia’s leading interior designer from 1970 until a younger generation (including some architects and designers he trained) became prominent in Sydney during the 1990s. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he studied architecture at Syracuse University (1953–1958) but did not graduate. Influenced by his father, a paint company’s colour decoration adviser, he first worked as a designer and artist in London, Amsterdam and New York before he was despatched to Sydney in 1969, by New York design consultancy Knoll International, to deliver Manhattan-modern executive offices to help internationally rebrand the British colonial origins of the Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac). During 1970–1971, Freedman worked part-time for Sydney decorator-antique dealer Leslie Walford, and formed a personal and professional partnership with Neville Marsh, a successful decorator from Perth. Trading as Marsh Freedman Associates after 1972, they designed many prestigious Sydney commercial and residential interiors, often including Freedman’s own furniture designs (most built in-situ but including a restaurant cocktail trolley collected by the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences). Marsh Freedman Associates’ most significant project was designing two floors of executive offices atop a new Martin Place tower for the State Bank of New South Wales (1985–1988). Across eighty rooms, Freedman and his team provided one of the world’s finest curations of postmodern (1970–1990s) perceptions of interior design excellence. Freedman later specified colours and finishes to update two Sydney heritage monuments: the Powerhouse (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, 1988) and the Queen Victoria Building (historic markets to a modern shopping centre, 2009).As well as designing interiors for some of Sydney’s most prestigious and prosperous people and organisations, MFA created Sydney’s most magnetic transmillennial restaurants, notably Berowra Waters Inn, 1976; Claudes, 1981; Kinselas, 1983; Taylor’s, 1984; Chez Oz, 1985; Bilsons, 1988 (renamed Quay, 2004); Treasury, 1992; Ampersand, 1998; and Buon Ricordo, 2007.In 2005, Freedman was described by The Sydney Morning Herald as ‘the Godfather of Sydney interior design’. He was recognised by design and architecture industry experts for his daring and widely emulated combinations of colours, inventive uses of materials, relentless attention to detail, and commitment to high-quality furnishings (often imported signature classics). He was respected also for his sophisticated understandings of optical perception and volumetric manipulations of interior space; talents exemplified with his optically and geometrically sophisticated scheme for Kraanerg (1988), one of three Sydney Dance Company ballets for which he designed the sets. With his American and European architecture and arts knowledge, he was highlighted by design writers as practising more like an architect than many Sydney colleagues who were educated as interior decorators and designers. He worked with Sydney’s leading architects of the late-twentieth century—including Glenn Murcutt, Ken Woolley, Peter Stronach, Lionel Glendinning and ecological design pioneer, Sydney Baggs. Freedman also trained some of Sydney’s outstanding younger architects and designers—including Iain Halliday, Sam Marshall, Stephen Varady, William MacMahon, Arthur Collin, Robert Puflett, Tim Allison and his late-career partner, Ralph Rembel. In 2005 the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (NSW Chapter) awarded Freedman Rembel an Interior Architecture commendation for its design of executive offices at the AMP building overlooking Circular Quay.Freedman’s 1970s and 1980s furniture designs, often finished with luxury European veneers and eye-catching details, were often promoted in Australia’s leading home furnishing magazines, especially Belle, Vogue Living and Interior Design. He was a Fellow of the Design Institute of Australia and the Academy of Design Australia, and a regular judge for the annual Dulux Colour Awards. During the late 1980s, Neville Marsh retired from Marsh Freedman Associates to live in Rome and Freedman continued to practice as George Freedman Associates (with Robert Chester and Sam Marshall). In 1996 he appointed Ralph Rembel as his business partner and in 2002 their practice was renamed Freedman Rembel. In 2010, Freedman and Rembel dissolved their practice and Freedman joined PTW (Peddle Thorp and Walker) architects as Head of Interior Design (while continuing to advise his existing private clients. In 2014, Freedman married psychologist Peter O’Brien at a ceremony in New Zealand.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2017
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 6 March 1936
- Summary
- Freedman trained as an architect. His interior design career began with Kahn & Jacobs Architects, a New York City firm. He later shifted to London, then back to New York working for Knoll International. He arrived in Sydney in 1969, forming a partnership with Neville Marsh in 1971. Freedman's practice later became Freedman Rembel in 2002. The practice was associated with PTW (Peddle Thorp Walker) architects after 2010.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Jul-16
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, TAS, Australia
- Biography
- Tasmanian born artist mainly known as a printmaker, Bea Maddock also worked in painting, drawing and photography.
Beatrice Louise Maddock was born in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1934. Beatrice and her twin sister, Frances, were the youngest of the four children of two amateur artists, Henry Mervyn Maddock, an Anglican clergyman, and Thelma Annie. The family lived in various country parishes of Tasmania.
In 1956, Maddock graduated with a Fine Art degree from the Hobart Technical College where she had studied part-time under Jack Carington Smith, Dorothy Stoner, Jack Koskie and Stephen Walker. During her studies, she worked at the Visual Aids Centre at the Tasmanian Education Department. Maddock taught in high schools while studying art education at the University of Tasmania. Artist and former teacher Jack Carington Smith encouraged her to apply to the Slade School of Art in London. She was accepted, and left in 1959 to pursue postgraduate painting and printmaking with William Coldstream, Anthony Gross (etching) and Ceri Richards (lithography).
During her European journey, she traveled in Scotland, England, France, Holland, Italy, and Germany. She studied at the Academi de Bell Arti in Perugia, Italy, on a one-month scholarship. She went to churches and sketched in notebooks, observing Masaccio’s paintings and other religious sculptures. Because of the language barrier and the poor teaching at the provincial school, Maddock and her fellow student Murray Walker quit the classes to spend most of their time in the landscape. Maddock found great interest and inspiration in the art and landscape of Umbria and Tuscany. She painted works like Italian landscape (1961) outdoors on small canvases she carried. At the Slade School, she had been criticized for drawing too well and using too many colours, a palette she had been taught in Tasmania. After mainly working in tones of green, her Italian experience diversified her palette again. In Paris, she was impressed by the works of Georges Rouault, the French Fauvist and Expressionist painter and printmaker. Her print works at the Slade, like her 1960 Self-portrait , were influenced by Rouault’s emphatic gestures and strong black outlines. She admired German Expressionism in Munich and Essen, and would later study German Expressionist prints at the National Gallery of Victoria Print Room when living in Melbourne in 1964. Maddock travelled back to Australia by boat in 1961, stopping in Bombay, India. There, she was deeply confronted by the poverty, and she considered her experience in India as a milestone.
Upon her return to Australia, Maddock spent two years in Launceston, studying ceramics, teaching, painting, and printing. In 1964, she had her first solo exhibition in Launceston: Paintings, Drawings, and Prints by Bea Maddock. She then moved to South Melbourne, where she worked in a furniture factory to make ends meet. The city influenced her Figure series, which she would work on until 1968. Maddock moved back to Launceston in 1965 to teach ceramics, printmaking, drawing and basic design. Even after she moved, her works were still based on her Melbourne experience.
Bea Maddock won many prizes including the Tasmanian Drawing Prize in 1968, with Figure in a place , and the F.E. Richardson Print Prize in 1969, with Midnight (part of the Day series).
By the late 1960s, the artist established herself as a printmaker and in 1970, the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne invited Maddock to teach printmaking. There, she was also able to dedicate time to her own work with the advanced printmaking technology, and started making photo-screenprints and photo-etchings. Her promotion of these two practices through teaching was extremely important in Australian art schools. In 1973, Maddock was appointed Senior Lecturer in Printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts (formerly National Gallery of Victoria Art School).
During the 1970s Maddock worked mainly in series which paralleled the sequential nature of newspapers, as she was commenting in her work on the omnipresence of mass media. She used newspaper clippings and other found materials in her work, like the photograph of a criminal in a local newspaper she used in the photo-etching Philosophy I (1972).
In 1974, she won the 4th prize at the International Print Biennale in Poland for the photo-etching Square (1972) and received her first commission, from the Print Council of Australia, to produce a member print. A Creative Arts Fellowship at the Australian National University of Canberra allowed her to spend all of 1976 on her own work. She then received a Commission (1977) from the Visual Arts Board for the VIIth International Exhibition in New Delhi, for which she produced ten prints – the Journey series, Four by Two , and Two by Two . The same year, the Commonwealth Games Print Portfolio in Edmonton, Canada, commissioned her to produce a print. She traveled to Canada, then the United States, where she saw the work of Jasper Johns at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a Paul Cezanne exhibition at the MOMA and other public collections in New York. Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol were important influences on Maddock’s work, with their extensive use of serial imagery, grid format, and photography. Numeral 1 (1984) is an example of one of Maddock’s responses to Jasper Johns’ serial work.
From 1979-80, she was Acting Dean at the Victorian College of the Arts and worked on a commission of twelve encaustic panels for the High Court of Australia, Canberra. She resigned from her Senior Lectureship at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1981, and became part-time lecturer at the Bendigo College of Advanced Education in 1982. Living in Macedon, Maddock created the Access Studio, a space for ex-students to use. Sadly, the 1983 Ash Wednesday bush fires destroyed Maddock’s Macedon studio and house. (She would later recreate the Access Studio at the Red Lion paper mill in Dunolly.)
Maddock toured New Zealand and gave lectures, along with her exhibition Bea Maddock Prints 1960-1982. She returned to teaching in Launceston, Tasmania, for one year until 1984, when she resigned from teaching altogether in order to devote herself entirely to her own work. Maddock had always had a strong desire to educate, but she knew that time consuming teaching was incompatible with her career. The following year, she was appointed member of the Council of the Australian National Gallery and was also Chairperson of Ritchies Mill Arts Centre in Launceston.
In 1987, the Artists in Antarctica Program invited Maddock on a trip to Antarctica. It inspired her Forty Pages from Antarctica , a suite of etchings. That year, she also produced, under the commission of the Australian National Gallery, the encaustic panels We live in the meanings we are able to discern for the ANZ Bicentennial Art Commission.
Text is a feature of Maddock’s visual language. The Parliament House Construction Authority commissioned Maddock to design two posters using quotes chosen by historian Manning Clark. Completed in 1989 for the Manton exhibition, Queensland Art Gallery, the four panel encaustic painting Tromemanner – forgive us our trespass is a good example of the importance of words in Maddock’s art.
Maddock’s work is held in the collections of the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, all State galleries and other collections in Australia, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Gallery in Washington.
Maddock is a Member of the Order of Australia.
Writers:
Drouin-Le, Vy
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1934
- Summary
- Bea Maddock was one of the nation's most accomplished contemporary printmakers. She worked across a range of media including encaustic painting, screen-printing, drypoint, handmade paper and . She also had a brief teaching career at the School of Art, Launceston CAE. Perhaps her best known work is Terra Spiritus: With a Darker Shade of Pale, a monumental 52-sheet panorama of the entire coastline of Tasmania.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2016
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-36.840556 Longitude174.74 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1932
- Summary
- Bolster founded the Aladdin Gallery, Elizabeth Bay, Sydney with Thomas Bolster in 1964 (some sources cite 1967). The gallery exhibited work from Asia and the Pacific as well as design and craft by Australian artists. The Bolsters moved to South Australia in 1982.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-23.3782137 Longitude150.5134227 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockhampton, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- Dell Claire Scott was born in Rockhampton in 1931, the second child of Barney Scott and his wife Bronwen neé Milner. Scott worked as a projectionist in Yeppoon but, starstruck by the movie business, he left the family for the United States. Her mother remarried Thomas Clarke, a labourer and timber-getter, and the family moved to a farming district some 26 kilometres north of Rockhampton. Dell attended The Caves State School where she demonstrated a love for drawing. She drew every day, usually in the evenings by the light of a carbide lamp. On completing primary school, she boarded in Rockhampton and worked in various businesses including a steam laundry and a couple of Greek cafés. When waitressing in one of these cafés she met her future husband Cliff Nash, a third-generation miner who worked as a fitter and turner for Mount Morgan Mine. They married in 1956 and daughter Leonie was born in 1957, their only child. Dell Nash found the mining town west of Rockhampton fascinating and often returned to the subject of Mount Morgan in her career as a painter. The family relocated to Rockhampton around 1963 when Cliff Nash obtained a position as chief engineer for the abattoir owned by T. A. Fields Pty Ltd at Nerimbera. Throughout the 1960s, her main focus was in turning the company house into a home, creating gardens and playing tennis. Health issues forced her to adopt a more sedate lifestyle and she joined the Rockhampton branch of the Royal Queensland Art Society. Her art practice did not flourish until Mervyn Moriarty founded the Australian Flying Arts School (subsequently Flying Arts/ Alliance) in Brisbane in 1971 and brought painting workshops to regional Queensland. Nash repeatedly credited Moriarty and AFAS with opening up her life with art. Bela Ivanyi, who had joined AFAS as co-pilot and tutor in 1974, instigated annual workshops near Yeppoon on the Capricorn Coast. The Cooee Bay Artist Workshops provided opportunities for ongoing professional development for Nash and fellow-artists such as Carmen Beezley-Drake, Linda Frawley, Rita Kershaw and Olga Morris for almost 4 decades. Ivanyi continued to mentor the largely regional clientele, bringing with him a series of high-profile contemporary guest tutors including Roy Churcher, Roy Orloff, Stanislaus Rapotec, Colin Lanceley, Fred Cress and Irene Amos. These influences gave Nash the confidence to paint boldly. AFAS and later Queensland Arts Council exhibitions in Brisbane included work by Nash. She became a prominent supporter of the Walter Reid Centre in Rockhampton, and exhibited regularly and collected prizes in local competitions such as Blackwater, Emerald, Gladstone, Gympie, Mackay and Rockhampton. In 1984, she enrolled in the Capricornia Institute of Advanced Education and completed a two-year course in etching, lino-print and screen-print, obtaining a Fine and Applied Arts Diploma. Painting landscapes, however, remained her favourite medium, largely due to her reverential connection to her environment. She sketched in ink, charcoal and pastel then completed the work in her studio.Her success was confirmed when Double Heads Yeppoon (1984), a work featuring the volcanic plug that juts into Rosslyn Bay, was selected for ‘Queensland / Works 1950–1985: A Survey of 80 Painters’ at the University Art Museum, University of Queensland. In the same year, the semi-abstract Rolling Hills, Tanby (1985) won the Bundaberg Sugar Company prize of $2000.The Queensland Arts Council and Rockhampton Art Gallery joined AFAS in showcasing Central Queensland contemporary artists and a number of her works were selected for travelling exhibitions, mostly to regional Queensland, in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Others were sold through local and Brisbane galleries. In all, Nash established a significant profile in the 1980s and 1990s.Dell and Cliff Nash owned a beach house in Zilzie, south of Cooee Bay, and retired there. Nash embraced the burgeoning coastal art scene. She continued to sell though Rockhampton galleries Biroo Gallery and Spiral Gallery; a gallery in Emu Park known as ‘the’ Gallery and The Mill Gallery in Yeppoon; and spaces such as Gnomes Restaurant, Rockhampton and Rydges Resort, Yeppoon. Rockhampton’s daily Morning Bulletin consistently featured and photographed Dell Nash as did, on occasion, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail. In 1996, Rockhampton Art Gallery honoured Nash, then aged 65, with a retrospective exhibition as part of a series to recognise the contribution of artists from Central Queensland.Nash continued painting and frequently won additional regional art competitions. She developed a canny sense of what might appeal: Cloncurry was awarded the Ernest Henry Art Prize, Cloncurry in 1996; Hills and Houses of Mount Morgan took the acquisitive $1000 prize in the Mount Morgan Inaugural Spring Fair in 1997. She engaged across the community, sharing skills and insights with TAFE students and high school students from St Ursula’s College in Yeppoon, Rockhampton Grammar, Rockhampton Girls Grammar and Rockhampton High School. Always keen to explore new perspectives, Nash experimented with modelling and exhibited a bust of her granddaughter Courtney in ‘The Quarry Studio exhibition’ in Walter Reid Art Centre Gallery in December 2004. She attended art workshops in Brisbane led by John Rigby and continued to participate in the Cooee Bay Artists Workshop. One of the last she attended was in 2013, under tutor Joe Furlonger, just three years before her death. Nash’s husband, who suffered from motor-neuron disease, died in 2011. She participated in ‘Reflections of Summer’, a group exhibition in The Mill Gallery, that same year. She continued to paint and exhibit after moving to Oak Tree Retirement Village, Yeppoon. The deep love of the natural world that was so apparent in the beginning of her career never left her. She died in 2016, aged 84. Art critic and gallery director Sue Smith, writing in an email in 2020, observed, ‘Looking again at her work after many years I’m quite struck by its strong similarity to work by another Rockhampton artist, Carmen Beezley-Drake. This might be partly explained by the fact that Dell and Carmen and others in CQ were regular attendees at the annual three-day Cooee Bay artists workshops – I think these two and others were very strongly influenced by the workshop tutors, especially Bela Ivanyi.’
Writers:
Lesley Synge
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 22 October 1931
- Summary
- Dell Nash was a contemporary impressionist landscape artist of Central Queensland known for her instinctive feel for line and vivid colour and strong psychological and emotional response to physical locations. A student of the Australian Flying Art School in the 1970s she began exhibiting in the 1980s, collecting many awards in regional art shows.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Jun-16
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-25 Longitude133 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Australia
- Biography
- Carl Nielsen was born in Australia in 1930. He completed an Industrial Design Diploma at Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT) in 1952. He moved to Sydney, first working as a photographer, then in furniture and construction and then as a design assistant at Amalgamated Wireless Australasia (AWA) Ltd. After a few years working in London, Nielsen returned to Australia to set up his own design business in 1960. In 1965 Nielsen was elected Federal President of the newly established Industrial Design Institute of Australia (DIA) and he also began teaching at University of New South Wales (UNSW). In the 1970s his company became Nielsen Design Associates Pty Ltd (NDA) and produced many notable products. His spouse Judy Sternberg worked at NDA as a director/business manager. Nielsen became more involved in design education and in 1976 he was appointed as Head of Industrial Design and Principal Lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts (SCA). In 1984 he and his wife Judy resigned as Directors of NDA though the company continued. Nielsen completed a Masters degree at SCA before the design school was amalgamated with the Sydney Institute of Technology to become the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). Nielsen was appointed Associate Professor in the Design Faculty at UTS. In 1990 Nielsen was a founding councillor of the Australian Academy of Design and in 1992 he was elected Life Fellow of the Industrial Design Institute of Australia. Nielsen retired from teaching at UTS in 1999, and was appointed an Adjunct Professor from 2000-2003.
Writers:
Powerhouse Museum
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1930
- Summary
- Industrial designer and design educator. He studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and established a private practice as Carl Nielsen Design ca.1961, which became Nielsen Design Associates after 1971. Nielsen was a founding member of the Society of Designers for Industry, NSW Chapter and held many posts in national professional design organisations.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter and etcher, was born in Sydney. She studied at East Sydney Technical College until 1949, including etching under Herbert Gallop. However, she did not begin exhibiting her prints until 1963, when she showed at Joy Ewart 's Workshop Art Centre, Willoughby, which she had helped set up. Since its demise she has exhibited with Artarmon Galleries, e.g. Alan Bond Sydney Development etching c.1988, and Northern Approaches 1964-65, etching (edn 30), purchased from Artarmon Galleries by Joan Kerr.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1929
- Summary
- Painter and etcher Elizabeth Ursula Rooney helped set up Joy Ewart's Workshop Art Centre at Willoughby. She studied etching under Herbert Gallop.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Mar-16
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-33.7962 Longitude151.2827 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manly, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Ceramic artist and designer, was born in Manly, NSW, and attended Balgowlah Heights Infants School on the first day it opened. He lived in Balgowlah until his early teenage years and remembers being the escort for the first Miss Manly Mardi Gras in the early 1960s. He studied sculpture and ceramics at East Sydney Technical College and is said to have been the first student to be awarded the new Ceramics Certificate at the 'Tech’ in 1964. His ceramic works are in major galleries, including the Powerhouse Museum and Manly Art Gallery & Museum. He has also worked as a commercial designer. In the late 1950s Alistair McCrea, CEO of the Australian Speedo Company, hired him to revolutionise its men’s leisurewear. His range of Speedo designs (1960-62), largely from the Powerhouse Museum’s archive, was shown in a retrospective at Manly Art Gallery 25 January-2 March 2002, combined with a fashion parade held in conjunction with the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Travis began flying huge kites in the 1970s and constructed them as suspended forms from the early 1980s, e.g. hanging along the nave of St Stephen’s Anglican Church, Newtown, for the first (and only) Sydney Festival of Mediaeval Music and Architecture in 1982 (when Joan Kerr gave the inaugural Blacket Memorial Lecture). From the 1960s onwards he has taught in countless workshops and classes on issues of colour, form and design.
Writers:
Staff Writer
stokel
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1927
- Summary
- Travis is a noted colour consultant, kite-maker, ceramic artist and designer. Travis was hired by Alistair McCrea to revolutionise Speedo's range of men's leisurewear, now archived in the Powerhouse Museum. His large-scale kites have been adapted for interior design commissions and performance art events. He later lectured at the Shillito School of Design and the College of Fine Arts, Paddington.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2016
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1923
- Summary
- Joynes was an embroiderer and needleworker working in Sydney. She was an active member of the Embroiderers Guild NSW, exhibiting in their exhibitions and other venues and publishing a number of publications on her art forms. With Prue Socha and Pat Langford she also founded the Creative Embroidery Association, Sydney. The Australian Museum relied on her skills as a textile conservator for a number of years.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- sculptor, was born in Berlin, Germany, on 25 November 1918. In 1951 she came to Melbourne – a city which struck her then as a sculptural desert – and spent the next eight or nine years adjusting to her new life, having her children and augmenting the family income by making and designing jewellery. Only a few sculptures were produced during this period, but in 1959 King, who had mostly worked in wood and stone, started welding. Her initial training had been as a wood-carver in Germany (1935-38), then at the Royal Academy in London and the Glasgow School of Art. After the war she had worked in London, where she held her first solo exhibition in 1949. A chance to travel to France and New York in 1950 confirmed the latter as the most exciting city she had experienced. There she saw Jackson Pollock’s paintings and made contact with members of the New York School, as well as exhibiting in a group show. Back at London she met and married an Australian artist, Graham King.
King’s early steel sculptures reflected a break with the past in the demands made by her use of a new material and in the inspiration and challenge offered by the vast spaces of the Australian landscape. Later she began to make steel maquettes: some complete in themselves, some models for large-scale works. Her first commission for a large sculpture came in 1971 with the RAAF Memorial in Canberra, followed in the same year by the Fred Schonell Memorial Fountain at Queensland University. These projects introduced King to collaborative work with engineers and welders and to the sort of detailed preparation with models and computation drawings critical to the monumental Forward Surge (1974-82), commissioned by the Victorian Arts Centre. Other works commissioned since the mid-1970s include sculptures for the University of Melbourne, La Trobe University, the Australian National University, Woden Valley Hospital, the State Bank of Victoria, the NSW Royal Blind Society Sculpture Award, ICI House in Melbourne, the McClelland Gallery Sculpture Park and the State Superannuation Board.
From 1969 King held regular solo exhibitions and participated in group shows and, from 1980, in the Sculpture Triennial exhibitions. She was a founding member of the Group of Four in 1953 and its successor during the 1960s, Centre Five. Both organisations aimed to promote public understanding and acceptance of sculpture, particularly through lectures and exhibitions, and were critical in creating a more receptive climate for it. Her educational interests also involved her in lecturing in sculpture at the School of Early Childhood Studies (1961-75) and at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in 1976-87.
King is represented in institutional, state and regional galleries and in private collections in Australia, Europe, UK and USA. In 1984 she was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia. Further recognition of her contributions and achievements has come with honorary doctorates from Deakin University (1990) and RMIT (1993).
Writers:
Kirby, Sandy
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 November 1918
- Summary
- King is a prolific and successful sculptor. Her involvement in the Australian art scene throughout her career has been immense and she is well recognised through commissions and awards.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Apr-16
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date2016-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1918
- Summary
- Higgs trained as a commercial artist, later working as a textile designer at Claudio Alcorso's Silk and Textile Printers, Sydney. In 1948, she returned to New Zealand to continue her career.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-16
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1957-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 29 June 1957
- Summary
- Andrew Sayers was one of the great curatorial communicators and enthusiasts for Australian art. His time at the National Gallery of Australia led to significant redefinitions of Australian art. As well as his own painting, which he kept private for many years, he is also remembered as inaugural Director of National Portrait Gallery of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Nov-15
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1948-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- This obituary was written by Grace Cochrane AM, independent curator and writer, Sydney; former senior curator of Australian decorative arts and design, MAAS, Powerhouse Museum.
Reproduced in part from [https://maas.museum/inside-the-collection/2015/03/04/obituary-john-smith-designer/]
It is very sad to hear of the death on 24 February 2015, of John Smith, a key figure in furniture designing and making in Australia for over 40 years. Smith and his partner, ceramic artist and designer Penny Smith, migrated to Tasmania as ‘10-pound Poms’, in 1970, and it was here that I met them after ‘crossing the ditch’ from New Zealand in 1972. After bravely battling recurrent bouts of cancer for some years, John Smith died with his family around him, at their weekender on Bruny Island.
Smith’s contribution to his field is respected and admired by many friends, colleagues and past students. He had moved to Hobart from the UK to take up a position as a design lecturer at the Tasmanian School of Art, later part of the University of Tasmania, combining teaching with his practice as a designer-maker, specialising in furniture design but also working on architectural and sculptural projects.
Born in Chesterfield in England in 1948, Smith completed a Pre-Diploma of Art at the Chesterfield School of Art in 1967 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Furniture), at the High Wycombe College of Art and Technology in Buckinghamshire, in 1969. From his initial appointment in Hobart as a lecturer in graphic design, he soon changed to teaching 3-Dimensional Design. He was appointed Head of the Design in Wood/Furniture Design program in 1981 and ran the department until retiring in 2007. In 1991 the Centre for Furniture Design was also established at the School and, under his direction, focussed on design research for industry with post-graduate students. The School says of his passing: “John’s influence as a designer of great skill and vision, as well as a teacher and mentor, has been exemplary and will be sadly missed by his colleagues.”
The initial 3-D Design program aimed to produce graduates able to apply design skills and ideas to the needs of industry, and was the first wood-oriented design program to be established in a university School of Art in Australia. It was broadened into the Design in Wood course in 1981, largely because it was seen that Tasmanian industry was not employing designers, and the notion of training a designer-maker who could, instead, sometimes contract out aspects of their work to industry was seen as the most realistic direction to take. To tailor the course more specifically to Tasmanian needs, it was decided to concentrate on local timber as a resource and also develop the making skills related to design. The Design in Wood course became part of the four-year degree program, and a number of those in the strong local resource of woodworkers were closely involved in planning and teaching.
As Smith said:
“an art school environment is an ideal position from which to study the designing-making process. If you want advice on whether to use finger-joints in the construction of a cabinet, don’t just ask a cabinet-maker who might say ‘use secret mitred dovetails’; also ask a sculptor who might say ‘why make it in wood?’ or ask the ultimate philosopher, the lay person in the street, who might just simply say ‘why bother’… If you are serious, you must have something to say and design is a language which helps you articulate your ideas.” (Smith in Cochrane, 1992, p 393)From 1990 the School offered a master’s degree, funded as part of the recent federal compensation to the Tasmanian government for the legislation that banned forest logging in the Lemonthyme Valley. During this time, a number of international furniture-makers were invited to teach there, and the School mounted the exhibitions Design in Wood, showing the work of graduates, students and staff in 1981; the Huon Factor, looking at the use of Tasmania’s special timber species in 1989; and in 1991 the exhibition Splitting Heads, in association with the first Hobart Design Triennial and the Critical Vision symposium.
Smith was a member of the Tasmanian Woodcraftsmen’s Association (founded 1976), and was involved in the Hobart Summer Schools of the early 1980s. He served on the boards of a number of organisations including the Visual Arts/Crafts Board and the Design Committee of the Australia Council; was a founding member of the Australian Academy of Design and one of the original members of the Furniture Designers Association (FDA). He received grants from the University of Tasmania, Arts Tasmania, the Australian Research Council and the Australia Council, including residencies in Barcelona and Los Angeles.
Throughout this time, Smith continued with his own designing and making practice. While exploring a Tasmanian identity in his work he was also interested in contrasts and connections with other places, while considering the sculptural relationships between furniture and architecture. Within his design practice he worked speculatively for exhibitions, produced products for a specialised retail market and carried out public and private commissions.
He was attracted to contemporary design forms as well as to the use of non-timber materials. In the mid-1970s he designed a large geodesic dome as a house, with triangular components made in fibreglass and perspex; he and Penny built it on Mt Nelson and lived there, working in their adjacent studios. Later, they built their second similar, smaller home on Bruny Island in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel. Penny explained:
“The Geo-dome Observatory came about from building experiments over the years, and has become the repository of the sum of our multiple parts. It’s a work in progress. Here reside the spoils of our respective endeavours – mementos of and from various friends and family members – of our travels and our art.”Over these decades Smith won a number of design prizes. In 1983, for example, he won a furniture design competition for restaurant and kiosk furniture, organised by the Crafts Council of Tasmania and judged by Tapio Periaenen (managing director of the Finnish Crafts and Design Council). His work is in the International Design Centre, Berlin, and in public collections in Poland and Japan. In Australia he is represented in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; Parliament House, Canberra; the National Gallery of Victoria; the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; the Design Centre of Tasmania’s Wood Collection, Launceston; the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart; the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; and the Hobart City Council. [...]
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2019
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 1 January 1948
- Summary
- Smith was a furniture design and maker who initially trained in the graphic arts, later turning to 3-D design. Appointed Head of Wood/Furniture Design at the University of Tasmania, Hobart in 1981, he went on to establish the Centre for Furniture Design, an influential for in furniture design and manufacture in Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1945-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1945
- Summary
- Smith was a documentary film maker and a member of the Sydney Film-makers Coop. She founded her company, Smith Street Films, in 1987 and created her first film, "Eora" the following year. She produced films for the ABC, TAFE NSW and worked for the Aboriginal Legal Service. Her journalism appeared in the "Sydney Morning Herald" and the "Koori Mail".
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- Vernon Treweeke has been called "the father of psychedelic art in Australia" and was a close associate of Brett Whiteley, who he had known from his school days. He also exhibited with the Central Street Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2015
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, New Zealand
- Biography
- Colin Lanceley, painter, sculptor and printmaker, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1938 and raised in Australia, as his family relocated to Sydney in the following year. In 1954 at the age of 16 Lanceley was apprenticed as a colour photo engraver in the printing industry in Sydney. He also attended evening classes taught by Peter Laverty at North Sydney Technical College. Lanceley subsequently enrolled at the East Sydney Technical College in 1956, where he graduated with a Diploma in Art in 1960. After his student days, Lanceley, together with Michael Brown and Ross Crothall, formed the Imitation Realist Group (1961) and exhibited work at John Reed’s Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne and at the Rudy Komon Gallery in Sydney. This trio of artists enjoyed playing a game they called ‘aesthetic chess,’ where they made impromptu arrangements of the everyday contents of their pockets (for example coins, keys etc.), often laid out on a table at a cafe in Sydney’s Taylor Square.
As the recipient of the prestigious Helena Rubinstein Travelling Scholarship in 1964, Colin Lanceley travelled to Italy and the UK, where he remained throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He held his first London exhibition at Marlborough Gallery in February 1966. In the course of becoming a well-travelled artist, Lanceley embarked on numerous trips across Europe, visiting France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Holland, Belgium and Crete. He spent extended periods working in France and Spain and during his time in England he lectured part-time at the Bath Academy of Art, Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, and the Chelsea School of Art, London. After his prize win at the Europe Prize for Painting held in Belgium in 1980, Lanceley continued his art practice in Burgundy rather than London. Lanceley married his wife Kay Morphett during his time aboard and they had two sons.
Lanceley, along with his family, returned to Australia in 1981, whereby he renounced the badge of expatriate artist. He was appointed as a lecturer at the City Art Institute in Sydney, serving in this post from 1983-86. Lanceley’s artistic reputation and influence was recorded in a 1987 publication by Craftsman House, with an introduction by Robert Hughes and an interview by William Wright, followed in the next year by an ABC film, ‘Colin Lanceley – Poetry of Place’ directed by Andrew Saw.
Significantly, in 1990 Colin Lanceley was awarded the honour of the Order of Australia (AO) for Service to Art. In the subsequent year he was presented with a Creative Arts Fellowship from the Australian Government and was also invited to lecture and exhibit at the Arts Club of Chicago, USA. Lanceley’s role as an honorary lecturer continued as he delivered the 1993 Lloyd Rees Memorial Lecture, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, in 2000 he lectured at the Bathurst Regional Gallery and in 2001 he was invited to lecture at the New York Studio School, Manhattan, USA. His artistic influence has also been furthered through the official roles in which he has serving, including his post as a member (appointed 1994) of the National Gallery of Australia’s Council and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the National Art School, Sydney (appointed 1998).
Lanceley has exhibited his work extensively since 1962 in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, and internationally in England, Switzerland, Belgium, USA, Poland and Japan. A large survey exhibition of Lanceley’s work was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1987, followed by ‘Australian Collection Focus – Colin Lanceley’ in 2001. Lanceley’s work has also been included in several major group exhibitions including Perspecta at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1983, the Biennale of Sydney in 1986 and the Great Australian Art Exhibition in 1988.
Lanceley has received a range of awards during the course of his artistic career, including the Young Contemporaries Art Prize from the NSW Contemporary Art Society (1963), the Scottish Arts Council Prize at the 1967 Edinburgh Festival, two prizes at the 1968 Krakow International Print Biennale and the Europe Prize for Painting in Belgium in 1980. His artistic commissions have included designing mosaics for the Australian International Aquatic Centre, Homebush, Sydney (1994), painting the ceiling of the Lyric Theatre, Sydney (1998) and creating a large glass work for the County Court of Victoria, Melbourne (2002).
Lanceley’s iconic and brightly coloured works, presenting abstract scenes built up from fractured geometric shapes, incorporate three-dimensional crafted and painted wood elements fixed to canvas supports. Collage has served as the recurring basis of his work, which has also been inspired by literary sources, for example the writings of T.S. Eliot.
The art of Colin Lanceley is represented in prominent Australian and international collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem; Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France; Contemporary Art Society and the Tate Gallery, London, England; Kunstvrein, Hamburg, Germany; Museum Narodowe, Warsaw, Poland; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and The National Gallery, Washington, USA.
Writers:
ecwubben
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1938
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude56.7823936 Longitude8.2414749 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Agger, Jutland, Denmark
- Biography
- Leif Kristensen (1935–2015) was a Danish architect, educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in Copenhagen, who came to Sydney in 1962 with plans (not successful) to work for Jørn Utzon’s team building the Sydney Opera House. Instead he joined the Government Architect’s Branch of the New South Wales Public Works Department, working as personal assistant to senior architect Peter Hall –– who later became one of the trio of government architects who completed the Opera House after Utzon’s departure. After four years of architecture school, Kristensen worked for Copenhagen architect Erik Ejlers. In 1964 he won registration to practice in New South Wales and in 1967 he and his second wife, Christine Wing, built a house and studio on bushland at Arcadia. As a government architect, Kirstensen’s most significant project was the Marsden Hospital for handicapped children in Parramatta – which won the NSW RAIA’s Sir John Sulman Medal (best public building in the state) for 1969–70.After leaving the government in 1969, he began a practice specialising in aged care facilities. His notable projects included Towradgi Park, Juliana Village (NSW merit award 1982), Norby Retirement Village and Abel Tasman Village.During the late 1980s, Kristensen again worked at the Sydney Opera House, reviewing and designing various fitouts and facility improvements.
Source—Drew, Philip. 2015. 'Leif Kristensen (1935–2015).’ Architecture Bulletin (Obituary), Spring edn, p. 36.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2016
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 17 June 1935
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2015
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-32.916667 Longitude151.75 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1934
- Summary
- Cooper began his career as a landscape painter, later turning to illustration and paintings of birdlife. He illustrated the book "Portfolio of Australian Birds" (1967), "Parrots of the World" (1978) and other works.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1933
- Summary
- Digby was an artist and designer working in costume and set design for the Australian Opera, the Australian Ballet and other performing arts companies. He also worked as a book illustrator producing covers for some Patrick White novels and children's books such as Bottersnikes & Gumbles and a treatment for Waltzing Matilda. He had a parallel career as a painter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Apr-15
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1932
- Summary
- Hood worked as a naval architect designing yachts and commercial vessels in Australia, the Pacific, Guyana and Bangladesh. He established a design firm in 1963. His work on the Hood class yachts produced a number of variants of Hoods (20s, 23s and more recently a Hood 28ML. He is celebrated as the designer of the America's Cup yacht, the 12 metre "Dame Pattie" launched in 1967.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- Elizabeth (Betty) Ann Dewar Cameron was born in Brisbane in 1931 the the second child and only daughter of William Dewar Cameron and Vida Margaret née Hutton. Her talent was evident at an early age as she was 13 years old when she was awarded The Sunday Mail Child Art Contest in 1944 and 3rd prize the following year. Cameron took her initial art studies under the tutelage of Patricia Prentice at Somerville House, Brisbane and also studied art privately with Caroline Barker and Richard Rodier Rivron.
The Younger Artists Group (YAG) of the Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS) was founded in 1941 and several artists who have made a significant contribution to art in Queensland had their beginnings here: Patricia Prentice, John Rigby , Margaret Olley , Margaret Cilento, Peter Abraham, Harold Lane, Joy Roggenkamp and Betty Cameron herself. Cameron was regarded as one of the most promising of the Younger Artists Group members when she began to exhibit in 1948 as one of the four paintings she exhibited that year, 'Frosty morning’ was purchased by the Darnell Fine Arts Committee of the University of Queensland. Subsequently, Betty Cameron received the 2nd prize awarded by the RQAS as an encouragement award at the Annual General Meeting in 1949.
She became Chair of the Younger Artists Group and was instrumental in the push to establish a travelling art scholarship. By the middle of 1950 the RQAS decided to provide a grant up to £150, provided a matching amount of £150 was raised by the YAG by 30 June 1951. Their efforts (which included a exhibition of the works by Cameron, Betty Quelhurst, Peter Abraham, Kenneth Roggenkamp and Theodore Klettke at the Moreton Galleries, Brisbane in June 1950) were successful. On 19 September 1951 a selection committee comprising Dr Gertrude Langer, Robert Haines and Vida Lahey awarded her the scholarship. Her work was included in the 1951 'Exhibition of Queensland Art’, at the Queensland Art Gallery and also in the early exhibitions 'Queensland Artists of Fame and Promise’ and 'L. J. Harvey Memorial Prize for Drawing’.
With the assistance of YAG scholarship Betty Cameron studied in London under Stuart Ray at the South West Essex Technical School but such was her proficiency that, after two terms study, he suggested she apply to enroll at the prestigious Royal College of Art, London. She was successful and was awarded the Princess of Wales Scholarship for the best female student. An appeal conducted by the Courier Mail, Brisbane, in 1953 provided the additional funds so she was able to complete her three year course of study.
She returned to Brisbane in 1957 with her British husband, the painter Roy Churcher. Together they set up a studio and gave classes in the attic of the Royal Queensland Art Society’s premises in the School of Arts Building, Ann Street. At the end of the year they took over classes at St Mary’s Studio, Kangaroo Point when John Molvig departed for a tour to Melbourne and central Australia. Portraiture was her major interest when she returned to Brisbane although she occasionally painted landscapes. She exhibited a 'Portrait of an old woman’ in the Australian Women’s Weekly Portrait Prize in 1957 and an unfinished portrait of Robert Haines, the Director of the Queensland Art Gallery, in the Centenary Eisteddfod in 1959, together with a 'Portrait of J. V. Duhig’. Later that year, however, Cameron gave up painting to devote herself to rearing her four sons. After some years as a secondary school teacher she began to teach at Kelvin Grove Teachers’ College. In 1971, when her youngest son started school she became a full-time lecturer there. She took her academic career seriously enough to undertake an MA from the Courtauld Institute in London. Her thesis was on Jon Molvig, later the subject of a book and she was awarded the degree in 1977. Two years later she was appointed senior lecturer at what was then the Preston Institute of Technology in Melbourne, a move that entailed her leaving her family in Brisbane for the first year. Her outstanding abilities combined with her administrative and networking capacity led to her becoming head of school. In 1983 she was appointed Chair of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council, and in 1984 was Deputy Chair of the Council. Her generous inclusive approach and administrative capacity brought her to the attention of Janet Holmes a Court and in 1987 she was invited to apply for the position of Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia. In 1990 she was appointed Director of the National Gallery of Australia where she became known as “Betty Blockbuster” for the magnificent range of exhibitions she organised.After she retired in 1997 she made a series of television programs on art for ABC Television. She also returned to her first love of drawing as, with failing eyesight she revisited her favourite works of art and drew them to fix them in her mind. The resulting books, Notebooks and Australian Notebooks combine fine drawing with written observations that are like love letters to art.
Research Curator , Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 11 January 1931
- Summary
- Betty Churcher, who was the first woman to head both a state and national art gallery, had an extraordinary career in arts education and administration in Australia. This was a change in direction from the expectations of her early years when she was regarded as one on Queensland's most exciting young painters. In her "retirement" she returned to art, and to drawing
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 31-Mar-15
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-32.916667 Longitude151.75 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- advertising and comic strip artist, was born in Newcastle, NSW. After completing his schooling at Cooks Hill Intermediate High, he became a window dresser for a soft-goods firm, then an artist in the company’s advertising department. He moved to Sydney in 1945 where he worked with department stores and advertising agencies. Then he worked for years for H. John Edwards, drawing over 150 issues of Tim Valour (the first few issues included a pirate adventure Rip Weston by Les Such), about 50 issues of The Crimson Comet , many issues of Biggles , and fillers and covers. He produced Catman in 1958 for Frew Publications and Captain Strato for Young’s Merchandising. In 1959 he did The Phantom Commando for Horwitz Publications and began work on Air Hawk and the Flying Doctors . The strip appeared simultaneously in the Sun-Herald and the Perth Weekend Mail and was subsequently syndicated internationally for 8 years. A series of Air Hawk comics were published from the late 1950s to early 1960. The strip ceased production in 1986 (though reprinted in the SMH until the early 1990s). Dixon won the 1985 Stanley for Best adventure/illustrated strip for Air Hawk .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1929
- Summary
- Prolific Australian post WWII comic book and newspaper strip artist ("Air Hawk and the Flying Doctor") and others. Worked on storyboards, advertising, comics after travelling to the USA in 1986.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Jul-15
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 23 November 1927
- Summary
- John Baily was Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia during the Dunstan years. Nationally he endeared himself to artists and curators for his intellectual generosity as the first Chair of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council. He is also the painter of lyrically beautiful landscape watercolours.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Nov-15
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude50.0619474 Longitude19.9368564 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Krakow, Poland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1926
- Summary
- Gross was a film animator, director and producer. He became a film maker in Poland in 1947, later moving to Israel in 1950 working as a cinema photographer. In Israel, he began his independent film career producing unconventional imagery and topics. Immigrating to Australia in 1968, he first worked in TV, later returning to film. After 1977, Yoram Gross Films created feature length animated films.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude53.8 Longitude-2.6 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lancashire, England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1925
- Summary
- Colligan was a painter and designer with training from colourist Phyllis Shillito, East Sydney Technical College. He became an interior designer and colour consultant founding Glasebrooks Paints Colour Studio. He later moved into theatre and TV. In 1982, he became the President of the Royal Art Society of NSW and was active in the visual and performing arts in the Port Stephens and Newcastle areas.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude51.7687323 Longitude19.4569911 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lodz, Poland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1924
- Summary
- Wrobel was a private gallery curator ( Woolloomooloo Art Gallery ) and collector working with his partner Elinor Wrobel until his death. He also trained in jewellery design and founded a firm "French Jewellery" (date unknown) and after learning to sail, he began to design and build sailboats campaigning with his yacht Mirrabooka.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kabararrji (Bentinck Island) , NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born circa 1924 on Bentinck Island (Kabararrji )in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Gabori grew up traditionally hunting, fishing and gathering. In the 1940s after a combination of drought and rising tides led to conflict among the Kaiadilt people, missionaries deported the entire population to Mornington Island where she lived for many years. Originally a weaver, Gabori first began exhibiting her paintings in 2005 at the Mornington Island Arts and Crafts Centre. She had a solo exhibition in 2005 at the Woolloongabba Art Gallery and was a finalist in the Xstrata Indigenous Emerging Artist Award in 2006. Her work was subsequently purchased for the permanent collection of the Queensland Art Gallery and in 2012 her work was included in the National Gallery of Australia’s National Indigenous Art Triennial.The income from her painting enabled her to return, with other women, to Bentinck Island.As is the custom, on her death her name was changed to Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda.Mirdidingkingathi means someone born in MirdidingkinkiJuwarnda is a dolphin, her totem.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. c.1924
- Summary
- As with other Kaiadilt women, Mirdidingkingathi Juwarnda Sally Gabori wove grass nets and carved coolamons for many years before she began to paint. Her first exuberant abstract paintings were exhibited in 2005 at the Mornington Island Arts and Crafts Centre, and soon attracted national attention. In 2016, the year after her death, QAGOMA honoured her with a retrospective survey of her work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Feb-15
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.283333 Longitude149.1 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Orange, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1924
- Summary
- Dixon was a National Art School trained artist and designer. He had a teaching career in Bathurst NSW, later Goulburn NSW. He worked across a range of media including pottery, sculpture and print-making. Retiring to Canberra, he continued his painting and drawing, largely based on nature studies. He remained an active environmentalist throughout his career.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- Jennie Boddington was the first curator of photography to be appointed in Australia. She was responsible for the National Gallery of Victoria's photography collection from her appointment in 1972 to her retirement in 1994. She was also a distinguished contributor to Australian cinema
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 15-Nov-15
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne
- Biography
- Ray Crooke is one of that generation of Australian artists who was only able to complete their art education after serving in the armed forces during World War II. As with fellow post-war artists Guy Warren and Tony Tuckson that war time experience shaped both his sensibility and his approach to art. Crooke was the second son of Gordon Crooke, an art loving accountant, and his wife Euphemia a nurse who had experienced a childhood on Aboriginal missions. After leaving school at the standard age of 15 he worked in an advertising agency while taking classes at Swinburne Technical College.In 1940 he enlisted in the Australian Army, first serving in the Victorian Scottish Regiment before being transferred to Western Australia. His unit was then transferred to northern Queensland coastal bases, a move that gave him a lifelong love of the tropics.After the War the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme enabled Crook to complete his art studies at Swinburne, where he was taught by Sir William Dargie, Rodger James and Alan Jordan among others.In 1951 he married June Bethell and in pursuit of the strong clear colours of the north, Crooke moved north, first to Cairns, then Thursday Island and later to Yorkey’s Knob. The tropics gave him his subject matter and coloured his approach to art, but there was little chance of becoming a professional artist so far away from the city, so in about 1955 the family returned to Melbourne.After a string of successful exhibitions in commercial galleries throughout the 1960s and after his portrait of George Johnston was awarded the 1969 Archibald Prize, he felt confident enough to permanently leave the city and return to north Queensland, eventually settling in Cairns.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 12 July 1922
- Summary
- Crooke began his career as an artist at a Melbourne advertising agency while taking courses as Swinburne Technical College. After 1939-45 war service, he taught, painted and worked as a textile designer. His first solo show was held in 1959 and he became well-regarded for his evocations of Australia's tropical north. He had considerable success locally and internationally, later settling in Cairns.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Dec-15
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1921
- Summary
- Williams was a career Royal Australian Navy officer (retired 1971) who also co-founded the surfwear brand Pratts with his brother Bill, making board shorts and bikinis from a factory in Long Reef NSW on Sydney's northern peninsula. Pratts had retail outlets in Dee Why and Chatswood.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-33.8225666 Longitude151.1923402 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Leonards, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- May-15
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- painter, was born Judit Kaszab in Vienna, Austria, on 15 August 1920, to Hungarian parents Imre Kaszab and Ilona, née Kont. Her parents soon separated and Judith went with her mother back to Hungary to live with her grandmother. She wanted to be an artist from an early age, even though she had little experience of galleries and paintings; when she was twelve (1932) she drew a charcoal portrait of her grandmother (reproduced in Klepac). She began her studies at the Academy of Art in Prague in 1938; the following year she married Jancsi (John) Kampfner, a man twice her age.
The outbreak of World War II changed everybody’s life; in the Kampfners’ case, Jancsi was sent to forced labour camps in Poland and Kiev and Judith’s mother was sent to Auschwitz. Judith worked in a factory under the assumed name of her Catholic maid Maria Koperdak, putting her artistic skills to use after hours as a forger of papers and passports. When the war ended, her husband returned; their first child was born on New Year’s Eve 1945.
Life in post-war Europe had little to offer them. The Kampfners and their (now two) sons obtained permission to migrate to Australia. They arrived at Sydney in 1951, living first at Bondi and later Woollahra. Judith soon made contact with other Sydney artists – including Michael Kmit, Paul Haefliger, Jean Bellette and Desiderius Orban—and established herself as a portrait painter. Although she has revisited Europe several times, undertaking several important portrait commissions there and gaining an international reputation, she became an Australian citizen in 1957.
Judith Cassab is a prolific and accomplished artist, able to paint portraits in a single sitting if necessary. Her portraits have won many awards, several of them twice: the Archibald Prize (1960 and 1968), the Australian Women’s Weekly women’s prize (1955 and 1956) and the Helena Rubinstein Prize (1964 and 1965). Her exhibition credits are prodigious. Judith Cassab was awarded the Order of Australia in 1988, the Bicentennial year.
Writers:
Callaway, AnitaKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1920
- Summary
- Painter born in Austria. Resident of Sydney she is a prolific and accomplished artist, able to paint portraits in a single sitting if necessary. Cassab has also worked as a muralist providing a mural for the Rex, Potts Point, Sydney in 1953.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2015
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New South Wales
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1920
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-33.7962 Longitude151.2827 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manly, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Peter Rushforth was born in Manly, NSW in 1920. From 1942 to 1945 he spent three years as a prisoner of war in Changi. On his return to Australia he enrolled in the arts course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and continued his studies at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. In 1951 he relocated to Sydney where initially enrolled in a sculpture course at East Sydney Technicl College, but soon became their first full time teacher in ceramics. The same year he set up a studio at Beecroft in the northern suburbs. He travelled extensively in the UK, Denmark and the USA on a Churchill Fellowship and spent time working in Japan. In 1966, he moved to Church Point, NSW. In 1978, on his retirement, he relocated his studio to Shipley in the Blue Mountains and became a full-time potter. He was a maker of high-fired stoneware vessels in a woodfired kiln with chun, tenmoku, limestone and ash glazes, wax resist, brush or inlay decoration. In 1985, he was awarded the Order of Australia for his services to ceramics and, in that year, the National Gallery of Victoria held a retrospective exhibition of his work, which is marked with an impressed or incised 'PR’.
Writers:
Judith Pearce
7write6
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 4 December 1920
- Summary
- Peter Rushforth's pots are a synthesis of European and Japanese aesthetic influences. He came to an appreciation of the Japanese Mingei (folk) aesthetic in unusual circumstances as a prisoner of war in Singapore during the 1939-45 War. Later he became one of the nation's most influential ceramics teachers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Jul-15
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2015-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- caricaturist, cartoonist, illustrator, journalist and cartoon historian, was born Anthony Raftopoulos in Paddington, NSW, son of Denis Raftopoulos who migrated to Australia in 1902 but returned to Greece for a wife (and a war). Tony Rafty, as he was known, was educated at Rose Bay Public School and the Central Technical College, Ultimo, until forced to leave at the age of 14 due to his parents’ poverty. He and his brother Stan then worked as golf caddies.
Tony’s first job as a cartoonist in 1939 was with the Referee (a sporting paper then in Ezra Norton’s stable, along with Smith’s Weekly ). He joined the Sun Associated Newspapers group in 1940 but enlisted in the AIF in 1941. He was a war artist and correspondent in New Guinea until discharged as medically unfit with malaria seven months before the end of the war. A month later he was back in New Guinea as artist-correspondent for Associated Newspapers (also other WWII stations: see file). Some of his wartime drawings were reproduced in Pix (see file). In 1948 he became the first Australian to draw an Australian comic book (acc. Lindesay). Ron Tarrant in the Secret Service , compiled from comic strips drawn in 1940-41, was published by the NSW Bookstall Coy, acc. Rafty c.v. He also created the strip Mugs the golfer .
He freelanced from 1957 to 1962 then rejoined the Sun and Sun-Herald as cartoonist, illustrator and sporting cartoonist, remaining until 1981. A book of caricatures, Tony Rafty’s Golfing greats with text by Terry Smith, was published by Rigby, Adelaide in 1983 (ML 796.3520922/1). He claims to have done about 20,000 drawings over half a century; 4,000 form the main part of his own 'World of Caricature’ collection. (Some were offered to the SLNSW in 1998 by his son, under the Taxation Incentive for the Arts scheme.) ML (PXD 764) has a collection of 8 placemats for the Australian War Correspondents Association Anzac Day luncheons 1989-97 and about 56 for Journalists’ Club dinners from 1989 to 1998 drawn by Rafty and other artists.
A noted cartoon historian, Rafty organised the exhibition Fifty Years of Australian Cartooning at the Sydney Journalists’ Club in 1964. It moved to Farmers’ Blaxland Gallery (11-19 September) and interstate to the Myer Mural Hall, Melbourne (November). 150 artists were represented, with biographical and career details in the catalogue compiled by Rafty and Brodie Mack . As Lindesay points out, it was the most comprehensive exhibition of Australian cartoons up to this time.
Rafty was elected president of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club in 1975. He claims he was a founding member, presumably this must have been when the club was reformed in the 1930s as he’s not on the 1924 list (see Harry Weston ). He was smocked in 1988, elected a life member in 1991 and awarded a Silver Stanley in 1997. He continues to do cartoons, exhibiting The Wik time bomb , published in the Greek Herald in 1997, in Bringing the House Down: 12 Months of Australian Political Humour (Canberra: National Museum of Australia/ Old Parliament House exhibition, 1997), cat. 96. He is also a longtime member and former president of the Sydney Journalists’ Club and the War Correspondents’ Association. OAM awarded 1991. In 1997 he had been married for fifty years to Sheila; they have five children.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1915
- Summary
- Caricaturist, cartoonist, illustrator, journalist and cartoon historian. Rafty joined the Sun Associated Newspapers group in 1940 but enlisted in the AIF in 1941.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2015
- Age at death
- 100
Details
Latitude-24.838632 Longitude151.1093424 Start Date1955-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Monto, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Gordon Bennett came to art as a mature adult, graduating in Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art, Brisbane, in 1988. He quickly established himself as an artist equipped both intellectually and aesthetically to address issues relating to the role of language and systems of thought in forging identity.
Much of Bennett’s work is concerned with mapping alternative histories and ideas in post-colonial Australia. He rejects racial labels and stereotypes. In 1995, as an act of personal liberation from preconceptions about his Indigenous heritage, Bennett created an ongoing, pop-art inspired alter ego, John Citizen, whom he says is 'an abstraction of the Australian Mr Average, the Australian Everyman’.
In the late 1990s, Bennett began a 'dialogue’ with the work of the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, a New York artist seen by Bennett as someone outside Australia who shared both a similar western cultural tradition and an obsession with drawing, semiotics and visual language. Bennett’s 'Notes to Basquiat’ culminated in a series of works produced in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York in 2001. Bennett’s subsequent 'Camouflage’ series (2003) references the war in Iraq and issues of secrecy. His most recent abstract works extend the notion of camouflage, dissolving the appearance of difference.
Since 1989, Bennett has held over 50 solo exhibitions and achieved national and international recognition for his work, with representation in biennales in Sydney, Venice, Kwangju, Shanghai and Cuba, and in major exhibitions of contemporary art in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Prague (Czech Republic), Italy, Denmark, Canada, South Africa and Japan.
The Art of Gordon Bennett by Ian McLean (including an essay by Gordon Bennett), was published by Craftsman House in 1996. Bennett has received several major awards, including the Moët & Chandon Australian Art Fellowship (1991) and the John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize, National Gallery of Victoria (1997). His work is held in all major public art collections in Australia.
Writers:
Murray-Cree, Laura
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 October 1955
- Summary
- Acclaimed contemporary Indigenous artist, Gordon Bennett's work explores the role of language and systems of thought in forging identity. Much of his work is concerned with mapping alternative histories and ideas in post-colonial Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Jun-14
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude12.5433216 Longitude104.8144914 Start Date1952-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cambodia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1952
- Summary
- Bun Heang was an artist and illustrator who immigrated to Australia in 1980. His later career developed in the field of political cartoons with a particular interest in Cambodian developments. His work appeared in films, magazines, books and on-line.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1947-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1947
- Summary
- Robert Hunter is best known for his rigorous works, painted in shades of white. He was one of the artists exhibiting in The Field of 1968.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2014
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by submitting a full biography
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 1943
- Summary
- Robert Jacks is one of the first generation of Australian artists to take nourishment from the post war American artists, rather than looking to Europe. He was one of the exhibitors at The Field in 1968
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Aug-14
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by writing a full entry
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 17 December 1937
- Summary
- As well as an extensive career as an artist Bill Wright became one of the most influential curators of contemporary art in Australia. After directing the 1982 Biennale of Sydney he was appointed deputy director of the Art Gallery of NSW where he mentored a generation of younger curators.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31-Oct-14
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-37.805278 Longitude145.035833 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kew, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 12 October 1936
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Feb-14
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, TAS, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1936
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29-Mar-14
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, , United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1931
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2014
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-33.7156888 Longitude150.3317665 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leura, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Professor Joan Kerr:Cartoonist and illustrator, produced cartoons and greeting cards in the late 1950s and 1960s. The Sydney Bulletin and London Punch were his chief cartoon outlets, but he also drew them for the Spectator and Lilliput , while in Australia his wordless, witty and satirical line drawings also appeared in K.G. Murray publications. Harvey’s Christmas cards were typically Australian versions on traditional English Yuletide themes: a kangaroo eating a plum pudding, Santa sunbaking or water-skiing, a man with a horse and buggy taking a Christmas tree to his rural Oz home (the NGA has an almost complete set). In the 1990s-2000s he designed, researched and wrote broadsheet Pictorial City Guides, the latest being Berlin (2001.
*Biography by Dr. Helen L. Hewson. *A student at Melbourne High School from 1944-1946, Tony Harvey indulged his passion for drawing and cartooning and dreamt of seeing the world. He read widely, borrowed from the Melbourne Public Library, frequented the National Gallery of Victoria and Ellis Bird’s secondhand bookshop discovering old engravings and copies of Punch, The Studio and Art in Australia. For a taste of the avant grade there was Gino Nibbi’s Leonardo Bookshop which played a pivotal role in freeing up literature and art in Australia throughout the 1930 and 1942 by stocking the latest art books and magazines. Critical of the conservative art scene, Nibbi published Stream, edited by Cyril Pearl with Dominic Leon’s Vorticist-inspired covers.In 1947 Harvey gained a free place to study commercial art at Melbourne Technical College where Alan Warren, Harold Freedman, Eric Smith and Ed Heffernan were teaching drawing, printmaking and lithography. Melbourne’s strong printmaking tradition can be traced to the NGV’s acquisition in 1891 of works by Durer, Rembrandt, Whistler and other artists. Familiar with the Claude Flight inspired relief printing among local printmakers during the 1940s, Harvey was also drawn to the work of British artists: John Piper, Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and Paul and John Nash. In 1948 the Old Vic theatre Co. starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh staged Sheridan’s The School for Scandal in Melbourne. Cecil Beaton’s sets, incorporating gigantic line engravings of Georgian houses, were a spectacular introduction to theatre design for the young art student.
With savings from designing for Fortuna Fabrics, Sydney and drawing filmstrips for the Maxcraft Projection Manufacturing Co., Harvey sailed in 1951 to Europe. On reaching London he sent three cartoons to Punch signed 'John Harvey’ which were accepted. An invitation to submit drawings to a special exhibition of _Punch _illustrators in New York followed and his cartoons were reprinted in Pick of Punch Annual (1951- 2: 44,142,197). His work also appeared in Lilliput, Spectator and London Opinion.
The country’s emergence from the war years was celebrated with the Festival of Britain. In addition to the V&A and Tate and National Gallery collections the new Arts Council exhibited sixty painters and twelve sculptors in a show of British art over the preceding 25 years. At this time and of interest to Harvey was the modern graphic design infused with Scandinavian and European trends as seen in Graphis and _Gerbraugraphik, the art of the Polish poster school and the drawings of Tomi Ungerer and Andre Francois. From America there was the New Yorker with the cartoons of James Thurber and Saul Steinberg. Furthermore in Britain the union of text, illustration, typography and printing pioneered by William Morris flourished through the private presses, Nonesuch, Curnow, Golden Cockerel and others.
After sketching around Europe and Britain, Harvey returned to Australia during 1953 via the USA. In Melbourne the printmaking scene was vital and experimental centering on Harold Freedman, Tate Adams, Geoff Barwell and Ian Armstrong at Melbourne Tech. Harvey chose instead to design and print greeting cards for distribution on a larger scale than had been attempted by local artists like Helen Ogilvie and Harry Raynor.
Tony married Prudence Boileau, the elder daughter of Sir Gilbert Boileau and Chica Edgeworth Somers (later Lowe) in 1954. They moved to Richmond where he set up his commercial 'art card’ printery, first at 283 Bridge Road Richmond and later at 609 Bridge Road. He produced over 250 card designs using lino cuts and letterpress and ranging from religious art, native flora and fauna, Australia’s colonial history and Aboriginal designs as well as a unique and humorous exploitation of an antipodean Christmas celebrated by kangaroos, Santas and the traditional fare turned upside down,'down under’.
Max Harris wrote in the Observer(17 October 1959)of thethe superiority of Australian cards over their English equivalents: “...Australian designers have a fresh and unexploited slant on the festive season… The greatest designer is Anthony Harvey, who does his own colour printing with unusually rich and vibrant inks. He is the first artist to have taken Australian motifs of the conventional kind and given them high wit and sophistication…”
In an interview with Helen Hewson in August 1987, Harvey recalled his working method:
“First I cut out the design using lino-cutting and cheap Japanese woodcarving tools, gem razor blades and an umbrella rib. A design would often require 2 or 3 or 4 blocks to create the colour range and I would ink up the first image in black and print it onto a further piece of lino in preparation for cutting the next block and to ensure exact registration. To give variety to the designs and range of cards fine lines were introduced by letterpress and photo-processed blocks were made from my drawings, and used with linocut blocks.
“I had an electric American Chandler and Price platen press and it was all rather dangerous because there was the possibility of crushing one’s hand as you fed the card between the block and the ink rollers. It was a major problem ensuring the rich coloured oil based inks had dried properly before a card design was returned for further colour printing,or if complete, for folding. I invented several drying machines over the years.
“The second printery, an old dairy with brick walls and cement floor, was very cold in the winter. The press and printing functions were along one wall with a central bench for folding and sorting cards for storage or despatch. Along two walls were floor to ceiling shelving accommodating drying racks, labelled boxes and the numnbered printing blocks easily identifiable for future reruns.
“Although it might seem from the diversity of the designs that other artists were employed, I was a solitary worker and engaged family members to assist with folding and packing. I handled my own distribution using sample cards in albums which I showed to prospective buyers.
Anthony Harvey Greeting Cards were sold exclusively throughout Australia by bookshops, art galleries and craft shops, including Primrose Pottery, Isa Johnstone, Georges Pty.Ltd. Hicks Atkinson, Hawthorn Galleries, Norman Robb, Margareta Webber, Hill of Content, Burnes and Oates and the Literature Bookshops in Melbourne; Marion Hall Best, the Roycroft, Carl Plate’s Notanda Gallery, David Jonesand the Blaxland Galleries in Sydney; Mary Martin Bookshop in Adelaide and Fuller’s in Tasmania. The cards featured in newspapers and magazines including, Australian Letters (Dec.1959), Walkabout (December 1960)and Vogue and Australian House and Garden.
The advent of the UNICEF and charity cards made inroads into Harvey’s exclusive art market and he closed his printery in 1959 and joined Speciality Press, North Clayton as a production planner and graphic artist. A year later, accredited for his 'industrial experience’ he was accepted at Collingwood Technical School as a temporary art teacher. He moved with his wife and two young daughters, Georgia and Tracy, from Richmond to St Kilda.
Continuing as a teacher, in 1962 the family had settled at Eltham in a cottage on the property of builder/designer Alistair Knox. Harvey designed and printed a range of silkscreened cards for loyal clients which incorporated three and four colours producing softer tones and subtle gradations of colour and depth.
Reflecting on a decade of extraordinary creativity Phillip Adams observed:
“Anthony Harvey’s cards…were way ahead of their time. Splendid pieces of design evoking for me, the great graphic work of Eastern Europe… in particular of Poland. (Adams-Hewson, 5 Dec.1977.)
In 1989 the National Gallery of Australia acquired An Album of Greeting Cards 1954-1964 for its Australian Print Collection. Blue Island Press, Sydney began reprinting Anthony Harvey cards in 2014.
Harvey taught art and craft at Watsonia Technical School and attended evening classes at RMIT and Toorak Teachers’ College part-time to gain further qualifications. In 1963 he was appointed Head of Advertising Art at Prahran Technical College and also produced the Commercial Art Course for Stott’s Technical Correspondence College, Melbourne. Returning to Watsonia Tech. the following year he remained in the Victorian Technical School system until 1974. When he resigned to concentrate on his own work, he was the Executive Officer of the Art and Craft Teachers’ Association and the Teachers’ Representative on the Four Person Standing Committee for Art in Technical Schools.
Drawing on his teaching experience he wrote and illustrated The Australian boys’ book of crafts, pets, sports and hobbies (1968). With Prudence Harvey, a companion book for girls (1970) soon followed as well as New Zealand editions in 1971.
Throughout the 1960s Harvey drew for Punch, Spectator and the Sydney Bulletin. From this period a cartoon based on Sebastian Brandt’s woodcut The Banquet given by Dido to Aeneas in which Harvey depicted the plates and wine cups sliding off the table with the accompanying caption: “It’s the way they draw these wretched tables!” featured in The Bulletin Book(1966). Years later E.H.Gombrich used the drawing in The Image and the Eye (1944) as an example demonstrating problems of perspective in medieval art. Professor Joan Kerr noted: “Anthony Harvey is an interesting cartoonist—oddly un-Australian despite the subject matter, I felt, probably because he is so sophisticated and understated. (Kerr-Hewson, 11 March 2002).
Harvey designed an egg container in the shape of a hen, which was hand-made from strawboard and painted. Its popularity led to a version in clay from which a brass mould was made. Thousand of birds were produced in papier mache from the mould and were brightly decorated by all the family, in particular his father, Stan Harvey. The birds sold throughout Australia, was an essential ingredient for all designer kitchens according to Belle House and Garden and _Vogue.
Tony and Prue were divorced in 1978. He moved to East Melbourne and joined Australian Industrial Publications where he spent the next thirteen years illustrating technical manuals for battleships,aircraft and power stations, much of it classified. Independently he published ARTCARDS (1985), a folio of postcards including his own linocuts along with works by Durer, Aldus Munutius, Yasukini. He researched, wrote and illustrated The Melbourne Book(Hutchinson, 1982) with over 400 black and white drawings which was launched by Don Dustan, Minister for Tourism in Victoria in the Melbourne Town Hall on 30 November 1982.
Harvey’s final project was a series of Pictorial City Guides. “I design the sort of guide I would like to have for a visit to a city. An overview with clues to its character and shape, pictures of the significant features—historical, cultural and architectural” The drawing were always views of the front elevation and based on photographs and sketches made on location. The guides were created on a Macintosh LC11 with a simple MacDraw 11 program with each city contained on the one frame. This was compressed on a disc, turned into a negative by laser technology and used to produce a printing plate for photo-offset production. Tones were made with 1800 dots to the inch. Twenty-four world city guides were designed and sold in Australia, UK and the USA until production ceased in 2007. Over many years as a designer Harvey always adapted to innovative changes in printing technology.
Initially Anthony Harvey Pictorial Maps was based in Carlton where Tony lived with Ann Morton until her death in 1993. Subsequently he moved his studio to Port Melbourne where he joined Alison Rowlands who later became his wife. He died at Port Melbourne on 27 July 2014 and is survived by his wife and daughters, Georgia Phillips who is currently the custodian of his sketchbooks and albums and Tracy Harvey, an actress, writer, musician and artist.
.
'
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
drhle_hewson
drhlehewson
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 25 May 1930
- Summary
- Harvey was a designer,sculptor, cartoonist, illustrator, print-maker, map maker and author. He also had an extensive career as an educator in Victoria. Especially noted for his wit, humor and economy of line in his Punch and Bulletin cartoons and vibrant range of linocut and silk screen Australian greeting cards produced during the 1950s and 1960s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Jul-14
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Des O’Brien was born in Sydney in 1930 and studied at the National Art School, Darlinghurst, and, later, with Godfrey Miller who taught him figure drawing.
He is a respected editorial and institutional illustrator, designer, author and painter. However, his personal art, which includes genre scenes, geometric abstracts, still life, portraits, figure paintings and drawings, has seldom been exhibited and unlike his applied art is unknown to the public. He makes no distinction between his fine and applied art, believing each is more accurately characterised as a continuous development.
Some noted clients of O’Brien’s include John Fairfax, Associated Newspapers, OTC, Australia Post, Australian Wool Bureau, the Herald and Weekly Times, Reader’s Digest, Commonwealth Bank, and Qantas. He has also created advertising work for many corporations.
O’Brien is a recipient of a Bronze Medal from the Arts Festival of the Melbourne 1956 Olympic Games. He is also the author, designer and illustrator of the children’s picture book, The Frog and the Pelican, awarded a Bronze Medal from Leipzig in 1983 and the Australian Book Publishers Design Award. He was inducted into the Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1995. Since that time he has worked almost exclusively on his personal art and has produced limited edition artists books of his work.
His work is illustrated in The Arts in Australia Series, _Commercial Art _written by R. Haughton James, Longmans, Green and Co., 1963.
Writers:
samobrien
duggim
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 1930
- Summary
- Des O'Brien is an Australian illustrator, graphic designer, painter and author. He trained at the National Art School, later joining Associated Newspapers. He formed a studio, O'Brien & Horrex, with his artist wife Jackie Horrex after 1955. He worked for publishers, advertising agencies and Australia Post.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Painter, filmmaker, performance artist and printmaker, Richard Larter was born on 19 May 1929, at Hornchurch, Essex, the son of Thomas Larter, a claims assessor for a marine insurance company, and Dorothy Scarles, who had worked for the British War Office during World War I. His mother was proud of her French ancestry and encouraged her children to appreciate both the work of the French Impressionists and the more adventurous Surrealist work sold at the art gallery run by her friend Fred Mayor. However his parents were less supportive when the young Richard indicated he wished to be an artist – his mother saw his future as a doctor. Richard Larter’s first formal art education came during World War II in 1944 when St Martin’s School of Art in London was kept open by running occasional classes for school children. His loathing of upper class 'military pretensions’ came from his time in National service with the British army where he served in the medical corps after leaving school. After the army he enrolled at St Martin’s as a regular student, but left almost immediately because he could not stomach either the teaching or his fellow students, who he felt came from the officer class who he continued to despise. After leaving the army he worked from 1949 to 1952 at Perfect Lambert & Co as a trainee marine surveyor. When he could, the young artist travelled to Paris where he spent time at art museums, looking especially at the work of the Impressionists and meeting other would-be artists. In 1949 he travelled to Cornwall where he befriended the visiting American artist, Mark Tobey. The next year he travelled to Algiers where he worked with the ceramicist Zora Merabek while she was restoring the Marabout tombs. Back in London, at Perfect Lambert & Co, he met the 15 year-old Patricia Florence (Pat) Holmes who had come to be interviewed for her first job after leaving school. At the end of 1952 he left Perfect Lambert, moved out of his parents’ home and moved to Canvey Island at the mouth of the Thames to spend Christmas with Pat’s family. On 1 February 1953 a great storm in the North Sea flooded Belgium, Holland and southern England. Canvey Island was completely submerged and 58 people died. The Holmes family was evacuated to a local school and Richard Larter married Patricia Holmes on 18 February 1953. They both became involved in adult education classes at Toynbee Hall in London, where he studied drawing while Pat supplemented her basic education. He worked at various jobs, including being a photographic model, until 1954 when he enrolled as a trainee teacher at Shoreditch Teacher’s College. He supplemented his meagre stipend by working as a rock driller, so his attendance at class was best described as intermittent. In 1956, while working as an art teacher at Santley Street Secondary Modern School in Kentish Town, Larter was looking at the window of a medical supplies shop, saw a box holding hypodermic syringes and realised they could be used to draw lines in paint. He also saw the definitive exhibition 'This is Tomorrow’ at the Whitechapel Gallery, where he was impressed by the energy of Eduardo Paolozzi, an artist he had long admired. No London gallery was interested in the young Larter’s art, but the Chief Inspector for Art at London County Council encouraged him to enter the Paris Salon. His painting was accepted and hung, but in 1962, by the time this happened, the Larter family were in the process of immigrating to Australia where Richard was employed by the NSW Department of Education. Teaching in Sydney led to a friendship with Richard Cobb, who later became the manufacturer of fine artists’ paints. In 1963 the Larter family bought land and a small cottage at Luddenham on the western edge of Sydney, and Richard Larter began to teach at Liverpool Boys’ High School. Conditions at Luddenham were primitive – the water supply was a small dam and a tank – but the wilderness of the bush environment encouraged Pat and Dick Larter to develop their own reading and other interests apart from the Sydney art scene. Although commercial galleries continued to disregard his work of this period, Larter had more success in local art competitions. In 1964 Bath Night 1, entered in the Royal Easter Show, received a favourable comment from Daniel Thomas, curator of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The following year when Thomas judged the Berrima art competition he awarded the prize to Richard Larter. He alerted Frank Watters to Larter’s work, which led to an invitation to exhibit at Watters Gallery, a new commercial gallery founded by Frank Watters and Geoffrey Legge. Perhaps because of the isolation of Luddenham, both Richard and Pat Larter were keen to experiment with different technologies. From 1966 onwards they were working on sound pieces and later they collaborated on performances and films. In 1967, the year their youngest child Eliza was born, Richard was transferred to Penrith High School, which was closer to home. Despite being the subject of advocacy by the curator of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the first collection to buy his work was the fledgling National Gallery of Australia in 1970. At the end of 1972, Richard was sufficiently financially successful to leave school teaching and devote himself to art full-time. However his finances were sufficiently unstable for him to continually look for residencies and other opportunities to earn while making art. In 1974 the family left Australia when Richard was appointed for a 12 month visiting lectureship at the Elam Art School, Auckland. Although Richard was the subject of the appointment, Pat Larter also participated in lectures and performances for students. As she was no longer caring for pre-school children she began to assert her own identity as an artist. The persona “Dick & Pat Larter” began to make a presence in the ephemeral movement of International Mail Art, although Richard Larter was happy to tell all that the dominant persona in that art form was Pat’s. Despite his political radicalism Richard Larter’s art became increasingly popular with major institutions and corporate collections. In 1976 he began a long and fruitful connection with the Victorian Tapestry Workshop which created large tapestries out of several of his paintings, including Pretty As (1981) in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia. In 1978 and 1979 Richard Larter was an artist in residence at Australia Council-funded studios at Armidale and Wagga Wagga. Neither were particularly happy experiences. This was especially true of Wagga Wagga, where the studio was in a physically remote location, and Pat stayed in Sydney where she created a major mail art event, Art Core Meltdown. However they saw the advantages of living in a large country town as distinct from the fringes of an ever growing city and in 1982 they sold the house at Luddenham and moved to Yass, to a two storied house in the centre of the town. In 1991 Richard bought the house next door as a dedicated studio. This gave him sufficient space to work on a number of paintings at any given time. At about the same time Pat ceased to be his model, so Richard used photographic models from agencies in Canberra and Sydney for his figurative work. Both Richard and Pat began experimenting with photography and laser prints on canvas enabled by modern computer technology. In 1996 Richard was awarded the Joan & Peter Clemenger Prize for Contemporary Art. Richard and Pat Larter’s super scans were included in the 1996 Adelaide Biennial, which was the same year as a celebration of Larter films at the Melbourne Super Eight Festival. Their collaboration ended on 19 October 1996 when Pat died. In May 1999 Watters and Legge galleries combined to celebrate Richard Larter’s oeuvre with a 70th birthday exhibition that was a revelation to many who had not recognised the breadth of his achievement. Subsequent to this there have been a number of exhibitions in public art museums. In 2002 Kelly Gellatly curated 'Stripperama: Richard Larter’, at the Museum of Modern Art at Heide, which examined the figurative tradition in his art and in 2006 Joanna Mendelssohn examined the connections within the Larter family in 'Larter Family Values’ at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre. In June 2008 there will be a Richard Larter retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 1929
- Summary
- Richard Larter first came to public notice in the 1960s with confronting works based on the female body, politics, and a sensibility informed by British Pop. However his work also celebrates place, mood and medium.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Jul-14
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1929
- Summary
- England apprenticed in engineering, later taking a position with GM Holden. He campaigned in motor racing, joining REPCO in 1952 and by the mid-1950s, he was designing the Ausca sports car powered by a GM Holden engine. The car was complete by 1956. In the 1960s, he designed and built another Ausca motor racer using Volkswagen components.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude46.8255578 Longitude16.0382213 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sotina, Slovenia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1928
- Summary
- Curman was a commercial photo-lithographer initially working for the printer John Sands & Co., Sydney. A specialist in 4-colour printing, he worked for printers in Adelaide and elsewhere. After 1969, he became a principal in Associated Lithographics, then in 1979, he founded Curman Lithographics. In 2002, he was named Graphics Arts Person of the Year by Print21 , the official magazine of Printing Industries Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.960707 Longitude151.1003611 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hurstville, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1926
- Summary
- Brabham, working with Ron Tauranac, developed the Brabham motor racing marque under the name of Motor Racing Developments (MRD) in 1962 while continuing a successful motor race driving career. He retired in 1971.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude52.3744779 Longitude9.7385532 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hanover, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1924
- Summary
- Taft-Hendry was initially an art collector, later opening Galleries Primitiff, Woollahra in 1959, touring works from Papua New Guinea internationally in the 1960s. She formed a partnership with Leo Fleishmann until his death and continued the gallery afterward expanding into Pacific Island art. She was a benefactor of the University of Newcastle and the Australian Museum.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude55 Longitude24 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lithuania
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1923
- Summary
- Miksevicius trained at Darmstadt Werkstaetten, Germany immigrating to Australia in 1948. He exhibited initially with a Baltic-associated group "Six Directions" and took up teaching art in a Sydney high school. His work is modernist, but as Christopher Allen wrote in a 2019 review of a retrospective, difficult to categorise.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-31.0900743 Longitude150.9290159 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tamworth, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2014
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-33.7553899 Longitude151.1518099 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gordon, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Dorothea Margaret Bisset,known as Margaret, was the daughter of successful businessman and inveterate letter writer O.D. Bisset and his wife Gwen, recent immigrants from Britain who had settled at Warrawee north of Sydney. After attending Abbotsleigh, which had a well established lively arts program for its girls, she studied ceramics at East Sydney Technical College. As with most of her generation her life was reshaped by World War II. In 1942, at her 21st birthday party, her patriotic parents invited a group of visiting British airman to the party. One of the party was A. J. (Tony) Tuckson, a Spitfire pilot who shared her interest in the visual arts. The following May the couple were engaged, although Tuckson was then posted to Darwin. They were married on 23 November 1943. Their son, Michael, was born in 1945. Margaret and Michael remained in Australia at her parents’ home while Tony was posted back to England until early 1946 when he returned to Australia where he was discharged from the RAF. For the following three years the family lived at the Bisset family home. Tony studied art under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme while Margaret resumed her pottery, studying under Mollie Douglas and Peter Rushforth. She joined them to become one of the founders of the Potters Society of Australia.In 1950 Tony joined the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where he eventually became Deputy Director. Gradually he ceased to show his art, so much so that even most of the gallery staff were unaware that he was continuing to develop his work, all in private. Their first house at East Gordon was the site of her first attempt at raku firing as she continued to experiment with ceramic forms.In 1958 she and Tony joined Dr Stuart Scougall’s expedition to Snake Bay, Melville Island where he commissioned works to enter the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She was an active participant in recording the works as they were being made. The Tutini are among the gallery’s most prized possessions. The following year the Tucksons travelled on another collecting expedition to Arnhem Land. Margaret photographed the artists collaborating on the bark paintings that now form the core of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ collection.In 1962 they moved to a new house in Lucinda Avenue Wahroonga. The house, designed by Russell Jack, took into account both Tony’s painting and Margaret’s ceramics as her studio included a kiln. The adventurous design included a long terrace so that the house backed directly onto the bush. Most of her works in public collections come from this period.In 1965 the Tucksons visited New Guinea for the first time, and Margaret developed a life-long passion for New Guinea ceramics. She made many return visits throughout the rest of her life. With Patricia May, who she met when May was first appointed to the NSW Gallery as curatorial assistant, she undertook many expeditions to record the work of individual potters as well as noting regional differences. Their book, The Traditional Pottery of Papua New Guinea remains the authoritative account of the field.In 1973, just before the Art Gallery opened its first dedicated gallery for Aboriginal and Melanesian art, Tony Tuckson died. Margaret ensured that his wishes about the display and the information on the artists were carried out. Although he had begun again to exhibit his paintings, his public profile was simply as an arts bureaucrat. In the decades after Tony’s death Margaret ensured that his thousands of paintings and drawings were all catalogued and then, with Watters Gallery. carefully released onto the market. She was the driving force behind the publication of the first monograph of his work and continued to generously encourage scholars and curators to see and know the full depth of his oeuvre. In this she was assisted by Richard McMillan, who wrote his masters thesis on Tuckson’s work and later by Ian Gunn. At the same time she continued to be an advocate for Papua New Guinea ceramics, supporting and encouraging potters to have faith in their work.A few days before she died she visited the Art Gallery of New South Wales, to see again the New Guinea work she had assisted in acquiring.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 23 October 1921
- Summary
- Tuckson was a potter working first in low-fired earthenware. She expanded her interest to Papua New Guinea ceramic traditions publishing "The Traditional Pottery of Papau New Guinea" with Patricia May in 1982. She was a founding member of the Potters Society of Australia. After the death of her husband, the artist Tony Tuckson, she ensured that his position as Austrlaia's pre-eminent abstract painter was properly recognised.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Aug-14
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 20 October 1920
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Apr-14
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1919
- Summary
- Spooner was an architect, graduating from Sydney Technical College with the conservationist Myles Dunphy. His career migrated toward landscape architecture after 1954 and became involved in highway design notably for the Sydney-Newcastle Freeway and commissions in South Australia and the Northern Territory. He became an lecturer at the UNSW developing their landscape architecture course, later becoming head of the department.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude68.24170235 Longitude14.66708159 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date2014-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Helle, Norway
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1912
- Summary
- Halvorsen, son of a Norwegian boat-builder, designed and built motor yachts from shipyards in Neutral Bay, later Ryde, then Bobbin Head NSW. While the company's timber motor yachts were sold internationally, he and his company also designed and built sailing vessels. He was a celebrated sailing competitor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-14
- Age at death
- 102
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1965-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 22 April 1965
- Summary
- Hensel was an industrial designer employed by Nielsen Design Associates, Sunbeam and later principal designer for Sunbeam Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1957-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 19 June 1957
- Summary
- Rogers was an illustrator, the founder of the Brisbane Book Illustrators Group, a lecturer at the Queensland College of Art as well as a painter. His illustrations and design appeared for the Univ of Queensland press, childrens' books and other publications. He helped establish the genre of illustrated books for older readers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-May-13
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1953-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1953
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude32.109274 Longitude76.5366901 Start Date1945-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kangra, Punjab, India
- Biography
- Michael Anthony O’Ferrall was born in India, the son of Colonel John O’Ferrall of the British Army and his wife Valerie Minchinton. After India became independent the family returned to England. On completing school O’Ferrall left England to hitchhike across the then accessible roads through Turkey, the middle east, Afghanistan, India, Thailand and Malaysia before arriving at Perth on Christmas Eve, 1965.For the next few years he undertook various unskilled labouring jobs, including at the Whyalla shipyards, which involved working with asbestos.This gave him sufficient funds to enrol in a degree in Asian studies at the Australian National University. He had an active extra curricula life at the ANU, becoming active in the Poetry Society and Jazz Club as well as organizing events on campus. In September 1970, he married fellow student Ilse Alps.The couple moved to Sydney where some years later he became one of the early students to complete the new Diploma of Museum Studies at the University of Sydney.Shortly after completing his studies the O’Ferrall family, which now included a baby daughter Elvira, moved to Yirrkala where he became the community arts organiser. In 1979, after he was appointed lecturer at James Cook University, the family moved to Townsville. In 1984 he left academic life for Perth, when he was appointed the first curator of Aboriginal and Asian art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia.He became a pivotal figure in the west, an active advocate for Aboriginal artists. In 1988 he enabled the Gallery to acquire the Louis Allen Collection of Arnhem land and Tiwi art, which had previously been housed in the Unity States. He later used the Allen collection as the basis for his groundbreaking exhibition, K_eeper of the Secrets_. In 1990 he was curator for the first exhibition of Aboriginal art to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale. Even though only two artists, Rover Thomas and Trevor Nickolls, were represented he made sure that viewers understood the diversity of Australian Aboriginal visual traditions. He also foresaw the need to encourage Indigenous Australians to become curators within the system rather than limiting themselves to be makers of art. He was responsible for the Art Gallery of Western Australia establishing an Indigenous curatorial internship.In 1995 O’Ferrall formally ended his employment at the gallery, but continued to be involved with the collection and staff, and was a significant contributor to the Indigenous Art book published by the gallery in 2001.He conducted many independent workshops for artists around the state. In 2010 he discovered he was suffering from mesothelioma, a legacy of his early career in the shipyards.
Writers:
akirpalani
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 9 May 1945
- Summary
- Michael O'Ferrall was one of the key curators in fostering recognition of the complexity of Aboriginal art. He worked closely with Aboriginal communities, especially in Yirrkala and Western Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Feb-13
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1945-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1945
- Summary
- John Peart's lyrical abstract paintings were first exhibited in Sydney in 1965, and his career kept very much in the same direction of sweetly beautiful abstract painting.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Oct-13
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-33.8797123 Longitude151.2561988 Start Date1942-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bellevue Hill, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist and art director, was born in Bellevue Hill [Rose Bay, acc. NGA], Sydney, on 21 January 1942. He attended Cranbrook 1952-59. While studying art at East Sydney Technical College in 1960 he submitted cartoons to the Bulletin . In 1961 he enrolled in Architecture at university (SU and/or UNSW). He was in trouble for obscenity for the cartoon The Gas Lash in the UNSWstudent publication Tharunka’s 1964 Orientation Week issue. Fifty years … says that he contributed both to Tharunka and Sydney University’s Honi Soit . In his third year of Architecture he returned to ESTC to study art, completing three of the five years of the course. In 1962 he won the Mirror Art Award. In 1963-64 he attended the Mary White Art School at the Rocks while simultaneously (1963-65 [1962-64 [ sic ] acc. McCulloch]) working as art director of Oz and being its major contributor of drawings and cartoons. The prosecution of Oz in 1964 for breach of the Obscene and Indecent Publications Act concentrated on a Sharp cartoon, The Word Spread Round the Arms (about an Ocker surfie), published in issue 6 (February; almost the same time as the similarly controversial The Gas Lash in Tharunka ), which consisted (almost) only of words (ill. Lindesay WWW , 159). Within weeks of Tharunka’s editors being convicted over The Gas Lash , Neville and Walsh were sentenced to six months gaol with hard labour and Sharp to four months, though all three were later released on bail pending an appeal, which was upheld. According to Coleman (p.12):
“The case caused such a sensation that it figured in the 1965 State election when the Opposition Leader Bob Askin, following Oz , made it his policy to abolish censorship. He won the election and that was the end of trial-by-magistrates in obscenity cases in New South Wales. It all added to the glory of Oz , Martin Sharp and cartoonists.”
A subsequent $300,000 libel suit, the departure of Sharp and Neville for England via Asia in 1966 to establish London Oz , the cancellation of advertising and the continued refusal of Gordon & Gotch to distribute Oz finally resulted in its demise (Lindesay, WWW , 156-160).
In December 1965 Sharp held a solo exhibition, Art for Mart’s Sake , at Clune Galleries, Potts Point. Martin Sharp Cartoons was published in 1966. Some of his cartoons also appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald , e.g. one about Prince Charles coming to school in Australia in 1965: “I sincerely hope he’s funnier than his father” . Others are [Aborigine in garbage tin with man bending over it] “You wouldn’t give us any trouble like those boongs in Los Angeles, would you Jacky” n.d. (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 74, 184). His cartoon Loading Up , published in the Australian 1965, about the Menzies government arms’ spending increase, is ill. King, 174.
Sharp lived and worked in London in 1967-69. He came back to Australia in 1970 then returned to collect his portable artworks for The Incredible Shrinking Exhibition group show, which opened at the Yellow House on 1 April 1971. He remained in London 1971-72 painting murals and publishing his Art Book etc..
Hamilton Art Gallery owns Sharp’s etching of Luna Park, Just For Fun? (clown on stage) 1981, ill. Hansen, cat.260 (the Hogarth Gallery’s copy was used in the 1999 S.H. Ervin Gallery show). Posters designed for the Nimrod Theatre are at ML POSTERS 810/1-7. On 4 March 2001 Dahlia Stanley was auctioning his silkscreen prints, Tiny Tim Eternal Troubadour Opera House 1982 , Kaspar (Nimrod November 7), The Venetian Twins and Art Sale for Land Rights n.d.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
staffcontributor
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 January 1942
- Summary
- Late 20th century Sydney artist. Sharp's 1964 cartoon "The Word Spread Round the Arms", published in "Oz" was seen to breach the Obscene and Indecent Publications Act and resulted in charges being laid against Sharp and his editors. Later, after reprising his antipodean success with the London edition of "Oz", he returned to Australia where he founded the Yellow House at 59 Macleay Street Potts Point.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Dec-13
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-31.5021772 Longitude150.6804062 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Quirindi, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Lila Lawrence, painter, screen-printer, ceramicist and weaver, was born on 2 July, 1940 in Quirindi, NSW and attended school there until the age of 15. She has lived in a number of places with her parents, mother Leah Olive Beale (née Suey) and father, Claude Beale, including Gunnedah, Curlewis and Tamworth before settling in the Wollongong region on the South Coast of NSW. Encouraged by her friend and fellow artist, Mabel Dungay, Lawrence attended art classes at West Wollongong TAFE in 1998 and was awarded her Advanced Diploma of Visual Art in August 2006. Lawrence is an artist member of the Boolarng-Nangamai Aboriginal Art & Cultural Studio based in Gerringong on the NSW South Coast and in 2006, as a member of this organisation, her work was included in their NAIDOC exhibition at Wollongong City Art Gallery and another exhibition titled “Looking through European Eyes”, also held at the Wollongong City Art Gallery, in which Illawarra Aboriginal artists were asked to respond to works from the Gallery’s Colonial collection. Lawrence has also exhibited at the Karoona Gallery, West Wollongong TAFE in 2004 and at the 2005 and 2006 Royal Easter Show. Lawrence stated in an interview with the author that her paintings, which are created using make-up brushes, are landscapes that “reflect from my memories of places and land I have travelled throughout my life.” Lawrence also conducts workshops at Boolarng-Nangamai in weaving, storytelling and cultural awareness. Lawrence said in the same interview that being a member of Boolarng-Nangamai also enables her to practice her Aboriginal culture and to be with her people.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Note:
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 2 July 1940
- Summary
- Lila Lawrence is a painter, printmaker, weaver and ceramicist who works out of the Boolarng-Nangamai Aboriginal Art Studio in Gerringong, NSW. Her paintings often depict personal memories of her life and the landscapes of places she has travelled through.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Apr-13
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1936
- Summary
- Gunter Christmann was one of the group of young artists who exhibited at Central Street in Sydney in the 1960s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2013
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Gwyn Hanssen Pigott had an established reputation in England and France through her inclusion in significant exhibitions and prominent collections before she returned to Australia. Although we in Australia know little of this aspect of her career, her nomination as a Fellow of the Society of Designer Craftsmen in London in 1963 indicates the high regard in which her ceramics were held. This profile has now been reasserted on a broader scale through the significant achievement in her Still Life groupings. Evidence of this profile is to be found in her receipt of numerous awards, inclusion in many public collections and successful solo exhibitions in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, St. Louis, New York and London. These works, produced from the late 1980s, are the culmination of forty years of dedication and commitment to her craft.
The tradition of functional ceramics has informed her career and an astonishing consistent quality of clarity of vision and precision of execution has been manifested throughout. The still, calm presence of artists such as Piero della Francesca and Giorgio Morandi have been acknowledged influences which she then transforms with the sensate experience of the potter. To hear Hanssen Pigott speak of the qualities of tension of the forms, the defining character of rim, foot and profile, the volumetric presence of the interiors and the penetrations into surrounding space is to appreciate how important these properties are to potters such as Leach, Cardew, McMeekin and Hanssen Pigott. It also emphasises how poorly such values have been regarded within the framework of European art history.
As a Fine Arts student at the University of Melbourne Hanssen Pigott passed through the displays of Chinese ceramics at the National Gallery of Victoria on her way to the painting galleries which were the principal focus of the course. She responded to the presence of the ceramics in the famous Kent Collection (both the serenity of the Sung pieces and the vitality of the Neolithic wares inspired her). There she also saw the work of Harold Hughan, Australia’s first exponent of stoneware, who told her of Bernard Leach’s A Potter’s Book when she visited him. She decided to devote her third year thesis to contemporary Australian pottery and, unusually for the period, she was permitted to do so. Armed with this aspiration and the inspiration of Leach’s book she visited other potters to try to elucidate in contemporary pieces the spirit that Leach venerated. She heard that Ivan McMeekin had just returned to Australia after four years experience with Michael Cardew at the Wenford Bridge Pottery, Cornwall. When she visited him at Mittagong she recognised the qualities she had intuited both in his own work and in the pots he collected. Hanssen Pigott then terminated her academic studies and became his apprentice for three years from 1955. She recalled: “Ivan taught me how to read pots: with my eyes and hands. He taught how to know the qualities of clay bodies, the subtle differences of glaze surface and depth, about thoroughness and patience and the futility of short cuts” (Hanssen Pigott, 1991, p. 46).
The philosophy and publications of Bernard Leach had a profound effect on pottery in post-war Australia. Consequently Hanssen Pigott travelled to England to further her studies with him (at his Pottery at St. Ives), and other major potters of the time, Ray Finch at the Winchcombe Pottery, Bernard Leach, Michael Cardew at the Wenford Bridge Pottery and Alan Craiger-Smith at the Aldermarston Pottery. She states:
Those five years, in rural workshops, taught by generous and enthusiastic masters who had given so much of their life’s energy and understanding to their craft, nourished and formed me as a potter and confirmed my choice of vocation. Here I was witness to the daily commitment to quality, the constant curiosity and change, the personal involvements with the history of the craft and the obsessive reaching for deeper insights (Hanssen Pigott, 1991, p. 47).
While most Australian potters followed Leach in looking towards China (and later Japan) as the source of their inspiration, Hanssen Pigott was largely focused on Europe.
Her apprentice years ceased when she set up a pottery in London with the Canadian writer Louis Hanssen (who she met while at the Leach Pottery and later married). She established a friendship with the Austrian potter Lucie Rie who became an important mentor and through her met the German potter Hans Coper. To her understanding of the integrity of the country based potters she added an appreciation of European elegance and sculptural presence which their work manifested. If there was a lasting influence on Hanssen Pigott’s work it is to be found in the refined forms of Rie. Coper’s 1965 exhibition at the Berkeley Galleries, London, however, had an effect which she only fully assimilated decades later, “I walked down the steps into a place so still; held, not immediately by the pots themselves, but by a sense that the space between the pots were recognised forms too: negatives.” (Hanssen Pigott, 1991, p. 47).
Three years earlier (1962) on a visit to Paris Hanssen Pigott saw an exhibition of French traditional wood-fired pottery from Haut-Berry at the Museum of Folk Art and Tradition and was attracted by their freshness and vigour. In this work she discovered a European tradition of long wood firing which paralleled that of Japan but was quite without its self-consciousness. Subsequently she purchased a house in Achères in Central France and set up a pottery. The first pots she produced, with dense vitrified bodies, were strongly influenced by the local examples which she described as “unpretentious but rich in a way I could easily relate to with their ash glazes, celadons and proto-porcelain type glazes.” (Hanssen Pigott, p. 1971, p. 4).
It was not long, however, before she began using porcelain refining the glazes and using the wood firing to produce more subtle effects. It was her response to the clay, form, glazes and firing that was important. For Hanssen Pigott there was no sense in separating production ware from one-off-work as an expression of the potter’s personality as, “One is expressing oneself in everything, absolutely everything. In the way you make the glaze, the way you pack the kiln, it is all yourself.” (Hanssen Pigott, 1971, p. 5).
The death of her husband in 1968 and the social unrest at the time introduced a period of dissatisfaction and soul searching. Like many of the 1960s generation she meditated and experimented with communal living. She lectured at several European institutions and worked with the Bread and Puppet Theatre of Vermont before deciding to return to Australia in 1973. Hanssen Pigott taught at the East Sydney Technical College for a time then settled in Tasmania with John Pigott where they established a pottery at Linden Rise, Kingston in 1975 with the help of a Crafts Board Grant. (John Pigott set up another pottery at Lower Longley in 1979). The stoneware items they produced there made use of local clays and glazes. Hanssen Pigott then undertook a year’s tenancy at the Jam Factory Workshop, Adelaide in 1980. During this year she shared a gas-fired kiln which gave her greater control, especially in relation to celadon glazes, which she adapted for a range of dinner wares. She also started to decorate her pieces with blue geometric patterns inspired by Nigerian indigo dyed textiles. Subsequently she was invited to continue the production pottery established by Kelvin Grealy at the Brisbane College of Advanced Education (now the Queensland University of Technology) at Kelvin Grove. She built a wood-fired kiln and remained potter-in-residence until 1988 when she established a pottery at Netherdale in the Mackay hinterland. It was in Queensland that the various strands of her life melded in a remarkable way.
While in Paris she saw an exhibition by the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi, who was new to her, “I found his early work disturbing. There was austerity in his drawings and etchings, a pulling back from colour and sensuality in his painting which I found difficult at first. And then it began to reach me, the profound realness of what he was painting and describing.” (Hanssen Pigott, 1987, p. 12).
But it was not until 1988 that the idea of constructing still life groupings inspired by Morandi’s painted assemblages evolved. It would also, of course, be mediated through the groupings of ceramics that form when production wares are displayed and used.
During these years in Brisbane the support of artists such as Madonna Staunton and Leonard Brown was especially gratifying to Hanssen Pigott. They were responsive to her work. The Garry Anderson Gallery in Sydney represented Staunton, who produces extremely reductive collages, and Brown who paints subtly tonal canvasses. Hanssen Pigott’s work meshed very well with the refined and intellectual style this gallery promoted. Her first exhibition with his gallery was later the same year.
After the 1986 wood firer’s conference in the Latrobe Valley Hanssen Pigott was invited to use Heja Chong’s Bizen kiln. She prepared for the firings by producing shapes unrelated to Eastern traditions some of which, such as the tapering and mallet shaped vases, find parallels in Morandi’s early paintings. She first exhibited a group of these pieces at the 'Australian Crafts 1988’ exhibition at the Meatmarket Craft Centre and received a Bicentenary Crafts Award. She did not pursue Bizen style firings as she found the markings of the pieces too complex to create her still life groupings. Her first specific still life works were made during her period at the Fremantle Art Centre in early 1989 and formed the basis of her exhibition at the Garry Anderson Gallery later that year.
At the same award she introduced the first group of her 'Inseparable Bowls.’ Hanssen Pigott has always worked in a domestic scale and bowl forms are of great importance to her, but the modest dimension of her pieces tend to be overlooked in group exhibitions. Group of bowls both create a stronger presence and emphasise the tension of from relationships.
One of the enduring qualities of her work is her deep reverence for the tradition, materials and processes of her craft,
The qualities that make you ask how can such a simple thing as a bowl, something you eat from, last in time and still be magical, still be elusive in this century? How can something so simple be so alive and lasting? . . . I was not interested in being a potter for the sake of earning a living, making functional pots, putting my hands in clay, expressing myself, adopting a lifestyle-none of those things. It was the curiosity about the quality, the essence of the pots (Hanssen Pigott, 1989).
Hanssen Pigott underwent a practical training through the system of apprenticeship and not the 'hot house’ tertiary education system where every student is expected to develop a unique style.
Her development as a potter focused on interior qualities. It is this element of the still life works that shines forth in the still calm and the quiet presence. Hanssen Pigott’s forms, composed as there are of rounded wheel-thrown forms, are even more restricted than the forms chosen by Morandi, and with the restrained glaze colours are as subtle as Morandi’s most reticent watercolours. Although Morandi’s work may have been the initial inspiration the groupings have asserted their own individuality. 'Still’ lifes is also something of a misnomer when we consider the jauntiness of works such as Jug Parade 1995 or the slow, lateral movement of her landscape groupings.
Her preference for wood firing also introduces the idea of transformation. In preparing the pieces for glazing it is her response to the form and the character she wishes to develop that determines the colour and finish of the glaze. She then responds to subtle changes breathed on the surface of the glazes and the variation of the forms that enhances their initial character which prompts their selection for specific groups. She selects and places and works with a group of pieces until a resolution is established – it is essentially an intuitive process. Hanssen Pigott speaks of her response to her arrangements,
As we look, volumes turn to line, and interior colours float from thin rims, making an echo. Kinship of form, tone, line and remembrance, brings the pots together and holds them there. We, at whim, can change all that: can pour the jug, test the ties, change the stillness: watch the play. I love to tread the fine line between the static and the lively, the seductive and the pretty (Hanssen Pigott 1995).
Essentially these pieces have become non-functional 'art works’ though informed with the entire history of traditional ceramics. These essentially European objects have become true objects for contemplation in the Eastern tradition. Hanssen Pigott acknowledges that the pieces could be arranged differently (In fact, in her more recent works Hanssen Pigott offers alternate settings for the selected group which evoke different emotions in the potter and viewer.), but it requires a high level of visual sophistication to be aware of the forms and tensions of the grouping. Despite the easy rapport such works foster with the viewers most would defer to Hanssen Pigott’s own arrangement.
In 1992 Hanssen Pigott was awarded a three year Artist Development Fellowship from the Visual Arts and Crafts Board of the Australia Council. She moved from her rural retreat in the Mackay hinterland to Bundamba, a suburb of the old industrial town of Ipswich (now a dormitory suburb for Brisbane) to be closer to support and resources.
Significant honours have continued to be awarded to Hanssen Pigott including a Visual Arts and Crafts Emeritus Award in 1997; an Australia Council Fellowship in 1998; and Order of Australia Medal in 2002, all in recognition to her contribution to the field of ceramics in Australia. For a practicing potter, however, the greatest honour has been a survey at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 'Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: A Survey 1955-2005’ in 2005.
Hanssen Pigott’s work is a telling rejoinder to some contemporary 'post-modern’ ceramists who play with the concepts and traditions of pottery without having the technical skills (or as profound a knowledge of pottery’s own history) and others who promote the gratuitous appeal of colour and style.
It is work in which the quality of making is an intrinsic part of the overall effect. Hanssen Pigott is an artist who understands her material and the processes of throwing and turning; and who appears to relish the delight of battling with them to achieve a dynamic control between balance and freedom. But more than this, these are pots which refer to the way we often take 'the domestic’ for granted. By encouraging us to meditate on the importance of everyday objects, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott restates a commitment to ceramics which is especially welcome at a time when post-modern cynicism offers stimulation but no solutions (Copper, 1993, p. 5).
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.Note: Primary Biographer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2010
- Born
- b. 1935
- Summary
- Gwyn Hanssen Pigott was one of Australia's most distinguished potters whose career extended over more than five decades in Australia, England and France. She has worked and exhibited extensively and established an international reputation for her exquisite works from her base in Queensland.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Jul-13
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Janet Mansfield (1934-2013) was born in Sydney, NSW. She became interested in pottery as a young mother, attending evening classes, then studying ceramics at the East Sydney Technical College (now the National art School) from 1964-1965. Setting up her studio at Turramurra in the north of Sydney, she began making thrown domestic stoneware, handbuilt garden pots and thrown and assembled sculptural pieces.
Students from ESTC had set up the Ceramic Study Group in 1963 with Peter Rushforth as patron. Mansfield became president of the group from 1968-69 and later a life member. This was the first of many senior positions she occupied in national and international craft and ceramic organisations over the years, including president of the Australian Potters’ Society from 1985-86 and of the International Academy of Ceramics from 2007.
In her professional practice she used grants to study in Japan and the UK, and to research salt glazing. In 1977, she moved with her family to 'Morning View’, a property near Gulgong, NSW, where she continued to make salt-glazed and anagama wood-fired vessels using local Gulgong clays. With Gwyn Hanssen Pigott and Peter Rushforth, she is one of Australia’s most revered wood-firers and her work is represented in major public collections in Australia and overseas.
She was also a significant publisher and author, having written several major books on Australian and international ceramics as well as numerous journal articles. After editing Pottery in Australia from 1976-1989, she established a new international journal – Ceramics: Art and Perception – in 1990, followed by Ceramics Technical in 1995. These were published in Paddington, NSW, where she also ran the Ceramic Art Gallery on Glenmore Road until her retirement in 2005. (The task of editing the two journals has now been taken over by Elaine Olafson Henry.)
In 1987, she was awarded an Order of Australia, and she held many other national and international awards for her contribution to the arts and to ceramics.
Throughout her career she was passionate about sharing her love of clay with others. From her base in Gulgong she invited international artists to share their insights with Australian practitioners at nine triennial events – Woodfire (1989), Fire-Up (1992), Claysculpt (1995), Hyperclay (1998), Clayfeast (2001), Clay Modern (2004), Clay Edge (2007), Clay Energy (2010) and Clay Push (2013). She died on 4 February 2013, just before this last event was held.
Her work is marked with an impressed 'JM’.
Writers:
Judith Pearce
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 19 August 1934
- Summary
- As a speaker, writer, publisher, juror and convenor, Janet Mansfield put Australian ceramics on the international stage. Her magazine "Ceramics: Art and Perception" set a new standard as a high quality journal dedicated to ceramic art. As a master potter, she made stong woodfire and salt-glazed works, many of which now reside in public and private collections.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 4-Feb-13
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.7660606 Longitude151.1601121 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Killara, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1932
- Summary
- Andrews was a garden designer with training at the Ryde TAFE College. She worked as Judy Andrews Garden Design, Gordon specialising in domestic garden design. Her Rumsey Rose Garden, Parramatta Park received an award from the Horticulture Research Intl Association.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-35.3596404 Longitude145.7347999 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Jerilderie, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1931
- Summary
- Fox was a milliner, training in Sydney 1949-1958, later moving to London working for Otto Lucas, Hardy Amies and others. He kept a studio in Bond Street and made over 350 hats for the Queen of England and other members of the royal family. Recipient of many British honours, he also designed hats and headgear for film.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Sculptor, was born in Melbourne, the younger of two daughters of ceramic designer Harry Redpath and his wife, Dorothy. Her formal art training began as a commercial art course in 1943 at Swinburne Technical College, but tuberculosis combined with a long convalescence interrupted her studies. In 1946 she resumed study at Swinburne, but switched to painting. Discontent with both her work and the medium led Redpath to enrol in sculpture at the Royal Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT)where she studied from 1949 to 1951. Her studies were largely self directed as she found no contemporary sculpture of interest to her in Australia, however her work soon attracted the attention of the sculptor Karl Duldig. She first exhibited with the Victorian Sculptors’ Society in 1950, and she was awarded the Society’s Stanley Hammond Prize in 1953. She also contributed to their activities as a council member and, later, as vice-chairman until her resignation.The quality of her work led her to be invited by recent immigrants,Julius Kuhn (later Kane), Inge King and Clifford Last, to join them in what became known as the Group of Four. The group exhibited in 1953 and 1955. By this time Redpath was also teaching art at a girl’s school.In 1956, with savings from two years of teaching, sales and commissions, she sailed for Europe. In Italy she studied at the Universita per Stranieri, Perugia. Later, when based in Rome, she cast two bronzetti, her interest in the potential of bronze as a medium having been aroused in Melbourne.On her return to Australia she continued to work in wood. In 1958 she was awarded the commission for for a mural based on Milton’s Areopagitica for the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne. It was carved in silky oak. In 1960 she was selected for the National Gallery of Victoria’s Six Sculptors exhibition, the first local demonstration of modernist sculpture.But by 1961 she decisively turned to bronze with Dawn figure which was a plaster cast envisaged for casting. It was awarded the Mildara (later Mildura) Prize for Sculpture. In the same year she was awarded both the Italian Government Travelling Scholarship and the Dyason Bequest travelling scholarship. In Milan in 1962 Redpath pursued further studies at the Academia di Belle Arti di Brera, gaining foundry experience on the recommendation of her teacher, Luciano Minguzzi. Two large sculptures and twelve bronzetti cast there and formed the basis of her Gallery A exhibition in Melbourne the following year. One of the sculptures gained Redpath her second Mildura Prize for Sculpture in 1964. In 1966 she won the Transfield Prize for Sculpture.Her most significant commission was the Treasury Fountain (1965-69) for the Secretariat Building in Canberra. James Gleeson described this as 'less a decoration than a morality in water and metal’'. The year after its completion she was awarded an OBE for her services to art.
Other commissions include Extended Column (1972-75) for the School of Music, Canberra; Sculpture Column (1969-72) for the Reserve Bank of Australia, Brisbane; and Bronze Reliefs (1964) for BP Australia, the Victorian Coat of Arms for the Arts Centre of Victoria (1968), Facade Relief (1970-72) for the Victorian College of Pharmacy, the Sydney Rubbo Memorial Capital (1970-73) at the University of Melbourne and Paesaggio Cariatide (1980-85) for the State Bank of Victoria, Melbourne.
Redpath regularly travelled between Italy and Australia, living and working in both countries. In 1972-74 she was awarded a Fellowship in the Creative Arts, Australian National University, Canberra. Then she worked out of her Milan studio (1974-85) before returning to develop her existing studio and production base in Melbourne. In the late 1970s Redpath ceased studio work, but instead described her sculptural ideas and projects in a manuscript, Ideas and Images. Her final commission, Paesaggio Cariatide was received in 1980 and is installed at the State Bank Centre in Bourke Street, Melbourne. The work was donated to the McClelland Gallery in 2003.
She continued to make was maquettes until the last years of her life.
She is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, the state galleries of Victoria, NSW and WA, in regional and institutional holdings and in private collections in Australia, Italy, UK and USA. In 2006 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Swinburne University.
Writers:
Kirby, Sandy
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 20 November 1928
- Summary
- Norma Redpath was a leading sculptor of the generation who emerged after World War II. Her success was even more remarkable as her career was forged at a time when it was especially difficult for women to succeed as artists. In 1956 she made the first of many visits to Italy, and there is a strong Italian influence in her work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.8125405 Longitude151.1115717 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ryde, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1927
- Summary
- Carrol trained as a milliner at Moray Millinery, Sydney working in women's millinery, then transferred her skills to theatre, television and film in the mid-1960s. She also taught at NIDA, TAFE NSW and the Australian Forum for Textile Artists' Fibre Forum and elsewhere. She also tutored privately.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, teacher and critic, was born in Melbourne. She studied at the National Gallery School under William Dargie, Alan Sumner and Murray Griffin in 1945-49, winning prizes for drawing and still-life painting. Sumner sent some of his students, one of them Braund, to the George Bell School for extra study, which proved a major influence. While still students at the NGV Braund and Judy Hunter had modernist works accepted by the Contemporary Art Society (Vic.) for exhibition (c.1943). They were threatened with expulsion from the CAS because they were reported in Truth as saying they had entered the works for a lark. Braund apologised and continued in the CAS, but Hunter employed lawyers, refused to apologise to John Reed and did not exhibit again with the CAS (Furby, p.91).
After finishing classes with Bell in 1949, Braund studied in England (1950-51). She rejoined the Contemporary Art Society in 1952 and in 1954 became a regular 'Thursday night’ participant at the George Bell studio until Bell’s death in 1966. Bell appreciated her ability to use form, colour and surface to create good pictorial design, and Braund became a confident exponent of Bell’s teaching ideas. She taught art at three Melbourne schools in the 1950s, gave talks on ABC radio in 1961-64, and reviewed children’s books for the Australian in 1969-77.
Instead of feeling victimised by being a woman artist, Braund stated in 1979 that she was glad that 'the collectors aren’t interested because it means that people buy my paintings because they like them, not because they are good investments’. She works in oil, gouache or watercolour, her later work being more angular in the treatment of figures and more abstract during the mid-1960s. Two excellent gouaches, The Art Class 1960 and Bathers, Sandringham 1979, were auctioned at Christie’s Sydney on 14-15 August 1994, lots 186, 194E.
In 1992 Christopher Heathcote noted that many artists who came to maturity in the 1950s have been 'unjustly neglected’ and that Braund was no exception. She held her first solo exhibition in 1952 and has exhibited consistently ever since. Her work is held in many collections: the National Galleries of Australia and Victoria, the Queensland Art Gallery and regional and university galleries. She has travelled extensively: to England and Europe in 1950-51, to Greece in 1958, as well as visiting the Mediterranean, India and Asia.
Writers:
Mahoney, Bronwyn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1926
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2013
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 27 April 1924
- Summary
- Howel 'Jim' Chesterfield, sign writer, was born in Brisbane in 1924. He attended Rainworth State School, married Ann, and worked as a farm hand. Chesterfield produced many signs for shops and offices and real estate agents in Brisbane and south east Queensland under the company logo he started as "JC Signs".
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Jun-13
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- Bert Flugelman was born in Vienna, where as a child he haunted museums and art galleries near his grandmother’s home. Once he sheltered from a rainstorm in the gallery for Secessionist art, and became entranced by Schiele, Kokoschka, and Klimt. His life changed in 1938 when the Anschluss led to Hitler’s Germany annexing Austria, and he fled.Flugelman was a 15 year old refugee, with no English when he came to Australia, so took labouring jobs in the bush. Later he enlisted as a non-combattant in the Australian army. At the end of the war he considered his future, and thought again of art. Supported by the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme he studied painting at East Sydney Technical College under Frank Hinder. At the end of his course Flugelman and his wife Rosemary travelled to Europe for adventure and exposure to art. He was struck down by poliomyelitis and fled to London for medical care at the Fever Hospital. He later credited that experience with making him take painting seriously. A fellow Australian, Cedric Flower, heard of his illness and approached the Royal Academy on his behalf. The three year grant he received from their Benevolent Fund enabled him to both survive financially and to establish his career as an artist. Years later, in Australia, Flugelman started a similar fund for Australian artists.After he recovered they traveled to New York, where he discovered a love of making sculpture. He continued so paint for some years, but it is as a sculptor that he has made his greatest impact.Shortly after returning to Australia in 1956 he began teaching part-time at East Sydney Technical College. In 1968 Donald Brook successfully argued that the University of Sydney’s new Department of Fine Arts should work with the Faculty of Architecture to create an experimental art workshop at the old tin sheds on City Road. Flugelman became the first tutor at the Tin Sheds,where he stayed for over five years. His experimental approach combined with a rigorous work ethic influenced the next generation of Australian artists, including the young Imants Tillers. Later he moved to Adelaide, and became involved in the fledgling Experimental Art Foundation and ran the Sculpture Department at the South Australian School of Art. In 1984 he moved to Wollongong University, to head the Sculpture Department at the Art School. He retired from formal teaching in 1990 but continues to mentor young artists and encourage a questioning generosity of spirit.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Eric Riddler
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 28 January 1923
- Summary
- Sculptor, painter, and mentor to many younger artists, Bert Flugelman came to Australia as a refugee shortly before the outbreak of World War II. In the 1970s he oversaw the radical artists associated with the Tin Sheds Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Feb-13
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude52.2319581 Longitude21.0067249 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Warsaw, Poland
- Biography
- Binem (William) Grunstein was born in Warsaw on 26 February 1921, the son of Herszl Grunstein and his wife Sarah (Kuperman). His parents and almost all of his family were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941, but Binem escaped to the countryside where he was able to survive by working as a farm labourer. He was joined by his brother Mark, but as the farm could not conceal two fugitive Jews they were captured.Grunstein’s ability to paint portraits of his Nazi captors led him to survive as he was transferred to a total of 14 prison camps, painting portraits at ever location. After the war he met Chana (Hania) Bornstein, another survivor. He came to Australia as an assisted immigrant in 1949, where he worked as a kitchen hand for the Australian army camp at Casula. In 1951 Chana joined him and they were married at the Great Synagogue in Sydney on her arrival.He returned to painting while working full-time as both a kitchen hand and making dresses, and later managing a dress factory. He also studied art and fashion at East Sydney Technical College. He became an active member of the Royal Art Society of NSW, and in his later years taught with them as well as exhibiting with them. He had frequent exhibitions at the Holdsworth Gallery, and his work was acquired by the Sydney Opera House.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 26 February 1921
- Summary
- His skill at portrait painting enabled Binem Grunstein to survive the Nazi concentration camps in World War II. After the war he immigrated to Australia, where he painted landscapes and other works for his own pleasure.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Jeffrey Smart was born in Adelaide on July 26, 1921, as the only son of Francis Isaac Smart, a real estate agent and his second wife, Emmeline Mildred (nee Edson). His elder half-sister was from his father’s first marriage. He first travelled to Europe when he was a child of four, but after the Great Depression destroyed his father’s business, life became more confined. Nevertheless he was able to take Saturday drawing classes from the age of 12. His early interest was in architecture, but financial reality meant that he became a trainee teacher instead. He also attended classes at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts.He was fortunate that the pioneer modernist, Dorrit Black had returned to Adelaide and it was she who first introduced him to the clean pure lines and cubic forms of modernism. He began teaching school in 1941,the same year he first exhibited with the Royal South Australian Society of Arts. He then approached a Melbourne commercial gallery, where he held his first solo exhibition. His clear-toned smooth painted geometric urban landscapes, where human figures sometimes appear as an intrusion, led him to be seen as an inoffensive modernist, an artist who could straddle both the Charm School and Surrealism.He first travelled to Europe as an adult in 1948. His experience of the great European collections, especially the work of Cezanne which he saw in Paris,and the work of the Quattrocento Italian artists helped mature his own vision. Smart returned to Adelaide in 1951 and after he was awarded the Commonwealth Jubilee Art Prize he moved to Sydney, where there were opportunities to exhibit his art.In Sydney he became the art critic of the Daily Telegraph, while continuing to support himself by working as a school teacher. Later he became the beloved Phidias, the art expert, at the ABC Radio children’s Argonauts program. Later he made the transition to television. As he became more successful as an artist Smart was able to leave school teaching and taught for a short time at East Sydney Technical College.In 1963 he was able to leave teaching and relocate to Italy where he was based for the rest of his life. Although he was surrounded by antiquity, the subjects he chose for his art tended to be those from modernity. He was entranced by the giant cubic shapes of industrial containers, empty streets, the absurd conjunction of old and new, of nature meeting geometry.Smart continued to exhibit in Australia for the rest of his life. He held exhibitions in public galleries as well as dealer galleries, and he was the subject of significant public praise. The Art Gallery of New South Wales held a retrospective exhibition of his paintings in 1999.As with many of his generation, Smart was hesitant at first to declare his sexuality, but later wrote a memoir, Not Quite Straight. His longest, and most loving relationship was with a fellow artist, Ermes de Zan who was with him from 1976 until he died.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 26 July 1921
- Summary
- With a career lasting over sixty years the Adelaide born artist Jeffrey Smart was an expatriate realist painter best known for his depiction of isolated individuals in industrial landscapes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Jun-13
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude55 Longitude24 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lithuania
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 27 January 1919
- Summary
- Zilinskas was an artist, designer, acrobat and trapeze performer who immigrated to Australia and worked in the Yuraygir National Park near Coffs Harbour NSW as a timber getter. While working there, he designed and built a timber, concrete and bottle sculpture in the forest ca.1960's that survives in 2019. He later joined the Ashton Circus where he continued designing and making circus equipment.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Aug-13
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-30.748889 Longitude121.465833 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date2013-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kalgoorlie, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Bessie Saunders was book in Kalgoorlie and educated at Miss Parnell’s Girls High School Claremont before attending Margaret Saunders’ Perth School of Art. She exhibited with the WA Society of Arts, winning prizes on at least two occasions. Later she became the Society’s secretary.In 1936 she married the painter Allon Cook and while she may have continued making commercial work, she appears to have ceased working as an artist after the birth of her son, the artist Phillip Cook.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1913
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2013
- Age at death
- 100
Details
Latitude42.989911 Longitude11.8687316 Start Date1972-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sarteano, Tuscany, Italy
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 11 November 1972
- Summary
- Cavaliere’s desire was to bring to light what she did not remember of her early years in Sarteano. Her art became a lifelong project transforming the packing, storing and transporting elements of her possessions into art.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude-27.1170905 Longitude150.8946408 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Darling Downs, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. September 1956
- Summary
- Kieran was an active participant of the 1980s Qld ARI sector and in community based media including 4ZZZ public radio.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.2012
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-34.4278083 Longitude150.893054 Start Date1952-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wollongong, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by adding to it.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1952
- Summary
- Michael Callaghan's political posters helped define urban dissent in the 1970s. Later he founded Redback Graphix and created the popular health poster figure 'Condoman'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1950
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2012
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-25 Longitude133 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1949
- Summary
- Coote is an interior designer and furniture maker active in the United Kingdom and Ireland. He studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, later working in Sydney for Decor, an interior design firm run by Tom Harding and David Lorimer. His firm, Coote & Co is now based in London.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Trevor Nickolls was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1949. He first exhibited as a student and gained a Diploma of Fine Art from the South Australian School of Art in 1972. One of his teachers was the printmaker Franz Kempf. In 1978 he undertook a diploma in education which enabled him to work as a school art teacher. In 1979, when undertaking postgraduate studies at the Victorian College of the Arts he met the Papunya artist Dinny Nolan. He later described this as a turning point in his art, and in his life as Nolan mentored him in gaining an understanding of the directions his art could take.
The following year, after graduating with a postgraduate diploma of painting, he was appointed an education officer. This meant that he was able to travel through the Northern Territory, meeting artists and coming to see how modern the ancient techniques could appear to be. His own art changed to incorporate his new understanding of a changing tradition of Aboriginal art.In the 1980s he lived in both Sydney and Melbourne, and began to paint the awkward duality of the changing perception. It was the works of the 1980s, that showed the awkwardness and pain of Aboriginal people responding to a rapidly changing world and the growth of industrialisation, which finally brought him widespread critical acclaim. He coined the catch phrase, “Dreamtime to Machinetime” to sum up both the dilemma and the response. Dreamtime is the harmonious connection to nature and ancient traditions, while Machinetime is the trap of the modern confined life.
In 1990 Nickolls joined Rover Thomas to become the first Aboriginal artists to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale. His work was widely collected by many institutions including the National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
He was well aware of the gifts that art could bring. His last gift was to establish the Trevor Nickolls Art Award for Aboriginal artists can undertake studies at art school.After his death, his friend the artist Vernon Ah Kee wrote: “For Blackfellas like me, the work of Trevor Nickolls, in the 1970s and ‘80s was a visual language that gave voice to the confusion and complexity around the identity politics of the times. As a visual artist, he gave voice to our frustration and anger at our powerlessness and our invisibility like no artist before had.”
On 17 November 2012 the Art Gallery of South Australia held a public commemoration of his life.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1949
- Summary
- South Australian Aboriginal painter who began working in the visual arts in the early 1970s. Along with Rover Thomas, Nickolls represented Australia in the 1990 Venice Biennale. Nickolls has work in many public collections including the Art Gallery of NSW, Art Gallery of SA and the National Gallery of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Oct-12
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1945-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North East Arnhemland, NT, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1945
- Summary
- Using distinctive white and black crosses on a red ground, Yogngu artist Gulumbu Yunupingu (1945-2012) painted Garak, the starry universe, on barks and poles. She came to national prominance when she won the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award (2004), and to international prominence with her scaled-up version of Garak for the Musee du quai Branly (2006).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Jun-12
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude54.44588805 Longitude17.07368774 Start Date1942-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stolp, Pomerania Poland, Stolp, Pomerania (Poland)
- Biography
- etcher, was appointed Founding Head of Printmaking at the Canberra School of Art, now part of The Australian National University in 1978. There is some speculation that he taught print making to Albert Namatjira Jnr while visiting Arnhem Land in 1976 and to Narratjin Maymuru and his sons when they were artists in residence at Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, in 1978. Appears to do colour etchings and engravings mostly.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1942
- Summary
- Jörg Schmeisser, etcher, is thought to have taught print making to Albert Namatjira Jnr while visiting Arnhem Land in 1976 and to Narratjin Maymuru and his sons when they were artists in residence at Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, in 1978.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.2012
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-38.2399682 Longitude142.9146792 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Terang, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2012
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, scriptwriter and stand-up comic, was born in London on 5 November 1933. A stand-up comic for thirty years, he first came to Australia in 1964 to appear at Chequers nightclub then 'just stayed and stayed’. Since about 1988 he has been employed as a scriptwriter at Channel 9, so draws few cartoons. Previously, however, he had contributed cartoons to the Bulletin , Penthouse and various other magazines. His cartoon in the B/W Artists’ Club collection (ML PxD 586/ G-I) showing two boys saying '“My Dad’s a Cartoonist.”/ “Mine’s a miserable sod too” was reproduced in Inkspot 16 (Autumn 1991), 21 (ML Q741.5994/47) and in Kerr. As a freelance cartoonist NSW, his colour cartoon of a teacher and pupil was reproduced in Rainbow – “What do you know about Federation?”/ “They build nice houses?” – a rare unpredictable view of the topic.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 5 November 1933
- Summary
- Contemporary London born, New South Wales based cartoonist, scriptwriter and stand-up comic.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Jun-12
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- Mark Strizic (b.Marco Strizic 1928 Berlin 19.04.1928 – d. Wallan 08.12.2012) migrated to Australia from Croatia in 1950 and became a widely published architectural and industrial photographer, portraitist of significant Australians, and fine art photographer/painter known for his multimedia mural work. He, and other postwar immigrant photographers Wolfgang Sievers, Henry Talbot and Helmut Newton exerted significant influence on Australian photography, particularly in its transition to Modernism. He taught photography at tertiary level in Melbourne from 1978, and in 1984 he became a full time artist, photographer and designer. The winner of a number of photographic awards and grants, he exhibited his work widely from 1958 onwards. Strizic’s work is represented in the Australian National Gallery and several state galleries. He settled in Richmond, subsequently moving with his wife Sue to Surrey Hills, Melbourne, and finally to Wallan in country Victoria, living there until his death in 2012.
Strizic was born in 1928 in Berlin, where his father Zdenko Von Strizic (1902-1990) was studying and practising architecture (later becoming a Professor of Architecture). In 1934, in reaction to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, the family fled to Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia). There Strizic began to study physics and geology.
At the end of WW2 Strizic fled to Austria as a refugee following the liberation of Yugoslavia to escape the Communist regime. As there was a five-year waiting period to emigrate to the United States, he decided to go instead to Australia and departed Naples on the converted Australian Navy seaplane carrier Hellenic Prince, arriving in Melbourne in April 1950. There his good spoken English soon gained him a position as a clerk with the Victorian Railways Reclamation Department, and he resumed his studies in physics part-time at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. In 1952 he married Hungarian-born Sue. Strizic bought his first camera, a Dianette, and began to photograph his environment, developing a love of strong light which he found abundant under the clear skies of his adopted city. He enjoyed contre-jour (shooting into the sun) and low afternoon side-lighting effects for their high-contrast graphic silhouettes in black and white prints, and that became his signature style for his historically and culturally significant photographs of post-war Melbourne. His abandonment of physics in 1957 for a career in photography was encouraged by his father (who visited Melbourne in 1957 as guest professor at the School of Architecture Melbourne University) and through his friendship with David Saunders (who had stayed with Strizic’s parents in Yugoslavia in 1952.1 Saunders, a Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Melbourne who was then acting Assistant Director at the National Gallery of Victoria, provided increasingly frequent photography commissions. In 1957 Saunders introduced him to Leonard French, an artist and the Gallery’s Exhibitions Officer, who asked him to document exhibitions, including the 1959 retrospective of cabinet maker Schulim Krimper’s furniture.
Postwar industrialisation in Australia then led to work for BHP and Humes Limited and McPhersons, photographing the plants, manufacturing, products and workers for annual reports and advertising, while the concurrent housing boom provided further opportunities. Again through Saunders, in 1958 Strizic met modernist Robin Boyd of architectural firm Grounds, Romberg and Boyd, who became a major client. Boyd controversially criticised Australian suburban culture in his book The Australian Ugliness of 19602, and likewise Strizic’s photography began to illustrate Australians’ disdain for their architectural heritage and their scant regard for the visual aesthetics of their urban environment amidst the destruction of magnificent Gold Rush era buildings and verandahs and their replacement by high-rise modernist office-blocks. His work was widely published in architectural books and journals but also illustrated social commentary during this period of a national identity crisis with frequent contributions of his photo-essays to Walkabout, Australia Today and other travel magazines. In 1960 Strizic joined David Saunders to produce Melbourne: A Portrait, stating 'Its central thought is that while men make cities, the cities also affect the men’.3
Having become the first photographer to exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968, Strizic moved more emphatically into fine art, finding a market for large scale mural installations amongst corporate clients. He began combining, enlarging, cropping and transforming elements from his black and white negatives through montage, then colourising and posterising the monochrome images in the manner associated with Pop Art. Symbols of urban ugliness such as power poles and billboards were his subject matter and critical target in often apocalyptic imagery intended to provoke a social consciousness. Strizic was an early adopter of digital imaging for the construction of such works (he discussed these processes in an address to “Still Photography?”, International Symposium in Melbourne, 1994.
Strizic lectured in photography at a number of tertiary education institutions including Preston (Phillip) Institute of Technology (1975-1977); Melbourne College of Advanced Education (Lecturer in Charge of Photography 1977-1982) and the Victorian College of the Arts (part-time lecturer in Photography 1982-1984).
1. 'Professor’s wife from Yugoslavia’, The Age, May 15 1957
2. Boyd, Robin 1960, The Australian ugliness, F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne
3. joint statement by the authors of Strizic, Mark & Saunders, David 1960, Melbourne : a portrait, Georgian House, Melbourne p.1
Writers:
James McArdle
fishel
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 19 April 1928
- Summary
- Mark Strizic is one of the remarkable generation of photographers who migrated to Australia in the years after World War II.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Dec-12
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.8936689 Longitude151.1656456 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stanmore, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1928
- Summary
- Bevan was a typographer who established a graphic arts business Dalley Typesetting P/L, later known as Paul Dalley Apex P/L. He introduced computerised transfer of images from film to lithographic plates for 4-colour printing and was involved in the abandonment of hot-type for computerised typesetting. His firm, then known as Adtype, was acquired by Harland and Hyde in 1993.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kensington, London, England, UK
- Biography
- Born and trained in London, the daughter of expatriate Australian artists, painter Evelyn Chapman and composer Sir George Thalben-Ball, Pamela Thalben-Ball worked as a landscape and portrait painter in Australia from the 1960s onwards, initially as a visitor but eventually based in the Sydney suburb of Avalon.
Writers:
Eric Riddler
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1927
- Summary
- London-born and trained daughter of expatriate Australians, worked as a landscape and portrait painter in late twentieth century Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2012
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-25 Longitude133 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1927
- Summary
- Walford was an interior designer and a founder member of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia. His design practice (est.1957) specialised in a period-based style, often mixing European furniture and furnishings with Australian work. Design commissions included the first iteration of Elizabeth Bay House, Kirribilli House (Whitlam era), Pruniers restaurant and work for socially prominent families.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 27 July 1927
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Feb-12
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1926
- Summary
- Davis was a puppet designer and maker with fashion design training from St Martins School of Art, London. She began work in puppets for the BBC. Touring Australia in 1956 with Peter Scriven's Marionette Theatre of Australia, she stayed on in Sydney. She later worked in puppetry in TV. Her most celebrated puppet was Amanda the Cat. She retired in 1991. Her puppets have been placed in Australian collections.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1926
- Summary
- Pollack began his career as a dress designer by working as a tailor with a shop in Elizabeth Bay Road, Kings Cross. He later began a fashion design business called "Shapely Creations". His designs were sold through David Jones Department Store, Sydney and other outlets
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1926
- Summary
- Tasker was a sailor, ship-chandler, sailmaker and boat designer beginning in skiffs, later customising a 40 Square Metre class yacht sailing as "Siska" for ocean racing. In his later years, he created the Australian Sailing Museum, Mandurah, WA (2008-2012)
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1924
- Summary
- Harrison was an engineer with an active interest in design and competitive rowing. He formed a partnership with Ted Curtain to design and develop a rowing machine with ergometric features. He later became involved in boat design introducing hull improvements, improved winches for sailboats and other mechanical devices. He retired from teaching in the 1980s but continued his consultancies.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born in Brisbane, Qld, on 9 December 1922; studied art Brisbane Technical College 1938. After five years in the army he worked as a cartoonist and artist while continuing his studies at ESTC (1948-51); then worked as painter in Brisbane apart from visits to England and Italy in 1957 and 1958. Won an Italian Government Scholarship to Italy, and in 1958 won the Women’s Weekly Portrait Prize. Won many prizes including Richards, Sulman and Melrose. Member CAS, Qld, and of Half Dozen Group of Artists, Brisbane, Qld.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 9 December 1922
- Summary
- Brisbane based painter and cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Oct-12
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude52.65233935 Longitude-2.64356407 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Shropshire, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1921
- Summary
- Dearnley was a small boat builder who was part of a team of five designers who created the Heron sailing dinghy. He was at one time the President of the National Heron Sailing Association. In addition to his design work, he was also a book editor and founder of the Ulysses Motorcycle Club.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 19 February 1921
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27-Jun-12
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude37.7790262 Longitude-122.419906 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- San Francisco, CA, USA
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in San Francisco (USA), a fifth-generation Australian who came to Sydney as a young child with her parents. She went to school at Ascham in Sydney and at Westonbirt, England. Her mother, Ailsa Lee Brown , was an artist, and Mitty also studied art: at East Sydney Technical College under Frank Medworth and William Dobell in 1944-46. While still a student, she took up residence at Merioola in Woollahra, a boarding house run by Chica Lowe who actively sought tenants with an interest in all fields of artistic expression. In 1944 Mitty Lee Brown was runner-up to Anne Wienholt , another Merioola resident, for the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship. In 1945 three pages of Present Day Art in Australia were devoted to her work; the paintings reproduced included a self-portrait, Sulky Girl .
Mitty Lee Brown left Australia with Wienholt in 1945, travelled extensively and did not return to Sydney until 1962, then but briefly. This inveterate traveller has lived in Paris and near Bordeaux in France, in Rome and, briefly, in Tokyo. She has built a house in Bali near Donald Friend’s longtime residence, lived on a houseboat in Kashmir, India, and renovated a house on the Greek Island of Cos. She has also undertaken two overland journeys from Europe to Australia via Turkey, Afghanistan and India. From 1980 until her death in June 2012, as Mrs Risi, she lived and worked near Trincomalee, Sri Lanka, but maintained regular visits to Australia.
Writers:
Simmons, Paul
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- Lee Brown a painter and printmaker, doyenne of the Charm School. Born in San Francisco was runner up in NSW Travelling Art Scholarship, 1944. Left Australia in 1945 to travel extensively around the world. She spent her final years in Sri Lanka.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Jun-12
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and comic book artist, was born in Glebe, Sydney (acc. Shiell ed). He always wanted to draw cartoons and attended Saturday morning art lessons as a boy at Oswald Brock 's studio in Sydney’s Victoria Arcade. He left high school during the Depression and found work as a junior poster artist with Hackett Offset Printing, meanwhile studying commercial art at night at East Sydney Technical College. He stayed at Hackett’s for six months, then became a designer and illustrator for a furniture manufacturer, Corkhill & Lang (later Frazer’s Furniture). He moved to Grace Brothers as furniture artist and salesman, but this was short-lived; he spent 1941-45 in the AIF and RAAF.
After the war Wedd decided to complete his Commercial Art course under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme. He created his first strip, Sword and Sabre , during the 1946 Christmas break. It was sold to Syd Nicholls’s publishing company and appeared as three monthly episodes in Middy Malone magazine. Wedd produced eight more strips for the magazine, all like Sword and Sabre about the French Foreign Legion. Nicholls, who was both nationalist and anti-war, encouraged him to try an Australian story, resulting in Captain Justice , the bushranger who righted wrongs, and a lifelong passion for Australian history. The strip first appeared in a Middy Malone book, was upgraded to a Fatty Finn comic, and when Nicholls was forced to abandon publishing after the 1950 Coal Strike, Wedd managed to get a contract with New Century Press for a series of 'Captain Justice’ books with the hero now from the American Wild West. 23 comic books were isssued in this series.
Meanwhile, Wedd produced one-off comic books, Kirk Raven and Tod Traill – the latter an American Western – for Elmsdale Publications. He created strips for Stamp News (on the history of the stamp) and for Dr T.S. Hepworth’s Australian Children’s Newspaper (which lasted for 16 years) and designed and illustrated all eight ABC Argonauts annuals. In 1954 he created The Scorpion for Elmsdale. It became a bestseller with sales of up to 100,000 per issue, he claimed, despite being banned in Queensland. Calvert Publishing decided to re-issue the Captain Justice books, but they had to be largely re-drawn to satisfy 1950s censorship rules and regulations, e.g. the hero’s face could not be entirely hidden, no flashes could issue from guns, no character could carry an offensive weapon in the hand, and no-one was allowed to be killed (the code did not apply to rival American strips, of course). He also wrote and illustrated eight books for Calvert about a war-time American, Kent Blake of the Secret Service .
Aching to do 'something really Australian’ (Wedd in Rae, 91), Wedd sold to the Women’s Mirror a serial strip called Children of Fortune set in the Macquarie period. Its success led to other commissions from the magazine, part of the Bulletin stable. At the same time he was producing a local version of Chuckler’s Weekly for Telegraph Newspapers. When local comics 'again took a nose dive’ in the early 1960s, Wedd found a new part-time career discussing his growing collection of Australiana and other historic topics as a TV guest on various Channel 9 programs. In 1965 he drew about 60 'Dollar Bill’ strips for the Decimal Currency Board. In 1966 he joined Artansa Park Studios and helped design a Lone Ranger animation feature for TV. This was followed by Rocket Robin Hood (also 1966). In 1968 he worked with Eric Porter Studios designing a TV series about his old Chuckler’s Weekly characters, leading to further work in the 1970s.
Wedd was in great demand for the Cook Bicentenary, creating historic strips, illustrations and cards for everything from TV series to Minties and washing powder in 1969-70 (Wedd in Rae, 92-93). He finally cracked the Sunday comics in 1974 when the Sunday Mirror accepted his Ned Kelly strip. It ran for 146 issues, until July 1977, and was published in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. Bold Ben Hall followed. A longtime member and vice-president of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club, Wedd lives at Williamstown, NSW (Lindesay 1994). He is married and has a family. In 1993 he was awarded an Order of Australia for his services as author, illustrator and historian. He won Stanley Awards in 1987 and 1989.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
stokel
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 5 January 1921
- Summary
- Wedd was a Sydney cartoonist, designer and comic book artist who worked on the nation's earliest animated film "Marco Polo vs the Red Dragon". He also executed covers for pulp fiction, drew trading cards and other emphemera. His obituary cites the establishment of his "Monarch Historical Museum", Dee Why (1960). Early in his career, he also designed selected items of furniture for Corkhill & Lang and Grace Bros., Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-39.9324904 Longitude175.0519306 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wanganui, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1920
- Summary
- Bethwaite was a aircraft pilot who initially designed gliders, then designed sailing dinghies such as the Northbridge Junior and later the 4.5 metre Northbridge Senior. After founding a company Starboard Products, later Bethwaite Design, he developed the Laser 2 (two crew Laser) and the Taser. Their final boat design developed by his son Julian was the 49er FX, a new Olympic sailing class.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-43.53 Longitude172.620278 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date2012-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Christchurch, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, cartoonist and art teacher, was born in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 13 November 1904, daughter of Arnold Wall (who wrote articles that were published in Lone Hand 1907-8) and E.K.M. Curnow. After initial art studies at Christchurch, Edith studied in Rome and London (Westminster Polytechnic). In 1933 she married Oscar A. Bayne, an architect; they had one daughter, Cosima. Wall came to Sydney in 1939 when her husband was appointed director of the Commonwealth Experimental Building Station; later the family lived in Balwyn, Melbourne.
Wall regularly exhibited watercolours and drawings with Sydney’s Society of Artists, the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS), the Contemporary Art Society (Vic.) and elsewhere. Strawberry Ices (two very fat women in fox stoles), shown with the Society of Artists in 1943, was illustrated in their catalogue; Woman with Cinerarias (a nasty Sydney socialite) was included in 1945. Alan McCulloch praised her satiric drawings in 'Contemporary Art Displayed’, Herald (Melbourne) 11 May 1955, 21.
Between 1940 and 1950 Wall worked primarily as a cartoonist, producing trenchant, witty and occasionally bleak cartoons for the Ure Smith publications Australia National Journal and its companion annual Australia Weekend Book . The fifth (1946) volume of the latter published a portfolio of her cartoons, all signed with the gender-neutral signature 'Wall’. Many were acid comments on wartime society, women and businessmen, but it was her military cartoons in particular that encouraged the belief that 'Wall’ was a man. The joke frequently lay in the incongruity of soldiers and situation. Hence a tough digger deep in the New Guinea jungle in 1942 reads a romantic novel to two even beefier mates ('Now, we’d just got to the part where Gervaise, suspecting Lady Irma’s infidelity, slips from the conservatory’), or else four hideous Hun officers worry in January 1945, 'Mein vriends, if things go on like this ve vill all become pure ornaments’. The artist’s gender was revealed in Australia National Journal in June 1945 with the publication of a photograph of her by Olive Cotton .
Wall’s 12 joke cartoons in Australia Week-end Book 1 (1942) include the ludicrous “Playtogs?” and [2 effeminate male dancers] “Well, frankly, I think that bow on top makes your costume look slightly silly” . She was the most prolific cartoonist in the book. Vol.2 (1943) contained 15 cartoons by Wall, equal to (but reproduced larger than) those by “Wiz” .They include: “Doctor’s sorry he can’t come; he says would you mind if the local man had a look at you?” (i.e. witch doctor), “I’m tired of this war – aren’t you?” , “I love the [Sydney] harbour trip – must be my seafaring blood coming out” , and “Now, we’d just got to the part where Gervaise, suspecting Lady Irma’s infidelity, slips from the conservatory” . Vol.3 (1944) has 17 Wall examples, again the same number as “Wiz”. They include The Drawing Lesson , cheese /furniture polish cartoons and “George is with the Eighth Army…” Vol.4 (1945) had 10 cartoons (just less than Wiz). Vol.5 included a 'Portfolio of Wall’s Drawings’, pp.161-76 (Wiz got a portfolio too).
In 1956-70 Wall taught art, worked as an illustrator and publicist and designed an Australian exhibition display for Britain. She was a committee member of the NSW Contemporary Art Society in 1944-50 (and exhibited with it 11 times up to 1959: see Paula Furby, PhD pp.157-58) and of the Melbourne CAS in 1960-64. She held a solo exhibition in 1954 (see McCulloch, 'Satirical Intentions’, Herald 4 August 1954, 16), won the VAS drawing prize in 1956 and the Minnie Crouch prize at Bendigo Art Gallery in 1971 – the year she had a solo exhibition of her small-scale satirical works at Melbourne’s Leveson Street Gallery. Her last solo show, held at Melbourne in 1996, apparently consisted mainly of watercolour landscape paintings. She told JK in 1994 that she did few satiric works because people only bought landscapes.
Wall’s other interests were 'history, languages, cooking’, she wrote in 1982, adding:
I started drawing at the age of two, and so my ideals had to be invented later. I am a descriptive, not abstract, artist; I am continually hunting the adjustments between colour and space, shadow and substance, finite form and infinite ambience. Colour and line are the weapons I use to attack reality. My main object is to paint a picture that has not been seen before. This is difficult as it necessitates a many-fronted approach.
Wall also drew cartoons for Man .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 13 November 1904
- Summary
- Mid 20th century New Zealand-born, Sydney and Melbourne-based painter, printmaker, cartoonist and art teacher.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Apr-12
- Age at death
- 108
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1956-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1956
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Jun-11
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude52.0799838 Longitude4.3113461 Start Date1954-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- The Hague, Netherlands
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 18 August 1954
- Summary
- John Barbour was an Australian Experimental Art Foundation council member from 1996-98, its council chairman from 1997-98. He was a long-time lecturer at the South Australian School of Art. First exhibiting in the 1980s, John Barbour's contemporary art has since shown in Stockholm, London, Tokyo, Sao Paulo and Auckland. His work is represented in the Art Gallery of South Australia
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Apr-11
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1946-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1946
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude52.2434979 Longitude5.6343227 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Holland, Netherlands
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1934
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1933
- Summary
- Humble began her training at the East Sydney Technical College under Phyllis Shillito and others. She initially studied industrial design but did not pursue it. She took a number of jobs, at one time working at the Martin Boyd Pottery. She completed her diploma in 1959. Her first solo show was held in 1972 and she later exhibited with the Eva Breuer Gallery, Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude52 Longitude20 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Poland
- Biography
- In 1950 Polish Holocaust survivor Sabina Wolanski, alongside husband Zdenek (Dennis), arrived in Sydney as an assisted immigrant. The couple had been living in Paris for two years, where Zdenek was a cutter in a shirt factory. Sabina recalls, “One day in Paris I saw a man promoting a tie on the street. I was intrigued and thought it was a clever idea for a business. I bought this strange looking product and packed it when we came to Australia. It was a clip-on tie, a real novelty, and we could see its potential. Zdenek refined and completely changed its structure and shape.” Using this experience, Zdenek gained employment working in a manufacturing company in York Street. The couple introduced the clip-on tie to David Jones and had great success under the Stardust name. It was in a shiny fabric dotted with tiny points that resembled stars. This tie was then patented and they became the Lido Tie Manufacturing Company. By 1956 the couple were travelling to Como, Italy, to buy and import custom-designed and hand-woven fabrics for their ties, bow ties and cravats.
Writers:
Jenni Hagedorn
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1930
- Summary
- Designer and Director of Lido Tie Manufacturing Company
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-23.2759057 Longitude129.3881877 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kintore, NT, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-29.7379146 Longitude151.7356326 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glen Innes, Australia
- Biography
- Thomas Fletcher Gillies (1928-2011)
The interior decorator Thomas Gillies was a contemporary of such notable Sydney designers and decorators as Marion Hall Best, Deric Deane, Meryl du Boulay and Florence Broadhurst. While Tom (as he was more commonly known) valued privacy, he moved effortlessly amongst his clientele where he became known for his ability to mix and match old and new furnishings to provide ease as well as style. “I don’t like the impossible,” he said in a recorded 2010 interview, “where you don’t know where to sit down and be comfortable.”
Tom Gillies was born in Glen Innes, NSW. The district is known for livestock and his father, Bruce Gillies, was a successful stock and station agent and his mother Edna attended Teachers College. Mrs Gillies’s teacher training proved crucial to the family after Bruce Gillies’s death in 1941.
Gillies was educated in Glen Innes and had no early design training or exposure to the arts. In 1945, he was placed in a clerical position into the local Commonwealth Bank. Three years later, he asked for a transfer to a Sydney branch. He mentioned a Sydney placement, he said, because he had visited the city once with his father.
Soon restless with clerking, he took up an opportunity in the furnishings department of McDowell’s department store at King and George Streets. Shortly afterward, he met the interior decorator and architect Deric (Frederick) Deane who ran a well-known antique shop in Rowe Street and later, an interior decorating studio known as Deane and Hall in the Trust Building, King and Castlereagh Streets. Deric Deane and his partner Don Hall introduced him to the profession of interior decoration.
Deric Deane was Sydney’s pre-imminent interior decorator as well as a registered architect and Deane and Hall had an impressive clientele including such figures as Sir Alfred Davidson, the head of the Bank of NSW and Mr and Mrs Robert Brash, the chairman of the Sydney Stock Exchange. After a year with Deric Deane, Gillies decided that he needed to do a design course at the East Sydney Technical College but Deane and his associates tried to discourage it, telling him it was a waste of time. But he persisted and took courses with Phyllis Shillito, the noted colourist, who trained him in colour mixing. Her theories, he said, allowed him to mix any colour a client wanted, even matching colours that had been on the walls for thirty years.
In the 1950s, Deric Deane folded the practice in the city and Deane and Gillies established a new practice in Edgecliff advertised under the name “Thomas Gillies”. The practice was successful enough to earn attract Taubmans paints who featured Thomas Gillies interiors in a series of colour advertisements. Deane died in 1960 and Gillies then began to practice independently from a new Edgecliff shop, later moving to Bay Street, Double Bay and other locations in the eastern suburbs.
Many of Gillies’s early clients were well-known NSW families who continued to rely on Thomas Gillies through two generations. He maintained that he had done hundreds of country houses. While reluctant to identify clientele, he noted professional relationships with Lady Pagan [Sir Jock and Lady Marjorie Pagan], Dame Helen Blaxland, and provided designs for “The Lodge”, Canberra for Hon. Malcolm and Tammy Fraser. He developed an interior design scheme for Government House, Parramatta for the National Trust of Australia (NSW) and “Clydebank” in The Rocks for Caroline Simpson.
As an interior designer, Gillies was a soothing but shrewd practitioner. “If you’ve got ideas and you want your client to have them, quite often you’ve got to be very diplomatic how you present them,” he said in a recent interview. “If they want a black and white and yellow room, you might do a yellow room with black and white. But they think they’ve got a black and white and yellow room. It was a good way to put things together.” But at the same time, he respected the client’s taste. “You can’t just thrust your personality onto them; you’ve got to step back. Your client is the most important person.”
Unlike contemporary interior designers, Gillies did no drawings or colour boards at all. He simply took three metre samples of textiles to the client and a hatful of ideas and presented his thoughts about decor in their living room. He also resisted floor plans, insisting that furniture should always be moved about, considering that fixed schemes for rooms were anathema, arguing that rooms should change for the seasons.
Gillies continued to practice in Sydney with an interlude in Burley Heads, Queensland in the 1970s when he explored flower painting with exhibitions at the Macquarie Galleries in Canberra, Victor Mace, Brisbane and the Painters Gallery, Burton Street. Then after five years in the tropics, he returned to interior decoration to re-launch his career in Double Bay.
He considered his interior decoration for the 19th century Government House in Darwin to be one of his most exciting commissions. The house’s gabled rooms open onto the cane furniture of a screened verandah that circles the white-painted building. “I gave them simple things,” he said. “So I thought, it’s the tropics, so I gave them big simple sofas covered in printed linens, simple striped curtains and nice clear colours.”
In his later years, he kept up with his friends and acquaintances, worked with the late Caroline Simpson, one of his oldest and closest friends, on her house and museum, “Clydebank” in The Rocks, Sydney and auctioned his collection in 2008 through Sotheby’s as “The connoisseur’s spring collection: including the private collection of Colin Lennox and Tom Gillies, John Stephens and the late John Klinger.” He maintained his creativity by executing tapestry work to his own designs. His career is now commemorated with the annual Thomas Gillies Scholarship for Interior Design and Decoration students at Design Centre, Enmore sponsored by Radford Furnishings.
Michael Bogle with Annalisa Capurro who interviewed Thomas Gillies in December 2010. Thanks also to interior decorator Malcolm Forbes for valuable information regarding the career of Deric Deane.
[Prepared as an obituary, published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 13 March 2012]
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1 January 1928
- Summary
- Gillies was an interior designer/decorator who apprenticed with the architect and interior designer Frederick Deane's practice in Sydney known as Deane and Hall (Don). In the 1950s, Gillies and Deane combined their practice in Edgecliff, a Sydney suburb as "Thomas Gillies". Gillies continued the practice under his name as various locations. In the 1970s, he moved to Burleigh Heads, Qld, then back to Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-11
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1926
- Summary
- Sahm was a production potter working with Terra Ceramics, Sydney and Gutenhalde Ceramics, Stuttgart, Germany. He established a pottery in Mosman in 1958 and taught at the National Art School. He continued working in ceramics and teaching until his retirement in 1984.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-11
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1926
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Jan-11
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude51.6889387 Longitude5.303116 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- s'Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 11 December 1925
- Summary
- Havekes appears to be a self-taught artist. He was active in ceramics, painting, sculpture, sculpture and tapestry. He later studied ceramics at East Sydney Technical College and worked with architects such as Peddle, Thorp and Walker and Kahn, Finch on major projects. Furniture by Havekes is also known. See Andrew Shapiro SH209 20/21C Art and Design 29 March 2022.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Oct-11
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-37.8902423 Longitude145.067469 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Murrumbeena, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- David Boyd is a figurative painter, ceramic sculptor and potter. David Boyd’s art stems from a long family tradition of artistic talent.
He was the fourth child of the potters Merric and Doris Boyd, and with his talented siblings – Arthur, Guy, Lucy and Mary – he spent his childhood at the family farm, Open Country in Murrumbeena, Victoria. Strong beliefs in religion and ethics shaped the Boyd family, and as with his brothers David refused to fight in World War II. He even underwent hunger strikes in order to avoid bearing arms.
After the War, David and his brother Guy moved to Sydney where they established Martin Boyd Pottery, producing high quality ceramics. In 1949 he married Hermia Lloyd Jones, a sculpture student at East Sydney Technical College. Their partnership in art and life was to last until her death in 2000. They could not however make a profit from their join pottery ventures until they moved to London in 1951. The media called them 'a golden couple’, and they attracted significant financial success, but in 1954 they returned to Australia, this time to Melbourne. Here the quality of their work combined with news of their London success, led to a significant local reputation, which was reflected in the sale of their combined work.
David Boyd began his career as a painter in 1957 with a series of symbolic paintings on Australian explorers. He became one of the seven members of Bernard Smith’s Antipodean group of figurative artists, joining his elder borther Arthur Boyd, Sidney Nolan, John Brack, Robert Dickerson, John Perceval and Clifton Pugh. His Truganini series was exhibited in Melbourne in 1959 but then the family departed once more for London.
David Boyd painted several major series of works, including his powerful Trial series, Tasmanian Aborigines, Wanderer and Exiles series. Picturing innocence and evil, destruction and creation, his works convey mythical and universal themes. Having won significant international recognition, David Boyd was invited by the Commonwealth Institute of Art, London, to hold a retrospective of paintings at their Art Gallery in 1969.
In 1971, after many years of British success, the Boyd family returned to Australia, settling this time in a large house in Silver Street, St Peters in inner Sydney. Noisy aeroplanes, represented by cockatoos, became the subject of some of his later paintings. He stopped painting in 2005, after breaking a hip, but continued to make etchings in collaboration with James Whitington. In 2009 he moved to Braidwood, where he was cared for by his daughter Lucinda.
David Boyd is represented in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra; all State and many regional galleries; the Mertz collection, USA; the Power Collection, Sydney; and many major international galleries and private collections in Australia and overseas.
He died on Thursday 10th November 2011 at Sydney, surrounded by three generations of his family, after a short illness. He was eighty-seven years old.
Writers:
Eva Breuer Art Dealer
Joanna Mendelssohn
zauthor
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 23 August 1924
- Summary
- Brother of Guy, Lucy and Arthur Boyd, David Boyd found acclaim as a potter in the 1950s and ’60s. He began his career as a painter in 1957 with a series of symbolic paintings on Australian explorers. David Boyd died on 10th November 2011 at Sydney, NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Nov-11
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-28.79363905 Longitude153.2670868 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lismore, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born on 22 June 1923 in Lismore, NSW, eldest of the three children of Joseph Olley and Grace, née Temperley. Shortly after her birth the family moved to Tully in Queensland, then to Murwillumbah (NSW) before finally settling in Brisbane. Margaret was educated at Somerville House. She was taught art by Caroline Barker , an enthusiastic teacher quick to recognise ability.
She spent a year at Brisbane Central Technical College, then studied at East Sydney Tech. under Dorothy Thornhill , Jean Bellette , Lyndon Dadswell , Douglas Dundas , Herbert Badham and Frank Medworth , graduating in 1945 with first-class honours. In 1943 she painted sets for John Kay of the Mercury Theatre Group; in 1947 she designed and executed the sets for Sam Hughes’s production of J.E. Flecker’s Hassan ; in 1948 she worked with Sidney Nolan on Hughes’s production of Cocteau’s Orphée and Shakespeare’s Pericles . She began showing her paintings in group exhibitions in 1944 – at the Royal Queensland Art Society Exhibition in Brisbane and the Under Thirties Group in Sydney. By 1945 she was exhibiting with the Contemporary Art Society in Sydney. In 1948 she held her first solo exhibitions at the Macquarie Galleries, Sydney and the Morton Galleries, Brisbane, where she again exhibited in 1950. In 1947 she won the Mosman Art Prize with New England Landscape , one of many landscapes she executed at this time. She and Donald Friend were among the first of many artists to paint in the Hill End area, near Bathurst.
In 1949 Olley and Mitty Lee Brown travelled to London. Olley settled in Paris and attended classes at La Grande Chaumiére. She became interested in the work of artists such as Matisse and Bonnard, seen in commercial galleries. On weekends she and fellow Australians David Strachan and Moya Dyring made painting expeditions, which she continued after moving to a farmhouse at Cassis, near Marseilles. Her many drawings and watercolours of Paris and French coastal villages have a quick vitality and show an increased awareness of light.
Having learnt the technique from Sir Francis Rose (a fellow excursionist), her first overseas exhibition – in 1952 at the Galerie Paul Morihien, Palais Royal – was of monotypes. It was favourably reviewed in three Paris journals, all of which commented on her sense of poetry. Olley sent out bundles of drawings to Australia for exhibition at the Marodian Gallery, Brisbane, and the Macquarie Galleries. In 1952, with Strachan, she joined David Rose in Lisbon and helped him with a commission for wallpaper designs. Then she worked in London with Jocelyn Rickards and Loudon Sainthill on designs for Michael Benthall’s proposed film, The Tempest .
In 1953 Olley returned to Brisbane. Robert Haines, Director of the Queensland Art Gallery, commissioned her to paint a mural of the Place de la Concorde for the opening of the important 'French Art Today’ exhibition at the gallery. It was followed by mural commissions for the Grosvenor and Lennon’s Hotels in Brisbane and, in 1955, for the Leagues Club, Phillip Street, Sydney.
In 1954 Olley and Friend travelled to Magnetic Island, prior to visiting Papua New Guinea. Work from these trips was shown in a solo exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in 1955. They revealed an increased interest in colour and, as Lloyd Rees was to comment, showed a Bonnard-like approach to tropical landscape. The still-lifes heralded her future direction as a still-life painter.
A warm personality, Margaret Olley’s capacity for friendship and her individual style of dress has endeared her to many artists. She has been a popular subject for portraits: by Margaret Cilento , Russell Drysdale and Donald Friend, as well as the renowned 1949 Archibald prize-winning portrait by William Dobell . All state and most regional galleries in Australia hold examples of her work.
Writers:
France, Christine
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 22 June 1923
- Summary
- After her first Australian solo painting exhibitions, Olley worked and exhibited in France in the 1950s. An endearing personality, Olley had many travelling and working friendships with other Australian artists. Olley died at her home in Paddington, Sydney, on 26th July 2011.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Jul-11
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-33.928992 Longitude18.417396 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cape Town, South Africa
- Biography
- Joy de Gruchy made a major contribution in the field of interior design, and the promotion of good design, art and craft – as an interior designer, business and gallery owner, and arts bureaucrat. Craftsman’s Market, Joy’s shop, became an iconic Brisbane business important to Brisbane’s cultural development as it grew from country town to cosmopolitan city. Joy believed strongly that modern interiors benefited from the interest and warmth that came from the injection of art works and craft.Born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1922, Joy studied economics and fine arts for her Bachelor of Arts at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She married architect, Graham de Gruchy. While working as an economist, Joy collaborated with Graham on domestic interiors for his clients. They were madly keen on the design ideas for furniture and interiors coming out of Europe, Scandinavia and the U.S. in the 1950s, heralding a new era of modern design. In 1960, with 3 young children, Joy and Graham moved to London. While there, they saw a slide show about Brisbane at Queensland House. They decided to emigrate, settling in Brisbane in 1962.Joy conceived the idea of a craft and design ‘studio’. She came across a ramshackle building at 57 Jephson Street, Toowong thinking this would ‘do’ until she found longer-term premises. Craftsman’s Market opened on 11 February 1963. Joy remained in business at this same location for the next 25 years.For two decades from the mid-1960s, Craftman’s Market and Joy’s interiors attracted interest from the interiors media, being regularly featured in magazines like Australian Home Journal, Belle, Home Beautiful, and Vogue Australia, Living and Interiors.Joy loved colour. Along with a few other Australian interior designers like Marion Hall Best in Sydney and Merlin Cunliffe in Melbourne, Joy was delighted by the bold colour and simplicity of Marimekko fabrics. Craftsman’s Market beat other states by a week when the 1966 Marimekko clothing range went on sale with a preview party on 10 August 1966. Vogue Australia captured this fashion event. Joy was rarely seen out of a Marimekko outfit for the next 30 years.Craftsman’s Market sold imported furniture from Scandinavia and local suppliers included Michael Hirst Furniture (Melbourne) and Saga Furniture (Sydney). Giftware included: Scandinavian glassware (Iittala, Kosta Boda, Holmegaard, Orrefors), ceramics (Arabia, Liekke, Hackman), kitchenware (Stelton, WMF, Spring), fabrics and textiles (Marimekko, Metsovaara, Tidstrand), jewellery (Hans Hansen) and clothing (Marimekko, Vuokko). Craft exhibitions included potters Carl McConnell and Hatton and Lucy Beck.Joy was actively involved with the community of architects, artists and designers. Her passion for interior design and her interest in the study of interior design led to accepting invitations to speak about interiors to the Queensland Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and to the public. In 1969, Joy and Graham de Gruchy co-sponsored the Darnell-de Gruchy Art Prize with the University of Queensland (and contributed funding until 1977). This was a significant contribution to stimulate modern art.In 1971, Joy was invited to become the first Queensland member of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (now DIA), remaining an active member for 22 years. In 1976, Belle magazine published a special national feature celebrating SIDA’s 25 years of design. Joy was one of the 39 featured Australian designers. In early 1973, Joy was appointed by the Whitlam Government as a member of the inaugural Crafts Board of the Australian Council for the Arts (later called the Australia Council). This was a stimulating time for the arts and Joy was delighted to contribute. Joy travelled often to Europe for ideas and product lines. Favourite stops were Conran’s Habitat, Milan and Copenhagen furniture fairs and the Danish Design Centre. The 70s was a world in which fibreglass and sophisticated furniture manufacturing techniques were leaping ahead. Joy imported Cado, Westofa, B&B Italia, Fritz Hansen, Artemide, Cassina. She secured top quality curtaining and upholstery fabrics from Sweden and Denmark. She imported Lyktan lighting and stocked the Louis Poulsen range. She imported stylish office equipment such as Danese and Styro. Joy’s business acquired the property adjacent to Craftsman’s Market in 1973. Joy added large showrooms connected by a walkway. The business now had 500 sq metres of display space for showing furniture and interiors, and as gallery space.By the mid-80s import rights changed to large Australian distributors like Artes. Joy continued to retail through them. She supplemented her business with local suppliers like Roy Catt furniture and retailing innovative Verisol window treatments.The De Gruchy Gallery in the 1970s and 80s showcased the work of many artists and craftsmen, including: batiks by Edit Richards, Peg Mecham pots, Aase Pryor jewellery and pots, Peter Collingwood and Tadek Beutlich (UK), Pru Medlin weavings, Milton Moon pottery, Sam Herman glass, the weaving art of Hawaii, Liz Nettleton weavings, Jack Laird ceramics and pots, watercolours by celebrated NZ artist Jane Evans, Pietro Agnoletto’s Art of the Sepik River, and Croneen oriental rugs. Belle magazine’s June 1980 issue featured a story on ‘top’ galleries in Australia, with the De Gruchy Gallery profiled.After 25 years in business, Joy closed the business in April 1988.Over the years, Joy completed many projects including homes for clients, particularly those designed by architects, many offices and small businesses such as professional consulting rooms, a few restaurants including the Nautilus Restaurant in Port Douglas, and the Castaways resort on the Sunshine Coast.Her friends (and clients) included some wonderful Queenslanders including: Karl and Gertrude Langer; Brian and Marjorie Johnstone; Pam and Patrick Wilson; John and Sue Railton; Graham and Margaret McNamara; Bob and Pfeff Colin; Nancy and Peter Underhill; Zelman and Anna Cowen; Betty and Roy Churcher; Syd and Maureen Schubert; Quentin and Michael Bryce; Joan Whalley; Denis and Elysia Croneen, and many more whose names are less well known.Joy left a lasting legacy among a generation of Brisbane homeowners, architects and business people who benefited from having access to a shop and showroom like Craftsman’s Market and the De Gruchy Gallery.
Writers:
rayned
Date written:
2021
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- De Gruchy established a design studio "Craftsman's Market", Toowong, QLD in 1962 offering design goods such as Marimekko & Danish-inspired furniture. Her husband, Graham de Gruchy also designed furniture for the shop. In the 1970s, she began supplying interior design services, later serving on the Crafts Board of the Australia Council. She and her husband established the Darnell-de Gruchy Art Prize, University of Queensland.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude54.09809555 Longitude-3.257316751 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Walney, Cumbria, England
- Biography
- Joy Warren, ceramicist and art historian, was born at Walney, Cumbria, England in 1921. Warren attended the Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney, the National Art School (NAS), Sydney, and the Camberwell School of Art, London, in 1949. After a study tour of Europe in 1951 she attended the Camberwell School of Art from 1952 to 1955 and then NAS in 1963. She completed a Bachelor of Arts with Honours at the University of Sydney in 1980 and attained a PHD at the University of Wollongong in 1994. Between 1982 and 1985 Warren toured the USA, Europe, China and Singapore. After working as an advertising executive from 1947 to 1959 in London and Sydney, she was a founding member of Ceramic Study Group in 1963 and the Craft Association of NSW (later called the Crafts Council of Australia) from 1964 to 1969. She was the founder, editor and producer of the 'Craft Australia’ journal from 1969 to 1975. Warren lectured in Art History and Theory at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, from 1979 to 1993 and at the Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, from 1980 to 1985.
Warren created poetic thrown ceramic vessels. The simplicity of the handmade shape, the tactility of the glaze and the understated tones were signatures of her work. Warren’s husband, the well-known artist Guy Warren, often painted on her ceramics, his figures in the landscape complementing the gentle character of the ceramics.
Warren was the recipient of an Australia Council Grant in 1942 and a Crafts Board Grant in 1979. She participated in two Paris residencies in 1994 and 2004. Warren has had numerous solo shows nationally and has been included in an exhibition with the Craft Council of New South Wales and an 'Australian Ceramics’ touring exhibition. Her work is represented in many major public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, and numerous private collections.
Writers:
downes
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- Ceramicist who founded the 'Craft Australia' journal in 1969, and was its editor and producer until 1975.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-29.7379146 Longitude151.7356326 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glen Innes, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Colin Madigan (1921–2011) was born in Glenn Innes, NSW and studied at the Sydney Technical High school, 1938-39, then at the Sydney Technical College from 1940, graduating with a Diploma of Architecture in 1950. He served in the Navy from 1941-46. From 1948 to 1950, he worked with Jack Torzillo in the office of Ashton Tyler and Edwards, then worked with his architect father, FJ Madigan, at Inverell from 1950-1954. On return to Sydney in 1954, he joined the Edwards Madigan Torzillo practice with Maurice Edwards and Jack Torzillo. In 1966, they were joined by another partner, David Briggs and the practice became known as Edward Madigan Torzillo and Briggs until 1977, when the word ‘International’ was added. A Canberra office was opened in 1973. then completed the High Court in 1981, the National Gallery of Australia in 1982 and and several further civic projects during the 1980s. The practice won the NSW RAIA’s Sulman Medal in 1967 and 1971; the Blacket Award in 1968 and Canberra Medallions in 1982 and 1984. Madigan himself won the RAIA Gold Medal in 1981 and became an Officer in the Order of Australia in 1984. He left Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Briggs in 1990. After a merger, it is now known as HBO + EMTB.Sources—Taylor, Jennifer. 1990. Australian Architecture Since 1960. Canberra: Royal Australian Institute of Architects.—Emmanuel, Muriel. 1980 and later editions. Contemporary Architects. London: Macmillan.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 22 July 1921
- Summary
- Colin Madigan was a nationally notable Sydney architect from the mid 1950s until his retirement in 1990. He is best known as the design architect for two national monuments on Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra: the High Court of Australia (1981) and the National Gallery of Australia (1982). He was a principal of Edwards Madigan Torzillo and Briggs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Sep-11
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-31.7656468 Longitude150.8388618 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Murrurundi, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1917
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2011
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-33.9542619 Longitude151.1403655 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockdale, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Ceramicist, was born Joyce Halpin on 14th October 1915. Her mother, Lavinia Figtree, was an amateur landscape artist who had painted several townscapes of Wollongong. On her marriage to Claude Gittoes, they bought a house in Villiers St Rockdale, near to her parents’ home. In the late 1950s she began to take ceramics classes Kogarah Technical College where she was taught by Molly Douglas and Mrs Anderson. Her early work is best described as being in the Japanese tradition as encouraged by post World War II British taste. Gittoes began to exhibit her ceramics with artist groups in the St George region and then to enter art prizes. In 1962 she was awarded the grand prize at the Royal Easter Show. In 1965 the family moved to a house with a larger studio at Bardwell Park. She exhibited at Barry Stern Galleries as well as mixed exhibitions. Her art changed direction from about 1970 after her son, George Gittoes, became involved in Martin Sharp’s Yellow House collective. She befriended Jo Sharp, Martin’s mother, and was encouraged to make ceramic objects based on Magritte for some of the installations. The most significant of these were the objects made for Peter Kingston’s Stone Room which was a part of the Spring 1971 exhibition. It may well be that the technical challenges posed by this work encouraged her own art to move away from bowls, plates and vases towards creating objects. Another source of encouragement was the direction taken by her daughter, Pamela Griffith, whose etchings and paintings were beginning to include detailed studies of Australian flora and fauna. The mature work of Joyce Gittoes is best described as small ceramic sculptures of Australian native life decorated with dazzling glazes. Her favourite subjects were owls, and these are greatly prized by collectors. Her most significant piece of public work is the ceramic mural installation at the Berrima Correctional Centre in the Northern Territory.
Writers:
Mendelssohn, Joanna
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2023
- Born
- b. 14 October 1915
- Summary
- The mature work of Joyce Gittoes is best described as small ceramic sculptures of Australian native life. Her favourite subjects were owls, and these are greatly prized by collectors. Her most significant piece of public work is the ceramic mural installation at the Berrima Correctional Centre in the Northern Territory.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Dec-11
- Age at death
- 96
Details
Latitude51 Longitude9 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date2011-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1911
- Summary
- Herbst was a designer for Prestige (Fabrics) Limited, an illustrator and later principal lecturer at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in industrial design, graphics. In the 1950s, Herbst made three films on design: `Portraits in Fabric', (1950); `Language of Design', (1950); `Fabrics in Motion', (1951). In 1967, the course also included Wilby Rackham as lecturer and three tutors. Herbst retired in 1975.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-11
- Age at death
- 100
Details
Latitude-32.916667 Longitude151.75 Start Date1963-01-01 End Date2010-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1963
- Summary
- Shaw Hendry moved to Adelaide in 1990 and was a long-serving Technical Officer at the University of South Australia. Folling a 1990 residency at the Frans Masereel Centre in Kasterlee, Belgium, Hendry received several South Australian artist grants to develop various art projects. His work is represented in numerous public collections around the country, including the Art Gallery of South Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Apr-10
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-32.0117265 Longitude117.4483428 Start Date1957-01-01 End Date2010-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Quairading, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Meeykba Shane Pickett (b.1957) spent much of his youth at Quairading, a wheatbelt town in Western Australia. From a family of Nyoongar artists he describes his work as the beneficiary of the legacy from both his father’s Jdewat traditions and his mother’s Balladong ancestry. He graduated from the Claremont Art School in 1983, though he had begun exhibiting in 1976 when only nineteen. His national recognition came early with his selection for the finals of NATSIAA in 1984 and in 1986 receiving the award for Best Painting in a European Medium.
Pickett has exhibited in every Australian state and territory throughout his career. His work has been recognised in numerous art awards and exhibitions. He won the inaugural 2007 'Drawing Together Art Award’, has been chosen as a finalist in the 'Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award’ numerous times, including winning the People’s Choice award in 2009. He was selected by Brenda L. Croft for the 'National Indigenous Art Triennial ’07: Culture Warriors’ at the National Gallery of Australia (touring nationally and shown in Washington D.C. in 2009).
In 2003 Pickett’s works featured in the first comprehensive survey to trace the rich multiplicity of Nyoongar visual culture, 'South West Central: Indigenous Art from South Western Australia 1833-2002’, also curated by Brenda L. Croft. In 2008 he was a finalist in the 'Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards’ at the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the recipient of the People’s Choice award. In 2009 he was again selected to participate in the 'Western Australian Indigenous Art Awards’, the only artist selected to participate in both exhibitions.
Pickett began his career with high-keyed colour depictions of Nyoongar stories of Country in a figurative style. In the early 2000s he abandoned figuration in favour of gestural abstraction, while still remaining focused on land and a responsibility to teach successive generations the necessity of knowing and caring for Country. In later work he charts the seasons, light and the lay of the Nyoongar landscape and the weather patterns and stories. He produces highly personal, ethereal landscapes that reveal an intimate relationship to and understanding of land, law and Country. Through his work he emphasizes the need for knowledge of weather patterns and shares his respect for the six Nyoongar seasons. His works often tell a previously untold or concealed history of Nyoongar lands, underscoring the deep connections, pride and confidence that come from identity, family and knowledge.
Inhabiting the spiritual space between what is concealed and revealed, his paintings explore the Nyoongar season cycle and in so doing create complex visual analogues for the persistence and renaissance of Nyoongar cultural awareness throughout the south-west. As he has said, his works “bring a respect and awareness of Aboriginal culture imbued with the spirituality present in Nyoongar values.” (artist’s statement, Mossenson Gallery). Pickett describes his art as simultaneously portraying an inner peace and the harshness of an everyday Indigenous journey through a modern world. McLean (in Croft 2007, p150) acknowledges Pickett’s painting as a legacy of the “vibrant postcolonial Nyoongar school of landscape art” initiated in Western Australia in the 1950s and now known as the Carrolup tradition.
Pickett’s stature in the community was recognised in 2006 when the united Nyoongar elders selected him to contribute to the monumental group painting Ngallak Kaart Boadja for the Perth International Arts Festival 2007. His work is held in the collections of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the National Gallery of Australia, and the National Gallery of Victoria.
Writers:
Gary Dufour
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2009
- Born
- b. 1957
- Summary
- Nyoongar artist Meeykba Shane Picket (b.1957) has exhibited in every Australian state and territory. He won the inaugural 2007 'Drawing Together Art Award', has been chosen as a finalist in the 'Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award' numerous times, including winning the People's Choice award in 2009. He was selected by Brenda L. Croft for the 'National Indigenous Art Triennial '07: Culture Warriors' at the National Gallery of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Jan-10
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude-22.2527454 Longitude131.7978253 Start Date1955-01-01 End Date2010-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yuendumu, Northern Territory, Australia
- Biography
- Born in Yuendumu in the 1950s, Bertha Nakamarra Dickson later lived in the Hidden Valley town camp of Alice Springs. When she was living at Yuendumu, her aunt, Ruby Napurrurla, taught her painting. Bertha’s country was situated near Mission Creek and she painted Warna (Snake) and Yawakyi (Bloodberry) Dreamings, which belong to the Jupurrurla/Napurrurla and Jakamarra/Nakamarra skin groups. Together with her husband, Andrew Japaljarri Spencer , Bertha worked for HALT (Healthy Aboriginal Lifestyle Team) in 1989/90. HALT’s aims were to educate Aboriginal people about the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse, diseases related to unhealthy nutrition, lack of hygiene etc. During that time, they produced a series of paintings in the traditional Western Desert style but dealing with these contemporary issues. Bertha had close connections with the Warlpiri communities of Yuendumu, Lajamanu and Willowra. She started with the IAD Literacy Course in 1992, and sold her paintings through the Jukurrpa artists’ co-operative. Monica Nakamarra Doolan was her sister.
Bertha Nakamarra Dickson passed away in Alice Springs on 31st May 2010.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2010
- Born
- b. c.1955
- Summary
- A Warlpiri artist and a former member of HALT (Healthy Aboriginal Lifestyle Team), Dickson's work has explored contemporary social and health issues. She was a member of the Jukurrpa group in Alice Spring (NT).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 31-May-10
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude55.861111 Longitude-4.25 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2010-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glasgow, Scotland
- Biography
- When Alex Leckie was admitted to as a sculpture student at the Glasgow School of Art, it was on the basis of his talent, rather than any formal academic qualifications.
In 1955, rather than face British National Service, he emigrated to Australia, settling in Adelaide. He initially found work throwing terra cotta pots for Bennetts’Magill Pottery. When he inquired about furthering his studies at the South Australian School of Art, he discovered he was the most qualified potter in the state. He was subsequently employed to teach both sculpture and ceramics. In 1962 he was arrested for swimming naked in the River Torrens and dismissed from his teaching post. However by this time he had his own well established pottery and was President of the Contemporary Art Society of South Australia. 1964, he was one of three Australian ceramicists chosen to represent this country in the International Ceramics Exhibition in Tokyo.However the prudish culture of Adelaide at the time was perhaps a factor in his return to Scotland in 1966. He spent some time in the London Central School, but in 1968 he was appointed Head of Ceramics at the Glasgow School of Art, a position he held for the next twenty years.
He did return to Australia in 1978, 1979 & 1982 as Artist in Residence at Melbourne State College, but for the rest of his life was based in Glasgow. An obituary described him as ‘… wee bull who caused havoc in many a china shop …’
Writers:
7write6
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2021
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 2 June 1932
- Summary
- Alexander Leckie, an adventurous Scot with a modernist sensibility, was one of the generation of studio potters responsible for establishing Australia's post war culture of hand thrown pots.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Feb-10
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude55 Longitude24 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2010-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lithuania
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1923
- Summary
- Following her arrival in Australia from Lithuania in 1951, Ieva Pocius was the first student to major in Sculpture at the South Australian School of Art. She went on to lecture part-time at the school for over a decade, whilst at the same time exhibited in Australia and overseas including the USA and Canada. Her life-size statue of Catherine Helen Spence in Light Square, Adelaide, remains one of her most significant works.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2010
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2010-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 14 January 1922
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Mar-10
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude47 Longitude20 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date2010-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hungary
- Biography
- Hungarian sculptor George Barsony was studying at the Munich Academy of Arts in July 1944 when the school was destroyed by air bombing. He was a refugee in Munich until 1949 when he arrived in Sydney in September as an assisted migrant and was naturalised in 1955.
He first worked as required as a carpenter in Sydney.In 1951 he married British immigrant Jean Harbutt Bird who worked for a Sydney pottery. Barsony was devout and had had had some success in Hungary and Munich as a sculptor of religious works. The Munich commissions were lsot during the War.A 2.2 metre bronze statue of St Francis of Assisi reputedly still survives in 32 Ferencesek street Pecs. George Barsony was highly skilled in design and mould casting. He was used to making maquettes for sculptures and had skills in kiln making and firing.
George and Jean Barsony established their own pottery Barsony Ceramics in 1955 at their home in Bankstown and in 1956 built a workshop at 24 Guernsey street Guilford, New South Wales, which operated until the 1970s. In the post war years artistic immigrants were encouraged to open small craft businesses. Studio pottery became a successful livelihood catering to a rising market for home decor.
An early products by Barsony Ceramics were small scale decor items such as ashtrays. For the 1956 Olympics market Barsony made a series of Australian Aboriginal heads as wall plaques. Black painted figure based lamps soon became a major product line. The Barsony range included wall plaques,candlesticks,figurines,lamp bases, book ends, vases, bowls and ashtrays. Most well known are the extensive variations of graceful 'black lady’ lamps. The figures were skimpily but discretely dressed negro, Hawaiian and other exotic ethnic belles as well as ballerinas, flamenco dancers, modern bathing beauties and even tennis players. Many figures were painted usually with added motifs and colours, and bright with red lips. Many had pearl drop brass earrings. Jean Barsony was responsible for much of the painting although other works also sprayed and painted the products.A distinctive feature of Barsony lamps were the plastic ribbon lampshades in multi colour stripes and occasional patterns. These were made from cutting up rolled up shower curtains into strips.
Barsony Ceramics were prolific in the 1960s a huge range of products and motifs in the black figurines and other finishes including lustre, white, brown and even gold finish.George also made plaster plaques for various advertisements by firms such as Tintara Wines, Casben shorts Stamina Quality Clothes. These were also marketed by Mrs Mary Hodern’s company Plasto.
Stores such as David Jones were regular customers. Barsony lamps were sent all over Australia, to New Zealand and to places in the Pacific such as Vanuatu – where the lamps were being supplied to people without electricity.Barsony Ceramics did not have a retail outlet for their own. A wholesaler, David Lyn paid for job lots which were then stored on site till the wholesaler called for their delivery.
The diversity of the Barsony range can be seen online with a number of sites devoted to providing details of the complex numbering by which to determine an original. The 1970s saw protection of the local pottery industry undermined by tariff removals which allowed Japan mass produced ceramics to come on to the market. The 1970s also saw a move away from the rather happy hedonism and vivacity of the Barsony style. The kiln and ceramics business closed in 1970 although lampshade making by George and Jean and later son Roger, continued to 2005. Some of George’s master moulds were sold to Austral pottery in Castle Hill others were smashed.
George Barsony did one known sculpture commission for a mosaic for St Margaret Mary’s (Catholic church) Marylands road in 1967.
Barsony ceramics have an established and robust collectors market but the work of the studio is unrepresented in any fine art or applied art museums. No scholarly study, formal exhibition or recognition has celebrated this unique and highly skilled Australian ceramic art studio.
Writers:
newtog
Date written:
2021
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 15 November 1917
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Oct-10
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-33.481536 Longitude150.1564887 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date2010-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lithgow, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Tom Bass AM, DVisArts, public sculptor and teacher, was born in Lithgow, NSW, in 1916. His parents both grew up in rural NSW, his father the son of a baker, and his mother a descendant of early Australian gentry. At the time of Tom’s birth, his father, also a baker by trade, was contributing to the war effort working in an arms factory in Lithgow. In 1919, at age three, Tom moved with his family to the outskirts of Griffith, where his father worked as a baker for the construction workers of the post-war irrigation scheme. From 1920-26 the family relocated several times, moving between work in Erskineville and the rural towns of Parkes and Gundagai, before eventually settling in the working class Sydney suburb of Marrickville in 1927. During the depression, in 1931 Bass left school to work; he was fifteen years old. Jobs were scarce, however, forcing him to travel the countryside, often on foot, seeking employment. At twenty-two he returned to Sydney, having decided to pursue his desire to study art. He posed as a life model at several art institutions, eventually commencing his art studies at Dattilo Rubbo’s atelier. From 1937-40 Bass learnt drawing skills and basic art principles under Dattilo Rubbo’s guidance, and in 1937 met his first wife, fellow student, Lenore Rays. In 1940, a year after World War II commenced, he was conscripted and sent to duties in Bathurst, then Sydney. Bass and Lenore Rays married during the war and moved to Minto, where they continued to live until 1975. Following his discharge from National Service, Bass attended The National Art School in Sydney under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme from 1946-48. During this time he was taught by the Head of the Sculpture School, Lyndon Dadswell. In his final year of art school, he received his first commission from a family of Queensland graziers, seeking a sculptural piece for their country property in Sutton Forest, NSW. After much deliberation over a theme of relevance to the lives of the rural family, Bass created a sandstone fireplace depicting a drover on his horse, titled Jack Earth. After graduating, Bass worked as an assistant to his previous teacher, Dadswell, from 1949-50, whilst trying to explore and define what type of sculptor he wished to be. Creating sculpture for exhibition in galleries was not his ambition; instead his interest lay in the function of sculpture in society, and how it could be used to represent people and communities (Bass & Harris 1996). It was during this time that Bass developed his philosophy of working with totemic forms and emblems to create works of significance to the people that they serve. To Bass, the totem was defined as 'an object that is so imbued with the meanings and the values of the people for whom it is made, that they can stand around it (the object) and connect with those things without a word being uttered…that to me is a totem, and that is the thing that has really inspired my work’ (Bass 2006). In 1951 Bass became a member of the newly founded Sculptors’ Society, and during the early 1950s he received media exposure through the Society’s growing public profile (Carson 2006). Bass’s work was featured in many group exhibitions with The Sculptors Society, including its first outdoor exhibition in the Botanic Gardens in 1951. Bass remained a member of The Sculptors Society until 1964, occupying the executive positions of president, treasurer and secretary during this period. From the early 1950s, Bass’ commitment to representing communities saw him become a sculptor of public art, with commissions from schools, universities, religious institutions, and government and corporate organisations. During a time when public monuments were being replaced by public art, Bass became a highly sought after sculptor of commissioned works. Significant public commissions, including The Student (1953) for the University of Sydney, The Falconer (1953-55) for the University of NSW, and The Trial of Socrates (1954-56) and The Idea of a University (1954-59) – both for the University of Melbourne – are evidence of the support for Bass by the tertiary sector. In 1953, Bass was chosen to represent Australia at the prestigious 'Unknown Political Prisoner International Sculpture Competition’ at the Tate Gallery in London, which led to further professional acknowledgement (Carson 2006). Corporate commissions Research and Herald Sculpture (1956-59) followed, along with religious works External Crucifix, Reredos Crucifix and St Paul the Sailmaker (1955-56) for St Augustine’s Church, Yass. During the 1960s, Bass produced numerous prominent and highly publicised civic works. The P&O Wall Fountain (1962-63) was controversially featured on the cover of Oz Magazine, the Lintel Sculpture (1967-68) formed the entrance to the National Library of Australia, and Ethos (1959-61) became Canberra’s first piece of public art work (Cloughley 2006), representing the spirit of the community of the national capital. Unlike many artists of the time, Bass chose to work independently of the commercial gallery realm, personally managing his own commissions and projects. As a public sculptor in a period of cultural and societal change in Australia, Bass was a key advocate for the inclusion of sculpture in public spaces. Significant religious commissions were developed during the period, including Our Lady Archetype of the Church (1959-62) for Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Hobart, and the Crucifix (1965-66) for the Chapel at the Royal Military College, Duntroon. Additionally, Bass’s work became internationally recognised through Sculptured Emblem (1968-1969) on the Australian Chancery Building in Washington DC, USA. It was in the 1960s that Bass undertook two study trips abroad, the first to Europe, in 1962, and to the USA in 1969, coinciding with the Washington DC commission. On this latter trip he met Australian expatriate sculptor, Clement Meadmore, and was inspired by the work of David Smith. According to Hoekstra, his “experiences in America helped him to see that he needed to explore his inner world… in sculpture… in the relationships with those near to him and with himself”(pers. comm.). In the 1970s Bass changed direction as an artist, choosing to focus on personal sculptures, and engaging in a new teaching vocation. His two major commissions of this period include Entrance Sculpture (1971) for the University of Technology, Sydney, and The Genii (1973) for the Queen Victoria Gardens in Melbourne, Victoria. After a short stint of teaching life study at the National Art School in 1973, Bass spent six months renovating a studio on Broadway, which then opened as the Tom Bass Sculpture School in 1974. The independent art school was designed to encourage a new generation of Australian sculptors, and promote sculpture in the community. In 1980 Bass held his first solo exhibition at the David Jones Art Gallery, resulting in mixed reviews. Whilst teaching at the Tom Bass Sculpture Studio School, he completed several commissions including The Arts and the Sciences (1984) for the Great Hall at the University of Sydney, and Christopher Robin (1989) for the Prince of Wales Children’s Hospital. Bass and Lenore had separated in 1975 (and divorced in 1981), and in the early 1980s, Bass met and married his second wife, Margo Hoekstra. During the 1990s Bass continued his leadership and teaching roles at the Tom Bass Sculpture Studio School, whilst participating in group exhibitions such as 'Sculpture by the Sea’ (1999) in Bondi. In 1998, after much resistance, the Tom Bass Sculpture Studio School was forced to relocate, moving to a new site in Erskineville. In 2003, Tom Bass handed the school over to a management committee, as it became an incorporated, not-for-profit association. As a public artist, the development of Bass’s career has been well documented by the media. Beginning with articles portraying Bass as an ex-serviceman turned artist in the early 1940s, the literature following his career is extensive. He has received both criticism and praise from the media, yet his choice to work outside the gallery realm saw him receive little attention from the arts community (Bass 2006). Since the 1950s, radio interviews, documentaries and television features have provided the public with first hand glimpses into Bass’s life and career. He has been featured in books such as The Development of Australian Sculpture: 1788-1975 (Sturgeon 1978), Australian Sculptors (Scarlett 1980) and The New McCulloch’s Encyclopaedia of Australian Art (McCulloch 2006). In 1996 he co-authored his biography titled Tom Bass-Totem Maker, and in 2006 a book accompanying his retrospective exhibition was released. In recognition of his services to sculpture, Bass was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1989. This lead to a resurgence of media interest and public recognition of his contribution to Australian sculpture. Following a career that had spanned sixty years, and to mark his ninetieth birthday, in 2006 the 'Tom Bass Retrospective’ was held at the Sydney Opera House. In 2009 Bass was awarded the degree of Doctor of Visual Arts (honoris causa) by the University of Sydney, in recognition of his excellence as a sculptor and teacher. Thomas Dwyer Bass died on 26 February 2010 and is buried at Macquarie Park Cemetery at North Ryde.
Writers:
De Lorenzo, Catherine
Note: Long, Sarah
Note:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 6 June 1916
- Summary
- Bass was an Australian public sculptor and teacher with a career spanning over 60 years. Born in 1916, Bass studied drawing at Dattilo Rubbo's atelier from 1937-40, and sculpture at the National Art School from 1946-48. His community-focused work is featured in many prominent Australian public spaces and institutions, including schools, universities and churches, as well as government and corporate sites. In 1974, Bass established the Tom Bass Sculpture Studio School, where he taught until his death. He died in February 2010.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Feb-10
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date2010-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Pioneering studio potter, printmaker and teacher, was born in Melbourne. Her mother left the family when she was a small child, and after conflict with her new stepmother, Clytie went to live with her aunt, Christian Waller and her husband Napier Waller, both artists who encouraged and nurtured her career. Christian Waller in particular introduced her to theosophy and to classical mythology, all of which were to be major influences on her work. Christian Waller, who was interested in astrology and the occult, persuaded her to change her name to “Klytie”. Her first art lessons were in modelling with the sculptor Ola Cohn in 1931. The following year she enrolled in studied painting and drawing classes at the National Gallery School under W.B. McInnes and Charles Wheeler. She soon transferred to the Melbourne Technical College where she studied figure drawing and applied design as well as modelling and sculpture. In 1932 she completed a series of plaster masks for the Wallers’ home at Ivanhoe, Victoria, and printed her only linocut Limpang Tung . Published (as Klytie Sclater) in Manuscripts no.3 (November 1932), p.12, it shows Waller’s influence. She made fired pottery from about 1936. Her first solo exhibition, when she showed pottery, was held at the Kominsky Gallery, Melbourne, in 1941 and showed the dominant influence of Christian Waller’s Art Deco sensibility.
In 1937 she married fellow studio potter William Pate. After her marriage she began to teach pottery at Melbourne Technical College where she remained until 1945, resigning to become a full-time professional potter. Two years later, the National Gallery of Victoria made its first purchase of studio pottery – a ginger jar by Pate and a piece by Alan Lowe. Her work was exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1983 and at Sydney’s Macquarie Galleries in 1989 and 1990. She continued to live and work in Melbourne until her career was ended by frail old age.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 20 October 1912
- Summary
- A potter and printmaker who was encouraged by her aunt, Christian Waller and uncle, Napier Waller, to pursue a career in art. In 1947, Pate, together with Alan Lowe, became the first ceramicists to have their studio pottery purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria. Her distinctive style led her to become one of Australia's most significant studio potters.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Jun-10
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-32.916667 Longitude151.75 Start Date1971-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Les Saxby is a Wonnarua (Hunter Valley, New South Wales) painter, dancer and didgeridoo player who paints the Dreamings of his people. He was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, in 1971 to Norma Walsh and Gordon Saxby. He began painting in the early 1990s and was included in the 1998 exhibition “ Djalarinji: Something that belongs to us” at Manly Regional Museum and Art Gallery. In 1992 he formed the dance troupe Yidaki Didg & Dance .
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 July 1971
- Summary
- Les Saxby is a Wonnarua (Hunter Valley, NSW) painter, dancer and didgeridoo player who paints the Dreamings of his people. He is the founder of Yidaki Didg & Dance.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Feb-09
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude-33.2981001 Longitude146.3734587 Start Date1965-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lake Cargelligo, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Joanne Dunn (painting as Joanne Reid) is a Wiradjuri woman, born in 1965 at Lake Cargelligo in New South Wales, Australia. In 1980 Dunn moved to Orange, New South Wales. Dunn is a self-taught artist, and during her career developed her own style, often combining Aboriginal and European art forms and also experimenting with abstract pieces. Dunn started “Jemalong Art” (jemalong meaning platypus) in June 2000, prior to which she painted for eight years with various Aboriginal organizations.Dunn has held a number of exhibitions both in Australia and the United States of America (in Nashville, Tennessee). She developed her talents into a commercial enterprise with the assistance of the Parkes Forbes Business Enterprise Centre, a not-for-profit business advisory service.In 2001, Dunn presented the first of a number of major exhibitions of her work in Sydney at the Country Embassy, hosted by Peter Croft, Chief Executive Officer of Parkes Forbes Business Enterprise Centre and the Department of State and Regional Development.The exhibition was opened by The Minister for Small Business, the Hon. Sandra Nori MP, as part of the launch of the Indigenous Small Business Advisory Service and featured 42 artworks by Dunn. In praise of the art, the Minister said: 'The exhibition highlights the talent and drive that Dunn has to translate her creative pursuits into a successful business and a source of financial independence’.Another major exhibition at the State Parliament House in Sydney was opened by the then Premier of New South Wales, Mr. Bob Carr, and hosted by Peter Croft, Chief Executive Officer of Parkes Forbes Business Enterprise Centre. The exhibition consisted of 30 artworks by Dunn and was on display for twelve months.Dunn’s depiction of Australian flora and fauna and her unique use of traditional Aboriginal methods also created interest in Nashville, Tennessee, when her works were exhibited at the Centennial Park Arts & Crafts Centre as part of the Australian Festival in 2003. Dunn will be making her first visit to Nashville in September 2006 where she will be exhibiting her works as part of the Australian Festival.Her works have also become sought after for official and private collections. One of Dunn’s major works was purchased to hang in the Orange Court House. Other works have been purchased by the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, State and Federal Parliamentarians.Several of her works were purchased by a Sydney based firm for T-shirt and wall hanging designs and manufacture.Dunn’s works extend from fine art to community projects. She designed the new welcoming signs located on the outskirts of Orange at each point of entry to the city. Dunn developed a totemic design in 2003 by adapting it to a land drawing, which will be the basis for construction of a giant platypus to be built in Orange at the Gosling Creek Reserve. The overall theme for the site is “drawn from the land” which indicates that inspiration, ideas and materials are drawn from the site and pays tribute to Indigenous and non-Indigenous occupants of the area. The platypus design is the first component of the project which will become a land or earth art measuring 70 metres in length. The image will be visible from several sections of the park and from the air, connecting the entry signs from the outskirts to the city centre. Although the project has been developed is yet to be constructed whilst awaiting funding advice from Orange City Council. Another of Dunn’s achievements includes use of her art works by the New South Wales Department of Education and Training to illustrate promotional materials for the Elsa Dixon Aboriginal Employment Program. Similarly, her work was selected to adorn materials for the Indigenous Self Employment Program. These arrangements were negotiated by the BEC. Dunn teaches Aboriginal Art and Cultural Practices through the New South Wales Technical and Further Education system.More recently Dunn was invited to participate in the “Water Works” showing held at the Orange Art Gallery in November 2005. The story behind Dunn’s painting is:“Waterworks is a thematic depiction of the history of the Orange waterways as seen through the eyes of a Wiradjuri woman. Its themes include the local river systems, ranging from Mount Canobolas to the Lachlan and including local fauna and flora”. Dunn was also invited to exhibit at the Careflight Exhibition, held in Orange, in December 2005. Her latest project is a reconciliation project at Bowen Public School in Orange, New South Wales, which embraces the coming together of all children, with a particular emphasis on troubled youth.Peter Andren, Independent Federal Member of Parliament (1996-2007) for Calare, is a great supporter of Dunn and has said in the context of Dunn’s Nashville exhibition, “This will be a great opportunity both for Dunn and to raise an awareness and appreciation of Aboriginal art in America. Aboriginal art covers a wide spectrum from Central Australia and Arnhem Land and urban Australia, from ancient to so-called traditional and modern. Dunn’s unique style has received wide acclaim, particularly her interpretation of nature and reconciliation themes”.
Writers:
Allas, TessCroft, Peter
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2009
- Born
- b. 19 February 1965
- Summary
- Joanne Dunn (painting as Joanne Reid) is Wiradjuri woman based in Orange, NSW. She is a self-taught artist who has exhibited locally and internationally.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-May-09
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude51.9464129 Longitude-0.2791646 Start Date1941-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England
- Biography
- NICK Waterlow was one of the great enablers of Australian art. He was best known to the public as the inspirational director of three biennales of Sydney, but his generosity of spirit made him the mentor to generations of students both in his teaching and as director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery at the College of Fine Arts at the University of NSW. He continued to watch over the careers of students and junior colleagues for many years after graduation.Nicholas Anthony Ronald Waterlow was born 30 August 1941 Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, the son of Anthony Edgar Russell Waterlow and Barbara Davy. His father spent the war years as a lieutenant in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps, and died young. His grandfather, Sir Edgar Lutwyche Waterlow was a Baronet. As a young man Nick was less interested in privilege than cricket. He played for Harrow and on more than one occasion said the proudest moment in his life was when he played at the M.C.C.. After leaving school Waterlow first studied French history at the University of Grenoble, before travelling to Florence where he studied Renaissance art at the British Institute. His first job was as a gallery assistant at the Alfred Brod Gallery in London, which specialised in Dutch and Flemish 17th-century art, but his interest was always the contemporary. By 1964 he was writing for the Arts Review in London, which led to opportunities to write criticism for Nation, The Sun, and The Bulletin when he made his first visit to Australia in 1965 to marry Rosemary (Romy) O’Brien who was then a school teacher. They returned to London in 1966, when he was appointed prints curator at Editions Alecto publishing house, and the next year he became director of the Bear Lane Gallery, Oxford, a position he held until 1972. From 1973 to 1977 he worked as senior recreation officer for the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, where he was given ample opportunity to develop his diplomatic skills as this new city endevoured to develop a cultural program.Waterlow’s English experience stood him in good stead when the family returned to Australia in 1977. After a stint as a lecturer at the Alexander Mackie CAE (now College of Fine Arts) and some writing for Art and Australia and Nation Review, Waterlow was appointed director of the 1979 Biennale of Sydney.The theme was “European Dialogue”. It became clear from the start that this director believed in dialogue. Local artists wanted greater participation, women wanted a more equitable representation, and many artists still had their eyes firmly focused on the US as the major centre of culture. Nick discussed, negotiated and compromised, and the final exhibition was the stronger for it. His reputation as an honest broker led to his appointment as director of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council in 1983. His ability to create an inclusive vision meant that he directed the 1986 and 1988 event and chaired the international selection panel for the 2000 Biennale of Sydney.The 1988 biennial, From the Southern Cross: A View of World Art c1940-1988, was one of the defining exhibitions for Australian visual culture. It connected Australian artists to European and American counterparts in a grand, complex narrative of art. At the heart of the exhibition stood The Aboriginal Memorial: 200 grave posts from Ramingining in the Northern Territory; one for every year of European settlement. Waterlow had been approached by Djon Mundine, then Ramingining art adviser, about the possibility of developing a project to mourn Aboriginal loss. Speaking after Waterlow’s death Mundine said, ‘he understood it right away’ and linked his idea of the graveposts to the crosses on the burial fields of World War I. The memorial was bought by the National Gallery of Australia and is now on permanent view.Mundine, then curator of Aboriginal art at the Campbelltown Regional Arts Centre, said: ‘He always gave you time, and gave you an ear. He wanted to know things. There’s a humility in that. He wasn’t afraid of ideas and wasn’t afraid of sticking his neck out.’In 1989, Waterlow was appointed senior lecturer in gallery management at the City Art Institute, now the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. In 1990 he engineered an upgrade so the qualification became the Master of Art Administration, one of the leading degrees of its kind. The next year he became director of COFA’s Ivan Dougherty Gallery, a position he held until his untimely death.It was through these positions that he made what is perhaps his most important contribution to Australian cultural life.Generations of curators, gallery directors, and artists were nurtured by his generous and inclusive approach to the making of exhibitions of art. Indigenous artist and curator Brenda L. Croft, who ensured that Waterlow was an honoured guest when she was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters at the University of Sydney, said: ‘I truly would not have had the career I’ve had without his encouragement and support.’ He was especially keen to encourage the work of indigenous artists. The gallery is a small space, yet the exhibitions he created (and enabled others to create) made it burst with life.From the time he was appointed to COFA Waterlow urged the university to expand resources for exhibiting art. He was instrumental in the plans for the development of the ramshackle COFA buildings, which now include a 1000sq m exhibition space. Funding was confirmed in the 2009 federal budget and the faculty was preparing for construction at the time of his death. Waterlow saw the building as one of the high points of his career and was planning a great opening to include the work of the NSW comedians known as the Ladies of the Bigotbri Concerned Women’s Association. One of the ‘concerned women’, Aboriginal performer Tess Allas, said: ‘I was excited about working with him. He gave me confidence to go ahead with a large exhibition proposal and put our plans into action.’His wife, Romy, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, died in 1998 after a long fight with cancer.Nick Waterlow was killed by his son Antony Waterlow who was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. After his death, his partner, the artist and poet Juliet Darling, worked with his friend Father Steve Sinn S.J. to create the memorial film A Curator’s Last Will and Testament.Because Nick Waterlow was one of the most loved figures in the arts community and because of the shock of his death, St Mary’s Cathedral was filled beyond capacity for his funeral. Afterwards students from the College of Fine Arts strewed jacaranda flowers on the pathway between the Cathedral and the Art Gallery of New South Wales which overflowed with those wishing to honour their friend, mentor, teacher and colleague.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 30 August 1941
- Summary
- Nick Waterlow was the inspirational director for a number of Biennales of Sydney, commencing in 1979. He later became the Director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Nov-09
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Brian Dunlop was born in Sydney, the son of British parents who had emigrated because of the Great Depression. He later described his father as “a bit of a Calvinist”. On leaving school after the Intermediate Certificate in 1954 he was awarded a scholarship to the state-funded National Art School in Darlinghurst, which meant that his parents encouraged his studies as a way of escaping his working class origins.
He instinctively used the human scale as a way of defining space and proportion, which meant that he readily absorbed the Charm School style promoted by the school’s teachers. Dunlop’s fine drawing style and carefully modulated tonality won him considerable attention in the earlier part of his career. In 1958, the year he completed art school, he was awarded the Le Gay Brereton Prize for drawing, and in 1962 had his first work (a drawing) purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.The same year he travelled to Europe, where he spent most of his time in Italy but also travelled to Greece, Majorca, North Africa and London. He returned to Australia convinced that the humanist values of the Renaissance artists were the right ones to guide his future career. For some years Dunlop was able to supplement his income as an artist with teaching part-time at the National Art School. When that was downgraded to a technical college in the 1970s, he taught at Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education. Formal teaching ended in 1980 when he became artist in residence at the University of Melbourne. The following year he was awarded the Sulman Prize for his painting of the interior of the Old Physics Building.Dunlop divided his time between Sydney and Ebenezer in NSW and Panton Hill and Port Fairy in Victoria. His careful compositions, where people are defined by their context made him especially popular as a portrait painter. He was not especially enamoured of portrait commissions, preferring to concentrate on landscapes, still lives and architectural interiors, and was known to dismiss portraits as “hack work”.
For some commissions however, he travelled. In 1984 he travelled to London, to paint the official Victorian Sesquicentenary portrait of queen Elizabeth. The Queen wears in a bright yellow dress, sitting in front of a white panelled door, balanced by and intricate golden patterned wallpaper. It is clear that he sees her body as an element in an overall composition, and it is no surprise to discover that while she only had brief sittings for the portrait, he spent a great deal of time painting the wallpaper. Despite, or perhaps because of this, Dunlop’s royal portrait is an especially satisfying work.In his later years Brian Dunlop was one of a small group of artists fostered by Eva Breuer, and exhibited regularly with her until his death.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 14 October 1940
- Summary
- Brian Dunlop's understated paintings and drawings were influenced by Renaissance art, as well as the Charm School artists who were his teachers in Sydney. His best known work is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Dec-09
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude53.2190652 Longitude6.5680077 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Groningen, Netherlands
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1928
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2009
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1928
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2009
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-32.820927 Longitude117.6528542 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wickepin, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, teacher, curator who was born in Wickepin, Western Auatralia where he grew up on the family farm. He studied at Claremont Teachers College and Perth Technical College 1949-50. He also took a Bachelor of Arts at University of Western Australia awarded in 1953. He taught at Nedlands primary school and then Perth Boys from 1949-54. He exhibited a watercolour, Winter Study, with the Perth Society of Artists in 1952. He married and had two children, but his wife Mary Elizabeth died in 1955, and having been left an annuity by an uncle he travelled overseas in 1955-6 and undertook study at Kent College, Canterbury. 1957 saw him teaching at Princess May and Perth Modern School and then he studied at East Sydney Technical School under Godfrey Miller, John Passmore and Ralph Balson, graduating with a Diploma in Fine Art in 1959. In 1960-1965 he taught in high schools and joined the Art Advisory Service of the Education Department. He won the Rupert Boan Landscape Prize in 1961. He taught drawing and painting at Perth Technical College 1966-7 and Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University) 1968-9. He spent 1970 being a fulltime painter preparing for a solo exhibition held at the Old Fire Station Gallery in Leederville. A charismatic man with a quirky sense of humour, he was generous with his students. Weekend painting and drawing excursions were held at his North Beach house in the 1960s. In the 1970s he lived in Central Australia and New Guinea. On his return he worked as an education officer at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in the 1980s. A consummate draughtsman his elegant drawings are now highly valued. He won the Sir Charles Gairdiner Hospital Prize in 1999. He continued having highly acclaimed solo exhibitions until 2008.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1927
- Summary
- Russell studied at East Sydney Technical School under Godfrey Miller, John Passmore and Ralph Balson. He won the Rupert Boan Landscape Prize in 1961 and the Sir Charles Gairdiner Hospital Prize in 1999.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2009
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 27 December 1926
- Summary
- Trained in engineering, Davis studied sculpture in London. Davis was an innovator in model-making for architects, landscape planners, designers and engineers. He later studied design at East Sydney Technical College and taught industrial design at Randwick Technical College. He had solo sculpture exhibitions from 1982 and taught sculpture at Seaforth TAFE.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1 January 2009
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Amy Lakides was a china painter, painter on silk and interior designer. She was born in Perth in 1919 and educated at Perth Girls School and Perth Technical College. Her first lessons in porcelain painting were under Flora Landells whom she admired. Later in life she studied at Sun Yee Art School in Singapore and with painters David Gregson and Owen Garde in Perth and Karafalakie in Greece. She has said of her training: “During my early years of study, I was taught many rules to go by, but now I combine both western and eastern concepts of composition until the effect pleased me. I use painting in and wiping out as a combined method as this helps the naturalistic result that I want.” Lakides taught china painting to Jean Agnew and others, advising her students to “[k]now your subject and practice drawing constantly. See the mechanical shape of the flowers, look for the directions of the petals, this is not difficult but necessary to develop observation. The ability to excel in art lies mostly in this area: perseverance and love of nature are essential ingredients.” She introduced other china painters to her 'wipe-out’ technique, which she taught on television in Western Australia and at seminars, workshops and lectures in England, New Zealand, Venezuela, Singapore, Canada and the United States. Amy was the Founding President of the Western Australian Guild of China Painters in 1965. She moved to Atlanta in America in 1970 where she carried on working, in addition to publishing books and articles. Her son remained in Australia and thus she continued to visit the country frequently. Lakides died in 2009.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1919
- Summary
- Well known and influential china painter, painter on silk and interior designer. Her first lessons in porcelain painting were under Flora Landells.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2009
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude40 Longitude-100 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United States of America
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1918
- Summary
- Culbert studied at the Free School of Mechanical Trades, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, designed and manufactured cases for radios in St Peters, a Sydney manufacturing suburb, later manufacturing cabinets for Admiral TV, then manufacturing chests for commercial sale.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-09
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-38.50717805 Longitude145.1888103 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Phillip Island, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1917
- Summary
- Furey was a Society of Designers for Industry foundation member, an International Design Institute of Australia Vice President, a Society of Industrial Designers President amongst other honours. As a designer, he was consultant designer A.G. Healing and worked for Australian Container Industry as Product Design head, as an independent consultant after 1964, he produced designs for Sebels, AWA and other firms.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-09
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator and painter, joined the Artists’ branch of the Communist Party of Australia at Melbourne in 1937, aged 24. It included cartoonists, commercial artists, painters, lithographers, and a model (who later convened the Models’ Union) into whose loft they eventually crowded for meetings. Healy produced banners and signs. In 1941 she married Charlie Walters and moved to Sydney. Their son Max was born in Sydney in June 1942. By 1949 the marriage was 'long over’ and Evelyn later married Bill Armstrong (died 1976), then Kevin (?) Healy. She illustrated Helen Palmer’s Beneath the Southern Cross , published in 1954 for the Eureka Stockade centenary.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1912
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Melbourne and Sydney political illustrator and painter. Healy illustrated Helen Palmer's Beneath the Southern Cross, published in 1954 for the Eureka Stockade centenary.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2009
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-30.774675 Longitude121.4883268 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date2009-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Boulder, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Wildflower painter, botanical illustrator, author, naturalist, teacher and farmer’s wife, Dr Rica Erickson was born in Boulder, WA, in 1908. She was the daughter of Christopher and Phoebe Louisa Topping Sandilands n_e Cooke. Her maternal grandmother was the redoubtable Nurse Cooke well known in Boulder in the early years of the nineteenth century. Rica won a scholarship to the Eastern Goldfields High School and lived with her grandmother whilst her parents went farming at Kendenup. After monitoring and teacher training she was sent to various one-teacher schools in the South West. Here she commenced painting. She was introduced to Emily Pelloe’s books on Western Australian wildflowers and given an excellent box of Windsor & Newton watercolours, and had private lessons with Brenda Holland in Albany on watercolour techniques. In 1936 Rica married farmer Sydney Uden Erickson of Bolgart and was compulsorily retired by the Education Department. Four children in four years as well as home schooling for some years meant little time for painting until 1950 when all the children were at school and later boarding school. After exhibiting her paintings at the Wild Life Show in 1946 she was persuaded by Dr Dominic Serventy to write a book to go with them. This began a career in botanical research followed by historical research and then editing. She and her husband travelled round Australia and overseas. In 1964 they retired from the farm to give Rica more access to research facilities. The children were: Dr Dorothy Erickson, artist-jeweller and writer, John, a farmer and vigneron, Bethel, an award-winning photographer, and Robin, a nurse who nursed the Duchess of Windsor. Rica was the author or editor of some twenty books and collaborated on a number of others. Her Western Australian Biographical Index and Dictionary of Western Australians project was the first project of its kind in the world. In 1980 she was Citizen of the Year for the Arts in Western Australia and awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Western Australia for services in the fields of botany, history and literature. In 1987 she was awarded the Order of Australia (Gen Division) for service to the arts particularly as an author and illustrator. Other awards include Honorary Life Membership of Western Australian Naturalists Club, 1966, Fellow of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, 1975, Honorary Life Member of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Western Australian Branch) 1982 and Fellow of the Western Australian Genealogical Society, 1987. In 1991 she had her first solo exhibition. In 1996 the first Western Australian Nature Reserve named after a living person was named in her honour. In 1999 Rica was honoured with the plaque for the year 1980 in the paving stones in St Georges Terrace. In 1999 she was also honoured as an older woman of science in Canberra. In 2006 Rica was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in Western Australian history. In 2007 she won the State Heritage Award for an individual. In 2009 she was one of fifty famous goldfields people profiled in an exhibition in the Museum of the Goldfields, Kalgoorlie.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1908
- Summary
- Wildflower painter, botanical illustrator, author, naturalist and teacher whose many honours included the Order of Australia (Gen Div.) for service to the arts and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Western Australia for services in fields of botany, history and literature.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2009
- Age at death
- 101
Details
Latitude-32.4925 Longitude137.765833 Start Date1971-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Port Augusta, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Bernadette Lennon-Lawrie was born in Port Augusta, South Australia, in May 1971. She was of the Mirning (mother’s side) and Antikirinjara (father’s side) people of South Australia. Lennon-Lawrie painted in synthetic polymer on canvas and board and in her artist statement for the Ceduna Aboriginal Arts and Cultural Centre she said the she loved painting, “especially dot paintings”.
It was through the Ceduna Centre that she was able to participate in Adelaide Festival Centre’s 'Our Mob’ exhibitions in 2006, 2007 and 2008. She also exhibited in a group show in 2007 at the Red Poles Gallery in McLaren Vale and was a finalist in the 2008 Port Lincoln Art Prize. She won first prize in the West Art Exhibition at the Ceduna Oysterfest with her painting Jidarah (the great whale).Her painting Whirly wind, Dust storm was acquired by the South Australian Museum.
Her grandmother Jessie Lennon was a published author with the book titled I’m the one that know this country. Her son, Beaver Lennon, was selected as a finalist in the 2008 Xstrata Art Awards at the Queensland Art Gallery.
Both her mother, Verna Lawrie, and her son, Beaver, work from Ceduna Aboriginal Arts and Cultural Centre. Bernadette Lennon-Lawrie passed away in 2008.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 May 1971
- Summary
- Dot painter who worked out of the Ceduna Aboriginal Art and Cultural Centre. In collection of South Australia Museum.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2008
- Age at death
- 37
Details
Latitude40.712778 Longitude-74.006111 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New York, USA
- Biography
- ON HIS first overseas posting, to Milan as a young art director, Ron Kambourian was blown away by the elegantly dressed local men who every morning sipped coffee and grappa in the cafes as Ferraris zoomed by. Kambourian not only joined this scene but sketched it, for he was one of an unusual breed – an art director who could draw.
He also loved things that flew, predominantly those machines that flew in the two world wars, and in particular Spitfires. He also loved fast cars. He loved the way they were engineered and the way they handled but, above all, he loved the way they were designed.
He leaves behind beautiful watercolours of planes, boats, cars, people, landscapes, layouts, ads, caricatures and cartoons. He also had a deft hand for oils, gouache, pencil, pastels, crayons and charcoal. In fact, if it could be used to create an image, he would use it. In later life he discovered and loved a new tool – the computer.
Ronald Haig Kambourian was born in 1940 in New York to Armenian parents Haig and Lucy Kambourian. He went to Forest Hills High and was in the same year as Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, but was happy to leave the music to them. He insisted only that the design of the year book was his. This creative talent offered him an early entry into university but in his first week he had a knife pulled on him and retreated to what he believed to be the sanctuary of the creative world – advertising.
He spent almost 50 years in the business and won more awards than most people have wall space to hang. This was best demonstrated at DDB Needham when a new business pitch found the then managing director David Fernley in a twitch about showing off the agency as the most creative in Sydney.
Kambourian’s idea of being helpful was to come in at the weekend before the pitch and hang his awards. These included gold Clios (for creative advertising), gold Art Directors Club, gold International Print, FACTS (Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations) and AWARD (Australian Writers and Art Directors Association) awards. They sat frame-to-frame, like wallpaper, from the ceiling to the floor, covering the main walls and even the hallway leading to his office. DDB Needham won the pitch.
Kambourian’s advertising career began in 1960 as an art director with Ogilvy Benson Mather, New York. By 1968 he was group creative director of Pritchard Wood & Partners, Wasey Quandrant, London and by 1971 creative director of Smit’s-Bates BV Holland.
n 1974 he married Karin Manders, a stewardess with KLM, the first of his family to marry outside the Armenian community. In 1975 they emigrated to Australia.
By 1976 he was the creative director of Monahan, Dayman, Adams, Sydney and by the end of the 1980s had worked for international agencies such as Clemenger BBDO and DDB Needham. By 1990 there was nowhere else to conquer and so he began his own visual communications consultancy – Wildblueyonder – that he continued until his death.
He was a master of type who would test unsuspecting copywriters by creating a layout with type that was truly gruesome and if the copywriter picked it up, a “just testing” email would follow with an attachment containing a brilliant piece of advertising work.
For 11 years he taught graphic design and advertising, first at Manly-Warringah College, then Sydney Graphics College and finally for eight years at the Billy Blue School of Graphic Design as senior advertising lecturer. His patience and perseverance always brought out the best in his students.
For 15 years Kambourian was also a scout leader and trainer, and served as the international liaison for the 16th World Scout Jamboree, held in Australia in 1988.
Kambourian was a fellow of the Australian Institute of Advertising, a member of the Art Directors Club, New York, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Society of Typographic Arts, the Art Directors Club Nederland and a foundation member and co-chairman of judges of the inaugural AWARD show.
(Bio and Obituary by De Brierley Newton http://www.smh.com.au/news/obituaries/a-master-of-beautiful-design/2008/06/02/1212258735330.html)
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Joanna Kambourian
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 8 September 1940
- Summary
- Kambourian was creative director at a number of prominant advertising agencies including Monahan Dayman and Adams, Sydney. He later founded a visual communications consultancy, Wildblueyonder. He was active as an illustrator, artist, typographer. He taught at Manly Warringah College, Sydney Graphics College and the Billy Blue School, North Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-May-08
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-27.02804795 Longitude116.3029629 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Murchison, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Joan Martin, born c. 1940s, was a Yamatji artist from the Murchison region in the Western Australian wheatbelt. As a child Martin was given the name Kulyarrdoo, and as an artist later in life she went by the name of Yarrna. Martin, who spent much of her adult life in Perth, created the painting upon which the design for the mosaic for the floor of the main building at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth was based. The Centre for Aboriginal Studies website states that “the painting depicts the coming together in celebration of different Aboriginal tribal groups from many parts of the country” (Accessed 21 May 2009). Martin also created paintings and painted ceramics based on Yamatji ancestral stories, examples of which are in the collection of the Curtin University of Technology Art Collection. In 1994 her work was shown in a solo exhibition, 'Yarrna: paintings 1982-1994’, at the Erica Underwood Gallery at the Curtin University of Technology.
Martin passed away in 2008.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Fisher, Laura
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1940
- Summary
- Yamatji artist who created the design for the mosaic on the floor of the main building at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2008
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 15 July 1937
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Oct-08
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-40.37342 Longitude148.02703 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cape Barren Island, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- Muriel Maynard, Trawlwoolway shell-necklace maker and weaver, was born on Cape Barren Island in 1937. Maynard’s mother died when she was very young, and the auntie who fostered her as a child was a shell necklace maker. Maynard used to collect shells on the beach with her aunt and other family members, and watch her string them together at night by the light of a kerosene lamp. She would come to carry on the necklace making tradition alongside her basket-weaving practice.
Maynard’s experimental approach to these crafts was reflected in her taste for stitching small, decorative posies of shells to the exterior fibre of some baskets. In 2004 Maynard participated in the Purrelayde Project along with fellow Tasmanian shell-necklace makers Dulcie Greeno and Corrie Fullard . The project was designed to facilitate passing on the techniques and traditions associated with the craft from this older generation of shellworkers to family members and peers.
Maynard participated in a number of exhibitions, including Tactility at the National Gallery of Australia in 2003 and Woven Forms, which began its national tour at Sydney’s Object Gallery in 2005. Her necklaces and baskets are represented in numerous state museum and gallery collections. In 2000 Maynard and fellow Tasmanian Aboriginal artists Vicki West and Lola Greeno were commissioned by Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife to produce an installation for the Lake St Clair Visitor’s Centre.The three women collaborated to produce a woven sculpture that acknowledges the nine Aboriginal nations of Tasmania, and celebrates the continuity of Aboriginal people’s presence in Tasmania.
Muriel Maynard passed away in November 2008.
Writers:
Fisher, Laura
staffcontributor
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1937
- Summary
- Trawlwoolway artist born on Cape Barren Island who takes an experimental approach to the Aboriginal traditions of basket weaving and shell necklace making.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Nov-08
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-37.755963 Longitude144.9161779 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Essendon, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born and bred in Melbourne. After completing secondary school, he began studying architecture at RMIT, but joined up in 1940. He spent the last years of WWII in New Guinea as an infantryman and made his first artistic income painting Japanese flags (in partnership with an American-born Japanese interpreter), which sold for up to $40 each as 'authentic’ souvenirs to American G.I.s. Weg drew the rising son and his partner did the wording. He also drew cartoons for his mates, some of which were published. Not to be confused with 'WOG’, acknowledged as Sapper Green W.O. ( William Oliver Green ) /HQRAE/9 Aust. 28/9/44 on back of original cartoon at Mitchell Library PX*DY66/78.
Green returned to Melbourne in 1946 and started a rehab. art course at the National Gallery of Victoria: “I wasn’t a great success there”, he told Pat Hinton, editor of the Herald (in preface to Weg’s World ): “Bill (later Sir William) Dargie advised me to go away and learn to draw. I’m still learning.” He began submitting cartoons to the Melbourne Herald and was hired as a replacement cartoonist when Sammy [S.G.] Wells went on holidays. In 1947 he joined the Herald as an illustrator, becoming a full-time 'Topical News Cartoonist’ and/or 'Australia’s first pocket cartoonist’ two years later. He remained in the job for 40 years then turned to free-lancing.
'Weg’ was an outstanding joke deviser (acc. Blaikie, 109), e.g. anti-modern art joke showing prize-winning 'Hunk of Junk’ at Sculptors Society Exhibition 1969: “I got it like that from the quarry” (ill. Lindesay 1979, 311). Also original 1960s cartoon at Mitchell Library [ML] PXD 764. He drew lots of cartoons for Man (December 1936-May 1974), e.g. “All right, stop crying and tell mother just where you buried the portable radio” n.d. (ill. Lindesay, Way We Were , 143); girl in bed on phone surrounded by wild oats: “Said he’d reap them later!” April 1946, 45.
His caricature of Henry Bolte was published in Nation Review in the early 1970s (Walsh 1993, 38). He apparently had cartoons in the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1980s, e.g. Election Melbourne 1 December 1984 (included by Christine Dixon, not ill?), and in the New York Times . Three original cartoons done for the Bulletin dated 25 June and 2 July 1985 – including cartoons about the ABC – are at ML PXD 739, and the SLV has at least 15 Melbourne Herald originals (under 'WEG’), e.g. CARNA CATS CARNA ROOS CARNA PIGS 1980s (re VFL). Several Weg anthologies have been published.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1 November 1923
- Summary
- Prolific and popular mid 20th century Melbourne newspaper cartoonist. Green made his first artistic income painting Japanese flags while stationed in New Guinea during WW2. On returning to Melbourne he worked as a cartoonist contributing works to the Melbourne Herald, Man, the Bulletin and the New York Times.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Dec-08
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.718959 Longitude117.4092845 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Carrolup, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Marjorie Hansen, Noongar artist, was born in 1922 at Carrolup, near Katanning in southern Western Australia. Her mother was an Native American, and her father was a Noongar man. At the age of fifteen she married Felix Hansen, who was then seventeen. Felix was a post cutter who was employed to work on the fence lines of different farming properties in the southwestern region, and Marjorie and their children would move with him and camp on the properties for the duration of his work. Marjorie made her first paintings on paperbark in the 1960s, while she was living on Wagin reserve. She also created paperbark paintings while living in Allawah Grove in South Guildford. Later, when she returning to Marribank (which was on the site of the former Carrolup Native Settlement) with her family, she created paintings and ceramics as part of the Marribank Artists Cooperative that operated alongside the Marribank Family Centre in the 1980s. In later years she moved to the Perth suburb of Koongamia. She continued to paint, selling her work through a gallery shop on St Georges Terrace. She would often sign her paintings with her Noongar name – chitty chitty (or willy wagtail).
A watercolour work created by Hansen in 1967 is in the collection of the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, and was included in the 'Koorah Coolingah (Children Long Ago)’ exhibition that took place at the Katanning Arts Centre, Katanning, and the Western Australian Museum in Perth during the 2006 Perth International Arts Festival. Hansen’s son Philip Hansen is also an artist, and his mother’s art practice has been a source of inspiration for him.
Hansen passed away in November 2008. She was living in Collie, where she was close to her many children and grandchildren.
Writers:
Fisher, Laura
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- Noongar artist who grew up on the Carrolup Native Settlement. Hansen is represented in the collection of the Berndt Museum of Anthropology.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Nov-08
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter and press artist, born in Melbourne, was a 'pioneer member of the new art classes’ at Caulfield Technical School. William Dargie was one of his lecturers. After serving in New Guinea during WWII, Bell remained studying native artefacts. Then he returned to Sydney and attended classes at SORA, a period he describes as full of 'rich, exciting ideas’. He returned to Melbourne and spent nearly 25 years as a press artist with the Herald and Weekly Times , retiring in the mid-1970s. Since then has had a number of exhibitions of his paintings and drawings. His charcoal illustrations on rag paper of 'Alice in Wonderland’ were included in the Carroll Foundation exhibition of 1990. In 1990 he was working on the theme of Eureka, 'Australia’s most celebrated rebellion against colonial rule’.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 11 January 1920
- Summary
- Late 20th century Melbourne painter and press artist. Bell served in New Guinea during World War 2 and after his service remained to study native artefacts. He eventually returned to Australia and began what would become a nearly 25 year career working on Melbourne's Herald and Weekly Times.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Jul-08
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude42.3315509 Longitude-83.0466403 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Detroit, Michigan, USA
- Biography
- The silhouette artist S. John Ross was born and raised in Detroit, USA. He was about 11 years old when he first saw a silhouette artist working at the Michigan State Fair and was captivated by the skill of the cutter. After leaving school Ross worked and trained with the silhouette artist Budd-Jack for three years, working the fairs of the northern states of the USA. He later worked in Hollywood. Some of his early celebrity 'cuts’ included Stan Laurel, Al Jolson, Spencer Tracey and Mickey Rooney. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour he was drafted into the US Army. Corporal Ross arrived in Australia in 1942 and was later transferred to the Philippines. During the war years he was involved in protecting General Douglas MacArthur and celebrity entertainers such as Bob Hope. Ross made images of both these men and garnered notice in the wartime press for his skill with his trademark surgical scissors.
After the war, Staff Sergeant John Ross left the army and returned to Australia where he married a local woman. Since then Ross has toured the agricultural shows and fairs of Australia and has been a regular at the Sydney Easter Show since 1948. His long time connection with the Sydney show saw him awarded the title 'show legend’ for 2007. A man of great humour, Ross was heard to say that he would “rather be a living legend than a dead one.” He has also been a regular at the Royal Queensland Show (the Ekka), the Royal Adelaide Show and at Sydney’s Luna Park and Centrepoint Tower. Ross has created tens of thousands of portraits during his 60 year long career and Vivian Leigh, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Nicole Kidman, Sir Robert Menzies and Queen Elizabeth II are among his famous sitters.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 April 1919
- Summary
- With a career lasting sixty years, US born S. John Ross was one of the last silhouette artists working in Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Aug-08
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-27.6395345 Longitude152.4132894 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Laidley, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, was born at Laidley, Queensland. During the 1930s she studied art with Vera Cottew at the Brisbane Girls Grammar and at the Central Technical College. During WWII she served for four years with the Air Force and when demobilised in 1946 was appointed an assistant teacher of art at the Tech. While teaching there she was awarded the Queensland Wattle League Scholarship. In 1948-49 she studied under William Dargie at the National Gallery School Melbourne under the terms of the Rehabilitation Training Scheme. In Melbourne she submitted a group of works to the Half Dozen Group of Artists’ Travelling Scholarship and received the 1949 award, allowing her an additional year’s study in Melbourne. Her major work that year, The market queue, Victoria Markets 1950, however, did not win the School’s Travelling Scholarship, but she was awarded the Hugh Ramsay Portrait Prize and also the Sara Levi Prize for the most outstanding student (for a portrait of fellow student Val Myers). Having saved for years, she was able to finance her own European study in 1951-52, where she visited galleries and studied at La Grande Chaumière, Paris. After returning to Brisbane she taught art at Moreton Bay College, Somerville House (Joan Kerr was a student in c.1955-56 ) and Ipswich Girls Grammar and, from 1955, at the Central Technical College. She became at full time teacher at the last from 1966 until retiring in 1984. In 2000 she was the subject of a focus exhibition by Glenn Cooke at QAG to mark International Women’s Day and her 80th year and in 2001 a larger more comprehensive retrospective was mounted at the Gold Coast City Art Gallery.
Betty Quelhurst died on 13 August 2008 and was cremated at Mt Thompson Crematorium, Brisbane on 19 August 2008.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1919
- Summary
- Betty Quelhurst was a painter. She served in the Air Force for four years during World War Two. Having saved for years she was able to study at La Grande Chaumière in Paris in 1951 and 1952. She spent the rest of her life studying, painting and teaching.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Aug-08
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- “Mr. Harry Sebel, FAIM. Sebel Limired,96 Canterbury Rd., Bankstown, NSW.Founded the Sebel Company in Australia in1951 and, as Managing Director, initiatedthe Sebel Design Award in 1967. Has beeninterested in Product Design and developmentsince the immediate postwar years inEngland. Has many patents and inventions to his credit. Fellow of the Australianlnstitute of Management. Sometime ChairmanChairman of the Toy Manufacturers’ Associationof N.S.W., and the Direct Mail Commiilee ofthe Australian Association of NationalAdvenisers, and a past Councillor of theN.S.W. Guild of Furniture Manufacturers.As a “hobby”, is also Managing Director ofThe Town House in Sydney, and has beenresponsible for the development of severallarge building projects including The Penthousesin Darling Point.” [Biographical summary from Anon. Design Australia 5/1969, p.56.]
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1 January 1915
- Summary
- Sebel was a furniture & toy designer/manufacturer. He worked with his father in metalwork in UK, then establishing a furniture manufacturing works in Sydney. Specialising in injection moulded plastics, later diversifying into property (Sebel Town House hotel). Notable works include chairs such as the "Slim and Comfy" , the Nest-a-Bye stackable, the steel "Stak-a-Bye" and the "Integra" (designed by Charles Furey).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-08
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
ecwubben
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 23 February 1915
- Summary
- Born in Melbourne in 1915, Grahame King was an artist-printmaker who significantly contributed to the field of printmaking in Australia. He taught lithography to generations of students at RMIT and in 1965, he along with Udo Sellbach and Dr Ursula Hoff established the Print Council of Australia, of which he became the Honourary Secretary and President.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Oct-08
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- potter, craftworker, broadcaster and bark artist, was born in Melbourne, daughter of Arthur Barker and Eliza, née Stribley, and younger sister of the influential Brisbane artist and teacher, Caroline Barker . She moved with her family to Brisbane in 1920, where she was educated at Somerville House; Nina Stoddart was her art teacher. In 1925 she enrolled as a full-time student at the Brisbane Central Technical College, taking pottery classes with L.J. Harvey and painting with Martyn Roberts. She exhibited pottery with the Queensland Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association (1927-33), the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland (1930-31) and the Royal Queensland Art Society (1929-32). She was awarded first prize for original design at the 1931 Royal National Exhibition for her hand-built earthenware bowl with carved modelled and glazed decoration using local clays. One of her vases (1931) is in the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery.
Harvey encouraged Barker to take up sculpture and allowed her to work after hours at the Central Technical College (in 1934 William Moore called her a promising sculptor); but the necessary advanced study in Sydney was precluded by the state of her health (she suffered from asthma). Agnes began to work from home, making hand-painted brooches. Sales were so good that in 1931 she visited England on the proceeds.
On her return she established her own studio, called Novelart, in the Heindorff Building, Queen Street. As well as acquiring a small printing press and guillotine to produce the illustrative work she marketed in Sydney and Melbourne, she had a small electric kiln for ceramics; but the former proved so demanding that she gave up pottery in 1934.
Barker exhibited annually with the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland until 1941. In 1937 she introduced enamelled pewter work to Brisbane and cork work in 1940-41. In the late 1940s she opened a craft shop, Bronte, in her sister’s painting studio in George Street. In 1953 she married Harold Richardson and shortly afterwards gave up the craft sho
In 1959 Agnes Barker was approached by Channel 7 to demonstrate crafts that could be made in the home. The following year she made over 50 television appearances; in 1960 she also appeared on Channel 9 in Sydney. She later concentrated on bark painting and oriental brush painting, exhibiting examples of both with the Royal Queensland Art Society.
Barker died in Mount Olivet Hospital, Brisbane, on 25 April 2008. A service was held at Mount Gravatt Crematorium on 30 April 2008.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1907
- Summary
- A talented artist in multiple media, Agnes Barker went on to become well-known as a television personality who demonstrated craftmaking techniques and activities in the home.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Apr-08
- Age at death
- 101
Details
Latitude-32.05423 Longitude115.74763 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date2008-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fremantle, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Painter Betsey Currie was born in Fremantle, WA, one of four children of the family who owned the Oasis Tearooms there. The jewellery maker and silversmith Herbert Kitchener Currie (also known as Kitch Currie) was her brother. Her maternal great-grandfather was a sculptor in Melbourne. She studied art at Perth Technical College under J. W. R. Linton and A. B. Webb. Linton opened a new purpose-built studio and gallery in Murray Street West where he and his elder son Jamie established a business as 'Art Metal Workers, Designers, Dealers in works of Art, etc’. This included a display area and a studio room for drawing, painting, sculpting or exhibiting. Currie and Jamie Linton worked there helping at the Linton School of Art from 1922-1925. Students came for life classes one or two nights a week. Currie shared a studio in 1929 with Ivor Hunt but this became impossible after the family lost their fortune in the Depression. J. W. R. Linton was retired early by the Education Department at the end of 1931 because of the 'financial emergency’ of the Depression. In 1932, when Jamie opened The Linton Institute of Art on the corner of King and Hay Streets, Perth, he was joined by his father and Currie. The Institute housed the studios and an art school. Currie acted as the Lintons’ assistant and general factotum, organizing the classes and teaching students. Kitch Curry helped with the metalwork. Extra 'life’ classes at night were carefully scrutinised by the police to ensure that all attendees were bona fide and that the nude did not move. The institute quickly became a meeting place for students, artists, family and friends. It also served as an exhibition venue with an alcove at the top of the stairs set up with a permanent display managed by Currie. The Linton Institute of Art lasted until about 1935. When J. W. R. Linton’s wife Lottie moved interstate in 1938, Currie and Linton went to live in Parkerville. She changed her name to Linton by deed poll in 1942. She and her sister Nell ran Currie’s Gift Shop in the Wheatsheaf centre, corner of St George’s Terrac eand Kings Street in Perth in the 1940s and 1950s to sell the work of Kitch Currie and the Lintons. Linton died in 1947 and in 1957 Betsey moved with Kitch to Greenmount. She taught art at Fremantle Prison through the Perth Technical College extension service from 1955 and retired in 1965. She and her sister travelled with Kitch to Europe and Morocco. In 1999, in her nineties, she enjoyed a resurgence of her art with almost sell-out exhibitions of pictures selected from her old folios. RED SECTIONS
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- Painter and teacher who had a long association with J. W. R. Linton and worked at the Linton Institute of Art. She changed her name to Linton by deed poll in 1942.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2008
- Age at death
- 103
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1965-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Adam Cullen, painter and Archibald Prize winner, was born in Sydney in 1963. He studied Fine Arts and Professional Art Studies at the City Art Institute in Paddington, initially graduating in 1987. Later he returned as a research student when the former CAE joined the He University of New South Wales, graduating with a Master of Fine Arts in 1999. Despite his apparent conventional academic trajectory, Cullen was initially best known for his confrontational stunts and punkish ploys. In one performance he walked around for a week with a severed pig’s head chained to his ankle, during which time he was banned from public transport. His friend and fellow student, Andrew Frost, saw this as an indication of his long term obsession with decay and death.Cullen’s most challenging performance piece was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2005. Home Economics consisted of Cullen and fellow artist Cash Brown, standing at a table with various domestic appliances and easily purchased ingredients. Then as Cullen read from sources found on the internet, Brown drew accompanying diagrams to show how weapons of mass destruction could be made by all.His joy in challenging authority can be seen in his later collaboration with Mark 'Chopper’ Read on a children’s book entitled Hooky the Cripple . Cullen’s work approached difficult social issues with a light touch. Crime, masculinity and cowboy culture, were all exposed through a lens of humour. Formally, his paintings united high and low culture through the combination of bold, gestural brushstrokes and appropriated imagery. Cullen was the recipient of a number of distinguished prizes most famously the Archibald Prize in 2000 for his portrait of the actor David Wenham. Ice was also a regular finalist in the Archibald, the Sulman and the Blake Prize. In 2002 Cullen represented Australia at the 25th Bienal de Sao Paulo.For many years he suffered from ill health, which was exacerbated by a life style characterised by drugs and heavy drinking. At the time of his death he was a diabetic, and had his pancreas removed and was heavily medicated, not for pleasure but for survival. Andrew Frost wrote 'Adam has left us his legacy: the good, the bad and the ugly, the funny, the insightful and glacial glistening of truth, the dancing black line, the splat of curdled enamel on the infinity of a single colour acrylic. It wasn’t conceptual he always said, it was optical. Just look and you will see.’
Writers:
Chalk Horse Gallery
Joanna Mendelssohn
duckydo37
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 9 October 1965
- Summary
- Adam Cullen delighted in confronting both his fellow artists and the establishment with his works that explored crime, masculinity and cowboy culture through a lens of bleak humour.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Jul-07
- Age at death
- 42
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Richard Martin Wood was born in Sydney on 15 November 1949 the eldest of the two sons born to Ronald Wood and Irene May née Martin. He was educated at the Sydney Grammar School but left school in 1965 to work in his family’s book and stationery business in Pyrmont. He quit working there in 1969 to travel around Australia with a group of friends. Their car broke down in Mackay and, after repairing the car and completing the trip they returned to Sydney. However, the prospect of living at Mackay appealed to Wood and he settled there in 1972. His involvement with pottery began when he enrolled in hobby classes at the Mackay Education Centre in 1973 while he worked as a crane-driver at the Mackay Sugar Co-operative Association’s Racecourse Mill. He was awarded a master craftsman/trainee grant from the Crafts Board of the Australia Council in 1978 and worked with the Eungella potters, Arthur and Carol Rosser in 1979-80. After completing his traineeship he received a workshop development grant from the Crafts Board and set up his pottery at Black’s Beach Pottery in 1981 and devoted the remainder of his career to the vocation of a potter. He relocated to Ocean Avenue, Slade Point and set up EarthSea Pottery in 1991 and from 1995 worked with his wife, Leonie Snedden. In 1993 he was awarded a Graduate Diploma in Visual Arts from Monash University, Gippsland Campus and in 2001 he completed a Certificate in Science from the James Cook University, Townsville.
His early work demonstrates the interest in salt-glaze firing that followed his training with the Rossers and, subsequently shows in the decorated surfaces of works such as Regions Torridae 1991 (QAG Collection). His work evolved over years and was inspired by bushwalking, windsurfing and scuba-diving and also incorporated the forms of seed pods, bark patterns and island profiles. Wood’s later work exploits glazing techniques from ancient China.
From 1982 he held a number of solo exhibitions including several at the Queensland Potters Association/Fusions Gallery in 1985, 1987 and 1993 (as well a group exhibitions for salt-glazed work). He also shared an exhibition with Leonie at Gallery 10, Townsville in 1996. Wood also exhibited at the Plumridge Gallery, Brisbane in 1986 and 1987. His work has been included in several significant group exhibitions such as 'The Queensland Gift 1988’ (Queensland Potters Association) and 'Decorated clay’ (QAG) 1991 and throughout his career he conducted numerous workshops and received a number of awards for his stonewares throughout North Queensland. His death on 21 June 2007 was caused by melanoma.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 November 1949
- Summary
- Rick Wood was an accomplished potter who was based in regional Queensland and who included a range of traditional glazing techniques and contemporary decorative motifs in his work.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Jun-07
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1948-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Sydney on 15 November 1948. He attended Our Lady of the Sacred Heart College, Bowral (1958-60), Chevalier College Bowral (1961-62), Christian Brothers, Rose Bay (1962-63), the Independent School of Dramatic Art, North Sydney (1968-71), a National Institute of Dramatic Art Playwright Forum in 1973 and a Royal Academy of Dramatic Art Professional Workshop at London in 1979. Cartooning, which he started doing in the Traralgon Journal in 1967, paralleled his acting career. In London he contributed to Punch and worked on the Australian Express for which he created the weekly comic strip Frogin (1980-82).
Returning to Sydney in 1983, Kemsley took over drawing the daily comic strip Ginger Meggs (in the Sydney Morning Herald to mid 2005, Daily Telegraph [Sydney] since then), a weekly (coloured) strip in the Sun-Herald that was syndicated to the US (et al.?). Some Days You’re A Legend.Some Days You Ain’t (Allen & Kemsley Publishing: Mosman NSW, 1995) was Kemsley’s fourth collection of Ginger Meggs comics strips, the first being published in November 1983. It was also the 39th volume in the Ginger Meggs series, which dates back to Jim Bancks 's first anthology of 1924 (three years after he created Ginger and the gang in the Sydney Sun ).
Kemsley was president of the Black and White Artists’ Club in 1988-90 and was elected a life member in 1991. Married to Helen Lorraine Perry with two sons, he lived in the Southern Highlands of NSW until his death in December 2007.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 15 November 1948
- Summary
- Contemporary Sydney/Southern Highlands cartoonist and actor. Was responsible for the "Ginger Meggs" strip for over 20 years, working right up until his death in December 2007. From 1988-1990 he was president of the Black and White Artists Club.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Dec-07
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude-36.3131874 Longitude145.0480905 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kyabram, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1937
- Summary
- Painter, teacher and pioneer of the Melbourne leather scene
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2007
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- John Stringer’s creative intelligence was the guiding spirit behind The Field of 1968. In the 1970s and 80s he created innovative exhibitions in New York, before moving to Perth where his creative intelligence was responsible for the new directions of the Kerry Stokes collection.
John Norris Stringer was born in Melbourne on 2 October 1937, the son of Walter Stringer, a banker, and his wife Eva. His father was an an enthusiastic photographer and his interest in the arts was encouraged. After leaving school he first enrolled in Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne, and later completed a Diploma in Art at RMIT. His passion for art led to his first appointment in 1957 as Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Victoria, under the formidable Dr Ursula Hoff. Although he enjoyed drilling down into the possible layers of meaning in individual works of art, Stringer’s talent was always towards display, and in time a staff restructure saw him appointed Exhibitions Officer.In 1968 he collaborated with Brian Finemore to curate The Field, the innovative exhibition of contemporary Australian art that opened the new National Gallery of Victoria building in St Kilda Road. The year before MoMA had brought the travelling exhibition Two Decades of American Painting to Australia. Waldo Rasmussen, MoMA’s International program director had been so impressed by the young Stringer that he arranged for him to go to New York as assistant program director.Here he arranged for exhibitions to travel to Europe, Latin America and Australasia. In 1975, Stringer oversaw MoMA’s blockbuster _Modern Masters: Manet to Matisse _ when it travelled to Sydney and Melbourne.In 1976 he returned to Australia to head the Australian Art Exhibitions Corporation, which brought a blockbuster exhibition of Chinese art, and his own initiative– El Dorado: Colombian Gold. This was less financially successful than China, although the cognoscenti enjoyed the pun of the exhibition’s title and the beauty of the finely crafted gold sculptures. Stringer returned to New York in 1978 as an independent curator. His marriage to June Webb was over, but he remained close to his children – his daughter Chloe and the twins Phoebe and Simon. He curated Latin American exhibitions for a gallery in Brooklyn,often working closely with his lover, the Columbian art critic Eduardo Serrano. He also showed Melbourne minimalist Robert Hunter and Sydney funk jeweller Peter Tully. For almost a decade he also ran visual arts at David Rockefeller’s project of Centre for Inter-American Relations. In 1988, when Betty Churcher offered him the position of curator at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, he was concerned both about how to keep close to his children, but also Serrano. Daniel Thomas later wrote that 'the long-distance relationship inevitably ran its course.’ In 1992 Betty Churcher moved to the National Gallery of Australia, and his curatorial role became more bound by administrative duties, which took Stringer away from art. He was saved when Kerry Stokes asked him if he would like to be curator of his personal collection. This new position gave him unprecedented freedon to promote West Australian art in both an international and national context.As well as great European and American work, Stringer was responsible for many innovative Australian and new Zealand works entering the Stokes collection. These included Howard Taylor, Juan Davila’s Stupid as a Painter John Brack,Michael Parekowhai, and Stuart Elliott.His last exhibition, Cross Currents, curated for Stokes and Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, was still on view when he died.Daniel Thomas, in his obituary of Stringer wrote that as he approached his 70th birthday Stringer was 'whippet-thin and fit, cool and wonderfully considerate, and engaged with the wonders of the natural world as well as new international art’. His daughter Chloe was to be married, and when he failed to turn up for wedding photographs, his former wife went to look for him and found him dead from a sudden heart attack, dressed for the occasion in Versace.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 October 1937
- Summary
- John Stringer was the innovative exhibition officer at the National Gallery of Victoria who was the guiding spirit behind The Field of 1968. Later he created innovative exhibitions for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, before moving to Perth where his creative intelligence was responsible for the new directions of the Kerry Stokes collection.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Nov-07
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Victor Dove was born in Sydney on 17th September 1928. He lived in Carrs Park and was educated at Hurstville High School in East Sydney. At an early age Victor’s love for art had become obvious and his father, the late Sidney Dove, had a special table with an easel built for him. After leaving high school, Victor enrolled at East Sydney Technical College where he studied commercial art, figure drawing, painting and composition, progressing into a career as a commercial artist.
Early in his career Victor established a position in Pakistan and stayed there for three years working for a Karachi advertising agency, traveling extensively and sketching many points of interest during his stay.
After moving back to Australia he worked as a press artist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Daily Telegraph , establishing himself as a commercial artist and, to some degree, a travel writer & photographer.
He had a love of travel and undertook extensive visits throughout South East Asia during his holidays, studying the culture and people of various countries and publishing a number of articles for Arts of Asia , Kaleidoscope and various other related magazines during his somewhat limited spare time; this eventually overtook his passion for painting and became his first love.
Victor’s photography and research into South East Asian cultures often led to a presentation slide show to related migrant culture groups in Australia including the Indonesian Society and the Korean Society.
While spending time in Fiji during the late 60s, he gathered a portfolio of information and sketches which were published in 1970 in his book Fiji Sketchbook (Rigby Press).
In his spare time, and later after he retired, Victor visited the south coast of New South Wales with his brother Frederick and family, sketching and painting various points of interest, particularly of the Kiama and Jamberoo areas, while there. Victor’s works also include a number of paintings and drawings from around Cronulla and Doll’s Point in Sydney.
Throughout his life, Victor worked in various media including painting, black & white line and wash drawing (he was a member of the Australian Black & White Artists’ Club) and photography.
Victor Dove died on 26 June 2007.
Writers:
Dove, Charles
Date written:
1970
Last updated:
2008
- Born
- b. 17 September 1928
- Summary
- A Sydney-born artist and travel writer whose paintings include many scenes of South East Asia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Sep-07
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-37.1417687 Longitude142.520244 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Halls Gap, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 8 November 1928
- Summary
- Fashion designer and couturier based in Melbourne and Darlington Point, New South Wales. Life partner and collaborator of Ross Weymouth.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Feb-07
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude51 Longitude9 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Germany
- Biography
- Mr. Gerd Block.Studied architecture in Berlin andKarlsruhe. Winner of Gold Medal for bestFinal Year thesis at Karlsruhe. Migrated toAustralia, 1951 . ln private practice, with hiswife, since 1956. Post graduate degreeMelbourne University, I965. Senior Lecturerand Year Master at School of Architectureand Building, University of Melbourne,since 1964. Published works on NetworkAnalysis and Architectural Education.[Anon. Design Australia, 5/1969, p.56.]
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2016
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1 January 1926
- Summary
- Renate and Gerd Block worked in partnership as architects. In 1958, they were exhibiting furniture and lighting in "Architecture and Arts". They were the architects for the first Canberra mosque, 1960. They were among the first interior architects to design and install the "office landscape" / Bürolandschaft in Australia. Their first commission to use this approach was the Nunawading Municipal Offices in Victoria ca.1969.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-07
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-32.5664044 Longitude151.1733972 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Singleton, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2007
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-36.3300305 Longitude146.2283047 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wangandary, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Lorna Merle Chick was born 18 August 1922 in Wangandary, a small farming community in north-eastern Victoria lying between the Warby Ranges and the rural city of Wangaratta, a few kilometres to the east. Chick grew up on the family farm, often riding her horse through the Warby Ranges, a 400m high granitic outlier of the Great Dividing Range rich in bird and plant life (Fawcett 1986). The Warby Ranges entered the public imagination when the Kelly Gang passed through them soon after the infamous Stringy Bark Creek police murders in 1878. Chick knew gang member Steve Hart’s brother Dick as a child, as her grandmother’s property adjoined the Hart’s property (Ford 1986). The subject matter of most of Chick’s work was inspired and informed by local bushranger legend and the small agricultural landholdings containing orchards, crops and stock around Wangaratta, which is situated on a river plain surrounded by the peaks of the Great Dividing Range and the Warby Ranges.
Chick’s painting career began by chance around 1960 after she attended Dookie Agricultural College to pursue subjects for farmer’s wives such as book keeping and jam making. This endeavour was the result of her having to assume more responsibility for the everyday running of the farm, following her husband Bert’s serious and incapacitating tractor accident (Unknown 1986). The college also offered an art appreciation course, which, after she attended, led her sons Marcus and Louis to express an interest in taking up art. The only place locally that ran an art class was Wangaratta Technical School. Chick later recounted that as she sat in the car while her children were being taught, the art teacher, Jock Thomlinson, came up to her and told her to come inside and see what she could do, an idea she hadn’t considered (Adams 1978). Thomlinson did little more than show Chick how to mix and apply paint to canvas, later writing of her unique perception and intuitive understanding of her compositions that were underpinned by a strong determination and interest in technique (Thomlinson 1985).
While early in her painting career Chick painted the occasional seascape including Lakes Entrance (1964), the majority of her oeuvre depicted the agricultural lands of North-East Victoria in which she lived all her life. Often noted for their panoramic, aerial views, Chick’s landscape paintings revelled in the native wildflowers and birdlife of the surrounding hills and mountains, epitomised by Where Eagles Nest (1969), in the Wangaratta Art Gallery collection and Power’s Lookout (1975), a painting whose title is in keeping with her interest in local bushranger lore (Banfield 1979, Karovich 1985). Chick also delighted in the minutiae of floral displays such as Wildflowers of the Warby Ranges (1969) and Roses (1977). Water divining, an activity she learnt while accompanying her husband, led to her travelling around the district, suggesting landscapes to paint (Kaptein 2004). Chick was also taken to composing piano music to accompany many of her paintings (Adams 1978).
During the 1960s and 1970s painting was secondary to farm and family life as Chick raised her sons and managed their 40ha property. As a consequence, painting was only done at night after her daily chores were completed (Hart 2004). In the 1980s, when her sons had grown up and her father, whom she had also cared for, had died, she was able to devote more of her time to painting. She was assisted in this by several Visual Arts Board grants in the early 1980s. She would retire to her small galvanised shed near her farmhouse that she used for an art studio at 8:30 in the morning and finish at 5:30pm (Unknown 1986). Despite this work ethic, Chick’s output was slow. On average it would take three months to complete a work and her largest painting, Power’s Lookout, at over 3m in width, took up to eighteen months to complete. This work was acquired by the National Gallery of Australia in 1976 (Unknown July 1976, Unknown 1986). She would also rework the same painting over many years (Unknown 1986). By the mid 1980s Chick estimated that she had completed around forty paintings, while near the end of her life two decades later, she had completed about one hundred (Ford 1986, Author Pers. comm. 2006)
Throughout her career Chick was wary and suspicious of the motives of those involved in the art world (Fawcett 1986). She once claimed that an art dealer stole a painting and that she received phone calls from people demanding that she supply them with work otherwise they would duplicate her style and put her out of business (Unknown 1986). She shunned what she called the art worlds “cocktail party trappings”. Curators also incurred her wrath. She described one as a careerist who did not ask her permission to display works in an upcoming exhibition (Author Pers. comm. 2006). However, she formed a friendship with then Ballarat Art Gallery director Jim Mollison in the late 1960s which ultimately led to the acquisition of several of her paintings for the national collection soon after he become director of the new National Gallery in Canberra in October 1971 (Unknown March 1972, Unknown July 1976, Unknown December 1976). Visitors to her farmhouse were often greeted with refreshments and invariably invited to lunch (Fawcett 1986).
Besides Mollison’s interest in Chick, her paintings were eagerly sought by collectors. Despite favouring traditional style paintings, the Benalla based business man Laurie Ledger commissioned Chick to paint his family property. This resulted in the work Woolleen from a Helicopter (1975), one of five of her paintings he donated to the Benalla Art Gallery (Unknown December 1976). The aptly named Dr W.H. Orchard was a private collector of naive art in the 1960s and 1970s that actively sought her works and lent them to early, significant group exhibitions of Australian naive art; 'The Innocent Eye’ (Benalla Art Gallery 1975-76) and 'Wonderland- Some Naifs’ (Albury Regional Art Centre and touring 1983-4). With the purchase of four works for Canberra’s new Parliament House from her Glenrowan and Kelly Legend Country series in 1986, Chick’s paintings began to attract greater attention. Due mainly to her small output, her paintings rarely come up for auction (McPhee 2005).
Lorna Chick passed away in April 2007 and was buried in Wangaratta. Her biggest regret appears to have been that she did not begin painting sooner in life (Ford 1986). Wangaratta Art Gallery organised a retrospective of her work as part of their 25th Anniversary celebrations in 2012-13.
Writers:
bullj
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 18 August 1922
- Summary
- Artist known for her paintings of the agricultural lands of North East Victoria, some of which are grand in scale and scope. Her work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 22-Apr-07
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.8342887 Longitude151.2182049 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Neutral Bay, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- At times it seemed Bill Spencer led a double life. For many years he was a fixture at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where he gave advice to visitors and colleagues alike. But not on art, as the hierarchical gallery structure did not encourage attendants to pass opinions on matters aesthetic. But once the uniform was discarded he reverted to being an artist painting sensitive Post Impressionist inspired landscapes of mainly New South Wales’ subjects, and portraits often of family and friends. Art governed Bill’s life. His father was a builder, designing as well as building houses on the lower north shore, near their Neutral Bay home. When Bill left school at 15 he enrolled in classes at the Julian Ashton school where he was taught by John Passmore, Eric Wilson, Jean Appleton and Henry Gibbons who praised his draughtsmanship. A solo exhibition at the Grosvenor gallery in 1939 was a great success. But as with most young men of his generation he was soon caught up by World War II, where he served in Army Intelligence. After the War his health was not good and this may have influenced his decision to choose the one job where he could work surrounded by art, as an attendant at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. With his thirst for knowledge of all manner of things and his natural organisational skills it was not surprising that he became the union representative of the general staff for the gallery. He settled at Miranda with his wife Cainetta Caines and here they raised their four children. Bill continued to paint on his days off. He was a regular exhibitor at local art exhibitions in NSW and his paintings of regional landscapes can be found in public collections throughout New South Wales. He held solo exhibitions at Dominion Galleries in 1965, Holdsworth Galleries in 1970, 1975 and 1979. His watercolour, Landscape at Richmond NSW, was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1971. In 1976 the AGNSW conservator, Bill Boustead, alerted the Gallery to the health hazards of the asbestos which had been sprayed onto the ceiling of the new gallery building. The matter was brought to the attention of the Public Works Department, but nothing was done. By 1978 the staff showed the administration evidence that the asbestos was flaking from the gallery ceiling throughout the building. A subsequent Health Commission report indicated that although there were areas where the sprayed ceiling was falling away and fibres going into the atmosphere, it was regarded as “being without health risk”. Bill did not accept this report and took his concerns to the Public Service Association. The PSA made representations on behalf of the gallery attendants to the Public Service Board. The Board refused to consider the removal of the asbestos, but agreed to replace the ceilings “as a long term projected. as funds become available”. Bill’s actions in convincing his colleagues of the danger of the asbestos led to the attendants threatening immediate work bans. Aleks Danko and Joan Grounds, artists who were preparing for the Biennale of Sydney picketed the gallery in sympathy, and threatened to withdraw their work. On 20 April 1979 the Premier, Neville Wran, agreed to the immediate removal of the ceiling. According to the gallery’s official communication “the decision did not arise from concern of any immediate health risk”. The name, “Asbestos Bill”, stayed.After Bill and Cainetta’s children went their ways, their father had more time for art. In 1998 his portrait of Cainetta, entered in the Moran Prize was praised by the critic Robert Rooney for the way it reconciled “abstraction and figuration”. He taught at both Gymea Technical College and the Royal Art Society. He was an inspirational teacher, loved for his warmth, knowledge and passion. Bill’s last years were cruel. Parkinson’s Disease immobilised him. Dementia destroyed much of his mind, except that when he looked at art he returned in part, to being the man he once was, and he continued to draw. The night before he died he was watching the Antiques Roadshow on television and saw a painting of cows in a field. “That looks like a Constable”, he said. It was not quite right, but the painting was indeed painted by one of Constable’s followers.
Writers:
Mendelssohn, Joanna
Note:
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 6 August 1919
- Summary
- In one life Bill Spencer was the Art Gallery of New South Wales attendant who led the fight against asbestos in the gallery building in the late 1970s, but as W.J. Spencer he was a graduate of the Julian Ashton school who for many years exhibited work in regional art exhibitions throughout New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Nov-07
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude52.0799838 Longitude4.3113461 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- The Hague, The Netherlands
- Biography
- Maryke Degeus was born at The Hague, The Netherlands in 1917. She had an unhappy childhood, but later trained as a school teacher. She became an important member of the circle around Jon Molvig and was largely self taught (although she may have studied briefly at the Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten, The Hague). During the years of World War II she was involved with the Dutch resistance movement, and also served in Indonesia. In 1949 she came to live in Brisbane where she taught at the Stuartholme Convent and a few years later built a cottage on Acacia Street, Surfers Paradise. There she taught children’s art and produced many watercolour studies of children. At the suggestion of the art dealer, John Cooper, she studied with Jon Molvig at St Mary’s Studio, Kangaroo Point, Brisbane from 1957. She became friendly with Ian Fairweather and produced several portraits of him. The following year she travelled with Molvig to Melbourne and through Central Australia. Degeus was notable for her vigorous technique especially with the palette knife. In 1960 she was reported as making her living from art as she was able to turn her hand to any necessity. At her suggestion Jon Molvig and Charles Blackman set up a teaching studio at Broadbeach for about a year. She taught as well as designed costumes for the production of Hotel Paradiso by the Gold Coast Little Theatre 1961.
During her marriage to an oil company executive, whom she met while travelling in Holland in 1966, she lived in Borneo and Sarawak but after they separated, Degeus returned to live in Surfers Paradise. She was one of the first Australian artists to be influenced by the experience of Indonesia – in 1972 she exhibited works with tribal subjects at the Reid Gallery. Subsequently, adapting once more to necessity, she transferred her major art interest to ceramics in which the influence of Indonesia dominated. As central Surfers Paradise was being developed extensively she sold her studio and moved to a new house/studio at Nerang where her ceramics and a ceramic mural were an important feature of its decoration. During the 1970s she also conducted pottery classes for children.
Degeus exhibited paintings extensively from 1958 in group exhibitions including : H.C. Richards Memorial Prize 1958-64; Redcliffe Art Contest 1959-72; Queensland Artists of Fame and Promise 1959; Centenary Art Competition 1959; Queensland Centenary Eisteddfod Art Competition 1959 (for which she was awarded the prize for 'Bag sewer’); Contemporary Art Society of Australia (Queensland Branch) 1962-64; Royal National Association 1963-65; L.J. Harvey Memorial Prize for Drawing 1963; Half Dozen Group of Artists 1964 and the Gold Coast City Art Prize 1968-71.
Maria Wilhelmina Degeus, as she was also known, died on 12 February 2007.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1917
- Summary
- Maryke Degeus was one of the many European migrants whose entry into Australia after World War Two transformed our culture. She was associated with Jon Molvig and innovative art practice in Brisbane in the 1950s and 1960s. Her intimate connections with Bali informed her art and experimentations with pottery in subsequent decades.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Feb-07
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Ivan Englund (1915-2007) was born in Liverpool, NSW. He completed a Diploma of Painting and Drawing at East Sydney Technical College (ESTC) in 1951, then taught art and ceramics in institutions in Victoria, Canberra and Wollongong, where he took up a post at the Technical College in 1954. He was one of the original four members of the Potters’ Society of New South Wales (later the Potters’ Society of Australia) when it was formed in 1956. He conducted extensive research into glazes and published two books and many articles on this work. In 1962, he was awarded an ESTC Fellowship for his development of igneous rock glazes. In 1971, he was appointed Senior Head Teacher of Art at ESTC, and from 1972 to 1977, he conducted the Ivan Englund Pottery School at the Rocks, before moving to Walcha, NSW, and then to Bawley Point, NSW, to work as a full-time potter. For his work on middle-fire glazes he received a Doctorate from Wollongong University in 1995. He has entries in the 1974-1996 potters’ directories. His mark is an incised or impressed 'IE’ in various forms.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Judith Pearce
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 4 November 1915
- Summary
- Ivan Englund was one of the founders of the Potters' Society of New South Wales in 1956. He taught at the Wollongong and East Sydney technical colleges before setting up his own pottery school at the Rocks in 1972. He conducted extensive research into glazes and published two books and many articles on this work.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Oct-07
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- Wolfgang Sievers was one of the finest architectural and industrial photographers working in Australia in the second half of the twentieth century. For an extended biography click on the peer reviewed biography tab below.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 18 September 1913
- Summary
- German-born Australian photographer whose subject matter consisted primarily of Australian architecture and heavy industry. Sievers arrived in Australia in 1938 and died in Victoria in 2007.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Aug-07
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-33.8858088 Longitude151.1024805 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date2007-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burwood, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Dorothy Ellen Lindsay nee Simpson was born in 1912 in the Sydney suburb of Burwood. In 1936 she married Norman Andrews Lindsay. He had been born in Wauchope, near Port Macquarie in New South Wales, on 20 May 1904, son of Norman J. and Mary Lindsay; and died on 10 May 1982, aged 78, at Thurloo Downs via Bourke. (There does not appear to be any relationship to Norman Alfred Williams Lindsay).
The couple had two sons. During World War II (1939-1945), Dorothy Lindsay worked for the Red Cross, while her husband served in the Australian Army, rising to the rank of Captain. By 1968 they were living in Turner Avenue, Haberfield, New South Wales. In 1979 the Lindsays moved to Wauchope { war-hope }. Lindsay died on 1 May 2007, aged 94, in Port Macquarie Base Hospital.
Lindsay studied art at the Australian School of Sketching, Sydney, from 1927, and in the 1970s attended a course at the Royal Art Society, Sydney. In 1968 she joined the Drummoyne Municipal Art Society and the Ryde Art Society. In 1976 she founded the Ashfield Municipal Art Society. This society was quite active at first, with open competitions exhibited in Ashfield Town Hall, but existed for only a few years. She is known to have exhibited with at least the Drummoyne Municipal Art Society (now the Drummoyne Art Society Inc) and Ashfield Art Society. The only works known to the biographer are minor landscape works in oils dating from the late 1970s. She is represented in South Africa, Australia, Papua-New Guinea, England, France, Holland, Canada, and Japan (Dorothy Lindsay, pers. comm. 2002). Her signature was 'Dorothy Lindsay’ scratched into the paint.
Writers:
Rost, Fred
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1912
- Summary
- Dorothy Ellen Lindsay (née Simpson), JP, BEM. Community worker and artist (painting and drawing). Founder of the Ashfield Art Society.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-May-07
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-29.43679805 Longitude151.1770693 Start Date1959-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Inverell, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 22 February 1959
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Jul-06
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1951-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1951
- Summary
- Wright was a West Australian furniture designer and maker who worked as a Denmark WA farmer and photographer before returning to study at the West Australian Institute of Technology in 1982. While working in interior design, jewellery and 3-dimensional work, his work is primarily in wood and his production furniture was sold through ANIBOU, Sydney and other outlets.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-06
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude-23.447 Longitude131.882 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Haasts Bluff, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born in the late 1940s at Haasts Bluff, where Cameron’s family settled after walking in from Pintupi country hundreds of kilometres west. The area around the Lizard Dreaming mountain which lies alongside Kintore was Cameron’s father’s country. He started painting for Papunya Tula Artists at Kintore in about 1987 under the instruction of Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri and Benny Tjapaltjarri , but later became more involved with community affairs. Stories depicted in Cameron’s paintings related to the Tingari cycle and included a Bandicoot Dreaming story around Desert Bore and a Wallaby and Budgerigar Dreaming site north-west of Nyirrpi.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1950
- Summary
- Cameron painted at Kintore for about a decade from 1987 under the instruction of Mick Namarari Tjapaltjarri and Benny Tjapaltjarri. He later dedicated himself to working for the Kintore Clinic.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2006
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-37.8611788 Longitude144.8898569 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Williamstown, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Jon Plapp was born in the western bayside suburb of Williamstown, Victoria, in 1938; received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne in 1959; and in 1966 moved to St Louis, Missouri, USA, where he completed a doctorate in psychology at the Washington University in 1967. There, Plapp took advantage of the Washington University’s fine art department to take some instruction in painting and life drawing. This was the extent of his formal art training .
In 1968 Jon Plapp relocated to Toronto, Canada, where he entered the social scene surrounding the David Mirvish gallery and met colour-field and geometric abstractionists such as Jules Olisky, Frank Stella, Larry Poons, and Canadian abstractionist Jack Bush. Their work profoundly influenced Plapp, both for its aesthetic qualities, and for its balance and serenity, that resonated with his own temperament and philosophical outlook. He was drawn to try this style of painting as it seemed an art he could make, might love, and possibly would excel in. In a spirit of admiration and emulation, he became a committed artist. By 1976 he was sufficiently confident in his work to invest in a studio space, to be shared with like-minded artists David Bolduc and Paul Slogett.
For Plapp, being an artist was not just about painting, it was a way of life. Throwing himself into the art world, he engaged in its activities, enjoyed its attitudes, and made friends with other artists and art world personalities. Richard McMillan, his life partner, whom he met in the late 1960s in Toronto, was both a sculptor and an academic. The couple were to be familiar faces in the Canadian and Australian art scenes, frequenting exhibition openings and other arts events.
In 1977 the two artists moved back to Australia where they settled in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills. Here Plapp continued to explore colour-field painting. His works from this period are characterised by subtle variations in colour aided by a play of texture, with impasto used to build swollen ridges of acrylic paint. In 1979 he had his first solo exhibition at Watters Gallery, which continued to represent him in Sydney. In Melbourne, since the 1990s he was represented by the Charles Nodrum Gallery; in Toronto he was represented by the Klonaridis Gallery; and in New York by the Rosenberg Gallery. Between 1979 and 2005 Plapp showed regularly in Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania, Brisbane and Toronto. A thoughtful survey of his work, Elusive Meanings, was held at the Tasmanian Devonport Gallery and Arts Centre in 1995. The curator, Fiona Christie, had first met Plapp in 1990 on one of Plapp’s regular visits to the northwest coast of Tasmania, where his family had settled in the 1850s. The survey focused on Plapp’s geometric abstractionist works from a critical ten-year period between 1984 and 1994.
Plapp started to explore geometric abstraction in the 1980s, creating from it works whose ambiguous mixture of freedom and discipline represented his response to life. In the burgeoning age of the computer, Plapp’s art was systematic without being mechanical or straightforward. His methodology embraced the geometry of the hand-worker as opposed to that of the scientist. He would tear his canvases into the desired length and use the loosened strands to plot right-angular arrangements of threads across the surface, securing them with tacks. When his hands started to shake — a symptom of the Parkinson’s disease from which he suffered for many years — Plapp took a leaf from Pollock’s book and laid his canvases on the ground, steadying his arm by leaning on the floor. He worked in series, diligently experimenting with each variation of a theme until he had exhausted its creative possibilities. The works produced at the end of his career, when the shaking was at its most extreme, ambitiously involved complex and fine lineal systems. The monochromic lines, some dead-straight, some with a slight waver, express Plapp’s human persistence and strict dedication to his art.
If recognition for Plapp’s art was quiet, he achieved a solid position in the estimation of critics, curators, dealers and collectors. In 2000 he and Richard McMillan were granted a residency at the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. His work is held by public, corporate and private collections in Australia and North America, including the National Gallery of Australia, MOCA, the collection of Ann Lewis, the University of Toronto, the University of Sydney, New England Regional Art Museum, the AMP collection, and Artbank.
As well as being notably dedicated to his art, Plapp was equally committed to his work as a psychologist in the Rivendell Child and Adolescent Unit at Concord Hospital. Terence Maloon, in the essay for the catalogue of a posthumous survey of Plapp’s work at Watters Gallery in 2009, noted that Plapp’s art expressed many of the intuitive responses of the psychologist: an alertness to tone, energy of expression, alternations of emphasis, meaningful silences — and the implications behind them — are the key to the paintings as to the psychologist’s work of diagnosis. More practically, Plapp’s career in psychology gave him the freedom to hold onto his ideal of art for art’s sake with no fiscal requirements riding on his art practice.
In the December of 2006, after failing to answer phone calls from his friends and his dealer, Jon Plapp was found dead in the apartment he had shared with Richard McMillan. McMillan, Plapp’s primary carer as his battle with Parkinson’s wore on, had died suddenly of a brain tumor five months before, in June 2006. Mourning, and battling his own fast-declining health, Plapp continued to work until the end, producing a new series of works on paper, which Watters Gallery exhibited in 2007, the year following the artist’s death.
Writers:
HMBG
Date written:
2016
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1938
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Nov-06
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- This is a stub. Please help the DAAO by adding information.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1936
- Summary
- Painter, post-object artist, always encouraging new ideas, Noel Sheridan had a major impact on art and ideas in Adelaide and Perth as well as his native Dublin.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12-Jul-06
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude65.0377727 Longitude-92.5540791 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NT
- Biography
- Paddy Fordham Wainburranga (corn circa 1935) was a senior artist (painter, sculptor, printmaker and dancer) and a storyteller of Aboriginal culture and history, including historical events associated with European occupation.
This entry is a stub. A full bio is coming.
Writers:
Stephen K Brown
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1935
- Summary
- Paddy Fordham Wainburranga (corn circa 1935) was a senior artist (painter, sculptor, printmaker and dancer) and a storyteller of Aboriginal culture and history, including historical events associated with European occupation.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jun-06
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lupul, Frederick Range, NT, Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- Pintupi/Ngaatjatjara artist who began painting in 1993 and was awarded the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award in 1999.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2006
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude50.938361 Longitude6.959974 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cologne, Germany
- Biography
- printmaker, was born in Cologne, Germany. Studied Kölner Werkschulen, Cologne, 1947-1953, where he organised a print workshop, Kölner Presse. Came to Australia in 1955 and held a joint exhibition of prints with Karen Schepers. Lecturer in printmaking South Australian School of Art 1960-1963; Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Vic.1965-1971; Canberra School of Art {1980s-1993?}. Founding member of the Print Council of Australia, along with Graham King, in 1966. Goya-influenced prints of 1966 include 'The Target is Man’ (illustrated in Bernard Smith, 'The Sellbach Etchings’, Overland 34, May 1966, 24-28). He had hard edge works in 'The Field’, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Vic. 1968. Foundation member of the Australia Council’s Visual Arts and Crafts Board in 1973 and of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board. Head of the School of Art at Tasmania College of Advanced Education, Hobart 1971-1977 [McCulloch says 1972 78], then went to Brisbane [Canberra from 1978 to present acc. McCulloch]; returned to Hobart 1993.
IMAGE: Nightwatch series 1993 (extended from a commission by the Queensland Law Society) consists of 30 b/w aquatints in a very European style; subjects range from enigmatic mockery to severe indictment of the human species. Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tas.(#5663.1) has 1990 artist’s proof of men running round a rock with a figure, probably female, playing a pipe on the top; also (#5663.2) 1990 artist’s proof of men looking at a woman chopped into pieces, clearly two of a series.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1927
- Summary
- Udo Sellbach was a printmaker and a founding member of the Print Council of Australia and the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Sep-06
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.8996968 Longitude151.170986 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Enmore, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- In his own words………
Notes for a Previous Exhibition – Geoffrey writes a short biography:
“I started painting when I was very young, about 7, encouraged by my parents who must have been driven mad by my endless bits of paper.
Later at school I was helped by a teacher, Edward Monkton who was an excellent watercolourist and exhibited in Sydney. He guided me in my selection of colours and their mixing and his influence is probably seen in my work. Through him I met John D Moore, a leading Sydney artist at that time and he also gave me help.
For a few years after school I painted small landscapes and watercolour sketches of birds.
In 1950 I took up my own property on the Mann River and so painting was neglected. We eventually moved to Queensland and while recovering from an illness I met Alex Rotteveel, the art teacher at Maryborough Girls High, and under his guidance started painting and drawing again. He introduced me to oil painting.
After moving back to the Clarence Valley in 1970 I joined the Lower Clarence Art Group and painted regularly. However this took second place to a small prawn trawler I was building and launched in 1975. This I worked mainly at sea for 10 years when we moved to Tullymorgan and I retired to concentrate on painting.
I went back to watercolour my first love. I also resumed my interest in birds and in 1987 after several months training under the guidance of David Geering, Greg Clancy and Bill Lane I got my ‘A Class’ bander’s licence. This enables me to see at first hand, detail of the birds I catch. I usually do a quick sketch of particular birds with notes on colour etc. These I use for my paintings as I find photographs usually disappointing.
Some of the paintings exhibited are by-products of a weeks bird banding at Mootwingee National Park where I took time of to do some sketches. “Blue Bonnets” is a result of this trip. All the other birds are species found locally. I tend to work watercolours dry, with exceptions, mainly to the honour of a lot of tutors. I tend to think that the little spots of paper that get missed add a sparkle to the painting. Sometimes I might have three lots of colour and three brushes which I use together. I am not worried about floating one wash on top of another and I might do up to seven or eight……….”.(End of page – pages missing)
Writers:
Katwood
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 9 November 1926
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Jun-06
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-18.6476374 Longitude146.1603448 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ingham, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1925
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2006
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, oil painter and illustrator, was born in Melbourne, Vic, and grew up in the suburb of Sandringham. He studied art at the National Gallery School. In 1948 he went to Perth to play in the WA tennis championships and was offered a job on the Daily News . He remained in Perth for 20 years as cartoonist on the Daily News and the Western Mail e.g. 'Rigby and School Help’/’“State aid’s not enough – we’ll need the Army and Air Force too!”’, Daily News 1966 (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 86) and 6 examples in Walsh 1966. He won the Walkely Cartoon Award a record five times (1960, 1961, 1963, 1966, 1969) – the 1969 one, published in the Daily News , being on Brisbane’s censorship of Beardsley’s Lysistrata drawings (straight copy, ill. Rigby, 69). He was Highly Commended in 1968, runner-up to fellow WA cartoonist Cedric Baxter .
In 1969, when his cartoons were being run in News Ltd newspapers across Australia, Rigby left for London, aiming to do cartoons for the Sun and News of the World (owned by Murdoch) for six months. He stayed five years. With England as his base, he travelled and worked in China, the USA, USSR (Russia), Europe and Vietnam. He also sent work back to Australia, e.g. 'Sharks’, Daily Telegraph 10 December 1975 (included in Christine Dixon’s exhibition). In 1977 he returned to Perth, but moved to New York later that year in order to work on the New York Post . He stayed for 12 years after again intending a six-month stint. When he retired, intending to return to Australia, the New York Daily News made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and he remained in New York. For a while, Paul and his son Bay Rigby, a cartoonist on the New York Post , worked for rival newspapers.
Rigby cartoons from the Sydney Daily Mirror are illustrated King 172, 178, 186. He was extremely influential on Australian cartooning. Someone (Petty?) noted that everybody wanted to draw like Rigby in the 1970s. Cartoonists who acknowledge his influence included Bill Mitchell of the Australian and Sean Leahy (also from WA). His practice of drawing his Perth Daily News cartoons on a duo-tone shade board (which he appears to have got from Giles) was widely emulated: by Benier (who drew for the rival Sydney afternoon paper, the Sun , and took over on the Mirror in the early 1970s after Rigby returned to London: Foyle, 94), by Warren Brown (who in turn replaced Benier on the Mirror ) and by Geoff Hook (“Jeff”), Rod Waller , Dean Alston , Alan Langoulant , Zanetti , Vince O’Farrell ( Illawarra Mercury ), Moir , Mitchell and Pryor .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1925
- Summary
- Prolific Australian newspaper cartoonist, based in New York during the 1960s and 1970s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Nov-06
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yummurpa country,Tanami Desert, NT, Yummurpa country (Tanami Desert), NT, Australia
- Biography
- Lorna Fencer Napurrula was born around 1924 at Yartulu Yartulu, and is custodian of land called Yummurrpa, south of the Granites Mine in the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory. The Yarla (Yam) Dreaming track originates from this region and travels north towards Lajamanu. In 1949, along with many Warlpiri people, Lorna Napurrula was forcibly transported to the government settlement of Lajamanu at Hookers Creek, in the country of the Gurindji people, 400 kilometres north of their own country near Yuendumu. Despite being uprooted from her traditional land, Lorna nevertheless maintained her cultural identity through ceremonial activity and art, and asserted her position as a prominent elder and teacher in the Lajamanu community. She was also a member of the artist’s co-operative in Lajamanu, the Warnayaka Art Centre.
Until her death in December 2006, Lorna lived predominantly at Lajamanu and Katherine (650 kilometres apart), travelling regularly between them. She was a senior Lajamanu artist. Lorna was custodian of the Caterpillar (luju) and Bush Potato (yarla) Dreamings that are associated with that land. She was also custodian of Dreamings associated with bush onion, yam and also bush tomato, bush plum, ngalatji (little white flower), many different seeds and water, wallaby and certain men’s stories including boomerangs for the Napurrula, Nakamarra, Japurrula, and Jakamarra skin groups. The travels of Napurrula and Nakamarrra moiety or “skin” groups were the inspiration for Lorna’s work.
While raised as a skilled painter of decorative body designs for ceremonies, Lorna began painting on canvas in 1986 with a typical dotting technique. She soon developed a very unique, personal style which became increasingly free, bold and abstract. Lorna applied the paint in liberal quantities to the brush before touching down on the canvas and layering the colours, one upon the next. The thick impasto, which may be produced with acrylic paint, was a crucial factor in her work as were bright, clear colour ranging from intense oranges to pinks, blues and lime greens. Lorna also mastered another quite different style where she relied on an expressive linear gesture as her elongated marks swirled across the surface of the canvas.
Her first solo exhibition was in 1997 and since then she exhibited regularly in solo as well as in group exhibitions. Lorna’s work is represented in public galleries in Australia and in private galleries both in Australia and overseas.
Writers:
Brown, Stephen K.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1924
- Summary
- As a previous ceremonial painter, Lorna began dot-style painting on canvas in 1986 and soon developed her own unique style which became increasingly free, abstract and bold. She applied the paint in liberal quantities to produce works with bright, clear colours ranging from intense oranges to pinks, blues and lime greens. Widely recognised as an accomplished artist, she passed away in 2006, aged in her eighties.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Dec-06
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-37.905 Longitude144.996 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brighton, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 30 November 1924
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Dec-06
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- Harry Seidler (1923–2006) was born in Vienna but left Austria in the late 1930s. He began architectural studies at Cambridge, England, then graduated from the University of Manitoba, Canada, in 1944. He worked in various Canadian firms, then won a scholarship to Harvard University, where he studied under Bauhaus pioneer Walter Gropius and graduated M.Arch 1946. He then took a design course with Josef Albers at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, and worked with Marcel Breuer in New York and Oscar Niemeyer in Rio de Janiero. He arrived in Sydney in 1948 and won his first NSW RAIA Sulman Medal in 1952, for the Rose Seidler House, Killara (completed 1950). [MORE INFO NEEDED 1950-1975] He continued building towers and substantial houses in various Australian and international locations and won numerous national and international awards (including Gold Medals from the City of Vienna and the Royal Institute of British Architects).Sources—Architecture and Arts. 1954. ‘People: Harry Seidler’, April, p17.—Architecture and Arts. 1956. ‘People: Harry Seidler, Architect’, April, p19.—Dobney, Stephen. 1997. Harry Seidler: Selected and Current Works. Master Architect Series III. Adelaide: Images Publishing and Sydney: Craftsman House.—Frampton, Kenneth and Philip Drew. 1992. Harry Seidler: Four Decades of Architecture. London: Thames & Hudson. (This is the main source for almost all project listings in companion Chronology of Sydney Architecture 1945-75.)—Spigelman, Alice. 2001. Harry Seidler: Almost Full Circle: A Biography. Rose Bay, NSW: Brandl & Schlesinger.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1923
- Summary
- Harry Seidler (1923-2006) was Australia's most significant and influential modernist architect. Born in Vienna and educated in Britain, Canada, the United States and Brazil, he arrived in Sydney in 1948. His practice, Harry Seidler and Associates, created many exceptional residences and commercial buildings from the 1950s to the early 2000s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2006
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude47.333333 Longitude13.333333 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Austria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1923
- Summary
- Seidler was an architect with a well-documented architectural career. In addition to his building works, he also designed selected items of furniture including a "modular radio-phonograph" illustrated in 1957, a wall-mounted storage unit for his Point Piper studio ca.1948 and the Rose Seidler house 1949-1950. His early commissions used the Sydney cabinetmakers Paul Kafka and M. Gerstl Cabinet Works.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-06
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-22.5216511 Longitude132.7344955 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Napperby station, Napperby, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born on Napperby station in 1923, Cassidy Tjapaltjarri was one of the most flamboyant figures in this small community, and in the media coverage of the Napperby artists’ first exhibition at the Hogarth Galleries in Sydney was identified as leader and spokesman for the painting group. Subsequently a pensioner, Cassidy was an elder of the Amnatyerre tribe. His traditional country was Red Hill and Napperby. He painted Caterpillar and Goanna Dreamings for this area and also Bush Tucker Dreamings from his grandfather’s country around the Mt Allan area. 'This Dreaming is about the place where I was born. This waterhole and this emu track are part of my Dreaming. It takes me two weeks to make. One day my painting will make Napperby number one. I show all the young fellas what we Aboriginal people can do for ourselves . ' ( Sydney Morning Herald , 11 July 1987)
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1923
- Summary
- Amnatyerre artist, and prominent figure in the Napperby community, his work has been exhibited at Hogarth Galleries in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2006
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-33.0837216 Longitude151.5009464 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dora Creek, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 24 March 1915
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Nov-06
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-39.6766915 Longitude175.7983062 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date2006-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Taihape, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter, was born on 24 March 1914 in Taihape, North Island, New Zealand, youngest of the three daughters of Edward Norris Borlase, manager of Raunui Station near Mount Ruapehu, and Bessie, née Morecroft.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 24 March 1914
- Summary
- New Zealand-born Nancy Wilmot Borlase arrived in Sydney in 1937, studying sculpture under Lyndon Dadswell under space restrictions in her small bed-sit forced a change to painting. Increasingly inspired by the Abstract Expressionist movements in Europe and New York, Borlase won the Portia Geach Memorial Prize in 2000 for her portrait of Marie and Vida Breckenridge.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2006
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-26.286773 Longitude132.13302 Start Date1971-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ernabella, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Born on 5 August 1971, Nyuwara, whose language group was Pitjantjatjara, was born at Ernabella Hospital, SA. Her mother, Tjunkaya Tapaya, an established artist, is Pitjantjatjara and comes from Antalya. Her father was from Tipany and his first language was Yangkunytjarjara. Nuywara attended Ernabella School and Woodville High School until 1988. The next year she began working in the screenprinting workshop at Ernabella Arts. She began experimenting with acrylic paints with immediate success. Later in 1989 she attended an information gathering tour of Darwin and Bathurst Island and began studying batik techniques. In November, she exhibited both paintings and batiks in Ernabella Arts’s Wiritjuta exhibition at Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs.
In 1990 she continued her studies in design and fabric printing and attended the opening of Ernabella Arts’s exhibition Ngura Kutjara at the Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute in Adelaide. In 1991, 1992 and 1993 her fabric prints were exhibited in the Central Australian Aboriginal Art and Craft Exhibition at the Araluen Arts Centre. Her fabrics were also shown in Kutjupa-Kutjupa , Ernabella Arts’s exhibition at the Aboriginal Artists Gallery in Sydney in 1991. In April 1992 Nyuwara attended the opening of Raiki Tjuta , Ernabella Arts’s exhibition at the Women’s Gallery in Melbourne. In June 1992 she spent two weeks in Yogyakata, Indonesia studying dye techniques and cap printing. In September 1992 one of Nyuwara’s caps was exhibited in the National Aboriginal Art Award and purchased by the Art Gallery of South Australia. This exposure and an exhibition of her fabric designs in an Alice Springs Gallery attracted several design commissions for T-shirts and a doona cover of the print Waru from the Community Arts Abroad catalogue. Nyuwara also studied printmaking and lithography and produced popular screenprint designs for fabrics.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
staffcontributor
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 5 August 1971
- Summary
- Pitjantjatjara speaker and distinguished print media and textile artist from Ernabella who also worked in acrylic on canvas. She trained at Ernabella Arts and studied dye technique in Indonesia. Her work is in the Art Gallery of South Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.2005
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude-18.6683457 Longitude128.597836 Start Date1961-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gordon Downs, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Although one of the younger Balgo artists in the early days of painting at the community – she was born near Gordon Downs Station c.1961 – Patricia Lee was more active than most in the activities of the older women in the Balgo community, including painting and ceremonial life. A Warlpiri speaker, she worked closely with her mother, Margaret Anjule, and grandmother, Dora Napaltjarri, both good artists in their own right. Her traditional country was in the Tanami Desert at Mongrel Downs, and her paintings often depict Wanayarra (Rainbow Snake) and Bush Tomato Dreamings from this area. Her work has a strong narrative element and she may be credited with 'introducing’ the technique of paint flicking into Balgo art. She began painting in 1984, and her work is included in the National Gallery of Australia collection. She usually sells her work through Warlayirti Artists. It was also featured on the cover of the Balance exhibition catalogue (Queensland Art Gallery, 1990) and included in Flash Pictures at the National Gallery of Australia in 1991-2.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1961
- Summary
- Widely exhibited Kukatja artist and an active participant in her community. She may be credited for introducing a new painting technique to the Balgo movement.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2005
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1951-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 8 October 1951
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Nov-05
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-22.1646782 Longitude144.5844903 Start Date1951-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Queensland
- Biography
- Desley Henry, of the Jirrbal language group of North Queensland, was born in 1951. Her paintings of acrylics and ochres tell Jirrbal creation stories. It is her weavings however that she is mostly known for. Henry weaves bicornial baskets from lawyer cane and these baskets are in the permanent collections of the Campbelltown Arts Centre and the Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1951
- Summary
- Desley Henry of the Jirrbal language group of North Queensland weaves bicornial baskets from lawyer cane. Her painting practice incorporates acrylics and ochres and her works tell Jirrbal creation stories.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2005
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-22.2619822 Longitude131.8081527 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yuendumu, Northern Territory, Yuendumu, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born at Yuendumu in the early ’50s, Eunice shared many Dreamings with her 'sisters’ and fellow painters Pansy Napangati and Rene Robinson Napangardi . Eunice emerged in the late ’80s as an artist in her own right, painting for Papunya Tula Artists initially and subsequently for the Centre for Aboriginal Artists. She was one of three women selected for a special furniture painting project for Bicentennial Travelling Exhibition. In 1991 she exhibited at the Aboriginal Arts Australia Gallery in Sydney with Maxie Tjampitjinpa , travelling to Sydney for the opening. She completed two major commissions: for the new Alice Springs airport opening in December 1991, and for a travelling exhibition starting in Washington in 1992. She also exhibited in Brisbane with Pansy Napangati in a two women show.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: Primary biographer. Some information supplied by Veronica Johnston Centre for Aboriginal Artists and Craftsmen
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1950
- Summary
- A Luritja/Warlpiri artist and leading woman artist in the desert painting movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Painted mainly for the Centre for Aboriginal Artists. She completed a major commission for the new airport at Alice Springs.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2005
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude47 Longitude20 Start Date1941-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hungary
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1941
- Summary
- Hubay was an interior designer who also had a career as an industrial designer, artist and sculptor. He studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Victoria. After 1969, he established "Palazzo", a South Yarra interior design studio for residential interiors. He later designed commercial interiors for clients such as Village Cinemas.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-05
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, TAS, Australia
- Biography
- Lennah Newson, Palawa basketweaver, was born in Launceston, Tasmania in 1940. Newson spent her childhood in Killiecrankie on Flinders Island, which is in the Furneaux Group of Islands off the north-east tip of Tasmania. Though she spent periods of her life in other parts of Tasmania, Newson remained deeply attached to Flinders Island for her whole life. In particular, the coastline of the island was a touchstone of meaning and inspiration for the artist, as the beach and the sea were important sites of economic and creative activity for her family. As was the case for all Aboriginal people who lived on the Furneaux Islands, fish were an important food source for the artist’s family and Newson’s observation of her father and grandparents making fishnets and fishtraps introduced her to weaving practices in her earliest years. Newson’s family’s resourcefulness nurtured her creative capabilities in other ways, as the following quote from the catalogue for the 2001 Adelaide Biennale “Beyond the Pale” (curated by Brenda Croft) conveys: “While growing up on the island my family didn’t have much money to buy toys, so we made our own with materials gathered from the beach and the bush. Living on such an isolated island taught me to use my hands and gather the materials that were growing and living around us to make the things that would otherwise be impossible for us to have” (p. 29). Newson’s sense of belonging to Flinders Island was also underpinned by the campaigns of her mother, Auntie Ida West, a respected Palawa elder who was born on Cape Barren Island in 1919. Auntie Ida fought for many years for the Wybalenna settlement on Flinders Island, the site of over 100 unmarked Aboriginal graves, to be returned to Aboriginal people. The graves are those of mainland Aboriginal Tasmanians who were removed to Wybalenna between 1832 and 1836 by George Augustus Robinson, and title to the site was finally handed back to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community in 2005. Lennah Newson supported her mother through these campaigns, and was a respected Palawa elder herself: in 2006 she was inducted into the Tasmanian Honour Roll of Women for service to Aboriginal Affairs and the Arts. The Honour Roll recognised that “The continuation of traditional fibre art in the Tasmanian Aboriginal community will be the lasting legacy of Lennah Newson”. Newson created baskets from a variety of materials. These included watsonia grasses, juncus reed, native flax collected from Oyster Cove on mainland Tasmania, river reed which “are gathered seasonally from creek waterways and rivers and dried” (artist’s statement, “Tactility” website), feathers, as well as refuse found on the beach such as commercial fabrics, mohair wool and plastic. The artist would weave these materials into baskets using various combinations of coiling, twining and cross-stitch. As a result, Newson’s baskets are sometimes densely woven and robust, and at other times delicate and transparent. Besides the 2001 Adelaide Biennale, Newson’s baskets were included in exhibitions such as “Tactility” at the National Gallery of Australia (2003), and “Woven Forms – Contemporary Basket Making in Australia’” at Object: The Australian Centre for Craft and Design (2005). In 2005 Newson’s baskets were exhibited alongside those of Colleen Mundy and Eva Richardson in the NAIDOC exhibition “Twining Culture” curated by Jennie Gorringe at the Moonah Art Centre in Hobart. Newson mentored a number of Tasmanian Aboriginal women in the art of basket weaving, including Colleen Mundy and Newson’s cousin Verna Nichols; she also demonstrated the craft at festivals and school education programs. Newson’s work has been acquired by the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Museum of Australia. Lennah Newson passed away in 2005.
Writers:
Fisher, Laura
Note:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 24 July 1940
- Summary
- Palawa artist whose basketweaving practice was informed by her love of the beaches of Flinders Island, Tasmania, where she spent most of her childhood.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 18-Jul-05
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1938
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2005
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude52.8926237 Longitude-1.4307059 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Boulton, England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1 May 1935
- Summary
- The largely self-taught painter, David Aspden, established his reputation in the 1960s by painting lyrically beautiful abstracts. In the context of the time, they were sometimes described as landscapes but often their forms were determined by his response to music, often jazz.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Jun-05
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-23.447 Longitude131.882 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Haasts Bluff, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born in a creek bed near Haasts Bluff c.1930, Gladys spoke and identified as Luritja because of her affiliations with the Haasts Bluff community. Her parents came from Warlpiri country north of Mt Wedge. Her first husband was Walter Tjupurrula, the former police tracker. After Walter’s death, she married a member of the original group of painters at Papunya in 1971, Johnny Warangkula , whom Gladys often assisted him on the backgrounds of his paintings as his eyesight failed. She also painted in her own right: a very large canvas of hers was included in Papunya Tula’s dramatic display at World Expo ’88 in Brisbane. She painted Witchetty Grub and other Bush Tucker stories from her father and mother’s country till her sight failed her. She lived in Papunya, where she was one of the senior women of the community at the time of her death in 2005.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: Primary biographer.
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- Senior Luritja artist who lived in Papunya, she initially assisted her second husband, Johnny Warangkula, on his canvases. Her work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2005
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- While Clement Meadmore (b. Melbourne, 1929) now enjoys international fame for his sculpture, in the mid-20th century his Australian reputation was centred around his work in furniture.
Meadmore began tertiary study at the Melbourne Technical College (now the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) in 1946. In 1948, the college became the first in Australia to offer a formal industrial design course to service Victoria’s powerful postwar manufacturing base. Meadmore soon began taking courses in this area of study.
By 1949, Clement Meadmore was promoting himself as an industrial designer. By 1952, he had designed his first success – a corded black steel dining chair wrapped with synthetic fibre cord (available in red, blue, green, yellow, black and white) – under the banner of Meadmore Originals, 86 Collins Street, Melbourne.
Meadmore’s corded dining chair was celebrated, appearing in design features and on magazine covers throughout the 1950s. In 1953, the chair received the “Good Design Award” from the Good Design Society, Sydney. Marion Hall Best’s showrooms in Woollahra and Rowe Street, Sydney, showed the dining chair (with arms) in saddle leather as well as the coloured cord. A Meadmore corded recliner in the same style appeared in the same year, followed by a dining table with silver ash top in the same style. It was a productive era for him.
In 1956, he formed a short-lived partnership with Max Robinson (Meadmore & Robinson) and later in the same year he became involved in a celebrated commission with the painter Leonard French for the Legend Espresso and Milk Bar at 239 Bourke Street, Melbourne (demolished 1970). This cafe, previously known as the Anglo American Milk Bar, was owned by Ion Nicolades, who commissioned Meadmore to design a new interior. Meadmore invited Leonard French to paint seven panels for the Milk Bar on the theme of the Legend of Sinbad. The Legend was a deep and narrow interior that Meadmore enhanced by placing mirrors opposite each of French’s paintings. A dramatic terrazzo floor, coloured fibreglass-topped stools, diagonally-hung fluorescent lamps and a window display of a Meadmore-designed sculpture drawn from the silhouette of Sinbad’s ship (as it appeared in French’s painting no. 3) made the Legend one of Melbourne’s most visually exciting cafes.
The Legend reopened at a time when Melbourne, goaded by architect and newspaper columnist Robin Boyd and his sympathisers, struggled to modernise itself for the anticipated international visitors for the 1956 Olympics.
Victorian industrial designers were rewarded with an inaugural 1956 Melbourne Olympics Arts Festival intended to display the cultural riches of the host nation. It was the first Olympics to incorporate an arts festival rather than art competitions. Major venues were chosen throughout the city to display Australian and Victorian achievements in industrial design, painting, architecture and other media. The Melbourne Technical College (now the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) featured graphic and industrial design and included Meadmore’s lighting design amongst designers such as Grant Featherston, Carl Nielsen and Frances Burke. Unfortunately, Meadmore’s work was not illustrated in the catalogue.
By the later 1950s, Meadmore had begun to actively exhibit his sculpture and move within the Melbourne gallery milieu. He also came into contact with Max Hutchinson, a commercial furniture manufacturer and designer. Hutchinson (1925-99) said in a 1984 interview that Meadmore came to him in 1958 and said, “ '[T]hese artists that you like [to use in interior design commissions], they need an exhibition’, ... So he ran the Gallery [A] for a couple of years until my accountant said, look, if you go on with this, you’ll be broke in another year.”
Max Hutchinson went on to found a branch of Gallery A in Sydney before Meadmore encouraged him to migrate to New York City in 1968. One of Meadmore’s first 1959 shows at Gallery A, Melbourne, featured his own sculpture with a catalogue and essay by Bill Hannan. The designer also sold a line of 'Gallery A Contract Furniture’ (“Designed to serve the discriminating, by Clement Meadmore for the coordinated series by Gallery A contract furniture.”) This new work was now fabricated for the commercial furniture market, rather than the domestic consumer.
Although he had been pursuing his sculpture throughout the 1950s, Meadmore vigorously expanded this career in this media in 1960 and moved to Sydney. He exhibited sculpture at Macquarie Galleries and Clune Galleries, Sydney; was awarded a commission for a sculptured balustrade for the Town House Hotel, Canberra; and briefly taught sculpture at the National Art School, Sydney.
His industrial design work of the 1950s gave way to sculpture. In 1963, a 13 minute documentary film titled Clement Meadmore was directed by a young Bruce Beresford and narrated by John Bell with a jazz soundtrack by Tony Curby Trio + 1. In this film showing Meadmore at work, the narrator explains that “Meadmore trained as a furniture designer…” and reflects that “Meadmore has no preconception of final work in his sculpture; he relies on inspiration for final form … The object is created first and then the [public] taste for it… This is the nature of artistic innovation…”.
Meadmore is described by Ken Scarlett in Australian Sculptors 1830-1977 as an Art Director for the fledgling editions of Australian Vogue, first published in Sydney in 1959. But a search through their first quarterly editions from 1959-1963 does not show his name on the masthead and more research is needed in this area. It is possible that he did some design and styling work for them as some of his furniture appears in an issue in the Summer 1960 edition and their Christmas 1961 edition suggests some of Meadmore’s graphic qualities.
In 1963, Meadmore moved to New York. Although his sculpture was foremost after he went to the United States, he maintained his Australian design links through Michael Hirst, a furniture designer and manufacturer working in Melbourne.
Michael Hirst, (b. 1917) ran a factory in Melbourne and remained active in furniture from 1955 to 1983. During this time, Hirst manufactured his own work as well as Meadmore items under the trademark H-Line and H/Flex. He sold through outlets like George’s, Andersons and interior decorators in Melbourne. It is not clear precisely when he began to fabricate Meadmore’s furniture. In a telephone interview in 1997, Michael Hirst explained that he too exhibited some of his design work at Gallery A, Melbourne. Some of Hirst’s work from the late 1950s has stylistic parallels with Meadmore’s work but after he left for Sydney, and later the USA, the influences wane. However, Hirst released a coffee table by Meadmore in 1965, suggesting that their commercial association continued after the designer had moved to the United States.
Although he single-mindedly pursued sculpture in the United States, Meadmore continued his interest in furniture design and in 1974 he published The Modern Chair, an illustrated survey of contemporary furniture from the Thonet Brothers to Mario Bellini. In his 1974 introduction, Meadmore reveals something of his own aesthetics of furniture. “Each chair…[in this book] has been selected for qualities that we can assess from our standpoint today, qualities which have less to do with style and period than with a solution of a defined problem. ...[However] Some of the finer adjustments of proportion, left unresolved by the mere solving of functional problems, have often been made with a visual sensitivity which undoubtedly contributes to make a chair a delightful object…”.
When the book was reissued in 1997, Meadmore pronounced himself disappointed with the designs of the last quarter of the 20th century. “...[W]hen I considered updating the book I realised that I could not think of a single chair to add. I still believe that a designer who is not solving problems is a stylist, and styling is what we have been looking at for the last quarter of the century.’
Meadmore’s furniture work studiously avoided historical references, although there were affinities with the 1950s furniture of the sculpture Isamu Noguchi and other mid-century sculptors who enjoyed exploring spatial problems. Meadmore favoured experimentation in synthetic fibres, plywood, finishes, steel alloys and other metals. It is clear that the designer found the techniques of fabrication interesting only as exercises in problem solving; craft values had no interest for him. As he states clearly in his book on modern furniture, Meadmore considers that problem solving is at the centre of good furniture design. His design work in Australia suggests that a very interesting furniture designer was lost to sculpture.
Writers:
Bogle, Michael
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 9 February 1929
- Summary
- Well known as a sculptor, Meadmore began his career as a designer. His furniture was sold at Marion Hall Best’s showrooms and his lighting design shown at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics Arts Festival alongside the work of designers such as Grant Featherston. Meadmore ran Max Hutchinson's Gallery A, Melbourne, in the late 1950s. In 1963 he moved to New York, where he concentrated primarily on his work as a sculptor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Apr-05
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude52 Longitude20 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Poland
- Biography
- Leon Saper became a member of Clifton Pugh’s Dunmoochin Artists’ Collective at Cottles Bridge and bought a bush block there c1955.
Leon took up pottery in 1970, inspired by the community of potters who had come to live and work at Dunmoochin in the 1960s.
Saper made a living selling his striking colourful work on hessian bags at the St Andrews Market. A retrospective exhibition of work collected by friends was held at the Nillumbik Council Offices in 2005..
His mark is an incised 'L. Saper’.
Writers:
7write6
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1928
- Summary
- Leon Saper became a member of Clifton Pugh's Dunmoochin Artists' Collective at Cottles Bridge. He took up pottery in 1970.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-05
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude51.2254018 Longitude6.7763137 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dusseldorf, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 4 November 1928
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Jul-05
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-31.0798092 Longitude152.842289 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kempsey, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Alison McMaugh was born in Kempsey in regional New South Wales. When she was a student at the National Art School in Sydney she befriended fellow student, Brenda Humble, and was credited by Humble for her ongoing support when Humble was under extreme financial pressure. Friends remember her as one of the free spirited Kings Cross bohemian crowd whose active social life stretched between the art school and the Cross.McMaugh exhibited in a group exhibition in 1954 and in a solo exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in 1957. She then followed the popular path of young Australians of her generation and travelled to London. In 1958 she met an American art student James Adley. They married in 1959 and returned with him to Michigan, where he became a professor of Art at Michigan University. She continued to paint as well as write poetry. Although based in the USA, she kept close links with Australia. She returned for an extended visit in 1982 and in 1983 had a critically successful exhibition at Garry Anderson’s new art gallery in Macleay Street. In 2003 she had a further successful exhibition with Helen Maxwell Gallery in Canberra.It was on her return from this Australian visit that McMaugh was diagnosed with Ovarian cancer. In September 2003 she became a citizen of the United States, without relinquishing her Australian citizenship. This enabled her to vote for John Kerry in the 2004 election, although she was by then already gravely ill.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1928
- Summary
- Alison McMaugh was one of the many young women artists trained in Sydney in the 1950s who found more opportunities abroad, in her case in Michigan, USA. Her work is characterised by intense colourful abstract paintings and drawings, with a hint of landscape.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Jan-05
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1924
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2005
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1921
- Summary
- Buckland was a commercial artist and painter with British art training, arriving in Australia in the 1960s. He exhibited widely featuring in regional shows such as the Mosman Art Prize, the Toorak gallery, Melbourne and the Contemporary Art Society, Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-05
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland
- Biography
- Ron Gilling (1917–2005) was born in Edinburgh, studied architecture at the University of Sydney and obtained registration 1948. Joined his father, F. Glynn Gilling at Joseland & Gilling, where he remained until retirement in 1982. As president NSW RAIA 1964-66 he was embroiled in the Sydney Opera House crisis. Federal president RAIA 1970-71. RAIA Gold Medal and OBE, 1977. Influenced by Spanish-Mediterranean architecture, the history of classical architecture and his father’s design teaching. Visited US and Britain 1955 to study bank architecture for ANZ Bank. Visited Taliesin West, met Mies van der Rohe. Joseland and Gilling designed commercial and domestic architecture. Source—Johnson, Paul Alan and Susan Lorne Johnson. 1996 onwards. Martyn Chapman interview for UNSW Architects of the Middle Third research project.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1917
- Summary
- Ron Gilling, born in Edinburgh, was a principal of Joseland & Gilling, a Sydney architectural firm, from 1948 to 1982. He was president of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects 1964-66 (NSW Chapter) and 1970-71 (national).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2005
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, lithographer, cartoonist and illustrator, was born in Paddington, Sydney on 22 February 1911, the only child of William Ungar and his wife, Robina, née Tate (d.1922). Thora knew that she wanted to draw from the age of three. Her mother died when she was a child but she later made several portraits of her father, who also posed for the male hero in several of her magazine covers, e.g. as a US soldier surrounded by Chinese children for an Australian Women’s Weekly cover, published 4 September 1943.
In 1927, aged sixteen, Thora won a scholarship to study art at East Sydney Technical College but couldn’t afford to complete the course, so she worked as a commercial artist for Sydney department stores by day and attended drawing (not painting) classes under Sydney Long and Dattilo Rubbo at the Royal Art Society for four nights a week and at weekends (1927-33). She first exhibited her paintings at RAS shows. She hated the 'daily work of drawing cups and saucers for Grace Bros. I wanted to be part of the sophisticated figurative illustrations seen in the American magazines’, she later wrote. Discovering that George Johnston , a fellow RAS student, was a successful cartoonist with the Bulletin , receiving 2 guineas for a published cartoon as opposed to the seven shillings and sixpence she was paid by Grace Bros, she took a cartoon into the Bulletin office about 1930. It was accepted for consideration but was neither paid for nor published and Thora never heard another word about it. However, the drawing remained in the Bulletin files and is now her earliest extant artwork (Mitchell Library, PX*D 545/1). In 1999 it was included in The Most Public Art exhibition at the State Library of New South Wales, curated by Joan Kerr, Craig Judd and Jo Holder; 'Granny’s column’ [Column 8] in the Sydney Morning Herald featured her pleased response to this belated recognition.
Thora Ungar and George Johnston were married at St John’s Church, Glebe, in 1934. They lived in a rented Walter Burley Griffin house at Castlecrag (The Moon House, next door to Walter and Marion Mahoney Griffin ) and both freelanced. George found a little regular work for small tabloids but Thora was the chief breadwinner, primarily through her work illustrating catalogues put out by Marcus Clark’s department store, especially items of furniture that she would draw in the firm’s Ultimo warehouse. She also continued to do hundreds of drawings of crockery, including entire dinner services for Marcus Clark; some were reproduced in the quality colour pages of the firm’s catalogues (of which she was rather proud).
In 1937 the pair decided to go to London so Thora could study at the Slade. They sold everything in order to afford the cheapest route, via China and across Russia by the Transcontinental Express. Booked to leave Shanghai on 19 August 1937, everything changed when Japan launched its attack on Shanghai on 13 August. George remained in Shanghai but Thora was forced to evacuate to Hong Kong along with thousands of women and children (sanguine drawings of a Chinese mother and baby done at Hong Kong survive – a photo of a large one is in her studio file). At the end of the year she was permitted to return, and she remained in Shanghai with George for four years. Both did commercial art for W.D. & H.O. Wills and Thora drew local people and places. When supplies arrived from Penfolds in Sydney she also painted, but apart from some small paintings and several line drawings was forced to leave all her work behind when they returned to Sydney in 1941, just before Pearl Harbour. A few Shanghai drawings and some later Chinese paintings were included in a modest retrospective held at James Harvey Gallery, Clovelly (NSW) in 2002. Although selected solely from what remained in her Northwood home and studio when she was aged ninety-one, the show still demonstrated her exceptional diversity in style, subject and medium.
Back at Sydney during the war, Thora resumed work as a commercial artist. She drew illustrations as a full-time artist on the Australian Women’s Weekly (1941 [1942 acc. Thora]-46), as well as doing casual work for Woman’s Day and the Sydney Morning Herald (1948-51). Known as Thora Johnston on the Weekly , she was a colleague of such well-known cover artists as cartoonists WEP ( William Edwin Pidgeon ) and Virgil ( Virgil Reilly ) and illustrators John Mills , John Santry and Wynn Davies . Her regular Weekly covers, which included The Kokoda Trail (painted 1942, published 9 January 1943, original artwork Australian War Memorial), a group of heads of happy wartime couples (3 April 1943) and The Woman Tram Conductor (5 February 1944), always carried the signature 'Thora’. The only other woman artist then employed on the Weekly was fashion illustrator René Dalgleish , a good friend with whom Thora swapped work (a drawing of a fashionable René blonde remains in Thora’s collection, along with one of Thora’s own fashion illustrations that was clearly influenced by her friend). She was also friendly with editor Connie Robertson.
After Thora and George divorced she lived with René and they worked together in the separate 'rabbit warren’ where the Weekly housed its 'mothercraft’ staff, in Bridge Street. In 1951 Thora married John Medhurst (d. 2002), whose portrait she painted several times. A large one – still in her studio in 2002 – was runner-up in the 1988 Atelier Acrylic Art Competition (see Australian Artist October 1988, 40) and won an award for excellence in the 1990 Royal Easter Show (see Australian Artist August 1990, 38-39). A good large charcoal sketch of John reading the paper at breakfast in their Northwood kitchen also remains with the artist.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s Thora designed book covers for Horwitz and began exhibiting her paintings – landscape, still life and portraiture – at numerous venues, especially metropolitan, local and regional art prize shows. She had a solo exhibition at Sydney’s Barry Stern Galleries in 1964, and she also exhibited at the Von Bertouch galleries in Newcastle. She revisited China in 1961 (when she saw Macao for the first time) and toured Europe with John in 1975, where she made many drawings subsequently developed into paintings, especially of Venice. In 1978 she studied lithography with Helen Best at the Workshop Art Centre, Willougby (NSW).
Thora Ungar received numerous awards for her paintings, particularly her portraits, including prizes from the Royal Agricultural Society’s annual exhibitions in 1967, 1974, 1983-84, 1986 and 1990. Her portraits were hung in the Archibald Prize ten times (1958-59, 1961-67 and 1974) and in the Portia Geach Prize for the best portrait by a woman artist eighteen times, the final occasion being 1996 when she showed a portrait of the Newcastle painter Nancy Goldfinch (the large portrait and a fresh watercolour sketch for it remain in her studio). She won art competitions at Tumut (1958), the Gold Coast (1968), Manly (1972), Armidale (1973), Kempsey (1988), Scone (1989), Gunnedah (1989) and other places, the last being from Port Macquarie Art Society in April 1996 for a still-life painting. A solo exhibition at Sydney’s Durning-Lawrence Gallery in 1996 comprised forty works spanning twenty-five years, with a special focus on her recent large, colourful modernist still-lifes. In November 2002 a retrospective of works from her studio was held at James Harvey Gallery, Clovelly (opened by Joan Kerr).
Thora Ungar died from cancer at her home in the northern Sydney suburb of Northwood on 28th February 2005. In an exhibition of Artists of the Royal Art Society, held in July-August 2006, a “Wonderful retrospective component by Thora Ungar”, was included. The main subject matter of these works were cats.
Writers:
Speck, Cathy
Peter Pidgeon
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 22 February 1911
- Summary
- 20th century painter, lithographer, cartoonist and illustrator, worked for the Australian Women's Weekly during WWII. Original society cartoon drawn for the Bulletin (ML), possibly never published.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 28-Feb-05
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ngarilyikirlangu, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Senior and respected figure both in Warlpiri ceremonial life and in the art movement at Yuendumu. He was born at Ngarilyikirlangu, north of the present day site of Yuendumu, in about 1910. His main totems are Emu and Bandicoot, and he usually paints Ngapa (Water), Yankirri (Emu) and Wardilyka (Bush Turkey) Dreamings, though he has also painted the Pamapardu (Flying Ant) Dreaming which passes close to Yuendumu travelling west. Darby’s family has responsibility for the Dreaming as it crosses Warlpiri country. Darby has been an active member of the painting group at Yuendumu since the early years as one of the group of senior men of the Yuendumu community who painted the 27 doors of the Yuendumu School with their Dreamings. Since the Yuendumu painting company’s first Araluen Centre exhibition in October 1985, his works have been included in numerous exhibitions of Warlukurlangu Artists in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Darwin, Alice Springs and the Gold Coast. Like most artists of the Western Desert – or anywhere else, Darby Ross has progressively refined his approach to and execution of his subject matter, yet his paintings have retained their distinctive early style of loose exuberant paintwork and complex, richly textured surfaces, sometimes strongly reminiscent of cave paintings from the Western Desert area. Darby’s work has been included in the Dreamings:Art of Aboriginal Australia exhibition which toured North America in 1988-9, the Mythscapes exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1989 and many other important national and international exhibitions since then.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1910
- Summary
- Darby Ross was a senior and highly respected figure in Warlpiri ceremonial life and one of the grand old men of Yuendumu painting. He was one of the group of senior men of the Yuendumu community who painted the school doors in 1984, helping to spark off painting in the community and the establishment of Warlukurlangu Artists in 1985.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2005
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Kilda, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- TIMELINE
Haines, Robert.
b.1911, St Kilda, Victoria, d. Toulouse, France, 2005.
1932.For three years, 1932-34, he studied theology at Ridley College but did not enter the Anglican Church. He shifted to social science at Melbourne University, but did not complete studies.
1938.Group Exhibition, Melbourne. Harold Herbert, “Work of Four Painters.” [including Robert Haines] Stair Gallery, Melbourne, [The Argus, 22 November 1938, p.16.]
1940-44An education officer in the army education service.
1945-1947Director, Georges Gallery Melbourne.
1947. Haines ran a coffee shop in the “Dungeon”, National Gallery School, Little Lonsdale Street and Russell Street, Melbourne. Head of the Gallery School at the time was William Dargie. [Sally Morrison, After Fire, A Biography of Clifton Pugh, Hardie Grant, 2009, p.81]
1947-1951Assistant Director, National Gallery of Victoria. Haines was the Asst director at the National Gallery of Victoria where he encouraged the acquisition of furniture-maker Schulim Krimper. [“Assistant Director of Art Gallery (appointment)”, Weekly Times, Melbourne, 19 February 1947, p.6]
1951-1960Haines was the second director of the Queensland National Gallery 1951-1960). He established the Queensland National Gallery Society in 1951 for fund-raising and the Annual Arts Ball which began in 1952. [Glenn Cooke, A Time Remembered Art in Brisbane 1950-1974, Qld Art Gallery, 1995, p.43]
He converted the 1897 Exhibition Building into a gallery space and integrated decorative arts (design) into the displays.
1960-76. Director of David Jones Fine Art Gallery, Sydney.(consultant until 1985)
“Although department stores in all state capitals had held occasional art exhibitions throughout the 20th century, none was like David Jones’s in Sydney. The company’s chairman, Sir Charles Lloyd Jones, hoped to place “an Australian painting in every Australian home”, and in 1944 established the professionally staffed David Jones Art Gallery. In 1960 his son, another Charles Lloyd Jones, offered Haines a new gallery in their Sydney store.” [Daniel Thomas, Robert Haines (1911-2005) obituary, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 October 2005.]
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1910
- Summary
- Robert Haines was a curator & educator pioneering the integration/exhibition of design objects with fine arts. Haines was also an exhibiting painter. He managed Georges Gallery, Melbourne after 1945, was asst director at the National Gallery of Victoria where he encouraged the acquisition of furniture-maker Schulim Krimper, director of Queensland Art Gallery 1951-60 & director of David Jones Fine Art Gallery 1960-76.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2005
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude53.55 Longitude10 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date2005-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamburg, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1909
- Summary
- Hoff took a Doctorate in Hamburg, Germany and in Australia, she became assistant curator, Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Australia. By 1949, she was head of Prints and Drawings and in 1968, she became Deputy Director of the Gallery. She retired in 1973.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-05
- Age at death
- 96
Details
Latitude-32.256944 Longitude148.601111 Start Date1960-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dubbo, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Michael Riley, Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi photographer and film maker, was born in Dubbo in 1960 and spent his early childhood on the Talbragar Reserve. Riley was the second of Allen Riley and Dorothy Wright’s four children, the others being his older brother David and his two younger sisters, Carol and Wendy. Talbragar Reserve had been established just east of the town of Dubbo in 1898 on Wiradjuri land, land with which Riley’s father’s family had been affiliated for many generations. The Rileys were one of the last families to leave Talbragar Reserve, and Michael was seven or eight when his family moved into Dubbo. His mother was of Kamilaroi descent, and her parents, Bengalla and Maude Wright, were caretakers at the Moree Aboriginal Reserve. Riley’s childhood in Dubbo was interspersed with regular visits to Moree to spend time with his mother’s extended family.When Riley was sixteen he moved to Sydney to begin a carpentry course and he was to remain there for the rest of his life. As Brenda L Croft writes: “In Sydney, Michael initially lived in Granville, meeting people who became not only lifelong friends, but his surrogate family: Linda Burney, brother and sister John and Raelene Delany, Dallas Clayton and David Prosser. Here, too, he created enduring bonds with true family, including cousins Lynette Riley-Mundine, Cathy Craigie, Maria (Polly) Cutmore, Ian 'Yurry’ Craigie, Craig Jamieson and others” (2006 Croft, p26). In 1987 Riley moved in with Burney and his cousins Lynette and Craig in Leichhardt.In 1982 Riley enrolled in a photography course with Bruce Hart at Tin Sheds Gallery at the University of Sydney. Hart provided vital guidance and encouragement at this early stage, and subsequently employed Riley as a darkroom and studio technician at the Sydney College of the Arts. Riley’s photographic practice preceded this training however: in his early teens he had bought a 'Box Brownie’ camera and a home-developing kit and had developed his own photographs – of family, friends and landscapes – in his bedroom wardrobe. Riley initially pursued a humanist style of documentary photography, producing stills of Aboriginal people from the Redfern community, playing and watching the local football and participating in street marches. He also took a number of chic black and white portraits of Aboriginal women in the style of fashion photography. In a 2003 conversation with Hetti Perkins, Riley said of his early photographic works: “At that time I was interested in representing Aboriginal people in a different way to the negative images of Aboriginal people in the media. I’d decided to do portraits of young urban Aboriginal people in the 1980s who were doing their own thing, mixing into society, trying to break the stereotype of who Aboriginal people are.” (in 2008 Jones, p111).One of Riley’s first group exhibitions was the seminal 'Koori Art '84’, coordinated by Tim and Vivien Johnson at Artspace in Sydney. Two years later he participated in the 'NADOC ’86 group exhibition of Aboriginal and Islander Photographers’ at the Aboriginal Artists Gallery, Sydney. The first to be wholly dedicated to Aboriginal photography, this exhibition was co-curated by Tracey Moffatt and Anthony (Ace) Bourke, the latter of whom would later represent Riley at Hogarth Galleries. The work Maria (1986), an image of Michael’s cousin Maria (Polly) Cutmore, was bought by the Australian photographer Max Dupain at the NADOC ’86 exhibition.In 1987 Riley co-founded the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative in Chippendale with nine other Sydney-based Indigenous artists. A training position at Film Australia in that year made it possible for him to write and direct the film Boomalli: Five Artists, which documented the emerging practice of five of the Boomalli founders: Bronwyn Bancroft, Fiona Foley, Jeffrey Samuels, Arone Raymond Meeks and Tracey Moffatt. The following year Riley directed another documentary: Dreamings, the art of Aboriginal Australia, which accompanied the landmark Aboriginal art exhibition of the same name which was shown at the Asia Society Galleries in New York in 1988.The spirit and subject of Riley’s projects of the 1980s and early 1990s are a reflection of his involvement in the vibrant Indigenous activist movements of the time. In the years immediately prior to Australia’s bicentenary in 1988 Riley was one of several Indigenous and non-Indigenous photographers who worked to create a wide ranging photo-essay documenting Indigenous Australian life across the country. The project, coordinated by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, culminated in the publication After 200 years: photographs of Aboriginal and Islander Australia today (1988). A number of works that Riley had created among communities in Leeton, New South Wales, and Robinvale, Victoria – communities he visited with fellow Indigenous photographer Alana Harris – were included in the publication. In their affirmation of the resilience of Indigenous Australians, these works contributed a counter-narrative to the national celebration of 200 years of white settlement. Closely connected to the Indigenous political movements of the 1980s was the emergence of a dynamic and ambitious artistic fraternity of urban-based Indigenous artists, playwrights, actors, dancers, poets and curators. The Boomalli Aboriginal Artist’s Cooperative was one manifestation of the networks and collectives that came into being at this time, and another was the Black Playwrights Conference. In 1989 the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust commissioned Riley to document the conference; for this he was assisted by fellow Boomalli founder Brenda L. Croft. The footage created became part of the collection of the Aboriginal National Theatre Trust, and later the collection of the State Library of NSW. His 1990 series Portraits by a window, which was his first solo exhibition at Hogarth Galleries, included portraits of established political figures Charles Perkins and Joseph Croft, and captured in the early stages of the careers of Indigenous artists and curators such as Tracey Moffatt, Brenda L. Croft (daughter of Joseph Croft), Hetti Perkins (daughter of Charlie Perkins) and Djon Mundine. Mundine had just conceived the Aboriginal Memorial installation of hollow log coffins made by artists from Ramingining in Arnhem Land, a response to the Bicentennary celebrations of 1988 (collection of the National Gallery of Australia). Riley’s sensitivity to the disadvantage and social justice issues that marked the lives of members of the Redfern Aboriginal community informed the creation of the experimental film Poison in 1991. According to Croft, Riley had read a Rolling Stone magazine article titled 'Seven little Australians’ which told the story of a cluster of heroin overdoses amongst teenage Aboriginal girls in Redfern, many of whom Riley knew (2006 National Gallery of Australia website). Among the actors in the film were Lydia Miller, Rhoda Roberts, Lillian Crombie and the late Russell Page, all of who went on to establish careers in the arts.From the early 1990s Riley’s work became preoccupied with revisiting and reappraising the spaces of his early childhood; the landscapes of rural New South Wales, the family body of which he was a part, and the way both had been shaped by the forces of colonisation. A common place: portraits of Moree Murries (1991) was the first of a series of projects in which Riley reflected upon his family’s experiences on missions and reserves. This series consisted of understated, subtly emotive black and white shots of family members set against a worn cloth backdrop. It was exhibited at Hogarth Galleries in 1991, the Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London in 1993, and some works from the series were included in the landmark 'Aratjara: Art of the First Australians’ exhibition which toured to galleries in Europe in 1993 and 1994. In 1998 Riley created portraits of members of the Dubbo community in the sister series Yarns from Talbragar Reserve (1998), which was exhibited at Dubbo Regional Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1999. Both series evoke the pathos of rural mission and reserve life by honouring the hardiness, humour and familial solidarity of the subjects, portraying as worthy of empathy and recognition people whose stories have been marginal to those conventionally celebrated as characteristic of the national ethos and character. Other projects from the 1990s were similarly reflective, with Riley using images and scenes that were evocative of childhood memories as a backdrop for the exploration of themes of loss, ruin and death. At this stage, Riley sought to bring an enigmatic quality to his works by using abstract symbolism, creating strange atmospheres and generating emotional resonances that were often ambivalent. The 1993 autobiographical film Quest for country, made in the year that he established Blackfella Films with Rachel Perkins (daughter of Charles Perkins and sister of Hetti Perkins), narrated his return to his ancestral country in the regions of Dubbo and Moree and his impressions of how that country has been marked by the massacres of Aboriginal people and the ruinous environmental impact of farming. The photographic series Sacrifice (1992) consisted of a constellation of metaphorical and allegorical images that expressed a critical and interrogative engagement with the impact of mission life and questioned the nature of the sacrifice Aboriginal people had made in order to be accepted into colonial society. Stylistically, Sacrifice marked a departure from studio-style or real life settings and a movement towards a more conceptual approach to the form. As he says of the series in an interview with David Burnett, it reflects “on that period of time when people did sort of start to lose things, you know, because of the assimilation process and … the government [was] trying to put people on reserves to be good Christian Aboriginal people” (2002 National Gallery of Australia website). Sacrifice was his third solo exhibition at Hogarth Galleries in Sydney; it was acquired by the National Gallery of Australia. The 1997 film Empire, which was commissioned by Rhoda Roberts for the Festival of the Dreaming, and the photographic series flyblown (1998) drew on landscape and Christian imagery to further explore the degradation of Aboriginal land and society by white settlement and the Christian faith, but also to affirm the endurance of Aboriginal spirituality. flyblown was toured to the 1999 Venice Biennale by Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi as part of an al latere exhibition at the Palazzo Papadopoli of Indigenous photomedia artists titled 'Beyond Myth – Oltre Il Mito’. The other artists in this exhibition were Brook Andrew, Brenda L. Croft, Destiny Deacon and Leah King-Smith. The 1990s also saw Riley make a number of documentary films for the ABC. Among these were Blacktracker (1996), a biographical film about his grandfather, Alexander Riley, who had been a highly regarded tracker in the NSW Police Force between 1911 and 1950. Alexander Riley was the first Aboriginal person in NSW to be made a Sergeant and in 1943 he was awarded the King’s Medal. Tent Boxers (1998) was another documentary made for the ABC. This film related the experiences of Indigenous men who had toured with country fairs and circuses as amateur boxers in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. In 1995 Riley was commissioned to create a permanent video installation, Eora, for the Museum of Sydney, which was dedicated to the original owners of the Sydney region. In 1998, Riley was diagnosed with renal failure: his immune system had never quite recovered from a case of rheumatic fever he’d suffered as a child. He continued to produce work, however his art practice was often interrupted by periods of time spent in hospital. In 1999 the Art Gallery of NSW commissioned the film I don’t wanna be a bludger for the 'Living here now: Art and Politics’ Australian Perspecta. The film, which Riley made with fellow Indigenous photographer and film-maker Destiny Deacon, was a satirical take on prevailing stereotypes of Aboriginal people. Riley’s last series of works, Cloud (2000), was the first in which he made use of digital manipulation. The recurring preoccupations with Christianity and Aboriginal spirituality, childhood memory, the spaces and animals of rural New South Wales, and the resilience of Indigenous Australia found expression in these minimalist images of lone, symbolic figures – including a boomerang, feather, locust and bible – suspended in an expansive blue sky feathered with cloud. This series marked a turning point for Riley’s international reputation: it was shown at the 2002 Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Queensland Art Gallery and was awarded the grand prize in the 11th Asian Art Biennial in Bangladesh. In 2003 Cloud was also selected for 'Poetic Justice: 8th International Istanbul Biennale’ along with the film Empire. In 2004 Riley was one of eight Indigenous Australian artists selected to be part of the Australian Indigenous Art Commission, which coordinated the permanent installation of their artworks and designs within the interior and exterior architectural spaces of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, opened in 2006. Besides Riley, the other artists included in the commission were Judy Watson, Paddy Bedford, John Mawurndjul, Ningura Naparrula, Lena Nyadbi, Tommy Watson and Gulumbu Yunupingu. These artist’s works were all enlarged and adapted to different media appropriate for the space. In Riley’s case, scaled up, laminated glass images from the Cloud series are now situated behind windows in one of the Museum’s buildings at street level. Riley passed away in 2004. The National Gallery of Australia’s retrospective Michael Riley: sights unseen toured nationally between 2006 and 2008.
Writers:
Fisher, LauraNote:
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 1960
- Summary
- Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi photographer, video artist and documentary film-maker who was a founding member of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative. His works focused upon Indigenous people's struggles in the wake of colonisation and explored themes related to religion, land and forms of social injustice.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2004
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1952-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1952
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2004
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1951-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Ousback’s pottery style was simple and functional with minimal decoration. He sometimes dug and processed his own clay. At first he was particularly influenced by British potter Lucie Rie but as he explored his new profession his interests were wide: he developed a collection of pots that spanned ages, styles and traditions. Many he gave to friends whom he knew shared his enthusiasm.
In 1993, Anders Ousback spoke at a potters conference in Adelaide. He recalled the experience of studying ceramics in the course at East Sydney Technical College that he had completed the year before. In activities that involved crushing rocks, stoking wood-fired kilns and the ‘breakneck speed’ of projects like ‘stoneware, raku, majolica, lustre, slip-casting, jigger-jolley, handbuilding, throwing, humping, and flopping’ into which he had been thrown, he explained how he had become aware that pottery was not simply tangential to his former profession but was a continuation of it. As he had done (and returned to do) with food, he found himself, in pottery, ‘searching for its heart’.
‘Both cooking and clay’, he pointed out, ‘have their origins in the application of heat, a chemical change, the taking of raw produce and its transformation. The kitchen is divided into the savoury and the sweet. The former, like creating with clay, is its fullest expression. The sweet kitchen with its exactitudes and demands of proportions, equals the glaze. Ratios of butter, flour and sugar are the fluxes, stabilisers and glass formers of cuisine. You glaze a tart. The process of sauté, roast and braise all equate to the raku, midrange and stoneware of clay. You wedge clay as you knead dough. Sieves, colanders and grinders all occur in the kitchen and the pottery. Pottery was first used to cook food, to store it and to eat from. Pottery and cookery are the most ancient crafts still practiced in our modern world.’
With the thoroughness and attention to detail that was characteristic of everything he did, Anders liked to be able to look closely at objects that he loved and that he was working with. It wasn’t enough to simply see something; he liked to touch the surface and texture of a pot and hold it to test its weight. And in the same way he understood so well the associations between making and appreciating food and wine, he also understood that what pots might mean is to do with the relationships that are made between maker and user.
Since his death in May 2004, many people have spoken about Anders Ousback’s wit, wicked humour, skills, imagination and intelligence and his perfect senses of timing, appropriateness, beauty and absurdity. Leo Schofield described him so perceptively as ‘a stone thrown into a still pond.’ We have all realised that there were many ponds of related friends, colleagues and family, and the ripples made by that stone have lapped over into all of them.
Writers:
Grace CochranePowerhouse Museum
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1951
- Summary
- Well-known and admired Sydney restaurateur and ceramicist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2004
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Bridget Whitelaw was born in England, but spent her girlhood in Canberra and Melbourne. While she was a student at the University of Melbourne, where she studied Fine Arts, she lived at St Hilda’s College.After graduation she worked for a while at the State Library of Victoria before joining the National Gallery of Victoria as Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings. Her thesis was on the collection of Lionel Lindsay prints and sketchbooks in the gallery’s collection. The collection and its exhibition benefited from her scholarly rigour and insight.In 1981 she travelled to Britain to work in the collection of the British Museum on a Harold Wright fellowship. On her return she met and married Dr Simon Oldfield, a love that lasted for the rest of her life. She was able to undertake that rare balance between a serious scholarly life in curatoria research and a close loving relationship with her children.In 1983 Patrick McCaughey transferred to head the 19th century Australian drawings collection and in 1985, with Jane Clark, she co-curated the ground-breaking Golden Summers: Heidelberg and Beyond exhibition. Her next major project was a re-assessment of the work of Frederick McCubbin, a project that more or less coincided with the pregnancy and birth of her youngest child. The exhibition opened in 1991. In 1992 after some time when symptoms were not understood, she was diagnosed with a rare muscle wasting disease. She resigned from the gallery, but managed to be the centre of her family’s life and lived long enough to see her children grow towards maturity.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 4 November 1950
- Summary
- Bridget Whitelaw will long be remembered as one of the two curators who created Golden Summers, the first exhibition to define Australian Impressionism. Her career was cut short by a debilitating illness.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Jul-04
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Alan Oldfield was born in Sydney’s industrial inner west,the son of a fitter and turner,whose success was very much a tribute to the quality of education made available to bright students in Australia in the immediate post war years. He discovered art because the local Marrickville library was designated to specialise in art books. At the age of eleven he was awarded the children’s prize in the local Rockdale Art Prize.
By the time Oldfield started high school the family had moved to a new house in Sydney’s south-west suburban sprawl where he attended East Hills Boys High, one of the new comprehensive schools that enabled all NSW school children to complete their secondary education. Bright boys were placed in the academic stream away from art, but his Latin teacher was Bill Collins, later to achieve national fame for his love of the cinema, so he was taught well. Oldfield left school at the age of fourteen with his Intermediate Certificate and enrolled in the National Art School at East Sydney Technical College. This introduced Oldfield to a world of freedom away from the restrictions of the suburbs. The camaraderie between staff and students and the self-conscious bohemianism of inner Sydney took him forever away from the restrictions of the suburbs. He enjoyed a robust social life, which included several spectacular appearances at the annual artists balls. He once recalled walking down Oxford Street as dawn was breaking, wearing nothing but glitter under his coat. The teaching was however less impressive. He later told James Gleeson that he found the teaching 'absolutely appalling’. Nevertheless it enabled him to join the lively young New York influenced radical artists gathered at Sydney’s Central Street Gallery, and he first made his mark as a hard edge colour field painter with an exhibition at the recently opened Watters Gallery. In 1968 he was one of the younger artists selected for the ground-breaking The Field exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Also at this time he wrote articles for the short lived art magazine, Other Voices. Many years later, in 2000 he wrote the catalogue introduction for the Wendy Paramour catalogue. She was the only woman in the Central Street group, and he wanted to ensure that her art was not forgotten after her death.In 1970 he travelled to the USA and Europe for the first time. He had always loved saturated colour, and his initial aim was to see the great survey exhibition of Matisse in Paris. But in Europe he was confronted with the power and beauty of the whole western tradition. As a young man Oldfield had found spiritual solace in the Anglo Catholic traditions of Sydney’s Christ Church St Laurence, and this encouraged him to look more to the great aesthetic traditions of medieval and renaissance Europe. His partner, late Jim Davenport, was an academic so the young Oldfield came to Cambridge where he later claimed he disgraced himself at High Table at Kings College.His paintings of this time included a series of meticulously painted chairs, empty, but awaiting the presence of a human body. One work included a book placed on a beach chair: it was a monograph on Caravaggio. He had seen the definitive Caravaggio and the Caravagisti exhibition in Florence and the 17th century Italian master was to remain one of his great guides. Oldfield returned to Italy in 1974, to Rome on an Australia Council Visual Arts Board travel grant. Here he had the freedom and time to paint and further study renaissance and baroque art. He began to appreciate the beauty of subtle tones and of sculptural forms shown in paint. His growing interest in medieval mysticism led to Oldfield researching The Revelations of Divine Love, by the English mystic, Dame Julian of Norwich. In 1985 he began to paint a series of works based on her visions and spirituality. His painting of Julian’s revelation A High and Spiritual Shewing of Christ’s Mother was awarded the Blake Prize in 1987. The entire cycle was exhibited in Norwich Cathedral in 1988 and his work still holds pride of place in St Julian’s Church, Norwich. Other residencies included Linacre College in Oxford, and Christchurch Cathedral Newcastle, NSW.Explorations and journeys, physical and spiritual, were a characteristic of much of his later painting. Oldfield’s connections to spiritual values led him to being awarded the Blake Prize again in 1991 and he also painted the shrines of Our Lady and Our Lord at Christ church St Laurence in Sydney. His last major series, Lizard Island, the Journey of Mary Watson, was published as a book, with text by Suzanne Falkiner. It was a finalist in the 2002 NSW Premier’s Literary Prize.Despite his involvement with interior lives and metaphysics, Alan Oldfield did not confine himself to religious art and ceremony. He was the designer for Rumours and Afterworlds for the Sydney Dance company from 1978 to 1980, and also designed Beyond Twelve for the Australian Ballet in 1987.
In 1976 Alan Oldfield joined the full-time lecturing staff at the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education in Sydney. He was to remain on the staff until just before his death, as the institution first renamed itself the City Art Institute and then College of Fine Arts, as part of the University of New South Wales. In 1991 he was promoted to Associate Professor. At various times he was head of undergraduate studies, head of studio studies, honours co-ordinator, acting director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery, and most of the other academic administrative jobs undertaken by university staff. In committee meetings his sotto voce comments were usually scandalous, and much appreciated by his colleagues.As a teacher he was well-known for getting surprising results from the least promising of students. He would say with a chuckle, comments that others would not dare utter, After the student got over the initial shock of being told they needed to totally rethink their approach, they would respond. He was an inspirational teacher of art history on Renaissance art, and his passion for the art he loved was totally infectious.After the death of Jim Davenport in 1997, Oldfield was supported by his colleagues and came to realise that this art school, and indeed the wider arts community was part of his extended family, as well as his sister, her husband and their children. Later this family included his new church of St James King Street, where he served on the Parish Council, and it was here that he was farewelled in a great Anglo Catholic Requiem Mass. He had designed the ceremony in the full and gleeful knowledge that most of those inhaling the incense were atheists.
Writers:
Olivia Bolton
Joanna Mendelssohn
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 30 December 1943
- Summary
- Alan Oldfield’s early work was characterised by crisp clean abstract paintings which combined a hedonist sensibility with the austerity of hard edge abstraction. His later paintings were in a more meditative style influenced by Italian Renaissance art and his deep and abiding religious faith. Also active as a theatre/set designer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Oct-04
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Joan Kerr was born on 21 February 1938 in North Sydney, NSW, the eldest of six children of Robert (Bob) Christopher Lyndon (1896-1963) and Edna May Richards (1907-1992), both from Queensland. The family moved to Cronulla where Joan went to primary school although severe asthma often kept her confined to bed. The Lyndons returned to Brisbane in 1951 and Joan attended Somerville House (1952-1955). In 1956 she commenced a BA at Queensland University, the first of her family to undertake tertiary education. She participated in debating and drama and was co-editor of the University’s student newspaper Semper Floreat. She graduated with a B.A. Hons (2) but did not complete her MA in English literature.Joan Lyndon met James (Jim) Semple Kerr (born, Rockhampton, 6 July 1932) in 1956 at university. They were married at All Saints Church, Wickham Terrace, Brisbane on 30 November 1960 but settled in Cremorne, Sydney. Jim worked for Qantas in management, Joan as a junior journalist on the publication Weekend. Their daughter Tamsin was born on 11 April 1962. Qantas posted Jim Kerr to Geneva in 1963 where their son, James Semple Kerr was born on 21 August. In 1964 Qantas transferred Jim Kerr to London, which gave the Kerrs the chance to explore England’s architectural heritage. Their formal study of architectural history began in 1966 with lectures on the great buildings of Europe followed by a two-year diploma certificate on mediaeval art and architecture at the Courtauld Institute. They also attended lectures by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-1983) at Birkbeck College, University of London. It was he, Joan Kerr insisted, who transformed her from ‘housewife to historian’. They were unable to complete their studies in London as Jim was posted back to Sydney in 1968.In 1969 Joan Kerr applied to the Fine Arts Department, Power Institute, Sydney University to undertake a Master of Arts (MA). Head of Department, Professor Bernard Smith insisted Joan first undertake Fine Arts I and II, which she completed in one year. After finishing first in both courses Smith offered Kerr a tutorship. She spent five years in the post unofficially assuming the duties of lecturer.Kerr convinced Smith to allow her to undertake an MA on colonial church architecture. Her thesis – The Development of the Gothic Taste in New South Wales as Exemplified in the Churches of the Colony: from the Beginning of Settlement up to the Establishment of the Victorian Gothic Revival Style at the End of the 1840s (awarded 1976) – crossed academic boundaries between art, architecture and history before such practices became acceptable in Australian universities.Jim resigned from Qantas and in 1972-73 completed a Diploma of Conservation at the University of York. The following year they both enrolled for doctorates at the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, University of York. Joan’s D.Phil thesis, Designing a Colonial Church: Church Building in New South Wales 1788-1888, was based on her MA with an extension of the cut-off date. Both Kerrs were awarded their doctorates in July 1978.In 1978 Jim Kerr became Assistant Director, Australian Heritage Commission in Canberra. Joan worked as a tutor in Fine Arts at the Australian National University (ANU) before being granted a two-year post-doctoral fellowship in history at the Research School of Social Sciences. In 1981 she was offered a lectureship in the Power Institute, Sydney University. She was promoted to senior lecturer (1983-84) and Associate Professor (1985-93). She was Acting Head of Department in 1983-84 and part 1991 and Head of Department, 1985-87.Kerr left Sydney University in July 1993 and spent three years at the College of Fine Arts UNSW (COFA). In 1997 She was one of four senior academics appointed to the new Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at ANU. After her retirement in 2001 she returned to Sydney and was again appointed Visiting Professor at COFA. She was to give occasional lectures but her major task was to obtain an ARC grant to set up the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online. In 2003 Joan Kerr was diagnosed with cancer. She died on 22 February 2004 and is survived by her husband, Jim; daughter, Tamsin; son James and her five grandchildren.
Writers:
steggd
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 21 February 1938
- Summary
- Joan Kerr was the editor for two important publications on Australian artists, The Dictionary of Australian Artists: Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870 (Oxford UP, 1992) and Heritage: the National Women's Art Book: 500 Works by 500 Australian Women Artists from Colonial Times to 1955 (Craftsman House, 1995). She was responsible for a handful of exhibitions and mentor to many other researchers.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 22-Feb-04
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude56 Longitude10 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Denmark
- Biography
- John Andersson attended the Academy of Fine Art In Copenhagen under renowned Professor Kaare Klint. In a detailed eight year course from 1950 to 1958, he qualified as a furniture designer, cabinet maker, and chair maker from A. I. Iversen, and from the Academy of Arts and Crafts as a qualified Interior and Product designer with the Silver Medal.
In Copenhagen he worked in the design practice of the great Finn Juhl, where he designed projects including the Danish Embassy in Washington; the exhibition of 'Arts of Denmark’ in New York and Chicago; the Church of David in Copenhagen; the offices for SAS Airlines in Paris, Nice Berlin and Copenhagen and on interiors of two DC7 aircraft interiors for SAS.
He came to Australia in May 1962 to head the Interior Design Unit for architects Peddle Thorpe and Walker. In 1965 he established his own practice and during his life worked on around 105 projects in Australia and overseas,involving interior design, furniture design, textile and product design.
His hotel clients included Noahs Hotels, Surfrider Motelf Dee Why, Crest Hotel and Hyatt Kingsgate Hotel Sydney, Georgian House, Town House Hotel and Collins Place Hotel, MelbourneThe list of business clients is a long one and some of which include – Dalgety Australia officesConstable and Bain city officeNorth Sydney Club interiors CCH Australia NZ and UK furniture, textiles and interiors Tooheys officesTabma interiors CSR graphic design Manly Waringah and Wollongong Club interiorsSeabridge Australia new office Nedlloyd office interiorHBS Canberra Exhibition Home lighting layout, furniture details, kitchen details.
John had many private clients for whom he designed their houses, furniture, interiors and products.
He taught design at the East Sydney Technical College from 1963 and in the 1990s was an examiner at the Sydney School of Arts.
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Copenhagen
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 1 January 1935
- Summary
- Andersson was formerly with Fin Juhl, Copenhagen. By 1962 he was the Head of Peddle, Thorp and Walker's Design Unit. By 1965, he established his own practice in Sydney. He designed the Prestige Lighting Showroom, the interiors of the Lyceum Theatre, de George's Dress Shop and the Crest Hotel, Kings Cross. In 1969, Andersson was developing designs for Jarvis Coates's furniture manufacturers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-04
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-37.7449752 Longitude144.9643314 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Coburg, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Neville Quarry (1933-2004) was born in Coburg, Victoria, and educated at the University of Melbourne, with his final year of study in 1956 in New Zealand. After several years of travelling, then teaching and building several campus structures at the University of Papua New Guinea in Lae, he moved to Sydney in 1976 to take up a position at the NSW Institute of Technology, which later became the University of Technology, Sydney. He became Professor or Architecture there and later Dean of the Faculty of Design Architecture and Building, then Chair of the Academic Board. In 1981, he was awarded the Union Internationale des Architectes’ Jean Tschumi Prize for architectural education. During the 1980s, he hosted the International Series of lectures in Sydney and Melbourne by well-known and emerging overseas architects and was a panellist on an ABC television show, The Inventors. He wrote and commented widely on architecture, wrote Canberra and the New Parliament House (with Alan Fitzgerald and Peter Mulller, 1984), edited Award-Winning Australian Architecture (Craftsman House, 19XX) surveying the history of RAIA national architecture awards. He was Commissioner to the Venice Architecture Biennale in 1991, producing an exhibition called Architetti Australiani. In 1994, he became the first academic to win the RAIA Gold Medal. In 1995 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia. He won a NSW RAIA merit award for his own house in Paddington in 19XX and, following his retirement in 1998, built three houses at Pearl Beach, and renovated a house at Byron Bay. He socialised widely with his popular New Zealand-born wife Peg, a social worker.Sources—Jones, Philip. 2004. ‘Backer of low-cost housing’, obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 November, p10.—McGregor, Craig. 2004. ‘A true believer, a great teacher’, obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald, p80.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1933
- Summary
- Neville Quarry was Professor of Architecture and Dean of the Faculty of Design Architecture and Building at the University of Technology Sydney (formerly NSW Institute of Technology) during the 1980s and 1990s. He organised the International Series of lectures by progressive foreign architects and Australia's first exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale (1991). He was awarded the RAIA Gold Medal in 1994.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2004
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-22.089 Longitude131.422 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mt Doreen, Northern Territory, Australia
- Biography
- Born c.1931 at Mt Doreen, and a Warlpiri speaker, Dolly Daniels was 'boss’ for the Yawulyu or women’s ceremonies at Yuendumu. Her Dreamings were Warlukurlangu (Fire), Yankirri (Emu), Watiyawarnu (Acacia Seed), Yumpulykanji (Burrowing Skink) and Ngapa (Water). She began exhibiting with Warlukurlangu Artists at the first exhibition of Yuendumu paintings in 1985 at the Araluen Arts Centre in Alice Springs, and subsequently in exhibitions around Australia including Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Darwin and Brisbane. In 1987 her work was also included in special 'Karnta’ (Women’s) exhibitions in Adelaide, Sydney and Fremantle. She was part of the South Australian Museum’s Yuendumu – Paintings out of the Desert project and exhibition in March 1988, Mythscapes at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1989 and L 'é t é Australien at the Musée Fabre, Montepellier France in 1990. She travelled to New York as part of a party of Warlpiri artists who attended the Dreamings: Art of Aboriginal Australia exhibition. Her impressions of the visit are recorded in the film Market of Dreams . In 1991 she exhibited a collaborative work with Anne Mosey in Frames of Reference: Aspects of Feminism and Art , part of the Dissonance program celebrating 20 years of women’s art in Australia. Dolly also collaborated with Anne Mosey on an installation for the 1993 Biennale of Sydney. A leading personality in the Yuendumu community, Dolly was co-Chairperson (with Bronson Nelson ) of Warlukurlangu Artists, Chairperson of the Yuendumu Women’s Centre, a member of the Warlpiri Media Association and, with Lucy Kennedy and Bessie Sims , one of three women on the Yuendumu Council. Collections: National Gallery of Victoria, South Australian Museum; Australian Museum, Sydney.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1931
- Summary
- A member of Warlukurlangu Artists since its inception, and co-chairperson of the association in the late 1980s. Since her involvement in the community's first exhibition at the Araluen Art Centre in 1985, her work has featured in major exhibitions across the country and overseas, including "Dreamings: the Art of Aboriginal Australia" and the 1993 Sydney Biennale.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2004
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wapurtali West Tanami NT, Wapurtali (West Tanami) NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c.1925, he is a Warlpiri speaker whose country is Wapurtali, home of the Bush Carrot ancestor which spread out from here to Ngamirliri in one direction and Yintaramurru in the other. Jack also painted the Yarla (Bush Potato) Dreaming for Yamaparnta, belonging to Jakamarra/Jupurrula. Other Dreamings he painted include Wapirti (Small Yam), Liwirringki (Burrowing Skink), Pamapardu (Flying Ant), Marlu (Kangaroo), Walpajirri (Rabbit-eared Bandicoot or Bilby), Yurduwaruwaru (Bearded Dragon), Karlanjirri (Dragon) and Patanjarngi (Parrakelia). He lived at Yuendumu and had been painting for Warlukurlangu Artists since the mid ’80s. His work was included in Yuendumu: paintings out of the desert at the South Australian Museum in 1988, The Painted Dream in Auckland and Wellington 1991 and many Warlukurlangu exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Perth, Darwin, Adelaide and Alice Springs. He was one of forty-two artists from Yuendumu who worked on a 7 × 3m canvas which toured European cities in 1993 as part of Aratjara – Australian Aboriginal Art .
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1925
- Summary
- Jack Ross started painting for Warlukurlangu Artists in the mid '80s and worked for two decades. He was in many Warlukurlangu exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Perth, Darwin, Adelaide and Alice Springs, in addition to being held in numerous public and private collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2004
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-28.3275 Longitude153.395833 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Murwillumbah, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, curator, tutor and former window dresser was born in Murwillumbah, New South Wales, son of a Baptist minister. He served in the Australian Imperial Force for six years during World War II seeing active service in New Guinea and the Middle East. In 1948-49 he attended the National Art School in Melbourne under Murray Griffiths as part of war service retraining. He came to Perth in 1950 where he worked as a display designer and window dresser for ten years. He was one of a number of artists who supported themselves in this way. Brian McKay, Len Littman and Hugh Child were others. The stores; Aherns, Boans, Cox Bros. and Corots all employed artists to do this work. Baker joined the Perth Society of Artists and in 1961 became Deputy Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia and a part time tutor for Adult Education. He spent 1967-68 in Europe and returned to become the Curator of Painting at University of Western Australia, a position he held until 1975. He won the Fremantle Art Prize in 1961 and 1963, the Melville Acquisitive Award in 1977, the Hume Award in 1985, the Challenge Bank Prize in 1986 and the Mandorla Art Prize in 1988.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- Painter, curator, tutor and former window dresser. Baker became Deputy Director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1961. He won numerous prizes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2004
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-33.481536 Longitude150.1564887 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lithgow, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- (Harold) Bryce Mortlock (1921-2004) was born in Lithgow and graduated from Sydney University in 1950 with the University Medal. After working as an assistant to Sydney Ancher, he moved to London and worked for the London County Council 1951-1952. On return to Sydney, he became one of Ancher’s partners in Ancher Mortlock and Murray in 1952. The firm became one of Sydney’s most successful practices of the 1950s and 1960s, and gained another partner, Ken Woolley in 1964. In 1966, Sydney Ancher retired; Mortlock retired in 1982. He was president of the RAIA’s NSW chapter 1970-72 and national president 1975-76. He received the RAIA’s Gold Medal in 1979 and the Order of Australia (General Division) in 1982. He was a director of Australian Building Industry Specifications P/L 1975-1992. In 1981, he was a visiting professor at the University of NSW and from 1984-1993 he was a site planning consultant to the Australian National University, Canberra. In 1988 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of architecture (honoris causa) by the University of Melbourne.Sources—Johnson, Paul Alan and Susan Lorne Johnson. 1996. Interview with Bryce Mortlock. Sydney: University of NSW Architects of the Middle Third program.—Saunders, David and Catherine Burke. 1976. Ancher, Mortlock, Murray, Woolley: Sydney Architects 1946-1976. Sydney: Power Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney. In the collection of Julie Cracknell.—Taylor, Jennifer. 1972. ‘The Development of A Regional Architecture 1953-63’ in An Australian Identity: Houses for Sydney 1953-63. Sydney: University of Sydney.—Various papers archived by the NSW RAIA 20th Century Buildings Committee.—Ancher Mortlock Murray & Woolley project database under construction by Anne Higham for the NSW RAIA 20th Century Buildings Committee.—Ancher Mortlock Woolley website www.amwarchitects.com.au
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- Bryce Mortlock was a distinguished Sydney architect during the 1950s and 1960s. After winning the University of Sydney medal for top architecture student (1950), he worked for the London County Council (1951-52), then became a partner of Sydney Ancher at Ancher Mortlock and Murray (later joined by Ken Woolley).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2004
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1920
- Summary
- Newton was a German-Australian photographer specialising in magazine fashion and celebrity photography. He had an extensive international career in magazine journalism with numerous photography exhibitions and publications.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-04
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Adelaide and has had a long and distinguished career in South Australia. She was educated at the Girls’ Central Art School, the SA School of Arts and Crafts (1934-37) and Adelaide Teachers’ College (1939-40). She taught at the School of Arts and Crafts in 1941-45, then resigned to work full time as an artist. Her most influential teachers were Mary P. Harris and John Goodchild (husband of Doreen ). She was also influenced by the professionalism of Dorrit Black , although not by Black’s style. In 1952 she married Frank Galazowski; they have four children.
Jacqueline Hick is primarily a figure painter in oils although she has also made prints, set designs and enamels. Her approach to media is to learn traditional methods thoroughly and then to experiment. In the early 1940s she, Thelma Fisher and Christine Miller learnt print-making from John Goodchild, then produced intaglio prints using unconventional methods. Although necessitated by a shortage of materials due to the war, this has become Jacqueline Hick’s method. In 1951 she took lessons in the use of oil glazes from Ivor Hele and subsequently used it almost in the manner of watercolour painting, particularly in her underwater bathers’ paintings of the 1970s.
Jacqueline Hick’s approach to subject matter and style is similar. She is conscious of working in the European tradition, which she studied in England, France and Italy (1948-50); she has been inspired by the work of Goya, Daumier, Kollwitz and, in Australia, Dobell and Drysdale. Her subject matter can be divided into two: a vein of social comment ranging from mild satire to trenchant criticism and more decorative work based on the Australian landscape and its fauna and flora. The former evokes wartime life in Adelaide, family life during the 1950s, the dispossession of the Australian Aborigines, the oppressive nature of the city, portraits of family and friends and the expression of her love of the performing arts. In her decorative work she enjoys the challenge of combining aesthetic needs and an awareness based on informed observation. Her hobbies are the study of geology and ornithology, and she has been a member of the Field Geology Club of South Australia and the Queensland Ornithology Society.
Throughout her career Jacqueline Hick has been active in arts organisations. She was a founder committee member of the Contemporary Art Society (SA), a founder member of the Adelaide Theatre Group, a member of the Royal SA Society of Arts, a Board member of the Art Gallery of SA (1968-75) and a member of the first Council of the Australian National Gallery (1982-85, now NGA).
Jacqueline Hick has mostly worked in Adelaide but lived in Brisbane in 1978-90. She now lives in retirement in Adelaide. She has won many awards for her painting, principally the Melrose Prize (1959) for her Self Portrait , the Cornell Prize (1958, 1960) and the Maude Vizard-Wholohan Prize (1962, 1964). In 1995 Hick was appointed Member of the Order of Australia, AM, for services to art.
Writers:
Furby, PaulaNote: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1919
- Summary
- Jacqueline Hick is a painter. She has had a long and distinguished career in South Australia. Hick won many awards for her painting, principally the Melrose Prize (1959), the Cornell Prize (1958, 1960) and the Maude Vizard-Wholohan Prize (1962, 1964). In 1995 she was appointed Member of the Order of Australia, AM, for services to art.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-May-04
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator, was born in Sydney and brought up and educated in Bowral. An accident with horses when she was fifteen kept her away from school for a year and left her deaf. During this time, she read a good deal and decided on a career in art. After spending two years studying at East Sydney Technical College, she worked for an advertising agency and gained useful experience in practical illustrating skills. Then came the war and she joined the Women’s Land Army.
Having already tried her hand at writing and illustrating a children’s book, in 1941 she succeeded in getting Ambrose Kangaroo published by Australian Consolidated Press. This was very successful and led to further commissions; for several years it ran as a comic strip in a Sydney newspaper. The high point was reached when the American publisher, Scribners, decided to bring out an American edition. No doubt they liked the freshness and novelty of the book and the progress of the war, with the influx of Americans to this area, had created an interest in Australia.
Her publisher suggested that she should do a picture book about a child’s life in this country. This resulted in Susan Who Lives in Australia (New York 1944) with English and American editions following. The author-artist was still very young—only twenty-eight—when Susan was published and her drawing is a little unfinished. She revised her work and used several varying styles in subsequent Australian editions of Katherine (as Susan was renamed in the English and Australian editions).
MacIntyre’s considerable versatility may be seen from her success in different spheres. She worked as a feature writer for the Age , Sunday Telegraph and Australian Women’s Weekly , and later as a television cartoonist for the ABC. Her early children’s books were ahead of her time in Australia, which was one reason why they were welcomed so warmly. Her later picture books with their humour and lively drawings continued to achieve success in America and retained their popularity here, being reprinted several times. However, the broad, poster-like style she developed and her slapstick humour divided critical opinion about their quality. (This may also have reflected increased critical awareness in response to the improvement in the quality of children’s books in general, even if few picture books were yet being published here). The Children’s Book Council Award for Picture Book of the Year to Hugh’s Zoo in 1965 was a controversial one.
But a dozen or more highly original picture books created when there was such an obvious lack of local books for young children firmly established the importance of MacIntyre’s contribution to the children’s literature of this country. She later went on to write several novels for adolescents with serious social content, published both in Australia and overseas.
In 1951 Elisabeth MacIntyre married John Roy Eldershaw. They had one daughter.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1916
- Summary
- Female children's book author whose poster-like illustrations of life in Australia made her popular in many countries. She also worked in television and as a feature writer for newspapers and magazines.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.2004
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude47.4925 Longitude19.051389 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Budapest, Hungary
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1910
- Summary
- George Reves (sometimes spelt Reeves) was an architect and designer of commercial interiors and buildings in Sydney. He registered as an architect in NSW in 1945 after working in Paris for Perret Freres. Some of his works were published in design and architecture trade journals during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2004
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-31.9807252 Longitude115.7814486 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Claremont, WA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 5 May 1908
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Apr-04
- Age at death
- 96
Details
Latitude-33.816667 Longitude151 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date2004-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parramatta, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, was born in Parramatta on 25 September 1907. She studied art at East Sydney Technical College from 1923 on a scholarship awarded to her from Drummoyne Public School. She specialised in sculpture, studying under Rayner Hoff from 1924. In 1930 she was awarded a Diploma in Art (Sculpture Honours), the first Art Diploma awarded at the College. She gained various prizes while a student, including an award in the 1929 Society of Artists’ Competition, and her work attracted critical attention.
Hoff, who described McGrath’s student progress as 'exceptionally brilliant’, designed and edited a book on her work which was published in 1931 with contributions from notable establishment figures, including Norman Lindsay and J.S. McDonald. Commissions included displays for Farmers department store, Pan for Beale & Co. in 1931 and illustrations for Katherine Susannah Pritchard’s The Earth Cover (1932).
For three years (1930-33) McGrath worked as an assistant to Rayner Hoff on the sculpture for the Anzac Memorial in Sydney, reputedly modelling much of the relief work. In 1933 she sailed for London with her family, attended carving classes run by John Skeaping and produced a number of portrait heads. She travelled in Europe in 1934-35 and later taught art at a girls’ school in Carlisle. In 1936-38 she illustrated books of humorous verse and cartoons for Punch , the jokes being provided by Albert Frost, whom she married in 1938. She moved to Washington DC (USA) in 1941 when her husband was appointed to the British Embassy and still lives there. She has not worked as a professional artist since this move.
Eileen McGrath was the most prominent and perhaps most accomplished artist in the group of (predominantly female) sculpture students at East Sydney Technical College whom Hoff developed into a coherent 'school’ of sculptors which dominated Sydney sculptural production in the inter-war decades. This liberated McGrath, and others, to produce an art which would possibly have not been allowed to them otherwise. Freedom from conventional constraints was won by taking on much of Hoff’s identity and the result was a markedly uniform body of work, yet a quite distinctive and powerful one.
Writers:
Edwards, Deborah
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 September 1907
- Summary
- McGrath was awarded the first Art Diploma (Sculpture Honours), at East Sydney Technical College. She studied under Raynor Hoff, and left Australia in 1933, studying and teaching in England and Europe before finally settling in Washington DC with her husband Albert C. Frost. Authorities (Deborah Edwards) suggest she did not work professionally after 1941.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-04
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1954-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 3 November 1954
- Summary
- Alan Brown was a New Zealand-born artist and designer who trained as an architect in Dunedin and Auckland. He worked in Auckland, Sydney, Amsterdam and Byron Bay.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2003
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude-33.713759 Longitude150.3121633 Start Date1945-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Katoomba, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 31 October 1945
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Oct-03
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-22.1646782 Longitude144.5844903 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Queensland
- Biography
- Waka Waka/Kallilia artist, Gloria Beckett was born in Queensland in 1943. Removed from her family as a child, Beckett’s work often reflects the pain and suffering she endured as a consequence. Beckett worked in a number of media including oils, inks, pastels, synthetics and charcoal and her style is equally diverse. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Queensland Art Gallery as well as many private collections. Beckett showed her work in the 2001 exhibition “Gatherings, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art From Queensland Australia” and stated in the accompanying catalogue that, “I sometimes paint events of my past… it helps me overcome the suffering, the bad memories and torment. I have a deep passion to paint my people as I see character, beauty and stregth in their faces, but there are times when I see the despair, suffering and sadness.”
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1943
- Summary
- A Waka Waka/Kallilia artist, the work of Queensland-born Gloria Beckett often reflects the pain and suffering she endured after being forcibly removed from her family as a child. Employing a range of media including oils and charcoal, Beckett's work can be found in the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2003
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude31.5656822 Longitude74.3141829 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lahore, Pakistan
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1940
- Summary
- Ingham was a furniture designer and maker with extensive training in England. He combined teaching, designing and making in the UK before taking a position with the Canberra School of Art (today, ANU), headed by Udo Selbach in 1982. Working in wood, he was a significant influence on students as well as commercial furniture manufacturing. He retired from illness in 2000.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-03
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nyinna Nyinna, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c. 1940 at Nyinna Nyinna near Docker River, Billy grew up traversing the vast reaches of Pintupi territory across the WA border. He came east by donkey in one of the early Pintupi migrations. He had observed the painting group at West Camp for many years before taking up painting himself in the mid ’70s. He usually painted Tingari stories for his country and lived at Kintore.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1940
- Summary
- Nolan came east in one of the early Pintupi migrations. He had observed the painting group at West Camp for many years before taking up painting himself in the mid '70s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2003
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- THIS IS A STUBB. PLEASE HELP THE DAAO BY WRITING A FULL BIOGRAPHY
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1940
- Summary
- Geoffrey Bardon was an artist and art teacher who came to Papunya in February 1971. His active mentoring of artists at Papunya and encouraging them to use acrylic paints when painting the kind of art that came to them naturally, was the spark that lit the western desert art movement.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-May-03
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-26.406265 Longitude146.2420417 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Charleville, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- Pastellist and painter, and founding member of the Pastel Society of Australia. Leslie Joyce (Les) McDonaugh was born in Charleville on 6 January 1933, first child of James Leslie Joyce McDonaugh and Dorothy Charlotte McDonaugh née Thorne. He was educated in Warwick and later St Patrick’s School, Brisbane, when the family settled in Fortitude Valley and later Toowong in the mid-1940s.Les McDonaugh enthusiastically made art throughout his youth; regularly entering the Sunday Mail’s weekly children’s corner drawing competition, for which he occasionally won prizes. Works by McDonaugh were also published and awarded purple certificates in The Sun’s ‘Cousin Marie’ children’s feature.(2) As a 19-year old, McDonaugh exhibited in the annual exhibition of the Younger Artists’ Group of the Royal Queensland Art Society. He was educated at the Central Technical College, where he studied drawing and painting under Melville Haysom and David Fowler.(3)Les married Lavinia Maud Lawson (6/3/1937-3/4/1993) on 22 December 1955. Lavinia supported Les’ art career economically and emotionally until her death.(4) In the late 1960s and early 1970s McDonaugh exhibited at the RNA art exhibitions, and from the mid-1970s was featured in solo exhibitions at commercial galleries. At the same time he continued to participate in exhibitions at the Royal Queensland Art Society. Critics noted his vibrant palette and bold application throughout his works.(5) In 1978 he travelled to Sturt’s Stony Desert near Cadelga to paint, and in 1979 his first solo show of oil paintings was hung. (6) In 1985 his work was featured in an exhibition of Northern Australian artists organised by the 1985 Australian Art Expo in Cairns; this exhibition later travelled to the United States with support from the Queensland Government.(7) Around the same time, McDonaugh was involved in the establishment of the Pastel Society of Australia, in which he executed Vice-Presidential duties.(8)In the 1980s and 1990s, McDonaugh continued to exhibit work in solo and group exhibitions including several exhibitions at Beaver Galleries, Canberra, and produced a series of instructional videos and pastel and painting. He also painted murals for the Inala Library.(9) One of his grandsons, John Woodrow Charlton was commissioned to paint over his mural in 2008 as it was beyond repair.(10)After the death of his wife Lavinia in 1993, he changed his style and exhibited more nostalgia, referencing his Irish heritage in his 1995 exhibition.(11) He regularly discussed his biography throughout interviews in later life. He continued to produce work and exhibit until his death.(12)McDonaugh died on 7 February 2003. He was survived by his second wife, and children from his first marriage, Elena, James, Gary and Robyn.(13) Works by McDonaugh are usually signed 'L McDonaugh’, sometimes bearing the date of creation.
(1) Patricia Kelly, ‘Bay islands became artist’s great muse’, Courier Mail, Tuesday 4 March 2003, p 18.(2) Sunday Mail, 23 April 1944, p 5; 28 May 1944, p 5; 10 December 1944, p 6; 12 September 1948, p 7. The Sun, 14 April 1946, p 6; 2 March 1947, p 10; 9 March 1947, p 4; 15 February 1948, p 3; 11 April 1948, p 3; 19 December 1948, p 3.(3) Courier Mail, Wednesday 11 January 1950, p 11; Tue 19 August 1952, p 2. Northern Australian Artists exhibition catalogue: 1985, Australian Art Expo, Cairns, p 7.(4) Information supplied by descendants of Les McDonaugh.(5) Sunday Mail, 20 June 1976; 28 May 1978(6) Sunday Mail, 28 January 1978; 7 October 1979.(7) Northern Australian Artists exhibition catalogue: 1985, Australian Art Expo, Cairns.(8) The Pastellist (newsletter), February 1988. Bayside Bulletin, 18 April 1995, p 4.(9) The Satellite, 13 June 1990, p 1; Bayside Bulletin, 18 April 1995, p 4.(10) Information supplied by descendants of Les McDonaugh.(11) Information supplied by descendants of Les McDonaugh.(12) Bayside Bulletin 18 April 1995, p 4; Tuesday November 3 1998 p 61; Patricia Kelly, ‘Bay islands became artist’s great muse’, Courier Mail, Tuesday 4 March 2003, p 18.(13) Patricia Kelly, ‘Bay islands became artist’s great muse’, Courier Mail, Tuesday 4 March 2003, p 18.
Writers:
Timothy Roberts
JWCharlton
Date written:
2016
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 6 January 1933
- Summary
- Pastellist and painter active in Brisbane, and founding member of the Pastel Society of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Feb-03
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-22.815924 Longitude127.7642195 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kiwirrkura, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Born near Kiwirrkura c.1932, Napanangka Yukenbarri was a Kukatja speaker. Her country was Winpupulla and Puturr, north of Jupiter Well). She lived in Balgo and started painting for Warlayirti Artists in 1989. A strong, senior woman who was one of the hardest working artists in Balgo. She developed a highly individual style where the paint was applied in heavy, coalesced dabs. A bold pattern of colours was created which served to represent different areas of the artist’s country. The works are usually totally abstract but all concern old campsites and their food and water-sources.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1932
- Summary
- Kukatja speaker and prolific painter at Warlayirti Artists in Balgo (WA). She developed a distinctive style with heavy dabs of paint.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2003
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-22.33179445 Longitude128.7182772 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lake Mackay, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Born c. 1930 “in the bush”, on the north-west side of Lake Mackay, Sam Tjampitjin was a Kukatja speaker. His Dreamings were Tingari and Water, and his traditional country was the site of Lanta-lanta, the area north-west of Lake Mackay. The artist had only been painting for Warlayirti Artists since early 1990. His works impressed with their strong, bold colours and design. Coming from a senior person in Men’s Law, these images presumably speak from the deep well-springs of the artist’s knowledge and experience. All his works communicate something of the artist’s sense of the power of the land. Many deal with Water Dreaming and associated rainmaking rituals.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- Sam had been painting with Warlayirti Artists since the early 1990's. His paintings are strong, with bold colours and designs. His paintings reflect his knowledge as a senior lawman and his connection with the land and associated rainmaking rituals.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2003
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1928
- Summary
- Fawcett trained in England, later moving to Melbourne taking a position with David Lancashire's studio as a "lettering artist'. He moved toward retirement with the appearance of computer-generated typography.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-03
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 6 April 1927
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2003
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude41.8755616 Longitude-87.6244212 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Chicago, IL, USA
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by adding biographical material
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 11 July 1926
- Summary
- Chicago born Carl McConnell became the most significant potter in post World War II Brisbane as he introduced porcelain and stone firing techniques to Brisbane. As with many studio potters of his generation he was profoundly influenced by Bernard Leach's A Potters Book.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2003
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia, Western Australia?
- Biography
- Born 'in the bush’ c.1920, probably near Hidden Basin, Alan Winderoo was a senior law-man of the Kukatja tribe within the Balgo community. His country on his father’s side was Yinpirkuana (Impirrkarwanu) near Lappi Lappi and his principal stories were Tingari and Water Dreamings. He began painting in Balgo for Warlayirti Artists in 1987, but may have painted prior to this, through his links with the Yuendumu community. His works exhibit a stong sense of tradition. The often rough application of paint serves to confirm that what was important to the artist was the message, which in turn is concerned with powerful events and forces of the mythological past. A painting of the artist’s was exhibited at the Madrid Art Fair in February 1990.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1920
- Summary
- A senior Kukatja law-man and artist at Balgo (WA). His rough application of paint brings attention to his Dreaming, which is indifferent to aesthetic effects. His work is held in major art collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2003
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and writer, was born in Adelaide and educated at Norwood High School and Urbrae Agricultural High. In 1939 he left Adelaide by pushbike for Kings Cross. He joined the AIF in 1940, sailed to Singapore and was captured at its fall. Gunner Sprod spent three and a half years as a prisoner of the Japanese. He drew cartoons in Changi and produced a hand-made magazine 'Smoke-oh’ to entertain other POWs; he also illustrated Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland at Changi in 1944. His POW cartoons were reproduced as a special feature in the Australian Women’s Weekly on 17 November 1945, eg two diggers carting 'Ishibishi Gasoline Coy’ tank through jungle: '“Gee, I wish it was full of beer.”/ “Don’t be silly. We haven’t got any glasses” (ill. Lindesay 1994, 32).
Sprod returned to Kings Cross in 1945 and was appointed the Daily Telegraph (ACP) cartoonist on the strength of his POW drawings. In 1949 he sailed for London and worked in Fleet Street for 20 years, primarily as a feature artist for Punch during the whole of his stay (Joan Kerr owned a collection of his Punch cartoons). He returned to Sydney in 1969 'owing to a wee bit of domestic trouble’ (Jensen, p.11) and resumed living at Kings Cross. He drew cartoons and illustrations for the Sydney Morning Herald for many years, e.g. [scene of traffic accident chaos, with man in flares, jewellery and fur saying to a policeman] “Can’t you hurry up with the formalities? – We’re on our way to a happening” (ill. Lindesay 1979, 316). ML has 4 original cartoons of the 1960s (PXD 764) and 17 originals of 1981-82 and undated (PXD 739) drawn for the Bulletin , including The People Plague published 30 June 1981, 97 (high rise buildings ruined by a woman hanging out her washing) and another of a bloke unable to leave his terrace house because his female partner is wearing the clothes. Both were included the 1999 SLNSW b/w exhibition. NLA has neg. of 'Strong willing girl wanted’ from Chips off a shoulder .
Sprod entered White Meat , a cartoon published in the Spectator , in the 1992 Stanley Awards (exhibited SLNSW). A longtime member of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club, he was 'smocked’ in 1994. He was still living at Kings Cross in February 1999 when he visited the Artists and Cartoonists exhibition at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in February 1999 and drew a cartoon in the visitors’ book. He may have moved to a nursing home in 2000. He died early in April 2003.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1919
- Summary
- Popular Adelaide born, mid 20th century Sydney and London based cartoonist and writer. From his early cartoons to cheer his fellow POWs at Changi, Sprod became one of the most popular London Punch cartoonists of the 1960s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Apr-03
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.8260081 Longitude151.2254326 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cremorne, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- comic strip artist and illustrator, won a Walkley Award in 1972 for an Australian Women’s Weekly illustration. In the late 1970s or early 1980s he created the strip Lucky Cat for the Sun-Herald . An original Bulletin cartoon, dated 16 February 1982 is at ML PXD 739.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 11 June 1918
- Summary
- Late 20th century Sydney comic strip artist and illustrator and the creator of the 'Lucky Cat' strip that appeared in the Sun Herald in the late 1970s/early 1980s. In 1972 Batten won an Walkley Award for an Australian Women's Weekly illustration.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-May-03
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-19.2569391 Longitude146.8239537 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Townsville, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- Artist, violin maker and socialist, was born in Townsville, Qld. He left school early and worked in odd jobs from the age of nine. In 1934, aged 22, he became a committed socialist after hearing a speech in Townsville by the left-wing Queensland lawyer Fred Patterson. He moved to Sydney that year to study art at East Sydney Technical College on a scholarship, working at odd jobs around the city, posing at night as an artist’s model, went to sea on coastal traders, worked as a fitter and turner and as a portrait painter. As an artist, sculptor, photographer, designer and woodworker, he was part of a group of painters, writers, poets and filmmakers who lived close to Sydney’s wharves in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. He joined the Communist Party and several Trade Unions. He was involved in a number of strikes as well as actively working against Menzies’s referendum to ban the Communist Party in 1951, where he used his talents to design logos and other visuals in the 'Vote No’ campaign. At a Communist Party meeting he met his wife Phyllis; they married in Paddington in 1939 and had three children.
In the early 1940s Johnson began building violins (although he couldn’t play them). Using traditional materials and methods, he became world-renowned for his instruments. Always inscribed with the letters TIMBFGNBOS (“this instrument may be freely given, never bought or sold”), they were given to promising young musicians who otherwise could not afford them. In 1992 he estimated that he had built 60 violins. He was awarded the OAM in 1991 for 'services to arts, in particular, music instrument making’, complementing the OAM Phyllis had received in 1989 for 'services to women’s affairs and consumer rights’. He died in 2003, aged 90, survived by Phyllis and two of their children, Peter and Alice. Another son, Ralph, predeceased him.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1912
- Summary
- An artist of diverse media, a world known violin maker and a committed socialist, Johnson was awarded an OAM in 1991 for services to the arts.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2003
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Sydney in July 1910. Adopted at the age of six months, he went to primary school in Balmain and Drummoyne. In 1918, aged eight, he moved with his family to a place called Dry River, at Cobargo on the far south coast of NSW, and completed his education through Correspondence School. Returning to Sydney in 1929, he worked as a blacksmith’s striker for six months, a job his hero Les Darcy had also held. Also in emulation he enrolled at Jack Dunleavy’s gymnasium, but withdrew from the boxing profession before his first fight. An accident while driving a petrol wagon for the Vacuum Oil Company put him in hospital for a long time, when he began taking art lessons by correspondence. Afterwards, on the dole, he studied life drawing at the Catholic Guild, Sydney.
Dixon freelanced with the Bulletin , Rydges Business Journal and Smith’s Weekly and drew comic stories for Frank Johnson publications until appointed art editor of Smith’s Weekly after Jim Russell left. His original cartoon '- and the judges have called for a photo’ was donated to the SLNSW ML in 1999 by the wife of a reporter on Smith’s , along with over 20 other originals and a copy of the final issue (28 October 1950) signed by all the cartoonists. Another of his cartoons, in the Thomas Ottaway donation, 'But only God can make a tree’ (ML ) n.d. [1940s?], was probably also done for Smith’s .
Les joined the army in 1941 but served only three months because his earlier injuries prevented him from wearing a tin hat. He was the dominant figure of Smith’s post-war years, leaving in 1949 (not long before it folded in October 1950) to join the Sydney Production Unit of the Brisbane Courier Mail as art editor (Cullen, Horseman and other Smith’s artists also moved there). He left in February 1957 to take over 'Bluey and Curley’ after Norman Rice died (who had succeeded the strip’s creator, Alex Gurney). He continued it until 26 July 1975 and also created the comic strip, 'Phill Dill’.
Dixon was made a life member of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club in 1991 and was awarded a Silver Stanley in 1994 for his contribution to Australian cartooning. Mid 1990s strips in the Black and White Artists’ Club Collection are at SLNSW ML. After he retired he lived at Summerland Point and drew a regular strip (and often other cartoons) for the free national monthly newspaper, The Australian Senior Citizen. He has organised art competitions for Aboriginal children throughout Australia. Contributed to S.H. Ervin cartoonists’ book in February 1999. Included in Brenda Rainbow’s Federation Cartoonists (2001).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. July 1910
- Summary
- Prolific newspaper cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- May-03
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-38.228973 Longitude143.136785 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date2003-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Camperdown, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 31 August 1910
- Summary
- Cecily Adams was senior decorator at Beard Watsons, Sydney, later in private practice in Castlecrag. She was a founding member of the SIDA in 1951. Educated at Strathcona Melbourne, she relocated to Sydney in 1932 and studied art at the East Sydney Technical College under Rayner Hoff. Her book, "From the Diary of an Australian Decorator", published by Child and Henry in 1986 is a memoir of her career in interior design.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Dec-03
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-20.12069 Longitude127.79392 Start Date1960-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Balgo Hill, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Matthew Gill’s work has received much attention from non-Aboriginal people, in part because of his fascination, to a far greater degree than anyone else in the Balgo community, with non-traditional designs and techniques. For example, he combined the X-ray technique of Arnhem Land with his own desert motifs. Born at the old Balgo Mission in about 1960, he began painting in 1982. He usually painted Snake, Emu and Water Dreaming stories from the area surrounding Lake Lazlett. A Kukatja speaker, he lived either at Balgo or in the Nyirrpi community. He was the son of Mick Gill . In 1989 the artist spent three months living and painting in Japan. Former Warlayirti Artists coordinator Michael Rae once described Matthew Gill as 'the most original and talented of all the younger artists at Balgo’.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1960
- Summary
- A Kukatja artist, and resident of both Balgo (WA) and Nyirrpi (NT), Gill's experimentation with different painting techniques produced a unique style. His work is in major collections in Australia and overseas.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 42
Details
Latitude-23.447 Longitude131.882 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Haasts Bluff, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born at Haasts Bluff in 1950, Goodwin spent his boyhood walking around the Haasts Bluff area. The family came to Papunya when the settlement was established in 1960 and Goodwin attended school there briefly. During the ’70s he worked as a stockman at Haasts Bluff, Hermannsburg, Vaughan Springs, and Orange Spring near Jay Creek. In the early ’80s he began to paint for Papunya Tula Artists, with instruction from Charlie Egalie and Turkey Tolson. He painted Dingo and Rock Wallaby stories from his traditional country around Nyuuman, south-east of Kintore, where close relative Mick Namarari had an outstation.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1950
- Summary
- Initially a stockman, Goodwin took up painting in the early 1980s through close contact with senior artists such as Mick Namarari, Charlie Egalie and Turkey Tolson.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1946-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- Ron Hurley was born in Mt Gravatt, Queensland on 19 October 1946. He is from the Gooreng Gooreng people on his mother’s side, and the Mununjali people on his father’s side. His family totem is 'Gnyala’ – the Owl. His personal totem is 'Wajgan’ – the Willy Wag Tail. From an early age Hurley showed skill in areas of sport and art – he was a high achiever in athletics, cricket and football, and he topped his classes in art throughout his primary and secondary education. His love and talent for art grew and saw him develop his first exhibition in 1966 at the age of 19. On August the 6th of this same year Hurley married Colleen Rose Kirk, from Cherbourg. They have two children, daughter Angelina and son Simon. Hurley was the first Aboriginal person to graduate from the Queensland College of Art when in 1975 he obtained a Degree in Visual Arts. He furthered his study at the Brisbane College of Advanced Education Kelvin Grove from 1976 to 1977. Hurley’s career is as diverse as his talent from being a sign writer and commercial artist, to later on as an arts manager, curator, teacher and lecturer. Hurley’s achievements were many including being awarded the 1992 Australia Council for the arts residency at the Cite des Arts in Paris, and exhibited at the Australian Consulate; working in collaboration with Minale Tattersfield Bryce and Partners as the Artist designer of the highly acclaimed Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Bid Logo; he was the first artist to initiate and facilitate artistic workshops to the Indigenous Artistic communities of far north Queensland specifically Aurukun. His work developing into the now growing trend of casting traditional Indigenous sculpture into cast metal medium and unique pieces of art. He was awarded the Ian Fairweather Memorial Prize, Redcliff Arts Prize, Gatton Art Prize, and NAIDOC National Poster Competition. Arts residencies include at Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove Campus, and Capricornia Campus, Rockhampton. Along with curator Djon Mundine, Hurley was the judge on the panel of the very 1st Telstra Indigenous Art Award in Darwin. He held numerous positions of expertise and authority including: being the first Aboriginal member of the Board of Trustees of the Queensland Art Gallery from 1996 to 1997, chairing the Visual Arts Committee of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts from 1993 to 1996, and chairing the Indigenous Reference Panel, of Queensland’s Indigenous Arts Marketing Export Agency (QIAMEA), with State Development from 2000 to 2002. Hurley’s first passion however was for producing art. His skill, knowledge and talent spanned various media including ceramics, painting, sculpture, photography and film, public art, linocut and screen printing, clothing, jewellery and even furniture. Hurley’s work was often based on historical and political figures, and examining the plight of Aborigines in urban society. Ron’s aim was to immortalise Indigenous people and culture through his work. It is exhibited and collected both nationally and internationally. His most celebrated painting 'Bradman Bowled Gilbert’ (1989) was purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery in 1990. Refusing to adopt the “dot” style of the stereotyped art from Aboriginal artist, Hurley commented on his art in contemporary Australian culture stating, “traditional Aboriginal art forms have always had their fair share of exposure and promotion. Stereotyping, being what is it, relegated these forms to the realm of kitsch. At long last the world is responding in a more positive manner, and traditional art is being looked at in its rightful context. It is the very fibre of our country’s imagery. The urban Aboriginal situation is the one, which captures my imagination, for it is here that one experiences 'limboism’, being neither Black nor White, so I am told. A world of such extreme contrast is the one to which I have learned to respond, survive, and attempt to create in”. Hurley is highly respected as an artist not only throughout the arts industry but also throughout Indigenous communities all over Australia. A proud Aboriginal man, he dedicated his whole artistic life to his homelands in Queensland and his Aboriginal culture. He was a mentor for Australian Indigenous young and emerging artists and was a tireless campaigner, advocate and promoter of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and culture. Hurley’s career spanned over 4 decades. He passed away on 3 November 2002.
Writers:
Hurley, Angelina
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 19 October 1946
- Summary
- A proud Aboriginal man, Ron Hurley's work reflected and represented various aspects of Indigenous Australian people, life and culture. From immortalising Aboriginal people and culture in his work to making significant political points and raising awareness
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Nov-02
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude48.666667 Longitude19.5 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia)
- Biography
- The symmetry of Paul Partos’s career as a painter, bracketed within two landmark exhibitions of Australian abstract art, both at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) – 'The Field’ (1968) and 'Fieldwork: Australian Art 1968-2002’ (2003) – resonates with the artist’s use of a border in his canvases to frame, in his words, 'the allusive [sic] world of felt experience’. Contained within the self-imposed physical and conceptual limits of a square or rectangle, Partos’s canvases reveal intense passages of his inner life, expressed in markings ranging from quietude and restraint to exuberant expressions of form and colour, universalised in the process of painting. Paul Partos arrived with his family in Western Australia in 1949, he and his brothers spending an initial six months in a Perth orphanage before being reunited with their parents for the move to Melbourne, an experience that coloured his life and art. From 1959 to 1962, Partos studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology alongside fellow students Robert Jacks, Guy Stuart, George Baldessin and Gareth Sansom. Following his critically acclaimed, sell-out first solo exhibition in 1965 at Gallery A in Melbourne and Sydney (curated by James Mollison) and later inclusion in 'The Field’, Partos became interested in conceptual art, resulting – after two years in New York (1970-72) – in austere, sparsely painted works. Although never entirely absent in his work, sensuality returned to his paintings in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, Partos experimented with etching, finding satisfaction in creating surfaces that matched his paintings in richness and sensitivity. In 1987, he left his fourteen-year teaching position at the Victorian College of the Arts to paint full time, exhibiting with Sherman Galleries in Sydney and Christine Abrahams Gallery in Melbourne from 1992. The beauty and vitality of his last exhibitions with these galleries (2000 and 2001 respectively) drew particular praise from an art world where abstract painters occupy a persistent presence in contemporary art. Paul Partos was represented in important solo and group exhibitions in Australia and abroad, among them 'Minimal Art’ (NGV, 1976); 'The Work and its Context’ (San Francisco Museum of Art, 1978); 'Australian Perspecta’ (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1981); 'Eureka’ (Serpentine Gallery, London, 1982); 'The Field Now’ (Heide Park and Art Gallery, Melbourne, 1984); 'Windows on Australia 1’ (Australian Embassy, Tokyo, 1995); '1968’ (National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1995); and Clemenger Award, Triennial Exhibition of Contemporary Art (NGV, 1996). In 1992, he was awarded an Australia Council Fellowship Grant. His work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, major state and regional collections and in several important corporate collections. The Estate of Paul Partos comprises a number of works spanning the artist’s career and a comprehensive archive of written and visual documentation. The Estate provides material for researchers, curators and students interested in the artist and Australian art from the late 1960s until 2002.
Writers:
Murray-Cree, Laura
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2008
- Born
- b. 4 January 1943
- Summary
- Paul Partos's canvases reveal intense passages of his inner life, expressed in markings ranging from quietude and restraint to exuberant expressions of form and colour, universalised in the process of painting.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Dec-02
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Pikilyi (Vaughan Springs), NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born at Pikilyi (Vaughan Springs) c.1940, Charlie’s language/tribe was Warlpiri/Luritja. He received some basic European schooling at the mission school in Yuendumu, and was initiated near Haasts Bluff. He worked as a stockman for seven years on the station at Haasts Bluff and later in Queensland. After marrying Nora Nakamarra, he worked on Narwietooma station for many years. Charlie and his wife came to Papunya in the very early days of the settlement. They had two sons and two daughters, of whom Natalie Corby began painting in the early ’80s under her father’s instruction. Charlie Egalie lived with his family at Mt Liebig, where his mother and father were settled closer to their country round Kunatjarrayi. Charlie himself dated his painting from Peter Fannin’s time running Papunya Tula Artists (1972-5). Billy Stockman , Kaapa Tjampitjinpa and Johnny Warangkula guided him in the beginning. His paintings depict Woman, Sugar Ant, Budgerigar, Wallaby, Bushfire, and Man Dreamings at sites across this region. Nora Egalie Nakamarra occasionally painted stories of her country at Kunatjarrayi after her husband showed her how to paint in 1989.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1940
- Summary
- Warlpiri/Luritja artist who commenced painting in Papunya as early as 1972. His work is included in many major art collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-20.93877525 Longitude128.9563258 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lake Dennis, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Born 'in the bush’ in 1935, probably in the area of Lake Dennis, Bridget Mudjidell was a member of the Ngarti language group. Her country was Tulku, on the west side of Lake White near Yagga Yagga. She mainly painted about food and water sources in this region. The artist spent the first part of her life in the area and knew it intimately. A gregarious, friendly woman, Bridget Mudjidell was a leader in women’s activities at Balgo. Her works all reflect a great knowledge and love of the land. An energetic painter, her work was always deeply personal, telling of her recent visits to places and of her ancestors’ activities there. She began painting for Warlayirti Artists in 1988.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1935
- Summary
- Ngarti speaker who painted the food and water sources of her country at Tulku (WA). She led women's activities in Balgo and was one of Warlayirti Artists' leading painters.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude41.764582 Longitude-72.6908547 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1932
- Summary
- In 1965 James Doolin came to Australia and became closely involved with the younger generation of abstract and colour field artists who worked and exhibited at Central Street in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Jul-02
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-22.5216511 Longitude132.7344955 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Napperby station, Napperby, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c. 1932 at Napperby Station. Language/tribe Anmatyerre. His father was born at the site of Ngarlu (Ngwerritye Alatiye) west of Mt Allan. His mother came from Warlugulong, south west of Yuendumu. The name Possum was given to Clifford by his paternal grandfather. Clifford received no formal education, growing up “in the bush” and then at Jay Creek during the late 1940s. He did stockwork at various stations across the Centre including Hamilton Downs, Glen Helen, Mt Wedge, Mt Allan and Napperby. One of last men to join Geoffrey Bardon’s group of 'painting men’ at the beginning of the 1970s – with the encouragement of his brother Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri.
Clifford Possum was already a woodcarver of reknown, and had been employed at Papunya School teaching woodcarving to the children and was Chairman of Papunya Tula Artists during the early 1980s. During the ’70s and ’80s, he and his family lived at Papunya, Napperby Station, M’bunghara outstation near Glen Helen, and then Alice Springs. Subsequently, Clifford divided his time between Alice Springs amd the homes of his daughters Gabrielle Possum and Michelle Possum (who are both painters) in Melbourne, Adelaide and Kempsey on the NSW Central Coast. He also travelled widely in Australia and to Europe and North America.
Clifford Possum’s country was around Mt Wedge (Kerrinyarra), Napperby station (Tjuirri) and Mt Allan and his vast repertoire of Dreaming stories included Possum, Fire, Water, Kangaroo, Fish, Snake, Man’s Love Story, Lightning, Mala, Goanna etc. He died in Alice Springs on June 21 2002, the day he was to have been awarded his AO.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Olivia Bolton
zreview
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. c.1932
- Summary
- Leading Papunya Tula artist. One of last men to join Geoffrey Bardon's group of 'painting men' at the beginning of the 1970s and the first to be recognised as an artist in his own right. His illustrious career has been the subject of several books and a major retrospective organised by the Art Gallery of South Australia, which toured nationally in 2003/5.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-32.716667 Longitude151.55 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Maitland, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, nun and Anglican priest, was born in Maitland, NSW, where she spent her childhood. Due to recurrent bronchitis ('I grew too quickly’), she was sent to boarding school in Moss Vale where it was hoped that the air of the southern tablelands would improve her health. Holidays were spent in the company of her two brothers, either roaming the grassy plains of her father’s home country of Moree or in the Hunter Valley droving cattle from Aberglassyn. The sounds, smells and excitement of the bullock teams moving up Maitland High Street to the noise and dust of the saleyards, the crack of the stockmen’s whips and the music of the blacksmith’s forge all left impressions that were to re-emerge in her sculpture.
Solling was always interested in healing work and considered studying medicine but was dissuaded by the prevailing attitude that professional careers were wasted on girls. So in 1945-46 she enrolled at East Sydney Technical College under the sculptor Lyndon Dadswell . Being among the first intake after the war, many of her fellow students had come straight from the army. It was 'an exciting and dynamic time’, an education she valued highly and later claimed was superior to anything she learnt overseas. She made the mandatory pilgrimage to London in 1947. Although rather lonely, she thoroughly enjoyed the world of the Tate Gallery, Bond Street and the latest exhibitions. She studied at the Slade ('the traditional thing to do’) but found it had little to offer her and set up in a studio in Chelsea, where many of her wire sculptures were completed. They were exhibited in 1951 at the Galerie Apollinaire, London.
She returned to Australia in 1952 and had a solo exhibition at David Jones Art Gallery in September. Then followed a freelance period with many commissions for portrait busts, including those of the singer Rosina Raisbeck and author Hans Christian Andersen. The latter, commissioned by the Danish community in 1955, was presented to the City of Sydney and installed in the grounds of Phillip Park. It disappeared in mysterious circumstances in 1984. Solling was one of only two women sculptors in the group exhibition held by the Society of Sculptors and Associates at David Jones Art Gallery in 1955, the other being Kathleen Shillam .
She returned to the UK in 1956 with a firm commitment to a religious vocation and entered the closed order of St Clare of Assisi where she remained until returning to Australia in 1975 to found a similar community at Stroud (NSW). She was the energy and guiding force behind the construction of a remarkable group of buildings and chapels built of handmade earth bricks and local timbers. Her sculpture – 'meditations on things you see’ – and her religious faith were never in conflict but worked in harmony to carry the message of St Clare, whom Sister Angela considered one of the earliest feminists.
Aged 66, Sister Angela decided to seek ordination. She was made a deacon, then a priest in 1992. She created a second stage of her monastery, which she planned to open to lay involvement and ministry. Dedicated in 1997, it was named 'Gunya Chiara’ from the Aboriginal word for house and the Italian word for light. She became interested in learning from Aboriginal women, developing ideas about the relationship between Aboriginal Dreaming and the Franciscan tradition and encouraging non-Aboriginal women to spend weekends at the monastery to learn about the sacredness of the land.
An accident with molten wax while Angela was absent from Gunya Chiara resulted in the burning down of the library and of Angela’s workshop and her works in progress. Already in trouble with numbers and over its aims, this sealed the fate of the monastery as a woman-centred place. It became the home of the First Order of Franciscan Brothers at the Hermitage, along with other Anglicans, and is now administered by the Samaritan Foundation, the social care agency of the Diocese of Newcastle. At 74 Angela accepted an offer to become an assistant priest in Church of the Good Shepherd in the diocese of Massachusetts (USA), where she worked with an artist interested in the visually impaired (Brennan). She died from a sudden massive stroke; her funeral service was held in St Philip’s Episcopalian Church, Brevard, North Carolina on 9 February 2002. Her ashes were scattered wide: on the hills of the local riding school for disabled people that was involved in and in Australia: on the hills surrounding the Stroud monastery and in the outback desert. Memorial services were held on 7 March in the Anglican Cathedral, Newcastle, and on 11 May in Gunya Chiara.
Solling/Sister Angela’s sculptures are held both privately and publicly. The Man from Snowy River (1955-56), a wood and copper wire mural, is in the Ashfield Hotel, Sydney, while one of her many sculptures on religious themes is in the Anglican cathedral at Newcastle (NSW). A small collection was included in an exhibition of modernist sculpture at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery, UNSW COFA, c.1999
Contemplation and sculpture were always the dominant forces in the life of Wendy Solling (later Sister Angela). As a child she was more at ease making toys with hammer and chisel than with dolls, having been introduced to tools by her doctor father. At school she chose drawing classes, but found static, still-life arrangements and an emphasis on perspective and shading little to her liking. Dissatisfied and restless, she longed to draw a tree, to catch the movement-'the spiralling thing’-so abandoned her lessons and began to carve straight into her material: fence post, wooden ruler and rifle butt.
As Sister Angela, she considered contemplation to be about shedding the inessentials and reaching back to 'the bare bones of what Clare is about’. Hence her decision to abandon plaster, colour and all embellishment and use the unadorned wire’s sinuous curves for movement and its cast shadows as shading ('we make our own shading’) was a logical development in her art.
It was not so much homesickness as an expatriate’s longing for the spaciousness of the Australian plains and a touch of nostalgia for the droving life – the cuppa over the fence, the swearing and cursing at the stockyards, the 'mystery and the poetry’ in the frosty light of early morning musters – which led her to the use of such icons of national identity as the bullocky, the drover, the shearer and his sheep. She remembers school holidays 'up Moree way’ where in the heat, dust and dryness everything, even clothing, is stripped to the bare minimum. The grasslands with their interminable wire fences are dry, parched expanses, littered with the sun-dried bones of animals: truly 'a land that could dry out the body and spirit’.
Sister Angela shared with the poet Judith Wright not only their images of the archetypal male Australian heroes, the Bullocky and the Drover, but also the same insistence on bone, bare and bleached. Both ignored the bravado of much masculinist representation; for instance, in this case the drover is not presented as a man of action but in a moment of repose, the horse’s head hanging tiredly down (Wright’s 'bone whisper[ing] in the hide’), the insubstantiality of the wire frame an allusion to the passing of an era. In Wright’s 1943 poem the bullocky, too, is rendered vulnerable by obsolescence:
Grass is across the wagon tracks,
and plough strikes bone beneath the grass,
and vineyards cover all the slopes
where the dead teams were used to pass.
The ghosts of dead teams and the fine-drawn shadows of the wire sculptures, now become ghostly mementos, are in marked contrast to the swirling, dusty action in Tom Roberts’s The Breakaway or Adam Lindsay Gordon’s 'running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs’. The figure of the drover, at one with his horse and constantly on the move, thus epitomises the poet’s spiritual journey into the country of the self and the artist’s own search for creative and spiritual identity.
Writers:
Steggall, Susan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1926
- Summary
- Sculptor, nun and Anglican priest. Sister Angela's sculptural practice was informed by her religion, her sense of the sacredness of the land and her contemplations on light, space and the materials of her art. In 1975 she began to oversee the construction of a monastery at Stroud, NSW, which was finally dedicated in 1997.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, entered the NGV Art School as an ex-soldier (former Sergeant) after WWII; 42 of the 59 new students in 1946 were ex-servicemen. In 1947 he entered Second Class 1947, oil on canvas (Warrnambool Art Gallery), for the Travelling Art Scholarship – a realistic painting that included portraits of friends and fellow students (John Brack, Grahame King – with whom he shared a studio – Helen Maudsley and Fred Williams). George Bell gave advice on the composition. He won the scholarship although many considered the painting shockingly moderne in its rounded modelling and everyday subject matter. He went to England, where he found accommodation at The Abbey Art Centre in New Barnet, Hertfordshire, where various Australian artists lived, including Mary Webb , James Gleeson, Robert Klippel, Noel Counihan, Bernard Smith, Leonard French and Stacha Halpern (see Bernard Smith reminiscences, vol.2), while others visited, e.g. Albert Tucker, Michael Shannon and Alan McCulloch.
Green returned to Melbourne in the early 1950s and struggled to survive, first as a graphic designer then as an art teacher. He kept painting and exhibited in a few, ever decreasing modest shows. After a 30-year wait, he finally emerged in the 1980s showing pencil, ink and gouache close-up environmental drawings of foliage and natural debris on the bush floor at Pinacotheca gallery – the results of long study of oriental art, especially shanshui drawings of the Sung Dynasty. Subsequently showed 2 painted scrolls (massed clouds over Port Phillip Bay and dawn sky viewed from the bush near Castlemaine, where he lived after he retired). For the last decade of his life he became increasingly reclusive, repeatedly doing coloured drawings of dead mistletoe, which were much admired by the cognoscenti and occasionally included in curated exhibitions.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 March 1921
- Summary
- Trained in art after serving in WWII. Won a travelling Art Scholarship to England with a realistic painting showing some very well known friends and fellow students including John Brack and Fred Williams.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude41.8933203 Longitude12.4829321 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rome, Italy
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1920
- Summary
- Molina designed and built a number of racing cars and special models and competed in race meetings and rallies.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-02
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia
- Biography
- Born 'in the bush’, probably around Lake Wills and Lake Hazlett c.1920, Mick Gill was one of several senior Tjakamarra men in the Balgo community who all came from the country surrounding Lappi Lappi or Hidden Basin (others include Alan Winderoo and Albert Nagomara ). The artist’s country was Liltjin, south-east of Balgo. These men and their wives were all Kukatja speakers who live and sometimes worked together. Mick Gill , who usually painted Water Dreaming stories for this site, started painting in 1985. His paintings were sold through Warlayirti Artists. His work was marked by the sense of controlled energy gained from his close, swirling lines. He talked of areas of country being the 'same’ as parts of the body and his work conveys something of this feel. He was married to Susie Bootja Bootja .
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1920
- Summary
- Senior Kukatja artist of Warlayirti Artists at Balgo (WA). His principal subject matter, Water Dreaming, was often depicted in tight swirling lines.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kurlpurlurnu, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born 1919 at Kurlpurlurnu, Abie Jangala’s language/tribe was Warlpiri and his country Kurlpurlurnu/ Parrulyu/ Puyuuru [Mikanjijangka – Kurlpurlurnukurra – from Mikanji through to Kurlpurlurnu] – a wide-ranging set of country. His main Dreamings were Ngapa (water) and Watiyawarnu. He and Jimmy Kelly shared Dreamings. Abie started painting in 1986 in the Traditional Painting course at Lajamanu. He was one of the first active painters at Lajamanu – the “grand old man” of Lajamanu painting. He was an important ceremonial leader and a most charming and personable old man. In 1989 he visited the Dreamtime Gallery in Perth for several months and painted in the gallery. His late wife used to paint too. In 1993 he had his first solo exhibition at Coo-ee Gallery in Sydney.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1919
- Summary
- Warlpiri artist and important ceremonial leader, Jangala was also known as the 'grand old man' of Lajamanu painting. He had his first solo exhibition at Coo-ee gallery, Sydney, in 1993.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-33.9217004 Longitude151.2557975 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Coogee, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 December 1919
- Summary
- John Duffecy was a self-taught furniture designer and maker whose business, John Duffecy Furniture, operated from a shop in Glenmore Road, Paddington, in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of his furniture was manufactured by Bowmer & Rogers (Shapiro sale SH126, 2016).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1917
- Summary
- Michael Hirst was a designer/manufacturer with a small factory in Hawthorn (2-3 workers), dates uncertain. He began designing with Clement Meadmore in 1955 and Hirst was active as designer from 1955-1983 under Michael Hirst P/L, Michael Hirst Furniture and/or "H-Line". Sold through Andersons, Georges , interior decorators, he also exhibited at Gallery A, Melbourne. (info based on telephone interview in 1996).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-02
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Photographer, was born in 1917, son of the English film star Madge Campbell and her husband Douglas Murray (whom she met when he was at Cambridge) of a well-known South Australian pastoral family that lived on a property called Murray Park – now the Adelaide suburb of that name. He was educated at St Peter’s College, Adelaide and at Cambridge then spent some time as a jackaroo, despite having absolutely no interest in rural life. Instead he was keen on photography, painting and drawing so drove to Sydney to work as an artist and never returned to Adelaide. In 1947 Ure Smith published his Alec Murray’s Album , a collection of portraits of Sydney society, diplomats, dancers and painters ('friends’) who included the young Kerry Packer sitting by a fish pond, the dress designer Luciana Arrighi and her sister Marcella, journalist David McNicoll, decorator Lesley Walford and lots of glamorous women. Many of the photographs were taken at Merioola, a large boarding house in Rosemount Avenue, Woollahra owned by Chicka Lowe (see Christine France, 1986) where lots of avant-garde artists lived, including Donald Friend , Justin O’Brien, Loudon Sainthill and Jocelyn Rickards. Murray lived in the stables.
He left Australia the year after the book was published and was joined in London by Rickards and Harry Tatlock Miller, later by Sainthill. They all found it difficult to get work in Britain but Murray got a job as a photographer for a magazine called Illustrated and his salary supported the four of them in a small flat in South Kensington. Failing to enlist during WWII because he was diabetic, he talked the authorities into appointing him a photographer in the Royal Navy. Packing a quantity of insulin and secretly injecting himself twice a day, he went to the Pacific Islands. 'Brave, but mad’, his wife later commented.
By 1951 Murray had his own London studio and his first commission from Paris Match . He covered the Coronation for the magazine and was its London photographer for more than a decade. From the mid-1950s until the late 1960s he drove his two-toned Rolls Royce coupe to Paris twice a year for the fashion collections (see also Louis Kahan earlier from Austria), working for the London Daily Telegraph , the Sunday Times and the Australian Women’s Weekly . At the end of each day his assistant Mike Martin would print the black and white photos in the hotel room, washing them in the bidet then ferrying them to the Qantas airbag and direct to the Women’s Weekly . During the 1960s he met and later married the model Sue Robins, who was to become a leading fashion stylist and costume designer. They bought a small cottage near Newbury in Berkshire as a weekend retreat from their elegant Belgravia house – hung with pictures of Murray Park’s finest merinos – where they went every Friday with their small dogs, Adelaide and Sydney. Occasionally they travelled to Sydney to stay with Murray’s oldest friend, the painter Margaret Olley .
Murray retired in 1985. His photographs were rarely exhibited publicly but rather displayed in silver picture frames on grand pianos in private homes, said Julia Clark, until Clark curated the National Portrait Gallery exhibition High Society at the NLA in 1995. In 2001 a retrospective entitled Alec Murray’s Album was mounted at the National Trust SH Ervin Gallery in Sydney; it was on view at Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria, when Murray died in 2002.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 October 1917
- Summary
- Australian fashion photographer who lived at Merioola in Sydney in the 1940s before moving to Swinging London.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-22.1646782 Longitude144.5844903 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- QLD
- Biography
- Artist, illustrator and comic strip artist born in Queensland.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
DAAO staff writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1916
- Summary
- Mid 20th century painter and illustrator.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Silversmith, woodworker, leatherworker and teacher Herbert Kitchener Currie, known as Kitch, was born in Perth in 1915. He was the younger brother of Betsey Currie, who lived with James W. R. Linton. Currie was educated at Wesley Colleges, South Perth, and Melbourne, returning to Perth at the end of 1930. He enrolled the next year at the Perth Technical School. The family lost their fortune in the Depression and in 1932 Currie went to work for a footwear importer, spending his evenings at the newly opened Linton Institute of Art. He worked for about four or five hours a week for Linton, learning his silversmithing skills “on the job”. When Linton’s wife moved interstate in 1938 and he and Betsey moved to Hovea, Western Australia, Currie joined a brother working for a gold-refining plant in Wiluna, returning to the metropolitan area after the war and again assisting Linton until his death in 1947. Currie then lived with his sister at Hovea, working as a craftsman in wood and leather until 1957 when the Hovea property was sold and they moved to Greenmount, Western Australia. There he took up silversmithing and copper work again. In 1964, Currie joined the Education Department as a lecturer in the Art Studies course at Fremantle Technical College, Fremantle, Western Australia. This legitimised his standing and gave him time to experiment. A measure of interest in the community and the success of the silversmithing courses can be gauged by the student numbers in one venue alone. When Currie commenced there were nineteen students. When he resigned and Terry Walsh took over there were one hundred sixty. The contact with the students was an excellent commissioning network and Currie was engaged to make jewellery as wedding and twenty-fifth wedding anniversary presents and for other special occasions. Currie’s mature style developed after an extensive tour of Europe and Morocco in 1974-75 when an Australia Council grant enabled him to spend three months studying this jewellery. The richness of the Arab work is reflected in a number of his subsequent pieces. It is seen in a large, opal-set bracelet, commissioned soon after he encountered the work. It is also seen in one of his loveliest pieces, a peacock necklace made in 1973 now in the Art Gallery of Western Australia. This has fanning scrolls of silver set with opal. Currie’s major works were made in the 1960s and 1970s, among them a number of ecclesiastical commissions and official gifts for the Department of External Affairs. These gifts were mostly serving-spoons and sets of teaspoons. Curry spoons made in 1962 are typical and show the influence of J. W. R. Linton’s work. This is not surprising as Currie had considerable reverence for Linton whose spoons were household equipment and readily available as models. Currie uses three motifs: repeatedly scrolled lines manipulated by pliers, a beaded wire filed by hand from square section and solid fan-like finials, individually carved, which he is adept at making quickly and uses as “finishers”. Currie has an attraction to undulating and scrolling line, and considers he has a natural ability to place these artistically. Currie deliberately kept away from wildflower and other designs used by Jamie Linton and partners, as he did not want to be in competition with men who made their living from their craft. This has meant that in restricting himself to the three basic motifs he has developed an easily recognisable style of his own, based primarily on scrolling wirework and inspired by his mentor J. W. R. Linton. In the late 1980s Currie made an imposing silver and lapis lazuli necklace, with the regular geometry of the stones contrasted against the scrolling detail of the filigree wire. The combination of geometry with scrolling in the smaller pieces is carried into larger works. For instance, Currie made a large copper fire screen and table for chemist Eula Gray in 1973. This is in much the same spirit as the peacock and triangle necklaces with the geometric cartouches, in which both the screen and pendant are contained, giving an air of crispness to the designs. The fire screen is massive with the scrolls constructed from copper rod especially sheared from a heavy-gauge sheet before being fitted into an industrially made steel frame manufactured by Geoff Woodland. Many commissions came through social contacts. One such was the 1973-74 contract for St Cuthbert’s Church in Darlington: a chalice and paten, pyx, lavabo, and a sanctuary lamp. This suite is heavily hammered over mechanically-spun shapes, resulting in an ambience quite false to the method of fabrication The commissioning priest, Father Andrew Donald, a high-church vicar, was very specific about detail. For instance no engraving was to be visible. Currie presented careful renderings of a cup based, it would appear, on Linton sketches in his possession. As an atheist he had little interest in the church dogma. The wide-bowled chalice is a modern variant of the twelfth-century Icelandic Cup in the Victoria and Albert Museum and although a copy is in the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Currie may never have seen this. The chalice, paten, pyx (wafer box) and lavabo (basin) are all set with enamelled copper domes in the manner used on occasion by Linton and Gordon Holdsworth. Twisted wire and small, carved, flower motifs complete the decoration. Later cutlery developed the scrolling-wire theme further and introduced a reeded effect seen in much of Jamie Linton’s work. A 1987 ladle is one of Currie’s most stylish pieces. This is reminiscent of Jamie Linton at his best. Another recent spoon, “Ram’s head and Wheat”, 1987, is also extremely stylish. Currie marked his work with: “KC” (in a square cartouche), “STG. SIL” (in a rectangular cartouche), and a swan mark (also in a separate square cartouche). Currie ceased work in 1988 when failing eyesight, due to cataracts, interfered with his ability to see. Operations undertaken in 1990 enabled him to commence work again in 1991 and he continued almost until his death in 2002.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1915
- Summary
- Herbert Kitchener Currie was born in 1915. He was a silversmith, woodworker, leatherworker and teacher. Currie ceased work in 1988 when failing eyesight, due to cataracts, interfered with his ability to see. Operations undertaken in 1990 enabled him to commence work again in 1991 and he continued almost until his death in 2002.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Eleanor Constance (Nornie) Gude was born in 1915 at Ballarat. Very advanced in painting at a young age, Gude was accepted into the Ballarat School of Mines Technical Art School at the age of 15. She completed her Ballarat studies between 1932 and 1936, winning the MacRobertson Scholarship in 1934. Gude then studied at Melbourne’s National Gallery School winning the NGV Travelling Scholarship in 1941.
Gude’s husband, Scott Pendlebury was also a painter and her children Anne and Andrew became an actor and musician respectively (see original DAAO entry) .
The work of Nornie Gude is represented in collections such as the Art Gallery of Western Australia; Ballarat Fine Art Gallery; Bendigo Art Gallery; Castlemaine Art Gallery & Historical Museum; Geelong Art Gallery; National Gallery of Victoria; and the University of Ballarat Art Collection.
Nornie Gude died in Melbourne on 24 January 2002.
Writers:
Gervasoni, Clare
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2008
- Born
- b. 8 December 1915
- Summary
- An accomplished painter from an early age, Eleanor Gude, or Nornie as she was known, took up her studies at the age of 15 before going on to win the prestigious MacRobertson Scholarship in 1934 and the NGV Travelling Scholarship in 1941, reputedly the first woman to do so.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Jan-02
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 21 November 1913
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, was born in Launceston but lived and worked in Sydney for most of his life. He took classes at the National Art School (East Sydney Technical College) in 1935 while working as a draftsman in the Lands Title Office. He began exhibiting his paintings with the Australian Watercolour Institute and the Society of Artists in 1937. He was posted to the ACT Public Service in 1940-49 where he did much to revive the Artists’ Society of Canberra. Influenced by Cézanne, his early watercolours and oils recorded sites around Bathurst, Canberra, Richmond and the pastoral outreaches of Sydney. After a study trip to Britain in 1953-54 he moved back to Sydney, where he lived in a sparsely-furnished wooden cottage in Leichhardt, painting domestic backyards and semi-industrial views of the immediate neighbourhood – Annandale, Pyrmont, Forest Lodge, Rozelle and Balmain in the 1950s and ’60s – then more abstract works. He chiefly exhibited with the Painters’ Gallery at Darlinghurst, but he did not have a solo show until 1976 at Macquarie Galleries. In 2000 he had another at Gitte Weise to accompany the launch of Martin-Webber’s monograph. He died in 2002 aged 90.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1911
- Summary
- Influenced by Cézanne, his early watercolours and oils recorded sites around Bathurst, Canberra, Richmond and the pastoral outreaches of Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2002
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date2002-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and stage designer, was born Ludwig Kahan in Vienna on 25 May 1905, son of a Russian-Jewish tailor. His family nickname Louis was adopted throughout his life. Although he wanted to train as an artist, his father persuaded him to be a tailor, although he attended evening art classes and continued to draw. He moved to Paris in 1925 and was employed as a master tailor for Paul Poiret. Within a few weeks he was appointed a designer for Poiret; designing clothes for Josephine Baker, Colette and other celebrities. He met Matisse, Derain, Dufy, Vlaminck and other artists who visited Poiret. When he rejoined his father’s flourishing business in Vienna (working from premises designed by Adolph Loos), he continued to visit Paris twice yearly to see the collections. Later he worked in Paris as a freelance designer, illustrator and painting portraits.
When war was declared he tried to enlist but was interned as an enemy alien. His only alternative was to serve with the French Foreign Legion; he was in North Africa when France capitulated. He held his first solo show at Oran in 1942. When the allied forces landed in North Africa he became an interpreter and technical draughtsman. Supporting himself by weekend work, he also drew 15 to 20 portraits a day for five days a week of wounded soldiers in hospitals on air letters which were photographed (10 copies to each soldier) then sent to families and friends. He was known as 'a guy from Paris’, which was how he signed the drawings. Encouraged by Albert Marquet, he also began oil painting in North Africa, beginning by copying prints by Cézanne and Renoir. After the war he returned to Paris and in 1946, as a staff draughtsman on Le Figaro , covered the trial of Pétain’s ministers while studying printmaking at the Bibliothèque Nationale and taking lessons in the medium at Colarossi’s. He also worked on painting (possibly at La Grande Chaumière, Paris).
Kahan came to Australia in 1947, via the USA, to visit his parents in Perth. He worked in Perth in 1947-50 (the Art Gallery of Western Australia acquired two drawings from a solo exhibition he held there) then lived mainly in Melbourne where he designed for the National Theatre and Australian Opera as well as painting and drawing. In Australia he was best known as a painter. He had over 50 exhibitions from 1947. He exhibited regularly in the Archibald, e.g. portrait of Albert Tucker, and won the prize for his portrait of Patrick White in 1962. He did many drawings and prints, mainly etchings. Many of his drawings of writers were published in Meanjin , in the Melbourne Age and in various books.
He met his wife Lily Isaacs, 21 years his junior, when visiting his parents and sister in Perth. They married in 1954 and went to Paris and London where Kahn studied and worked (including designing for the Welsh Opera Company). He returned to Melbourne in 1958 to work as a painter also, from 1969, teaching Adult Education art classes. He also continued to visit Paris and make numerous drawings there, his last visit being in 1999 when he was 94. He did many etchings and he designed stained-glass windows for churches and synagogues (e.g. Great Synagogue windows, Sydney, 1983) but is especially known for his portrait drawings of writers, musicians, artists (e.g. Max Meldrum 1951) and historians, most now in public collections. In 1961 the Art Gallery of New South Wales purchased his portrait of Albert Tucker and in 1962 he won the Archibald Prize for his portrait of Patrick White. A retrospective was held at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1992. Kahan died in July 2002, aged 97, survived by Lily and two daughters, Rachelle and Dena.
A woodcut self-portrait of Kahan exists: 'The Artist and His Tools – The Artist’s Only Woodcut’ 1947, woodcut (edn 80), illustrated Butler 1981 (also illustrated as 'Self Portrait’ in Lebovic & Warner, Fifty Years , cat.39). Kahan’s work in the National Gallery of Victoria includes work in Artists in Profile , a collection of drawings commissioned by the Age and presented by that newspaper in 1965.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 25 May 1905
- Summary
- Louis Kahan was a versatile, multi-talented artist and designer. He served in the French Foreign Legion and worked as a tailor in Paris where he associated with Josephine Baker and Matisse. He settled in Australia in 1947 and was best known as a sketcher and painter, winning the Archibald with a portrait of Patrick White in 1962.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Jul-02
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-18.324439 Longitude127.55465 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Canning Stock Route, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Born near Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route c.1940, Michael Mutji was a Kukatja speaker with country at Kinyu and Tjunpartja. He resided at Balgo, where he began painting for Warlayirti Artists in 1988. He usually painted Dingo/Wati Kutjarra (Two Men) Dreaming. A quiet man who did a lot of painting and tried many different approaches to his art, yet always imparted the look of tradition. The head of a household containing a number of artists, he painted with great diligence and seriousness.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1940
- Summary
- Kukatja speaker of Balgo Hill and a committed artist of Warlayirti Artists. He was the head of a household of Balgo painters.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2001
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- east of Haasts Bluff, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c. 1940 about just east of Haasts Bluff. Turkey’s family had been moving between traditional country around Kintore and Hermannsburg mission, where they could collect rations of flour, tea and sugar. After Turkey’s birth they remained in the area around Haasts Bluff. When Papunya was being established and there was work to be had the family 'came in’ from the bush and Turkey, recently initiated, was employed as a labourer on construction work around the new settlement and also in the Papunya communal kitchen. Later he married and moved to an outstation west of Papunya. His first wife died, and he remarried and later moved to Kintore in 1983. He had an outstation on his traditional lands at Yuwalki to the south-east of Kintore. Chairman of Papunya Tula Artists for much of the 1990s and one of the best known of the company’s artists, Turkey Tolson was one of the pioneer painters at Papunya in the early 1970s. While some of his 1980s work was amongst the most innovative and figurative of all the Papunya Tula artists’, he also painted in the classical severely traditional Pintupi style of circles and connecting lines. Artist-in- Residence Flinders University 1979 with David Corby Tjapaltjarri . Painted Bush Fire, Emu, Snake, Woman, and Mitakutjirra Dreamings from his traditional country south of Kintore around Yuwalki, Mitakutjirra and Putjya rockhole. The artist and his work featured in East/West: Land in Papunya Paintings at Tandanya Aboriginal Cultural Institute in Adelaide 1990 and in the associated documentary Market of Dreams . Turkey’s daughter-in-law Brenda Rowe began painting in 1989.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1940
- Summary
- One of the youngest of the pioneering painters at Papunya, who became Chairman of Papunya Tula Artists in the 1990s and one of the company's leading painters.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2001
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2001
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-32.936 Longitude117.178 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Narrogin, WA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1938
- Summary
- Narrogin weaver specialising in figurative sculpture.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2001
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-32.8175039 Longitude151.4833649 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kurri Kurri, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- weaver, was born at Kurri Kurri, NSW, an only child. Trained at East Sydney Technical College (National Art School), Sydney, 1951-56. Married painter Leonard Hessing in the late 1950s and worked as a teacher and design consultant until 1962, when she became a full-time 'fibre artist’. In 1967 she went overseas to study weaving and spent a significant year in India in 1968, where she was commissioned by Patwant Singh, editor of Indian Design to make a wall-sized tapestry. From the late 1960s to the 1980s she became known for her giant weavings in public buildings, which were widely exhibited from the early 1970s, in particular in Clay + Fibre -with ceramic artist Marea Gazzard – at NGV and later at Bonython Gallery, Sydney, 1973. That same year she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study overseas and returned to India. (She had a last Indian trip in the late 1990s.)
Hessing used a range of materials including silk, jute, sisal, wool and synthetic fibres. She said in 1972: 'The concept of a non-rigid, yielding, flexible form that grows and develops at each touvh is tremendously exciting. It includes a subtle relationship of things within things and the final form that contains within itself countless co-ordinated events.’ Major commissions included weavings for the Wentworth Memorial Chapel, Vaucluse (1967), the Menzies Hotel, Sydney (1969), the Australian Embassy, Paris (1977), the Orange Civic Centre, NSW (1978) and the Sydney Masonic Centre (1979). Her enormous Banner (1970) is in the Clancy Auditorium UNSW.
In 1974 Hessing was one of the three craftspeople featured in the film One Weft Double Cloth , commissioned from Film Australia by the Crafts Council of Australia. Shortly afterwards, she moved to rural NSW with the film’s director James Coffey, 'to create’, she said, 'total environment, sustaining and beautiful’. She led a reclusive life, breeding horses and participating in Landcare projects, though she continued to make smaller weavings, including the Cycle Series One 1984 – her response to severe drought. After briefly living in Mudgeeraba, Queensland in the late 1980s, she moved to Tuross Head on the NSW South Coast in 1990 to care for her mother, where she remained permanently. She began working and exhibiting more seriously again, showing the results at the Hidden Valley Gallery, Bodalla, at the Priory, Bingie, and in late 2000 at the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery. Aged 68, Hessing died suddenly of a brain hamorrage while driving from her home at Tuross Head to Canberra. She was survived by her partner of recent years, Norman Sanders.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1933
- Summary
- Late 20th century textile artist and weaver.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2001
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-27.6160323 Longitude152.7608348 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ipswich, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- Painter and bushman, was born in Ipswich, Qld. Self-taught, he became a full-time artist in 1961 after leaving the navy. A good draughtman and an experienced bushman, he became known for his sentimental paintings of Australian rural life, often featuring stereotypical old time shearers, drovers, farmers or small rural communities. His most popular works were a series of murals he did for RSL clubs and surf pavilions around NSW. Photographic prints of his paintings were sold in framing and other modest commercial art shops throughout Queensland and NSW, e.g. Cunnamulla in 2000. The originals sold well to private collectors; not long before his death a British collector paid $100,000 for his Man from Snowy River . Darcy Doyle died at home in Mudgeeraba, Qld, on 28 August 2001, aged 68. His work is not represented in any public collection.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1932
- Summary
- A self trained artist, Darcy Doyle was known for his popular murals and sentimental paintings of Australian rural life.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Aug-01
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 June 1932
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 28-May-01
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-22.043 Longitude132.491 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Coniston, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born at Coniston c.1930 of the Anmatyerre language group, Dick’s boyhood companions included Clifford Possum and his older brother Tim Leura . Dick moved into Alice Springs, establishing himself at Morris Soak. At the beginning of the ’80s he began painting on canvas independently in the Western Desert style – one of the first to do so – selling his work through the Centre for Aboriginal Artists and occasionally Papunya Tula Artists. Dick served for nine years on the Aboriginal Congress and was co-author of Settle Down Country and Health Business with Pam Nathan. His country lay around Mt Allan, and his work usually portrayed Sugar Ant and Women Dreamings from this region. He was married with nine children, two from a previous marriage. His daughter, Wendy Lechleitner began painting in the late 1980s, early 1990s.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- Anmatyerre artist and author, who sold his work privately for many years and occasionally through Papunya Tula. His work is represented in major public and private collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2001
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-37.8902423 Longitude145.067469 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Murrumbeena, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Painter and printmaker, born Margaret Vickery in 1928 in Murrumbeena, Victoria. Her mother died during childbirth in 1930 and Margaret was raised by her widowed father, William, a Gallipoli veteran. Between 1930 and 1940 they boarded in seventeen different households from Albert Park to South Yarra, mainly with elderly widows, before eventually settling in Sandringham. Margaret attended Sandringham State School until the age of twelve, then moved to the Methodist Ladies College in Kew, where she remained until the completion of her leaving certificate.
Even as a teenager Margaret was interested in studying art, and wanted to study at the National Gallery School. But her father insisted that academic studies were needed to increase the chances of secretarial work. This eventually led to her employment at the Commonwealth Bank where she met a young banker, Peter Dredge. Peter and Margaret married in 1950.
Margaret Dredge’s initial art training was with Inez Hutchinson in the mid 1950s. Dredge’s early paintings were figurative and still life works, but her output soon led into abstraction. In 1958 she joined the Beaumaris Art Group and began exhibiting in their group exhibitions. Soon after (1961) she joined the Contemporary Artists Society (CAS) and the Melbourne Contemporary Artists (MCA). At this time, as well as painting consistently, she became increasingly involved in the art world, becoming a Council Member of CAS, teaching at Beaumaris, holding life classes at her home and visiting galleries and exhibition openings.
1961-79 was an intense period of exhibition for Dredge, with numerous group and five solo shows. Her first solo exhibition was held at Peter Burrows Gallery in Queens Road, Melbourne, in 1964 and another at the Three Sisters Gallery in Brighton during the same year. She was commended in the 1970 Inez Hutchison Award; was the co-winner in the 1976 Shire of Flinders Art Award; and was awarded the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery 21st Exhibition Acquisitive prize of 1978. Her work was also attracting positive reviews – Graeme Sturgeon wrote of an exhibition of thirteen major works at Gryphon Gallery in 1979: “With this exhibition, Margaret Dredge has assumed a place among the top dozen women working in Melbourne” (The Australian, 3 April 1979).
It was following this period that Dredge virtually withdrew from exhibiting publicly. She continued working over the next twenty-two years, but only participated in group shows five times between 1980 and 1992 and not at all between 1992 and 2001. The reasons for this withdrawal were many, including the increasing commercial pressure to produce more of the same style of work. Her withdrawal can also be seen as a reaction against the assimilation of post-painterly abstraction into Australian art, which had been heralded by 'The Field’ exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1968. In the 1970s Dredge spoke of her desire to express “the human apart from the designer of pretty patterns of perfection”. While she had explored post-painterly abstraction in the 1970s with some critical success, she became more and more self-expressive in her paintings, particularly after switching to acrylics in 1973.
In 1980 the Dredges sold their suburban Sandringham home and shifted to the inner city area of Richmond. Dredge studied etching with Bill Young, Maggie May, Geoffrey Goldie and John Spooner, and in 1982 had a new studio built. From 1983 her output was more prolific, nine paintings in 1985 alone.
Dredge suffered her first heart attack in the late 1980s. She continued to work, however, and during the 1990s she completed a series of identically sized paintings. It was not until 1997 that her work came to a halt due to incapacitation from heart drugs.
Following the death of her husband, Peter, in March 2000, Dredge produced two major paintings – very lyrical abstractions incorporating almost calligraphic brush work – PJD Vale , dedicated to her husband, and Words .
Margaret Dredge died in September 2001.
Writers:
Dingle, Max
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1928
- Summary
- Born in 1928, Margaret Dredge did not have the opportunity to study art until the mid 1950s when she started studying painting with Inez Hutchinson. Early paintings were figurative and still life works, leading into abstraction, she quickly became involved in the Melbourne art scene. Dredge died in 2001.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2001
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-33.8931044 Longitude151.2040292 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Redfern, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Redfern, Sydney, on 15 June 1927. He was drawing caricatures of his family and visitors from the age of five. He attended Glebe Primary School and North Newtown Intermediate High where he drew for the school paper. Lindsay Foyle noted in his obituary ( Australian 27 July 2001, 12) that he 'read voraciously from the age of 12 and there were visits to the Art Gallery of NSW, “mainly to perve on the Norman Lindsays”.’ Elsewhere it is mentioned that he studied part-time at ESTC in 1943, although Foyle claims that
His first formal art training was at the Julian Ashton School. His mother got him in at a reduced rate because he showed talent. He was working night shift [as a compositor] at the [ Daily ] Telegraph and attending art school during the day. It proved too much for his health. Something had to go, so he moved to the mail room and from there into the art department.
Tanner did illustration and design at the Telegraph ; his first cartoon was published in 1944. Initially, he was influenced by WEP ( Bill Pidgeon ) who told him not 'to be afraid to try something new you don’t think you can do. You make a mess and then you clean it up.’ Tanner said it was the best advice he ever received, says Foyle, who also notes that when They’re a Weird Mob was published in 1957 with WEP’s illustrations Tanner was proud that nobody noticed that he had drawn the illustration on the dust-jacket.
Tanner was with the Occupation Force Newspaper BCON ( British Commonwealth Occupation Newspaper ) in Osaka, Japan in1946-47, returned to Sydney in 1948 and joined the Communist Party (which he left in 1956 after Hungary and moved to the right). He became a full-time Repat. student at ESTC and joined AM magazine as an illustrator. He also met Margaret (Peg) King (1925-1996) in 1948, when both were amateur actors at Sydney’s New Theatre. They married the following year and had a daughter (Judy) and two sons (Mark and Michael).
Though a member of the Communist Party, Tanner worked as a political cartoonist on the Daily Telegraph in 1952 and on the Sunday Telegraph in 1954-60. [Dates differ according to writers; Foyle says began full time on the Tele in 1954, Petty says he was there only 1956-60 etc.] He used to submit three roughs to the editor each day, says Foyle, 'one for the money, one for the show and one for himself – but he soon realised that it was the one for himself that generally got in’. Bruce Petty comments on his 'elegant free-form pencil roughs’, followed by 'a stylish pen-and-wash drawing’.
He left for London in 1959 and worked on the Daily Sketch as a gag artist for a year (1960-61). He won the London Cartoonists’ Club award for the most promising newcomer in 1961. Then he returned to Sydney. He spent seven years (1961-67) as art director and cartoonist with the Bulletin after it was purchased by Frank Packer’s ACP; Donald Horne was the first editor, then Peter Hastings and Peter Coleman. Examples of his Bulletin cartoons include: (disgustingly fat beach inspector to slim woman in two-piece bathing costume) “Get off the beach! You’re obscene” 1961, used to exemplify his work in the Foyle obituary (and ill. Rolfe 297). Cf his NLA original (?), “I don’t care who you are, you’ll have to get off the beach”, showing a policeman on Cyprus talking to Boticelli’s Venus rising from the sea.
Peter Coleman, with whom Tanner wrote Cartoons in Australian History (1967), mentioned in Voices 1997 (p.93) that Tanner opened up 'other lines’ when he was at the Bulletin , including a plaster bust of Menzies ('which sold well among the great man’s critics’) and a popular coffee mug in the shape of Sir Henry Bolte (NPG), cf Frith 's toby jugs. (Under Coleman’s editorship the Bulletin also put out records, notably collections of 'naughty’ songs by Barry Humphries and Will Rushton , and published Len Evans’s first book on wine.) Coleman resigned in 1967; his final editorial in February attacked the hanging of Ronald Ryan was accompanied by a Tanner cartoon of Bolte the Hangman. The issue was pulped by Packer. Soon afterwards editor Graham Perkin (who became a close family friend) offered Tanner twice the salary to work on the Age , where he moved in 1968 [in July 1967 according to Petty, who had been given work at the Bulletin by Tanner]. Foyle notes that he had been at the Age for only a week 'when the acting editor rejected one of his cartoons. After a blazing argument involving the editor and managing director, it was agreed Tanner wouldn’t be asked to do an alternative cartoon if another were rejected. Tanner wasn’t going to be censored at the Age .’ A Roman Quarrel , published in the Age on 7 November 1975, was included in Christine Dixon’s exhibition. From 1978 he again contributed from time to time to the Bulletin (Rolfe, 271). Altogether, he wrote in 1989 (?), he worked under some 16 editors.
Cancer caused him to have his larynx removed and for a time he communicated only by notes – an affliction that is said to have caused him to take up drinking seriously, according to Foyle. Later, he acquired an electronic voice enhancer that allowed short comments.
By 1973, when he was aged 45 and again living in Sydney, Tanner had won two Walkeley Awards for Best Cartoon of the Year (one in 1962) and was writing a weekly column as well as drawing cartoons in the Age . Rolfe states that he is best known for his defence cartoons of the 1960s and his joke blocks of patio intellectuals, the latter virtually an extinct [cartooning] genre now when politics is all. Travel broadens the mind (on Senator Colston), published in the Age on 6 March 1997, was exhibited in the National Museum of Australia/Old Parliament House exhibition Bringing the House Down: 12 Months of Australian Political Humour (Canberra, 1997), cat. 73.
Tanner retired from the Age in 1997 after three decades working for the newspaper. A member of the Black and White Artists’ Club, he lived at Nicholson Street, Fitzroy. He died of a heart attack in his sleep in Melbourne on 23 July 2001, aged 74. His colleagues Petty, John Spooner and Foyle, who all wrote obituaries, emphasised his compassion for the poor and rejected of society and his hatred of power, pomposity and hypocrisy. 'During the Cold War’, said Spooner, 'he managed to antagonise both the Left and the Right.’
A respectable historian of cartooning, Tanner donated a good collection of his own cartoons to BFAG in 1983, as well as a collection of early Bulletin originals he had found round the office when he was Art Director in 1971 (see Filmer). Indeed, the donation of various old Bulletin original cartoons to art galleries around Australia after Packer purchased the magazine seems to have been solely Tanner’s work.
When the Victorian Government hanged Ronald Ryan [prison escapee who had murdered a warden], the whole issue [of the Bulletin ] of February 9, 1967, with a leader, 'Day of the Quicklime’, and a cartoon by Tanner showing the Victorian Premier Sir Henry Bolte holding a rope and saying “I do not bow to mob protest – only mob support” [reproduced by Coleman in Voices article] was pulped on the orders of Sir Frank Packer’ (Rolfe, 305, also Coleman, 12). Coleman notes that Packer did this shortly after he had resigned and it was not the reason for his resignation, despite stories to the contrary: see P. Coleman, Voices , pp.94-95, ill.).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 15 June 1927
- Summary
- Influential mid 20th century political cartoonist. Tanner worked as a cartoonist for the Melbourne Age for 30 years as well as contributing to a number of other publications. The controversial 1967 Bulletin issue which attacked the Victorian Government's decision to hang criminal Ronald Ryan, and which featured a cartoon by Tanner, was pulped on the orders of Sir Frank Packer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Jul-01
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude43 Longitude12 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Italy
- Biography
- Along with Wolfgang Sievers, Mark Strizic, Dieter Muller, Henry Talbot, Helmut Newton, David Mist and others, the Italian-born, Melbourne-based Benini became one of a group of influential émigré commercial photographers working in post-war Australia. While Max Dupain is recognized as a genius of 20th century Australian architectural photography and Wolfgang Sievers the master of industrial photography, Bruno Benini can be regarded as one of Australia’s most elegant and refined mid-20th century fashion photographers.
Born in 1925 in Massa Marittima, a medieval town in Tuscany, he migrated to Australia with his family in 1935 just prior to the outbreak of World War II. He studied science at Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT University) and worked for a brief period at General Motors Holden at Fishermens Bend, Victoria before returning to Italy with a brief stopover in London in the late 1940s. It was during this trip that he decided to pursue a career in photography. He joined Peter Fox Modern Photography Studio in Melbourne in the early 1950s working initially as a salesman and receptionist with the camera operators Henry Talbot and Katherine Perkins.
After setting up his first studio at 24 Cotham Road in Kew in the mid-1950s, Benini then also covertly honed his photographic and lighting skills by working as a male model with Helmut Newton, Henry Talbot and other Melbourne-based photographers. At the same time, he also became friendly with several local printers who assisted him to gain proficiency in the aspect of photography that Bruno went on to master and thoroughly enjoy. From Kew, Benini moved to various locations in the city before settling in his 6 McKillop Street studio that he shared with model-turned-photographer, Janice Wakely, and later with his wife Hazel Benini during the 1960s.
Bruno met Hazel, a New Zealand-born artist and display designer, in 1959 when she was already a working fashion display artist and he an established Melbourne fashion photographer, with numerous prestigious clients on his log books including the Australian Wool Bureau, the Gown of the Yea and Theo Haskin’s Salon Milano. Hazel and Bruno went on to form an indivisible partnership as leading Melbourne fashionistas – Bruno as the elegant photographer and Hazel as a vivacious and creative fashion publicist and stylist.
“When I first met Bruno I was working at a big store called Hicks Atkinson, which ran from Collins Street through to Bourke Street (Melbourne). So we were getting to know each other then and I think he was doing a big colour photograph and he was worried he couldn’t get the right pink background. I organised a big roll of paper, heavy paper that they put under linoleum in those days and delivered it to his studio. I mixed up the paint and I painted just the background for him. So that was my first job helping him out.”1
In his obituary for Bruno Benini in 2001, Philip Jones summed up beautifully the world which Hazel and Bruno inhabited in Melbourne:
“Habitués of Lygon Street, Carlton, have long been familiar with a couple of elegant indivisible boulevardiers. He tall, silver-haired, sanguine, handsome, an overcoat slung over his shoulders, Roman style. She blonde, petite, stylish and intense. The Benini’s were intrinsic to the artistic and social life of Melbourne.”
Predominantly shot in black and white, Benini’s photographs were much sought after by newspaper and magazine fashion editors and regularly appeared in major interstate newspapers including the Hobart Mercury, the Perth Independent, the Brisbane Courier Mail, the Canberra Times, the Adelaide Advertiser, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun Herald. Today, the photographic prints, negatives and transparencies survive as vibrant, clearly delineated records of what would otherwise survive only as grainy press prints.
Bruno Benini’s remarkable photography archive was acquired by the Powerhouse Museum in 2009 with funding assistance from the Australian Government through the National Cultural Heritage Account. The archive was meticulously accumulated over 50 years by Bruno and Hazel Benini. It came to the Museum after literally being stored in boxes under beds, in the bottom of cupboards, in drawers and on the tops of wardrobes. With each change of address or studio, came the need to rationalise stock. Over time material was lost, damaged or discarded. Hazel re-tells the story of a tea chest of very early shots which Bruno stored in his father’s garage. When his father decided to throw them all out, permanently lost were shots of Barry Humphries’ first wedding and a portrait, which Humphries claimed was the best photo he’d ever had taken. Years later he would phone Bruno and Hazel and implore, ‘Bruno, please try and find the negative.’ Well, Bruno knew it wasn’t there.
After Bruno’s death, it became imperative that the collection was preserved. Despite the loss of material over time, the Benini archive is still a very substantial and comprehensive collection, providing a vivid record of the Australian fashion industry over five decades – from the elegant couture of the 1950s, the mod and hippy modes of the 1960s, through to the confronting funkier styles of the 1970s, body conscious images from the 1980s and athletic fashion from the Nike-dominated 1990s.
There are over 250 photographic blow-up prints and several thousand black and white negatives and colour positive transparencies, as well as hundreds of contact sheets and proof prints, biographical material including scrap books, posters, tear sheets, diaries, magazines and newspaper cuttings dating from the 1950s through to the photographer’s death in 2001. Haute couture gowns, niche labels and ready-to-wear brands are represented including Norma Tullo (perhaps the only Australian label with its own outlet in the Isetan Department store in Tokyo in the 1970s), Phillippa Gowns, Theo Haskin’s Salon Milano, Hall Ludlow, Simona, Solo, Prue Acton, Mike Treloar, Ninette and its related youth brand Nutmeg, Gala, Sportscraft and Sportsgirl.
Many top Australian models appear: Maggie Tabberer, Maggi Eckardt, Helen Homewood, Jan Stewart, Nerida Piggin, Pip Colman, Janice Wakely and Bambi Shmith, formerly Patricia Tuckwell, violinist with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and later, Countess of Harewood. International fashion labels retailed in Australia through small boutiques are also captured by Benini’s lens – like Fiorucci from Italy and Laura Ashley from England. The unusual Australian settings of some of Benini’s shots make them uniquely memorable – like the shot of Liz Scarborough modelling a Le Louvre coat in a blackened landscape after the Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983, and the photograph of Di Sweeney modelling Bottega’s newly imported blue Italian gumboots and jip-jacket wet weather suit inside a car wash in Carlton in 1976.
By the late 1980s, Benini began to tire of fashion photography and decided to turn his lens to male nudes. He later added delicate colour still life photographs of flowers to his portfolio as a refreshing diversion from the countless nude male text shots he was commissioned to shoot for models aspiring to join Greg Tyshing’s Giant model agency. The archive also contains many portraits of Australian and visiting actors, writers, artists, dancers, designers and pop singers as they would often pop into Bruno’s studio to have their portraits taken.
The Powerhouse Museum first drew attention to the significance of Benini’s collection in 1996. In April of 2009, Peter Garrett, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts announced that the Bruno Benini photography archive would be acquired by the Museum with funding assistance from the National Cultural Heritage Account. It is now widely appreciated that this uniquely comprehensive and well documented archive provides a vivid record of fashion design, manufacture, retailing, marketing and consumption as well as a close look at accessories, shoes, sunglasses, hair, makeup and swimsuits. The Benini collection supports the Museum’s dress collection and enriches the Museum’s pioneering holdings of Australian design and fashion photography archives.
Over 50 photographs from the Bruno Benini photography archive were presented as a screen projection in the Powerhouse Museum exhibition 'Inspired!: design across time exhibition’ in 2009.
1. Hazel Benini, interview with the author, Melbourne 2008
Writers:
Anne-Marie Van de Ven, Powerhouse Museum
staffcontributor
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1925
- Summary
- Photographer Bruno Benini migrated to Australia from Italy in 1935. As a commercial and fashion photographer, Benini captured the works of many Australian and international fashion designers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2001
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yinjirrimardi, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c. 1924 at Yinjirrimardi, a site near two soakages where Two Dreamtime Women emerged from underground. Daisy Nelson was Warlpiri and lived at Yuendumu with her husband Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson . She painted Warnayarra/Pikilyi (Rainbow Serpent/Vaughan Springs), Watakiyi (Bush Orange) and Yuparli (Bush Banana) Dreamings, the last inherited from her father. Some of these Dreamings she gave permission for her (sister’s) son Michael Jagamara Nelson to paint in his work for the 1986 Sydney Biennale. Daisy Nelson had been part of the group of senior women artists at Yuendumu since the beginnings of the painting enterprise at Yuendumu, showing in the first exhibition of their work at the Araluen Centre in Alice Springs in October 1985. Since then, her work has been included in exhibitions of Warlukurlangu Artists in Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane, and in shows in Portsmouth UK, Seattle USA, and Madrid Spain. In 1988 she won an award for Best painting at the Victor Harbour Art Show. She was represented in Yuendumu – Paintings out of the Desert at the SA Museum 1988, Windows on the Dreaming Australian National Gallery 1989 and Tigari Lai Contemporary Aboriginal Art from Australia at the Third Eye Centre Glasgow, Scotland in 1990. In 1993 her work was shown in Aratjara: Art of the First Australians , Dusseldorf, Germany, Humleaek, Denmark, and other European cities.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1924
- Summary
- A senior Warlpiri artist who was at the forefront of the painting movement at Yuendumu in the early years. She has represented Warlukurlangu Artists in exhibitions both nationally and internationally.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2001
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-33.8670797 Longitude151.2259967 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Potts Point, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Sculptor, was born at Potts Point, Sydney, on 19 June 1920, son of a successful businessman. He was educated at Cranbrook and Sydney Grammar and studied art at East Sydney Technical College. During WWII he served in minesweepers and as a gunner on a tanker, then was transferred to making scale models of ships for the Royal Australian Navy to use in recognition training. This led to a new interest in sculpture, beginning with monumental carved stone figures and changing in the 1940s to surrealist works. 'His sculptures and drawings completed in London and Paris in the 1940s are among the finest products of postwar European surrealism’, Edwards states. Influenced by Zen and Indian philosophies in the 1950s.
It was not until Klippel went to New York in 1957 and later, while teaching at the Minnesota School of Arts, that his talents began to be appreciated. After periods living in NY in the late 1950s and early 1960s, where his contemporaries included the giants of abstract expressionism, he settled in Birchgrove, Balmain, and began making the 1960s and ’70s spectacular non-figurative junk assemblages – monumental civic sculptures and intimately scale metal and plastic assemblages – for which he is best known.
In 1979 a solo exhibition at Sydney was a sell-out, with prices up to $18,000 and for many years before he died, on his 81st birthday, he was unquestionably Australia’s most celebrated sculptor. An exhibition of his large assemblages was held at Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1995. 30 small metal sculptures on show at Watters when he died (his dealer was Frank Watters), all made within the past 12 months, were of equal quality to any of his work. Deborah Edwards was preparing a retrospective when he died, on his 81st birthday.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 19 June 1920
- Summary
- While Klippel is best known as a sculptor, he also worked in industrial design. Klippel's interest in sculpture began during WW2 while making scale models of ships for the Navy for recognition training. This lead to his early monumental carved stone figures and Surrealist works of the 1940s. His later works, for which he is best known, were non-figurative assemblages.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Jun-01
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-37.7435744 Longitude142.0243127 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamilton, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, sculptor and teacher, Taylor was born in Hamilton, Victoria and moved with his family to South Australia before 1919, then to Western Australia in 1932. He was a scholarship winner to Perth Modern School where he exhibited an interest in cricket, athletics, drawing, photography, and aviation. In 1937 he enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force undertaking pilot training at Point Cook. He transferred to the Royal Air Force in July 1938, was shot down in May 1940 and spent the rest of the war as a P. O. W. It was while at Stalag Luft III c. 1943, that he met Guy Grey Smith. They both drew in the camp. Demobilised in Perth in February 1947, he returned to England, married Sheila Smith, and enrolled in painting at Birmingham School of Art. They returned to Perth in January 1949 and settled at 'Aldersyde’ Bickley, where they raised three children. Bickley quickly became home to the entire extended Smith family who emigrated from the UK. Life in the Perth hills was the catalyst for Taylor’s fascination with the bush landscape and forest forms, which became central to his work. In 1960 he visited Britain and Europe for six months. He taught painting and drawing part-time at the Perth Technical College from 1951 to 1961 and at the School of Architecture and Planning at the Western Australian Institute of Technology from 1965 to 1969. In late 1967 he moved to Northcliffe in the heart of the tall-timber karri and jarrah forests of the south-west of Western Australia, where he produced some of his most powerful, impeccably crafted evocations of nature. The first work acquired by the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1949 was a self-portrait. He took many public commissions, including for the Fremantle Port Authority’s new overseas terminal building 1960-62, AMP, ANZ, and Curtin University. Many of these can now be viewed at Curtin and UWA. Two retrospective exhibitions of his work were held at Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1985 and 2004. In 1986 he received the Inaugural Emeritus Award from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council. A monograph by Ted Snell was published in 1995. Retrospective exhibition catalogues were published by the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1985 and MCA/AGWA in 2003. Daniel Thomas in the artist’s obituary stated that “ after the death of the very different and much more erratic Arthur Boyd, Howard Taylor was Australia’s best artist of any kind.”
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Gary_Dufour
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2023
- Born
- b. 29 August 1918
- Summary
- Painter, sculptor and teacher, his work was presented in two retrospectives, in 1985 at the AGWA, and from 2003-06 at ten-venues organised by the MCA and AGWA. He received the Emeritus Award from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council in 1986; Member Order of Australia, 1989; Hon. Doctor of Letters, UWA, 1993; Hon. Doctor of Technology, Curtin University, 1997; and 'State Treasure' Western Australia 1999.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Jul-01
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-37.7435744 Longitude142.0243127 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamilton, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Howard Taylor was born in Hamilton, Victoria, on 29 August 1918. He moved to Perth with his family in 1932. In 1937 he joined the Royal Australian Air Force and in 1938 transferred to the Royal Air Force. In 1940, during a sortie over Alsace-Lorraine, he was captured and became a German prisoner of war. While he was interned Taylor began to draw and to read books supplied by the Red Cross, and he pursued his interest in art. After the war he studied at the Birmingham College of Art from 1947 to 1948 under a RAAF rehabilitation program, and he made painting excursions around the English countryside.
In 1949 Taylor returned to Western Australia and settled in the Darling Ranges on the outskirts of Perth. This locality was the catalyst for his fascination with the bush landscape and forest forms, which became central to his work. In 1960 he visited Britain and Europe for six months. He taught painting and drawing at the Perth Technical College from 1951 to 1965 and at the School of Architecture and Planning at the Western Australian Institute of Technology from 1965 to 1969. In late 1967 he moved to Northcliffe in the heart of the tall-timber karri and jarrah forests of the south-west of Western Australia, where he produced some of his most powerful, impeccably crafted evocations of nature.
Howard Taylor died on 19 July 2001 in Perth.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 August 1918
- Summary
- Howard Taylor began to draw and explore his interest in art while a prisoner of war in Europe in the early 1940s. After studying at the Birmingham College of Art, Taylor returned to Western Australia where he began to explore his fascination with the bush landscape and forest forms, which became central to his work.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Jul-01
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-30.7073143 Longitude152.9183972 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Macksville, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1916
- Summary
- Joyce (nee Blumer) with her husband Janek was one of Schulim Krimper's largest clients. She commissioned more than 50 pieces which comprised the sole furnishings for their house in St Ives. She drove the extent and nature of their collection of Australian paintings by Drysdale and Dobell, introduced to her by Janek's closest friend Rudy Komon. The couple also collected European decorative arts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-01
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.8894781 Longitude151.1274125 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ashfield, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Gordon Andrews. (b.1914) Born in Ashfield, NSW, this designer’s career has embraced industrial design (cookware, furniture), graphic design, development of exhibition concepts and design as well as photography. He trained at the Sydney Technical College, Ultimo and the East Sydney Technical College but gained his formative experience in graphic design with the advertising agencies Samson Clark Price Berry, Sydney and Stuart, London in the 1930s. He returned to Sydney in 1939 and briefly ran a personal design practice. During the 1939-45 war, he worked in the De Havilland drawing office and later supervised an experimental hangar.
In 1946, he held a one-man show of paintings and ‘constructions’, including contemporary furniture, with some models later copied by others. In 1949, he took his family to London and set up his own design office, which was retained by the Design Research Unit to design exhibitions for Ilford, Peter Robinsons, The Tea Board, the British Council. He also worked on exhibitions and showrooms for Olivetti, and Smiths Instruments. In 1951, he was made Fellow of the Society of Industrial Designers.
During 1953-1954, he and his family lived in Turin, Italy, while he designed an encyclopaedia, styled a fountain pen and produced an exhibition for the 1954 Fiera de Milano. Then he turned down a three-year contract with Olivetti to bring his family back to Sydney. On return, he designed exhibitions, shops, showrooms and furniture for Olivetti, David Jones the Commonwealth Bank, NSW Government agencies, and other notable clients.
He is best known for designing the first decimal currency bank notes that were released in Australia on 14 February 1966. Working with Hal Missingham, Douglas Annand and Alistair Morrison as advisers, Gordon Andrews designed for the Reserve Bank of Australia its first $1, $2, $5, $10, $20 and $50 paper notes. These designs won almost universal appreciation.
He was also one of Australia’s foremost industrial designers and a designer of international significance. He worked in Britain. France and Italy, as well as Australia and was the first Australian designer to be elected as a Fellow of the UK Society of Industrial Artists and Designers (1955). He was also awarded membership of the Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry and the Alliance Graphique Internationale. Prolific career across a broad range of disciplines and the extraordinary breadth of his interiors for the Australian Pavilion of the Comptoire Suisse trade fair (1960), the New South Wales Government Tourist Bureau, Sydney (1961) and the New Zealand Government Tourist Bureau (1965). The retrospective exhibition Gordon Andrews: a designer’s life, was held at the Powerhouse Museum in 1993, curated by Judith O’Callaghan. Andrews’ own monograph Gordon Andrews: A designer’s life, was published by the New South Wales University Press in the same year.
Gordon Andrews’ design career has been remarkably diverse, making difficult an overall assessment of his work. He is considered by his peers and critics to have worked successfully in virtually every medium he has chosen.
Andrews retired to Lovett Bay on the Hawkesbury River until bushfires destroyed his home on his 80th birthday. He died in Sydney on 17 January, 2001, aged 87. He was survived by his former wife, Mary, children Lynn, Richard and Michael, and sister Betty Horsburgh.
Sources (include)—Andrews, Gordon. 1993. Gordon Andrews: A Designer’s Life. Sydney: University of NSW Press.—Architecture and Arts. 1956. ‘People: Behind the Blueprints in this issue: Gordon Andrews, Designer’, April, p17.—Powerhouse Museum website www.powerhousemuseum.com/opac/89-735.asp
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Michael Bogle
zreview
Davina Jackson
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 10 January 1914
- Summary
- Gordon Andrews was one of Australia's prominent mid-20th century multi-disciplinary designers. While best known for designing Australia's first decimal currency notes (1966), his international career included industrial design (cookware), furniture, jewellery, interiors, graphics, murals, exhibitions and photography.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Jan-01
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-35.2576239 Longitude138.8956803 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Strathalbyn, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Noel Wood was born at Strathalbyn in South Australia in 1912 the fourth and youngest son (the eldest, Rex, became a printmaker of note) born to Anglican minister the Reverend Thomas Percy Wood and Fannie née Newbury. His paternal grandfather, also Reverend Thomas Percy Wood, produced watercolours in India from 1882. Noel Wood trained at the South Australian School of Art, Adelaide under Marie Tuck and Leslie Wilkie and from his early years was regarded as a capable portrait painter. Wilkie, a portraitist of note, said that he would never be without work as long as he painted portraits. That, however, was never Wood’s interest. It appears he lived in Melbourne for a time working as a photographic model for Vogue and also produced fashion drawings.
The Reverend Wood married Noel and Eleanor Weld Skipper at St John’s Church, Monalta, South Australia on 25 August 1933 and they went to live in his brother’s small cottage 'Eumala’, on Kangaroo Island, South Australia. They stayed for about two years and Wood painted consistently. On their return to the mainland Wood provided linocuts for Chapbook issues 1 and 2 in 1935 and 1936. According to daughter Ann, they purchased a Model T Ford with the profits from three successful exhibitions in South Australia and drove to North Queensland in 1936. The couple visited Townsville and eventually, Bedarra Island, in the Family Island Group where they purchased 15 acres of land at Doorila Cove, on the north-eastern corner of the island. It was as remote an existence as he desired, as Mission Beach on the mainland was 40 minutes away by motor boat. Wood set up a series of gardens to emulated a life of self sufficiency. Two daughters, Virginia Maray and Ann Oenone, were born.
Wood began a series of successful exhibitions from the late 1930s. His images of his tropic idyll captured the public’s imagination and, at that time, he was possibly the most widely recognised artist in Australia. When the war came Eleanor and their two daughters were evacuated in 1940. They eventually settled at Woodend, Victoria and essentially maintained separate existences. Successful exhibitions were held in Brisbane and Sydney in 1946 but, unfortunately, an exhibition proposed for Sydney the following year was terminated when the paintings were lost in transit (according to daugher Ann the shipment was sent via rail). Despite this set-back Wood continued his planned trip to Europe in 1947 and, after painting in Ireland and France was living in London by March 1949 but by May 1950 was conducting art classes in Cairns. Wood travelled overseas later in the decade when he worked as an assistant art director for the film industry in the USA for two years before returning to Australia in about 1957. He stopped painting in the 1970s to devote himself to his garden.
In 1982 Sean Dixon travelled from Townsville to Thursday Island by canoe and recorded his visit to Bedarra Island:
It was here we met Noel Wood, a fascinating man of around 70 years. He had lived the life of a recluse on his island for 45 years – having travelled overseas thrice [sic] to pursue his work as an artist painter, the spell of Bedarra bound him to return. Noel built his house from driftwood and local materials, living out the fancy of a shipwrecked mariner with the island, as it was, to be the sole provider. He subsequently introduced many varieties of exotic tropical fruits and vegetables, not the least of which were the coconut palm and Taro plant, to supplement his early diet of fish and native plants. In all to create for himself the authentic 'Tropical Island Paradise’.
Wood, in fact, practiced permaculture decades before the concept was popularised in the 1980s.
Although life was difficult in the early years of Wood’s sojourn on the island, the romantic vision of his hermit-like existence, so favoured by writers when they reported on his activities, was never quite accurate. Timana Island, also part of the Family Island Group, became the winter residence of Melbourne sisters and painters Yvonne Cohen and Valerie Albiston from 1938. Another neighbour was Hugo Brassey who owned Dunk Island. A portion of Bedarra Island was acquired by a Frank Coleman in 1938 and, shortly afterwards, paying guests began to arrive on the island. Several small resorts on various parts of the island (one of which became the Bedarra Hideaway Resort in 1981) were developed in the following years. Wood’s studio, a 'true bohemian artist’s pad’, had undergone a modern makeover, “the epitome of modern minimalist luxury design by noted architects Engelen Moore” according to Elizabeth Kind in the Financial Review of 2001. By the 1980s the modern tourist world had well and truly caught up with Wood. The ABC produced a feature on his life, The island and the painter , which went to air on 12 February 1987. Wood settled in the Montville area in 1988 but soon returned to Bedarra Island. He planned to sell his parcel of land in 1993 but retired to Mission Beach in 1996. He died at the Tully Hospital on 10 November 2001.
The paintings which established Wood’s reputation reflect the bold colour and lush vegetation of the tropics. As Ross Searle in the catalogue of his 1991 exhibition at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville remarked on the work of Cohen and Wood:
“Cohen’s painting, like that of her contemporary, Noel Wood, was more intuitive in conception and showed a far more vigorous approach use of colour and feeling for design in its treatment of the luscious vegetation. They were after all living in the most idyllic of circumstances, and were profoundly influenced by the environment.”
The developing awareness of the importance of tourism to North Queensland and its pioneering artists, demonstrated by the exhibitions `Artists in the tropics’ 1991 and `Escape artists: modernists in the tropics’ 1998, has established Wood’s profile. A profile, one must add, established on a small body of identified work. He exhibited in Brisbane and Sydney into the 1950s, and his landscape subjects of the tropical north found ready appeal when he exhibited in group exhibitions such as at the Australian Art Academy, Melbourne in 1939. Three works were included in the 'Exhibition of Queensland Art’ at the Queensland Art Gallery in 1951 and other group exhibitions include 'Queensland Artists of Fame and Promise’ (Brisbane) in 1953, and the Gold Coast City Art Prizes 1968 and 1971.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1912
- Summary
- Noel Wood's escape to the tropical paradise of Bedarra Island in far North Queensland fostered a romantic image and the colourful paintings he produced there established a considerable profile during the 1930s and 1940s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Nov-01
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and commercial artist, was born in Melbourne on 2 December 1910. He went to school at Ballarat, where he excelled at art 'but not much else (though he was a precocious reader)’, according to Griffiths. At the age of seventeen he began an apprenticeship in Henry Wicks’ commercial lithographic studio in Melbourne, on the second floor of the old St James building on the corner of Little Collins and William Streets – a building where Norman and Lionel Lindsay had a studio in 1892, as had Ernest Moffitt . Jack Castieu, who with Bernard O’Dowd established Tocsin , Australia’s first socialist magazine, also had rooms there at the time. In the 1920s it became Dalgarno’s home as well as workplace when he moved out of his parents’ house to set up his own studio and become involved in the revolutionary magazine Strife .
In 1926-30 Dalgarno attended drawing classes at the National Gallery School at night and met Nutter Buzacott and Noel Counihan . He also met other left-wing artists and intellectuals at the Swanston Family Hotel, Melbourne.Then he moved to Sydney and studied art with Dattilo Rubbo (1930-33) and occasionally at East Sydney Technical College (1932-34). In Sydney he shared a studio with Geoffrey Grahame (a crayon portrait of him by Dalgarno dated 1934 offered by Josef Lebovic in 1997) and with James Cant until Cant went to England. He spent much time at Packey’s {Packie’s?} Hotel in Sydney where the bohemian set met. In 1933 he returned to Melbourne and joined the Communist Party (which he left in 1949). He drew illustrations for the Bulletin and for Wireless Weekly .
In 1934 {1935 according to Bernard Smith} Dalgarno married Nadine Rankin and returned to Sydney (Sydney drawings exist dated 1934). He visited North Queensland in 1935 then settled in Brisbane for ten years. He began working as art director at Johnston & Jones’ advertising agency in 1936; Merewether notes that he produced advertisements for Bulimba Breweries by day and did cartoons for the brewery’s striking workers at night. According to Griffiths, this led to him being sacked from the agency. Later he claimed he was 'harassed by the security police’. He spent some time in North Queensland and began to take painting seriously, doing pictures of cane-cutters, fishermen and other workers. In 1940 he held his first major painting show in Brisbane, with Noel Wood: An Exhibition of Tropical Paintings . Soon afterwards, he began work as a camouflage artist for the RAAF based in Darwin, serving in North Queensland and the offshore islands. During this time he sketched station and mission workers and Aborigines. Some of his 1941-44 drawings of Brisbane Labor leaders and people of North Queensland were exhibited at Josef Lebovic’s gallery in 1997. He contributed to the important 'Australia at War’ exhibition at the NGV in 1945 and won a second prize in the industrial section.
At the end of the war he returned to Sydney and became involved in the Labor movement there. He joined with James Cant, Dora Chapman and other realist artists in founding the Studio of Realist Art (SORA), which had an active life from 1946 to 1949. He designed the cover of the SORA Bulletin . The Mae West , a wartime pen and wash portrait, was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales from the 1948 SORA exhibition. In 1947-49 he also taught drawing and painting part time at East Sydney Technical College and was a member of the Contemporary Art Society (NSW). In 1947-48 four federal trade unions – the Ironworkers, Miners, Seamen and Waterside Workers, of Port Kembla, Newcastle, Cessnock, Lithgow and Wollongong – commissioned him to make a series of drawings and prints about working life, 'Australians at Work’ [1947 drawings in Lebovic, 1948 in Merewether]. W.S. Robinson of the Zinc Corporation of Australia (forerunner of BHP) commissioned him to paint and draw the miners of Broken Hill, leading to a solo exhibition of industrial paintings and drawings the SORA studio, opened on 16 July 1948 by James Boswell, lithographer, illustrator, painter, art educator, member of the Society of Industrial Artists and the Artists’ Association and art editor of London’s Liliput magazine. Some of his Broken Hill drawings were used as illustrations in George Farwell’s Down Argent Street: A story of Broken Hill (Frank Johnson, Sydney, 1949). The Sydney Morning Herald paid him to travel inland and record the faces of rural Australia, while film director Harry Watts employed him as artist on the 1947/48 film Eureka Stockade. Drawings of Chips Rafferty and Peter Finch on the set and other figures dated 1948 were sold by Josef Lebovic in 1997.
Dalgarno left for Europe in 1949 {1950 according to Griffiths}, first going to Czechoslovakia and joining up with the Artists’ Union, then studying in Paris at l’Ecole des Beaux Arts (1951-53) and learning lithography and etching at William Hayter’s famous Atelier 17 (1951 53). He became a habitué of the Café Flore and met existentialists and expatriate surrealists such as Tristan Tzara {BS}. He was fond of drawing the workers in the Paris markets (Les Halles) both on and off duty. He showed work in the Salon des Etrangers (1952) and held solo shows in 1953 and 1955.
In 1956, at the suggestion of Australian writer Hugh Atkinson, Dalgarno went to India where he remained for 20 years, basing himself at Bombay (Mumbai), setting up a lithographic workshop (active 1965-73), working as art director for Lintas International and lecturing in lithography at the Bombay School of Fine Arts. He was co-founder of publisher Editions Anarmali in 1956 and a member of the Board of Studies for the Fine Arts Faculty, University of Baroda (1968-75). He won various prizes in Paris and India, mostly for his graphics. He produced a great many lithographs and etchings in India on 'the ever-present plight of the poor and needy, the mysticism of gods and temples, the power of Indian philosophy and politics’ (Anna Griffiths), which were unrecognised in Australia. As always, his chief focus was on ordinary people.
In 1976, after the death of his second wife, Betty (Elizabeth Bridge), Dalgarno moved to New Zealand. He settled in Auckland where he continued to paint and make prints – and exhibit them – almost up to his death. He was a longstanding member of the Print Council of Australia, although he never again lived in Sydney {Merewether & Concise Dic are wrong in stating that he returned to Sydney c.1978}. 'In 1980, after attending the Pratt Center in New York, he added photographic techniques and colour to his printing repertoire, and experimented, none too convincingly, with abstraction’, Anna Griffiths wrote in his A&A obituary.
Sydney’s Rudy Koman Gallery exhibited his series of Broken Hill miners in 1984. His steelworkers were shown at Holdsworth Galleries in 1986 and his sheep-shearing series at David Ellis Gallery in 1988. An exhibition of his Australian social realist prints, Roy Dalgarno: Working Life , was at Wollongong City Gallery from 11 November 2000 to 21 January 2001. 'The steelworkers at their work remained the most inspiring thing for me’, he said in an interview not long before he died, 'and the steel works were like a huge modern cathedral’ (quoted Griffiths Art and Australia obituary). The exhibition closed just before Dalgarno died, in Auckland on 1 February 2001, aged 90. He was survived by his first wife, Nadine, and their sons Lynn and Lowan, his and Betty’s daughter Yogaratna Danielle, his third wife, Anna Brough, who lives in Auckland, and two grandsons, Loren and Samuel.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 2 December 1910
- Summary
- A diverse artist working primarily with drawing and as a printmaker, Roy Dalgarno had a long and varied career. His work mostly depicts the plight of the worker in Australia and later in India.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Feb-01
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Edward Herbert (Ted) Farmer (1909-2001) was born in Perth and studied architecture in Melbourne. He worked for Leighton Irwin and was transferred to Sydney in 1936 to run its Sydney office. In 1939, he joined the Government Architect’s branch of the NSW Public Works Department, and carried on the architectural traineeship program that had been initiated by Cobden Parkes and Harry Rembert. Farmer’s team built up an enviable record in achieving quality in architecture. The first significant building was Fisher Library, which won the RIBA bronze medal and the Sulman Award from the RAIA. As well as the more prestigious public buildings of the Fisher Library, Goldstein Hall at the University of NSW, the Art Gallery of NSW and the State Office Block, the office also produced a large number of hospital buildings and schools and educational buildings, with the high schools’ program a major thrust. During Farmer’s 15 years in the role of Government Architect after 1958, the office won six Sulman Awards, two Blacket Awards and numerous merit awards. Farmer himself was awarded the RAIA Gold Medal in 1972. However, he found himself in an awkward position when Jørn Utzon resigned as architect for the Sydney Opera House. Through the newly appointed Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes, Farmer assisted in appointing a panel of Peter Hall, David Littlemore and Lionel Todd to complete the work Utzon had begun. From 1965 until his retirement in 1972, he was the NSW RAIA’s representative on the NSW National Trust. Sources—Johnson, Chris. 2001. Architecture Australia obituary on website http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NIT/is_5_90/ai_86468933—NSW Government Architect’s website, www.govarch.dpws.nsw.gov.au/history/farmer_johnson.htm (accessed October 2005)
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1909
- Summary
- E.H. (Ted) Farmer was the New South Wales Government Architect from 1958 to 1972 (when the Government's major project was construction of the Sydney Opera House, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2001
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-33.9143894 Longitude151.1032133 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Campsie, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, caricaturist and comic strip artist, was born in Campsie (NSW), son of a council plumber and national secretary of the Plumbers’ Union who was killed in an accident in 1915 and Catherine MLC, the first woman member of an Australian Upper House. His elder brother, Dan , also became a cartoonist. Jim went to school at Lewisham Christian Brothers until 1924, when aged 14 he began work as a copy boy on the Daily Guardian . Later that year he transferred to Smith’s Weekly , where he worked as a copy boy to Stan Cross and began to draw cartoons. He also studied at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School for six years (1924-30) while working at various jobs, including being box office attendant at the Sydney Stadium. This led to a brief boxing career, which included winning all five bouts as a welterweight at Sydney Stadium. He also played tennis. In 1926 he had some basic art tutoring from the head artist of Fox Films – which he paid for, although he worked there unpaid for two years.
In 1928 Russell became Australia’s youngest political cartoonist, being employed on Sydney’s Evening News until the paper folded in 1931. Then he briefly went to the Referee as sports caricaturist until he rejoined Smith’s (on the art staff) the same year. Examples in Smith 's include: (re swearing man) '“Did George ever take lessons in golf?”/ “No, but he speaks it beautifully, doesn’t he?”'26 May 1934, 23; '“Father, dear father, come home to us now” – 1935 version’ (son pleading with father to leave a milk bar) 26 January 1935; two girls at a party '“He’s a smooth liar, isn’t he?”/ “Smooth? He’s streamlined”’ 13 July 1935, 10; (couple walking along swinging tennis rackets) '“How do you like married life?”/ “It’s alright when the wife’s out”’ 1935; and 'The Shape of Things to Come’ 11 March 1939, 12. Two undated originals in the Cross collection were probably also done in the 1930s: (shop assistant to leering customer) 'She: Could I show you something?/ He: I’ll bet you could’ and (chorus girls with orchestra and two men in evening dress in audience) “That’s my girl, second from the right! Can you see her?”/ “Most of her.” In 1939 he temporarily abandoned cartooning and accompanied the Australian Davis Cup team to the US as a tennis writer. The team won the cup as WWII broke out. Russell tried to enlist in the RAAF, unsuccessfully.
When Stan Crossleft Smith’s in 1940 Jim Russell succeeded him as art editor and also took over drawing Cross’s comic strips, including You and Me , which he renamed Mr and Mrs Pott , from 1950 The Potts . This internationally syndicated strip has long been identified with Russell, particularly his new character the bachelor brother of Mrs Potts, Uncle Dick introduced in 1957 after an editorial directive banned domestic rows. Often seen as semi-autobiographical, Uncle Dick was apparently initially based on the character Sheridan Whiteside in the film, The Man Who Came to Dinner , 1941 (played by Monty Woolley, apparently based on American critic Alexander Woolcot), although Russell later wryly admitted: 'I’ve grown more like Uncle Dick and Uncle Dick has grown more like me. My wife [Billie, who died in 1995] says he is me.’ In 1990 Russell established a world record of 51 years continuously drawing a comic strip. The Potts (retitled Uncle Dick in the USA) was syndicated to some 40 newspapers in Australia, the US, NZ, England and India, he was still drawing it when he died, on 15 August 2001. (Strips continued to appear in the SMH for several weeks afterwards).
During WWII Jim Russell not only enlisted the Potts into the war effort, he drew two weekly satiric features, Adolph, Musso, and Herman (which made fun of Hitler, Goering and Mussolini) and Schmitt der Sphy . Both were reputedly resented enough in Germany to get Russell on a Hitler hit-list, especially the former. He won the Voluntary Services section prize in the NGV’s 1945 exhibition , Australia at War . Jim occasionally used the pseudonym 'Mick Newton’ for his comic strips Kanga’s K.O. Comics (1949) and for a later version of Wanda Dare in Tex Morton Comics (see Shiell ed. – attributes the earlier Wanda Dare to older brother Dan Russell). When Smith 's closed in 1950, Russell followed Cross to the Melbourne Herald and Weekly Times Ltd. He also wrote film reviews and other articles, was a radio and TV personality, a publisher of dancing and music magazines and ran two travel agencies. For most of the last years of his life he lived at Sylvania.
In 1924 Jim Russell was one of the founders of the original Black and White Artists’ Club (see Harry Weston for full list of members) and organised some of the early B/W Artists’ balls. He succeeded Cross as president in 1955-57, then again in 1965-73, with Doug Albion in the interim. He won the Club’s first Silver Stanley in 1985 for his contribution to black and white art, was elected life member and patron in 1986, 'smocked’ in 1993 on his return from overseas where he was elected a member of the National Cartoonists’ Society of the USA, the only Australian ever to receive this honour. In 1978 he was awarded the MBE, then later the AM. Russell organised a ABWAC tour to the National Cartoonists’ Society’s annual Reuben awards at La Jolla, California in May 1994 and was said to be organising another to Boca Raton, Florida, for the Reuben awards and convention in May 1995 ( Inkspot 24, summer 1995, 12). He was actively cartooning and contributing to professional and charity events until the day before he died, aged 93. Indeed, he had agreed to go to Engadine to judge the L.J. Hooker primary and secondary schools’ cartoon competition and to conduct a workshop on cartooning on the day he died, said Lindsay Foyle, but had to cancel because he was unwell. He was survived by a daughter, three grandchildren and a great-grandson.
In the late 1970s the Herald donated a large collection of Potts strips of the 1960s-70s to the SLNSW. One Russell cartoon of the 1950s, and others (possibly for the Bulletin ) are in the SLNSW ML. 'Hullo, Rhubarb! What are you doing these days?’ was donated to ML by the wife of a Smith’s reporter in 1999 along with over 20 other originals and a copy of the final issue, 28 October 1950, signed by all the cartoonists.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1909
- Summary
- Prolific cartoonist: took over 'The Potts' from Stan Cross; created "Uncle Dick". In 1924 Jim Russell was one of the founders of the original Black and White Artists' Club.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Aug-01
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude50.8036831 Longitude-1.075614 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Portsmouth, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist and painter, was born in Portsmouth, England, the youngest boy in a family of 12 children. He came to Perth in 1911, aged four. Two years later the family moved to Sydney and settled in Balmain. They were very poor and moved frequently, 'just one step ahead of the landlord’, he once commented (Rae, 52). Eric left school at 14 and tried a variety of jobs before leaving home to explore Australia at the age of 16 [15 according to Stephens obit.]. He 'humped his bluey through Queensland and New South Wales and worked as a rabbit trapper and shearing shed hand’ (Blaikie, 102) at Cowra, Canowindra, Coonamble and Walgett [for six years according to Stephens]. Although Jolliffe’s heart was in the bush, he needed money to live so moved back to the city where he worked as a window cleaner during the day and attended art classes at East Sydney Technical College at night.
Pre-WWII he worked as a freelance cartoonist mainly drawing for the Bulletin, which bought his first drawing. After his mate Arthur Horner moved to Smith’s Weekly Jolliffe drew Old Andy for the Bulletin from 1930 to 1939 (the anthology Andy was published by Frank Johnson c.1940). Other freelance jobs were for the ABC Weekly (1939), Pix (1946) and the Sun newspaper (1966-70). In fact, his only full-time jobs in a lifetime of drawing cartoons were at Smith’s Weekly for a year or so (1944) and at the ABC Weekly for a few months.
Jolliffe was a camouflage artist with the RAAF during the War, travelling to Arnhem Land and the Kimberley, where he got to know a number of Indigenous people. He specialised in bush humour, both black and white, and was admired by both races. (Billy Palm Island is said to have described Jolliffe as his favourite cartoonist at the opening of the Tambo exhibition at the National Library of Australia in November 1997) His 'comic studies of Aborigines in the more or less raw and the Outback’ featured in the Sun-Herald and Pix (especially) for many years. He sketched everywhere he went. He first met Aborigines from Arnhem Land and the Kimberley while working in a camouflage office with the RAAF in the Northern Territory during the war. They inspired Witchetty’s Tribe , e.g. “I see Daughter’s got herself another beau” ('caveman’ Aborigine dragging female by the hair, original NLA). He also drew hundreds, possibly thousands, of white bushie jokes, many featuring Saltbush Bill, e.g. “Couldn’t imagine Christmas dinner without a bit o’ poultry, Ma”, Bulletin 1941 (Bill about to behead an emu). Douglas Stewart recollected that as 'an exponent of life in the outback’, he 'used to carry the most charming little flying possum in his pocket’ at the Bulletin office (Stewart, 36).
Jolliffe’s 'Saltbush Bill’, 'Witchetty’s Tribe’ and 'Sandy Blight’ cartoons in Pix were nationally renowned, e.g. Corroboree 3 February 1945, 16-17; Walkabout 31 March 1945, 16-17; Back o’ Beyond 26 May 1945, 16-17; Piccaninny Playtime 14 July 1945, 10-11; a double-page spread of 'Jolliffe Jollities’ 16 August 1947, 22-23, on what might happen 'if aboriginal tradition mingles with the influences of our Western civilisation’; The eternal “She” in the Never-never 11 October 1947, 12-13; As Jolliffe sees the Abo 24 July 1948, 12; With Jolliffe in Arnhem Land 30 October 1948, 14-17 (on the Smithsonian Institution-sponsored Arnhem Land expedition – [and/or 'with Bill Harney and Charles Mountford on a National Geographic expedition and with Professor A.P. Elkin, the anthropologist’, according to Stephens] including jokes about most of the individual members of the expedition confronting the Yirrkala people, e.g. the anthropologists). In many of his Aboriginal cartoons the joke depends on the incongruity of the Indigenous Australian’s two worlds, e.g. woman outside humpy smacking baby while husband with spear is saying, “ Now , where’s the exponent of child psychology?” 1955 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 277). His 'Saltbush Bill’ cartoons ran in Pix magazine for nearly 50 years from 1945 (Stephens).
Jolliffe was an immensely prolific artist. By 1983 he had published 130 anthologies of his cartoons and drawings, mainly from Pix , according to Rae, and they were still appearing in People (with which Pix merged, separated, then merged again) in 1997. Annual anthologies exist to 2001; his son-in-law, the cartoonist Ken Emerson , told Tony Stephens that Jolliffe published ’132 books of comics’ (obituary Sydney Morning Herald [ SMH ]). The first was Andy (Sydney: Frank Johnson, c.1940) of which the publisher noted, '“Andy” has become a national figure and the sales of this book of fun on the selection have been phenomenal’ (ad. in Lock anthology 1941). Others include Corroboree: Aboriginal Cartoon Fun (Sydney, 1946) – with poem 'The Artist’ (Albert Namatjira) by Norma L. Davis; Witchetty’s Tribe: Aboriginal cartoon fun no.13 (Rosebery NSW: Sungravure, n.d. [1950s?]) – cartoons from Pix , including a sputnik joke [presumably post October 1957], plus a centrepiece series of portrait heads); Witchetty’s Tribe: Aboriginal cartoon fun no.28 (Rosebery NSW: Sungravure, n.d. [1960s?]) – more cartoons from Pix , plus 45 sympathetic sketches of 'some of the 45 aboriginal dancers from Arnhem Land who recently delighted Sydney and Melbourne audiences with their corroboree dances’, organised by Stephen Haag of the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, plus Jolliffe’s description and sketch of a 'Pukamuni [ sic ] death dance’ on Melville Island. Later he published his own annuals, e.g. Jolliffe’s Outback Australia (E. Jolliffe: Dee Why NSW, 1979), which consisted of Saltbush Bill gags, plus articles on cedar getting on the Macleay River and on the koala, with a portrait of a pretty Aboriginal girl inside the back cover 'for framing’), and Jolliffe’s Outback 129: Saltbush Bill’s 50th Anniversary (Jolliffe Studios, 1994) celebrating 50 years since Bill’s first appearance in Pix as a weekly feature.
In 1980 the Federal Anti-Discrimination Board accused Jolliffe of racism in the way he portrayed Aboriginal people in his cartoons. A burst of publicity ensued, with Ken Slessor, Prof Elkin, Lenny Lower and Jolliffe’s cartoonist mates rallying to his defence (some of whom were presumably cited posthumously). Blaikie said that Jolliffe had, in fact, replaced the earlier offensive Smith’s Weekly moronic 'Jacky Jacky’ stereotype (notably those drawn by Stan Cross ) with athletic hunters with a sense of humour and women 'as beautiful as white models’. Letters and cartoons about the incident are reproduced in The Best of Witchetty’s Tribe by Jolliffe (Jolliffe Publications, Dee Why, 1980). Joan Kerr’s papers include a copy, also photocopies of newscuttings and letters about the incident from Jolliffe’s own files.
Perhaps partly in response to this public insult, Jolliffe won the Stanley Award for best single gag artist in 1985 and 1986. He had also won the Sydney Savage Club Cartoonist Award twice (in 1960 and 1961). He was a fellow of the Australian Institute of History and Art [details unknown] and was awarded the OAM for his services to art as a cartoonist and illustrator, states Stephens. Yet even though he continued to draw cartoons and produce annual anthologies, few contain Aboriginal subjects from the 1980s and there are almost no Aboriginal gags in the Mitchell Library’s collections [ML] of his original drawings.
At the age of 82, Jolliffe added watercolour painting to his repertoire. From then on he regularly exhibited views of outback Australia. He lived in a retirement unit at Bateau Bay (NSW) with his wife, May, whom he married c.1932, but still spent much time travelling in the Northern Territory visiting his many Aboriginal friends. May died in 1993 after 61 years of marriage and their daughter May (wife of Ken Emerson) died in 1997. The Australian Black and White Artists’ Club gave Jolliffe a 90th birthday celebration in Sydney in 1997. He attended both b/w exhibition openings at Sydney in 1999 with his friend John Clements. Eric Jolliffe died in November 2001, survived by Ken Emerson and granddaughter Jane Emerson. His funeral service was held at Ourimbah on the Central NSW Coast on Wednesday, 21 November 2001.
Images include Aboriginal rock painter, “Actually he’d rather do landscape like Namatjira, only he’s scared they might give him citizenship rights” original not located (see Kerr, Artists and Cartoonists ); Aborigine painting on a rockface to his critic, “What d’you mean, 'chocolate boxy’?”
Aboriginal being chased by croc, Bulletin original ('Saltbush Bill’ OR 'Sandy Blight’ collection?), published 1 July 1946 (ML Px*D438/38), showing sheep, cows and rabbits at the top of tree with a bushie saying to a male visitor, “It’s a sure sign of heavy rain” (in State Library of New South Wales Australians in Black & White, the most public art exhibition, 1999).
A small 1960s-70s group of Jolliffe’s Sandy Blight strips are in ML (Pic Acc 3088), donated by the SMH c.1979, while a number of outback cartoons are in the ML Bulletin collection.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1907
- Summary
- Prolific mid 20th century Sydney-based cartoonist and painter and the creator of "Witchetty's Tribe". Despite having a number of close friendships within the Indigenous communities of northern Australia, in 1980 the Federal Anti-Discrimination Board accused Jolliffe of racism in the way he portrayed Aboriginal people in his cartoons - a claim that was met with outrage amongst his peers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Nov-01
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-33.713759 Longitude150.3121633 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date2001-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Katoomba, Blue Mountains, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, craftworker, designer and editor, was born in Katoomba, NSW on 25 August 1900, second eldest child and eldest daughter of ten children – five brothers and four sisters. She grew up at Balmain and attended Sydney Girls’ High School, leaving at the age of 15 to help her mother care for 'the brood’. Nancy was interested in art and the first job she had was at the Jack O’Lantern studios in Sydney, creating pokerwork for £2 a week. She continued to work there as a commercial artist in the 1920s, decorating furniture and artefact and producing polkerwork designs in her own studio.
From 1918 Nancy Hall attended Julian Ashton’s art studio, where her contemporaries included Roland Wakelin , Dorrit Black and Grace Crowley . In July 1924 she published the first issue of the magazine Undergrowth , which she edited with Dore Hawthorne until 1929. A linocut by Ysobel Irving (later Irvine), published in the July August 1928 issue, showing a young woman in a smart suit and hat moving purposefully towards a seat on a ferry in many ways typifies the stated aims and unstated achievements of this student magazine. Begun as a four page, hand-typed newsletter for the Sydney Art Students’ Club, Undergrowth progressed rapidly to become a handsome, professionally printed magazine. Titled by its editors Undergrowth: A Magazine of Youth and Ideals , it contained articles, poetry, stories and plays from students and others. The cover designs were linocuts and woodcuts by Hawthorne, Crowley, Florence Taylor , Ruth Ainsworth , Miriam Moxham , Gwen Ridley and Roland Wakelin. The other illustrations were mostly linocuts and woodcuts by students with occasional photographs and coloured reproductions of works by established artists such as William Dobell , Wakelin and Roy de Maistre .
Its youthful acceptance of new ideas resulted in a leaning in favour of modern art; indeed, Undergrowth became the main forum for information about, debate on and support for modern art in Sydney. By virtue of the number of female artists working in a modernist style, including Anne Dangar , Grace Crowley, Thea Proctor , Ethel Anderson and Margaret Preston , the number of letters and articles by and about women artists and supporters of modern art outnumbered similar items concerning or by male modernists. As has often been remarked, women students in art schools always far outnumber the men. Although Undergrowth printed contributions from male students, it reflected the prevailing gender ratio and hence gave women an unprecedented voice to express their views and publish their work. The female editorship was unique in a Sydney publication at the time, and it is perhaps telling that women artists such as Ysobel Irving found their only public recognition in Undergrowth . When it ceased publication after the July August 1929 issue, most disappeared, leaving almost no trace in the art world.
At the age of 27 Nancy Hall went to Sydney University, graduating BA in 1931. At the conferring ceremony her father rose to his feet, clapped loudly, and shouted 'Bravo! Bravo!’ Becoming devoted to the ideals of Christian Science, she started two Christian Science schools at Vaucluse – Hillcrest and Edgeworth – where she taught French and Latin. Edgeworth was founded towards the end of the 1930s and named after her friend Sir Edgeworth David. Her brother Ian Hall notes that after the Japanese shelled the eastern suburbs in the early 1940s she transferred Edgeworth with some 19 students to a large old house in the 'country’ at Castle Hill. She rented the property, which had plenty of room, but no amenities. Chaos reigned as she did the chores and taught a bunch of adventurous children for a year with the help of a few dedicated volunteers, then returned to make great progress at Vaucluse.
Nancy Hall, who never married, painted in oil and watercolour and did illustrative designs almost up to her death. She spent her last years in the Lady Gowrie Village at Gordon, where she encouraged other residents to become interested in activities beyond the daily routine. 'Nan was never critical, just loved and loving’, wrote Ian Hall, the last surviving sibling, in an Sydney Morning Herald obituary. She died peacefully at Gordon on 22 June 2001, aged 100.
Writers:
Johnson, Heather
Note: Primary
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1900
- Summary
- Sydney based painter, craftworker, designer and editor. In July 1924 she published the first issue of the magazine Undergrowth, which recognised many female artists of the time.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2001
- Age at death
- 101
Details
Latitude-28.5483333 Longitude153.5011111 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mullumbimby, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1943
- Summary
- Mullumbimby-born designer behind the Dandie/Dandy boutique in Kings Road in Swinging Sixties London.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-23.447 Longitude131.882 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Haasts Bluff, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c. 1940 at Haasts Bluff in his mother’s country. Two Bob’s family fled Warlpiri country and went to live in the area of Mt Wedge after the 1928 Coniston massacre, later moving to Haasts Bluff and thence to the new settlement at Papunya in the early ’60s. Two Bob was one of a group of younger Warlpiri artists, including also Don Tjungurrayi , Maxie Tjampitjinpa and Michael Nelson , who started painting at Papunya in the late 1970s, early 1980s and emerged over the decade of the 1980s as major painters for Papunya Tula Artists. Two Bob’s Dreaming stories included Goanna, Man, Woman, Bush Tucker, Bush Grapes, Mukaki and Carpet Snake. He and his wife Nellie Nangala, a Luritja woman (who also painted for Papunya Tula occasionally), had three sons and two daughters. Two Bob travelled to Canberra, Sydney and Adelaide with Papunya Tula Artists.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1938
- Summary
- Two Bob was one of a group of younger Papunya-based artists, including also Don Tjungurrayi, Maxie Tjampitjinpa and Michael Nelson, who emerged over the decade of the 1980s painting for Papunya Tula Artists.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kintore Range, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born in the Kintore Ranges c.1935, Johnny Scobie grew up walking these regions as his father had before him. As a young man, Johnny went droving, north to Lajamanu and east as far as Broken Hill before returning to Alice Springs to marry his promised wife Narpula Scobie , sister of Turkey Tolson . and go to live in Papunya. Johnny’s recollection is that he started to paint in the late ’70s when John Kean was running Papunya Tula Artists, resuming after a break back in Kintore, where he was Chairman of the Walungurru (Kintore) Council for many years. His country from his mother’s side was around the Kintore Ranges out to Lake Mackay and the Balgo area. He also painted the Wedgetail Eagle Dreaming for a hill to the west of Yuendumu.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: Primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1935
- Summary
- Pintupi artist and Walungurru Council Chairman whose early work for Papunya Tula Artists was included in the Peter Stuyvesant Collection, which toured internationally from 1977.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-25 Longitude133 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1931
- Summary
- Hermia Boyd was a set designer, potter and glass painter.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-00
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-21.43494345 Longitude125.0580478 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Percival Lakes, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Born 'in the bush’ in the area near Percival Lakes c.1930, David Hall lived at Mulan. A Kukatja speaker, his traditional country was Kutarta, south-west of Balgo. He began painting for Warlayirti Artists in 1990 and painted Tingari and Water Dreamings. Like some other artists working out of Mulan, he used more areas of brushwork on the canvas and did not utilise dotting so much as other artists from the Balgo Hills area. He created unusual and subtle designs filled with his knowledge and concern for Men’s Law. He worked slowly and carefully, attaching great importance to his finished works. He was married to the late Ena Gimme Nungarrayi .
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- Kukatja artist who painted for Warlayirti Artists from Mulan (WA). His designs, usually featuring more brushwork than works from nearby Balgo, are imbued with the knowledge and power of Men's Law.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Harry Howard (1930-2000) was an architect and landscape architect who designed the sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Australia (with Barbara Buchanan and Roger Vidler) and the landscape setting of the adjacent High Court, Canberra. He graduated in architecture from the University of Sydney in 1953, worked briefly for Sydney Ancher, then transferred to Edwards Madigan Torzillo, where he remained for many years. He also completed a diploma of town and country planning at the University of Sydney in 1960. A modernist devoted to Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe and Harry Seidler, he was also drawn to left-wing socialist politics. His first commission, an abstract composition of two elegant, flat-roofed pavilions – a House for a Young Couple and a House for a Retired Couple – was built on a double lot in East Gordon and exhibited at the arts festival of the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956. He worked on the site design and landscape development of many schools during this period, both for the Public Works Department and parents & citizens groups. During the 1960s, he taught design part-time in the School of Architecture at the University of NSW. He was one of a highly talented group which included Rickard, Bill Lucas and Neville Gruzman, who were committed to creating an inspired response to the Sydney landscape. They created a unique work environment and social milieu at 7 Ridge Street, North Sydney, a building conceived by Howard and Rickard as a series of professional studios and designed by Ian McKay. At one time, 7 Ridge Street accommodated the offices of Seidler, Mackenzie, Rickard, Howard, Peter Myers and the studios of designer Gordon Andrews and photographer David Moore. Howard served on the NSW RAIA Council 1970-84 and on the Board of Architects during the 1970s. A foundation member of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, In association with Barbara Buchanan, he designed Sawmillers Reserve at McMahons Point, the landscape of the Film & Television School, Ryde, and the courtyards at NIDA. In 1996, he received the Australian Award, the highest accolade of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects.Source—Weirick, James. 2000. Obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 October.James Weirick checked this information in January 2005.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1930
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude47.4925 Longitude19.051389 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Budapest, Hungary
- Biography
- Peter Kollar (1926-2000) was an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of NSW. Born in Hungary, he arrived in Australia in 19XX and taught at the university from the 1950s. In 1957, he won fourth place in the Sydney Opera House design competition (the highest-placed Australian entrant) and protested against Jørn Utzon’s departure from the project. Kollar was known for fierce debates with design tutor Neville Gruzman. He wrote prolifically on architecture, the world’s great spiritual traditions and the principles and theory of design In a rare honour, the University of New South Wales was formally congratulated by theinternational assessors of his doctoral thesis for a body of work which they proclaimed as 'thegreatest work of its kind’. His students witnessed a profoundly spiritual yet solidlyfounded approach to architecture. Sources—Obituary in UNSW Faculty of the Built Environment newsletter,
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1926
- Summary
- Dr Peter Kollar (1926-2000) was an associate professor of architecture at the University of New South Wales from 1957 to the 1970s. Domestic architecture by Kollar is known as well as an entry in the Sydney Opera House competition in partnership with Balthazar Korab.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-00
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 December 1924
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-31.959105 Longitude118.0023126 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bruce Rock, WA, Australia
- Biography
- John Perceval was born on 1 February 1923 with the name Linwood Robert Steven South Bruce Rock in Western Australia. His father, Robert South, was a wheat farmer, a man well known for his hard work and violent temper. His parents’ marriage was short-lived. His mother, born Dorothy Dolton, left when the boy was only 18 months old, with his older sister unhappily stayed with their father until 1934 when their mother married William de Burgh Perceval in Melbourne. John Perceval took his stepfather’s name, and began to attend Trinity Grammar. At the age of 15 he suffered from polio, and spent a year in hospital. As a part of his recovery he began to paint.He came to know the artists associated with Melbourne’s newly established Contemporary Art Society, and through them joined the circle of artists and writers around John and Sunday Reed at Heide Park. Despite his withered leg John Perceval enlisted in the Army as his skills as a draughtsman could be used in the Cartographic Company. Here he met Arthur Boyd, and then the entire extended Boyd family at Murrumbeena. He married Arthur’s youngest sister, Mary Boyd, in 1944. With Arthur Boyd and Neil Douglas he worked at the Murrumbeena pottery, making decorated pots and bowls. His paintings of this period show a strong influence of Arthur Boyd’s work, with a joyeus brush stroke and an almost naive quality.The Perceval family lived at Williamstown, at the old naval port on the mouth of the Yarra and the working harbour became a part of his subject matter. His subject matter was sometimes metaphorical, but always based in elements of his life. The city of Melbourne became the background for a nativity scene, painted in a style that quoted Breughel. His children: Matthew, Tessa, Celia and Alice all appear as reoccurring elements in his art. No more is this more evident than in his series of ceramic angels, made between 1957 and 1962. While they certainly quoted Renaissance sculptural figures and Piero della Francesca’s paintings, the joie de vivre of these (sometimes) quite naughty figures owes more to his observations of his children – although one is modelled on the satirist Barry Humphries.In 1959, Perceval was persuaded by Bernard Smith to join with his brothers-in-law Arthur and David Boyd, John Brack, Robert Dickerson, Charles Blackman and Clifton Pugh to form the Antipodeans a celebration of the human figure, in opposition to the rise of abstract art. His own paintings however concentrated on landscapes, and increasingly he found more nourishment from Vincent Van Gogh than any other artist.Perceval’s bad memories, alcoholism and long undiagnosed psychiatric illness meant that life was less than easy for his family and his marriage ended unhappily. In 1965 he was hospitalised for alcoholism, and in 1977 he entered the Larundal psychiatric hospital, where he stayed until 1986.Perceval continued to paint for the rest of his life, but although he had some commercial success, these later works appear crude when placed next to his paintings of the 1940s and ’50s.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1 February 1923
- Summary
- John Perceval had little formal training as an artist, but after he fell ill with polio at the age of 15 he concentrated on painting and drawing. He came to know the Boyd family and the Angry Penguins circle of Heide Park and they were the greatest influence on his developing style.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Oct-00
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-34.6394513 Longitude148.025723 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cootamundra, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter and teacher, was born in Cootamundra, NSW, and educated at Canberra Grammar School, leaving in 1941 with high marks in art and history. Interested in Max Meldrum’s tonal painting theories, he moved to Melbourne and joined his school in 1942. He became an assistant teacher, running the classes when Meldrum was away. For 10 years he lived in the Meldrum home, where he was treated like a son. When Meldrum died, Inson moved to Sydney and opened a studio in Rowe Street in 1954. He held his first solo exhibition that year. One of his first students was Ivy Shore, winner of the Portia Geach art award and his life partner.
For 25 years Inson divided his time between teaching and travelling around Australia, painting and photographing city and rural scenes, portraits and still life and writing Australian history: The Restless Years and The Glorious Years (both Jacaranda Press). In 1980 he began painting foreign landscapes, interspersing his Australian trips with visits to Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He had 60 solo exhibitions in his lifetime, mainly in Brisbane and Sydney but also in Canberra and Adelaide. He was a frequent contributor to the Archibald, a finalist on several occasions in the Doug Moran Portrait Prize and winner of the Troy Roche Prize. Ivy died in 1999 and Inson died of a massive heart attack early in 2000, aged 77, having taken a class the day before his death.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1923
- Summary
- Holding 60 solo exhibitions in his lifetime, Inson divided his time between teaching and travelling around Australia and overseas to paint foreign landscapes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-27.5610193 Longitude151.953351 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toowoomba, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- Verlie Just (née Tainton) was born in Toowoomba on 22 July 1922, the youngest daughter of George Richard Tainton, a respected journalist with The Courier-Mail, and his wife Gladys née Horn. Verlie attended All Hallows’ School in the heart of Brisbane. Although her father steered her towards a career in academia, she was determined to be an artist, deliberately failing exam questions to remain in the school’s arts stream. For several years, she took private painting lessons with William Bustard, and eventually, enrolled at Brisbane’s Central Technical College. Verlie studied full-time from 1938 to 1941, primarily under the tutelage of FJ Martyn Roberts and Cyril Gibbs. While there, she also met her future husband, Arnold William Theodore Just.
Initially, Verlie worked in embroidery and fashion design. During World War II, she enlisted as a draughtswoman in the Australian Women’s Army Service at Victoria Barracks, which enabled her to monitor Arnold’s whereabouts while he was deployed overseas. In 1942, Verlie learned that his unit was to pass through Brisbane. On 26 August that year, the couple wed at St John’s Cathedral. Two years later, while Arnold was on his second tour of Papua New Guinea, Verlie gave birth to their first daughter, Jeraldene. Arnold returned home three months after the war ended. In 1950, Verlie resumed her studies, enrolling in Melville Haysom’s classes at the Central Technical College. After giving birth to her second daughter Janene, however, she paused her career to raise her family.
In the 1960s, with Jeraldene and Janene nearing the end of their schooling, Verlie resumed her artistic practice. She drifted away from her earlier interests, having fallen in love with jewellery design. Over the years, Verlie had developed an interest in geology. She was fascinated by the potential of gemstones, and viewed jewellery as a means to unlock their beauty. At the time, instruction in jewellery-making was restricted to male trade apprentices, and as a result, Verlie taught herself the techniques involved in lapidary and silversmithing. While her favoured metal was sterling silver, she experimented with a variety of gemstones, many of which she found herself. She would often take the family on expeditions to fossicking areas such as Stanthorpe, the Gold Coast Hinterland, and Lightning Ridge, where they would pan in creeks and dig for stones.
In 1960, Verlie was invited to develop her practice at The Spit, the Sydney studio of Danish silversmith Helge Larsen. Larsen and his wife Darani Lewers were pioneers of contemporary jewellery and hollowware in Australia. Their influence was particularly felt in Brisbane through their 1962 and 1964 exhibitions at the Johnstone Gallery. Although Verlie ultimately rejected the minimalist approach employed by Larsen, the two stayed in touch for many years.
In 1969, Verlie embarked on a study tour of the United States, spending five months abroad in Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Bangor. She also visited Philadelphia, where she attended a course in electroforming at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture (based at Temple University) with jewellery artist Stanley Lechtzin. The highlight of her trip, however, was time spent at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Located on the coast of Maine, Haystack was an international hub for craftspeople, artisans, and designers. Verlie had received a six-week scholarship to the school, and while there, learnt from prominent metalsmiths Olaf Skoogfors and Robert Ebendorf. At Haystack, she was also introduced to Perspex, and moved into mobile-jewellery and wall-hangings. While the artist’s foray into plastics was promising, it was short-lived. When she returned home, Verlie resumed her use of natural materials.
Back in Brisbane, Verlie became involved with the Craft Association of Australia (CAA). The CAA was a non-profit organisation, affiliated with the World Crafts Council, that sought to promote the work of Australian craftspeople and designers. In 1970, Verlie helped to form the Queensland branch of the CAA at the invitation of Larsen, who had co-founded the New South Wales branch in 1964. She was elected as the first President of the Queensland branch (CAAQ), with EJ Weller and Kit Shannon as Vice Presidents. Under their leadership, the CAAQ established a fellowship, held several member exhibitions, maintained a directory of local craft events, and more.
In 1972, Verlie had a ‘falling out’ with the CAAQ. She took issue with its members, many of whom had falsely stated that Brisbane artist Hilda Pavlu, who exhibited under the pseudonym of Frances Wildt, had won the 1968 Benvenuto Cellini Competition in Germany, when in reality she had received a Highly Commended award. The press picked up and circulated this inaccuracy, which frustrated Verlie. She did not want the CAAQ to be seen to spread false claims, especially as it had received financial support from the Queensland Government’s Education and Cultural Activities Department in the form of a Cultural Activities New Ventures Fund. Verlie attempted to correct the situation but found that those involved were unreceptive to her efforts. Pavlu was another female jeweller in direct sales competition with Verlie, thus it is plausible to suggest that Verlie’s unwillingness to let the matter go was spurred by professional rivalry. In the end, stubbornly refusing to move on from the situation, Verlie not only resigned from the CAAQ, but also quit creating jewellery in protest.
After resigning as an artist, Verlie set her sights on a new goal: establishing her own gallery. In April 1973, she founded The Town Gallery. In the surrounding years, Brisbane had witnessed the closure of its major commercial galleries, including the Moreton Galleries in 1970, the Johnstone Gallery in 1972, and the Reid Gallery in 1975. Verlie sought to alleviate this loss with The Town Gallery, although she rejected the term ‘commercial gallery’ – she believed that the quality of an artist’s work was more important than its marketability. The opening of The Town Gallery also marked the success of Verlie’s notable campaign to exempt art galleries from the Government’s trading hour restrictions. Prior to this, galleries were unable to display arts and crafts for sale outside regular trading hours, as stipulated in the Factories and Shops Act 1960. This affected artists who relied on sales from exhibition openings, among other gallery events, which often occurred after hours. Verlie lobbied for seven years until finally, the legislation was amended.
Throughout its lifetime, The Town Gallery occupied several spaces in Brisbane: Queens Arcade Building (1973–85), Dunstan House (1986–90), MacArthur Chambers (1990–97), and Charlotte House (1997–2000). Although Verlie claimed to exhibit Australian artists of all styles, she held a particular interest in those inspired by European Modernism. Within her stable of artists, several presented explorations into abstraction, with the majority excelling in Modern landscape, genre, and portrait painting. Most notably, Verlie represented interstate artists Gary and Alan Baker, Judy Cassab, Graeme Inson, and Owen Piggott, and Brisbane artists Irene Amos, Henry Bartlett, and John Rigby. She also provided many emerging Queensland artists with exhibition profiles, including Veda Arrowsmith, Bev Budgen, Brian Hatch, Max Hurley, Shirley Miller, Mervyn Moriarty, and Phyllis Schneider. Additionally, Verlie played an important role in bringing Brisbane’s Modernist painter of the 1940s, Vincent Brown, back to critical attention. Apart from pottery by Carl McConnell however, Verlie rarely exhibited crafts media. It is likely her upset with the CAAQ contributed to this decision.
In 1979, Verlie expanded The Town Gallery to include the Japan Room, the first space in Australia to both exclusively and permanently exhibit ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock prints). Verlie sought to bring the masters of the tradition – Hokusai, Hiroshige, Utamaro, Kuniyoshi, Yoshitoshi, Kunisada, and more – to the citizens of Brisbane. While she maintained several contacts in Japan, the majority of her prints came through South Australian dealers David Button and Geraldine Halls. For years, Verlie pushed for Queensland Art Gallery (QAG) to expand its collection of Japanese art. She wrote countless letters to the institution outlining her acquisition recommendations, and while her advice was not always taken, she made a definite impact. Between 1979 and 2000, approximately a third of the Japanese woodblock prints acquired by QAG were made available by Verlie. She also collaborated with the institution to curate two dedicated exhibitions of ukiyo-e: ‘Looking Eastwards: The Intricate Art of Japanese Prints’ (1989) and ‘Four Centuries of Ukiyo-e Prints’ (1997).
While directing The Town Gallery, which was renamed The Verlie Just Town Gallery in 1976, and eventually The Verlie Just Town Gallery and Japan Room in 1979, Verlie undertook many trips to Japan, the United States, and Europe to stay up to date with global art trends and forge relationships with international galleries, dealers, and collectors. During this time, she continued her involvement in the Brisbane arts community. In 1991, Verlie became a founding member of Brisbane’s Public and Private Gallery Directors Group, co-chaired by Philip Bacon and Marilyn Domenech. Although she exited the group after three meetings, she supported them in their bid to remedy the inadequate level of newspaper coverage of the visual arts in Queensland, in particular their mission to develop a Thursday arts page in The Courier-Mail, a matter she had been pursuing since the 1980s.
For her contributions to the arts, Verlie was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia on 8 June 1992. She had been nominated by her stable of artists and Sir Charles Gray Wanstall, the former Chief Justice of Queensland. On 10 January 2000, Verlie passed away. Arnold kept the gallery open for a limited time, so people could see the last show she had installed. Soon after, The Verlie Just Town Gallery and Japan Room closed its doors.
Adapted from: Elena Dias-Jayasinha, “The Verlie Just Town Gallery and Japan Room Archive,” Queensland History Journal 24, no. 11 (November 2021): 1045-56.
Writers:
Elena Dias-Jayasinha
Date written:
2021
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 22 July 1922
- Summary
- Just, described as Queensland's first contemporary jeweller, established 'The Verlie Just Town Gallery and Japan Room' in 1973 in Brisbane, Queensland. She was one of the founders of the Queensland Craft Association. Her jewellery was exhibited widely.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Jan-00
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-34.78029735 Longitude150.6966853 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berry, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Born in North Sydney in 1922, Roger McLay belongs to the first generation of celebrated designers (Gordon Andrews, Frances Burke, Alister Morrison, Grant Featherston and many others) who were taught their trade by the Australian technical colleges.
McLay’s design consultancy in Sydney ran a varied practice producing commercial furniture, interior design for such clients as the Sebel Townhouse, large commercial-scale lighting, heat-formed acrylic and glass as well as graphic design and packaging for corporate clients.
He trained initially at the National Art School in Darlinghurst from 1938-41 while serving an apprenticeship with John Sands in lithography. During the 1939-45 war, McLay enlisted in the RAAF in 1942 with service in North Africa and Europe, returning to the National Art School from 1945-47. Here he took classes with teachers such as William Dobell.
McLay said that he was won to industrial design when, en route to the RAAF in Europe in 1942, he stopped off in New York where he found industrial designer Raymond Loewy’s famous Studebaker motor car revolving on a lighted pedestal in the foyer of one of the city’s museums. “Fortunately for Australia,” McLay once said, “General Motors didn’t ask me to design the first Holden.”
In the postwar 1940s, like most designers of his era, he struggled to work independently. As a tenant of the New South Wales Maritime Services Board, McLay shared his Gloucester Street Studio with the late Alistair Morrison and Denis Gray. Like other young artists and designers in the area, they frequented the Andronicus Coffee Shop as well as the Newcastle Hotel in the Rocks.
Following a familiar path for young designers, McLay did his earliest freelance work for advertising agencies where he met the designer Douglas Annand who was also struggling for clients during this period. The post-war pool of talent was large but the commercial market for designers was very small.
McLay’s most celebrated work, the “Kone” chair was developed and sold from his Gloucester Street studio in 1948 and the word spread quickly amongst Sydney’s small community of Modernists. “The first customer to buy one of the chairs,” McLay once explained, “was a lady called Marion Hall Best who had a design shop at Woollahra. I think the next client was Grace Brothers and Beard Watsons.” The Kone chair won an Interior Design Society award in 1950 and demand increased further as mainstream retailers sought it. The Kone chair remains in production
This chair is a masterpiece of simplicity formed from a single sheet of plywood, twisted and fastened into the shape of a shortened cone. This conical shape was then inserted into a simple black steel base. In an interview about the creation of the laminated timber Kone, McLay explained that aircraft grade plywood intended for the DeHaviland-manufactured “Mosquito” aircraft was readily available after the war while most other raw materials were in very short supply.
In the mid-1950s (McLay was unsure of the date), he licensed the Kone chair to Descon Laminates where it was produced until 1960 when Descon ran into financial difficulties. McLay and his family went to England pursuing design work during this same period.
Roger McLay retired in 1987 after several years in a studio in Neutral Bay, a harbourside suburb in North Sydney.
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- Roger McLay began working in industrial design after 1947. McLay's most celebrated work, the "Kone" chair, was developed and sold from 1948. From the mid-1950s until 1960 McLay went to England pursuing design work. He designed commercial lighting, Sebel Townhouse interiors, Wahroonga Shire Council chambers, interiors for the Commonwealth Bank, the logo for AGC insurance and other works, often anonymous.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, painter, illustrator and sculptor, was born in WA. He spoke to the WA chapter of ABWAC in June 1997 as a former WA newspaper artist.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Western Australian cartoonist, painter, illustrator and sculptor. Aisbett was a member of the WA chapter of the Australian Black and White Artists Club and in 1997 he gave an address on his experiences as a former newspaper artist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.8342887 Longitude151.2182049 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Neutral Bay, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, cartoonist and writer, was born in Sydney on 22 August 1920. He studied art with Dattilo Rubbo. Although best known as a painter and illustrator of historical subjects, he had cartoons in Australia: National Journal and in Australia Week-end Book 1 (1942) during World War II, e.g. Shearer’s Cook .
This entry is stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 22 August 1920
- Summary
- Late 20th century Sydney painter, illustrator, cartoonist and writer. Cedric Flower studied art with Dattilo Rubbo.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Aug-00
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-37.82013725 Longitude145.1500496 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Blackburn, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 28 October 1918
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Oct-00
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude55.861111 Longitude-4.25 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glasgow, Scotland
- Biography
- Charles Wilton made his living as a ceramist. He studied ceramics at the Melbourne Technical College, then spent four years working with Eric Juckert in his studio in Caulfield before setting up his own studio in Croydon in 1940. 1958, he was one of the founding members of the Potters’ Cottage at Warrandyte.1970s – He established a studio at Phillip Island. Charles produced functional ceramics in earthenware and stoneware.
Charles served in the Air Force from 1942-1946.
Work incised 'Charles Wilton’ or 'C. Wilton’.
Obit – Ceramics Technical, no.23, Nov 2006-Apr 2007: 98-100. Gary Prince and Ken Lawrence
Writers:
7write6
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 4 August 1916
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude47 Longitude20 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hungary
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1915
- Summary
- Kolos was an architect and designer working in several partnerships during his career. Amongst his many commercial and domestic commissions, in 1959, he designed the American Coffee Roasting restaurant in King St, Sydney as well as Chris's Restaurant, Killara.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-00
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Encyclopedia of Australian Science.[https://trove.nla.gov.au/people/484705?c=people, 2019]
Kathleen Rennie McArthur was a self taught botanical artist who recorded a full years blooming of wildflowers along the Sunshine Coast. The material was turned into her first book (1959, Jacaranda Press). McArthur exhibited and sold her artwork nationally. A keen conservationist, she co-founded the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland and was involved in many campaigns including pushing for preservation of what is now Cooloola National Park. The James Cook University of Northern Queensland awarded her an Honorary Doctorate for her contributions to botany and the environment.
Career position – publishedCareer position – Exhibited her work in CairnsCareer position – Vice-President of the Wildlife Preservation Society of QueenslandCareer position – Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, Caloundra branch foundedCareer position – Exhibited her work in CanberraCareer position – publishedCareer position – publishedEducation – Doctor of Science (Hon DSc) received from James Cook University of Northern QueenslandView the full record at Encyclopedia of Australian Science
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2019
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 1 January 1915
- Summary
- McArthur taught herself to paint, specialising in wildflowers. Her knowledge of Queensland flora led her into nature preservation and political activism. She was a founding member of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland (WPSQ), She is the author of a number of publications on nature and other topics.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-00
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- commercial and mural artist, textile designer and photographer, was born in Brisbane and educated at Somerville House where she was taught art by Enid Dickson. Her father died when she was 15 and she moved to Melbourne with her mother. Encouraged by her mother (who had attended art classes at the Brisbane Technical College under Godfrey Rivers), Olive Ashworth spent a year studying at Melbourne’s Art Training Institute in 1933. Aged 17, she completed the first year of her course with one gold, two silver and two bronze medals. She then returned to Brisbane to work as a commercial artist, completing her course by correspondence. In Brisbane she ran Burns Philp’s art department until setting up on her own in 1945; 'Olive Ashworth Publicity Services’ lasted for over 20 years.
Ashworth had visited Lindeman Island for a holiday in 1939 but became aware of the Great Barrier Reef’s design potential only in the early 1950s, when she visited Heron Island and was commissioned to design a promotional brochure for the resort. Many of Queensland’s island resorts were being developed at this time and Ashworth was commissioned to design several of their earliest tourist brochures. As McKay points out, in the 1950s the Reef became as familiar to potential visitors through these as through the colour photographs of Frank Hurley or Noel Monkman.
Many of Ashworth’s most striking and original textile designs were based on sketches and photographs of the Reef that she made over the years from underwater observatories. She was a keen photographer, using a Hasselblad camera. Her first success in textile design came in 1951 when one of her Barrier Reef designs was runner-up in the first Grafton Award, offered by a British textile firm. In 1954 she was one of 10 prize-winning finalists in the Leroy-Alcorso prize for textile design, won by Douglas Annand . However, when made up as a dress fabric her design proved by far the more popular with purchasers; the following year the all-male judging panel was enlarged by the addition of two women judges.
Ashworth’s textile designs were included in exhibitions at the Queensland Art Gallery in 1982, at the Queensland Wildlife Artists Society in 1983-88, and in the Centre Gallery’s important bicentennial exhibition, 'Women Artists in Queensland, Past and Present’ (1988). REP: QM
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1915
- Summary
- Commercial artist, textile designer and photographer. Ashworth is best known for her textile designs that were based on sketches and photographs of the Great Barrier Reef she took from underwater observatories.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-46.4118465 Longitude168.3470632 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Invercargill, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1914
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude43 Longitude12 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Italy
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1913
- Summary
- Claudio Alcorso was the founder of Modernage Fabrics, Silk and Textile Printers in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney. Australian and NZ artists and designers produced prints including Douglas Annand, Donald Drysdale, Jean Bellete, Avis Higgs (NZ), Justin O'Brien with 46 designs in total. Phyllis Shilitto, colour and design teacher at the Sydney Technical College also had an affiliation with Silk and Textile Printers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, was born in Sydney on 20 June 1913 and was educated at Bondi Public School. She joined the art classes of the English sculptor Rayner Hoff at East Sydney Technical College in 1928, aged fifteen, and subsequently became a prominent member of a successful and coherent group of college sculptors strongly influenced by Hoff, which dominated sculptural production in Sydney between the wars. She completed her Diploma of Art (Sculpture Honours) in 1933, then worked as a part-time teacher at the College in 1934-5 and assisted Hoff on a number of civic commissions, including the Anzac Memorial, Sydney. She exhibited with the NSW Society of Artists, where her work attracted widespread praise. In 1935 she won the NSW Travelling Scholarship – the first woman artist, and the first sculptor, to receive this award.
Tribe travelled to London and studied at the Royal Academy Schools, the City and Guilds School of Art, the Regent Street Polytechnic and St Martin’s School of Art over the next decade. During World War II she worked in the Ancient Monuments Department of the Ministry of Works recording stately homes and monuments. She also modelled a series of Royal Australian Air Force portrait busts. In about 1945 she and her husband, the architect John Singleman (her superior at the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments), moved to Sheffield, Cornwall, where she set up a studio as well as teaching sculpture part-time at the Penzance School of Arts for 40 years (1948 to July 1988). Her husband (died 1961) studied under the renowned local potter Bernard Leach and set up his own practice.
Tribe exhibited widely in England and Australia and is represented in public and private collections in both countries. She was a member of the British Society of Portrait Sculptors, the Society of Women Artists, London, and a fellow of the Royal Society of British Sculptors. Retrospective exhibitions of her work were mounted in 1979 at the City Museum and Art Gallery, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent (the first public gallery to purchase her work), and in 1981 at the Guilford House Gallery, Guilford. Recent exhibitions in Australia were held in 1986 (von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle) and 1987 (Barry Stern, Sydney).
During her sixty-year career in England, Tribe, an eclectic artist who experimented widely with different media, continued to be preoccupied with the themes of human life-energy, sexuality and growth first seen in her sculpture of the 1930s in Sydney. Apart from a brief interest in abstraction in the 1950s, she also retained her commitment to figurative traditions. Teaching commitments and lack of money prevented a return visit to Australia until 1966, when her sister helped her financially to see Sydney and her family again. Everyone in the art world had forgotten her, and the plaster sculptures she had left in storage at East Sydney Technical College had disappeared (mosly never to reappear despite Tribe spending years searching for them, McDonald states). At about this time she became interested in early Thai sculpture and, through a series of coincidences, visited Thailand regularly betweem 1968 and 1995. She also began to return to Australia regularly, visiting other parts of the world en route to both countries. In 1990 she met the Sydney collector and art patron John Schaeffer who invited her to stay, introduced her to international dealers and acquired work for his home. In 1991 the Mall Galleries, London, showed 80 of her works in the exhibition 'Alice to Penzance’. The Society of Portrait Sculptors awarded her the Jean Masson Davidson medal in 1998 and in 1999 Patricia R. McDonald’s biography of Tribe, underwritten by Schaeffer, was launched at the AGNSW in association with Deborah Edwards’s exhibition This Vital Flesh. The Sculptures of Reyner Hoff and His School .
Barbara Tribe died on 21 October 2000, aged 87. She is buried beside her husband in the village of Paul, Cornwall. In her will she provided for the establishment of a charitable trust to encourage sculptors in Australia, with John Schaeffer as trustee.
Barbara Tribe, Rayner Hoff and other sculptors of the 'Hoff School’ were strongly influenced in the 1930s by vitalist principles concerning the importance of the creative/procreative forces in human existence as revealed primarily in the relationship between male and female. Under this influence, and drawing heavily from classical models and mythology, they created sculptures which were unprecedented in Australia in terms of their portrayal of explicit and active sexuality.
The subject of lovers, which remained a consistent theme, was marked in Tribe’s art by the role of equal activity she attributed to the female. Lovers (1936-37, Art Gallery of New South Wales), for example, is an exceptional image of joyous, equal participation and complementary sexuality, and images of active female eroticism proliferate in her sculpture of the 1930s. Her Bacchanalia (1933) portrays woman as an intensely active participant in the human rituals of sexual abandon. Such images (which may be aligned to contemporary social realities for women) were entirely removed from the work of Australian sculptors such as Eva Benson who dealt with the female nude largely under Edwardian tenets of the erotic.
Despite-in this case-having a model (Iris Platt) in common with Norman Lindsay, Tribe’s sculptures diverged radically from the images of boudoir eroticism which characterise her fellow vitalist-influenced artist at this time. The ambiguity between the sexually adventurous nature of her work and its creation by a twenty-year-old female sculptor in Sydney ultimately led to Tribe being awarded honorary masculinity, her sculpture being constantly assessed by contemporary critics in terms of its 'extraordinary virility’.
The image of woman as an active force in the male-female relationship was extended to Tribe’s sculptures of single females, where she was preoccupied with images involving independence and sexual control. Female sexuality and erotic power in action is conveyed in her Medusa , which emphasises the strength of a cosmic, sexualised impulse through the actions of the female in relation to sexual energy. In many 'Hoff School’ sculptures, including Marjorie Fletcher’s The Fijians and Jean Broome-Norton’s Abundance , this energy in the female becomes the 'procreative drive’. Tribe’s Medusa , however, is the antithesis of Eve, the mother and source of human life; this figure thrusting backwards, her legs spread, body arched and mouth open as the 'phallic force’ of the snake curls around her arms and thigh, represents the equally seductive and powerful (but destructive) forces of death.
Medusa, the youngest, most beautiful and only mortal of the three Gorgon sisters, was punished by Athena for meeting Poseidon in her temple by having her hair turned into snakes and becoming so hideous that men were turned to stone by gazing upon her. This Medusa, however, is no frightful monster but has been represented in her more proactive, pagan manifestation of snake goddess. The snakes that are her hair are arranged into a corona like a tiara, further emphasising the majesty of her destructive, evil beauty. In the light of this and other women’s work, it is not inappropriate to conjecture that the unprecedented emphasis on the active woman in 'Hoff School’ sculpture was due to the influence of Hoff’s female students, perhaps most notably Barbara Tribe.
Writers:
Edwards, Deborah
Note: (Heritage biography plus death details)
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 June 1913
- Summary
- Prominent member of group of college sculptors influenced by Rayner Hoff between the wars, known as the 'Hoff School'. Often revolving around the theme of lovers, her sculptures are noted for the potency of activity and participation by her female figures.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Oct-00
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-34.4468606 Longitude147.5337584 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Temora, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, comic strip artist and ballet costume designer, was born in Temora, NSW. The family moved to Sydney when she was a child. She had a brother, Jim, who survived her. After secondary education at Sydney Girls High School, she studied art at East Sydney Technical College then, aged 20, worked as a commercial artist. She eventually had her own studio and two assistants. In 1937 she married Paul Denny. They had a daughter, Christina, but the marriage broke u
In 1945 Fullarton began a career as an artist and writer of children’s books using Australian animals as her chief subject. Her first book, The Alphabet from A to Z , sold 50,000 copies. Then she did a book of nursery rhymes and A Day in the Bush , both again very successful. She drew Bim Bim in the sixpenny Rupert Rabbit comic book series of at least 11 eleven numbers and a special Christmas issue, published by Allied Authors and Artists from 1946 to 1949. (K. Urquart drew most of the comics in the books, however, including 'Rupert Rabbit’.) Her greatest success was the comic strip Frisky the Rabbit . First drawn for the Sydney Morning Herald in 1948, initially on a three-month trial, it became a lasting strip in the Sunday Herald 's comic strip supplement. She produced it from a studio in the Herald building. Frisky , a book of reprints of the strip, was published by Angus and Robertson in 1956. The NSW Education Department made Frisky into an educational film distributed to schools throughout NSW and other states. During the myxamatosis epidemic Fullerton caused some controversy in making Frisky contract the disease (not fatally), leading to a deluge of letters from young readers. Farmers (and the visiting biologist Dr Julius Huxley) were not amused.
A new weekly strip followed, The World of Animals . It was published in all Australian states and in Europe. Her comic strip Alic apparently also appeared in the Sunday Herald (Sydney) in the late 1940s [acc. Germaine]. She continued to illustrate children’s books: after Frisky came Wimpy, the pygmy possum and adaptations of the The Water Babies , Thumbelina , Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass , the last also being published in the Melbourne Age .
Always fascinated by ballet, Fullarton was inspired by the visits of the de Basil Company before WWII. She left for Europe with her daughter and while Christina danced Nan continued drawing, sending Frisky and The World of Animals back from London, Germany, Holland and France (all places incorporated into the Frisky strips). After retiring from this, she worked behind the scenes in a London ballet company formed by her daughter and her son-in-law, the dancer-choreographer Alexander Roy. She worked on programs and publicitiy and designed and made ballet costumes, including much-admired costumes for a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream .
Fullarton married again in 1970; her husband was an Italian-British restauranteur, Rene Bassett (d.1982). She suffered a stroke in 1998, which left her partly incapacitated, had a further attack early in 2000 and sank into a coma, dying in London soon afterwards {before May}.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1913
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney and London painter, children's book illustrator, comic strip artist and ballet costume designer. Creator of Frisky the Rabbit.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2000
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, jeweller, teacher and arts administrator, was born in Sydney on 6 November 1912 but received her initial art training in New Zealand (1926-28) under Julia Lynch. In the early 1930s she studied sculpture at East Sydney Technical College under Rayner Hoff and Lyndon Dadswell . In 1938 she became a foundation member of the Contemporary Art Society; the following year she was awarded her diploma in sculpture.
From 1939 to 1964 Aarons exhibited widely with many professional art societies in NSW and Victoria. In 1951 she became a foundation member of the Society of Sculptors and Associates, participated in radio programmes for the ABC and completed the playground sculpture for Phillip Park—apparently the first of its kind in Australia. In 1954 she commenced teaching sculpture at East Sydney but moved to Melbourne the following year, where she remained until moving to Canada in 1964.
In Melbourne, Aarons was a member of and adviser to the Education Department. She was instrumental in devising art curricula for Department of Education of Victoria & Tasmania, Head of Sculpture Department at Caulfield Technical College (now part of Monash University) training SAC students in sculpture & design, and instituted 'in-service training’ for teachers at summer school to upgrade art education knowledge. She belonged to the Art Teachers’ Association (vice-president in 1960-64), lectured and wrote on art education and acted as a teacher-demonstrator for the UNESCO conference at Canberra in 1963. That year some of her conceptual jewellery pieces were selected to represent Australia at the 1964 World Crafts Conference in New York, which she attended as an Australian delegate.
After touring Canada, Aarons attended a summer school at Columbia University, New York, as an observer, guest lecturer and artist in the print studio. Later that year she taught sculpture and design at the Central Technical School in Toronto. She has been artist in residence at five other international art schools in Canada and the United States. In 1965-71 she was allied arts editor for Architecture Canada , in which position she established a liaison office for artists and architects and published two catalogues of current information on artists for architects.
In 1966 Aarons completed a major commission for the Beth Emeth Synagogue at Downview, Toronto: a large series of stained-glass windows, two cast bronze Ark lights, the Ark doors and some furniture for the morning Chapel. Her large tapestry mural was added in 1969.
Aarons exhibited jewellery in the Canadian Pavilion at the 1967 Expo in Montreal. In 1969-72 she acted as a special consultant to the Art Gallery of Ontario and curated theme shows for regional galleries. In 1973 she received a senior Canada Council grant to curate the centenary show at the University of Ontario, 'Art for Architecture’ (1974). From 1976 until she resigned in 1984, she was both a founder and director of the Harborfront Art Gallery, Toronto. In 1983, as an Australian, she was awarded the Diplome d’Honneur by the Canadian Conference of the Arts. While living in Toronto, Aarons married fellow artist, Merton Chambers.
Aarons returned to Australia in 1985, to live in Queensland. She became an honorary consultant to Noosa Gallery and an honorary life member of the Gallery Society. In 1994 she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal. She was then writing a book on twentieth-century art in colonial countries from an artist’s perspective and preparing for a retrospective exhibition to be held at Sydney in 1995. Anita Aarons died in Brisbane on 3 January 2000.
Writers:
Veale, Sharon
Date written:
Last updated:
Source of info:
Blin, Rene (29 February 2008) 'Information sourced from'.
- Born
- b. 6 November 1912
- Summary
- Anita Aarons had a diverse career working as a jeweller, sculptor, art administrator, radio commentator, teacher and art editor for an architecture publication, while living in Australia, America and Canada. Her practice ranged from designing play equipment to stained glass windows and tapestry murals.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Jan-00
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude53.55 Longitude10 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamburg, Germany
- Biography
- painter, was born in Hamburg, Germany, on 26 August 1909, second daughter of Australians Edward and Lina Hallenstein then visiting Europe. The family came to Victoria the following year and Lina grew up in Toorak, Melbourne, and in England and France. She worked as a translator and in a bookshop before marrying Baynham Bryans in 1931. They had a son, Edward (b.1932), before separating some years later. Moving to South Yarra in 1936, Lina met William Frater and decided with his help and encouragement to become a painter. Her first works were painted early in 1937 and Basil Burdett selected her Backyards, South Yarra (1937, Joseph Brown Gallery) in 1938 for the Herald Exhibition of Outstanding Pictures of 1937. Her work was included in Burdett’s article in Studio (1938) and in the exhibition, 'Art of Australia 1788-1941’, shown at MOMA (New York) in 1941. What is probably her best-known portrait, The Babe is Wise , was painted in 1940.
Bryans went to live in a converted coach-house at Darebin in the late 1930s, which developed into an informal artists’ colony. Ada May Plante , who had long been living there, continued in residence and Bryans subsequently purchased it. Bryans, Plante, Frater, Ian Fairweather (1945-47) and other artists had studios there over the years and it was a centre for a group of writers associated with the journal Meanjin . In 1948 Bryans had her first solo exhibition. It included Nude (1945, NGV) and Portrait of Nina Christesen (1947, p.c.), both painted at Darebin, which she sold later that year and moved to Harkaway, near Berwick. She took a few lessons from George Bell in 1948 and from Mary Cockburn Mercer in 1951. In 1953 she went to America, then to France where she studied for a few months at L’Ecole Libre in La Grande Chaumière and visited Mercer in the south of France. Back at Melbourne, she once more became prominent in the city’s artistic and cultural milieu.
Landscape painting was always important to Bryans. In 1964 she experimented with abstraction and the following year visited Central Australia and painted extremely colourful modernist paintings of the Australian bush. She was awarded the 1966 Crouch Prize for Embedded Rock (1964, BFAG). The Bush 1 was the only painting sold from her second solo exhibition, held at Georges Gallery in 1966 – purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria, which awarded her a retrospective in 1982. Nevertheless, as Forwood notes (2001), her portraits 'best reveal her contribution to Australian art’. Moreover, 'her seventy-three portraits of friends engaged in the world of art and letters form a pictorial biography of Bryans herself’. Her first portrait was of Australian artist Ambrose Hallen (1937). Among the last were three studies of Adrian Lawlor (1965-66)
Bryans was a member of the Independent Group. In 1991 she rejoined the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, which she had first joined in 1940 and quit in 1966.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 September 1909
- Summary
- A somewhat peripatetic artist whose wanderlust took her to Europe, America and Central Australia, Lina Bryans was noted for her landscapes and her abstract modernism.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 30-Sep-00
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date2000-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, caricaturist and sculptor, was born in London on 13 June 1908 [according to Phillip Jones in Australian obituary [obit.], or on 16 April 1906, Sydney Morning Herald [ SMH ] obit.]. After a boarding school education – which he hated – he began a business career with a City of London firm of traders and bankers, who sent him to Japan when he was 19. There he became fascinated with calligraphy 'and spent more time observing artists at work than he did negotiating contracts and dealing with shipping and letters of credit. It was in Japan, aged 21, when he first published a caricature in a newspaper, Ashisha Shimbun’ (Jones).
He left the firm, went home briefly then came to Sydney in 1927, 'where he was entranced by the beauty of the women’ (Jones). He soon met and married one – Dorothy Mae Horsley – and it became necessary to earn a living. Jones states that 'he sent a sample caricature to The Bulletin’. Elsewhere (including Wallish) the story is more specific, stating that in 1929 when the Depression was enveloping Sydney he spotted a prominent politician laying a wreath at the foot of the Cenotaph in Martin Place, sketched a caricature on the back of an envelope and sent it to the Bulletin . This led to a cheque and a job as a caricaturist and political cartoonist.
At the Bulletin Frith, who had a 'perky pointed nose and a ready laugh like an exploding steam-engine’, was second-in-command on the art staff after Ted Scorfield , according to Douglas Stewart (28), though Ned Wallish’s obituary claims that 'within two years he became the principal caricaturist and co-art editor with Scorfield’. He remained at the Bulletin for 15 years. A Bulletin cartoon dated 1932, The Opening of the Bridge , shows Captain de Groot on his horse (ill. King, 124). Wartime Bulletin cartoons include: You Mustn’t Grumble! (on the Home Front); New Order Birthday Ceremony (with a naked Mussolini suckling a Nazi sausage dog Romulus and Remus style); “Stop muckin’ about an’ get on with the job!” (female tram conductor aloft holding onto a cord); “Whether we like it or not, Captain, we’re known as Shiny – er – Seats!” (two female army officers); “That Mr. Dobell? Are you requiring a model?” (distorted woman in 'Manpower’ office with officer on telephone) published 23 August 1944 (original ink drawing, National Library of Australia [NLA] R9039 reproduced Kerr, 1999).
Other Bulletin cartoons of 1937-38 and 1944 were notable. 148 original drawings and 262 caricatures by Frith done 1930-44 are in the Mitchell Library Bulletin collection, including lots of US film stars, Albert Namatjira (no.5) and D.H. Souter (nos 92-93). Frith noted in retirement that 'there was hardly an individual of any importance in the country or who came to the country that I didn’t meet for the purpose of drawing’ (quoted Jones). In December 1944 [1948 according to Jones – but this is wrong] Frith was appointed the first staff cartoonist on the Sydney Morning Herald . When he was invited to make the move, Norman Lindsay wrote to the Bulletin editor regretting the loss of his great friend and remarking that Frith had inspired many of Lindsay’s cartoons over the years. His letter was included in Frith’s 2001 retrospective (Old Parliament House, Canberra).
From then on cartoons were a regular feature of the SMH leader page, e.g. one featuring Chifley, Dedman, Ward, Calwell and fear of socialism, published 6 June 1945 (ill. Souter, 263). '“Cocky” Calwell (a parrot) appeared in numerous cartoons repeatedly screeching “CURSE THE PRESS”’ (both obits). Frith also did many cartoons of Ben Chifley who, according to Wallish, commented when he lost the battle to nationalise the banks that he could handle Menzies in the House and the huge advertisements of the banks in the press but had no answer to Frith’s cartoons.
'During his Bulletin years he developed the knack of modelling in plastercine portrait-cum-caricature heads of famous people, some of which he then cast in metal’ (Wallish). In 1936 he modelled the head of fellow Bulletin cartoonist G.K. Townshend , an expatriate Kiwi. His large bronze head of Chifley, completed 24 hours after Chifley died in 1951, is in the National Portrait Gallery [NPG]. Mostly he made small plasticine models, primarily to be photographed and published in the Bulletin (as caricatures). Apart from a few favourites he later had cast in bronze they were then destroyed. Surviving examples held in private collections and included in his retrospective included small busts of Doc Evatt and Sir Frank Beaurepaire.
NLA has his original cartoon Passports (R8778) dated 6 March 1949 and published in the Sun-Herald (Melbourne, acc. Telnet NLA Public Access catalog – but surely Sydney?). A Sydney Savage, elected in 1944, he drew a fat man in evening dress mounted on a kangaroo with a semi-naked blonde in blackface in its pouch for the club’s 'Corroboree Lubras Night’ 1946 (# ill. Ashton, 56) and a white pair making themselves up blackface for the 1944 Ladies’ Night Programme (Ashton # ill.124).
At the invitation of Sir Keith Murdoch, Frith left the SMH for the Melbourne Herald and Weekly Times in February {December according to Wallish} 1950. His cartoons then appeared there for 18 years (to 1969). Cartoons dated 1957 and 1958 from the Melbourne Herald – Positively no connection and El Matador – are ill. King, 170. NLA has 7 ink originals, including “I assure you this’ll hurt, Doc…” published 9 August 1957 and “ Back to your classrooms…” published 29 August 1957, plus caricatures of Edouard Borovansky (c.1957?) and H.V. Evatt (1957). 'Asked the secret of being a successful caricaturist and cartoonist, Frith replied: “Politicians. … Given faces like Jack Lang, Billy Hughes, Joe Lyons, Bob Menzies, Ben Chifley, Gorton, McMahon, Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser and Bob Hawk [sic], all one needs is a pencil and paper”’ (Wallish).
In 1972 Frith began modelling Toby Jugs for Bendigo Pottery. Included in his 2001 retrospective were jugs in the form of Ned Kelly (in armour), Kingsford Smith, Albert Namatjira (with boomerang handle), a unique terracotta Norman Lindsay (with a nude woman handle) never cast, PM R.G. Menzies, Don Bradman (terracotta in retrospective and cast version in NPG 2001, on loan from p.c), Henry Lawson, et al.
After Frith retired he did cartoons and picture stories for his grandchildren, featuring koalas, giraffes and other animals. Some were displayed in a special children’s section of his 2001 retrospective, 'From Grandpa’, with a child’s wooden desk he had painted with cartoon animals.
In May 1994 Shirley McKechnie interviewed Frith for the NLA’s Oral History Project (tape TRC 3056). Despite failing eyesight he drew almost until his death. A heavy smoker and 'fond of the occasional drink’, he died in Melbourne aged 94 ( SMH obit 12 October) or 92 (acc. Jones), on 21 September 2000. His wife, Dorothy Mae, predeceased him. He was survived by their children, Jacqueline (Mrs Jackie Milne) and Jeffrey, who sponsored the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts’ retrospective exhibition, a brush with politics: the life and work of John Frith , at Old Parliament House, Canberra in the second half of 2001.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.13 June 1908
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney and Melbourne cartoonist, caricaturist and sculptor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Sep-00
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1962-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Naomi Dixon was a painter and ceramicist. She painted with synthetic polymer on rocks, metal, ceramics and board. Together with her husband Paul Dixon, she worked tirelessly lobbying the Marion City Council to preserve the wetlands opposite the Flinders Medical Centre which became known as Warriparinga (windy place by the river) on which the Living Kaurna Cultural Centre stands.
Dixon showcased her work in the exhibition Kaurna Nepo Porendi held at the City of Marion Council Chambers Gallery in May 1994. This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 August 1962
- Summary
- Painter and ceramicist, Naomi Dixon was also an enviromentalist and lobbyist. Her work is held in the collection of the Flinders University Art Museum.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-May-99
- Age at death
- 37
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1951-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- painter, born Victoria and essentially self-taught. Grandmother was an art teacher. Very art-historical in references, especially Turner, but also Friedrich, Durer, Samuel Palmer, Richard Dadd as well as Martens , Von Guerard and Piguenit . Friendly with Douglas Green, trained at NGV School and with George Bell . Also keen on music and a passionate believer in synaesthesia. Married Larissa Usenko. First solo exhibition in 1989 at Michael Wardell’s 13 Verity Street Gallery, Melbourne. Others in 1993, 1997, 1999.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1951
- Summary
- Painter, born Victoria and essentially self-taught.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1951-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Howard Arkley a painter, photographer and sculptor was born in Melbourne in 1951. A visit to the National Gallery of Victoria’s 1967 'Sidney Nolan Retrospective Exhibition, Paintings from 1937 to 1967’ inspired him to immediately take up painting. Arkley undertook his formal studies at Prahan College of Advanced Education and completed his Diploma of Art and Design in 1975. In this early period he utilised the airbrush as his principal working tool. His first solo exhibition was held at Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne in 1975. This exhibition was titled 'White Paintings’ and it featured Arkley’s abstract and monochrome works.
In 1977, Arkley was the recipient of the Alliance Française Art Fellowship, the Visual Arts Board residency in Paris and the Green Street Studio residency in New York. Whilst abroad, he developed his signature spontaneous and obsessive working style, returning to Australia with a new perspective on Australia’s national context. Arkley began to introduce colour and figuration, focusing on everyday suburban themes and iconography. Beginning with his collection of flyscreens, his work reflected notions of domesticity (feminism), mass production (popular culture), surface (minimalism), pattern, order and reproduction, using and reusing his collected bank of images and iconography. He was heavily involved in the local punk scene and in 1981 admitted its influence in his frenetic work titled Primitive, which, as the artist states, “set off my career” (Arkley in Crawford and Edgar, 2001, p. 48). His work took a new direction. The automatic nature of Primitive reflected his personal life; embedded with his collected and reused iconography it led him toward portraits and his tattooed 'Urban Tribalism’ series.
1983’s Suburban Interior marked Arkley’s entrance to the interior suburban space. The use of wallpaper as a surface for decoration and scenes of 'home life’ reflected his increasing interest in domestic themes and was followed by streetscapes, homes with gardens, high rise apartments and home décor which he saw as popular imagery to address. By 1988, all of Arkley’s work was focused on suburban themes. He made his professional and commercial breakthrough, reconfiguring Australian suburbs as landscapes. He returned to portraits in 1990 with Tolarno Galleries’ 'The Head Show’, which he saw as self portraits “wearing masks and hiding identities” (Trioli, 1990). Arkley also began his collaboration with Juan Davila in Blue Chip Instant Decorator. This successful partnership resulted in the merging of painting, installation and constructed furnishing and further developed Arkley’s style and confidence.
Mix 'n’ Match of 1992 was inspired by home decorating magazines Home Beautiful and Better Homes and Gardens . Arkley reduced his form to stylised images, paying increasing attention to details (pictures on walls, books on shelves). 'The Pointillist Suburb’ series followed in 1994 and he finally felt he had connected with his audience.
Tolarno Galleries’ ’20 Year Review’ (1995) and the 'Fabricated Room’ (1997) series preceded Arkley’s selection as Australia’s representative at the 48th Venice Biennale (1999). 'The Home Show’ had a critical and popular success resulting in offers of exhibitions in Paris and London.
Shortly after his returning to Melbourne from the Biennale Arkley died of a heroin overdose. Since his death Arkley’s work continues to be exhibited and is highly regarded as serious studies of Australian suburban landscape.
Writers:
Craig, Rebecca
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2010
- Born
- b. 1951
- Summary
- Painter, photographer and sculptor who studied in Melbourne. Using the airbrush as his principal tool, Arkley was heavily influenced by punk culture, suburbia and domesticity. He also designed a suite of chairs "Muzak Mural Chair Tableau" in 1980-81. Arkley was the Australian representative at the 1999 Venice Biennale.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude42.0415823 Longitude-87.8873916 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Des Plaines, Illinois, USA
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 2 August 1936
- Summary
- Borkenhagen was an interior designer resident in Australia and active in in the 1960s. Sent to Sydney by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill to consult on the Qantas/Wentworth Hotel, she had established a Sydney practice by 1965. She designed the Summit Restaurant, Australia Square. She returned to California in 1980 opening her own interior design firm and later joined a company called Clement Chen and Associates, San Francisco.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Aug-99
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- With a career spanning three decades, Davis was one of Australia’s pre-eminent artists, a sculptor who regularly exhibited in Australia and overseas, particularly Japan and the United States. Davis represented Australia at the 38th Biennale of Venice and the Indian Triennale in 1978, and the Osaka Triennale in 1992. His ongoing concern for landscape resulted in numerous site-specific installation works in Australia, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Britain, the United States, Japan and New Zealand. Significant commissions include an installation in the Australian Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Davis’s work is represented in all Australian national and state galleries, most regional galleries, and in private and public collections in Australia and abroad. He was the recipient of various grants, overseas residencies and prestigious awards, including the Comalco Award in 1970 and the Blake Prize for Religious Art in 1993.Davis drew inspiration from the Australian bush, particularly the Mallee country, the Hattah Lakes area and the Murray River, the artist often returning to these areas to create ephemeral works in situ. Recurring motifs in his work include rivers and fish, often referred to by the artist as nomads/travellers. Davis deeply respected Aboriginal art and culture, successfully establishing various collaborative projects and exchanges with local aboriginal people. Influenced by the Arte Povera movement and eschewing then fashionable metal sculpture, Davis worked with delicate materials, painstakingly modelling eucalyptus twigs, string, paper, calico and bitumous paint. His work and his many years of lecturing have been highly influential to the current generation of installation artists and sculptors. Also evident in Davis’s work is his ongoing interest in Japanese forms and traditions, his first visit to Japan in the early 1980s resulted in an ongoing dialogue and relationship with that country and many of its significant artists. His contemplative solo practice was situated within the wider parameters of his exchanges and dialogues with cultures and locations, creating work rich in associations and vocabularies.The Estate of John Davis comprises a number of works spanning the career of the artist, as well as an extensive archive of written and visual documentation. The Estate provides comprehensive material for researchers, curators and students interested in the artist and Australian art from the 1970s to the late 1990s.
Writers:
Murray-Cree, Laura
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1936
- Summary
- With a career spanning three decades, Davis was one of Australia's pre-eminent artists, a sculptor who regularly exhibited in Australia and overseas, particularly Japan and the United States.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1922
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude51 Longitude9 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Germany
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1920
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-32.9186415 Longitude151.7487447 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamilton, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1920
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Napanangkajarra, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c. 1919 at Napanangkajarra near Yuendumu, Paddy Nelson’s country ran from Yumurrpa to Watikinpirri area, SW of Yuendumu through New Haven station. A Warlpiri speaker, Paddy was a senior ceremonial and religious leader in the Yuednumu community. He was one of the first Yuendumu men to paint with acrylics, and one of the senior men who painted the doors of the school in 1983. With Paddy SIMS, Larry SPENCER Jungarrayi and JIMIJA Jungarrayi, he worked on the 1985 Star Dreaming painting whose purchase by the Australian National Gallery from the Yuendumu artists’ first show in the eastern states, helped to launch the new painting enterprise in the local art world. His main site was Ngama, a Snake Dreaming place. He painted Yarla (Big Yam) and Ngarlajiyi (Small Yam), Warna (Snake), Ngapa (Water), Karrku (Mt Stanley ochre mines), Janganpa (Possum), Mukaki (Bush Plum), Karnta (Women’s) and Watijarra (Two Men) Dreamings. A prolific painter, distinctive for his fluid impulsive brushwork and subtly different renderings of his classic iconography, his work was shown in almost every exhibition of Warlukurlangu Artists from the mid ’80s onwards and in major touring exhibitions of Aboriginal art including Art and Aboriginality (Portsmouth Festival 1987, Sydney Opera House 1988 – Paddy Nelson’s painting appears on the cover of the catalogue) and Dreamings: The Art of Aboriginal Australia (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles etc. 1989-90). In 1988, Paddy Nelson was one of five Warlpiri men from Yuendumu selected by the Power Gallery, Sydney University, to travel to Paris to create a ground painting installation at the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in May 1989. Several of Paddy’s relatives, including his wife Daisy NELSON and her sons Michael Jagamara NELSON and Bronson Jakamarra NELSON, are also artists of reknown.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1919
- Summary
- A senior ceremonial and religious leader in the Yuendumu community, Paddy Nelson had been at the forefront of the Warlukurlangu art movement since its inception and with other senior men painted the famous Yuendumu Doors of the school (now in the South Australian Museum) in 1983.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1919
- Summary
- Valerie MacSween was a northern Tasmanian maker of traditional shell necklaces.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1999
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Melbourne, daughter of the poet and playwright Rupert Atkinson and niece of the artist Helen Atkinson . She studied at George Bell 's Bourke Street School from 1934 until it closed in 1939:
I was only sixteen or seventeen and dreadfully self-conscious. My drawing, I rapidly realised, was appalling so I slogged away for about a year before touching painting.
... I missed an awful lot that went on, mainly because I found it impossible to work at the studio year in and year out. So I used to take two or three months each year off to re-charge as it were, mostly in Literature at a bookshop and library in Collins Street.
The great majority of Bell’s students were women (Yvonne was 'great chums’ with Frances Burke until Burke left to take up fabric design): but, Atkinson noted, 'never forget it was the boys in the back room who rated. And rightly.’ Yet although Bell was prejudiced in favour of the men, Atkinson was a favourite pupil. Exceptionally talented, she was also a striking woman with 'green eyes, red hair, creamy complexion, [and] a lovely personality’, recollected Joan Yonge, a fellow student, adding: 'She came in very elegantly – and always late. Bell would say indulgently, “You wait until the world’s warmed up before you step out don’t you?”’
Atkinson’s paintings of the late 1930s were mainly nudes ( Distorted Nude 1936-39), portraits ( To the Pure, All Things Are Pure n.d., Virgin and Cat 1938) and paintings of contemporary life ( The Tram Stop 1937), including a rather unflattering self portrait. Many have a similar subversive wit to The Life Class . However, when she left to be married in September 1939, Bell wiped his hands of her. After her marriage to Tony Daniell, she moved to Townsville (Qld) but later returned to Victoria, residing in Castlemaine. Many later works are of Australian bushranging or primitive rural life subjects. Later in her life she also held a number of solo exhibitions at the Avant Galleries, Melbourne. She also exhibited with the Victorian Arts Society and at the Art Gallery of WA. Paintings of 1974-76 are signed her 'Yvonne Daniell’. Her witty, all women, charcoal drawing The Cocktail Party n.d. was offered by Deutscher Menzies November 1998, lot.38 (ill.).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1918
- Summary
- Painter and student of George Bell's. Melbourne-born Atkinson painted painted nudes, portraits and contemporary life scenes throughout the 1930s. Many later works are of Australian bushranging or primitive rural life subjects.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and draughtsman, was born in Adelaide on 25 May 1918 (acc. McCulloch; 21 May 1917 according to military records). He studied at the School of Fine Arts in North Adelaide under Millward Grey (1933-39) and was involved in the school’s journal, The Paint Pot . He also exhibited at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts while still a student, e.g. The Fisherman c.1937 (lithograph, private collection) was exhibited at the RSASA in July 1937 (ill. Carroll). In his first solo exhibition at the John Preece Gallery in 1938, Wigley showed drawings and lithographs, presumably of hunger-marchers and demonstrations – the subjects of his first drawings, according to Merewether (p.113).
Wigley moved to Melbourne soon after war was declared. There he exhibited with the Contemporary Art Society, met other artists and became close friends with Josl Bergner . Called up in 1941, he made models and maps with the Army Survey Corps for the next three years. He also continued to paint, exhibiting at the Kadimah Cultural Centre along with Bergner, O’Connor , Buzacott and Counihan and associating with the 'social realist’ group. He contributed three paintings to the Anti-Fascist Exhibition in 1942. Other works include The Unemployed and the Workers c.1940s, pencil, University of Melbourne (ill. Hanson, cat.268, and included by Rodney James in Global Arts Link’s Bluey and Curley exhibition in 2000 – as art – along with his oil painting Waiting 1946, p.c.).
Discharged in 1944, Wigley went to the Northern Territory with an old school friend, Ronald Berndt. [McCulloch states: Appointed official artist to the Elkin (sic) anthropological expedition into Central Australia after discharge from the army.] He returned with a case full of drawings, especially of Aboriginal people. Then he attended the National Gallery of Victoria School (1945-47) under the Army Rehabilitation Scheme (CRAST). In 1946 he had a show at Tye’s Gallery. He left for Paris with Bergner at the beginning of 1948, where they stayed with Bergner’s sister Ruth. He studied at the Académie Julian (1948-50) and under F. Léger. After the two had a show at Galerie Gentil Hommiere (Merewether), Wigley went to London and Bergner went to Israel (1951).
Wigley returned to Australia in 1954 [McCulloch says 1952; Concise says 1955] and again exhibited at Tye’s, this time with O’Connor and Counihan. He taught at South Melbourne Technical School. He went north again in 1956 (McCulloch says 1957), to Port Hedland, where he stayed in an Aboriginal Co-op formed by D.W. McLeod in which the inhabitants lived independently by mining and pearl-shell gathering. Again he produced a large body of sketches and watercolours, resulting in a sell-out exhibition at Melbourne’s Australian Galleries in 1959. Alan Boxer acquired Three [Aboriginal] men at night c.1958, tempera on board, in 1961, evidently from the Australian Galleries (Purves), Wigley’s usual dealers. He had paintings and drawings in an exhibition that went to Moscow in 1960.
Henceforth Wigley travelled between Port Hedland and Pilbara and Melbourne and Adelaide, working with Aborigines to set up printing facilities and design and illustrate school texts. A large retrospective was held at Melbourne’s Acland Street Galleries in 1981, including 'Aboriginal Study, Port Headland’, Overland 85 (October 1981), cover. For other exhibitions and commissions see McCulloch.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Olivia Bolton
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. c.21 May 1917
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Adelaide, Melbourne and regional Northern Territory and Western Australian based painter, political printmaker and draughtsman.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-36.840556 Longitude174.74 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Biography
- Rosalie Gascoigne was an Australian Sculptor. She was born at Auckland, New Zealand, on 25 January 1917 in Auckland and died at Canberra, Australia, on 23 October 1999. Gascoigne grew up in New Zealand, however, in 1943 she moved to Stromlo in Canberra, Australia following her marriage to astronomer Ben Gascoigne.
Gascoigne’s father, Stanley King Walker, was an engineer and her mother, Marion Hamilton Metcalfe, was a secondary school teacher. Gascoigne was the middle child in her family and had an older sister, Daintry, and a younger brother, Douglas. Being a scholastic person was valued in the household and art was frowned upon. Gascoigne went to Auckland University and studied English, French, Latin, Greek and Mathematics from 1935-38, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts. In 1940 she completed a one-year course at Auckland Teacher Training College to become a secondary school teacher. Gascoigne had no formal artistic training, and it was only later in life she discovered her abilities. She experimented with the art of flower arranging in the late 1950s and developed a passion for gardening. Gascoigne then took classes at the Sogetsu School of Ikebana.
Gascoigne had three children named Martin, Thomas and Hester. Her eldest son, Martin, became involved in the art world, befriending curator James Mollison and later marrying writer and curator Mary Eagle. He thus played an important role in Gascoigne’s artistic career. In 1963 Gascoigne made a trip to Europe and in 1980 she made an art pilgrimage to New York. In 1982 she travelled to Italy for the Venice Biennale. Important contacts that influenced Gascoigne’s artistic development included Carl Plate, Norman Sparnon, James Mollison and Michael Taylor.
A work that highlights Gascoigne’s artmaking practice and the main themes she explored is Great Blond Paddocks. The work was acquired by the Art Gallery of New South Wales with funds from the Art Gallery of NSW society. Great Blond Paddocks consists of long, narrow, rectangular pieces of sawn wooden soft drink crates arranged on wood. The work captures the undulating, grassy plains and wheat fields of Canberra and its surrounding regions. In addition it shows the minimalist and abstract qualities of Gascoigne’s art.
Another work of Gascoigne’s is Crop 1 which was initially shown in an exhibition entitled ‘Rosalie Gascoigne: Material as Landscape.’ The show was first at the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney in 1997 and was taken to the National Gallery, Canberra in 1998. Crop 1 consists of hundreds of dried salsify heads poking through a plane of galvanised chicken wire. They have been compressed, bound and arranged on a silver-grey sheet of galvanised iron. The work symbolises Australian agriculture as it highlights the separation and cultivation of the land. Texture is important in the work, as with Great Blond Paddocks it is evident that the materials have been shaped by their time in the natural environment.
A key exhibition was Gascoigne’s first solo exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries, Canberra as it was her first recognition by the art establishment. Gascoigne’s second solo exhibition in 1976 was important as at the age of 59 she was hailed by the critics as an exciting and new original artist. In 1982 she Gascoigne selected for the 40th Venice Biennale, becoming the first woman to represent Australia. In 1988 Gascoigne participated in the Australian Biennale where her work gained international recognition. Some of Gascoigne’s prizes include the John McCaughey Prize, the Order of Australia and the Grand Prize at the Cheju Pre-Biennale in Korea.
Gascoigne’s work is represented in public collections across Australia. Her work is also represented in public collections in New Zealand and the United States of America. Many of her pieces belong to private collections.
Writers:
emily_edgar
Date written:
2016
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1917
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-37.87731945 Longitude145.042234 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Caulfield, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, cartoonist, printmaker and teacher, was born in Caulfield, Victoria. He studied at Melbourne Technical College (RMIT) in 1929-35. From 1936 he worked as a freelance illustrator and cartoonist for Melbourne weeklies; His ink cartoon Calvalcade of Billy 1940, is in La Trobe, State Library of Victoria, donated by the artist -with other works in 1988. He was an official war artist in the Royal Australian Air Force in 1944-45. As a teacher at RMIT after the war, he initiated the Melbourne Print Group in November 1951; it included Geoffrey Bardwell, assistant lecturer, and associates Christine Aldor, Fred Williams , etc. (see 'Melbourne Prints’ in McCulloch).
He designed Victoria’s Spa Health Resorts: Daylesford, Hepburn Springs c.1952 (National Gallery of Australia) for the Victoria Railways, Australia (NGA poster no. 273)
Freedman did a series of topographical 'Views of Melbourne’ for a book published in 1963. He was commissioned to paint a large mural of the history of aviation for the Australian War Memorial (1967-72), then was appointed state artist for Victoria in 1973, a position he apparently retained until his death in 1999. His first commission, a mural on the theme of transport for Spencer Street Station (removed for reconstruction of Southern Cross Station, 2004), was followed by a number of murals, including one on the theme of regional history for the new state offices at Geelong.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1915
- Summary
- Popular mid 20th century Melbourne painter, illustrator, cartoonist, printmaker and teacher. Freedman was commissioned to paint a large mural of the history of aviation for the Australian War Memorial (1967-72).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- He was born in Melbourne, on 29 December 1914. His grandfather and namesake Albert Lee Tucker, MLA, was mayor of Fitzroy. By the time Albert was born his father, John Tucker, was working on railway maintenance. His mother Clara (née Davis) was aspirational, but with insufficient income the family found life difficult. Albert left school young and worked at subsistence jobs. By 1934 he was working at John Vickery’s commercial art studio in Collins Street and drawing freelance for women’s magazines. This brought him into contact with Melbourne’s creative artistic community, including the young modernist Sam Atyeo, and the conservative Sir John Longstaff. In 1933 he began attending evening classes at the Victorian Artists Society (VAS). Other evenings were spent at the old reading room of the State Library. He also haunted Gino Nibbi’s Leonardo Bookshop, and befriended the proprietor. Tucker exhibited for the first time at the VAS in 1933. A self portrait of 1937 attracted the attention of the Herald's art critic, Basil Burdett, and he left his full-time job. The same year he took some classes at the George Bell school but soon left,preferring to direct his own learning. Along with Bell and other discontented artists Tucker became a founding member of the Contemporary Art Society in 1938. In 1939 he bought a second hand camera, and it his photographs that so memorably records the life of the Angry Penguins circle in the 1940s.Through his friendship with Harry de Hartog and others he became involved in the Artists’ Branch of the Communist Party. From the late 1930s, Tucker’s art was increasingly influenced by Surrealism. His interest was endorsed by the art he saw in the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art, which featured works by Dali, Ernst, de Chirico and Picasso.In 1938 he became romantically involved with Joy Hester, an art student from the National Gallery School who began attending Victorian Artists Society life drawing classes, and in 1939 they moved in together. Tucker and Hester married on 1 January 1941. By this time John and Sunday Reed were financially supporting Tucker’s career as well as befriending Hester and encouraging her art. At Heide they were joined by Sidney Nolan, whose ménage à trois with the Reeds was public knowledge.In 1942, after Japan entered the war Tucker enlisted in the medical corps. His status as an artist led to him making illustrations for the officers at the Wangaratta base and after a bout of pneumonia was medically discharged in October 1943. The sight of shell-shocked and profoundly injured soldiers newly returned from the front continued to haunt him for the rest of his life, and coloured the direction of his art.Tucker began to paint works based on his disgust at the sexual promiscuity of young girls in times of war, a concern that evolved into a savage critique of strong female sexuality.
Many of his paintings are dominated by a shape based on a full-lipped woman’s mouth, evolving into an agressive lipstick pink crescent, and this shape recurred for the rest of his painting life. After leaving the Army, Tucker worked for a while with Arthur Boyd at his pottery at Murrumbeena, but then resumed work on bq). Images of Modern Evilbq). , an emotionally searing response to young girls, American soldiers and the War. On 4 February 1945 Joy gave birth to their son Sweeney (although Sunday later claimed that Tucker may not have been the father).In early 1947 Tucker visited Japan, and saw the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, images that would always stay with him. He met with Japanese artists and painted portraits of American officers to raise money to buy cultured pearls for resale in Australia. On his return from Japan he was told that Joy had been diagnosed with Hodgkins Disease, and had two years to live. In his absence Joy had met the artist Gray Smith, and when she was told of her illness the marriage was over. Hester left Sweeney with Tucker who left the baby with the Reeds while he considered his future. He was eventually persuaded to allow them to adopt his son. It was a decision Tucker regretted for the rest of his life. He left Australia for England on 9 September 1947. Post-war London was uninspiring, but in Paris he was inspired by the work of Jean Dubuffet. In Paris he was also helped by Peter Bellew who was now working for UNESCO. Tucker visited other European cities, seeing as much art as he could. He was especially impressed with German Expressionism and in 1951 he travelled to Frankfurt-am-Main to join his new companion, Mary Dixon, an American he had met in Paris. The faction fights of the Communist Party in the 1940s and the activities of the Soviet Union had turned Tucker’s political perspective into one of anti-Communism. The landscape that now coloured his perceptions was that of bomb-blasted Germany. The next year they returned to Paris where they lived in a caravan Tucker had built, and later travelled to the south of France and Rome. In November 1953 John Reed withdrew the small stipend he had paid Tucker, causing him considerable financial difficulty. The news coincided with a visit from Sidney and Cynthia Nolan, who advised him of possibilities of the Venice Biennale, where Tucker exhibited in 1956. Nolan also showed Tucker his photographs of animals killed in the Australian drought, imagery that was to provide Tucker with new subject matter.In Rome he befriended the Italian artist Alberto Burri who introduced him to a new adhesive into which he could mix sand and dirt for his Nolan inspired work, completed in London. In 1958 Dixon visited California to see her mother, and took some of Tuckers’ work with her. The Museum of Modern Art in New York bought Lunar Landscape – the first purchase by a public collection. His next series, exhibited successfully in London, Explorers, made craggy despairing images of those explorers who died in the bush.In early 1960 he visited New York where he had successful exhibitions, was given the free use of a furnished apartment, and work was purchased by the Guggenheim. After a further successful London exhibition, he returned home to Australia and held a successful national touring exhibition. His first Melbourne studio was at 9 Collins Street, the same building as Tom Roberts. In 1961 he met Barbara Bilcock, who he married in 1964. They bought land at Hurstbridge and built a house and studio. He became a passionate conservationist, but fell out with his old friends by supporting the Americans and the Australian governments in their stance on the Vietnam War.In Melbourne he renewed contact with Sweeney, a brilliant but troubled young man who made art as well as running commercial art galleries, subsidised by his adoptive parents. In 1972 Sweeney Reed Gallery showed the entire series of Images of Modern Evil for the first time. It was a major critical success. Sweeney however could not reconcile the contradictions of his life and on 29 March 1979, in the middle of negotiations to sell Tucker’s early paintings to the National Gallery of Australia he committed suicide.Albert Tucker’s last series of paintings, Faces I have met, was a series of recollected portraits of friends and enemies. It was prompted in part by the revival of interest in his earlier work brought about by James Mollison’s advocacy of it, and academic researchers including Richard Haese and Janine Burke. He died of a heart attack at a private hospital where Barbara had taken him for tests.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 29 December 1914
- Summary
- Albert Tucker was one of the Angry Penguins group of artists who were at Heide in the 1940s. His art was shaped in part by the poverty he experienced and saw during the Great Depression and his experiences in the Army and Melbourne in World War II. He also worked to ensure the posthumous reputation of his first wife, Joy Hester.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Oct-99
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-37.78744285 Longitude144.9290013 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newmarket, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, designer and commercial artist, was born in Newmarket, Melbourne, on 26 September 1909, youngest of the three children of David Haxton, a stationery salesman and a talented amateur painter of Scottish descent, and Isobel, née Durham. She came to Sydney with her family as an infant. After leaving school at fourteen, she spent a year studying drawing and sculpture full-time with Rayner Hoff. In 1924-28 she studied at East Sydney Technical College and from 1925 also worked commercially, first in a city factory decorating pokerwork vases and breadboards with kookaburras and waratahs, then as a 'fashion artist’ at David Jones’s department store illustrating advertisements {acc.Thomas}.
In 1929 she set up as a freelance designer and illustrator with four other advertising illustrators in a Bridge Street studio, continuing until 1931. She was also invited to join a sketch club run by Alison Rehfisch and George Duncan .
She went to London in 1932, as soon as she’d saved her fare, and worked full-time with J.Walter Thompson for three years. Then she remained on a retainer while also working for Harper’s Bazaar , Vogue and Strand Magazine . In the evenings she studied at the Grosvenor School under Iain McNab. She designed playing cards for the P&O Line amid other freelance commercial art commissions, and she also exhibited oil paintings in London (ROI 1937).
With the impending outbreak of World War II Haxton returned to Australia via the US and Mexico in 1939. In Mexico she became interested in architectural decoration.
After her return she became especially friendly with Tas (Russell) and Bonnie Drysdale . When the Drysdales moved to Albury in 1941, Haxton often worked in a nearby studio-barn with Tas and with Donald Friend who was stationed with the army at nearby Pukapunyal.
Back at Sydney she exhibited paintings {mainly at the Macquarie Galleries}. She began painting murals in restaurants and for the large stateroom of a visiting British aircraft carrier. She worked with Alistair Morrison on a vast mural for the entrance of the Great Hall at the Royal Easter Show c.1942. Her mural for Le Coq d’Or restaurant won the Sulman Prize in 1943. In 1944-45 she was director, stage manager and scene painter for a small company entertaining the troops in New Guinea.
During the war she also illustrated stories in Australia: National Journal and Australia Week-end Book . Vol. 1 (1942) of the latter contains her 'Mrs Tabbie’s Teaparty’ (a drawing quite unrelated to the accompanying poem, 'The Cat’); a fat lady eating eclairs in restaurant for 'Eclair’ by Jean Stanger; 'Georgie sat in the sun, shelling peas for lunch’ for 'Mail Day’ by Alison McDougall (p.102), and circus man yelling 'Ark’ beside lizards for Roger Welch’s 'Lizards Aloft’ (p.193) – the best of them. Most are signed 'Elaine’. She is also represented in vol.2 (1943), p.56; vol.3 (1944) has a small illustration; vol.4 (1945) decorations.
At the end of 1945 she went to New York where she later studied stage design at the summer school of the NY Theatre. She spent 8 months in London and several months touring Europe before returning to Australia in 1949. She spent the next 12 years in Australia mainly occupied with stage design but also involved in advertising, book illustration, painting, print-making and set and costume design for ballet and opera. (She also designed furnishing textiles for Marion Hall Best and Claudio Alcorso.) She travelled widely, notably as one of the members of the Australian Cultural Delegation visiting China in 1956.
In her later years she devoted most of her time to painting and printmaking. She studied the latter at Joyce Ewart 's Willoughby Art Centre in Sydneyin 1965, where she was taught various techniques by Elizabeth Rooney and became especially interested in etching. Her long-time interest in Japanese culture took her to Japan in 1961. In 1969 she spent three months at Hayter’s Atelier 17 in Paris, then revisited Japan later that year to study woodcut printing techniques in Kyoto. Her prints include Ju-Jitsu 1981 (2 figures in b/w, quite lively), TMAG edn 6/20 (#3532).
In 1986 she was awarded the AM 'particularly for printmaking’. After a long illness {dementia} – she was cared for by her niece and husband in Adelaide from 1989 – Haxton died in Adelaide on 6 July 1999, aged 89. She was predeceased by her husband, Brigadier Richard Foot, whose third wife she had become in 1954.
She is well represented in state and regional public collections throughout Australia. Didn’t approve of women’s art exhibitions; 'In 1982 she told Barbara Chapman, “I want to be judged by all my peers, not half of them”.
Writers:
Sayers, AndrewNote: Primary.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 26 September 1909
- Summary
- Painter, printmaker and designer, Haxton worked through the 1930s as a commercial artist in both Sydney and London. In 1943 she won the Sulman Prize and in 1986 was awarded an AM for printmaking.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Jul-99
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Designer, architectural renderings, architect, landscape architect John Oldham , son of Charles Lancelot Oldham , son of James Oldham , and Susan Hoyle 'Dolly’ Russell , daughter of the Fremantle harbour master Commodore Charles Robert Tylden Russell , was born in Perth in 1907. His father was a noted architect and designer of the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle, Fremantle Markets and many other buildings. His mother was an accomplished artist educated in England, France and Germany. The boy was encouraged to draw and paint from an early age. His father died when John was eleven years old and a boarder at Guildford Grammar School. In 1924 he was apprenticed to the practice his father had owned – by then Oldham Boas. Here he learnt perspective and became very good at rendering. In 1927 he exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts. His exhibits were “Three Imaginative Designs”. They were not for sale. In 1928 he moved to work for Rodney Alsop who had won the competition to design the University of Western Australia. When the university was completed Oldham went to Melbourne under Alsop’s patronage to do a year of architecture at his atelier. Alsop encouraged his staff to be creative. When Olham returned from Melbourne at the end of the Great Depression of 1929-35 he turned his hand to poster design and with Harold Krantz opened 'Poster Studios’. He discovered he had a facility in this regard. His West Australian first posters were “displayed everywhere”. He and Harold embraced contemporary architecture and formed a partnership. In 1933 he exhibited watercolours Wheat Ships and After the Rain with the West Australian Society of Arts and Coal Hulks with the Perth Society of Artists.
In 1937 John married Ruby Gertrude (Ray) McClintock a radical thinker and journalist who was instrumental in him joining the Communist Party. He inherited some money and they moved to Sydney where he worked for the Communist Party and the architectural firm Stephenson and Turner and then the Commonwealth Department of the Interior. In Sydney in 1938 he was associate editor of the Communist Review.
John Oldham was part of a team for the Australian exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. He was the designer of the exhibit whilst Douglas Annand designed the brochure. This prefabricated display was set up in the Commonwealth of Nations Building and was highly commended by the judges. Oldham and his wife undertook a study tour to Canada and USA to attend the opening and had the opportunity to see works by, and meet many of the influential figures in the Modern Art movement as well as studying exhibition-display methods and modern architecture. They were very impressed with the social quality of Roosevelt’s 'New Deal’, which they saw in operation. Whilst they were on their way back to Australia war was declared and the Communist Party was made illegal. They threw all their literature and John’s work notes over the side of the ship to avoid future problems.
Ray became pregnant and the pair decided to return to Western Australia arriving in May 1940. John joined Harold Krantz Architects as a partner. The firm designed large blocks of modern flats and Oldham also did watercolour renditions for Oldham Boas and other architects.
Life was a little difficult. John was neglecting his architectural practice for work for the communist party making the partnership untenable and because of his left views former friends often snubbed him. The family were also under observation by a Special Bureau of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, which was monitoring Communist sympathisers. John Oldham was considered a leading communist in Western Australia, as he was the Chairman of the Budget Protest Committee, an organisation that was a front for the party at the time of its illegality. They also joined the Workers’ Art Guild, which was involved in theatre, and art education for working-class people. John became a committee member. The family moved to Sydney in 1941 just before restriction orders on them were to be implemented and where they worked actively for the Communist Party. In 1946 John also became President of the Studio of Realist Art founded by Roy Delgarno. Significantly they became enthusiastic gardeners at this time. During WWII Oldham worked for the Department of the Interior and became friendly with 'Nugget’ Coombs going on to work for his Department of Post-War Reconstruction. Oldham was Chairman of the Inter-Departmental Exhibitions Committee organising a number of displays. He was the Designer/Exhibition Director of the Australian display at the 1947 British Empire Exhibition held in Sydney.
By 1950 he worked for Van Dyke, builders of pre-fabricated houses, and later headed the architectural and town planning drawing office of the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Authority; designing construction towns, power stations and mobile housing. Ray had been researching English and American garden design and John became particularly interested in the work of F. L. Omstead, the designer of New York’s Central Park. Both, although committed to socialist ideology, became less interested in 'the party’ machine and channelled their energy into developing a new design discipline in Australia – called landscape architecture. John designed his first garden for their home at Baulkham Hills and discovered colonial gardens of the English School. In 1953 John finally had time to qualify as an architect in New South Wales. They returned to Western Australia in 1954 where John had been offered work by the architectural firm Oldham Boas and then had a nervous breakdown. He decided to specialize in landscape architecture and became a full-time landscape architect. In 1956 he worked for the Government Housing Commission designing the gardens for the Wandana Flats and undertook private commissions. In 1959 Oldham joined the Public Works Department with the proviso that he was allowed to undertake some private work. Most of his early work for the Public Works Department was on schools and hospitals. Projects included; the landscaping of nine major dams including Serpentine and Wellington Dams, the Regional Environment Plan for the Ord River Scheme, the Peel-Harvey Inlet Study and the landscaping of the new freeway system and Narrows Interchange – part of which was called Oldham Park after his death. Master planning for two national parks and the landscaping around the Parliament House precinct were also designed by him. He was the first Government landscape architect for Western Australia and the first appointed to a Government Department in Australia. Although his title at first was 'Garden Designer’ as landscape architecture was not a qualification available in Australia at this time. He received his first landscape architecture qualifications from England becoming a licentiate of the British Institute of Landscape Architects by 1959 and later became a fellow. He held a position with the Public Works Department throughout the iron ore and nickel booms until 1972 when he retired following a heart attack.
Oldham spent a lot of time studying and promoting the discipline of landscape architecture. He developed many international contacts and travelled widely attending conferences and giving lectures particularly after 1964 when he became a representative for Australia on the Grand Council of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA). Oldham and his wife were very active in conservation matters. One of his favourite quotes was “A city without its old buildings is like a man without a memory.” John and his wife were a team in everything they did and jointly wrote three books, Gardens in Time, Western Heritage and George Temple-Poole: Architect of the Golden Years. They had two children Patricia Susannah 'Tish’ and Jan Russell. Tish, who travelled to landscape design conferences with her father, also worked with him on project designs such as the Perth Foreshores competition in the 1990s and on two gardens he designed for her at Park Lane, Claremont and Rule Street, North Fremantle. Tish was a fashion designer, textile artist and public art practitioner. Jan was a cookery writer, demonstrator and illustrator with a regular column in the Sunday Times. John Oldham died in Perth in 1999 of a stroke. Oldham Park at the Narrows interchange was named in his honour in a ceremony in 2000.
Writers:
Erickson, Dorothy (Dr)
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1907
- Summary
- Oldham worked as an architect, artist, interior designer and landscape architect. Working for Stephenson & Turner in NSW, he later focussed on landscape architecture, developing a substantial reputation. Oldham was the first Government landscape architect for WA. Oldham and his journalist spouse Ray McClintock wrote three books on architecture and landscape.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia
- Biography
- Embroiderer and weaver Norma Rolland was born in Western Australia the daughter of Robert Anthony Rolland, civil engineer and surveyor, and Norma Gertrude n_e Pearce. They lived on the corner of Ord and Walker Street in West Perth. Rolland was educated at Miss Dalziell’s Girls Grammar and Presbyterian Ladies’ College from 1912-23. In her circle ladies did not work so after school she joined the social roufnd of tennis parties, reading, and so on, helping run the large property. Rolland studied art with Bea Darbyshire at Henri Van Raalte’s school in Ventnor Avenue and used to help Bea with her prints, which she printed in the laundry. In 1925 Rolland enrolled in Needlework at Perth Technical School under Loui Benham where she obtained a credit pass. In 1926 her father became very ill and needed caring for even though they had a servant so she studied privately with Benham who lived nearby. In 1931, when her father died, Rolland went east for ten months to stay with relatives in Geelong and Sydney. She travelled with her mother in Europe in 1935-36 and studied at the Royal College of Needlework in London. When war broke out she joined the VAD. Rolland tried to enlist in the navy but instead was eventually selected for cypher work and worked in Fremantle for eighteen months until just before Singapore fell, after which Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service arrived from the east to take over. In 1945 when the end of war was in sight she went to Sydney and continued working in cypher until 1946. Visiting her friend Margaret Richmond, who was teaching weaving at Frensham school in Mittagong, she became interested and studied, dyeing, weaving and materials-preparation in Sydney for a few months. In 1946 Rolland was discharged from the civil service when the cypher work was over. She returned to Western Australia via Melbourne where she had further instruction in weaving. Rolland brought a thirty-six inch loom with her and woollen yarns and set up a studio where she wove tweeds, lampshades, bright-coloured woollen knee-rugs, vividly coloured linen tablemats, guest towels at various fabric lengths. She spun as well. Weaving was a fashionable studio practice for women, particularly during the forties, fifties and sixties. Cotton and linen were available in Western Australia. Between 1947 and 1953 Rolland exhibited in the King Edward Hotel with a number of weavers who worked in the ambit of interior designer, Maria Dent. Others included Astrid Colebatch, who had learnt in Sweden on a visit home to her family, Mrs Robinson who lived in Austen Street, Subiaco, Western Australia and wove rag rugs during the war and sold through a craft shop in London Court, Miss Blythe, and Dulcie Lamb. Rolland usually made for a year and then sold it at the exhibition. There were occasional orders. Her output included bright coloured wool knee-rugs (red and purple), linen tablemats in bright colours – particularly yellow, guest towels and lengths of tweed. These annual exhibitions provided enough work from commissions for year-round employment. However with an ill mother there was not the time to make the enterprise support her financially and so in 1954 Rolland joined the Red Cross where she taught weaving until 1966.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- Embroiderer and weaver, Rolland set up a studio in Western Australian where she wove tweeds, lampshades, bright-coloured woollen knee-rugs, vividly coloured linen tablemats, guest towels and various fabric lengths.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-33.8471255 Longitude151.2115234 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Milsons Point, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, comic strip and commercial artist, was born at Milson’s Point, Sydney (Miller’s Point, acc. Shiell ed.), son of a plumber who was killed in an accident in 1915; his younger brother Jim Russell was also a cartoonist. Their mother, Catherine Green, was a member of the NSW Legislative Council in 1931-32. Dan studied art with Julian Ashton and J.S. ('Wattie’) Watkins at night while working as a clerk. He was secretary of the Black and White Artists Guild 1928-29 and secretary of the re-formed Black and White Artists’ Club in 1937, while working as an advertising and commercial artist. He worked for Frank Johnson Publications during WWII and was a commercial artist in Sydney 1944-45, then went overseas in 1946 and studied cartoon techniques in the USA, Mexico and Canada. He produced adventure strips for Johnson for which he was paid 30/- a page. He usually managed 4-6 pages a week. They included Terry Lawson (rover scout), Val Blake – Ventriloquist (and detective), Wanda Dare (reporter) and Jimmy Dale (boxing champ). In 1952 he became a staff artist on Truth and the Daily Mirror and was involved in A.M. magazine. He was political cartoonist for the Adelaide Advertiser in 1953-55. From 1955 to 1964 he was general cartoonist for the Adelaide News and Sunday News .
A lifelong member of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club, Dan Russell was president in 1977. He won a Silver Stanley for his contribution to black and white art in 1991 and was made a life member of the ABWAC the same year.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- Prolific newspaper and comic strip artist. A lifelong member of the Australian Black and White Artists' Club, Dan Russell was president in 1977.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-30.748889 Longitude121.465833 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kalgoorlie, WA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and author, was born on 20 August 1905 on the goldfields at Kalgoorlie WA, her father, an architect and surveyor, and his newly-married wife being among the earliest pioneers in the town. They settled there from Adelaide with four children. The family later returned to Perth and Sheila spent most of an idyllic childhood near the bush. Due to financial insecurity, however, they moved house constantly before settling in Melbourne. After completing her schooling at Toorak College, Sheila studied briefly at the National Gallery School – her only formal art training (graduated from it according to Timms’s obit in AMA )- leaving to become a commercial artist.
She worked in London as a poster artist and illustrator of children’s books, painted at weekends and made children’s friezes and toys, which she exhibited in mixed and solo shows at Melbourne and Sydney in 1930-31. The National Gallery of Victoria purchased a drawing from her first exhibition and Eric Thake invited her to exhibit in a mixed show that included James Flett and Herbert McClintock . In 1931, with Australia in the midst of the Depression, she left for London. While looking for a job and sharing a bedsitter, she illustrated her first children’s book, Margaret Brown’s Black Tuppenny (1932). At a low ebb financially, she became the first woman to be employed by Shell Mex Advertising. But she refused full-time work in order to continue to illustrate her own children’s books.
In 1934, at the invitation of her New Zealand friends, the artist James Cook and his wife, Ruth, she went to Catalonia, shared a primitive apartment with them in Gerona and enjoyed her first chance to paint every day. Back in England, she married and settled in Northumberland where her husband operated an old watermill; her studio was an empty, straw-carpeted hen house. The Bowdens moved to the Cotswolds to escape the northern cold and Sheila primed and painted her canvases in an Elizabethan attic. During 1937 they exchanged places with a friend in London where she joined and exhibited with the Women’s International Club.
While exhibiting, Sheila wrote and illustrated children’s books. Little Gray 'Colo’: The Adventures of a Koala Bear was published in New York in 1939 (NLA copy acquired 1999). Two published by Hamish Hamilton were Pepito (from her Spanish sojourn) and John Appleby (from living in the old mill). Published at the outbreak of World War II, the entire edition of John Appleby was destroyed during a bombing raid over London. At the outbreak of war, Hawkins was employed at RAAF Headquarters. She also painted murals in the New Zealand Forces canteen, drew and painted the long-boats carrying coal (manned by women) and visited Scotland to draw the Australian Forestry Units.
After the war, she refused an offer from Hamish Hamilton to publish all her future books and instead continued as an illustrator of other authors’ texts in order to support herself and her daughter. She was well known for her humorous animal illustrations and worked for various publishers, including Penguin, Faber & Faber, Heinemann and Methuen. Animals of Australia , published under the new Puffin imprint in 1947, sold more than 50,000 copies. Between 1930 and 1960 she illustrated fifty children’s picture books and was the author of ten of them. In 1956 Wish and the Magic Nut , written by Peggy Barnard and illustrated by Hawkins, was chosen as Australian Picture Book of the Year. In 1962 Angus and Robertson published her own hand-lithographed book of cartoons, Australian Animals and Birds .
During the 1950s Hawkins had several solo exhibitions. On a visit to Australia with her daughter in 1954 she exhibited six war works at the Pylon Lookout for (or on behalf of) the NSW Forestry Commission. They were offered to the Australian War Memorial in 1956 but rejected as the Memorial already had two works. In 1969 she exhibited with the Chelsea Artists. During the 1970s she joined the Free Painters and Sculptors and participated in mixed exhibitions and several solo exhibitions at Loggia Gallery, London.
Hawkins continued to live in London and exhibit with a variety of galleries until 1993 when she showed with the Ridley Arts Society. She died in London on 10 January 1999.
Writers:
Wilkins, Lola
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 20 August 1905
- Summary
- Mid 20th century painter, illustrator and author. War artist and children's book illustrator.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Jan-99
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-36.3562509 Longitude146.3230914 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1999-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wangaratta, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 17 August 1902
- Summary
- Melbourne-trained tram conductor who worked as a painter, potter and designer. Farrell designed a pedestal chair with the seat formed from Perspex for Module and Company, Fairfield, Victoria, ca.1970. Company shifted from Bulleen to Fairfield and was in operation 1965-1992.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1999
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-37.7189715 Longitude145.1256231 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Montmorency, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, environmental artist, was born at Montmorency, a bush suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne. His boyhood at the creative community of Eltham taught him about metalwork and mud-brick construction, which encouraged him to think of a career in art. He was awarded a scholarship to the National Gallery School and at the end of his degree qualified as a high school art teacher. H worked first at the Diamond Creek Technical school before teaching at the altnernative Diamond Creek Community School.His talents as an artist were noticed early in his career as he was awarded the Eltham Art Prize in 1970 and in 1971 was included in a group exhibition at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery. The same year he held his first solo exhibition at Pinacotheca and was invited to participate in Harald Szeemann’s selection of Australian art for John Kaldor. In 1973 he was included in both the Mildura Sculpturescape and the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ exhibition, Recent Australian Art.After the end of his first marriage to Sue Halprin he moved to north-eastern Victoria with his second wife, Rosemary Buchanan, and here he became as well known for his farming as for his art. In his later years he suffered from a crippling auto-immune disease. An obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald said “to him what mattered was expressing himself, turning a creative idea into reality.”
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 19 February 1949
- Summary
- Ross Grounds was one of the pioneers of environmentally aware art, using a playful understanding of the rhythms of nature, which he incorporated with a whimsical humour. His second career as a farmer, worked in harmony with his creative life.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1998
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude-22.6219466 Longitude135.1941577 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dneiper, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c.1938 at the old sheep camp, Dneiper Station, Central Australia, Louis Pwerle was an Eastern Anmatyerre speaker whose country lies on the central-western area of Utopia Station, with significant areas also on neighbouring Mt Skinner station. As the eldest of his brothers (who include Cowboy Louie Pwerle ), he was 'boss’ of the stories for this area and an important ceremonial leader of the Eastern Anmatyerre, held in high esteem by the community. Known as a good stockman, Louis worked over the years for several stations across the north-east. Though he had been painting only since the end of the 1980s, his distinctive personal style, with its bold designs and optical intensity, won Louis considerable recognition both in Australia and overseas. In 1990 he had a solo exhibition at Utopia Art, Sydney and was, with Emily Kngwarreye , CAAMA/Utopia-artist-in-residence at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (Reference: Batty, P. and Sheridan, N., Utopia Artist in Residence Project [Holmes à Court Foundation, Perth, 1990]). He had a family outstation at Mosquito Bore (Lyentye) in the north-west of Utopia Aboriginal Land, and was married to Angelina Kngwarreye and Sarah Kngwarreye.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1938
- Summary
- Louis Pwerle was an Eastern Anmatyerre artist, ceremonial leader, and 'boss' of stories for his country in the central-western area of Utopia station. His work is represented in major public and private collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1998
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-33.829075 Longitude151.24409 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mosman, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1928
- Summary
- Von Willer trained with Lyndon Dadswell at East Sydney Technical College/National Art School with work in the 1949 ESTC Diploma Exhibition. He attended the Inaugural Sculpture Society General Meeting in 1951 and By 1963, he was teaching sculpture at ESTC while residing in Mosman. After 1970, he moved into kinetic works and music. In 1980, he was appointed Head Teacher of Art at Meadowbank TAFE.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-98
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-14.5194035 Longitude132.1869752 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockhole, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c.1927 at Marnpi south west of Mt Rennie. According to Tindale’s records, the family group was camped near Putarti Spring, south west of Mt Liebig when encountered in 1932. When interviewed, Mick remembered as a little boy walking east to Haasts Bluff with his family to collect rations from the missionaries. For the next decade, the family stayed around the Haasts Bluff /Hermannsburg area. Mick was initiated at Areyonga. He subsequently worked as a stockman on various stations, including Tempe Downs and Areyonga. In 1971 he was serving on the Papunya Council and with fellow councilor Johnny Warangkula soon made his interest in painting known to art teacher Geoffrey Bardon. During those early years, Mick travelled to Sydney with Bardon for the making of the film Mick and the Moon about the artist and his work. Mick was one of a few Pintupi who stayed on in Papunya for some years after the 1981 mass exodus to establish the Pintupi township of Kintore on their homelands. Painting prolifically in this period of the early ’80s, he travelled to Sydney with Nosepeg Tjupurrula and Tutuma Tjapangati in 1981 for an independent exhibition mounted at Syd’s, Darlinghurst, Sydney in support of an Aboriginal controlled health service at Papunya. Later Mick joined his countrymen and women at Kintore, and set up an outstation at Nyunmanu to the south-east of the settlement. Later he lived at Njutulnya outstation with his second wife Elizabeth and their two young children. A senior man, Mick’s paintings covered many Dreamings, principally Kangaroo, Dingo, Water, and Bandicoot. His work increasingly explored new directions and remained fresh and exciting after decades of continuous output. In 1989 he travelled to Melbourne for an exhibition of Papunya Tula Artists at the National Gallery of Victoria. His painting Bandicoot Dreaming won the 1991 National Aboriginal Art Award. In 1991 he had his first solo exhibition at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi Melbourne.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1926
- Summary
- One of the founding members of Papunya Tula Artists and one of the most eminent and revered painters of the desert art movement.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1998
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kintore Range, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Rover Thomas was born at Gunawaggi, Well 33 on the Canning Stock Route. His mother, Ngakuyipa (Nita) was a Kukatja woman, the two fathers who brought him up were Lanikan Thomas and Sundown, both Wangkajunga men.When he was ten, he moved with his parents to Billuna Station in the Kimberley, where he began to work as a stockman. Here, sometime during World War II, he was initiated into traditional law. He later worked with a European fencing contractor before returning to Western Australia and the Bow River Station in the north-eastern Kimberley. He later worked at the Texas Downs Station and the Mabel Downs Station.In early 1975 he came to live with the Warmun community at Turkey Creek. At this time Aboriginal people had finally been awarded equal pay with white workers and as a result many station owners expelled them from their properties.In that year the Kurirr-Kurirr ceremony came to Rover Thomas in a dream, a series of visitations from a dead Kija Wula speaking woman, who told him of her travels over the land after her death. She had been critically injured in a road accident, and died as the Royal Flying Doctor Service flew her over the whirlpool Tawurrkurima/Jintiripul, the home of the Rainbow Snake. Thomas first made a series of song verses on these revelations, which became boards for dancers to hold in ceremonies. By the early 1980s Thomas began to paint larger interpretations of the dream of the old woman who told him of roads crossing, of past massacres and the Rainbow Serpent’s destruction of Darwin with the event known as Cyclone Tracy in December 1974.Thomas also painted of massacres of Aboriginal people in the Kimberley. These events were sufficiently recent for him to have heard the stories directly from survivors.In 1990 Rover Thomas and Trevor Nickolls became the first two Aboriginal artists to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale and in 1994 Roads Cross, a major survey of his work was exhibited at the National Gallery of Australia.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. c.1926
- Summary
- Rover Thomas, who painted the land and the massacres of people in the Kimberley, first came to prominence as the Dreamer of the Kurirr-Kurirr ceremony, which he subsequently painted. He and Trevor Nickolls were the first Australian Aboriginal artists to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1991.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Apr-98
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Joan KerrPainter, printmaker and theatre set designer, was born in Melbourne on 3 November 1925. She worked in Melbourne and produced etchings, linocuts, lithographs, screenprints and woodcuts. The NGA has 74 prints dating from c.1948 ( Beach Box ) to 1991 (the computer-generated Still Life with Fruit ) – though most are of the 1960s, including the abstract colour screenprint, Portrait Group 1965. See also Eveline Syme .
Brash produced early figurative prints which became more abstract.
Emma MillsBarbara Nancy Brash was an Australian printmaker, painter and designer, who practiced between 1946 and 1997. Brash was born in Melbourne on the 3rd November 1925 to Alfred and Elsa Brasch. The Brasch family were a well-established presence within Melbourne society.
Barbara’s grandfather Marcus Brasch had originally emigrated from Prussia to the United Kingdom in 1848. He quickly established himself as a piano merchant, who traded his wares overseas to Australia and New Zealand. Marcus and his brother Woolf moved to Australia in 1866 to found Brasch Brothers and Salenger. The brothers went on to open the first Braschs store at 108 Elizabeth Street. The Brashs’ also had ties to the Australian Impressionist movement. Woolf Brasch’s first daughter Golda Figa Brasch married Louis Abrahams in 1888, who became a founding member of the Heidelberg School. One of Woolf’s sons Reuben Brasch established the Curlew Camp, visited by Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton between 1881 and 1882.
After the death of Marcus in 1894, his son Alfred inherited the family business. After the First World War, Alfred anglicised his surname to ensure his family’s assimilation into an increasingly xenophobic Australian society. Barbara and her brother Geoffrey went to primary school at St Margaret’s Melbourne. Barbara attended secondary school at the all-girls college St. Catherine’s. Geoffrey eventually inherited his father’s company in the 1970’s, introducing vinyl records, audio systems and later compact discs. Although Barbara produced several record labels for Brashs during the 1980’s, she was not an active participant in the business. Barbara lived at her family home in Toorak until her father’s death, where she presumably cared for her ageing parents. In 1963 at the age of 38, Brash lived briefly at in Toorak, before moving to her own home in Kooyong in 1967, where she lived for the remainder of her life.
Brash enrolled at the National Gallery School to study a Diploma of Art in 1946 at the age of 21. Brash was taught painting by Alan Sumner, the first Modernist instructor at the NGS, who is also known for his pioneering work as a screen printer. She went on to additionally enrol at the George Bell School, where she attended Friday afternoon classes on the principles of modernist painting. It was here that she met painter Dorothy Braund, who also simultaneously studied under Sumner at the Gallery School. During her time at the Bell School, Brash was also in contact with older artist Evelyn Syme, of whom she drew a portrait of. Brash also enrolled in Saturday morning etching classes run by Ben Crosskell at the Melbourne Technical College in 1946.
Brash left Australia to travel Europe with Braund, returning to Melbourne from London in 1951. On her return, Brash became involved with circle of artists based at the Melbourne Technical College called the Melbourne Printmakers Group or Freedman Group. Brash attended the Tuesday evening classes with a number of others, including Mary Macqueen, Lesbia Thorpe, Nancy Clifton, Charles Blackman and Kenneth Jack. Brash joined the Studio One Printmakers group in 1963, alongside Tate Adams, Janet Dawson, Grahame King, Hertha Kluge-Pott, Jan Senbergs and Fred Williams. Brash was also closely involved in the Print Council of Australia, acting as the treasurer in the 1970’s and early 80’s. In 1965 Barbara became a member of the Lyceum Club. She was originally sponsored by artists Constance Stokes and Anne Montgomery. After experiencing a lapse in productivity during the late 1980’s, Brash’s practice was reinvigorated in the 1990’s by digital media. Brash attended workshops run by notable digital printmaker Bashir Baraki to learn the Canon Laser Photocopy technique. In 1996, Brash published her first collaborative print portfolio, alongside Bashir Baraki and Jean Knox, titled The Image Makers.
Brash died in February 1998 at the age of 74. In her will, she left a considerable amount of her shares to animal welfare groups, including Wildlife in Secure Environment, The Animal Welfare League of Victoria, The Lost Dogs Home and Animal Hospital and The International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Brash’s work spans a variety of printmaking media and subject matter. Her early prints are largely linocuts or etchings, which are aesthetically within the Classical Modernist tradition. Her lifelong interest in environmental and animal subject matter can be observed in her early work. Brash adopted the screen-printing method during the 1960’s and 70’s. She began to produce more abstract prints, experimenting with textural effects like embossing. Her digital work in the 1990’s is particularly interesting; she began to engage with notably more political subject matter than her previous work. Brash’s 1997 Sludge series explores the theme of environmental damage. Brash was a deeply experimental artist, who embraced new technology and aesthetics throughout her career. Her masterful use of translucent and layered colour permeates her entire oeuvre.
Brash won the Sara Levi Scholarship from the NGS in 1947 and a further award for her final year painting Half Nude (1949). Brash was included in a number of important early modernist print exhibitions, including Studio One Prints ’63 and Australian Print Survey 1963/4. Brash’s early work toured the United States; she was included in Australian Prints Today at the Smithsonian Institution and The Philadelphia Print Club in 1966. In the 1970s, her prints toured South East Asia in Australian Prints; Poland, India and New York in Images; Japan in three different exhibitions, and the Western Pacific. Regionally, she was exhibited in Printmaking in Australia 1812-1972 at the Newcastle City Art Gallery, and Printmaking in Australia: Colonial to Contemporary at the Queensland Art Gallery. She has had three major solo exhibitions; in 1965 at the Australian Galleries, 1966 at the Design Arts Centre Brisbane, and 1989 at the Eastgate Gallery.
Brash’s work is represented in a number of major state and regional galleries. The most notable of which include; National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery, The Warrnambool Art Gallery, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery and The Ian Potter Museum of Art.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Emma Mills
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 3 November 1925
- Summary
- Twentieth-century Melbourne artist who has worked mostly in printmaking. The National Gallery of Australia holds over 70 of Brash's works including the c.1948 print 'Beach Box'.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 20-Feb-98
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-34.9066222 Longitude138.5699532 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hindmarsh, SA, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and painter, was born Frank Bennier [ sic ] in Hindmarsh, SA, a fourth generation Australian of Basque extraction whose family migrated to South Australia in 1843. He signed his work 'Benier’ and always wore a basque beret in honour of his heritage, although locally born and educated. His first cartoon appeared in the Adelaide Express & Journal in September 1934, when he was 14:
“…it was just a one-line gag sort of thing and I can’t remember the exact date – but I do remember I received the princely sum of 30 bob ($3) and blew the lot on lollies.” (Quoted obituary SMH 24 October 1998, 120)
His father, a bushman turned copper miner, disapproved of his son’s passion for drawing and sent him splitting fence posts and doing other manual labour on farms around the Mount Gambier area. After leaving school, he was employed as a copy boy on the Adelaide News and assigned to the processing department after telling his boss of his artistic ambitions. Finally, he graduated to the art department.
Benier rejoined the News as an artist after serving in military intelligence (a contradiction in terms, he joked) in the Middle East and New Guinea during WWII. In 1956 (acc. Australian obit, elsewhere 1957 and 1958) he moved to Sydney and worked in animation (Australian). He contributed to the Bulletin , original (ML Px *D452/92) paid 10 December 1958 showing a chap in a restaurant lassooing the salt with spaghetti: “To me, spaghetti without salt is nothing” – a very Mercier style of gag.
Mercier was Benier’s mentor when he joined the Sun in 1958. Benier’s big break came when Mercier’s suggestion that he fill in while Mercier was away on holidays was accepted, but he left in 1960. According to Wendy Stokes in the Sun-Herald 1971 (quoted in obit.), Benier loaded his second wife, Penny (now dead), their 'three children by previous marriages on both sides and one child of their own’ (apparently all boys) into the car and went to London. His comments on England in 1962 are quoted by Jensen, pp.11-12. He remained away for three years, then returned to the Sun as feature cartoonist in February 1966 [1965 acc. Australian obit.].
Frank Benier of the Sun won a Walkley Award for best cartoon of the year in 1967 (Bruce Begg won in the category of 'Press Artwork’ and John P. Petersen of Woman’s Day for illustration). His cartoons also appeared in the Sun-Herald , e.g. 'The Dingo and the Lizard’ (undated original AGWA 957/D377) and presumably the two 1960s and 1971 originals in ML (PXD 764). His obituary writer notes:
“His second stint on the paper wasn’t always easy, Bennier growing increasingly critical of its editor, the late Jack Tier, for trying to tell him what to draw.”
In 1973 Benier joined the Sun 's arch-rival the Daily Mirror , having been offered a raise of about 30% and less editorial control. A road cartoon (very like Rigby ), done for the Mirror , is in Hayllar & Sadler (111). He continued drawing cartoons for another decade, although by 1971 he considered himself 'first of all a painter’ (Wendy Stokes, Sun-Herald 1971). He specialised in hot outback landscapes. Even so, he did not regard cartooning as prostitution of his art, according to Stokes:
“The true guts of all art is observation. The cartoon is observation of current life – and it’s also the preparation for a painting. A lot of Basques are fishermen and shepherdesses. Few of them are artists. But I know it’s because of my Basque background that I have a nostalgia for the country, a closeness to the whole earth.
“This makes an artist partly international. You tend to drift towards farmers and peasants.”
In later years his cartoons included a miniscule bloke in a corner wearing a black beret. He smoked a pipe and was a great wine lover. After he retired to his home at Patonga Beach (NSW) in the 1980s, he continued as a member of the Black and White Artists’ Club until his death in 1998. He was survived by his third wife, Mary Lou, and three of his four sons: Nick, Steve and Kerry. Many original cartoons were already in the SLNSW Bulletin collection in 2000 (e.g. cricket and football gags c.1970) and he bequeathed the library another 2,250 or so.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 13 December 1919
- Summary
- Popular mid 20th century Adelaide, Sydney and London newspaper cartoonist and painter. Benier's first cartoon appeared in the Adelaide Express & Journal in September 1934 at the age of 14. Years later the cartoonist was unable to recall the specifics of that first paid gag, only that he spent his entire earnings from it on lollies.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1998
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-34.4816626 Longitude150.4177868 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bowral, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- designer and printer, was born in Bowral, NSW, officially on 11 February 1912 (although her birthday has always been celebrated on the 12th), youngest of the five children of Alistair Ronald Mackenzie of Ross, Scotland, a British army communications engineer who worked as a telegraph constructor in Melbourne and Western Australia, and Rosalind Isabel Agnes, née Walker, of Victoria. Her father was sixty-five and her mother forty-four when she was born; her two surviving sisters were more than twenty years her senior (the elder was Isabel Mackenzie ). She grew up at Bowral, Armidale, Glebe and Clovelly, visiting painting exhibitions at the Art Gallery of NSW, ballet, concerts, and plays at Her Majesty’s Theatre with her family.
After completing her schooling at SCEGGS Redlands, Cremorne, where Miss Hoare taught her English and Art, Nan enrolled at East Sydney Technical College in 1929 where her most memorable teacher was Phyllis Shillito. However, she was forced to discontinue her studies because of the Depression and thereafter learnt 'on the job’: first as a sign writer, then as a scarf and embroidery designer. On 4 March 1941, 'at the old stable’, 1 Vista Street, Mosman, she opened the business Annan Fabrics with her partner Annie Outlaw, née Simpson (1891-1991), an English secretary who had been awarded the OBE for her work with Prime Minister Lloyd George during the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris. Annie had come to Sydney with her artist husband, Arthur, soon after their marriage in September 1922; she was Hon. Sec. of the NSW Society of Arts and Crafts when she met Nan, who had begun designing textiles in her Mosman home in the 1930s, characteristically using strong colours, clear lines and a preferred use of Australian imagery.
Annie had £100 and Nan had researched the viability of 'rapid fast’ dyes from Fahmann Industries in Frankfurt, supplied through Abel Lemon of Harrington Street, Sydney, which led to them establishing a screen-printing business at Mosman – called Annan from their two names – and to set about acquiring basic equipment and the requisite practical skills. While an intimate knowledge of the mechanics of screen-printing and dye mixing was obviously necessary in order to produce well-printed colourfast fabrics, it was also fundamental to MacKenzie’s design philosophy, which held that good design was dependent on appropriateness and a thorough knowledge of the particular processes involved in making a finished article. Outlaw’s creative contribution to the business was in dye mixing, a highly skilled task that allowed no margin for error.
In spite of supply problems and various other difficulties, during the war years in particular, Mackenzie and Outlaw achieved a remarkably wide range of excellent colours and found that their bright fabrics sold readily. Being bold and colourful designs in colour-fast dyes on sturdy cotton, most fabrics such as Rock Carving c.1945 (Powerhouse) – inspired by the Aboriginal artistic tradition of carving or painting pictures on rock and images of Australian fauna that recur in Aboriginal art and mythology – were well suited for curtains or other domestic furnishings. Some were also made up into dresses, beachwear and ties.
Annan designs became an international success, exhibited in Australia House, London, and at Cairo in 1947; at the Australian Display Centre, New York, in 1952; and in the Ideal Houses Exhibition at Sydney Town Hall in 1953. Over the years Mackenzie and Outlaw received several offers to go into large-scale commercial production, but they preferred to retain independent control of the studio through concentrating on individual projects and commissioned lengths for large retail stores such as David Jones. Mackenzie and Outlaw, who could screen-print an average of thirty-six metres a day, produced a wide range of fabrics, the vast majority featuring Australian flora or Aboriginal motifs. Their many commissions included fabrics for the office of the High Commissioner of Pakistan, the 'Australia Room’ of the P & O liner Himalaya , the Qantas offices in London, Honolulu, New York and Djakarta, the overseas and TAA passenger terminals at Mascot and Essendon, the University of NSW, the Sydney P & O offices and curtains in the dining room of Parliament House, Sydney. Field Marshall Montgomery chose for his home the pink and ochre version of their Kangaroo Hunt , a design exhibited at Australia House, London; this was also selected by Lintas Advertising Agency.
In the face of a flood of cheap imported American prints in the postwar years, however, it became much more difficult to keep the business viable; Annan Fabrics became increasingly dependent on architects’ commissions for printed fabrics for both private and public interiors. Despite the superb quality of their work and their undoubted success, the business was never financially secure. Living from commission to commission, Mackenzie and Outlaw were just able to keep afloat until 1954 when they were forced into liquidation over the production of street decorations for the Royal Visit. Having been awarded the subcontract, they worked on nothing else for months and were unable to sustain the loss when the contractor declared himself bankrupt. The business folded in 1955. By then Annie’s husband had died and she had returned to her native London, where she died on 17 January 1991, aged ninety-nine. She was always 'great fun’ to work with, Nan recollects.
From 1960 until she retired in 1974, Nan taught textile printing in the Design and Crafts Diploma Course at East Sydney Technical College. On 8 June 1963, she married Andrew Kenneth Kirkwood. She was still living at Mosman in 1995.
Writers:
Lorenzo, Catherine DeSumner, Christina
staffcontributor
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 11 February 1912
- Summary
- Female fabric designer and printmaker who worked with Annie Outlaw in Sydney to establish colourful designs with Australian motifs for international markets during the 1940s and 1950s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1998
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.3591223 Longitude116.1536169 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Collie, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Mavis Lightly (nee Allen) was born in Collie on 2 December 1911, died on 12 December 1998 and is notable for having been an inaugural foundation member of the Busselton Society of Arts.
Mavis was the granddaughter of an engineer from the well-known Irish engineering firm, W.H. Allen. They provided engines from Belfast to mining companies in Queenstown, Tasmania, and Cue, Day Dawn and Collie in Western Australia.
Her father immigrated to Australia as a 16-year-old with his father, who in an ironic twist of fate died from snakebite soon after arrival.
Her father ended up in Collie selling engines and then ran a family garage in Busselton in the 1920s. Mavis was brought up in the family home behind the garage.
In an oral history interview recorded in 1985, Mrs Lightly recalls as a five-year old drawing a compelling picture of a Model-T Ford on the classroom blackboard which remained up for nearly a year.
At age 15 she was privately tutored by an English artist by the name of Baker. She left school then and as the eighth child by eight years she was looked after by other family members and not allowed to work.
This reflected the social and cultural norms at the time and the low expectations of women.
She married at 20, farming in the Vasse region and raising two children, Ian and Lynette.
In the recorded interview she describes her art practice as a pleasure and habit with no pressure to produce commercially sought after works. Like so many other women artists of the time she describes her art as “a casual hobby”.
After the Second World War, Mavis moved from the farm to Busselton becoming a serious painter and a student of Margaret Johnson. She used oil and with two small children had a passion for drawing on paper with charcoal being interested in all subjects – landscape, still life, and portraits.
“Margaret Johnson recognised I had some talent and took an interest in me,” Mavis told her social history interviewer in 1985.
Margaret G. Johnson, (1898 – 1967) was a Sri-Lankan born Australian portrait artist. Her father James Wood, was a Scotsman in Kadugannawa, Ceylon. She was one of seven children who all had an interest painting and drawing. At a young age her father immigrated to Western Australia and after completing her schooling in Perth was sent to the Glasgow School of Art at the tender age of fifteen, three years younger than the usual entrance age.
Margaret studied under Maurice Greiffenhagen and Professor McKeller, concentrating on painting and modelling. She completed her four-year course in three years and returned to Western Australia after the end of World War One and married.
As a portrait artist she specialised in portraiture painting especially watercolours but also had works in pencil, pastels and oil. Her portrait works are found in the National Gallery of Australia, Parliament House and at the Perth City Council. For example, her portrait of Prime Minister John Curtin hangs in the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
In 1934, her model for a portrait plaque of pioneering women’s activist and politician Edith Cowan was chosen from several local West Australian entries to be the choice for a memorial work on a clock tower in Kings Park, Perth honouring the trailblazer. The Edith Cowan bust is in high relief above a wreath of gum leaves and nuts cast in bronze and is visible today on the eastern face of the clock tower.
Ms Johnson was a member of the West Australian Society of Arts and taught Mavis Lightly at the Busselton Technical School.
Mavis had her first Art Exhibition in 1952 in the Country Women’s Association Hall, before the Busselton Arts Society was formed and every item was sold at prices ranging from five to 18 guineas.
This was followed by several other exhibitions.
“My early work can more than hold their own, even after art classes by Boissevain and Juniper and you develop your own style and my style has been retained largely due to that early influence of Margaret Johnston where I learnt the basics of distance, composition, colour, coordination and application, have your own colours but have your tonal values right,” she said.
Boissevain and Juniper are considered WA Art Royalty and their influence extends far beyond their extensive body of work because they also had longevity as art teachers.
For example, William 'Wim’ Boissevain (born 23 July 1927) was born Willem Geoffrey Boissevain in New York, son of Gideon Walrave 'Gi’ Boissevain who was in the Dutch diplomatic service.
With his roots in the Netherlands and international upbringing, he was drawn back to Europe and studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London and the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.
Arriving in Australia in 1947 he became naturalised in 1949 and is well-known for his studio at Glen Forrest in the Darling Range near Perth.
Contrasting this Dutch heritage, Robert Litchfield Juniper, AM (7 January 1929 – 20 December 2012) had a broader art practice covering artist, art teacher, illustrator, painter, printmaker and sculptor and was born in the dusty light-filled wheat-belt town of Merredin in Western Australia.
Like Boissevain he was drawn to Europe and studied commercial art and industrial design at Beckenham School of Art in England and in a striking similarity was also a long-term resident in the Perth hills where he was involved with the Darlington Arts Festival.
The strong loyalty and admiration Mavis Lightly felt towards her female teachers and mentors like Johnson rather than men, demonstrates how early Australian women artists supported and nurtured each other.
In the first 'Art in the Park’, the longest running exhibition of its kind in Western Australia, held in Mitchell Park Busselton from the 19th to the 24th January 1960, Mavis Lightly had one oil and eight water colour works for sale, with her highest priced, an oil
called 'Winter Pattern’ selling for eight guineas, the second most expensive piece of art on offer.
Mavis Lightly won the $500 Tom Wardle Prize for oils at the 1968 Busselton Art Society Competition, reputed by Society Patron, Sir Claude Hotchin to be the richest art prize offered outside the Perth metropolitan area. Her entry, Still Life, oil on board, 370 × 475 mm is part of The Busselton Art Society collection, the largest private art collection in the South West of Western Australia.
“I also taught art, always all ladies,” Ms Lightly said. This reflects the economic necessity of women artists of the time supplementing the household income from other sources than pure art sales. History repeating itself, much like how Margaret Johnson had taught Mavis Lightly decades before.
White Camellias was purchased at a garage sale run by a charity group in 2017. The work is significant as it reflects the artists unique still life style and her depth of tonal colours.
The framing reflects the frugal nature of the period. A busy time as a farming mother raising toddlers, with a husband often away, and money more likely to be directed to other activities rather than framing.
“If it’s a complicated painting, I always have a simple frame,” she concludes in her oral history interview.
Retired stock and station agent and son, Ian Lightly gets a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes when he remembers how his mother’s artwork helped pay for his education.
Sales from his mother’s art practice helped fund expensive boarding school fees for Ian and his sister at Perth’s elite private schools, Hale and St Hilda’s, when cash flow from their Busselton farm was tight.
Writers:
ArtPhD
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 2 December 1911
- Summary
- West Australian artist
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Dec-98
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Alastair Morrison collaborated with the László Moholy-Nagy on visual merchandising for Simpson’s Piccadilly store in London from 1935 to 1939. He later was appointed art director for Allied Iron Founders of London where he was responsible for the corporate identity as well as advertising. During his London career he was noted for his designs for Shell Oil Company, Gaumont British films, Whitney Straight airlines, Lund Humphries and the Dorchester Hotel. After World War II he worked both as designer and engineer for the De Havilland Aircraft Company. He was employed as a graphic designer for Rhine Castle Wines, Alberto Distillers, David Jones Art Gallery and the Contemporary Art Society.
Biographical summary from [Anon. Design Australia, 5/1969, p.56.]Mr. Alastair Morrison, 22 HeeleySt., Paddington, NSW, Born and educatedin Melbourne. 1935-1939: Workedand exhibited as Graphic Designer inLondon. 1945: Freelance Graphic Designerbased in Sydney. Past N.S.W. President,Contemporary Art Society and lndustrialDesign lnstitute of Australia. Chairman ofDecimal Currency Note Design Committee.As a “hobby”, inventor of “Strine”, and,under the pen-name of Afferbeck Lauder,wrote “Let Stalk Strine”, “Nose ToneUnturned”, and, recently, “Fraffly WellSpoken”
Writers:
John H Martin
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1 January 1911
- Summary
- Morrison was a typographer, graphic designer, industrial designer and author. He had a celebrated design career in London from 1936-1939, returning to Australia before the 1939-45 War. Working for the Reserve Bank of Australia, he also worked for P & O, Rhine Castle Wines and the National Trust of Australia. As a member, he also designed many catalogues for Sydney's Contemporary Art Society.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-98
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-25 Longitude133 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1909
- Summary
- Crawford was a fashion designer and stylist. She apprenticed in retail with Mark Foys, later Myer, associate director Foys, travelled to USA, later ran a fashion agency "Mona Crawford International", Taylor Square, Sydney, NSW.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-98
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- Mattie Hodgson was born in 1909 into a family which encouraged girls creative endeavours. Her aunt, the artist Edith Ward, introduced her to photography. By 1924 the family had moved from Victoria to Perth in Western Australia, and it was here she was given her first camera. The next year she began to work as a receptionist and retoucher at Perth’s Ruskin Studios. Seven years later she declined an offer to take over the business as she was more interested in painting and drawing, which she was then studying at the Perth Technical School.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 6 April 1909
- Summary
- Mattie Hodgson was a photographer retoucher, and colourist working in Perth and London from the mid-1920s to World War II,
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2-Nov-98
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-37.8244246 Longitude145.0317207 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1998-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hawthorn, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Peter Hammon Lindsay, landscape painter, cartoonist and commercial artist, was born at 22 Falmouth Street, Hawthorn, Victoria on 6 April 1908. He was the only child of artist, Percy Lindsay and Jessie née Hammon. Peter H. Lindsay spent his early years in Melbourne, but just before the end of hostilities in 1918 his parents moved to Shirley Road, Roseville, a suburb on the northern fringes of Sydney. One of the earliest images made by the artist was a series of unusual photographs of his father (and occasionally his mother) modelling in dramatic poses in the back garden of their new Roseville home. This set of photographs (now in the collection of the National Library of Australia) seems to have been conceived as a visual aid for his father’s commercial illustrations. The early death of his mother to tuberculosis in 1924 left Peter spending the rest of his adolescence and early adulthood living with his eccentric father. Peter’s uncle, Sir Daryl Lindsay, writing in his 1965 memoir (The Leafy Tree), commented on the close bond between the pair: “When his wife died he and his son, Peter, lived on together on the North Shore. They were devoted to each other, went everywhere together, called each other Joe and were more like a couple of old bachelors than father and son.” According to the artist’s friend, Mollie Flaxman, Peter gravitated into the world of art because of the 'strong and steady influence’ of his father. He initially received artistic training from Percy and later more formally at the J.S. Watkins Art School, in Pitt Street, Sydney, an institution which specialised in training students in commercial art. By the late 1920s Peter had joined the staff of the Sydney printing firm Pratten Brothers where he worked as their art director for 38 years. From January 1929, Peter, then aged in his early twenties, began to contribute cartoons to the popular magazine, Aussie: The Cheerful Monthly. He contributed about 25 joke blocks for Aussie and also had 24 images published in the Bulletin. He also contributed several joke blocks to the Australian Women’s Weekly. In a 1992 letter to the cartoon historian, Vane Lindesay, Peter disclosed that he had once been involved with the Black and White Artists’ Club when it was revived by Jim Russell in the late 1930s. Peter’s cartooning approach was very similar to his father’s late style and it is possible that Peter occasionally 'ghosted’ for Percy in the Bulletin. A typical Peter H. Lindsay joke block (published in the January 1931 issue of Aussie) depicts an indignant man standing in a court witness box.“Justice! Justice! I demand justice” [says the prisoner thrusting his hand in the air]. The bald judge replies, “Silence! Do you forget that you are in a court of law?” In 1935 Peter and his father relocated from the family home in Roseville to rented accommodation in Milson’s Point, Sydney. In 1938 Peter married Edith Olga (Wendy) Woolfrey and the couple moved to their own place at 28 Hamden Street, North Sydney. In March 1942, Peter, now aged in his mid thirties, enlisted in the armed services. As an Australian Army soldier he served in New Guinea, Tarakan and Borneo. Although not employed as an official war artist, gunner Lindsay continued to pursue his art while on active service, and several of his works from this time have war themes. After the death of Percy in 1952, Peter became the principal champion of his father’s artistic reputation. He took an important role in the organisation of the Percy Lindsay survey exhibition at the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery (BFAG) in 1975, and according to the then BFAG director (and show curator), Ron Radford, Peter, was 'a very nice, quietly spoken man who was very well mannered’ and 'was a delight to deal with.’ Before and after his father’s 1975 exhibition, Peter made significant donations of Percy Lindsay artworks and ephemeral material to the Ballarat collection helping it become one of the largest depositories of Lindsay family artwork in the country. Peter painted mainly oils and watercolours, but also produced several prints, including one etching depicting a European townscape. From 1933 he began to occasionally exhibit his landscapes at the annual exhibitions of the Australian Watercolour Institute. He became an exhibiting member of the Royal Art Society [RAS] of New South Wales in 1950 and was later awarded a Fellowship (FRAS) by the RAS. Like Percy he produced mainly small landscapes although Peter’s later oils were higher in key than his father’s Barbizon influenced images. After his wife died in 1969, Peter lived for many years in Chatswood, Sydney. After retiring from Pratten Brothers in the early 1970s he spent many years travelling and painting around Australia and he is believed to have visited Europe. He occasionally visited his family’s work at Ballarat, sometimes in the company of his late life companion, Doreen Hubble, a former model to (Peter’s uncle) Norman Lindsay and Grace Crowley. A member of the well known Lindsay family of artists, Peter H. Lindsay is sometimes confused with his (non-art producing) journalist cousin, Peter Lindsay (1907-1998), who was the elder child of Sir Lionel Lindsay and Jean née Dyson. Peter H. Lindsay died (childless) at the age of 90, on Wednesday 19 August 1998. A short obituary in the Royal Art Society newsletter was written by his fellow artist Mollie Flaxman.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, SilasNote:
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 6 April 1908
- Summary
- A landscape painter, cartoonist and commercial artist, Peter Hammon Lindsay was the only child of artist Percy Lindsay (the eldest child of the prolific Lindsay family) and his wife Jessie Hammon. A contributor to Aussie magazine and the Bulletin, Peter H. was also a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute and the Royal Art Society.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Aug-98
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-34.1803736 Longitude139.9863923 Start Date1959-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waikerie, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- artist and activist, known to her people, the Ngarrindjeri, as “Kurwingie”, was born at Waikerie, South Australia. Her father, Stan, was an outstanding indigenous footballer, her mother apparently an Irish Australian. After attending Mitcham Girls High School in Adelaide, Kerry, aged 16, travelled to Darwin and worked at Glen Helen near Hermannsburg as a chamber-maid. There she began drawing images of Namatjira country, which she sold to guests at the hotel. She then did basketwork and associated craftwork in Darwin, until motherhood and a desire to continue her studies led her back to Adelaide in 1984. An arsonist destroyed most of her art and led her to abandon her third and final year of study for a TAFE Associate Diploma in Fabric Design. By 1986, however, she was fully engaged in art again, and in that year won the South Australian Aboriginal Artist of the Year award.
In 1988 Giles spent some time as a trainee graphic artist with Co-Media and was invited (with Mitch Dunnett junior) to be Aboriginal Artist in Residence at Flinders University, where she produced her first limited editions of works on paper and curated her first exhibition, The Cutting Edge: new art from the Third and Fourth Worlds . In 1989 she worked on a major mural project at the Port Lincoln Aboriginal Organisation. Her art incorporated material about the Aboriginal struggle for land rights, deaths in custody, exploitation of the environment, and indigenous rights. These themes were developed at Tandanya in 1989-92 when she was a trainee exhibitions’ officer. She was particularly involved in East to West: Land in Papunya Tula painting (the 1990 Adelaide Festival exhibition), and in 1991 curated Two countries, one weave , an exhibition on the work of Maningrida and Ngarrindjeri weavers. A second residency at Flinders saw Giles develop a technique of marbling on fabric. She held her first solo show at Flinders Art Gallery, ooooh! I feel Good… .
1992 saw the production of a great range of silk paintings, linocuts, screenprints and etchings. She was one of three contributors to a Contemporary Art Centre of SA exhibition, Murrundi: three River Murray stories . In 1993 she held another solo exhibition, fab ART [et al. see Megaws]
Giles died suddenly on 21 July 1997. A retrospective was held at Flinders University Art Museum in August.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1959
- Summary
- Giles worked as an artist, activist and curator. She has many accolades to her name, including the South Australian Aboriginal Artist of the Year Award in 1986 and two Artist in Residencies at Flinder's University. A retrospective of her work was held in 1997, the year of her sudden death.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Jul-97
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mayilnpa, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born around Mayilnpa, just out of Alice Springs, c.1935 into a Luritja/Amnatyerre speaking family, George Bush was an associate of the original group of artists in Papunya in the early ’70s. At the time, he was living in Papunya working as a police tracker. For a time in the early ’80s he lived on a remote outstation in his wife’s country, but mainly divided his time between Papunya, where he painted for Papunya Tula Artists, and Alice Springs, where he occasionally painted for the Centre for Aboriginal Artists. His Dreamings were water snakes, spider, various plants and other types of bush tucker.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1940
- Summary
- Luritja/Anmatyerre artist who was also a police tracke. He was an associate of the original group of painters in Papunya in the early 1970s and also painted for the Centre for Aboriginal Artists in Alice Springs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1997
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, caricaturist, illustrator, writer and comic strip artist, was born in London on 13 April 1939. He sold his first cartoon to London’s Daily Sketch when aged 14. While doing National Service he worked on the British Army magazine Soldier as a cartoonist, press artist and art editor. Then he studied at Hornsey College of Art, graduating top of the school in 1963 (acc. obit.). He sold gags to Punch , Private Eye , the New Yorker (once) and, by syndication, to the Bulletin . An original cartoon dated 27 August 1967 (ML PXD 739) was drawn for the Sunday Telegraph , presumably after he moved to Australia. In Sydney, Buchanan took over from Rigby as feature cartoonist on the Daily Mirror in 1970-71; he was followed by Frank Benier .
Original Mirror caricatures by Buchanan are owned by the former premier of NSW Neville Wran, by Joan Sutherland and by the current Attorney-General of NSW. He then became chief graphic designer to the NSW Health Commission (1972-76), Creative Director, The Market Place (1976-80), partner with Mike Selby of Promotional Thinking (1980-84) then freelanced from 1984, including tutoring for the Australian College of Journalism’s cartooning course and regularly assisting at cartooning workshops conducted by the ABWAC at the Children’s Hospital. He illustrated numerous books with cartoons, including most of Peter Clyne’s Tax Avoidance books and some comic book titles from Avenue, Beaumont and Capricorn Books, but specialised in drawing comics in trade magazines, notably 'Polly the Pumper’ for the service station proprietors’ trade magazine, Australian Service Station . His best-known character was Captain Humungus who appeared in a strip in The Picture for years; a 1992 example featuring both the artist and the editor of the paper was reproduced in Inkspot 28, 19.
A longtime member of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club, Cole Buchanan served on its committee from November 1990 (including being elected NSW Vice President). He was also on the committee of the Federation of European Cartoonists’ Organization. In 1983 he won the API Packaging Award. His work was included in the Stanley exhibitions from 1990 and he won a silver Stanley in 1995. He lived at Balmain until his death from cerebral lymphoma (diagnosed April 1995) on 7 May 1997, aged 58. He was survived by his widow, Penny, and their three sons, Josh, Giles and Sam.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 13 April 1939
- Summary
- Late 20th century Sydney newspaper cartoonist, writer and designer. Creator of 'Captain Humungus'
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-May-97
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- artist, held a print exhibition at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond, Vic, in 1970, including a Dada poster, 'Mub wonk the greeve bleue stonk art-art Glop’.
Did a drawing for Overland 56 (Spring 1973), back cover.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1938
- Summary
- Significant late 20th century contemporary artist. One of the founders of the Annandale Imitation Realists of the early 1960s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Apr-97
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude-32.9144444 Longitude151.7491667 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Islington, Newcastle NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1929
- Summary
- Painter and sketcher who grew up in Carrington, Newcastle, and became one of the pioneers of the abstract expressionist movement in 1950s Sydney
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1997
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Joan Campbell MBE (1925-1997) was born in Geelong, Victoria, and spent her early years there before moving with her family to Western Australia in 1940. While recovering from the stillbirth of her third child, she took a hobby pottery class, and this led her to pursue pottery as a craft, building a wood-fire kiln in her Scarborough backyard with her father’s help, and teaching herself to fire it.
In 1959, she began work with Johannes de Blanken, a Dutch potter who had settled in WA. Later, she worked with Eileen Keys (1903-1992), who had resolved to use only locally available materials in her work. In 1966, the two experimented with the raku technique and this became Campbell’s preferred way of firing. Her pieces were mainly earthenware, some thrown and further manipulated, others handbuilt. She held her first solo exhibition at the Old Fire Station Gallery in 1969.
As the only potter in WA specialising in raku, and eager to discuss technical problems with a fellow practitioner, she contacted Paul Soldner, ‘the father of American raku’. He ended up organising an eye-opening information exchange tour for her to the United States in 1970. In 1971, prompted by Campbell, the Pottery Society of Australia invited Soldner to conduct a teaching tour of Australia. He visited Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Campbell herself conducted a three-day raku seminar in Melbourne in August of that year.
Now recognized nationally as an exponent of raku, she was selected with a group of other Australian potters to exhibit at the International Academy of Ceramics Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in 1972. She was surprised to find that she had been awarded the coveted Diploma of Art for her entry, a pot now in the V & A collection. As a titular member of the academy, she was invited to attend a symposium and made two hundred black and red ashtrays for Hammersley Mines to fund the trip. She revelled in overseas travel as a way of furthering her craft, and attended academy conferences into the 1990s.
Aided by her talent as a public speaker, she quickly assumed a larger persona. As well as appearing in a weekly television programme demonstrating and talking about pottery, she conducted workshops in country areas and set up pottery classes at the University of Western Australia for the Guild of Undergraduates. When the Western Australian Branch of the Crafts Association of Australia (later the Craft Association of Western Australia) was set up in 1968, she was elected secretary. She was a founding member of the Crafts Board of the Australia Council in 1973, and a member of the Australia Council from 1974 to 1977.
The MBE after her name was awarded in 1977, two years after she had moved her studio to an old sandstone building on Bathers Beach at Fremantle. She continued to develop and extend her own work there, and also began to take in trainees. By the twentieth birthday of the Bathers’ Beach workshop in 1995, forty-two people had spent an average of nine-twelve months each under her tutelage. Unlike other workshop owners of the time, Campbell did not use her trainees as assistants. They contributed to the financial and physical running of the workshop in exchange for professional development in raku firing and space to work on their own projects. Joint exhibitions helped to pay the bills.
Campbell’s preference for large-scale works encouraged public art commissions and these began to take up most of her time from the mid-1980s. While still loyal to clay and the pot form, she also found herself designing, making and erecting large murals, multimedia works incorporating steel, wood and glass, and complex environmental installations. She was preparing for an exhibition when she was diagnosed with cancer late in 1996. Former trainees and friends finished the work using glazes formulated by Greg Daly. She died on 5 March 1997, just weeks before the exhibition opened.
Writers:
Judith Pearce
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1925
- Summary
- Joan Campbell was a seminal figure in Australian and Western Australian ceramics. An early specialist in Raku, she created a substantial body of work, shared her knowledge at conferences and seminars, promoted Australian ceramics through memberships of national and international craft organisations and mentored a generation of potters at her workshop at Bathers Beach in Fremantle.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Mar-97
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude47 Longitude20 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hungary
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1923
- Summary
- Eidlitz was a graphic designer, working as an art director for USP Benson, Melbourne and working from his own studio. He received a Churchill Fellowship in 1965 and studied in the USA where he worked for NBC TV. He also visited the UK and Germany during his Fellowship. His work was exhibited widely.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-97
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Born in Ballarat, Victoria in 1921, Wilkinson studied at the School of Art, Ballarat School of Mines to gain a Drawing Teacher’s Certificate. Prior to serving in the Royal Australian Navy on HMAS Westralia, he spent a few months as a temporary teacher in the pottery department of The Melbourne Technical College (later to become RMIT), a time that was to strongly influence his choice of career. During World War II The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) Historical Records Section commissioned Wilkinson, then a serving member of the RAN as a war artist, and examples of his work were subsequently presented to the Australian War Memorial. Prior to the end of WW II the artist created two works that clearly demonstrate his ability to model clay; Japanese Prisoner of War and Admiral Sir Guy Royle, both made in 1944. Illustrating the artist’s ability to develop the minutest details, these works are transformed from basic portrait studies to a universal commentary on the human spirit.
On returning to The Melbourne Technical College after the war, not only as a teacher but also as a student to complete his teaching qualifications, Wilkinson established a studio with a large kiln and foundry at his home in Black Rock. It is believed that Wilkinson was the only artist in Australia at the time who cast his own works ensuring complete control over the process and allowing him the flexibility to manipulate the medium; it was in his home studio and foundry that the artist produced many of the works in this exhibition.Wilkinson was clearly adept at mastering the uncompromising physical realities of the clay but a ceramicist must also be able to understand the unpredictable and often mysterious process of firing. His ability to understand the chemical processes that occurred enabled him to master the kiln and from there he began to experiment with metal casting.
Having learned traditional technical skills in ceramics and casting, Wilkinson was well equipped to produce a body of work that was meticulous in its craftsmanship. However, in this case the artist’s attitude toward sculpture is directed toward the process; the process of how he works and how he thinks in relation to the materials. It is not based on a desire to mystify the viewer, but rather a desire to transform the mundane into something quite extraordinary. In an artist statement for an unknown exhibition he wrote, “I believe that only through craftsmanship and a perfect understanding of materials and the principles of Art is it possible to achieve true self-expression.”
In works such as Blue Rider, 1953, the oversized, highly stylized figure dwarfs the horse she rides side saddle. Her arms are over long, her legs truncated and yet the overall impression is of a work of elegant simplicity. Blue Rider was included in the exhibition at the Arts Festival of the Olympic Games, Melbourne, in 1956. Previously the Olympic Charter prescribed that a Fine Arts Competition must be held during the Olympic Games. In 1955 the International Olympic Committee decided that an Arts Festival was more appropriate and in 1956 the first of these was held in Melbourne as part of the official Olympic Games programme. The importance of the inclusion of this work in an exhibition that also included notable ceramicists Ivan McMeekin, Klytie Pate and Peter Rushforth along with heavyweight painters such as Arthur Boyd, John Brack, Louis Buvelot, Charles Conder, Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts gives context to Wilkinson’s place within the art world of the time. Wilkinson also exhibited regularly with the Victorian Sculptors’ Society from the early 1950s alongside Inge King, Lenton Parr, Julius Kane and other members of the Centre Five who broke away from the Society in 1961. He remained a close friend of Lenton Parr and would often spend Sunday mornings at his home with both Parr and fellow artist Roger Kemp.
At this time clay was Wilkinson’s preferred medium to create both sculptural and utilitarian objects, the latter however often showing a sculptural quality as evidenced in Pot, which was included in the exhibition Australian and New Zealand Pottery organised by the National Gallery of Victoria to tour State galleries from 1963 to 1964. In an article on the exhibition in The Australian, 22 August, 1964, Elwyn Lynn evocatively describes this work as “… a blackish, sculpturesque pot with protruding gun muzzles – like a new weaponry awaiting victory garlands.”
With a long and successful career teaching at RMIT from 1946 when he was appointed Assistant Pottery Instructor through to his position as Senior Lecturer of Ceramics from which he retired in 1985, Wilkinson saw many of his students develop successful careers in the arts. Peter Rushforth, one of Australia’s most revered ceramic artists, was not only a contemporary of Wilkinson’s but also his student in the early years of his teaching career. And while students such as Rushforth continued to develop their skills with clay at a time when others began to look to follow overseas movements, Wilkinson chose to look to other mediums.
Wilkinson was experimenting with casting a variety of metals in the early 60s using electroplated copper (Whistling Man, 1962) and later in the 1970s with aluminium. Working alongside close friend and artist, Harold Freedman, on a commission for Melbourne’s new international airport, Tullamarine, Wilkinson created semi-abstract flying shapes in cast aluminium to complement the nine panels painted by Freedman depicting the evolution of flight. Later he was to develop a theme of ‘survival and disintegration’ with a series of sand cast signposts as well as other abstract works which showed a new conceptual development in his work. Along with the use of contemporary materials and methods Wilkinson also explored the possibilities of using plastics in sculpture.
It is with the medium of bronze that the artist most fully realised his considerable talent for modelling. There is a palpable human presence in Wilkinson’s bronze sculptures, the striking specificity of their form repaying the artist’s investment of time and labour. His sense of humour is apparent in works such as Self portrait as jester (date unknown) and The Rotter (date unknown) both first modelled in wax and then cast ‘cire perdu’ in his studio workshop. In other untitled figurative works it is possible to see references to Giacometti and Brancusi and even a touch of “Boterismo”, while the wall sculptures Christus Rex and St Francis recall a modernist take on a medieval religious sculptural tradition. Wilkinson also meticulously modelled a series of elegant (undated) horses and unicorns; these quite eccentric but timeless animals demonstrated the artist’s desire and ability to achieve a formal perfection.
Described as a “somewhat self-effacing artist at a time when egocentricity is probably a better proposition” in an unidentified 1960s newspaper, the artist is clearly portrayed as being unassuming both in his work and in his desire to make art. Whether working in clay, cement fondu, bronze or fibreglass relief, it is clear that his work is always about a process, not about potential sales or public recognition. The result is a strange, paradoxical oeuvre. At its heart stands a devotion to art making and yet the modesty of the artist’s ambition saw him exist outside the art world.
Allan Jeffery Beeson Wilkinson1921 – 1997The Melbourne Technical College/ RMIT1946-66 Instructor of Pottery1967-68 Senior Lecturer of Pottery1969-74 Lecturer of Pottery1975 Senior Lecturer of Pottery1976-1985 Senior Lecturer of Ceramics
List of exhibitions1948 _Pottery exhibition _at The Wattle Tea Rooms, Ballarat1956 The Arts Festival of the Olympic Games, Melbourne1958 Retrospect, Five Years, Victorian Sculptors Society1959 Brighton High School exhibition 1961 Nine Melbourne Sculptors, Argus Gallery, Melbourne1962 Four Arts in Australia, touring exhibition to South East Asia1963 Jeffery Wilkinson and Andor Meszaros, Argus Gallery, Melbourne1964 Australian and New Zealand Pottery, touring exhibition by National Gallery of Victoria1967 Jeffery Wilkinson, solo exhibition at Leveson Street Gallery, North Melbourne1970 Captain Cook Bicentennial Sculpture Award, Melbourne1990 Solo exhibition, Victorian Sculptors Society1993 VAS Artist of the Year, Victorian Sculptors Society1994 _St Vincent’s Hospital _Exhibition1997 Solo exhibition, St Vincent’s Hospital2000 Melbourne 1956, National Gallery of Victoria2000 Solo exhibition, Kirwan’s Bridge Winery2013 Jeffery Wilkinson:Untitled, The Gallery @ BACC
Commissions and PrizesC 1948 Empire War Medal 1939-45 PrizeC 1964 Christus Rex St John’s Anglican Church, Wodonga1970 The Alcoa Citizenship Award, Corroboree, Newcomb High School1970 Christus Rex St Aidan’s Anglican Church, Box Hill1970 The History of Flight, Tullamarine Airport with Harold FreedmanC 1970 Victorian Amateur Athletics Association Annual Award
Writers:
Skater12
duggim
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- While Wilkinson is best known as a potter and teacher at Melbourne Technical College, he also worked in metal sculpture and designed timber furniture in an Arts and Crafts style. Employed as an Official War Artist in the 1939-45 War, his work was included in the 1956 Olympic Games Arts Festival.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1997
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.5628557 Longitude148.6610118 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Canowindra, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Elwyn Augustus (Jack) Lynn was born on 6 November 1917 at Canowindra, New South Wales the son Leonora (née Johns) and William James Lynn, a labourer. When the boy was two his father obtained work as an assistant fitter on the NSW railways and the family moved to Junee. He attended primary school at Junee and high school at Wagga Wagga where he completed his Leaving Certificate.He was subsequently awarded a Teaching Scholarship to the University of Sydney. While his major was in English, he also studied philosophy and came under the influence of the philosopher John Anderson. He was introduced to art as a part of his Diploma of Education at Sydney Teachers College, and subsequently became involved in the NSW branch of the Contemporary Art Society and in 1954 became its secretary. The society put out a newsletter, the CAS Broadsheet, which Lynn made the most influential publication of its day on Australian art. He arranged for air mail subscriptions of major international art journals, so that throughout the 1950s local artists were told of the activities of New York, Paris and other centres. In 1963 he was elected President of the Contemporary Art Society.Throughout the 1950s his own painting began to move towards abstraction. His love of language and the physical shape of letters sometimes led to titles that were word games and sometimes he included fragments of letters in paintings. He was awarded the Blake Prize in 1957 for Betrayal which was seen at the time as a radical abstract painting. In 1963 Lynn succeeded Robert Hughes as art critic for the tabloid Sunday Mirror. He was subsequently appointed an art critic for new publication, The Australian, but soon moved to the Bulletin. He returned as senior art critic for the Weekend Australian in 1983, a position he relinquished in 1995. His interest ideas of freedom led him to join the CIA influenced Australian Association for Cultural Freedom. He subsequently became associate editor, and then editor of their publication, Quadrant.In 1956 he married Lily Luise Walter, who had spent much of her girlhood in Weimar in Nazi Germany, where her father had managed to conceal knowledge of her Jewish ancestry from both herself and the authorities. In 1958 he took long service leave to travel with Lily to Europe, to get a sense of the culture that had shaped Australia’s European emigrés. At the Venice Biennale he was exposed to the rich textures of “matter painting”, which had a profound influence on his own work. His texture based works led to him being included in the 1961 Whitechapel Exhibition of Recent Australian Painting. In 1968, while he was teaching English and history at Cleveland Boys High, Bernard Smith, the Power Professor at the University of Sydney, suggested he apply for the position of curator at the Power Collection. In the following years he enriched the collection with innovative purchases of works by Josef Beuys, Enrico Baj, Marcel Duchamp, all at the height of their fame, as well as works by artists at the beginning of their careers, including Ed Keinholz and Sean Scully. There was an assumption at the time that Australian artists could not belong in a contemporary collection. While he could not buy their work, it could be given. As a result, the Power Collection soon boasted of works donated by Sidney Nolan.Lynn’s association with Quadrant led him into conflict with his colleagues, many of whom were vocal opponents of the war in Vietnam. As a result his years at the University of Sydney were not especially happy ones. In these years he forged closer personal relations with the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education (later the College of Fine Arts, UNSW, which later named a room in his honour. He was awarded an AM in 1975. In 1976 he was appointed Chair of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council. This time coincided with an economic recession and a subsequent significant reduction in arts funding. As a result he advocated for more funds to be directed to contemporary art.Despite his failing health, including poor eyesight, Lynn continued to paint until shortly before he died. Unlike sone artists whose work declines with their health, Lynn’s vigorous last works look as though they were painted by an artist in his prime.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2021
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 16 November 1917
- Summary
- Artist, critic and cultural warrior Elwyn (Jack) Lynn was one of the most influential figures in mid-twentieth century Australian art. In the 1950s as his own painting became progressively more abstract, he educated his colleagues via his editorship of the Contemporary Art Society Bulletin. He was the first Curator of the Power Collection at the University of Sydney
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Jan-97
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and pianist, was born in Brisbane on 13 May 1916 and educated at the Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School. Ella Robinson’s formal art training began with an apprenticeship to Morden & Bentley, a local commercial art firm, in about 1934. In 1935 she moved to Sydney and studied art and music concurrently, attending the National Art School at East Sydney Technical College in 1936-39 and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1936-40. In 1940 she returned to Brisbane and held an exhibition of paintings and drawings with Vera Cottew and Muriel Foote ( Shaw ) from which the Queensland National Art Gallery purchased Ella’s self portrait. Over the following years, she exhibited her paintings and prints regularly, often through the Royal Queensland Art Society. Her series of linocuts, Interpretations of Music by Moussorgsky (1942), was purchased by the Queensland Gallery from the 1942 annual exhibition of the Royal Art Society of Queensland in Brisbane. (The National Gallery of Australia has another copy, purchased 1989.) Gnomus 1941 (6.2 × 11.5 cm, inscr. l.r. 'Gnomus’, l.r. 'Ella J. Robinson/1941’) is the first print in the 1941-2 series inspired to illustrate Pictures at an Exhibition , a suite by the Russian composer Modeste Moussorgsky (1839-81) who himself had been inspired by a memorial exhibition of watercolours and drawings by his friend Victor Hartmann (1834-73). She owned a copy of Moussorgsky’s score (Art Gallery of Western Australia) with the following preface:
'It is a serie [sic] of ten pieces, each bearing the name of a picture, the impression of which the composer has tried to translate into music. The Prelude and Interludes, each entitled PROMENADE, consist of one theme with variations which conveys the idea of the composer strolling amongst the pictures.’
A list of the ten pieces and a description of each image follows. The subjects fall into three categories: images such as Tuileries: Children Quarrelling at Play and The Market Place at Limoges inspired by Hartmann’s travels, images derived from traditional Russian folklore such as Hut of the Baba-Yaga (a witch in Russian mythology) and architectural studies and general sketches. Hartmann was one of the most important architectural figures within the 'Balakirev’ circle which, through the use of techniques and images from peasant handcrafts, folk song and legend and the traditions of medieval Russia, sought to establish a 'Slavonic renaissance’. Many of his drawings included in his 1874 memorial exhibition incorporated such traditional references. Fry, however, had not seen any reproductions of Hartmann’s paintings. Wishing to make a visual interpretation of the music she was playing at the time, she based her designs solely on the brief descriptions given in Moussorgsky’s score. That for Gnomus is 'a drawing representing a dwarf, who totters with faltering steps on his little legs’. Her dwarf is walking down a long dark corridor. Spot-lit in an open doorway, he hesitates, perhaps startled, and as if unsure whether to continue along the corridor or change direction towards the light source. This unknown element creates a foreboding atmosphere and implies a malevolent presence. Whether the source of this malevolence is the dwarf or something unseen by all except the dwarf is not clear. Strongly cast shadows play a major part in this image, indeed, in more than half of the ten images in the series. Used to suggest the presence of a figure or force just beyond the picture frame, this gives them a personal, darkly atmospheric continuity.
Fry’s images were unusual in the context of Australian printmaking at the time, normally characterised by the decorative work of artists such as Margaret Preston and Thea Proctor . There is, however, a visual and thematic link between these dark images and the distinctly Australian brand of Surrealism that emerged, in part, as a reaction to the horrors of World War II. A similar tone is evident in some of the works of artists like Russell Drysdale , Peter Purves-Smith and James Cant , whose dark and foreboding images were personal expressions of the pervasive uncertainty and fear of the era. Redolent with cultural references, Ella Fry’s prints are primarily highly individualistic expressions that represent a culmination of her personal interest in music and art. Informed by contemporary social issues, they can also be read against the broader backdrop of Australian art during World War II.
In 1943-45 Ella Robinson taught music and art at the Tamworth Church of England Girls School. Her musical career was also maintained. In addition to frequent piano recitals and solo performances she produced radio broadcasts for the ABC until 1948. In 1945 she married Melville Fry. Two years later, they moved to Perth where her dual career continued under the name of Ella Fry. Her involvement in the visual arts expanded in 1956 when she was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Art Gallery of Western Australia. She was Vice-Chair of the Board from 1970 and Chair in 1976-86. In 1983 she was awarded the CBE. Ella Fry died on 17 May 1997 – in Brisbane according to Butler (although she was still living in Perth when contacted re Heritage in 1995). She is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Western Australia, as well as in numerous university, regional and private collections.
Writers:
Grant, Kirsty
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 May 1916
- Summary
- Ella Fry was painter, teacher, printmaker and pianist whose prints had a dark, almost surrealist quality reflecting the uncertain times in which she lived. She lived a full life as an artist, musician and producer for the ABC.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-May-97
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Sydney on 16 November 1916 and lived at Rose Bay and Burwood. Her parents came from Clayton near Bradford, Yorkshire, migrating to Australia during World War I. She attended Rose Bay, Darlinghurst and Paddington primary schools and Burwood High but left school at sixteen, without her Leaving Certificate, and enrolled in Commercial Art at East Sydney Technical College where she studied drawing, life drawing, oil painting, watercolour and lettering with Frank Medworth , Douglas Dundas , Herbert Badham , William Dobell , Arthur Murch , Charles Meere and others. Notable fellow students included Lorna Nimmo , Rosaleen Norton and James Gleeson . Norton modelled for one of Robertshaw’s paintings as well as many of Meere’s. In 1937 she completed her art course and, with the encouragement of Meere, decided to compete for the 1938 Travelling Art Scholarship. Meere offered to train her in figure painting and she became his apprentice. Working in his two-roomed commercial art studio at 24 Bond Street, Robertshaw executed the first of her eight major neoclassical figure paintings (e.g. Picnic 1938, see Sotheby’s catalogue Nov 1998, lot 11). Meere’s best-known work, Australian Beach Pattern (1940, AGNSW), was her training ground and – in the tradition of the student following the master – she meticulously painted a feminised version. Robertshaw learnt her craft so well that her paintings of this period have frequently been mistaken for Meere’s.
She entered the scholarship four times (1938-44) until ineligible due to age restrictions. By 1944 her traditional, conservative approach had been eclipsed by 'the revolution in modern art’ and the judges awarded the prize to the more 'contemporary’ work of Anne Wienholt . Freed from the constraints of the scholarship and feeling oppressed by Meere and his painting style, Robertshaw decided to leave the studio and wean herself from his influence. She started up her own commercial art studio in a room in the same building, but it was a difficult and lonely time. Clients were hard to find. She decided to work freelance for the industrial advertiser L.B. Rennie. In 1944, aged thirty, with a secure income and the encouragement of her friend Fred Esch, a journalist, she moved away from home and rented a room in the Esch home in Mosman, where she remained for three years before returning home to Burwood. She continued industrial drawing at Rennie’s for the rest of her working life.
The self portrait, Standing Nude (1944), was her last figure painting and symbolised a final break from Meere. Returning to her original passion for watercolour landscapes and flower paintings, she exhibited these with the Society of Artists, the Royal Art Society and the Australian Watercolour Institute. On her retirement, Robertshaw purchased a small house in the Blue Mountains where she continued to live until her death on 10 May 1997. The importance of her neoclassical figure painting was not recognised until 1988, but now these rare examples in her oeuvre are keenly sought by museums and private collectors.
Writers:
Slutzkin, Linda
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 November 1916
- Summary
- Painter of neoclassical figure paintings and landscapes, Robertshaw knew lean times as a commercial artist, exhibited with the Society of Artists, the Royal Art Society and the Australian Watercolour Institute, and retired to live in the Blue Mountains.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-May-97
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-37.8576088 Longitude145.0350666 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Malvern, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Malvern in suburban Melbourne. In the 1930s he lived in Sydney studying at ESTC and drawing freelance cartoons and comic strips for the Bulletin and Smith’s Weekly . His first cartoons were published in the Bulletin , eg. “You bin wrong all this time, Mum. It wuz a crow, not a goanna” (Dave fishing an object out of the water tank) 1936 (ill. Lindesay 1994, 15), or – better because the style of drawing is more original) – pathetic cow cockie, “Looks like somebody’s bought the next block, Ma” 31 March 1937. The first meeting of the reformed Black and White Sketch Club – which had collapsed with Cec. Hartt 's death in 1930 – was held in Arthur Horner’s Sydney studio on 8 September 1937. Vane Lindesay reports that the room was so small the artists present had to crawl over each other to sketch the model hired for the night.
After serving as a captain in the AIF’s military history section during World War II – where he was in charge of Privates Donald Friend and Sali Herman – Horner arrived in London in 1947 [1946 acc. Senyard; left in 1946 acc. Atkinson, p.53]. There he studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. He drew for Lilliput and the Leader , produced political cartoons for the Tribune and worked on the News Chronicle (1950-60) where his masterpiece 'Colonel Pewter’ began in 1952. After the paper folded, he moved to the Daily Mail , then in 1964 joined the Guardian where Colonel Pewter, which he took with him, continued until 1970; it was syndicated to the Age from 1962 to September 1970. He wrote as well as illustrated all 54 stories in the Pewter series. He also contributed cartoons to the New Statesman (he was political cartoonist for it in 1966-71 according to Atkinson), Punch , Private Eye and The Times . He was a close friend of Vicky, the great post-war London cartoonist.
Horner returned to Melbourne in 1976 where he contributed to the Age . In 1977 her drew a new 'Colonel Pewter’ strip to celebrate the Centenary Test titled The Pukka Ashes (ill. Lindesay 1979, 326), but then dropped it despite public enthusiasm. As he explained in a letter to the Age :
“As for the question of [permanent] revival I was equally sorry to let old readers down but once off the treadmill of a daily strip the act of climbing back on again was more than this weak flesh could undertake and in any case I feel a good wheeze runs its course and shouldn’t be pushed any further” (quoted Lindesay 1979, 82).
Instead, he began a weekly satire showing the angel 'Uriel’ bewildered by Australian institutions, manners and customs (1976-79: one original SLV). Lindesay (1979, 83) called it 'positively brilliant satire’ and 'the finest feature being drawn for the Press in this country in recent times’. He also did theatre drawings (e.g. Japanese kabuki theatre) and occasional political cartoons for the Age (eg. 14 June 1986, ill. Senyard), like he had previously done for the New Statesman . David Swain reported he had scored the originals of 'Horner’s social history series “Our Lot” [done] for The Age ' for the NMA in an article on the NMA collection in the Bulletin (11 November 1988, p.110) illustrated with Horner’s brilliant gag of a young woman examining the work of an exhausted cartoonist (self-portrait?), who says: “It’ll get by the Editor and make the readers laugh – but what about a student doing his PhD a hundred years from now?”
In 1979 he was among the eleven cartoonists included in the Age 'Black and White’ 125th anniversary exhibition at the Age Gallery, 250 Spencer Street – staff cartoons and photographs – along with Leunig, Nicholson, Petty, Spooner, Tandberg, Tanner, et al (reviewed by Mary Eagle, Age 5 October 1979). He had a solo exhibition at the Age gallery in the 1970s.
Horner was married to the cartoonist and illustrator Vic Cowdroy , who predeceased him. The then lived in retirement in Melbourne until his death on 25 January 1997. Two daughters – Jane Sullivan (an Age journalist) and Julia Houghton – stepdaughter Diane Romney and his two brothers, Frank and Jack Horner, survived him.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 10 May 1916
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Melbourne, Sydney and London newspaper cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Jan-97
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude53.9015775 Longitude-0.3827242 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hull, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Jack Koskie, painter, printmaker, teacher and graphic designer, was born in Hull, Yorkshire in 1914. At the age of sixteen he embarked upon his first sea voyage in an Iceland-bound trawler; the sea later proved to be an important theme in this artist’s oeuvre. In around 1930, while Koskie was a student at the Hull College of the Arts, he was awarded a scholarship to study art in Rotterdam and Paris. In the next stage of his travels, Koskie emigrated to Australia in 1939 where he continued his artistic training at East Sydney Tech and later at Hobart Tech.
During the Second World War, Koskie served in the Merchant Navy and then with the Australian Army Engineers as a camouflage designer. Upon his discharge, he travelled around Australia with “brush and pen” in hand, exploring his adopted homeland and studying the scenery it had to offer. In what was to be a rich and varied career, Koskie first settled in Sydney and worked as a publisher’s designer and illustrator for many of Australia’s leading publications such as Invisible Press, The Sydney Morning Herald, Women’s Weekly, as well as the Commonwealth Office of Education in Sydney and Tasmanian Government Printer. Later moving to Tasmania, he served as the Head of the Department of Graphic Design and Print Making at the Hobart Technical College. This was followed by his position as lecturer in Printmaking at the Gordon Institute of Technology, Geelong, his tenure of office as the senior art master at Mount Scopus College near Melbourne, Victoria, and his time as Lecturer in Printmaking at Deakin University, where he finished his teaching career in 1979.
Whilst serving in the various teaching positions just mentioned, Koskie had continued his own artistic practice in painting (oils and watercolours) and printmaking (for example lithography). A key work in his career was the illustrated publication Ships that Shaped Australia (Sydney: A & R, 1987). The result of years of extensive research, this book contained images of ships, painted by Koskie that had played a key role in the history of Australia. With an eye for detail and historical accuracy, Koskie attempted to ascertain the weather on the day a ship entered the harbour for the first time, including wind direction. In some cases, such as Kangaroo Point in Brisbane, the artist visited the harbour in question to capture the light and landscape for his scenery. Koskie received a range of commissions owing to his unique knowledge as a marine specialist, including the Story of Ships for the NSW Department of Education; Golden Fleece, Captain Cook Centenary Calendar; illustrated shipping features for The Sydney Morning Herald and Reveille, R.S.L. magazine; and a painting for the Geelong Historical Society’s Matthew Flinders celebrations.
Throughout his career, Koskie, exhibited with several major art societies, including the Victorian Artists Society and the Art Society of Tasmania. He further participated in a wide range of group exhibitions including the Lord Mayors Art Prize (Melbourne), ACTA Marine Paintings Prize and the St Kilda Arts Festival. His first solo show was held at Coombe Down Galleries in Newtown Victoria in 1971, where he exhibited landscape paintings of Geelong and nearby locations, as well as scenes from his time in New South Wales and Tasmania. A comprehensive retrospective showcase of his work was held at Sandridge Gallery, Port Melbourne in October 1998.
Furthermore, Koskie received several awards during his career including the Ben Uri Art Prize (1963), Cato Art Prize for his oil painting Figure at the Pier (1970), Carlyon Graham Art Prize for his painting Low Tide Queenscliff (1969), Roland Prize (1970), Applied Chemical Prize (1975) and the Lord Mayors Art Prize, (Melbourne City Council) (1980). Adding to his accomplishments, Koskie was a member of the Journalist Club of New South Wales, the Victorian Artist Society and he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (London).
Following a unique and diverse artistic career in Australia, Jack Koskie passed away in 1997.
The art of Jack Koskie is represented in several prominent public Australian collections including the Australian War Memorial, Canberra; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; Government House, Hobart and Broken Hill Art Gallery, as well as private collections in the UK, USA and Australia.
Writers:
Staff Writer
ecwubben
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1914
- Summary
- Koskie was a representational painter and graphic designer. He was the chief designer of the Commonwealth Office of Education (Sydney) Sydney and the Tasmanian Government Printer. He became a published author and illustrator in 1987.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1997
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude45.6496485 Longitude13.7772781 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Trieste, Italy
- Biography
- Stanislaus Rapotec, painter, was born in Trieste, Italy, on 4 October 1913. In 1918 he and his parents relocated to Yugoslavia. He later studied economics and art history at Zagreb University (c.1933-39) where he was an active member of student life, being involved in student unions and serving as the secretary-general of the interuniversity union of Yugoslav students. After completing his studies, Rapotec began his first job at the National Bank of Yugoslavia in Split, Dalmatia.
During the Second World War Rapotec served with the Allied forces in Europe and the Middle East (1941-48) for which he received a captain’s commission and assisted migration to a Commonwealth country of his choice. He arrived in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1948 and resumed his study of economics, as well as his interest in painting. Rapotec’s first solo exhibition was held at John Martin Gallery, Adelaide in 1952.
In 1955 Rapotec travelled to Sydney and continued his artistic practice in a studio on Phillip Street. He later settled in Victoria Street, where at one stage he shared a house with other notable artists including John Passmore, Bob Hughes, Leonard Hessing and John Olsen. These artists occupied studios in Rapotec’s house for a short period of time around 1960. Sali Herman and Russell Drysdale were other prominent artists also living in the area. In an interview with James Gleeson, Rapotec commented upon the invigorating artistic milieu that arose with all these artists in close proximity to one another, thereby supporting the exchange of ideas.
Rapotec was a leading exponent of abstract expressionism, which he adopted with resounding conviction after moving to Sydney. In the early 1960s he was seen as one of Australia’s most radical painters, producing original compositions with sweeping, gestural brushstrokes that reflected a meditative, subconscious and spontaneous response to mark-making. After the late 1950s he switched exclusively to painting in acrylics. He painted directly on hardboard without referring to preparatory sketches, in the process maintaining the spontaneity and vigour of his work. Fellow Sydney artist Judy Cassab painted his portrait for the Archibald prize in 1960, for which she won the coveted art prize, with the work being purchased by the AGNSW in the following year.
In 1961 he got married and also achieved his first major success in open competitions when he won the Blake prize. Meditating on Good Friday, a large abstract-expressionist composition, was the prize-winning work. He continued to exhibit regularly at the annual Blake Prize from 1954 to 1963 and also contributed to the annual Contemporary Art Society shows in Adelaide and Sydney during the 1950s. Significant international group exhibitions in which Rapotec participated included ‘Australian Paintings,’ San Francisco (1959), the Sao Paolo Biennale, Brazil (1961) and the Exhibition of Australian Paintings at the Tate Gallery, London in 1963. Between 1952 and 1984 Rapotec also had 24 solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally, including the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, in 1975.
In 1973, Rapotec’s painting Corpus Christi in Seville was hung in room number 53 of the Vatican, which was beneath the altar of the Sistine Chapel. His work was one of a collection of works in the Vatican Gallery of Modern Religious Art, which was opened by Pope Paul VI that year.
Following the death of his wife in 1976, Rapotec spent more time travelling and painting in Europe. On 26 January 1989, he received the prestigious honour of becoming a Member of the Order of Australia for Service to the Arts. He suffered a stroke in 1995 from which he never fully recovered and died in Sydney on 9 December 1997.
Included amongst the numerous awards Rapotec received during his artistic career were the Grand Prize, Daily Mirror-Waratah (1961), the Daily Mirror-Waratah Prize for Drawings (1962) and the Royal Sydney Show, Woolworth Prize (1963).
The art of Stanislaus Rapotec is represented in several Australian public collections including the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Baillieu Library Print Collection, The University of Melbourne and the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. His work is also held in the Art Gallery of Wellington, New Zealand, as well as private collections in Australia, New Zealand, USA and England.
Writers:
ecwubben
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1913
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1997
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and graphic artist, was born in Sydney on 18 January 1909, third daughter of Francis Alfred Alison Russell, a barrister, and Lillian, née Salter, who had studied art with Mary Stoddard . Elsa gained her intermediate certificate at Abbotsleigh School. She studied drawing for a year at East Sydney Technical College but was unable to continue for financial reasons. She attended Dattilo Rubbo 's painting and drawing classes on a casual basis in 1932-34; fellow students included Alison Rehfisch and Donald Friend . She recalls that Rubbo provided 'a welcome European influence in the Sydney art scene’.
World War II changed her life. As a member of the Women’s Australian Auxiliary Air Force in 1942-45, Russell worked as a driver at Uranquinty, a Service Flying Training School about twenty-four kilometres south of Wagga Wagga. In addition, she refuelled aircraft and issued petrol. She also made time to sketch fellow WAAAFs and draw caricatures of officers at the base. In 1946-47, under the Commonwealth Rehabilitation Training Scheme, she returned to East Sydney Tech. and studied life drawing under Godfrey Miller.
Elsa always had the ability to capture movement and life. A chance meeting with Phillip Wirth of Wirth’s Circus in 1950 inspired her to sketch the performers and the horses going through their paces in the early morning. She spent the following year drawing and painting the Borovansky Ballet Company, also in Sydney. These works were shown in 1951 in the foyers of His Majesty’s Theatres in Sydney and Melbourne in an exhibition shared with Dora Jarret and Piers Bourke. Her first solo exhibition opened at David Jones Art Gallery in 1952; Character from a Ballet and The Fowlyard were selected by the Contemporary Art Society for their annual interstate exhibition. In 1955 she travelled overseas and made a series of paintings of the Cirque de Medrano, Paris, and the Mills of Olympia Circus, London. She survived by teaching English and by selling her art through Galerie Herve. These drawings are vital and brisk and the paintings employ bold colour.
Family commitments drew Russell back to Sydney in 1956. She attended a sketch club in Cremona Court, Phillip Street, where her sister Audrey, a watercolourist, and Sheila McDonald had studios. For a short time Elsa ran a taxi-truck service transporting art for friends. In 1960 she drew and painted the Luisillo Spanish Dance Troupe in Sydney and made posters for them. She captured the excitement of the track in her painting At the Races that won the Tumut Art Prize in 1961. During the 1970s she exhibited with her sister Audrey at the Barefoot Gallery, Avalon. In 1986-87 she participated in the Australian Watercolour Institute’s annual exhibition; the Woolloomooloo Gallery held a retrospective of her work in 1989 and Artarmon Galleries held what proved to be a “tribute” exhibition from her family and friends in December 1997.
Although art was central to Elsa Russell’s life, she had a passion for music and played the piano as a child. She made regular trips from her Turramurra home to sketch in the bush and some of her later work dealt with the protection of native fauna, on which topic she designed posters. Russell had laughing, brown eyes and even when her hair was white remained as lively and lucid as she must have been when young. Her Anglican faith remained strong until her death on 25 November 1997. Artarmon Galleries gave her a retrospective exhibition, held 11-20 December 1997.
Writers:
Littley, Samantha
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 January 1909
- Summary
- Russell, a painter and graphic artist had laughing, brown eyes and even when her hair was white remained lively and lucid. She was drawn to ballet and circus troupes, studying their performers both in Australia and abroad, often using her graphic skills to produce posters for them.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Nov-97
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-33.960707 Longitude151.1003611 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hurstville, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1908
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Jun-97
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and art teacher, was born in Sydney on 23 January 1906, daughter of Robert F. Irvine, and Florence J. née Herborn. Her father was an artist and a bibliophile who commisioned bookplates from Sydney Long and knew Julian Ashton. Ysobel was educated at the Presbyterian Ladies College and, in the 1920s, attended Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School where she contributed to the art students’ magazine, Undergrowth . In the late 1920s she studied design with Thea Proctor , then became a voluntary worker with the 'Children’s Library Movement and Leisure Time Classes’ teaching art to students after school hours. This work was later abandoned to allow Irvine to nurse her ailing mother, who died in 1939. Most of Ysobel Irvine’s prints were produced during her years at Sydney Art School, including cover designs for Art in Australia (September 1927 and December 1928). She returned to study teaching in about 1945, studying painting with Roland Wakelin. She taught 'Design and Colour Theory’ at the Double Bay Design School (where she had been Wakelin’s pupil) and at other times at Abbotsleigh and Frensham (when Ainsworth was overseas) in 1959-61.
From 1964 to 1975 she taught drawing and creative painting at the Workshop Art Centre, Willoughby (NSW), where she was described as a sweet person and a very sensitive and encouraging teacher whose classes were always extremely popular.
Writers:
Johnson, Heather
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 January 1906
- Summary
- Painter, printmaker, designer and art teacher, born in Sydney on 23 January 1906. Her designs appeared on the cover of Art and Australia in the late 1920s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1997
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.8772 Longitude151.1049 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burwood, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Architect, Sydney.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- Winsome Hall Andrew was a Sydney architect. She was born in 1905 and died in 1997.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1997
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-40.1375859 Longitude175.6608381 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1997-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cheltenham, New Zealand
- Biography
- The career of Frederick Halford Coventry (1905-1997) epitomises the concept of art in industry, and industry in art. A muralist, painter, printmaker, glass artist, poster designer and book-illustrator, he attracted recognition in the fine and commercial art sectors for the decorative linearity of his work. Born in Cheltenham, New Zealand, in 1905, Coventry grew up in Tokomaru Bay. After enrolling for a brief time at Elam School of Art in Auckland in 1922, he studied under Harry Linley Richardson at Wellington Technical College from 1922 until 1926. The impact Richardson had on Coventry was immense, leading to his life-long commitment to viewing art as an integral part of everyday life. Much of Coventry’s study was done at night-school while supporting himself by working as a draughtsman by day. The emergence of Coventry’s highly individual style was encouraged by Julian Ashton at the Sydney School of Art where Coventry enrolled in 1926. The work which first brought Coventry to public attention was his Self-Portrait, pencil drawing (1927). Notable for its cinematic modernity and meticulous attention to detail, the drawing featured in the Society of Artists’ “Special Exhibition” at the David Jones Art Gallery in Sydney in May of 1929. In 1929, Coventry relocated to London to study engraving under Iain Macnab, developing a far from traditional approach to the medium. Impressed by his work, Malcolm Salaman published Coventry’s engraving Apples & Birds of Paradise in The Studio. Several of his engravings also featured in the “Exhibition of Modern Prints” at the Twenty One Gallery, London, in December 1929. Praise from the art critic for The Times led to Coventry holding a solo exhibition of his drawings and engravings at the Twenty One Gallery in February, 1930. The Contemporary Arts Society purchased Temporary Staircase, an engraving of scaffolding at a building site, for the British Museum Print Room. Assigning as much energy to his commercial art as his fine art, Coventry had a client list resembling a trade directory. His clients included: the Australian Broadcasting Commission, Australian National Travel Association, British Petroleum Ltd, British Home Office, British Imperial Airways, British Post Office, The Daily Telegraph, Egyptian State Railways, London Transport, New Zealand Shipping Co Ltd, Shell Mex, Southern Railways, Union Steam Ship Co of New Zealand and the Wellington Wool Manufacturing Co Ltd. Examples of his advertising art appeared in The Studio, Commercial Art, Modern Publicity and Advertising Word. His poster for Southern Railways, Winter Sunshine Holidays In Southern England, featured in the “British Art in Industry Exhibition”, London (1935). Coventry was also invited to travel to Egypt to design posters for the Egyptian Government’s Railways and Tourist Departments and the Orient Line. James Gleeson noted that William Dobell occupied Coventry’s Bayswater studio-flat while he was in Egypt, and on his return they shared it for a time, making sketches of London street scenes from the windows. (Dobell’s portrait of Coventry is now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales collection). The rapidly expanding travel market also provided Coventry with interior design commissions. He was among leading artists selected by Edward Brian O’Rorke to work on the interior of RMS Orcades I, a luxury steamship launched in 1937. Coventry designed an etched glass scheme for the 1st class café. In 1939, the New Zealand government commissioned Coventry to paint four murals for the “Centennial Exhibition”. These were the antithesis of Coventry’s usually innovative graphic style, suggesting he felt constrained by the terms of the commission. Returning to London, he became a camouflage officer for the British Air Ministry during World War II, responsible for designing camouflage schemes for military installations. He also managed to maintain his artistic career despite difficulties such as having his engraving plates destroyed during the blitz in 1940. He exhibited paintings and drawings at the Royal Academy, and the War Artists Advisory Committee purchased his oil painting, Dummy Figures used in Training (1942), for the Imperial War Museum. A member of the Society of Industrial Designers, Coventry’s commitment to art and industry led to him joining the Art Workers Guild in 1945, the Society of Industrial Artists in 1946, and being elected a member of the Society of Mural Painters in 1947. A year later he received one of his most important liner commissions, the creation of murals for the Cunard’s luxury liner RMS Caronia II. The Art Deco simplicity of these murals was evident in Horses Released from Work (1948). Consisting of twelve carved and gilded gesso panels on polished veneer, it was installed above the entrance to the 1st class lounge. Other liners for which he created painted murals and etched glass designs include the New Zealand Shipping Company’s M.V Rangitiki (1947), M.V. Rangitoto (1949) and Ruahine (1951) and for the P&O line, the Himalaya (1949). The staging of an exhibition of Coventry’s mural decorations, paintings and engravings at New Zealand House, London, in May 1950, provided an ideal opportunity to showcase many of these works. In 1951, Coventry began teaching perspective and life drawing at the Chelsea School of Art. Never content to confine himself to just one artform, he was by now experimenting with techniques for ornamenting large sheets of architectural glass. He registered a patent for sand-blasting, engraving, etching, colouring and moulding glass in 1955 (GB787758). Demand for his services as a glass designer grew to such an extent that he resigned from Chelsea School of Art in 1958 to concentrate on this aspect of his art. The most significant of his glass commissions was the design of fourteen windows for the Plymouth Guildhall to replace those destroyed during a German bombing raid. Depicting scenes from the history of the Plymouth, this commission began in 1958 and took 25 years to complete. Coventry also undertook several commissions in London during this period, including a mural for Queensland House; a large tile mosaic entitled The Labours of Hercules for the exterior wall of the Central Office of Information; stained glass windows for St Alphage House and the Masonic Lodge in Hendon; an etched and engraved armorial plaque for a city guild; and murals for the Scarsdale Arms Public House, Kensington. This represents only a sample of his commercial undertakings, many of which are still to be fully documented. Examples of his murals and etched glass designs featured in the “Art on the Liners” exhibition at Southampton Art Gallery in 1986. Coventry died in London in 1997. Works by Adelaide-born painter Fred Coventry (1913-1995), are sometimes misattributed to Frederick Halford Coventry.
Writers:
Dr Gail Ross
Note:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 19 January 1905
- Summary
- A painter, muralist, stained glass artist, glass painter & etcher, printmaker, poster-designer, art teacher, book-illustrator and designer, Frederick Halford Coventry's art practice encompassed both the fine art and commercial art sectors.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Feb-97
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-31.2282721 Longitude119.327784 Start Date1964-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Southern Cross, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Mitch Dunnett Jnr was a painter, printer and photographer and a descendant of the of Wirangu people of South Australia and the Noongar of Western Australia. He was born in 1964 at Southern Cross in the Western Goldfields of Western Australia and grew up in Ceduna in South Australia. In a telephone conversation with the author in March 2009, his father Mitch Dunnett Snr said that his son left Ceduna in the 1980s and moved to Adelaide to finish his high school studies. He studied for a while before finding himself running foul with the law, ending up in Adelaide Gaol. In 1988, whilst still an inmate he painted his seminal piece Take the Pressure Down which referenced the death in custody of fellow inmate Kingsley Dixon, a 19 year old Aboriginal man who was found dead in his cell at Adelaide Gaol in July 1987. The work was acquired by the South Australian Museum.In the 1988 exhibition, A Changing Relationship: Aboriginal Themes in Australian Art c. 1938 – 1988 , curators Catherine De Lorenzo and Dinah Dysart included a photograph taken by Polly Sumner of Dunnett titled, Mitch Dunnett, Adelaide Jail, 1987 after he witnessed the death of Dixon.In 1988, after release from prison Dunnett was given a residency at the Flinders University Art Museum. He also began working at Co-Media in Adelaide where he produced his offset lithographic posters, two of which, Survival in solidarity and Keeping our culture, telling our stories were acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia.Dunnett was included in Queensland Art Gallery’s Balance 1990 exhibition with his work Death of the Tasmanian Devil 1988 . This synthetic polymer paint on canvas painting depicts the moon as an aggressor strangling the life out of a Tasmanian Devil. “The moon”, he says, in his artist statement in the accompanying catalogue is “symbolising the White settlers causing the extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. After all, the White men have now taken over the moon by landing on it.” When describing the animals depicted in this painting Dunnett says that working at Co-Media taught him to be “polite with animals” and to make them “look polite and kind and not violent”. The story of the 'Death of the Tasmanian Devil’ was a Dreaming story told to Dunnett by his father. In the story the moon and the devil fight spilling blood across the land. This blood becomes the ochres found around the West Coast of South Australia. Yellow ochre from the blood of the moon and red ochre from the blood of the devil. Dunnett worked with Kerry Giles who also had an association with Flinders University Art Museum (where Giles had two residencies). Together they staged a joint photographic exhibition Pages of History at the South Australian Museum in April 1993.In 1996 he enrolled at Tauondi Aboriginal Community College in Port Adelaide studying art under the tutelage of photographer, Nici Cumpston . This college began life in 1973 and was originally known as 'The Aboriginal Community College’. It has been located at many different premises but is now in Port Adelaide.His works are in the collections of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Flinders University Art Museum, and the South Australian Museum.Mitch Dunnett died in Adelaide in 1996 due to complications arising from renal failure.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1964
- Summary
- South Australian painter who had a residency in the Flinders University Art Museum in the 1980s and was included in Queensland Art Gallery's 'Balance 1990' exhibition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1996
- Age at death
- 32
Details
Latitude-35.115 Longitude147.3677778 Start Date1955-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. July 1955
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Feb-96
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude43.7329581 Longitude7.2499384 Start Date1951-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Philipines
- Biography
- Artist, was included in the Tin Sheds exhibition, “Dead Gay Artists”, 1-23 February 2002.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1951
- Summary
- Artist, exhibited at Tin Sheds exhibition, University of Sydney, 2002.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1996
- Age at death
- 45
Details
Latitude51.77046785 Longitude0.464669774 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Essex, England, UK
- Biography
- Even though her works have now entered public collections Pat Larter is better known as the subject of many of her husband’s best known paintings. Patricia Florence Holmes was born at Leytonstone in Essax, the daughter of Leslie Holmes, a decorator, and his wife, Pansy. Her father died of tuberculosis when she was four, and her mother supplemented her income by fostering children. The family lived at Canvey Island at the mouth of the Thames Estuary.On leaving school at 15, she took a position as office junior at Perfect Lambert & Co, a London marine surveying company. Here she met the trainee marine surveyor, Richard Larter, who took great pleasure in introducing her to cinema and other creative pleasures. He was staying with her family at Canvey Island on 1 February 1953 when a storm from the North Sea broke the sea wall, completely submerging the island, killing 58 people. On 18 February they married. Pat worked a number of jobs, including as a salesperson and demonstrator for surgical goods, a barmaid and a photographic and artist’s model until the birth of their first child, Lorraine. As Richard developed his art, with a close awareness of British Pop art, especially Eduardo Paolozzi, she became his model, the first subject for most of his art. Richard trained to become a high school art teacher and in 1962 the family, which now included three children, emigrated to Australia. After initially living in a Housing Commission estate at Bradfield Park, they bought a block of land with a small cottage at Luddenham south-west of Sydney. It was here that Richard painted the works that brought him national fame, and Pat continued to be his main subject, although by 1967 they had five children.From 1966 onwards they began to experiment with sound recordings. In 1969 they bought a super-eight camera and began to experiment with films, usually based on Pat and her comic, sexually explicit, performances. Some of these took place in front of somewhat shocked audiences at Sydney’s Sculpture Centre.In 1974 Richard was appointed visiting lecturer at Elam School of Art in Auckland. Pat joined him in performances in front of the students. When t Terry Reid, organised the Inch Exhibition, as an International Mail art event, she submitted a work in her own name and was awarded the Sandy Shaw Prize by Cees Francke. After they returned to Australia at the end of the year, the persona “Dick & Pat Larter” gradually became active in Mail Art, but in reality Pat was the driving force.In 1975 Pat made her first solo film, Men, a robust critique of sexism.In 1982, Richard, Pat and their youngest daughter Eliza, moved to a large two storey house in rural Yass where Pat relished the comfort after the spartan life of Luddenham, and especially the ready supply of hot water. She was now so prominent in Mail Art circles that in 1986 she was honoured with a retrospective of her mail art at the Artists’ Union in Tokyo. However in the following years she turned towards other art forms. After initially experimenting with laser prints she turned to painting, in part inspired by an exhibition of works of Aboriginal women from Utopia, who had also turned to paint in their maturity. Her first solo exhibition took place at Legge Gallery in 1992 and then in March 1996 she and Richard were both included in the Adelaide Biennial. She was however not well. On 20 September she was admitted to hospital in Canberra, where she died on 6 October 1996.The films made by the Larters were celebrated at the Melbourne Super Eight Festival of that year.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 8 July 1936
- Summary
- For most of her life Pat Larter was regarded as a muse, the subject of much of her husband, Richard Larter's, art. In reality she was often the instigator of the sexually confronting performances he filmed. By the mid-1970s she began to emerge as an artist in her own right, becoming a major figure in International Mail Art. Later she turn to painting and mixed media work. Her career was cut short by her untimely death.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 14-Oct-96
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-21.69788725 Longitude125.6327353 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tobin Lake, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Born 'in the bush’ around the Tobin Lake area c.1930, the artist was a Kukatja/Wangkatjunka speaker, whose traditional country was in the area surrounding the northern Canning Stock Route. Muntja was the 'boss’ woman for the Wangkatjunta mob at Balgo – both by the force of her personality and her knowledge of Women’s Law. She worked closely with anthropologists at various times and was a recognised authority at many gatherings. She had been painting her Tingari and Dingo Dreamings since 1986 in works which display her authority in matters of the Law. Her husband, John Mosquito , is also an artist of note. She sold her work through Warlayirti Artists.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- Kukatja/Wangkatjunka speaker and "boss woman" for the Wangkatjunka mob at Balgo (WA), her paintings reflect her authority in relation to matters of Law. She was married to leading Warlayirti artist, John Mosquito.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1996
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tasmania
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 10 October 1926
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 19-Sep-96
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-34.188889 Longitude142.158333 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mildura, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Potter Heather McSwain was born April 20, 1921 in Mildura, Victoria. She studied at a junior Technical School before enrolling at Swinburne Technical College for four years from 1938 to 1941 and undertaking part time studies at the National Gallery School in Melbourne. She undertook a Commercial Art course typical of the period that included commercial art, design, and fine art subjects such drawing, painting and ceramic modelling. During the War in the Pacific, from 1942-1945, she spent four years at the Planning Department, Department of Aircraft Production, Fishermen’s Bend Victoria. When peace was declared she worked as a freelance Display Artist in Victoria before moving in 1952 with her friend Marjorie Loats to Western Australia to work as a commercial artists for Art Photos process engravers. Commissions undertaken at the time included murals for the War Memorial Library of Adelaide Boys High School in 1958, an Empire and Commonwealth Games Poster in 1962 and a ceramic sculpture for the Therry Awards (National Catholic Schools’ Drama Awards) in 1963. Other commissions during her career included an altarpiece for a Mt Pleasant church and private textile and stained glass commissions. She had taken up potting as a hobby. Her kiln was built by a technician from Brisbane and Wunderlich. As was typical of the time in Western Australia she dug her clays herself and adapted them to suit her needs. Teaching at the University’s Summer School brought her to the notice of a number of people and she was persuaded to join the staff of the Fremantle Technical School, at this time the centre of artistic endeavour in the crafts. She was probably also enrolled for classes with art critic Charles Hamilton who refereed her for a teaching position in 1961 referring to her as a capable and progressive student. McSwain never married and lived with her designer partner Marjorie Loats in a house they designed and partially built at 25 River Parade Salter Point. The house was adorned with murals, stained glass and textiles by McSwain. Flying parrots, pomegranates, lilies, leaves and thistles in bright secondary colours were painted on the walls. In 1959 at the newly opened Skinner Galleries in Perth McSwain, Ida Ott Nielsen and Marie Miller shared an exhibition. Miller’s weaving, Ott Neilsen’s screen printing and McSwain’s ceramics were displayed in the new purpose-built gallery run by the enterprising Rose Skinner. Miller was the President of the Women’s Society of Fine Arts and Crafts who made a living as a weaver selling all round Australia, Ott-Nilsen had worked in Den Permanente- the Design Centre in Copenhagen before accompanying her husband the builder of the Narrows Bridge to Perth for a few years. The exhibition was impressive and attracted considerable attention. McSwain arranged the work as a series of landscaped tableaux incorporating foliage and other props. Photographs taken by Leif Ott Nilsen record a stylish exhibition. Reporter Jane Scott in an article on the show was at pains to indicate that whilst the women may have started their careers as leisure time hobbyists the three had thriving studio businesses. Ott Nilsen’s six designs for fabric lengths were each printed in two sample colour-ways. One, based on the native castor oil plant, was particularly striking. The wall hangings Spanish Bull and Siamese Cat were printed in runs of twelve. The eye-catching Spanish Bull, catalogue item 14, cost four guineas. McSwain’s graphic and striking pots were exhibited as well as her ceramic sculptures. The slab-built work had a distinctly Scandinavian look popular at the time. She worked basically in terra cotta, applying matt black and white and turquoise alkaline glazes. These she used on pieces such as the Diamond Check jar. Other pots were scored and decorated with strongly geometric black lines and dots. Her oeuvre included bowls, tea sets, jars of all sizes, coffee pots, vases, candlesticks and small table sculptures of figures and animals. Attenuated Siamese cats and elongated and geometrically stylised figures predominated in the sculptures. McSwain was aware of international trends and historic work but as an artist/designer-potter strove for individuality. Her interests lay with strong form and medieval heraldry. The devices emblazoned on the tents of nobles fascinated her. These medieval structures used to define person, place and possession were utilized in her work. The faces of her figures were transformed into shield-shaped masks, the mask dominating the body. Although consciously an artist-potter she did not just decorate the pots but conceived the shape and decoration as a whole entity. The coiled pot no. 110, Covered Jar with Head incorporated these principles. It is now in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia. In 1969 she was awarded her Teachers’ Training Certificate from the Technical Division of the West Australian Education Department and could be eligible for a permanent appointment. This enabled her to travel and she visited Japan and later Spain and South America. In the 1970s she attended workshops with the many international visitors the Craft Council movement brought to Australia. These included Englishmen Michael Cardew and Harry Davis and the American Paul Soldner. She also attended workshops with Australian Ivan McMeekin. At this stage she was exhibiting at the Waterways Studio. In the 1974 International Bendigo Pottery Award she exhibited two storage jars. One had figures on the lid. It was forty-eight centimetres high and was priced at $100. The other with a dark glazed lid was twenty-eight centimetres high and priced at $70. Her later work was inclined to be more bulbous and conventional without the graphic adornment except in the case of plump female figurines. McSwain continued to teach ceramics at the Fremantle Technical College until about 1988 and was a popular and well-respected teacher. On her retirement she spent time sailing in her yacht on the Swan River. A considerable number of her students set up as studio potters. One group banded together to market their work as the Kiln Shelf Potters. McSwain was also involved in the formation of the South of the River Potters Club. She died in April 1996 and the Art Gallery of Western Australia purchased a collection of work from her estate. RED SECTIONS
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 April 1921
- Summary
- Heather McSwain was a potter. She was aware of international trends and historic work but as an artist/designer-potter strove for individuality.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Apr-96
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-33.960707 Longitude151.1003611 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hurstville, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Justin O’Brien, born 2 August 1917, was the third of the the five surviving children of the produce merchant Maurice O’Brien and his Irish-born wife, Teresa Mary Sherin. At the time, Hurstville, south of Sydney, was a semi-rural small town. In this devoutly religious family, life was dominated by the parish Catholic Church.When he was six he stayed with relatives in Elizabeth Bay where his aunt Louise gave him art materials. While at school at Christian Brothers Waverley he took private lessons with Edward M. Smith, and at the age of 14 he left school to study with Smith full time. By the time he was 18 O’Brien was teaching art in Catholic schools, while developing his own practice. He exhibited in the Archibald Prize in 1937, 1938 and 1939. His work attracted the interest of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Art Critic, Peter Bellew, and Peter Dodd, an art teacher. They encouraged him to join the fledgling Contemporary Art Society and the religious painting group, the Fra Angelico Guild.
Much of O’Brien’s artistic development is indebted to his experiences in Europe. His experiences abroad began in 1940 during WWII as part of the Australia Army Medical Corps. First in Palestine and then in German-occupied Greece, where he nursed seriously injured soldiers. Although a majority of his war-time artwork was completed in a prisoner-of-war camp in Torun, Poland, it was in Greece that he witnessed a sight that greatly impacted his artistic style: a mass grave of Greek civilian victims of famine. This experience overwhelmed young O’Brien who, upon his return to Australia, introduced symbolism into his painting to express what he saw in ' the Greek Burial’ (c1945) by employing a bright, simple palate with stylized figures and landscape.
O’Brien’s return from war saw great support from private patrons and Macquarie Galleries, at which he exhibited repeatedly throughout his career. Just as important were the friendships he developed at this time, leading him to exhibit with The Sydney Group, artists who were later mocked by Robert Hughes as the “Charm School”. By 1946 he was living at Meriloola, the grand but slightly decrepit boarding house run by “Chica” Lowe which was the haunt of many actors, dancers and artists; including Donald Friend, Mary Edwards, and Loudon Sainthill.1946 also saw him appointed art master at nearby Cranbrook School, a position he held intermittently until his final departure for Europe at the end of 1966. Many of the boys became models for his paintings. Most importantly, his influence as teacher and mentor led to some of his students becoming professional artists, including Brian Dunlop, John Montefiore, Martin Sharp Owen Tooth and Peter Kingston.
Over his lifetime of painting, O’Brien’s art embraces and readdresses several motifs including moonlit figures, male bathers, Mediterranean landscapes, and religious scenes. Despite his great admiration of Cezanne, Raphael, Pierro della Francesca, El Greco and the Sienese painter Duccio, his style and use of colour has been attributed as being Symbolist and Fauvist. The intense but unconventional use of religious iconography in his art led O’Brien to be awarded the inaugural Blake Prize for religious art in 1951.In 1954 O’Brien renounced the Catholicism of his youth, but s spiritual element remained in his art.
From 1948 until 1965 O’Brien paid several extended visits to Greece and Italy. At the end of 1966 he resigned from Cranbrook and in early 1967 resettled in Italy. The following year he was commissioned to create a mosaic for the Basilica of the Annunciation at Nazareth. Egidio Scardamaglia, one of his pupils posed for the angel. In Rome Scardamaglia with his wife and daughters became O’Brien’s new family.
His later works reflect the sun-drenched tranquility of his new life. He continued to exhibit in Sydney, at Macquarie Galleries, until his death. In 1982 the art historian Anthony Bradley, who he had taught at Cranbrook, wrote a monograph on his art. In 1987, the year he turned 70, he was honoured with retrospective exhibitions at the National Gallery of Victoria and the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney. He was awarded an AM in 1992.His last years were troubled by bone cancer, and he died in Rome on 17 January 1996
Writers:
Skupien, Karolina
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 2 August 1917
- Summary
- Justin O'Brien was known at first for his Byzantine influenced paintings of Christian iconography and later for sun drenched studies of Mediterranean landscapes. He was also the most influential art master at Cranbrook school where his pupils included the young Martin Sharp and Peter Kingston.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Jan-96
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-37.8576088 Longitude145.0350666 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Malvern, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Douglas Baulch, painter, was born 24 May 1917. He was the youngest of three children of Ernest Stanley Baulch and Annie Baulch who resided at 28 Edsall Street, Malvern, Victoria. His father departed for the front on HMAT A20 Hororata on 23 November 1916 and returned to Australia on 26 September 1917, incapacitated due to war injuries. He died several years later. This caused financial and emotional hardship for Douglas which made him more empathetic than most. As a young man he survived off the War pension and with the assistance of his mother and elder sisters, Doris and Gloria. They recognised Douglas’ artistic talent and he commenced formal art studies at Swinburne University (formally Prahran Technical College) in 1931. He graduated in 1934, after which he maintained a friendship with other students and artists such as Sir William Dargie and Sidney Nolan.
Douglas’ style was typical of a blended impressionism and realism, which was not in vogue at the time, due to the burgeoning abstract movement. Douglas refused to participate in this movement, which he felt generally represented those artists who did not have the ability to produce work of the impressionist-realist style exemplified at the time by artists such as David Davies, Jane Price, William Nicholas Rowell, Clara Southern and Arthur Streeton of the Heidelberg School. Douglas greatly admired these artists: he viewed their works regularly and met with some of them on occasion. Douglas felt the true image and feeling of a subject could not be portrayed without complete respect of the genuine environment and context, and, as a result, he executed almost all of his work en plein-air and in an impressionist-realist style.
To supplement his income and to support his mother and sisters he worked as a commercial artist at Troedel and Cooper Pty Ltd. between 1936 and 1938, and then as an artist with the fashion and society photographer Athol Smith until 1940. He completed his post-graduate studies in Fine Art in 1940. At this time Douglas exhibited extensively at the Victoria Artists’ Society, despite the theft of several of his works at one stage. With the outbreak of World War II, he joined the Air Force. In 1944 he managed to get a short break from the war effort and returned briefly to Melbourne to marry the love of his life, Lyla Foster, on 24 February 1944. He then returned to northern Australia due to continued pressure by the Japanese in the Pacific.
At the end of the war Douglas returned to his home at 6 Leopold Street, Glen Iris. His son Jeff was soon born there in 1946. In the following years Douglas’ paintings were expressive of his sense of optimism, which was responsive to the positive atmosphere of the post-war boom and the prosperity of the Menzies era, and his enjoyment of family life. For the next six years he was occupied with landscape and portrait painting and the emotional and financial demands of starting a family. By 1951 he was supporting his wife and children, Jeff, Graeme and Madeleine. He worked as a commercial artist to supplement his income. In 1952 he moved to East Doncaster. Douglas regarded it as an area more suited to growing families and appreciated its proximity to the Yarra Valley regions of Warrandyte and Templestowe. Like the artists of the Heidelberg School, he found the scenery there captivatingly beautiful, and these locales are heavily represented in many of his works.
Douglas exhibited at numerous locations and kept his studio running full time. His family continued to grow with the birth of Michael, Francesca, Paul, Kevin and Lisa, so that ultimately it totalled 8 children. Due to his love of his family it was not uncommon for these children to be depicted in some of his landscape scenes and portraits.
In 1965 Douglas took a sabbatical to Dampier in Western Australia, the same time that the Dampier Port was being established. He was captivated by the harsh beauty and emotion of the region as is displayed in his works of King Bay, Cape Leveque, Burrup Peninsula, Hearson’s Cove and Bullarra. Douglas enjoyed the area and climate so much that he wanted to relocate to the Dampier area, however due to family commitments this was not possible. His paintings of the region are unique because many of the locations that he captured no longer exist, as the area has since been replaced by one of Australia’s largest liquid natural gas developments.
Returning to the Yarra Valley Douglas continually explored the surrounding areas around Warrandyte, Templestowe, Donvale, Park Orchards and Kangaroo Ground, capturing the ambiance of these unique landscapes. In 1964 he exhibited at Victoria Government House for the Queen’s visit. He also held many exhibitions at locations around Melbourne, and participated in shows at various state libraries, universities and financial institutions, as well as prizes such as the Archibald. His works are currently held in a number of private collections around the world in the UK, US, Belgium, Paris and Hong Kong.
Later in life Douglas continued his artistic work while also working as a teacher. He taught from his studio in East Doncaster, on television, at various TAFEs and at Monash University. He also illustrated the poetry book Beside My Hearth. His style did change later in life, as he moved towards more vividly colourful expressions of the natural landscape. This shift was reflective of his greater sense of freedom in life and the fact that the heavy responsibility of supporting a large family had now lifted, as his children had matured and were pursuing their own lives.
Most of Douglas’ works were fresh and optimistic, however on some occasions unexpected family stresses are noticeable. For example, his self portrait in the late 1970s exhibits the stress caused by the prolonged illness and premature death of his son Michael.
In the 1990s Douglas fell ill with cancer. He was hospitalised for a year and died at the age of 78.
Writers:
DouglasBaulch
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 24 May 1917
- Summary
- Douglas Baulch, painter, worked en plein-air in a blended impressionist and realist style. He exhibited at the Victorian Artists' Society and painted in the Yarra Valley and Dampier in Western Australia. He passed away in 1996.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Feb-96
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-31.5021772 Longitude150.6804062 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Quirindi, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Mary Margaret Abbott was born in Quirindi in rural NSW in 1916. She was first educated at Quirindi Intermediate High School before moving to Sydney to study art. In 1932 she enrolled in Sydney Commercial School in Bathurst Street, where she was taught by Miss Maude Russell. In 1935 she continued her studies while becoming a pupil-teacher at the school.The following year she began to study art at the Julian Ashton Art School, but after one term travelled to London. Here she worked as a jewellery designer for Ciro Pearls while studying at the Chiswick Polytechnical College.In the summer she visited Paris and the collections of the Hague in Amsterdam.On her return to Sydney she continued her studies at Julian Ashton while working as a fashion designer for Spencers, as well as undertaking freelance illustration work.In 1941, as a part of the concerted national war effort, she joined the Australian Women’s Land Army, working on farms close to Sydney so that she could continue her studies at Ashton’s on Saturday afternoons.In 1943 she was one of the finalists in the New South Wales’ Travelling Art Scholarship. Although she was unsuccessful, her work was sufficiently impressive for Ashton’s to employ her as an assistant teacher the following year.Her salaried employment ended when she married Grantley Darcy Roberts in 1947, but she continued to work as an illustrator.
Mary Abbott Roberts had begun to paint portraits in the late 1930s, and in the 1950s this was the medium she focussed on. In 1954 she exhibited in the Archibald Prize for the first time. She was all successful in being selected for the exhibition in 1955 and in 1956.
In 1958 her husband was injured in a car accident and was transferred to Bathurst Technical College. Mary and their daughter Christine joined him the following year. She became active in the Bathurst Society of Music and Arts and also exhibited with local art groups in Orange and Cowra. She was also involved in restoration work for the Bathurst Historical Society and painted three large murals for the Acropole Restaurant in Bathurst. In 1960 she began teaching at Bathurst Technical College. Later she taught at Marsden Girls’ School and from 1965 to 1974 also taught at Orange Technical College.As with many women of her generation Mary Abbott Roberts’ work was little recognised for most of her working life. Her work came to the attention of feminist art historians Jude Adams, Barbara Hall and Jennifer Barber when she successfully exhibited in the 1975 Portia Geach Memorial Award. In 1977 her portrait drawing of Mona McDonnell was included in Project 21: Women’s images of women at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, an exhibition that emphasised the relative neglect of this particular generation of women artists.
In the introduction to her 1985 retrospective exhibition at the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery she wrote:“most certainly an artist requires inspiration and emotion, but basic qualities of composition, drawing and painting, should be the students first consideration, later developing versatility and flexibility.”
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
CRoberts
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. c.8 November 1916
- Summary
- Mary Abbott Roberts, who also exhibited under her maiden name of Mary Abbott, was born in Quirindi in rural New South Wales and studied in Sydney at the Sydney Commercial Arts School and the Julian Ashton Art School. She was best known as an academic portrait painter and regularly exhibited in the Archibald Prize throughout the 1950s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.2 February 1996
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1912
- Summary
- Foster was a painter, printmaker and textile artist. She studied at East /Sydney Technical College (diploma 1934), later in England 1950-51. Her work was widely exhibited in NSW regional galleries and other states .
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-96
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Alhalkere, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c.1910 at Alhalkere (Soakage Bore) Utopia Station, Emily is an Eastern Anmatyerre speaker and senior artist at Utopia. Her Country is Alhalkere and her Dreamings include Sand Goanna, Wild Orange, and Emu. Emily first saw white people as a young girl aged about nine. She worked in her younger days as a stockhand on pastoral properties in this area (see The Art of Utopia, M. Boulter) at a time when Aboriginal women on the stations were usually only employed as domestics – suggesting the forceful independence of her personality. Emily was the adopted daughter of Jacob Jones, a very important lawman in the Alyawarre community, and a leader in the women’s ceremonial business at Utopia.
From the time she painted her first canvas for A Summer Project 1988-9 , the work of Emily Kame Kngwarreye has received widespread acclaim and recognition. Emily found in acrylics and canvas a medium more suited to the bold immediacy of her style than the more laborious production processes of batik, in which she had been working for the preceding decade and exhibiting with the Utopia women in exhibitions in Australia and abroad since 1977. Her technique is highly individual with under-drawings covered by layers of dots. Her pleasure in working as an artist is reflected in her powerful colours and her energetic and expressive compositions. In 1990, Emily’s work was shown in two highly successful solo shows in Sydney, as well as the Art Gallery of NSW’s Abstraction show. Later that year she participated in the CAAMA/Utopia artists-in-residence program at the ICA, Perth. (Reference: Batty, P. & Sheridan, N., Utopia Artist in Residence Project [Holmes à Court Foundation, Perth, 1990]). Several more solo shows have followed: Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne (1990, 1991) and Utopia Art, Sydney (1991, 1992). Her work was rapidly acquired by major public and private collections in Australia and overseas and is keenly sought after by other buyers. In three years, she has been represented in 48 group exhibitions around Australia and the world, including Ireland – A Picture Story , Royal Hibernian Gallery, Dublin; Russia – Aboriginal Paintings from the Desert , Union Gallery, Moscow, 1991 and touring St Petersburg, Ukraine, Minsk Byelorussia, Riga Latvia; USA – Contemporary Aboriginal Art , Harvard University and touring USA and Australia; Japan – Aboriginal Art from Australia , National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 1992 and Crossroads Toward a New Reality , National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto and Tokyo etc.
She is the most lauded painter of the Utopia art movement to date, and one of the best known of the desert artists, painting with an undiminished energy which belies her years. In 1992 she was awarded an Australian Artists Creative Fellowship. In 1993 she exhibited in the Joan and Peter Clemenger Triennial Exhibition of Contemporary Australian Art at the National Gallery of Victoria and featured in Aratjara – Art of the First Australians , touring Dusseldorf, London and other European Galleries.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1910
- Summary
- One of the best known desert artists and a senior woman in Utopia (NT), Kngwarreye's work is distinctive for its expressive abstract style. The recipient of awards such as the Australian Artists Creative Fellowship (1992), her work is recognised internationally and is included in major public and private collections in Australia and overseas.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1996
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Watikipinrri, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c.1910 at Watikipinrri, west of Central Mt Wedge (Kerrinyarra), for which Mick was the senior custodian. Mick had worked as a stockman at Glen Helen and Narwietooma stations in his younger days. His knowledge and authority in the ritual sphere made him one of the most important of Papunya Tula’s artists to his fellow painters. Mick shared with Tom Onion the custodianship of the Honey Ant design of the original mural painted on the Papunya school wall. He was a prolific painter, stopping only when his eyesight and health failed him in the early 1990s. By this time he had passed his skills and his love of painting on to younger artists including Maxie Tjampitjinpa and Don Tjungarrayi . Mick’s country stretched across the Papunya, Mt Wedge, Mt Liebig region covering the Sugar Ant (Warumpi), Water, Yam (Yarla), Snake (Yarripirri) and Woman Dreamings which the artist usually painted. His usual place of residence was Papunya, though towards the end of his long life he spent time in Alice Springs for medical treatment. His work was exhibited in the Asia Society’s Dreamings show which toured North America in 1988-9. He was the first Western Desert artist to be purchased by the National Gallery of Australia.
Writers:
Johnson, VivienNote: Primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1910
- Summary
- One of the founders and most important artists painting for Papunya Tula over its first two decades because of his ritual authority and encyclopedic knowledge of stories and designs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1996
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Marjory Rayment Clark was born in Brisbane on 12 May 1908, the only child Alexander Wilson Mackenzie Clark and Phoebe Irons Rayment. She was educated at the Brisbane Girls Grammar School and later enrolled at the Central Technical College to study with L. J. Harvey c.1926. Subsequently she enrolled in the Domestic Science section of the College about 1931 and received her diploma in 1933. She exhibited pottery at the annual exhibitions of the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland 1928-34. In 1933 a reviewer noted a “custard apple vase” which is possibly the work which was included in the “L. J. Harvey & his School” exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery in 1983. She also exhibited pottery (and chip carving) at the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association 1928-34 and was awarded numerous prizes. She also exhibited pottery with Society of Arts and Crafts of New South Wales in 1928 and 1929.
She taught at the South Brisbane Intermediate School (where she had a display of her own work at a school exhibition) and at the Brisbane Opportunity School. She was later appointed teacher of domestic science subjects at the Gympie Technical College where examples of her pottery and chip carving were exhibited in annual displays of work. She had acquired a small kiln from Agnes Barker (qv) and produced pottery until her marriage to Royston Chapman on 7 December 1940. Agnes Barker recalled that the picture shelf of her family home in Marooka was massed with examples of her work. Her children Marjory and Christine were born in 1943 and 1946 respectively.
Subsequently she prepared a cookery column for The Sunday Mail under the name of Suzette Newspaper and ran a catering firm “The Golden Pyramid”. She died in Brisbane on 10 December 1996.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 May 1908
- Summary
- Marjory Clark was one of the most accomplished and prolific of the Harvey School potters. A graduate of the Central Technical College, Clark exhibited her wares for a number of years and also worked as a teacher.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Dec-96
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-31.95 Longitude141.466667 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Broken Hill, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- costume designer and art teacher, was born at Broken Hill in December 1908, daughter of William James Thomas, an engineer, and Ethel, née Henderson. After attending Broken Hill High School, then boarding at Adelaide Presbyterian Girls’ College, she won a scholarship to the SA School of Arts and Crafts. Thelma, an associate member of the Society of Arts, was one of the first five teachers appointed to introduce art into South Australian high schools, teaching at both the School of Arts and Crafts and Adelaide High School. Thelma was deeply involved with the experimental Ab-Intra Studio Theatre in Adelaide, as both costume designer and performer.
Granted a year’s leave of absence from the Education Department, she spent 1934 in Melbourne studying with George Bell and working for Pierre Fornari. Fornari was costume designer for J.C. Williamson’s big musicals; he also had a salon in Collins Street.
As Fornari couldn’t draw it was my job to put his ideas and designs down on paper, not always an easy task. I did the sketches of the Cyril Ritchards-Madge Elliott production of “Roberta”. I learnt a great deal from him, both in actual designing and also in the appreciation of a necessary high standard of workmanship in the making of costumes.
Thelma also did some costume designing on her own behalf for productions at the Garrick and Tivoli theatres and for Melbourne’s centenary Pageant of Nations at the Town Hall. She returned to Adelaide and to teaching in 1935. The following year she was 'lent by the Education Department’ to design the costumes for the official celebrations of South Australia’s centenary. One of these events was the performance of Colonel Light, the Founder , the prize-winning play by Max Afford, whom Thelma was later to marry.
Thelma was invited to Sydney in 1937 in order to commence work on the 1938 Sydney sesquicentenary celebrations, thereby completing a hat-trick of such commissions: Melbourne (1934), Adelaide (1936) and Sydney (1938). The Sydney celebrations – the most lavish of all -took place on 26 January 1938.
In April 1938, Thelma Thomas married Max Afford at St Michael’s, Vaucluse. Both led busy professional lives in Sydney. Max wrote plays for radio and theatre and, later, screenplays; Thelma designed costumes for the Minerva Theatre (e.g. Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird 1940), Doris Fitton’s Independent Theatre (e.g. The Insect Play 1941), Ken Hall’s Cinesound Films (e.g. Mr Chedworth Steps Out 1939) and for Charles and Elsa Chauvel ( The Sons of Matthew 1947). As well, she designed period costumes for J.C. Williamson’s, was the resident designer for the Minerva Theatre until 1950, and wrote articles for the daily papers and weekly magazines on fashion and theatrical design. She designed the costumes for the very first live dramatic production on Australian television in 1957. In the 1960s Thelma turned again to teaching, being senior art mistress at Queenwood, a private girls’ school at Mosman, until she retired in 1978.
Thelma Afford’s costume designs are held by the Mortlock Library (SA), the Fryer Library (QU), the National Film and Sound Archive (ACT) and the Mitchell Library (NSW). Some of her designs for the 1938 Sydney sesquicentenary procession were exhibited at the Mitchell Library in 1990.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. December 1908
- Summary
- Costume designer, performer, actor and fashion journalist with a practice from Broken Hill, Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. She also designed costumes for early Australian TV drama. She later became the senior art mistress at Queenwood, a private girls' school, Mosman NSW. She is to considered to have introduced art subjects into South Australian schools.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1996
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, theatrical designer and art teacher, was born on 29 November 1908 in Hobart, Tasmania. She studied art at the Hobart Technical College in 1924-27 with Lucien Dechaineux and Mildred Lovett then taught there, graduating in 'Art Graphic’ in 1930 and 'Art Plastic’ in 1932. She went to Sydney in 1932 and studied at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School with Adelaide Perry and Thea Proctor . Both had a profound influence on her, as is evident in her linocuts of 1933. Kingston returned to Hobart in late 1933 and resumed teaching at the college. She graduated in 'Art Applied’ in 1934 and exhibited with the Art Society of Tasmania (1929-35) before departing for study in London in 1937. There she studied stage design at the Slade School under Vladimir Polunin (the Diaghilev Company’s designer in 1937-40) and life drawing and painting at the Westminster School of Art under Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler. She also studied fabric design and printing at the Central School of Art and Craft. According to Butler, Kingston won the Betty Malcolm scholarship for stage and decorative painting from the University of London in 1939.
Her 1939 London Christmas card, Happy Christmas (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery [TMAG], National Gallery of Australia [NGA]), decorated with an identity card, ration book and a gas mask with a blimp in sky, was later annotated by the artist:
1939 was the only Christmas that, when I went out, I had to carry the things pictured, except the “blimp”, it was tethered outside the back fence of where I had a “bed sitter” in Adelaide Road, Chalk Farm./ Identity cards were a good thing in 1939./ The National Gallery Canberra has a print of this.
She made ballet costumes for Sadler’s Wells before returning to Sydney in 1940 on board the Strathmore . Her shipboard drawings (TMAG box 35) include a musical evening concert scene; her linocut, Ship’s Ventilator , was purchased by the AGNSW from Bloomfield Galleries in 1975.
Back at Sydney, Amie Kingston worked as a display artist for Farmers department store (1940-44) and exhibited (mainly flowers and views) with the Contemporary Art Society (1940-46), the Society of Artists (1940-47) and the Macquarie Galleries (1940-55, 1957-61). She worked extensively in theatrical design, not only making designs for the Helen Kirsova Ballet Company but also for the Sydney Conservatorium Opera School. Between 1941 and 1946 she designed 11 productions for the School, sometimes painting the scenery as well as preparing the designs. In 1948-53 she taught art at the Double Bay Design School with Dora Sweetapple and Muriel Medworth . Kingston married cartoonist Thomas Arthur Challen in 1942. She continued to teach art to children and adults for decades, retiring from teaching in 1976, then living at Elanora Heights under her married name of Challen [Challan [ sic ] acc. NGA website] until 1995. She died on 13 January 1996.
On 8 July 1941, the first season of the Kirsova Ballet opened at Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music. This debut represented the beginnings of a local, Australia-based professional ballet theatre in Sydney. Helene Kirsova, who formed the company, first visited Australia as the prima ballerina of the Monte Carlo Russian Ballet in 1936. She came with a substantial reputation, having danced with major European companies and having worked with such master choreographers as Massine and Fokine. The Kirsova Ballet was relatively short-lived in comparison with the first Melbourne professional company, established at almost the same time by Edouard Borovansky. The Kirsova Ballet ended its life as a professional company in May 1944. However, despite the brevity of its existence Kirsova’s company has an important place as the first company to extend its hand to a band of Sydney artists who aspired to ballet design. Among them were three women: Elaine Haxton , Alice Danciger and Amie Kingston. The Kirsova Ballet was a superb opportunity for Kingston, who …designed three ballets for Kirsova- Harlequin , Hansel and Gretel and Peter and the Wolf -the last being in preparation at the demise of the company. Kirsova is reported as having envisaged the ballet to Prokofieff’s music as having a 'Disney feeling’ and Kingston’s set design has a touch of Disney about it. It is flat and brightly coloured, with the decorative qualities associated with the Sydney style of the late 1940s; Kenneth Wilkinson described these qualities in 1945 as 'the natural grace and gaiety of youth’. Kingston’s work was not confined to ballet design, but Kirsova offered her a rare opportunity to work in the medium, which was her first love.
Writers:
Sayers, Andrew
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 29 November 1908
- Summary
- Mid 20th century painter, printmaker, theatrical designer and art teacher. Amy Kingston worked prolifically in Australia and the UK, designing for the stage, the ballet and working as an art teacher.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Jan-96
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-37.7667 Longitude144.9628 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brunswick, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 5 April 1905
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Oct-96
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1996-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born in Croydon, England, on 4 October 1898, educated in Chile (1909-12) and as a boarder at Farnham Grammar School, England (1912-14). His family came to Australia in 1914 and he worked on their farm in Queensland until 1919. Then he moved to Brisbane where his first job was as an illustrator with a Brisbane department store. He also drew newspaper cartoons in Brisbane. His ink cartoon signed “Cabby”, Blind Man’s Buff (Brisbane Town Hall Art Collection), done for the Brisbane Mail in 1921, shows a man wearing a blindfold labelled 'unemployment’ and 4 tiny old men in spats running away labelled 'Repat’ (with promises), 'Town’, 'Country’ and 'Govt’.
In 1922 Curtis sailed to the USA – his cabin-mate was his great friend, the pioneer filmmaker, Charles Chauvel. There he studied at the Art Institutes of San Francisco and Chicago and undertook industrial commissions as a freelance commercial artist. He married Ruth Baldwin, whom he met in Hollywood and their daughter, Robin, was born in Chicago. While in Chicago, Curtis worked as an architectural draftsman for the town planner of San Francisco Daniel H. Burnham (1846-1912), after the great fire of 1871 led to intense skyscraper rebuilding in the ’80s and ’90s – presumably after the 1906 earthquake.
The family returned to Sydney in 1928 and Curtis set himself the task of recording the erection of the Harbour Bridge, inspired by the 'wonder of work’ and the words of Burnham: 'Make Big Plans: for little plans have no magic to stir men’s blood and in themselves may never be realised’. His Building the Bridge: Fourteen Lithographs Celebrating the Construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge with foreword by Dr J.J.C. Bradfield (1931/33? reprinted as The Bridge , Currawong Press, 1981) is said to have led to many commissions from heavy industry.
Curtis’s lithographs distil key 'remembrances’ in the Bridge’s construction. Curtis’s admiration for civil engineering had developed while living and working in America and his contact with the writings of Joseph Pennell motivated a lifelong interest in industrial modernism. As soon as he saw the Bridge on his return in 1928, Curtis had visited Bradfield to show him his portfolio and Bradfield introduced him to Dorman Long staff and they let him 'go all over the Bridge’, so long as he kept out of the 'bloody way’. He went whenever he could afford to, which was 'once every several weeks’ and while on the Bridge he sketched quickly in crayon and later drew exactingly in pencil for lithography. On the day of the opening, 19 March 1932, The Daily Telegraph featured a drawing and announced the publication of Building the Bridge , by Simmons Limited. He sketched the dizzy heights and, to visualise the Opening Celebrations, he hired Charles Kingsford-Smith to fly him around the harbour. As he sketched, Curtis said he often 'felt the curious eyes of the inhabitants of North Sydney’s Lanes’ upon him (The Bridge, 1981).
His first lithograph showed the work team joining the arches. He made another print of them completing the Bridge deck. But the Depression had decimated his freelance work and he took his family to Queensland, where they picked fruit. Curtis returned to Sydney when a friend promised access to some lithographic equipment. He and the supportive printer published this book and they sold a few copies. Bradfield said 'in these drawings are expressed the strength, the labour, the romance of a great undertaking’. Soon after, BHP commissioned Curtis to document the Newcastle steel works for its golden anniversary. He published four more books after 1933, including A Vision Takes Form , which records the building of the Sydney Opera House.
Curtis’s drawings are now held in public institutions throughout Australia, eg The Coal Miner n.d. [1930s?], charcoal heightened with white, ML (Pic. Acc.5494). He painted murals and did industrial illustration in 1932-38, including the series Australia at Work , which was syndicated in Australian newspapers. In 1933 he was commissioned to supply drawings of the Newcastle steel works for the BHP Review Jubilee number; he also visited Broken Hill that year, where his first exhibition was held, followed by Kalgoorlie and Perth. Wollongong CAG has 18 pencil drawings, including eight commissioned by BHP illustrating the Hot Strip Mill at Port Kembla, four pastel and wax crayon drawings and one watercolour, mainly of Port Kembla industrial subjects. 'Mr Mac’ (private collection), a far more comical pencil drawing of MacRobertson’s Chocolate Factory at Melbourne in 1939 (with frog workers), was included in the 1999 S.H. Ervin exhibition, Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White (cat.34).
During WWII Curtis recorded working life in the Commonwealth Munition factories (1939-41), worked as Camouflage Officer in Australia and with the RAAF in New Guinea (1941-43), until he was finally appointed an official war artist to record the nation’s industrial war-time production (1943-45). More than 200 works are in the Australian War Memorial (AWM) collection. After the war, he and Ruth travelled throughout Australia and he submitted regular work to Walkabout . His poster, “Follow the Sun by Clipper to Canberra, Australia’s National Capital” c.1940s (NLA) was published by Australian National Publicity Association (ANPA). He recorded the first expedition to Northern Australia for the Australian Geographical Society, and he continued to paint murals of Australian life and industry. During the 1950s he did drawings of workers and manufacturing at the Victa lawnmowing factory (Powerhouse Museum). In 1959-64 he illustrated the construction of the Gladesville Bridge for the NSW Department of Main Roads, and from 1959 to 1969 he worked for the Sydney Opera House Trust compiling a detailed visual record of the erection of the Opera House. A Vision Takes Form: Sydney Opera House (Sydney, A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1967, with foreword by Prof. H. Ingham Ashworth – one of the judges and professor of Architecture at Sydney University) consists of a selection of reproductions of his paintings and drawings now held in the building itself. Ruth died before this work was completed. In 1969-70 he travelled to New Zealand, Central America, USA, Europe and Asia with his second wife, Ellice Macoun.
Curtis held solo exhibitions at Von Bertouch Galleries, Newcastle (1986 and 1988) and at Richard King’s Print Room in Sydney, as well as at regional and interstate galleries, including Broken Hill Art Gallery and a survey exhibition at Eastend Gallery, Broken Hill in 1989. Lloyd Rees, Frank and Margel Hinder, Joshua Smith and Max Dupain were among his close friends. Robert Curtis died on 23 March 1996, aged 97, survived by Ellice and his daughter, Robin Moore.
Writers:
Holder, JoKerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 4 October 1898
- Summary
- Mid 20th century illustrator and artist. In 1922 Curtis travelled to the USA with his great friend, the pioneer filmmaker, Charles Chauvel. There he developed what was to become a lifelong interest in industrial modernism and on returning to Sydney in 1928 he set about documenting the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Mural designs for corporate clients and department stores are also known.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Mar-96
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1952-01-01 End Date1995-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- poster and installation artist, fabric designer, craftworker and gay activist, worked in a vast range of media and materials. In the mid-1970s he was known for the exquisite hand-painted textiles he produced for 'Flamingo Park’, the fashion house run by Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson, but from 1975 all his work, regardless of medium, was about gay experience. Involved with the Sydney Gay Liberation movement since 1972, his first solo exhibition Secret Love , held at Sydney’s Hogarth Galleries in 1976, featured collages explicitly exploring gay male sexuality, anti-gay legislation and public and private sexual hypocrisies (Gott 6). He visited the USA in 1977 and fully participated in its wildest gay scenes.
Back at Sydney, McDiarmid’s first post-US exhibition was the Australian Dream Lounge , an installation at Hogarth Galleries in December 1977 (and possibly later at Lewers Bequest and Penrith Regional Art Gallery) which paid homage to Australiana and 1950s kitsch. The following year he showed Trade Enquiries at Hogarth, a series of large-scale collage works examining the effect on Australia of the 'Macho’ look and the new power of the 'pink’ dollar. Some of the collages were turned into a portfolio of 8 offset lithographs, published by Watters Gallery in May 1979 (shown in S.H. Ervin b/w exhibition, 1999, cat. 107).
McDiarmid lived almost continuously in the US from June 1979 to December 1987. In 1982 he wrote in an Artist’s Statement submitted to the Crafts Council of Australia with Men Quilt , his 1979 paean of praise to the multiple joys of gay sex (Gott 6):
I am interested in popular culture. My work is the intersection between folk art, women’s work (needlepoint, patchwork quilts) and contemporary materials. I use loud, cheap and vulgar plastics to make “pretty” pictures—pieces of wall decoration. Good taste can be a prison.
A favourite material from the early 1980s was hologram foil, used in Rapper, Dapper, Snapper , a monumental wall mosaic destroyed in 1982 by Pan Am en route from New York to Sydney for exhibition, and Body Language 1990 (hologram foil on board, NGV). Since his artworks produced no income, he continued to earn his living designing textiles for women’s clothes, moving in the early 1980s to more 'tribal’ designs. In about 1983-84 he began a series of enormous graffiti paintings on cloth, which in turn led to the production of Day-Glo and other vivid disco-wear. He made large fabric works on the subject of HIV/AIDS in the mid-1980s.
After returning to Australia at the end of 1987 McDiarmid immersed himself in community art projects. He did several of the posters for Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras from 1986 (and 1988 and 1990 ) prior to his death in 1995(Mitchell Library [ML] POSTERS 463/1-7), and definitely in 1988 , which has no signature (ML POSTERS 461/1-3). He was also the Artistic Director of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Workshop/Parade. Included in the Tin Sheds exhibition, “Dead Gay Artists”, 1-23 February 2002 curated by Robert Lake.
Writers:
Staff Writer
jeffreystewart1950
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1952
- Summary
- McDiarmid worked in a wide array of media and styles in his artmaking. After 1975, all his work focussed on gay experience, and he is known for his huge wall hangings and other fabric works about HIV/AIDS in the mid 1980s. He used bold designs and colours and very kitsch, 'non-art' materials, such as hologram foil - his argument was: "Good taste can be a prison."
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1995
- Age at death
- 43
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1948-01-01 End Date1995-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wurrumiyanga, Bathurst Island, NT, Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
Olivia Bolton
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 1948
- Summary
- Eddie Puruntatameri was Australia's first Indigenous studio potter. After studying at Bagot pottery he returned home to Bathurst Island where he established Tiwi in 1972. Later he worked st Pirlangimpi Pottery, Melville Island.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1995
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date1995-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- An industrial designer practising in Melbourne, Featherston was born in Geelong and began his career as a designer in glass and lighting without formal training.
After service in the 1939-45 war, he began to develop a range of furniture that has become his signature product: the Relaxation range (1947-49) and the famous Contour Chairs (1951-55 but re-released in the 1990s). This furniture was initially made by Grant Featherston but later licensed to other manufacturers.
Featherston formed a design partnership with wife Mary in 1966 and together they were the winners of many Good Design Awards. Internationally, his best-known work is the famed Talking Chair, commissioned by architect and design critic Robin Boyd for the Australian Pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal. When sat upon, these chairs delivered a tape-recorded message on Australian topics in French and English.
Grant Featherston was one of the pioneers of industrial design in Australia and helped form the Society of Designers for Industry (now the Design Institute of Australia) in Melbourne in 1948. Curator Terence Lane organised Grant Featherson’s retrospective exhibition 'Featherston Chairs’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 1988.
Writers:
Bogle, Michael
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. c.1922
- Summary
- Featherston was an Industrial design and design industry leader. Recognised for his furniture and exhibition work in partnership with Mary Featherston, he helped to form the Society of Designers for Industry (now the Design Institute of Australia) in Melbourne in 1948.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1995
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude50.083333 Longitude14.416667 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date1995-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Czechoslovakia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. You may help the DAAO by adding to it.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- Conceptual and mail artist active in the 1970s, his work was characterised by an intellectual rigour.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1995
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1995-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Born in London in 1920 into a family linage of journeymen tailors to royalty on his mother’s side and a horse rustler turned antique dealer with a passion for painting on his father’s side. With the death of his mother, Raymond from age two, spent his childhood as an orphan before coming to NSW Australia in 1939 through a youth immigration scheme. In 1940 he joined the WW2 Australian infantry. At 21 he was amongst Australia’s deadliest jungle fighters against the Japanese on the Malay peninsula before the Allies’ surrender, after which he spent four long years as a POW in Changi and on the Burma railway. Here he learnt to paint and draw and remarkably kept diaries dotted with emotive drawings.Immediately after his discharge from the military hospital he married Elma Mackay Gibson. They lived and worked in the Horsley Park Post Office where Ray was the Post Master and had a studio. In 1946 Moult-Spiers entered the art scene in Sydney when he exhibited his semi abstracts with the “Contemporary Art Society”. From here he dipped in and out of the Sydney art scene, first as a student of art at East Sydney Technical College as part of the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme, devised for returned soldiers, and operating from 1947 to 49. By 1950 Ray Moult-Spiers was a foundation member of the City of Parramatta Art Society. In 1953 he held a solo exhibition in the David Jones Gallery, Sydney, which was pre-announced with a full colour two-page spread written by Herbert Hull for the February edition of the popular “Australia Magazine” called “A.M.”. The press reviewers including James Gleeson defined his solo show of 52 works with terms like ‘Fantasy’. In January 1956, Moult-Spiers left Australia for a work trial with Walt Disney as a Fantasy artist no less. He was away for a year, but because his wife was not permitted to stay in America, Moult-Spiers was back in Horsley Park by 1957 exhibiting with a group of five young contemporary artists in a show which was very much ‘anti-art school’ and in a Dadaist move exhibited at the CWA Rest Rooms, Fairfield. Moult-Spiers won the 1961 “City of Parramatta Art Prize” with his painting titled “The Mourners” and in 1962 he won the “City of Parramatta Contemporary Art Prize”. Later in 1962 Moult-Spiers was on the executive for the “Australian Art Associates”, a nationwide organisation for modern painters, architects, sculptors, designers and creators in plastic arts. In October 1964, Moult-Spiers and Collinridge Rivett held a two-man show at the Penthouse Gallery, Church Street, Parramatta. It was opened by the University of Sydney Archivist with proceeds going to the International House Appeal. The write up describes Moult-Spiers as being “recognised as one of Australia’s most creative and original contemporary painters.” Raymond Moult-Spiers and his wife moved to Stradbroke Island in 1970, where his wife died suddenly in 1977. Raymond continued painting eventually becoming a recluse until his death in 1995. His last exhibition was on the Island in 1994. He is survived by two of his children to another relationship.
Writers:
parsoj
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 9 February 1920
- Summary
- Moult-Spiers began his career with an exhibition of pictures with the “Contemporary Art Society” in 1946. He was a student of art at East Sydney Technical College and a foundation member of the City of Parramatta Art Society. By 1962 Moult-Spiers was a member of the “Australian Art Associates". He moved to Queensland in 1970 where he continued exhibiting.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Aug-95
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1995-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- illustrator and commercial artist, was born in London and grew up on a chicken farm 50 miles to the north. Unable to find work as an illustrator after leaving school, she painted scenery, designed and made sets and costumes and acted for provincial and small London theatres. She continued to sketch, and she also did occasional commercial art, her first regular commission being to fill in the patterns and fur trimmings on hundreds of outline fashion drawings.
Senior migrated to Australia in the 1940s with her architect husband. He joined the Public Service and she began to work as a freelance illustrator, her major client being the Sydney printing and publishing firm John Sands. She wrote and illustrated Bush Haven Animals (1954) and illustrated Little Brown Piccaninnies of Tasmania by Jane Ada Fletcher, Kurri Kurri the Kookaburra and Two Thumbs the Koala (1950 and 1951) by Leslie Rees, John of the “Sirius” and John and Nanbaree (1955 and 1962) by Doris Chadwick, Cousins-Come-Lately (1952) by Eve Pownall and, she said, 'my old favourite, Eve Pownall’s first Australia Book ' (1952).
After her husband died of multiple sclerosis in 1968, Senior devoted herself to Australian wildlife studies, most notably posters for the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service. Other posters included a series issued by the NSW Bush Fire Committee such as Prevent Bush Fires (n.d., Josef Lebovic Gallery), all featuring 'Smokey Bear’. Until 1970 Senior was a regular illustrator for the NSW School Magazine . She lived at Collaroy Plateau, on Sydney’s northern beaches until her death in 1995.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1917
- Summary
- Illustrator and commercial artist who was born in London and migrated to Australia in the 1940s. Senior wrote and illustrated a number of children's books and later in her career devoted herself to Australian wildlife studies, most notably posters for the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1995
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-37.9502592 Longitude145.0043868 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date1995-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sandringham, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Isabel Roberta St Margaret Donald née Suter, sketcher, was born on 25 August 1914 at Sandringham, Victoria, to Robert John Suter, a farmer, and Emily née Birtwistle Owen. Isabel, or Bobby as she preferred to be called, attended school at Quambatook in country Victoria then went in to service for 12 months until she was old enough to go in to nursing. She completed Division 1 Registered Nurse training at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in April 1939. She enlisted for army service with the 2/8 Australian General Hospital on 25 September 1942 and served in New Guinea. Her service number was VX108173. Bobby was a talented artist and writer. While serving in New Guinea she completed a book of sketches depicting the every day life of a nurse. This book was eventually donated to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Bobby married late in life at age 38 in 1952 and had only one child, Robert. In the early years of their marriage, Bobbie and her husband Robert ran a private nursing home in Toorak. They eventually moved to Cairns in Queensland where Bobbie had time to devote to her passion of painting. Following Robert Snr’s death, she and Robert Jnr returned to Melbourne to the security of family support.
Bobbie had quite a long battle with breast cancer and eventually died on 26 May 1995.
Writers:
Staff Writer
georginacusack
duggim
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 25 August 1914
- Summary
- Mid 20th-century sketcher and nurse, Suter kept a secret diary throughout her postings with the army that she filled with humorous cartoons that depicted the often less-than humorous situations she encountered during her time with the Australian Army Nursing Service.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-May-95
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-35.0641302 Longitude138.8586385 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1995-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mount Barker, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, silk-screen printer, potter and art teacher, was born at Mount Barker (SA) on 24 March 1911. She won a scholarship to the Adelaide School of Arts and studied in 1936-41 under Marie Tuck , Dorrit Black , Leslie Wilkie, Louis McCubbin and Ivor Hele. She joined the United Arts Club where students could sketch from life. From 1935 she exhibited with the Royal South Australian Society of Arts (RSASA) and was elected an associate member while still a student; in 1941 she won the RSASA Portrait Prize. The following year she joined the army, where she lectured in the Education Section until 1945 as well as establishing a Fine Art Print Library and organising an art exhibition of work by army personnel.
After the war Chapman and the Sydney artist James Cant co-founded the Studio of Realist Art (SORA) in Sydney; she became its secretary, gave drawing lessons and established a library at SORA’s premises and organised and participated in SORA exhibitions ( see Marjory Penglase). She and Cant married in 1946. In 1950 they went to London and remained there for five years, also visiting France and Italy. They returned to Sydney, but a year later moved permanently to Adelaide. Chapman lectured at the SA School of Art from 1958 to 1969 and from time to time afterwards although officially retired. She was also an art critic for the Adelaide Advertiser during these years. In 1961 she was awarded the Melrose Prize for portraiture. After her retirement she began to produce serigraphs like The Girl With A Long Nose (1970, NGA) and Katinka (1973, p.c.), and silk-screen printing has remained a major interest. Dora Chapman died in Adelaide on 15 May 1995.
PORTRAIT: Self Portrait n.d. (c.1940), oil on canvas 76.2 × 64.3 cm. Art Gallery of South Australia
Painted in Adelaide, where Chapman had previously had an outstanding student career, this unusual self-portrait presents an oddly ambiguous view of the artist. The setting is Chapman’s own studio yet this figure seems a stranger there, nervously deflecting her gaze as if the viewer-who of course is Chapman herself as well as us-is the real owner of the place. The coat, scarf and broad-brimmed felt hat (which became a trademark) suggest that this person really belongs outdoors, and to some extent she does; at least the largest of the works pinned on the wall would have been painted en plein air . Chapman was then painting landscapes, portraits, still life and interior subjects so the image could be read as representing all facets of her art-except that it carries no conviction that the artist/subject belongs in any specific location.
Inextricably intermingled with the disjunctive subject and setting is the sexual ambiguity of the figure. Short, concealed hair, clothing suitable for either sex, a solid right fist and such strong facial features do not indisputably proclaim that this is a woman in her late twenties; the artist might equally be a younger man. That frank, sexless androgyny complements, indeed justifies, the severely realist idiom of the work. Although there is much artifice in the rendition of the figure and the schematically rendered objects, the power of this portrait comes from the viewer’s conviction that it is an absolutely honest, unflattering, factual statement.
In fact, few metaphysical problems about her art or her sexuality seem to have troubled Chapman in the 1940s. She was far more concerned with changing society through social realist art. In 1945 she married a fellow painter, James Cant, and moved to Sydney, where they co-founded the Studio of Realist Art ( see Marjory Penglase ). Chapman became the secretary rather than an official exhibiting member, who were all men, and did much of the work to sustain the group’s teaching, exhibiting and social programmes-a typical woman’s role. Inevitably, her own art suffered as a result. Chapman’s great integrity in presenting with such artistic detachment this insecure stranger in her studio makes this a compelling work. The artist-subject rightly looks warily away from the self who is painting her, unsure of her place in the studio or, as yet, in life itself.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 24 March 1911
- Summary
- Painter, silk-screen printer, potter and art teacher. Resident of South Australia, New South Wales, and England, she was concerned with changing society through social realist art.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 15-May-95
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date1995-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- Thelma Carter (1910-1995) was a Gurnai fibre artist who lived in east Gippsland, Victoria.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Allas, Tess
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1910
- Summary
- Thelma Carter (1910-1995) was a Gurnai fibre artist who lived in east Gippsland, Victoria.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-Apr-95
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude40.712778 Longitude-74.006111 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1995-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New York, New York, USA
- Biography
- sculptor, 'born in New York, brought up in Buffalo, and living in Boston’, had a rich early life. Her father was interested in natural history, while her pianist mother was interested in classical and advanced music – Debussy and Bartok. Wagner was sung in their summer house at Eagle Lake by visiting German opera singers. Margel Harris and her sister studied modern dance, 'as “movement” rather than interpretation’, with a pupil of Isadora Duncan ( see Bernice Agar ). However, she always wanted to be a sculptor and was taught to work in clay from the model by Charles Grafley and Frederick Allen at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
In 1930 she married Frank Hinder , whom she had met at Emil Bisttram’s summer school at Moriah, Lake Champlain. With their daughter, Enid, they came to Frank’s native Australia in 1934. Although Margel experienced severe culture shock she never returned to America, travelling overseas only in her seventies, to China. She made her first carving, Doves , soon after she arrived; it was shown five years later in Exhibition 1 (1939).
The sculptor Gerald Lewers’s understanding of the qualities of wood and stone gave direction to her subsequent years of carving. No sculptural style had yet emerged that was as modern as the paintings of the Australian modernist group, of which she was a part, although Eleonore Lange in her catalogue introduction to Exhibition 1 advocated a sculpture which 'eliminated natural appearance, silhouette and surface modelling to concentrate on shape relations’. Margel was already working towards this, her work suggesting primitive and eastern aspects of modern art.
During the war Margel worked as model-maker for Professor Dakin and made models used in advertisements. Resuming sculpture in 1943, she became interested in movement and in getting away from a solid shape with a central axis – in becoming anti-classic. Her many bird and animal sculptures now reflected moments in the process of life; a crane’s tail unfolding became an abstract organic carving. By 1952 wood had been banished as too sentimental. She wanted to be spontaneous, which was hard in wood, so turned to metal for the rest of her career. Her 'space-age’ period was ushered in by two competitions in 1949-53. Her new work embraced the theory of Gabo and Maholy-Nagy – constructed out of space and time. Margel’s competition model for the Pinkerton Memorial used cement, perspex and cast aluminium in a constructivist way to articulate space. It was in her second competition piece, The Unknown Political Prisoner , that this quality of articulation was perfected.
Compared to Gabo, Margel’s work is asymmetrical, more intuitively wayward. While she is always trying to get away from a centre, from gravity, the sadness, she says, is that one cannot. Compared to Hepworth, she uses form in a less absolute sense. She feels Hepworth’s work is static. The asymmetry, the necessity to move around the work to comprehend its form, became central to her art and led to the revolving constructions begun in 1954. Her later career includes large public sculptures, her masterpiece being the Captain Cook Memorial Fountain in Civic Park, Newcastle (1961-66).
Writers:
Free, Renée
Note: primary
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- Sculptor, born in New York she moved to Australia with her husband and became involved in the Austalian modernist movement. Her later career includes large public sculptures, including the Captain Cook Memorial Fountain in Civic Park, Newcastle, 1961-66.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1995
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-27.5610193 Longitude151.953351 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1995-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toowoomba, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Gloria Alice Lovelock was born in Toowoomba on 25 February 1906, the first daughter of the two boys and two girls born to William Lovelock and Florence Annie née Jones. The family came to reside in Sandgate a few years later where Gloria attended the Sandgate State School and later studied secretarial courses at the Domestic Science High School, Brisbane. She first became involved with pottery when she accompanied Olive Dougherty (later Moase qv) to pottery classes at the Central Technical College in 1926. She exhibited a collection of pottery at the Second Annual Exhibition of Work by Art Students of the Central Technical College in December, 1933; the Third Annual Exhibition in December, 1934; and in the Sixth Annual Exhibition in November, 1937. She may also have exhibited her work in 1935 and 1936 but individual exhibitors are not cited in these years. She continued her classes with L. J. Harvey when he was teaching at Horsham House and was included in exhibitions there until 1941. She exhibited pottery at the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association in 1939 and pottery, leather and macramé work at the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland in 1941. She also exhibited a vase modelled as a tree trunk at a students’ exhibition at Horsham House during the 1940s.
After this she worked for the Red Cross as a remedial craft instructor teaching returned servicemen leatherwork, chip carving and pottery and, in turn, was taught leather plaiting by one of her patients. She taught pottery to the University of Queensland physiotherapy students at the Royal Brisbane Hospital during 1944. She was appointed a Superintendent for the Red Cross in 1945 and in late 1949 replaced Mrs C. W. White in charge of the Red Cross Depot. She worked as a secretary for a few years before she had to retire to care for her aged parents and subsequently worked as a secretary at St Aidan’s Anglican Girls School, Corinda during the 1970s.
Gloria Lovelock was one of the most highly regarded potters of the Harvey School and demonstrated her skills at workshops during the Queensland Art Gallery’s 1983 exhibition 'LJ Harvey and his School’.
She died at Redcliffe on 6 March 1995.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 February 1906
- Summary
- Gloria Lovelock was one of the most highly regarded potters of the Harvey School and demonstrated her skills at workshops during the Queensland Art Gallery's 1983 exhibition 'LJ Harvey and his School'.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Mar-95
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1963-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1963
- Summary
- Scott was an active participant of the 1980s QLD ARI sector.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1994
- Age at death
- 31
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1960-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- Stephen Cummins was an Australian filmmaker, curator and artist active during the 1980s and early 1990s. A founder-member of Queer Screen, Cummins’ work was an early contribution to Queer Theory and cinema studies and a number of his works, particularly in Super 8, are considered historically significant.Cummins’ Super 8 films included Blue Movie and Breathbeat [both 1984] Deadpan [1985], and Le Corps Image [1987], each film demonstrating the artist’s fascination with the subcultural signification of the male body. Later projects such as Elevation [1989] – a project funded by the Australian Film Commission – was a 16mm film project extending and refining Cummins’s approach. Resonance [1991] – made in collaboration with Simon Hunt – was screened internationally picking up a number of awards including being voted Best Short Film at the 38th Sydney Film Festival [1991], Best Australian film at the National Gay & Lesbian Film Festival and Best Short Film at the Turin Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, Italy [1992]. Cummins also made film and video projects for broadcast. The 1992 project Life’s Burning Desire [52 mins, Betacam] and the short Body Corporate [9 mins, Super 8, 1993] were both screened on SBS Australia.As a curator, Cummins organised programs of Australian Super 8 film to tour Europe and the US such as Eclectic Dreams [1986], 34° S 151° E [1987] and Surface Imprint [1989]. Cummins’ curated programs of film for Australian festivals including Bent, a program of SPLASH: The Sydney Film and Video Event at the Chauvel Cinema [1988].Cummins graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Sculpture/Photography from Sydney College of the Arts in 1984 and was awarded a Graduate Diploma, also from SCA, in 1986. From 1990 until the time of his death in 1994 Cummins was enrolled in the Master of Art Program at the University of Technology.
Writers:
Andrew FrostScanlines
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1960
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1994
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude-30.748889 Longitude121.465833 Start Date1941-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Kalgoorlie, WA. He left school aged 15 and moved to Perth where he became a copy boy on the West Australian 'to fill in the time before joining the Air Force’. The air force 'knocked me back because my eyes were crook, so I ended up becoming a press artist’. Simply because there was a vacancy, he was put in the art department in 1969 and began drawing cartoons. He was soon appointed the daily cartoonist, the first since the paper began publication in 1933 [in 1934 according to the Australian 31/10/1998, 11]. He remained until 1978 then moved to Sydney to join the Daily Telegraph (1979-80). In 1980 he transferred to the Australian where he remained for 14 years, until his death. Rigby , who was drawing in Perth when Mitchell was growing up, was a key influence on his work (as he was on so many newspaper cartoonists, e.g. Benier , Slapp ), though Les Tanner 'influenced me a lot on caricature’ and he was a fan of Jolliffe 's 'for years and years’.
Mitchell had work syndicated worldwide through New York. He won Stanley Awards for the best editorial/political cartoonist in 1985, 1987 and 1992 and for best comic strip artist in 1987-88 for Bustards of the Bush . Probably his best-known work, this weekly strip was developed from In the Scrub with Harry Bottler (a parody of the TV 'bush’ personality Harry Butler). It appeared in the Weekend Australian from 1983 until he died; a collection, Mitchell’s Bustards of the Bush was published by Cumberland Press, Parramatta, in 1984. In 1989, when Mitchell was dying of leukaemia, News Ltd instituted the Bill Mitchell Memorial Award for young artists. He lived to present the first in 1990, joking that the name needed to be changed. Despite chemotherapy he continued to produce cartoons from his home at Muswellbrook (NSW) – faxed to Sydney – until he died in May 1994. He was survived by his wife, Rhonda, their four sons – Stuart, Leigh, Dale and Christopher – and various grandchildren. The Bill Mitchell Memorial Art Award continued to be sponsored by the Australian newspaper for some years.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1941
- Summary
- Popular late 20th century Perth and Sydney newspaper cartoonist. Mitchell won Stanley Awards for the best editorial/political cartoonist in 1985, 1987 and 1992.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- May-94
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1931-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, Western Australia, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1931
- Summary
- Marsh was the principal of a design firm originally known as Neville Marsh Interiors (1965, dates vary), later becoming one of the principals of Marsh Freedman, in partnership with George Freeman (ca.1975, dates vary). Specialising in residential interiors, Marsh, formerly with the British Colour Council, was known for his colour work. He retired in 1986 and moved to Italy, later reviving his career with hotel work in Bali.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-94
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude53.1144444 Longitude19.0530556 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Golub, Poland
- Biography
- Joseph Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski, abstract expressionist painter, theatre set designer, photographer and experimental film producer, was born in Golub, Poland on 28 December 1922, the son of Stefan Kotkowski and Jadwiga Niejedli. As a child he showed an interest in art, although his father, who was a bank manager, did not approve of painting as a career. During the Second World War, Ostoja-Kotkowski received art lessons from an artist he met in Poland. Before the end of the war, he was evacuated from Poland and sent to Dusseldorf, where he applied for and received a scholarship to study at the Dusseldorf Academy of Fine Art in Germany, from 1945 to 1949. Whilst at the Art Academy, he studied painting under the guidance of Professor Hauser.
Towards the end of 1949, Ostoja-Kotkowski immigrated to Australia, arriving in Melbourne aboard the ‘Fairsea.’ In his migration papers, he was described as a ‘mechanist’ and for his first job he was sent to work in a concrete factory. Unsatisfied, he sought the nighttime shift in order to focus on his artistic study during the day, whereby he attended classes at the National Gallery School in Melbourne, Victoria, under the tutelage of Alan Sumner and William Dargie.
In late July 1953, Ostoja-Kotkowski was one of eight Melbourne artists in a group exhibition showcasing contemporary Victorian art at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney. His co-exhibitors included prominent artists such as Arthur Boyd, John Brack and Charles Blackman. Around June of 1953, shortly before this exhibition, he moved to Leigh Creek in the north of South Australia, where he continued his artistic practice in painting, while also earning a supporting income as a house painter. Some of the paintings he completed during this time were transported to Melbourne and exhibited in the ‘Herald Open Air Art Show,’ held in the Treasury Gardens off Spring Street and Collins Street (8-14 December 1953). However, Adelaide was to be backdrop for his first solo exhibition, which took place at the Royal Society of Arts in 1955. South Australia also became his official home, as he settled in Stirling, in the Adelaide Hills.
In 1955, Ostoja-Kotkowski commenced collaboration in film production with Ian Davidson. These two artists worked together on a range of projects together, including several creative films, the first being ‘The Quest of Time,’ which was a surrealist work questioning the distinction between the ‘dream world’ and reality. Furthermore, Ostoja-Kotkowski and Davidson jointly undertook documentary assignments. In 1956, they were given the task of recording the activities that celebrated the Port Adelaide Centenary and they photographed the South Australian Architectural Exhibition that was held in the Botanical Park. Ostoja-Kotkowski contributed designs to the exhibition, where one of his first two sculptures in steel was additionally displayed.
Ostoja-Kotkowski’s creativity traversed multiple mediums. In addition to painting, film, photography and sculpture, he wrote poetry and designed décor for numerous theatre productions, his first in Adelaide being for ‘The Prisoner,’ produced by Philip Fargher. He painted backdrops for several productions by the South Australian Ballet Theatre, including ‘Pas Noirs et Sentimentals’ and ‘Cinderella.’ Moreover, he produced stained glass windows for private firms and he experimented with metal, bronze, plastic and new paints, including vitreous enamel.
In 1957, Ostoja-Kotkowski and Davidson exhibited their experimental films at an exhibition of contemporary South Australian art at David Jones Gallery, Sydney. Ostoja-Kotkowski’s painting ‘Form in Landscape’ was shown for first time at this exhibition, after which time it was displayed in Adelaide where it won the Cornell Prize. The Art Gallery of South Australia later acquired this painting.
Ostoja-Kotkowski’s public reputation as a noted contemporary Australian artist was further demonstrated by his inclusion in the “Art in Everyday Life” exhibition. He was one of eleven artists commissioned by Kelvinator Australia Limited, through the Australian Woman’s Weekly, to each paint a refrigerator that would be displayed in a touring exhibition and then sold at auction with proceeds going to Legacy House, Sydney. The exhibition commenced in Sydney in December 1958 and travelled to Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide. Fellow exhibitors included Arthur Boyd, Clifton Pugh and Jon Mulvig.
In 1958, Ostoja-Kotkowski began to work with the Elder Conservatorium of Adelaide University. He designed sets for Donizetti’s ‘Elixir of Love’ and employed innovative light settings. This can be seen as a precursor to his ‘Sound and Image’ productions, starting in 1960, where his visual production on the theme of ‘Orpheus’ comprised dance, music and sound, with projectors displaying photographs that faded in and out together in sequence.
Ostoja-Kotkowski’s innovative artistic practice led to a number of public projects in the following decades of his extensive and celebrated career. In 1964 he devised an illuminated mosaic pattern on the glass fronted MLC Building for the Adelaide festival, as well as a executing a large mural for BP House in Melbourne, constructed from steel, fibre glass, resin and copper. During the 1970s Ostoja-Kotkowski won an Australian wide competition for a mural at the Adelaide Airport, and continued activities in electronic and light displays. These activities drew upon the research he conducted during a Fellowship he received from the Australian American Educational Association, which took him to the US to study laser art and technology. In 1984 he presented a laser kinetics concert in the streets of Ballarat on the occasion of the Ballarat Festival. Furthermore, in 1991 his home country, Poland, invited him to present a concert with the National Philharmonic in Warsaw. This major production involved 13 lasers accompanied by the music of national composers.
Ostoja-Kotkowski received an Order of Australia in 1992. He passed away two years later in 1994. His work is held in several prominent public collections, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth and Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.
Writers:
ecwubben
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 28 December 1922
- Summary
- Joseph Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski, abstract expressionist painter, theatre set designer, photographer, experimental film producer and light and sound artist was born in Golub, Poland in 1922 and he arrived in Australia in 1949. His diverse artistic practice included innovation in laser art and sound and image technology. Ostoja-Kotkowski was awarded an Order of Australia in 1992.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1994
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-22.815924 Longitude127.7642195 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kiwirrkura, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Born near Kiwirrkura c. 1920, Milliga was a Kukatja speaker. Her country was Purrungu and Mulyurtju. She lived at Balgo and started painting for Warlayirti Artists in 1989. Despite being very elderly, the artist loved painting and seemed to enjoy conveying something of her feelings for her country. All of her works tell of the food and wood sources in the area where she lived for many years. Towards the end of her life, she produced a series of totally abstract works marked by layers of hazy dotting.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1920
- Summary
- A Kukatja artist who began painting for Warlayirti Artists in 1989.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1994
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia
- Biography
- Designer of textiles, painter, china painter, leatherworker and art teacher was born in Western Australia on the 2nd of February 1920 to Louisa May Smith n_e Forbes and her husband Dr Eric Smith. Her mother a teacher of music, singing and painting prior to her marriage, was a painter and member of the Western Australian Women’s Society of Fine Arts and Crafts who became a well-known china painter. She had studied art under Francesco Vanzetti. The family set off later in 1920 for Los Angeles and Edinburgh where her father completed his medical training. They returned to Perth in 1927. She attended St Clare’s College where her teacher was Miss Brockway and later St Mary’s Girls School under Margaret Saunders whose Perth School of Art she had also attended on Saturdays. Saunders, her mentor for ten years, encouraged her to make her own designs and had shown her how to make repeat patterns for printing. Forbes-Smith studied commercial art from 1941-43 at Perth Technical School under Iris Francis and Ivor Hunt and followed that with general art studies to 1946. She was one of the first students to graduate from Perth Technical College with the Art Teachers Diploma. The hours had been rigorous 9-4pm and 8-9.30 five days a week. Forbes-Smith travelled regularly with her father making four trips to Singapore in the 1930s and 1952. Sketches made on the voyages were later incorporated into designs for textiles. Forbes-Smith learnt china painting from Grace Nicholls and showed regularly with the Western Australian Women Painters and Applied Arts Society. In the August 1939 exhibition at Newspaper House Art Gallery she exhibited two designs for needlework, a design for centrepieces and a lampshade. However it was textile designs in 1941 which were described in a newspaper of the day as: “Not only modern but in accordance with the most modish fashion tends, and practical. Particularly attractive is a diagonal conventionalized design in native weapons, boomerangs, woomeras and the like in agreeable stripes. There is an unusual combination of leschenaultia and boomerangs. The whole range of exhibits, selected by art authorities, though comparatively small, is constructive and encouraging.” Forbes-Smith exhibited leatherwork and textile designs with the Women’s Society in 1945 the year she was invited to become member of The Studio Club, which met in the Turf Club building in central Perth. Other members were Margaret Johnson, Audrey Greenhalgh, Nell Chappell, Iris Francis, Aimee Santo Crimp and Dorothy Hanton n_e Stubbs. She enjoyed the critical involvement of this supportive women’s group. Forbes-Smith also taught private classes for girls in the club premises. In 1947 she studied at the Adelaide School of Design under Davis and Hoffman but ill with rheumatism returned after six months. Forbes-Smith joined the Perth Society of Artists in 1948. She would have to leave Western Australia to pursue a career as a textile designer as the manufacturing base was not there and this was not something she wished to do so instead she became a painter and teacher until she married Herbert Clement Kentish in 1952 and resigned from teaching. Forbes-Smith taught at Park School, St Hilda’s Girls School, Guildford Grammar School and Lady Lawley Cottage. After her marriage she lived on a dairy farm in Keysbrook, was active locally, teaching art and brought up three children. In 1952 she exhibited Bolinda Vale, Keysbrook with the Perth Society of Artists. In the 1960s and the 1970s when her children were grown she took trips to South Africa, New Zealand and the various states of Australia exhibiting her work or teaching painting on cruise ships. RED SECTIONS
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 February 1920
- Summary
- Designer of textiles, painter, china painter, leatherworker and art teacher. Forbes-Smith showed regularly with the Western Australian Women Painters and Applied Arts Society. In the 1960s and the 1970s she took trips to South Africa, New Zealand and the various states of Australia exhibiting her work or teaching painting on cruise ships.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1994
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1918
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1994
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-34.65589 Longitude117.64688 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mount Barker, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Bella Kelly was born in 1915 in Mount Barker, which is in Minang country in the South Coast region of Western Australia. Kelly was the daughter of Billy Colbung (dec.) and Mina Bayla Brockman (dec.), who were members of the Wardandi people and originated from the southwest region of Western Australia. Kelly’s birth name was Isobel Colbung. Kelly spent her childhood in the bush, and would sometimes draw pictures in the sand while she sat around the campfire with her elders. Her parents earned an income from selling kangaroo skins to buyers who visited the region around Cranbrook (40 kilometres north of Mount Barker). In later years, her father worked as a labourer on George Warburton’s farm in Mount Barker. Kelly did not attend school, but in her early teenage years taught herself to read from comic books (The Albany Advertiser, 6 March 1967). After her parents passed away, she moved to Kojonup, and while she was a teenager she was employed as a domestic at the Carrolup Native Settlement, responsible for cooking and housemaid duties.Kelly painted consistently throughout her life. Her earliest creative works, made in her youth, were charcoal drawings and paintings on paperbark, but in her late 30s she began to paint with acrylic on canvas, and would go on to work with watercolours and gouache. This transition was, in part, made possible by the paint supplies Kelly received from a doctor in Mount Barker for whom she worked as a domestic from the 1960s. Dr Bourke, who also cared for one of Kelly’s grandchildren over several years, ultimately acquired a large collection of Kelly’s paintings over the period that she was employed by him (Krakouer, pers. comm. 2009). For the most part, her paintings depict the Stirling Ranges, often foregrounded by the trunks and branches of the Jarrah and Karri eucalypts of the area. The Stirling Ranges, also known to Noongars as the Blue Ranges, sit just to the northeast of Mount Barker where Kelly was born, and are part of the Minang people’s traditional country. They are visible from many of the towns where Kelly lived during most of her life. In the book Koorah Coolingah (Children Long Ago) (2006), her daughter Cheryl Narkle states that “...it’s always been the Stirling Ranges. There was something there that she’s telling us about what’s around Mount Barker, where she walked… where they camped at all their settlements and all that.” (Pushman & Wally 2006, pg 71).Kelly worked as both a domestic and a farm labourer on properties throughout the Great Southern and the South Coast regions, travelling between Albany, Mount Barker, Katanning, Wagin, Narrogin and other towns. Like her father, she worked on the Warburton property in Mount Barker (later the site of Goundrey Wines), where she was employed in both the 1940s and in the 1970s by Kitty Warburton, the daughter of George Warburton. Kelly’s grandson Jerry Narkle, who visits many properties in the region in his capacity as an Indigenous heritage officer, related to the author that he frequently meets landowners who knew or know of Kelly, and many of them own her paintings or recall her creating art while working on their properties. A small shack in which Kelly used to live opposite the Warburton’s property is now heritage listed with the Department of Indigenous Affairs in Western Australia (J. Narkle, pers. comm. 2009). Kelly painted in a naturalistic style, employed a vivid palette and used a small brush to pick up highlights on ridge tops, leaves and tree bark. She usually painted indoors, drawing entirely from her intuitive knowledge of, and love for, the Stirling Ranges. Her strong emotional identification with her country is conveyed in her intuitive use of colour and the dream-like appearance of many of her works. Jerry Narkle, who grew up with Kelly during the 1970s and 1980s, described her patient and dedicated approach to her art, and the fact that she would remain utterly absorbed in her painting for full days with few breaks (pers. comm. 2009). For Noongar artists practicing today, Kelly is strongly associated with the renowned Carrolup children artists who produced, exhibited and sold work to great acclaim in Australia and overseas under the guidance of Noel and Lily White, who taught at the Carrolup Native Settlement school in the 1940s and early 1950s. Kelly had worked at Carrolup as a teenager, and returned there later in life, in the 1980s. Furthermore, her four sons from her marriage to Henry Kelly: Flemming Kelly, Goldie Kelly, Greg Kelly and Simpson Kelly (all deceased) were taken away from her and spent part of their childhood at the Carrolup Native Settlement. Kelly remained in close proximity to the settlement for a number of years after her boys were taken away (C. Narkle, Pers. comm. 2009). Goldie, Greg and Simpson all painted at some stage in their lives, and a work by Simpson that was created at Carrolup when he was twelve years old (in 1948) is in the collection of the Berndt Museum of Anthropology. Kelly was creating work long before the Carrolup School began and seems to have been largely self-taught. However the stylistic affinities between her works and those of some of the Carrolup children, and the profound influence her practice has had on later generations of Noongar artists who work in the Carrolup style lead to her being regarded as an integral part of the Carrolup legacy.Kelly had three daughters and a son with her second partner, Largy Narkle, whom she met in the late 1940s: Cheryl Narkle, Lorrice Kelly (Lorrice kept her mother’s name), Caroline Narkle and Geoffrey Narkle (dec.). The Narkle children were removed from her care and raised in Wandering Mission, also known as the St Francis Xavier Mission, in Wandering. Geoffrey Narkle went on to become a well-known artist himself, and Caroline Narkle is also a practicing artist who paints in association with Mungart Boodja Art Centre in Katanning. The exhibition catalogue South West Central (2003) quotes the following statement from Geoffrey Narkle about his mother: “Bella Kelly painted to escape many social and political pressures of her time; [having had] her children stolen from her, she found a form of peace in her many landscapes, and she found great joy as many sat and watched her paint as she shared many of her stories. Bella Kelly will always be remembered for her love for her Noongar/Nyoongar people and her great love for her beautiful South-West country” (in Croft & Gooding 2003, pg 43). Kelly’s experience of losing her children, and the difficulty of rebuilding relationships with those children in later life, is partially narrated in the play King Hit, which was co-written by Geoffrey Narkle and David Milroy in 2002. It dramatises Geoffrey’s life story from growing up with his mother, father and siblings on Clayton Road Reserve just outside of Narrogin, to being taken with his sisters to Wandering Mission, to touring as a boxer with George Stewart’s boxing troupe.Kelly first exhibited her paintings in 1970 with her son Goldie in Perth. Other exhibitions followed, including one with her son Geoffrey at the Waterman’s Restaurant in Mount Barker in 1977, and a 1991 exhibition at Fremantle Arts Centre in which her paintings were shown alongside artwork by Alma Toomath and Michelle Broun. However Kelly’s works circulated widely outside of formal exhibitions. She sold her work through shops in Perth, like Inada Aboriginal Arts, and in the towns where she worked, such as a shop run by Noongar artist and writer Maxine Fumagalli in the town of Denmark. She would also sell individual works to farmers to support her family when she was short of money. Her works are on the walls of many households in Western Australia and have been acquired by interstate and international visitors to the Great Southern, Southwest and South Coast regions, having appealed strongly to Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike. Among the collectors who acquired her work was Perth art entrepreneur and collector Mary Mácha. In 1988, Kelly received the NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) Aboriginal Artist of the Year Award.Kelly spent most of her later years in Mt Barker amongst her family, until she passed away in Perth in 1994. In a conversation with the author (2009), Caroline Narkle described how Kelly kept making work right up until the year of her death, and how her grandchildren loved to sit and watch her paint. She remains a greatly revered artist in Western Australia, having been a source of inspiration to Noongar artists such as Lance Chadd, Athol Farmer, Roma Winmar, and Charlie Colbung (her grand-nephew). Her works are in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Berndt Museum of Anthropology, and are kept on permanent display in the Albany Regional Hospital and the Mt Barker Senior High School. Exhibitions in which her works have been shown posthumously include 'Aboriginal artists of the South-West: Past and Present’ (2000) at the Lawrence Wilson Gallery, The University of Western Australia, and 'South West Central: Indigenous art from south Western Australia 1833-2002’ (2003) at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. In 2009 her works were included in the Brisbane Powerhouse exhibition 'The Legacy of Koorah Coolingah (The Legend of Children Long Ago)’, in which original works of the Carrolup school were shown alongside contemporary Noongar artists who have been influenced by their work.
Writers:
Fisher, LauraNote:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 14 January 1915
- Summary
- Noongar Aboriginal landscape artist from Mount Barker who is strongly associated with the Carrolup school of artists. Well remembered and respected in the southwest, Great Southern and South Coast regions of Western Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1994
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.565 Longitude149.0177778 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burnt Yards, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- photographer, the eldest of three children, was born at Burnt Yards (NSW) in 1909. Her father, John, was manager then owner of a sheep and wheat property. When she left Walli Public School in March 1922 at the age of thirteen, Alice was presented with a Box Brownie camera. Films were sent by post to Kodak in Sydney until she purchased her own equipment for developing. The few known extant examples of her work (1926-31) are of her brother, Eric, and Bob Costello, a labourer employed by John Green.
Alice married Allen Roy McGregor, a BHP prospector at Junction Reef Goldmine, in the Church of England at Mandurama on 9 June 1934. They moved to Newcastle and had a son, Malcolm, in 1938. Alice did not pursue her early interest in photography. She died in July 1994.
Writers:
Goodhew, Vanessa
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1909
- Summary
- Although she abandoned her early photographic pursuits after she married, Alice enjoyed photographing her brother and a friend with her first camera in her early teens.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Jul-94
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, sculptor, illustrator and commercial artist, was born in Sydney on 22 April 1908, daughter of William Cowdroy. After a few years at Eden on the south coast of NSW, the family settled in Sydney. Vic attended Fort Street High School until she was thirteen and became ill with scarlet fever. After she recovered, she left school and began studying art at East Sydney Technical College. At the end of 1925, aged seventeen, she was in her fourth year as a sculpture student and Rayner Hoff was calling her his 'star pupil’. Although primarily devoted to sculpture (portrait heads and small nude figures), Vic also did story illustrations; Hoff predicted that in both fields she might some day rival Norman Lindsay , an artist whom she was said to admire profoundly. Yet even then, despite a common interest in drawing and modelling nudes, Vic’s work showed little direct Lindsay influence, being far more 'moderne’ and stylised.
In 1925 Cowdroy was drawing cartoons for Aussie – including a self portrait. That year she made plaster panel decorations for the Black and White Artists’ Ball, the bohemian event in the Sydney social calendar, said to be 'weirdly original in design, displaying her virile imagination, her innate sense of composition and her skilful modelling’. In 1926 she designed the poster for the Artists’ Ball (National Art School collection). Her graduate sculpture, Figure from Life , was illustrated in Art in Australia in March 1927.
Cowdroy also drew cartoons for the Bulletin in the 1920s, eg 'Violinist: “I want an E string please”/ Sadie: “Oh sir, if you don’t mind, would you pick it out for yourself, sir? I 'ardly know the 'es from the shes!”’ 11 June 1925 (original Mitchell Library [ML] Px*D457/91, address Miss V. Cowdroy, 119 Anzac Parade, Kensington); and (two smoking flappers) 'Musical Intelligence./ Mrs Nurich: “We dined the Baron last night.”/ Mrs Hibrow: “You don’t say! Did he bring his coronet?”/ Mrs Nurich: “Oh, I didn’t even know that he could play one!” 12 December 1925, 25 (original ML Px*D457/92, same address).
She continued to sign her work 'Vic Cowdroy’ after August 1926 when she married George Bunting (the subject of one of her earliest sculptures, a plaster head done when she was fifteen). They had a daughter, Diane, who became a fashion artist. Now illustration was Vic’s major interest. As 'Cowdroy’ she did lots of work for the Home (1928-31/ or 1934?), including a drawing for a Myra Morris story, 'The Dark River’ (2 January 1928, 18-19), depicting the difficult sentence: 'Bernadette’s mind was a dark, running river, swirling about him, seeking to carry him off his feet’. Her Home cartoons include The national dinner beverage , showing 'The Dinkum Australian abroad who, having exhausted his quota of serious drinking for the day, asks for a modest cupper tea’ (1 July 1931, 36), and The Big Australian Beach Parade (see Heritage ).
She produced drawings, including covers, for Wireless Weekly and drew a nonsense image for Ink no 1 (1933), 47 – the only issue published – 'Mr Johnson (from the Bank)/ “I come from the moon, my name’s Augustus, and you’re my little ray of moonshine”.’ For several years she did fashion features for David Jones and Farmers department stores, some published in Home . She illustrated three books of poems by her friend Ronald McCuaig with fine, witty line drawings: Vaudeville (1938), The Wanton Goldfish (1941) and Quod (1946). She also painted portraits. Her subjects include the English author and poet Peter Hopegood (private collection).
From January 1938 Cowdroy contributed numerous joke cartoons and elegant line and watercolour drawings to Man , Man Junior , Cavalcade and other semi-salacious, 'all-male’ K.G. Murray publications under the pseudonym 'Royston’. Her first cartoon in Man (January 1938) shows a predatory young woman addressing a meek employee at 'Car Registration’: “I’d like to know who owns car BW88”. Other examples are (women golfers in a bar) “Oh you declined! For the moment I thought you said reclined” August 1938, 35; (old woman to young woman going out) '“Be a good girl and have a good time.”/“Make up your mind mother”’ November 1938; (young woman to customs officer checking her luggage) “Oh, don’t worry with that one. It’s only some marihuana I’m smuggling in” December 1938; (woman with knickers round her ankles but hat intact) “Huh! I thought you said this stuff would knock your hat off” January 1939, 37; (barman to two demure-looking young women) “and remember, no risque stories, there are gentlemen present” May 1939. Also one of c.March 1940, 96.
In the 1940s Cowdroy shared a Sydney studio with cartoonists George Aria , “Carl” (Hottie) Lahm and Arthur Horner . In 1946, after George Bunting died, she sailed for England with their daughter. Two years later, in London, she married Arthur Horner, who had come over to work in Fleet Street. They had two daughters, Jane (a journalist) and Julia (a painter and illustrator). Vic stopped drawing while the children were young, but later took up animation. In a converted stable in Hertfordshire she produced forty-five minutes of animation virtually single-handed. In 1976 she returned to Melbourne with her husband. She died in Melbourne on 26 June 1994; Arthur Horner (best-known as the creator of Colonel Pewter in London Punch ) died in Melbourne in 1997.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 April 1908
- Summary
- Mid 20th century artist and cartoonist.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Jun-94
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude54.98 Longitude-1.61 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
- Biography
- Personal
Edmund Arthur Harvey was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, on 20 February 1907, son of Arthur James Harvey and Margaret Harvey née Nicholson. His only sibling, younger brother Wilfred, died in infancy. Harvey migrated with his parents to Australia in 1909, but was sent back to Europe for studies at the age of eighteen. His parents returned to England for the duration of World War I, as his father was an engineer and worked in Southampton in a naval wartime position. They returned to Australia in about 1918, after the war. Harvey returned to Australia in 1927 after completing his studies in Europe. In 1940 he married one of his students, Lorna Dummer, in Sydney, New South Wales. She was thirteen years his junior, the daughter of Leslie Sidney Dummer (1890-1945), civil servant, and Milliken 'Milly’ Dummer née Chaffey (1892-1982).
The Harveys had one son, Antony James, and one daughter, Diana. In World War II, Harvey served in the Australian Army (22 April 1942 – 21 April 1944) in the Volunteer Defence Corps as a Gunner. In 1945, the Harveys moved to the Sydney suburb of Castlecrag, where they lived until his death on 23 May 1994. He was eighty-seven.
Education and professional
Harvey began his art studies in 1922 at the age of fifteen years, at evening classes in drawing under Henry Gibbons at East Sydney Technical College (ESTC) in Sydney. That same year he commenced full-time art studies with Julian Ashton at the Sydney Art School. In 1925, at the age of eighteen, he was sent to Paris, where he became a full-time student at the Academie Julien, and also took evening classes at Colarossi’s Ecole de la Grande Chaumière. In 1926 he studied in Florence, at the Academia Della Bella Arte in Rome, and at the Chelsea Polytechnic in London.
In 1927 Harvey returned to Sydney. From 1927-28 he was assistant to G.W. Lambert, ARA. In 1930 he attended evening classes at East Sydney Technical College (ESTC). Harvey was elected a member of the Society of Artists in 1932. In 1933 he assisted Norman Carter in preparing cartoons for stained-glass windows called Sheep Country , and two murals for the former Rural Bank building in Martin Place, Sydney, (the building was later demolished, but the murals were removed by the conservation staff of the Art Gallery of NSW).
Harvey developed a successful private practice. His landscape paintings were traditional in style, and mainly depicted scenes in rural New South Wales. He signed his paintings 'HARVEY’.
In 1935 Harvey and Arthur Murch founded the School of Decorative Arts, situated at the corner of Liverpool and Castlereagh Streets, Sydney.
Harvey became a part-time art teacher at ESTC in 1935, and became a full-time art teacher in the NSW Department of Technical Education on 2 September 1940. He was an art teacher (part-time 1936-1940, full-time 1940-1971) at North Sydney Technical College and ESTC (which became the National Art School). He became Head of the North Sydney Technical College annexe of East Sydney Technical College, and Senior Head Teacher. In 1972 Harvey was Senior Head Teacher of Diploma Painting, Fine Arts Division, at the National Art School. He retired at the end of 1971, after thirty-seven years teaching at the National Art School, and continued to paint in private practice until his death.
Writers:
Rost, Fred
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 February 1907
- Summary
- Edmund Arthur Harvey (1907-1994), generally known as E.A. Harvey or simply Harvey, British-born Australian painter of landscapes in oils, and teacher, particularly at the National Art School, Sydney, NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-May-94
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Frances Burke was best known as a fabric designer and an adventuresome retailer of modernist furnishings through her shop New Design P/L which first opened in 1948.
Burke, born into a Melbourne family involved in the textile trade in Flinders Lane, was initially trained at Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT) and studied painting at the National Gallery School. Bernard Hall was the Director of the National Gallery School (W.E. McInnes after 1935) and the training there was rigorous and academic. The school’s colour palette, not allowed until fourth year, began with burnt sienna and ended with titanium white.
Perhaps as a corrective, she later attended George Bell’s school of painting at its Bourke and Queen Street location from 1936-38. Three flights of creaking timber stairs led to Bell’s studio in the old commercial building; more adventuresome students took the goods lift. Her fellow students at this time included Mary Alice Evatt (Mrs H.V. Evatt) and Sali Herman amongst others.
Critics have observed that George Bell drilled his students to paint from the subject and their imagination. As a consequence, artists such as Francis Burke used images of nature in her design work as starting points; not as goals. As she later confessed in an interview, “I was all the time with my head in a book…George taught me to create from my own mind and thoughts.”
Frances Burke was fortunate to mature at a time when the art of the Australian Aborigine was being re-discovered by contemporary artists and designers. In 1929, the National Gallery of Victoria had mounted the exhibit “Australian Aboriginal Art” and in 1930 Margaret Preston published her influential essay “Applications of Aboriginal Designs” in Art in Australia. Many of these images became part of Burke’s early oeuvre
When she left the Bell school, she founded Burway Prints (fabric prints) in August 1937 with fellow Technical College graduate Morris Holloway. Their first exhibition in 1938 was a critical success. This firm eventually became Frances Burke Fabrics, but she continued to use a textile converting company managed by Morris Holloway to print her designs.
Burke’s textile work was often derived from Australian forms and colours and she was part of a trend amongst designers in the 1930s and 1940s to look more closely at Australian imagery. Byram Mansell, for example, established a textile studio in Sydney in 1930 and rather obsessively explored Aboriginal themes for several decades. Claudio Alcorso’s Silk and Textile Printers, Rushcutters Bay, Sydney also produced a textile range called “Modernage” (1946) that included a number of Aboriginal-influenced images and colours
In 1948, in an expansive mood, Burke established New Design P/L on the first floor of 55 Hardware Street between Little Bourke Street and Lonsdale Streets. She advertised nationally and sold furnishings, fabrics, and domestic utensils designed in the relatively new Modernist style. With its first floor position, New Design had more of a gallery atmosphere than a street front shop. The shop survived in a variety of city and suburban locations until 1967.
Burke’s New Design is part of an Australian tradition of women-directed design emporia that includes Melbourne’s Cynthia Reed Modern Furnishings (1934-35) Margo Lewers’ Notanda in Sydney (1935) and Marion Best Fabrics (1938) in Woollahra
In the 1950s, Frances Burke made a convincing transition to the reigning minimal Modernist style in her fabric designs and interior furnishings. New Design also showcased furniture by Clement Meadmore and Grant Featherston. She also did the interior design work for the Hayman Island Resort during this period.
In 1956, the Olympics in Melbourne presented an Arts Festival, which included a Society of Designers for Industry-coordinated exhibition of industrial design at the Royal Melbourne Technical College (now RMIT) featuring Burke’s work amongst other industrial and graphic designers.
Burke’s status as a designer was widely recognised early in her career. In 1947-48, when a professional design association, the Society of Designers for Industry (SDI) was mooted by R. Haughton James, she became a founder member. The SDI 's original committee included such design luminaries as Fred Ward, Ron Rosenfeldt and Grant Featherston. This important organisation has now evolved into the Design Institute of Australia (DIA).
As designer and retailer, she had many important and influential commissions in Government House, Canberra, several Australian embassies and consulates in Europe, the United States and the Pacific Region.
In her later career, Frances Burke played a substantial administrative role in the design community in Melbourne and was awarded a MBE (1970) and an Honorary Doctorate (RMIT) in 1987 for her services in design. Frances Burke became increasingly inaccessible in her later life and this has had an ill effect on the documentation and national acknowledgement of this important designer. Her work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia by a collection assembled by curator John McPhee, the RMIT Design Archive collection, the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences and other state galleries and museums.
Writers:
Bogle, Michael
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1907
- Summary
- Burke founded screen-printing business, Burway Prints, Melbourne 1937. Established and managed "New Design" retail outlet, founder member Society of Designers for Industry. Her textile designs featured fauna and flora (often Australian), abstract appropriations of Aboriginal designs and organic forms drawn from nature.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 14-Oct-94
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- print and poster maker (including colour linocuts and some b/w work) and postage stamp designer, was born in England and studied at the Slade under Henry Tonks c.1925. Her first linocut, made to instructions over the telephone from Claude Flight to be shown at Flight’s exhibition of linocuts, was purchased by the Victoria & Albert Museum. She continued her studies at Chelsea Polytechnic under Henry Moore, and at the Académie Montmartre under Ferdinand Léger. Arrived Australia in 1953 where she designed posters, e.g. Sturt’s Desert Pea, Australia 1956 (NGA) for ANTA and Discover Australia c.1954-58, photolithograph (Powerhouse Museum, cited Baddeley cat. 5). She exhibited regularly in Australia before migrating to New Zealand.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- Female artist of the Slade School and Académie Montmartre who studied under Henry Moore and Ferdinand Léger. Mayo briefly produced tourist posters in Australia after travelling from England and before migrating to New Zealand.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1994
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-34.7523871 Longitude149.7198009 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1994-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Goulburn, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Commercial and watercolour artist, was born in Goulburn, NSW, daughter of a railway worker. Her aunt was Louisa Lawson, mother of Henry Lawson. The Albury family moved from Goulburn to Hornsby c.1911 and Winn studied art at East Sydney Technical College. She travelled to the USA in the 1920s where she worked as a commercial artist at Sacramento, California. After returning to Sydney, she seems to have worked as a commercial artist in the 1930s.
A collection of Winn Albury’s designs, mostly for lampshades, arrived at Historic Houses Trust (NSW) in 1998 with the part of the Lorenzini archive that had been auctioned in 1995 as part of her deceased estate. Watercolours by both Winn and her sister Ethel were included, along with a large volume of material by Augusto Lorenzini (1852-1921).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1896
- Summary
- Twentieth century female watercolourist who worked as a commercial in Sydney and Sacremento, California. Work found amongst her estate included a number of designs for lampshades.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1994
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-32.8316667 Longitude151.3511111 Start Date1953-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cessnock, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Artist, was included in the Tin Sheds exhibition, “Dead Gay Artists”, 1-23 February 2002.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1953
- Summary
- Late 20th century artist
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Feb-93
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude-23.3782137 Longitude150.5134227 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockhampton, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Ben Wickham was born and raised in Rockhampton where his father and some of his brothers were painter/decorators. He was educated at the Park Avenue State School and later at the North Rockhampton High School. He was largely self taught although he had lessons with local artist Charles Haywood and had the support of the art teacher Ainslie Cox, who let him set up a studio under her flat in Victoria Street, Rockhampton. She encouraged him to have lessons with Roy Churcher in Brisbane and he also was encouraged by a student teacher Annette Pirrett. He had his first exhibition at age 15 at Forday’s Paint Shop. Wickham came to Brisbane in 1967 and exhibited with the Royal National Association that year and worked at an advertising agency, Harold Vinnicombe and Associates. He held further solo exhibitions in Rockhampton at Gallery 1-11 in 1968 and at Gallery Up Top in Quay Street in 1971. He also shared an exhibition there with potter Philip McConnell a year later.
He worked as a graphic artist for Capricornia Regional Electricity Board from 1970 and exhibited with the Rockhampton Branch of the Royal Queensland Art Society. He moved to Melbourne in 1972 briefly to work freelance before returning to Rockhampton. He was awarded a Rotary Club Art Prize in 1973 and produced a series of bronze heads for the (now) University of Central Queensland and also produced the sets for productions at the Philbeam Theatre.
Later he moved to Sydney where he worked as a freelance scenic artist and the Sydney Theatre Company’s inaugural production The Sunny South in 1975 is included in his credits. His practical skills were developed as a scenic painter for Opera Australia over several years the early 1980s. He was also involved in the production of commercials for T.V. and worked on the production of the 1983 film Razorback, directed by Russell Mulcahy. He travelled between Queensland and Sydney for the remainder of his life. He painted several productions for the Nimrod Theatre Company including their final production of Tartuffe in 1985. Apart from his time in Rockhampton, Wickham did not exhibit extensively, although he continued to produce work on a reduced scale.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2000
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1949
- Summary
- Ben Wickham's assured skill as a draftsman was evident in his early exhibiting career but his peripatetic lifestyle mitigated against its full development.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Aug-93
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1946-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New South Wales
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1946
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1993
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- artist and cartoonist.
His 1977 Great Divide cartoon about art was in the Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White: The Most Public Art exhibition at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney 1999.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 29 December 1939
- Summary
- Internationally influential late 20th century Geelong raised conceptual artist. Central to the Art & Language movement.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Sep-93
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-33.0880805 Longitude147.1479606 Start Date1933-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Condobolin, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- KEVIN GILBERT (10 July 1933 – 1 April 1993) was born into the Wiradjuri nation on the Kalara riverbank (Lachlan River) in Condobolin, Central New South Wales. During his lifetime Kevin was a tireless advocate for Aboriginal rights and responsibilities and has left a legacy for others Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal to follow in the struggle for recognition and acceptance of Aboriginal sovereignty and an understanding of the spirituality of the oldest living culture in the world.The youngest of eight children, Kevin and his siblings became orphaned at a very young age. He escaped the orphanages and with two of his sisters, returning to Condobolin to their family and extended family where they lived off the land in a ‘fringe camp’ and holding onto Wiradjuri language and culture. Married with two children, Kevin successfully worked his way to being a station manager on a property near Condobolin, but his marriage ended in tragedy with the murder of his wife, for which he served over fourteen years in jail. With limited reading material, and a formal education to fourth grade, Kevin read dictionaries from cover to cover and developed an extensive vocabulary.In Long Bay Goal Kevin learnt the art of lino-cutting techniques which enabled him to become the first Aboriginal printmaker. He made his own tools 'from a spoon, fork, gem blades and nails’, carved 'old brittle lino off the prison floor’ and printed images using the back of a spoon. His artwork was first exhibited in 1970 at the Arts Council gallery, Sydney, in an exhibition organised by the Australia Council. His creative talents also flourished through poetry, essays and plays. Kevin became the first Aboriginal playwright with The Cherry Pickers being written in 1968. In 2001 The Cherry Pickers, directed by Wesley Enoch, toured to the Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival in Manchester 2002; Exeter; Brighton; Nottingham and Salisbury, England.In 1971, Kevin joined the Gurindji Land Rights campaign and was instrumental in establishing the Aboriginal Tent Embassy opposite Parliament House in Canberra in 1972. He crystallised central issues of the Aboriginal political struggle in Because a White Man’ll Never Do It and it is recognised as an Angus and Robertson Classic. He exposed the reality of surviving genocide in the oral history Living Black, a collection of Aboriginal people’s stories which won the National Book Council award in 1978. In 1979 he spearheaded the National Aboriginal Government protest on Capital Hill, Canberra, calling for acceptance of, and respect for, Aboriginal Sovereignty. In 1981 he moved to the bush on the Queanbeyan River and co-ordinated the Treaty’88 campaign. He defined a legal argument for justice in Aboriginal Sovereignty, Justice, the Law and Land (including Draft Treaty) and completed the books Inside Black Australia, The Cherry Pickers and Child’s Dreaming. To coincide with the 1988 opening of the new parliament house, Kevin commissioned and exhibited the ground breaking photographic group exhibition Inside Black Australia: Aboriginal Photographers’ Exhibition. Later that year, for his anthology Inside Black Australia, the Governor-General presented him the 1988 Human Rights Award for Literature, but Kevin publicly refused it on the grounds that Aboriginal Peoples continue to be denied basic human rights in their own land.In 1992 Kevin Gilbert was instrumental in re-establishing the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and spent most of the last year of his life at this Tent Embassy. He had a profound conviction that the Aboriginal Embassy is the vehicle through which there will be a resolution to the underlying conflict over the opposing sovereignties in Australia. In the lino-print Colonising Species, with the blood of the oppressed dripping on the Crown, he depicts the turning point for justice as the High Court Mabo decision.His art has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is in major collections. In 1992 he was awarded a four-year Creative Arts Fellowship for his 'outstanding artistic contribution to the nation’ but sadly died six months later aged 59. On 8 April 1993 the Memorial for Kevin was held at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Canberra, where some of his ashes were placed in the Fire.In 1995 Kevin was posthumously presented the RAKA poetry award for Black from the Edge and was highly commended in the ACT Book of the Year award. His autobiographical book for children, Me and Mary Kangaroo, was short listed for the 1995 Australian Multicultural Award.Kevin has 6 children Kevin, Kerry, Kate, Ruth, Euroka and Kalara and many grandchildren and great grandchildren and great great grandchildren. He is also survived by his 2nd and 3rd wives Cora and Ellie. BooksThe Cherry PickersLiving BlackBecause a White man’ll Never Do ItThe Blackside: People Are Legends and other poemsThe Purfleet ReportInside Black AustraliaAboriginal Sovereignty, Justice, the Law and Land (including Draft Treaty)Flashes of Essence (poetry recordings)Black from the EdgeChild’s DreamingMe and Mary Kangaroo (published posthumously)LinocutsTotality; Corroboree Spirits; Bhoolbene Miggai; My Fathers’ Studio; Lineal Legends; Eagle Men Legend; Burrawang; Mabung; Massacre Mountain; Christmas Eve in the Land of the Dispossessed; Colonising Species.
CollectionsNational Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Queensland Museum, Brisbane; West Australian Art Gallery, Perth; Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra; National Museum of Australia, Canberra; Private Collections.Exhibitions2013 – I Do Have A Belief (1933- !993) Art Retrospective Belconnen Arts Centre Canberra.2004 – Athens Olympics, Athens, Greece.2001 – Intermission, Wharf 2 Gallery, Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney.2001 – Kevin Gilbert Retrospective, Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-Op, Sydney. 1996 – 1999 – Breath of Life: Moments in transit towards Aboriginal Sovereignty – toured nationally to Canberra, Adelaide, Armidale, Moree and Sydney, Perth, Townsville, Towoomba and internationally to Rebecca Hosacks Gallery, Soho, London; and Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Commonwealth Peoples Centre, Durban, South Africa. 1995 – Yiribana, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.1994 – Urban Focus, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra;1994 – Tyerabarrbowaryaou II – I shall never become a whiteman, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Harbour; Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat, Victoria; Urban Focus, Australian National Gallery, Canberra, exhibited in Cuba at the 5th Havana Biennial. 1994- Who’s Afraid of black, Red and Yella, Museum of Ethnology, Rotterdam.1994- Legends From Down Under, Boomerang Galerie, Amsterdam.1992 – 1994- New Tracks-Old Land, Australian Galleries, Green Street, Soho, London; USA tour, New York, Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon and Massachusetts Collage of Art, Huntington Gallery, Boston Massachusetts; Northern Territory Museum of Arts and Sciences, Darwin; Queensland Aboriginal Creations, Brisbane; Redcliff Entertainment Centre, Redcliff, Queensland; and Memorial Tribute, Gallery One, National Gallery of Australia.1992 – Painting Our Dreaming, Alliance Francaise Gallery, Canberra; ’92 Pressing Spiral Arm Gallery, Canberra.1991 – Tjukurrpa Nganampa Kantyila Kanyintjaku – Keeping Our Dreaming Strong: Hackett, ACT; Alliance Francaise Gallery, Canberra; Social Images, Gorman House, Canberra.1990 – Desert Art, Albert Hall, Canberra.1988- 1999 – Inside Black Australia, Aboriginal Photographers Exhibition: Showground, Wagga Wagga; Trades and Labour Club, Newcastle; Queensland Museum, Brisbane; Museum of Victoria, Melbourne; Narragunnawali, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra; Albert Hall, Canberra; Leftbank Bookshop, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney; Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-Op, Sydney; and Centreprize, London.1975-76 – Kooringhat Gardens Art Gallery, Taree.1971 – Robin Hood Gallery, Sydney.1970-71 – Arts Council Gallery, East Sydney.
Writers:
Staff Writer
241056
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 10 July 1933
- Summary
- Painter, printmaker, cartoonist, photographer, poet, writer, historian and activist. Produced the first known fine art prints by an Aboriginal artist, made while he was in prison.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1993
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-21.424707 Longitude128.5459056 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lake Wills, Western Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Born “in the bush” around Lake Wills c. 1925, Nagomara was one of several senior Tjakamarra men in the Balgo community whose work primarily concerned Water Dreaming and rituals associated with rainmaking. His country was in the Stansmore Ranges around Mangkai. He was custodian of various Tingari and Water Dreaming stories for this area. He also painted the area around Nguntalpi, a very sacred place of many rocks and caves, where his father is buried. A Kukatja speaker, Albert Nagomara began painting for Warlayirti Artists in 1988. His works generally use strong, simple motifs, such as roundels and watercourses, but beneath their simplicity lies a great reservoir of Law matters.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1925
- Summary
- A Balgo artist with Warlayirti Artists Association whose starkly simple works belie the depth of knowledge of Tingari and Water Dreaming stories for which he was custodian.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1993
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-33.7497631 Longitude151.0657475 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Beecroft, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist, comic strip artist and illustrator, was born in Beecroft, NSW. He studied at East Sydney Technical College (ESTC) for two years, then spent a year in the art department of the Sydney Sun . After serving in the Australian Air Force in 1943-46 he worked for Frank Johnson Publications. Many Belbin originals are in the Johnson Papers (Mitchell Library Px*D68, vol.1), particularly dozens of book covers, e.g. black and white 'Schoolboys outshoot hell-fire bushrangers’ by John Barr signed 'Phil Belbin 46’ and others in both colour and black and white (see State Library of New South Wales black and white exhibition 1999). Sheill (1999, 113) states that perhaps his best comic was The Raven , published as one of Frank Johnson’s Triumph Comics in September 1946.
Belbin’s 30-year association with K.G. Murray Publications included hundreds of illustrations, cartoons and comics, the later often signed with pseudonyms such as 'Humph’ and 'Duke’. He produced Peril on Venus and Climax comics for Murray, and he also worked as a freelance illustrator for publishers and advertising agencies. He was the first Australian artist commissioned to do illustrations for Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. In 1969 he developed a newspaper strip, The Early Birds , most of which later appeared as part of the Air Hawk series. Belbin received a Citation of Merit from the New York Society of Illustrators in 1974.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 9 September 1925
- Summary
- Late 20th century Sydney painter, cartoonist, comic strip artist and illustrator. A graduate of the East Sydney Technical College, Barr served in the Australian Air Force during WW2 before beginning a 30 year association with K.G. Murray Publications. In 1974 Belbin received a Citation of Merit from the NY Society of Illustrators.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1993
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-38.085466 Longitude141.8198006 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lake Condah, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Connie Hart, Gunditjmara basket weaver, was born in 1917 in Little Dunmore, near Lake Condah Mission in South Western Victoria. Connie attended the mission school during her childhood, but was always attentive to the stories and practices of her mother and her elders while she was growing up. When she was sixteen she began to work as a maid and cook for properties in the western districts of Victoria, before she moved to Melbourne. During World War II she worked in a munitions factory, and in later years she worked as a wardsperson at St. Vincent’s Hospital, and in a shoe factory.
Connie only began basket weaving in 1983 at the age of 65. Having returned to Little Dunmore to care for her mother who had suffered a stroke, Connie recollected the baskets that her mother had made from Puung’ort grasses when Connie was a child. As she is quoted as saying in the book Living Aboriginal History of Victoria (in Jackomos & Fowell 1991, pg 74):
'No one taught me to make my baskets. My mum told me we were coming into the white man’s way of living. So she wouldn’t teach us. That is why we lost a lot of culture. But I tricked her and I watched those old people and I sneaked a stitch or two.’
Connie went on to craft a great variety of baskets, as well as eel traps and baby carriers. She passed on weaving methods to a number of members of her family, including Sandra Aitken , as well as many other Indigenous and non-Indigenous people through basket weaving workshops.
Connie Hart passed away in 1993 as a much loved and revered member of the Victorian Indigenous community.
Writers:
Fisher, Laura
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1917
- Summary
- Highly regarded Gunditjmara basket weaver and community elder who began weaving in her 60s and facilitated the regeneration of localised Victorian Indigenous weaving practices. Self-taught after observing mother and local Elders.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1993
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edwardstown, Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter and sketcher. Hele studied art at Adelaide’s Prince Alfred College, the South Australian School of Arts and in Europe. He first came to national attention with a number of prizewinning history paintings in the 1930s.
Appointed an official war artist during World War II and Korea, Hele’s work was widely distributed in exhibitions and books.
Hele was a prolific Archibald Prize winner during the 1950s (1951; 1953; 1954; 1955; 1957). “Once I start a portrait I like to go straight through until it’s finished. While I’m doing it I think it, dream it – I’m obsessed by that one thing… the human face and the human form are always the greatest things to me…” he explained in 1962.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Riddler, Eric
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 June 1912
- Summary
- A leading figurative artist working in Adelaide in the mid 20th century. Hele served as a war artist in the Second World War and Korean War and won the Archibald Prize for portraiture on several occasions during the 1950s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Dec-93
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator and cartoonist, was born in Sydney, 28 April 1911, older brother of Frank Hodgkinson . After studying at the Royal Art Society of NSW under Dattilo Rubbo and at East Sydney Technical College under Rayner Hoff , he worked as an illustrator on the Daily Guardian and the Sun in Sydney (1929-31), then on the Melbourne Herald (1932-76). With the writer Hal Porter, he used to frequent the Café Petrushka in Little Collins Street, a 1930s Bohemian haunt that featured the work of young contemporary artists on its walls. In 1938-39 he visited England, France and Italy to study art in European galleries and to investigate commercial printing for the Melbourne Herald .
During WWII he served as an official war artist in New Guinea ( Concert Party, Milne Bay ), Ceylon, India, Burma and Darwin and was included in the Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture by Australian Official War Artists , National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 1943-44 (see catalogue pp.12-14). He held exhibitions of his drawings of the dancers in the De Basil ballet company in 1939 and 1943, the latter in the foyer of His Majesty’s Theatre. His original cartoon, Old Man, Borneo (c.1934-37, La Trobe Library), was included in the 2000 Global Arts Link exhibition Bluey and Curley , whichalso showed a straight portrait sketch, Gunner Jackie Peacock (1942, Australian War Memorial).
Some of Hodgkinson’s post-war drawings are illustrated in Norman Macgeorge (ed.), The Arts in Australia (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1948). They include Studies from Life (male rear and details from life class), p.48; Drawing (55), a white on black image of a man lecturing in a crowded theatre to illustrate Macgeorge’s 'The lecture as an art form’; The Orchestra (63), a very detailed, white on black, theatre scene; The 'Cello Player (65); The Troubadour (68), who looks like a modern woman; and The Reader (71), a white-on-black Renaissance man reading a book by candle light. Both he and Macgeorge were members of the Melbourne Savage Club, Roy becoming a fifty-year member like William Dargie . He drew the Savage Club Christmas card in 1948, showing Santa coming down the chimney and saying to toddler labelled 1948, “Well son! They Haven’t Nationalised Me Yet!!” (ill. Johnson, p.156) A concert programme for the Melbourne Savage Club Jubilee Dinner in 1954, done with Alec Gurney , is illustrated in Johnson (p.157). His oil portrait of Judge Frederico, Savage Club President in 1974-77, is illustrated on p.165.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 28 April 1911
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney-born and trained, Melbourne-based war artist, illustrator and cartoonist. During WWII Hodgkinson served as an official war artist in New Guinea, Ceylon, India, Burma and Darwin.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1993
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-33.8798136 Longitude151.078522 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Strathfield, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- John Samuel Coulson Mills (John Mills), painter and Illustrator, was born in Strathfield NSW on 12 September 1907. His father Samuel was an established journalist who also worked with Val Morgan, writing scrip to accompany cinema advertising. His mother Augusta was an actress. They divorced when John was seven. It was at this age that he expressed his unwavering desire to be an artist. Growing up in Bondi and the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, Mills gained admission on scholarship to the Sydney Technical College (later National Art School) at the age of 13. At the time he was the youngest in attendance.
At the age of 16 his father passed away and as an only child, his mother became financially dependent upon him. He began work as an artist in the advertising department of Metters and it was during his two years there that he designed the “kooka” logo, the distinctive kookaburra image which adorns the original Metters stoves. He would also go on to design the Mortein logo featuring the mosquito on the dog’s tail which accompanied the catchphrase: ‘when you’re on to a good thing, stick to it’. After leaving Metters, Mills began work as a freelance artist, illustrating fiction and advertisements for the publications of the day which included The Australian Women’s Weekly, The Bulletin, Woman’s Mirror, Australian Magazine (A.M.), Man Magazine and Rydges Business Journal.
It was also at this time he began attending classes at the Royal Art Society of NSW under the tutelage of Datillo Rubbo, Sydney Long and James R Jackson. As well as being on a scholarship for painting for two of his three years there, he was also awarded prizes for Composition of Subject (1st), Best Collection of Work (1st), Drawing from Life (2nd) and Still Life (2nd). In the evenings at the Royal Art Society he would hone his skills on the top floor of an old building on Pitt Street and by day he would put these skills to work to earn his living. His paintings were hung at exhibitions of the Royal Art Society as well as the NSW Society of Artists with both holding annual exhibitions at the Education Department Gallery in Bridge Street.
In 1938 he joined Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) on a permanent basis illustrating fiction and covers for The Australian Women’s Weekly. His colleagues at this time included John Santry, Bill Pidgeon (aka WEP), Carl Shreve, Thora Ungar, Virgil Reilly, Wynn Davies, Rene Dalgleish, Des Condon, Geoffrey Turton (aka Petrov) and George Finey. He was now a full-time artist working to deadlines and well known as a leading artist of Australia’s most popular magazine with over 600,000 copies sold every week.
By this time he was living in Mosman and commuting by ferry. On the ferry he enjoyed many conversations with fashion illustrator Agnes Mary Patricia O’Neill (Pat) who, due to the outbreak of war, had recently returned from London where she had attended the Slade School of Art and illustrated for several department stores, including Harrods. Prior to her travelling, Pat had studied at the Julian Ashton Art School and was a fashion illustrator for the catalogues and weekly papers of David Jones, Mark Foy’s, and Farmers. As two working artists with shared hopes for the future and in love, it wasn’t long before he proposed and they married in 1942 at Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Mosman. Pat was always a good critic of her husband’s work and despite his talent, declared that ‘no man can draw a woman’s clothes’.
Soon after having their first child, Ken in 1942, Mills put his experience as an amateur sailor to use and enlisted in the Royal Australian Naval Volunteer Reserve (Naval Auxiliary Patrol) [R.A.N.V.R. (N.A.P.)]. He sailed on the HMAS Zanana for Papua New Guinea to assist operations at Milne Bay. He was witness to air raids over Finschhafen and Goodenough Island, assisting in recovery efforts. In June 1944 he was promoted to Skipper (R.A.N.V.R) of HMAS Koorine based in Sydney Harbour.
As an unofficial war artist, Mills sketched and painted hundreds of pictures during his time in the Pacific. He also painted his experiences after his return while he was recovering from Malaria at the Concord Repatriation General Hospital. The culmination of this work was a solo exhibition of 101 pictures at Macquarie Galleries on Bligh Street on 16 August 1944. The exhibition was a sell-out and Mills donated the proceeds to the R.A.N. Relief Fund. One of these paintings titled Auxiliary Patrol to the Rescue featured on the cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly on 12 August 1944.
After the war, Mills returned as a full-time artist for ACP and he and Pat had two more daughters, Jane (b1945) and Jo (b1949). Principally illustrating for The Australian Women’s Weekly, Mills often used his children as subjects for his illustrations with all three regularly appearing in print. His son Ken features on the cover from 25 November 1950. His daughter Jane features on the cover from 22 October 1949. And his youngest daughter Jo features on the cover from 31 December 1949. Taking turns with Bill Pidgeon, John Santry and other leading artists, Mills had illustrated the cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly forty times by 1950. After this time, photography became the principal medium for covers but the demand for his work within the pages remained for the next twenty years. During his time with ACP he is estimated to have completed more than 5000 illustrations. Also a keen photographer, Mills developed many of his own photographs of sessions at home in front of the camera with his wife Pat, acting out dramatic scenes as reference material for his illustrations.
Although principally an illustrator, his watercolour landscapes were selected for the Wynne Prize on six occasions in the 1960s. After retiring from ACP in 1973, Mills continued to paint for leisure in both oils and watercolours with his paintings appearing in many regional and local exhibitions. After suffering a stroke in 1991, his urge to paint remained, using his left hand to paint watercolours from still life and of Mosman Bay. His determination to walk again and his resolute spirit is captured by his daughter Josonia Palaitis, whose painting of her father won the Doug Moran Portrait Prize in 1994. John Mills passed away peacefully with his wife Pat and his family by his side on 19 October 1993.
Writers:
Guy Palaitis
Date written:
2021
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 12 September 1907
- Summary
- Artist and illustrator best known for his prolific contribution to The Australian Women's Weekly before, during and after WW2.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Oct-93
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude50.97058355 Longitude0.0930414 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Uckfield, Sussex, England, UK
- Biography
- The English born Ivor Francis became a dominant influence in Adelaide cultural life from the late 1930s until the 1970s. painter and cartoonist, was official cartoonist for the South Australian Teachers Journal 1938-45.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 13 March 1906
- Summary
- The most prominent of the South Australian surrealist artists, inspired by the writer Max Harris. Francis was also an art critic and cartoonist. Francis was official cartoonist for the 'South Australian Teachers Journal' 1938-45. His creative practice declined after he was appointed to the education board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Nov-93
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-35.9995747 Longitude146.3906094 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Corowa, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, craftworker and gallery director, was born in Corowa and grew up in the NSW countryside. From an early age she was encouraged by her mother to draw. The family moved to Melbourne in 1920 and Helen attended the National Gallery School in 1922-25. Influenced by Claude Flight’s Lino-cuts (London, 1927), in the late 1920s she began making linocuts and, a few years later, wood-engravings. She produced many for exhibition, as ex libris plates, for greeting cards, and as illustrations for privately published books such as Russell Grimwade’s Flinders Lane (1947) and J.D.G. Medley’s Stolen and Surreptitious Verses (1952).
In 1949-55 Helen Ogilvie was director of the Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne. Aiming to show the most exciting contemporary work, she organised exhibitions of such artists as Margo Lewers , Helen Maudsley, John Brack, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman and Ian Fairweather. In 1956 she moved to London where she partly made a living designing and making modern lampshades. She also began to paint the small studies of Australian rural buildings for which she has become best known. In London she had two successful solo exhibitions – one held after she returned to Australia in 1963 – and she participated in several group exhibitions.
Back in Australia, Helen Ogilvie continued to explore the countryside, sketching and painting the humble buildings she admired which she was aware were disappearing. At the end of the 1970s she decided that she had said all she wanted to say in her art and from then on produced little work. Her interest in the art world, however, remained acute until her sudden death in Melbourne on 1 August 1993. The last solo exhibition she was able to attend opened at australian Girls Own Gallery, Canberra, on her 89th birthday, 4 May 1991. From 1990 until her death she shared her memories with the contributor—with generosity, clarity and a delicious sense of humour – for a book of her wood engravings to be published by Officina Brindabella, Canberra.
Writers:
Maxwell, Helen
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1902
- Summary
- While working as the director of Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne, Helen Ogilvie organised exhibitions for such avant-garde artists as Margo Lewers, John Brack, Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, to name a few. Her own work was also very modern and she was engaged with the Crafts Revival of the 1950s and 60s, which allowed her to make a living designing cutting edge lampshades in London for a period.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Aug-93
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-38.661326 Longitude178.0206487 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1993-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gisborne, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1902
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1993
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1947-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Craftman, jeweller, painter and gay activist, was included in the Tin Sheds exhibition, “Dead Gay Artists”, 1-23 February 2002.
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
stokel
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 December 1947
- Summary
- Artist and gay activist, was included in the Tin Sheds exhibition, "Dead Gay Artists", in 2002.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.August 1992
- Age at death
- 45
Details
Latitude-26.286773 Longitude132.13302 Start Date1946-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ernabella, SA, 'in the bush', Ernabella, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Born 18 November 1946 'in the bush’ at Ernabella. Her mother came into the mission from Angatja. Her father’s country is Pukara. Yipati grew up on the mission and attended Ernabella school. She had two daughters, Tjimpuna and Carol. Yipati’s chosen subjects for paintings included principally scenes from the Piltati Dreaming line and depictions of food gathering on Pitjantjatjara lands. She was previous Chairperson of Ernabella Arts, the organisation which she joined in 1965 as a young girl, training in weaving and developing her painting skills. Her death in 1992 ended a long and distinguished artistic career, which is not elaborated here at the express wish of her immediate family.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 November 1946
- Summary
- Pitjantjatjara artist from Ernabella who worked in a range of media, including batik and screenprint. Kuyata was dedicated to her work and her role as Chairperson of Ernabella Arts. She was an artistic leader in her community.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1992
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1941-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Tony McGillick is important in Australian art both as a driver behind the eponymous Central Street Gallery and for his paintings. Influenced by hard edge American abstraction, McGillick’s colour field paintings were seen as the forefront of the internationalism of Australian art replacing earlier parochial movements.
Named after two of his then communist parents’ heroes, Antonov Carlyle McGillick was born in Sydney in 1941. Later in life, Tony (as he was known) said “My childhood was very happy” (Tony McGillick quoted in Throsby and McCarter, 1992, p. 60). He wandered around Kings Cross barefoot, played in Trumper Park and caught the tram to swim at Redleaf Pool in Double Bay, Sydney.
In 1958 he started studying at the Julian Ashton Art School. McGillick also worked in advertising which he continued to do for the rest of his life.
In 1960 he went to London where he stayed for six years. During this period, McGillick participated in group exhibitions in London, Edinburgh and Frankfurt. After a short period in New York, he returned to Sydney in 1965.
McGillick’s pivotal period was the Central Street years. In April 1966, together with Harold Noritis and John White (his half-brother), he opened Central Street Gallery. This was Sydney’s first 'white box’ gallery and while a diverse group of artists exhibited there, many were 'colour field’ painters. He had a joint exhibition with Roy Harpur and Rollin Schlicht in August/September 1966 and in 1968, his first one-man exhibition which was also shown at Pinacotheca in Melbourne. While McGillick’s paintings could appear to be simple areas of colour, there was much more to them. On his studio wall he had a postcard of Titian’s work A Man with a Quilted Sleeve . He drew the outline of a five sided geometric shape based on the sleeve. This is the shape of each panel in Jasper’s Gesture . This work is held in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
In 1968, he exhibited in 'The Field’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, which was later shown in Sydney. This exhibition introduced McGillick’s work to a wider public.
In 1970, Central Street Gallery closed but the space continued to be used by the Institute of Contemporary Art for exhibitions. In 1971, he was involved in the magazine, Other Voices .
McGillick continued to participate in various group exhibitions until 1973 but largely stopped exhibiting. He continued to paint and unstretched draped canvas works replaced his irregularly shaped geometric canvases.
In 1978, he had a one-man exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, titled 'Survey 6 Tony McGillick’ but after this his work was rarely shown. In 1990 his work was included in the exhibition 'Central Street – An exhibition of selected paintings’ at the Charles Nodrum Gallery in Melbourne which was also shown at Sydney’s Ray Hughes Gallery in 1991. In the catalogue essay, McGillick was described as the “main source of (Central Street’s) intellectual and physical energy” (McGillick, 1990).
In the early 1990s, McGillick started to think about exhibiting again and was planning an exhibition at Sherman Galleries (Sydney) but this was unrealised due to his sudden death on 3rd November 1992.
Instead in 1993, Sherman Galleries had a memorial exhibition and another one-man exhibition was held at Annandale Galleries in 2000.
Writers:
Stewart Reed
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2010
- Born
- b. 22 February 1941
- Summary
- A colour field painter who was also one of the founders and directors of Central Street Gallery in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Nov-92
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- He was born on 7 April 1939, the son of Clem Whiteley, an entrepreneurial businessman, and his wife Beryl (née Martin). The family home at 18 Lucretia Avenue Longueville, was near the Lane Cove River where it feeds into Sydney Harbour, so he always had a sense of the beauty of where land meets water. Whiteley could always draw: he won his first art prize at the age of seven. When he was nine his parents sent him to boarding school at Scots College in Bathurst on the other side of the Blue Mountains. This was culturally an unusual decision for urban Australians. The young Whiteley was unhappy at school and did not flourish. He did however come to love the country around Bathurst and later in life returned to it as subject matter. His enduring friendships from these years included the artist Vernon Treweeke.In 1956, the year after he saw an exhibition of Lloyd Rees paintings, Whiteley was awarded first prize in the Young Painters section at the Bathurst Show. He left school mid-year and began working in the art department of the Lintas Advertising Agency. He enrolled in classes at the Julian Ashton School and also joined the open air sketch club conducted by John Santry on the shores of Sydney Harbour. He came to know Lloyd Rees who frequented the group. Always gregarious, the young Whiteley came to know students at Sydney’s other main art school, East Sydney Technical College, including the beautiful Wendy Julius. On weekends he returned to near Bathurst to paint around the old mining towns of Hill End and Sofala. He also ventured south to coast around Thirroul and Wollongong. Landscape was the dominant popular genre for Australian artists at this time, but Whiteley also wanted to explore the human condition in art, and one of his paintings of this period was of people in an inner city soup kitchen.In 1959 the artist and cartoonist William Pidgeon, who was a family friend, encouraged him to leave his job with Lintas and to concentrate on painting a body of work for a travelling scholarship to be awarded by the Italian Government. The judge was Russell Drysdale and Whiteley’w winning work, painted around Bathurst and Sofala, showed sensuous painterly qualities in the browns of the hills.He arrived at Naples on 25 February 1960, and spent some months in Rome as well as travelling to Florence and London. In Paris he was reunited with Wendy Julius and together they returned to Florence and then Venice. Whiteley first exhibited with a commercial gallery in London in 1960, and at the end of the year moved to a house in Ladbroke Grove in London, where he was reunited with friends from Sydney, including Michael Johnson, and met other Australian expatriates, including Arthur Boyd. The following year his work was included in the Survey of Recent Australian Painting at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and a painting from this was bought for the Tate Gallery.In 1963 he married Wendy Julius, her body and her beauty became embedded into his subject matter. Whiteley’s successful London years were interspersed with extended visits to Europe and the USA. He drew the lithe movements of animals in the zoo, and made a memorable series of paintings and prints based on 10 Rillington Place and the activities of the psychotic murderer Christie.In 1967 he was awarded a Harkness Foundation Scholarship and moved to the United States. The Whiteley family (daughter Arkie was born in 1964) stayed in a penthouse in the Hotel Chelsea. Janis Joplin was one of Arkie’s baby sitters, and when they left, a Brett Whiteley painting took pride of place, hanging behind the desk in the reception area. The intensity of this American experience, which coincided with a time of cultural and political turmoil, was reflected in changes in his art. Sandra McGrath has linked his art of this period to a self-identification with Bob Dylan, and Whiteley at this stage did begin to grow his hair in a Dylanesque mop. The excesses,contradictions and conflicts he felt were at the heart of the American experience were expressed in his large panel series, The American Dream (1969).In July 1969 the Whiteley family left the USA for a simpler life in Fiji, where they were arrested for possessing marijuana and were deported to Australia, arriving in Sydney in November. They rented a house overlooking the Harbour in Walker Street Lavender Bay; later they bought it and modified the house for their purposes. Sydney at that time was on the cusp of change as the first generation of post-World War II babyboomers were not prepared to accept the wisdom of the past, but wanted new heroes. Whiteley’s international fame had preceded him, and he relished in the rock star status he was afforded in the popular media as well as in artistic circles. In Sydney, in the early 1970s, his excesses were seen as legitimate behaviour for a great artist. From about 1970 he also enjoyed the creative milieu of the Yellow House, which Martin Sharp had caused to be established on the site of the old Terry Clune Galleries in MacLeay Street, Potts Point. Here Whiteley worked collaboratively with old friends, and made new ones. The Yellow House ended in about 1973 and in its last days the drug that easily supplanted all others was heroin. Whiteley’s major work of this time was the panel series of Alchemy, a work on the elements of dross andmagic that combined to make art. It was an intense painting, and some were uncomfortable with its intensity. Afterwards there were more relaxed works, as views from Lavender Bay became elements in a series of Matisse influenced odes to the beauty of Sydney Harbour. These paintings became such objects of lust to Australian art collectors that the possession of one is the leitmotif in Up For Grabs (2000), a play by David Williamson.Whiteley was first awarded the Archibald Prize in 1976 for Self Portrait in the Studio. In the following years other self portraits tracked the changes in his body, perception and ability under the increasing influence of heroin. Wendy joined him for some years as an addict, but was eventually successful in withdrawing. In 1985 he purchased an old T-Shirt factory in Surry Hills, which he converted into a dedicated studio. He moved to the studio alone in 1987, but some time afterwards began to share with Janice Spencer, a fellow addict he met at Narcotics Anonymous.In 1989 Brett and Wendy Whiteley were divorced, but the acrimonious property dispute over the ownership of was still not settled at the time of his death from an overdose of methadone at a motel at Thirroul south of Sydney, on 15 June 1992.After Whiteley’s death his will was successfully disputed by his daughter Arkie, who was awarded the bulk of his estate. The NSW government established the Brett Whiteley studio as an ongoing (albeit sanitised) record of his working life. To honour his memory, his mother, Beryl Whiteley, established the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship. As with the Brett Whiteley Studio this is administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Writers:
Olivia Bolton
Joanna Mendelssohn
Peter Pidgeon
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 7 April 1939
- Summary
- Brett Whiteley was the first Australian to combine a pop star's persona with that of a visual artist. He worked across the mediums of painting, sculpture and graphic work and was several times awarded the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes. He achieved domestic and international recognition early in his career in the 1960s. His Matisse influenced paintings of domestic interiors and Sydney Harbour remain enduring images.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Jun-92
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- Performance poet, actor, dadaist and sound artist, inspired by the underground movements he encountered in the USA and UK in the late 1960s and early 1970s
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Jun-92
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude-22.815924 Longitude127.7642195 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kiwirrkura
- Biography
- Born 'in the bush’ near the present site of the Kiwirrkura community c.1925, Donkeyman Lee was a Kukatja speaker. His principal site is Walla Walla, just out of Kiwirrkura, and his paintings, which he began producing in 1985 at Balgo, are mainly Tingari stories for this area. Donkeyman usually worked on large-scale canvases and with these he managed to convey a sense of his desert country. His works, which are included in the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria, are always bold and strong and full of his personal experiences of Men’s Law. They are also surprisingly innovative for an older man, and convey something of the easy-going good humour of the artist. He lived in Balgo and sold his paintings through Warlayirti Artists.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1925
- Summary
- Kukatja artist who often produced bold, large- scale works, reflecting his strong association with Men's Law in Balgo. His work is held in major national collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1992
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-33.968226 Longitude151.1354509 Start Date1924-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kogarah, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- comic book artist, was born Kogarah, NSW and educated at Kogarah Primary, Canterbury High and Sydney Grammar Schools. Jim Russell encouraged him to attend weekly art classes in Smith’s attic studio. Worked with Greater Union Theatres art department and also drew recognition charts for the air training corps before joining the air force. Demobilised in 1946, he sold an adventure comic strip Destiny Scott to the Sydney Morning Herald . He created Bunny Allen, the Glamour Girl (originals ML; one in SLNSW b/w show in 1999) and The Buccaneer for the All-Australian Comics Group. All 30 or so issues of Tex Morton’s Wild West Comics (1947-50), named after a prominent Country and Western singer, featured Chatto’s Bunny Allen .
In 1949 Chatto drew The Lone Wolf for Atlas Publications. In 1954, in association with Larry S. Cleland, he produced covers for H. John Edwards and Cleveland Press (comics and pulp novels). At Cleveland Press he drew The Twilight Ranger and El Lobo as well as covers and began a Skippy series based on the TV program for Page Publications (failed because it came out after the series had peaked). Etc (see Sheill).
In 1977 Chatto took over the Sunday newspaper strip Air Hawk and the Flying Doctor . He left to become a freelance cine-cameraman and TV producer.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1924
- Summary
- Late 20th century comic book artist and filmmaker.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1992
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude52 Longitude20 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Poland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1917
- Summary
- Wolanski is the designer of the Lido clip-on tie and founder of Lido Tie Company. He was also active as a sculptor with works in Israeli Parliament, Tel Aviv and Fitzroy Gardens, Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-92
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude51.4126079 Longitude-1.5167069 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hungerford, Berkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sculptor and illustrator; drew comic illustrations in Australia Week-end Book 5 (1946), e.g. head (p.29) and man with tiny woman on his head (p.197).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 25 November 1917
- Summary
- Influential mid 20th century sculptor, illustrator and art teacher who taught extensively in Australia in the 1940s and 1950s before settling in Auckland, New Zealand. This biography deals with his wartime cartoons.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Dec-92
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-37.8001 Longitude144.9671 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Carlton, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Sidney Nolan was born on 22 April 1917, the first of four children of a Melbourne tram driver, Sidney Nolan, and his wife Dora Sutherland. His parents were Australian born, but very aware of their Irish cultural heritage. Later that year the family moved to the seaside suburb of St Kilda, elements of which were later to feature in Nolan’s mature art.In 1932 Nolan left school at the standard leaving age of 14 and enrolled in design and crafts at Prahran Technical College. The next year he began working for Fayrefield Hats where he produced advertising and display stands. This technical work gave him an early introduction to spray paints and experimental use of materials. In 1934 he enrolled in evening classes at the National Gallery School and within a few years was making plein air paintings within the Victorian impressionist tradition. His interest in art and ideas led him on a more adventurous path. In 1938 he met the art patrons John and Sunday Reed and through his involvement with them became a founding member of Victoria’s Contemporary Art Society. The same year he married fellow art student, Elizabeth Paterson, the grand-daughter of the artist John Ford Paterson and moved to Ocean Grove near Barwon Heads. In 1939 Nolan saw the Herald Exhibition of English and European Contemporary Art, which introduced him to the art of 20th century Europe and radicalised his own approach to art. His first solo exhibition in 1940 was opened by John Reed. The same year Nolan’s daughter, Amelda, was born.The following year Nolan left his family to live with the Reeds at their home at Heide Park. He remained romantically involved with Sunday Reed until 1947 and she actively encouraged him to take a more experimental approach with his art. He began to use Ripolin enamel paint, material more commonly used by house painters. Its fluidity and rapid drying enabled him to freely experiment with different styles and to quickly paint more than one work at a time. He was drawn into the activities of the Reeds, Max Harris and the Angry Penguins group, and in 1944 painted a series of paintings in response to the poems of the bq). naivebq). poet, Ern Malley. After an issue of the Angry Penguins magazine celebrated the genius of Malley (with a cover illustration by Nolan) the poet was revealed to be a hoax concocted by two anti-modernist poets. The entry of Japan into World War II led to Australia conscripting soldiers for the first time in its history. Nolan was conscripted and posted to the Wimmera in rural Victoria. Two years later,faced with the possibility of being posted to New Guinea, he deserted the Army and took refuge with the Reeds at their Heide and Parkville homes. Living a fugitive life may have turned his mind to the circumstances of other fugitives from justice. Douglas Stewart’s radio play in verse, Ned Kelly, was broadcast in 1942, but Nolan never admitted Stewart as a possible source for his Ned Kelly series which emerged in the second half of the decade. These paintings remain his most memorable work and he continually returned to this subject matter throughout his career.In 1947 Nolan left Sunday Reed and her husband John to live with John’s sister Cynthia who was already establishing a reputation as a sensitive writer. They moved to Sydney where the new gallery director, Hal Missingham, was an active supporter of Nolan’s work. Their house at Wahroonga backed onto the property of the conservative artist Lionel Lindsay. When Lindsay observed Nolan’s practice of painting a row of paintings all at once he wrote to his friend Harold Wright, angrily denouncing Nolan as a charlatan. In 1948, he put his affairs in order, obtained a dishonourable discharge from the Army,and married Cynthia. The couple made several flights over outback Australia,and Nolan began his remarkable series of aerial paintings of the outback, where thin wiped layers of Ripolin are used to evoke the shapes of ragged mountains.In 1951 they left for Europe and in 1953 they settled permanently in London, but made frequent visits to other parts of Europe, Africa, Antarctica and often returned to Australia. The London base was essential to establishing Nolan’s British reputation. He was honoured with a survey exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1957, the same year as he created the set designs for the stage version of Douglas Stewart’s Ned Kelly play. He was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to the USA in 1959 and in 1963 was awarded an OBE for his services to art. Many retrospective exhibitions were to follow, including a 1967 exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, a 1973 exhibition in Dublin and a 1987 national touring exhibition in Australia.Cynthia Nolan committed suicide on 23 November 1976. In 1978 Nolan married Mary Boyd Perceval, the widow of artist John Perceval and sister of his friend Arthur Boyd. The relative haste of this marriage caused a permanent rift with his former friend Patrick White, who attacked him in his memoir Flaws in the Glass. Nolan responded in paint.In 1981 he was made a Knight Bachelor for his services to art, and in 1983 they settled at Rodd Farm on the borders of Wales where he enjoyed the expansive landscape for the rest of his life. While he was honoured by Australian galleries with exhibitions in the later years, he was emotionally more committed to Britain and Ireland. In 1986, four years before his death, he gave fifty paintings to the people of Ireland.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 April 1917
- Summary
- Sir Sidney Nolan, the son of a Melbourne tram driver, became one of Australia's most celebrated and honoured artists. His Ned Kelly series made him a household name. Working in several media and art forms - painting, drawing, printmaking, set design, murals, spray painting and collage - he created more than 10,000 individual works.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Nov-92
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- printmaker and painter, was born in Brisbane on 4 January 1916, daughter of Joselyn Salisbury and Clifford Isles, a director of Isles, Love & Co, auctioneers. She married Max Allen in 1939; they had three children Sarah (Mrs Clive Lucas), Jocelyn and Nicholas, who donated a large collection of her prints to the National Gallery of Australia [NGA]. Joyce Allen, a friend of the printmaker Ailsa Allan , made her first linocuts in the late 1940s, e.g. The Pied Piper 1947, which was intended as an illustration to Robert Browning’s poem and hence never editioned. In the 1950s she attended classes given by Thea Proctor but only began working seriously on her prints in the early 1960s when her friend Ysobel Irvine introduced her to Willoughby Art Workshop and the teachings of Joy Ewart . There she met Elizabeth Rooney , under whose guidance she experimented with etching, although linocut remained her primary medium. Allen’s linocuts include Within a Week 1967 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased by Hal Missingham from the exhibition Sydney Printmakers , Blaxland Galleries, 3 September 1967), The Pursuit of Trivia 1986, At the Gallery 1987 (private collection [p.c.]), Fury 1989, Death in the Dump 1989 (p.c.) and Muddle 1980s (every mother’s domestic situation). She always painted watercolour landscapes too.
Allen exhibited with the Australian Watercolour Institute and the Society of Artists in the late 1950s, with the Sydney Printmakers at Blaxland Galleries in the early 1960s and in Australian Print Council exhibitions in 1967, 1969 and 1971. She held solo exhibitions at the Willoughby Art Centre and with the Bowral and Berrima Art Societies. Her prints were included in the 1968 Bradford Print Biennale (UK) in 1968, with Baldessin , Ruth Faerber, Graham King, Elizabeth Rooney and Stephen Spurrier.
Allen and her husband moved to Bowral in 1970 where she taught briefly at the Heartfield School and continued to teach part time with the Bowral Art Society. A retrospective exhibition of her linocuts was held at Scheding Berry Gallery, Sydney in 1986 – the year a large collection of her works was acquired by the NGA (added to by her children in 1993 so that the gallery now has over 100 prints ranging from 'Backyard, Sydney’ 1947 and 'The giant pouring water’ and 'Title Page: The Lonely Giant’ 1948 to 'Diners’ and Still life in the dump 1991). She had a solo exhibition at australian [sic] Girls’ Own Gallery [aGOG], Canberra, in 1990 and her work was included in several group shows at this gallery. In 1991 she received the Visual Arts and Crafts Board of the Australia Council’s Emeritus Award but died suddenly at Bowral on 30 July 1992, just after a retrospective exhibition of her work had opened at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney. Helen Maxwell Galleries, Canberra (formerly aGOG) gave her another small solo show in June-July 2001.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 4 January 1916
- Summary
- Brisbane born painter and printmaker and a student of Thea Proctor and Joy Ewart. Allen was a regular exhibitor with the Print Council of Australia and in 1991 was awarded the Visual Arts and Crafts Board of the Australia Council's Emeritus Award.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 30-Jul-92
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.8520678 Longitude151.153689 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Drummoyne, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, graphic artist, cartoonist and printer, was born on 17 September 1915 at Drummoyne, Sydney. After helping milk cows on his parents’ farm at the beginning of the Depression, he served an apprenticeship as a commercial artist during the Depression then studied at East Sydney Technical College [ESTC] in the late 1930s. He helped form the Windsor Group, which painted landscapes around Windsor (see catalogue) and married actress Frances Cottingham. After about four years in the RAAF (at the Commonwealth Aircraft Factory, acc. Fox), he exhibited in the 'Australia at War’ exhibition (National Gallery of Victoria, 1945), winning a first prize for one of his paintings of Civil Construction Workers.
A member of the Communist Party of Australia, Rod Shaw was one of the founders of the Studio of Realist Art [SORA] in 1945, a body set up partly in dissatisfaction with the Contemporary Art Society (which had sided against Dobell in the 1944 Archibald Prize case). He was most active in its public programs; he showed work at the annual exhibitions, wrote and published its regular bulletins, organised art classes and taught drawing to interested Waterside Workers. After the war, with Dick Edwards, he founded the publishing company of Edwards & Shaw, which produced some of the finest art and poetry books seen in Australia; one of the last was James Mollison’s Fred Williams Etchings . It also published, for the Council of Civil Liberties, the banned report of the English trial of Penguin Books for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover . He was also on the editorial board of Helen Palmer’s democratic-socialist journal Outlook , for which he drew cartoons and other humorous illustrations (Fox).
Despite having little time for painting, Shaw painted Cable Layers for the 1946 NSW Travelling Art Scholarship. He did not win, but after the oil was shown at SORA that year it was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 1947 (with Nan Hortin , John Oldham and Kevin Lynch ) he participated in the Australian section of the British Empire Exhibition at the Royal Easter Show, painting portraits of Henry Lawson, John Macarthur and Peter Lalor. His Pyrmont Washing (originally titled Washing Out, White Bay Cutting ) of 1948 was exhibited in that year’s SORA show (ill. Merewether). In the early 1950s he and others (including Hortin) began painting a large mural in the Waterside Workers Federation offices depicting the story of the Labor Movement from the 1890s strikes onwards.
By the mid-1970s Shaw’s own paintings had turned more towards figurative abstraction, but he produced little because he was increasingly involved in publishing and teaching. He contributed articles and illustrations to Overland , eg 'Dear Stephen’ no. 56 (Spring 1973), 23. Later he taught at Sydney University’s Tin Sheds and at ESTC. He died in December 1992 (see obit. Sydney Morning Herald , 8 December).
The Roderick Shaw collection of commercial illustrations, art posters and cartoons 1940-90 (Mitchell Library PXD 836) includes his business card; three pen drawings of Bathurst Island people, one dated 1942; drawings for magazines articles, stories and festivals; prints; four Aboriginal designs by Aboriginal artists in an A4 envelope (presumably 1942); four sketchbooks and loose leaves from sketchbooks; 13 political cartoons by 'Schweik’ (a pseudonym) and four other b/w drawings.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
staffcontributor
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 17 September 1915
- Summary
- Rod Shaw was a dominant figure in the left wing Studio of Realist Art in the 1950s while also being half of the progressive publisher, Edwards & Shaw which printed both the banned book The Trial of Lady Chatterely and the Art Gallery of New South Wales' catalogues. He was also well known as a painter,graphic artist, and cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Dec-92
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Guilford Bell (1912-1992) was born in Brisbane, grew up on his family’s extensive rural properties in Queensland, and in 1930 was articled to a Brisbane Beaux Arts architect, Lange L. Powell (then president of the Queensland Institute of Architects). At night, he studied at the Central Technical College, from where he graduated in 1935 with a Diploma of Architecture and the gold medall for best student. In 1936, he went to London and began work with Georgian-style architect Professor Albert E. Richardson, head of the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College, London. While working there, he visited the Paris Exposition in 1937 and accompanied the distinguished archaeologist Max Mallowan and his wife, novelist Agatha Christie, on their spring 1938 expedition to Syria and their autumn 1938 expedition to Brak; Belle contributing most of the plans and drawings of the digging sites for Mallowan’s 1947 book, Iraq. Back in London in 1939, one of his drawings was exhibited at the Royal Academy and published in the Architect’s Journal before he returned to Australia when war was declared. He worked in Canberra for Ansett airlines, then in 1943 joined the RAAF as an architect, receiving his officer’s commission in 1944. In 1946, he registered in Melbourne as an architect, working on occasional joint ventures with the chief architect at Ansett, John A La Gerche. In 1948, he completed the ANA Terminal in Sydney and travelled to the United States with Reg Ansett to study resort architecture. On return, he designed the first buildings for Hayman Island Resort on the Great Barrier Reef. In 1952, he set up a private practice in Toorak and began designing grand houses for wealthy clients around Australia, including several on country and suburban sites in New South Wales during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1955, a young graduate architect, David Godsell, began working for him; leading to a strong shift in the work towards the principles of Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra. In 1961, after Godsell left the practice, Bell went into partnership with Neil Clerehan, but the Clerehan and Bell practice was dissolved in 1964 and Bell continued to lead his own firm until he took on a much younger partner, Graham Fisher, in 1983. The work was strongly influenced by his Beaux Arts training in the Classical Orders, but executed with modern materials, technologies and open plan concepts.Sources—Van Schaik, Leon (ed.). The Life Work of Guilford Bell 1912-1992. Melbourne: Black Inc (Schwartz Publishing), especially Philip Goad’s essay ‘A Very Private Practice: The Life and Work of Guilford Bell’, pp 106-131
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1912
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1992
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.8894781 Longitude151.1274125 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ashfield, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Max Dupain (1911-1992)was Australia’s most important photographer between Harold Cazenoux and David Moore and John Gollings. The photographer of choice for most leading Sydney architects from the 1950s to the 1980s. Preferred black and white silver gelatin prints or 35mm colour slides to medium and large format transparencies. Dupain’s own house (shared with another noted photographer, his first wife Olive Cotton) was designed by Arthur Baldwinson in the mid 1950s. Books with substantial quantities of Dupain photographs include: Max Dupain, Old Colonial Buildings of Australia, Methuen 1980; Peter Johnson, Leslie Wilkinson: A Practical Idealist, Unwin Hyman 1983; Gael Newton, Max Dupain, David Ell Press 1980; James Broadbent, Clive Lucas and Ian Stapleton, The Golden Decade of Australian Architecture: The Work of John Verge, David Ell Press 1978, and Francis Greenway: A Celebration, Cassell Australia 1980.Sources—Various websites accessed on a Google search October 2004.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 4 April 1911
- Summary
- Max Dupain was one of Australia's outstanding photographers of the mid 20th century, specialising in architecture, merchandise, industrial and portrait commissions, as well as his own landscape and scenery compositions. His works have been exhibited widely and form the basis of various books.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1992
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1909
- Summary
- Book keeper in the family furniture business, Gerstl, from early 1950s until the 1980s. Her mother, Olga Kafka and brother Paul Kafka emigrated to Australia and the Gerstl family briefly lived with them in Lindfield when they arrived in 1947. The two businesses were kept strictly separate, but the families were socially close. From 1939-1946 Charlotte ran a cake shop in Shanghai that was a centre for European social life.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-92
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Kilda, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1908
- Summary
- Chamberlain began his career in automotive design as racing driver, later developing a racing car identified as the "Beetle". He later designed the Chamberlain Champion Model Tractor and produced it in a Perth, WA factory from 1955.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-92
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1907
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1992
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.8933952 Longitude151.1368729 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Summer Hill, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Frank Hinder was a Sydney cartoonist, illustrator, painter and printmaker. He was born on 26 June 1906 at Summer Hill, NSW. He had art lessons from his father, an amateur painter, and attended the Royal Art Society of NSW School in 1924, East Sydney Technical College in 1925-27, the Art Institute of Chicago in 1927-28, New York School of Fine Arts 1929 and the Master Institute of the Roerich Museum, NY, in 1930-31. Although best known as a painter (see Free) and a lithographer (see Bloomfield), he also did cartoons, graphic and advertising art in 1934-64. While in the USA in the early 1930s he contributed drawings to the New Yorker and to a Boston journal ( Boston Breeze ?), including a drawing of an American street crowd (Mitchell Library). He married Margel Harris in the US and they returned to Sydney in 1934.
In 1936 Frank illustrated Alice in Wonderland (the 4th Australian “Alice”). The Mitchell Library’s James Hardie Childhood collection includes his 'Hunting of the Snark’, with a lengthy series of b/w pencil drawings developing a drawing of the captain with a map 'that was a perfect blank’, based on a type of Golden Section theory about spirals and nested rectangles copyrighted by Fanning.
In the 1940s Hinder drew cartoons in Australia: National Journal , e.g. May 1947, and Australia Week-end Book 5 (1946), 13: “M’dear! Just one of those days you can’t call your lavatory your own!” (demented woman on phone with children’s party going on in the background) and p.196 (on dogs). An excellent ink drawing titled Frustrated artist shows a cartoonist (who looks like Hinder) at a drawing board and a man (who looks like George Lambert ) saying: 'Funny drawings, eh? I do them myself sometimes – but I put mine in the waste-paper basket’ c.1946, published Australia: National Journal . The original was included in the S.H. Ervin 1999 b/w art show (courtesy King Street Gallery, Sydney) with his matching drawing Universal Youth : “I know I’m right! – but I just can’t explain myself – not even to myself” c.1947, done for the same journal.
A coloured pencil drawing offered Deutscher-Menzies 1 May 2001, lot 180 (col. Ill, est. $700-1,000) Margo Draws a Vertebrae , inscribed 'Penrith – 45 F.C.H’, is a clever little portrait of Margo Lewers (a visually joke about her abstracting natural motifs). A good pen on vellum simple line nude appeared in Josef Lebovic Collectors’ List 1996 no.56, cat.26.
Further information:Frank Hinder (1906-1992), a painter, was interested in movement and rhythm in art and the truth behind appearances. He described his Construction painting as “trying to express a back-and-forth movement on the picture plain and he was strongly influenced by new scientific theories of his time, including Jay Hambridge’s 1902 book, Dynamic Symmetry (on the underlying order in natural forms). In 1930, he married Margel Hinder, a New York-born sculptor, in Boston, MA, and returned to Sydney with her in 1934.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Michael Bogle
Davina Jackson
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 26 June 1906
- Summary
- Mid 20th century modernist cartoonist, illustrator, designer, painter and printmaker. Hinder also worked with the Australian camouflage group during the 1939-45 war as a designer for the "Hinder Spider", a portable camouflage frame for soldiers. Theatre and set designs by Hinder are also known.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31-Dec-92
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-36.3143823 Longitude146.8390836 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yackandandah, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Cyril Gibbs was born in 1906 at Yackandandah, Victoria. He graduated from the Ballarat School of Mines and Industries in 1929 and taught part time at the Swinburne Technical College, Melbourne, from 1929 to 1931. Gibbs taught in Sydney for three years before moving to Brisbane in 1934 where, in 1936, he set up a commercial art studio. He took over from F.J. Martyn Roberts as the second Head of the Art School, Central Technical College, in 1938, and acted in this position until his retirement in 1971, when the institution became the College of Art, Morningside. Gibbs taught several generations of Queensland art students during this time including Marion Finlayson, Shirley Miller and Roy Paget.
Gibbs was involved in many aspects of arts administration apart from his teaching role. He was a Trustee of the Queensland National Art Gallery from 1946 to 1959, overseeing the appointment of its first Director in 1949, and acted as a member of the Art Advisory Committee for ten years. He regarded the 1946 acquisition of E. Phillips Fox 's major canvas, Bathing hour , with special pride as it was his direct responsibility.
Gibbs lectured in art subjects for the Board of Adult Education for 20 years, was a Vice-President of the Queensland Art Teacher’s Association, a life member of the Art Lecturers’ Association, and a member of the Art Advisory Sub- committee to the Queensland Board of Post Primary Studies for three years. Gibbs was also the Queensland Department of Education representative at UNESCO seminars in Melbourne, 1954; Canberra, 1963; and Melbourne, 1967 and was the Australian Representative at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Perugia, in 1964.
Gibbs was awarded the Coronation Medal for his services to art in 1953, elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London, in 1964, awarded a certificate in art and culture from the University of Perugia, Italy, also in 1964, and was awarded an honorary Bachelor of Arts from the College of Art, Brisbane, the year before his death.
Gibbs was awarded watercolour prizes at the Royal National Association and Industrial Association from 1959 to 1961 and subsequently acted as judge for the prize for many years. He received the Caltex Warana prize for watercolour in 1962 and exhibited with the Redcliffe Art Contest in 1960, 1961 and 1965, being awarded the prize in the latter most year. Gibbs’s work was also included in numerous other group exhibitions such as the H.C. Richards Memorial Prize, 1959 and 1962, and the Caltex Centenary Prize in 1959. He exhibited with the Half Dozen Group of Artists and was Vice-Patron of that society 1984-92. A solo exhibition of his work was held at the Moreton Galleries, Brisbane, in 1949 and an exhibition of 'Paintings from the estate of Cyril Gibbs (1906-92)’ was held at Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, just after his death in 1992.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- Cyril Gibbs was an accomplished watercolourist who produced a substantial output over his lifetime but his contribution to arts administration in Brisbane was probably as significant an achievement.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Feb-92
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, commercial artist and teacher, was born in Victoria. He studied at the NGV School, Melbourne 1919-23. Appointed an official war artist in 1941, he was captured in February 1942 after the fall of Singapore and spent three and a half years as a POW in Malaya, recording his experiences in a series of drawings exhibited on his return. In the Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture by Australian Official War Artists 1943-44 (JK catalogue), he was represented only by a self-portrait, lent by the Australian War Memorial (cat.23, ill. p.9), and a long catalogue note of extracts from his letters to the Australian War Memorial in 1942, plus a note stating that the self-portrait was 'the only work of Murray Griffin that can be shown. Mr. Griffin was appointed to work with the 8th Australian Dvision in Malaya and served in that theatre of war from November 1941, to February, 1942, when he was taken prisoner at the fall of Singapore. During his three months’ service in Malaya he completed a number of pictures which were packed ready for transport to Australia, but apparently did not leave the country, and their fate is unknown.’
Griffin also painted this experience, e.g. The Hungry Ones, Changi 1943, oil on board, Warrnambool AG (ill. Hanson, cat. 231 & John MacDonald, Federation NGA 2000). Although solely in Changi, where conditions were actually less harsh than many other Japanese camps, Griffin spoke to prisoners who returned from working on the Thai Railway and was inspired to make paintings and prints recording their experiences too, e.g. Hospital Ward, Thailand Railway (painting), Bridge Work, Thailand Railway 1946, pen, brush, brown ink and pencil with white, 51.4 × 35.6 cm, AWM, and Working on the Thailand railway cutting, July 1943 , brush and ink, 36 × 53.6 cm, AWM (last two illustrated in 'Special P.O.W. issue’, Journal of the Australian War Memorial 14, April 1989, cover & p.6).
Later Griffin became known for his colour prints, especially his birds and animals, e.g. The Owl , linocut, and Red Parrots , linocut and screenprint (ill Bridget McDonnell Gallery, Carlton, Early Australian Painters , catalogue of exhibition 25 May-15 June 2001, cats 42, 43).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- Griffin spent three and a half years as a POW in Changi, recording his experiences in a series of drawings exhibited on his return. He later became known for his colour prints of birds and animals.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1992
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-29.7385108 Longitude151.7357523 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1992-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glenn Innes, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Porcelain painter Ethel Warbuton (née Beavis), was born in Glenn Innes, NSW, 1894. Warburton was married to Raymond Parker Warburton (also a porcelain painter), they had a daughter – Patricia Ganter.
Warburton painted porcelain cups and saucers for Aynsley China Limited c. 1916-55. Warburton was also a member of the NSW Arts & Crafts Society from 1922, and President of the society from 1961-65.
Examples of her ceramic painting are held at the Powerhouse Museum.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 17 March 1894
- Summary
- Porcelain painter Ethel Warbuton (née Beavis), was born in Glenn Innes, NSW, 1894. Warburton was married to Raymond Parker Warburton (also a porcelain painter), they have a daughter - Patricia Ganter. Warburton painted porcelain cups and saucers for Aynsley China Limited c. 1916-1955. Warburton was also a member of the NSW Arts & Crafts Society from 1922, was President of the society from 1961-65. Examples of her ceramic painting are held at the Powerhouse Museum.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1992
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-18.324439 Longitude127.55465 Start Date1953-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Canning Stock Route, Western Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Born 'in the bush’ near the Canning Stock Route c.1953, Ena Gimme was a member of the Mulan community and a Kukatja speaker. She spent her early years in the area around Kinyu, north of the Canning Stock Route. Her traditional country was Kalliyangku, near the Canning Stock Route, and her main Dreamings are Tingari stories. The artist’s work shared more in common with that of older Warlayirti painters than it did with that of her peers. Perhaps this shows the influence of her mother, Eubena Nampitjin , on whose paintings she sometimes assisted. Ena Gimme began painting for Warlayirti Artists in 1989. She used layers of different coloured dotting to create 'rough’ but dramatic works, often with a 'floral’ look.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1953
- Summary
- Kukatja artist from the small community of Mulan (WA). Her painting style is influenced by senior Warlayirti artists including her mother, Eubena Nampitjin. Her work is held in major public collections, such as the National Gallery of Victoria.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Mar-91
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude-32.936 Longitude117.178 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Narrogin, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Greg Kelly, Noongar artist, was born in 1940 at Narrogin in south Western Australia. Kelly was one of Henry and Bella Kelly 's four sons, the others being Goldie Kelly , Flemming Kelly and Simpson Kelly . Greg Kelly was taken away from his parents in 1946, and he and his brothers spent a number of their childhood years in the Carrolup Native Settlement in Katanning. He left Carrolup when he was thirteen years of age, and began work as a farmhand on properties in the region of Wandering and Narrogin. Between 1958-68 he played for Cuballing Football Club.
Kelly began painting in the 1970s, working with watercolours, acrylics and oil paints. He did not exhibit his work, but sold paintings to family members and associates in the southwest, as well as international visitors to the region. Stylistically, his works bear the influence of the Carrolup style and of his mother, a highly acclaimed artist of the southwest who influenced many younger generation Noongar artists. Kelly’s brothers Goldie and Simpson were also artists.Kelly passed away in 1991.This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Fisher, Laura
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1940
- Summary
- Noongar artist who lived at the Carrolup Native Settlement in Katanning, WA, between the ages of six and thirteen. His mother was Bella Kelly, a highly acclaimed artist in the southwest of WA.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1991
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, writer and tough SA feminist; ills in Roger Butler, My Head is a Map: A decade of Australian Prints , NGA catalogue, Canberra, 1992, eg. Birth 1986, linocut, NGA, or Woman and Herself 1986, linocut, NGA. Also etching on zinc, The General and Mata Hari 1964 (done at Central School, London), AGNSW, and 'Beauty and Beast’ 1989, no.11 in portfolio of 12 linocuts printed and published by A.T. Bolton at the Officina Brindabella, Canberra, 1990.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- A well-known twentieth-century author as well as painter.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1991
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Harry Memmott (1921-1991) b.Brisbane. He spent his childhood at Annerley not far from his grandfather J.T. Sandison’s pottery works. He trained as a painter, studying art at the Brisbane Technical College, and completing a rehabilitation art course at the East Sydney Technical College after the war. He returned home in 1950 and set up a business making left-wing silk screen prints and picture frames. At that time, the Sandison pottery was being run by Memmott’s uncle, George Sandison, and Memmott learnt to make pots under the guidance of George’s partner, Merv Feeney. In the mid-1950s, he took over a section of the works and started making a range of souvenir wares. In the late 1950s, he began to make and teach studio pottery. In the late 1960s, he visited Japan, and soon afterwards, moved to the Dandenong Ranges, Victoria, to take up a position at the Prahran Technical College / Vic College Prahran, leaving his wife Cootch Memmott to take over the studio pottery business. In 1970 he published his influential 'The Australian Pottery Book’. His works are signed 'Harry Memmott’.”(Australian Pottery at Bemboka) – During the war Harry served with the Army Intelligence Unit in the Pacific. – Harry had twin sons.1980 – 1991 Head of Ceramics, PTC/VCP. – James Thomas Sundison – Victoria Pottery, Annerly. – Trainee & colleague of Merv Feeney when Merv took over J.T. Sundison’s Victoria Pottery.
Writers:
7write6
Date written:
2021
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 1 January 1921
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-91
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-33.713759 Longitude150.3121633 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Katoomba, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and teacher, was born on 11 April 1920 at Katoomba, NSW.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 11 April 1920
- Summary
- A painter who studied at East Sydney Technical College and various colleges and universities in France and the UK. She was the first woman to receive the Wynne Prize, for her painting Valley Farms, in 1941 and the first female president of the Australian Watercolour Institute, presiding from 1955-1958.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1991
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude51.2211097 Longitude4.3997081 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Antwerp, Belgium
- Biography
- painter, theatre and fabric designer, was born in Antwerp, Belgium. She came to Sydney in youth and later studied art under Dattilo Rubbo . She was in Paris in 1935-38, studying and exhibiting at the Salon des Tuileries. Back at Sydney, she exhibited with the Contemporary Art Society and the NSW Society of Artists; she also designed sets for the Kirsova Ballet. In 1946-47 she designed for the Silk and Textile Printers Modernage Fabric range. Silk and Textile Printers Pty Ltd, founded by Orlando and Claudio Alcorso and Paul Sonnino, had begun production of screen-printed dress fabrics in 1939 at Sydney’s Rushcutters Bay, but this became virtually dormant during World War II. When production resumed in 1946 a small range of textiles designed by Australian artists was trialled, including Danciger’s Voyage within a Dream (1946, NGA: gift of the artist 1982). Danciger said of the design: 'I was primarily concerned with strong form, colour and movement. As it was to be printed on silk, it was necessary to keep in mind the lightness and delicacy generally associated with that material.’
The success of the 1946 experiment led to a more ambitious range of artists’ fabrics in 1947 – the year the factory moved to Hobart. Thirty-three 'fine’ artists designed the 1947 'Modernage Fabrics’. As well as Danciger, who produced Sea Fantasy (a sample is in the Powerhouse Museum), they included Jean Bellette ( a sample of her fabric is in AGNSW), Mary Curtis, Sheila Grey, Mary Lewis , Muriel Medworth , Margaret Preston , Suzanne Rogers and Betty Skowronski. Male artist-designers included Russell Drysdale , William Dobell , Douglas Annand , James Cant , Adrian Feint , Donald Friend , James Gleeson and Justin O’Brien. Silk and Textiles continued production in Tasmania until 1969 when the firm was taken over by Dunlop.
Along with many of the other 1946-47 designs, Sea Fantasy was illustrated in the company’s book, A New Approach to Textile Designing by a Group of Australian Artists (Ure Smith, Sydney, 1947, cat.34). A statement from the artist accompanied it: 'In this design, intended for a heavy furnishing material suitable for curtains, my wish has been to achieve a decorative effect that would be the dominant note in a modern room. For this city, where so many windows have a view of the sea, the motif of the design and the brilliant colours would make an appropriate frame.’
Eugene Goossens opened the 'Art in Industry’ exhibition of these 'Modernage’ fabrics at the Australia Hotel on 1 September 1947 and was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald as saying that 'when the “not too distant” opera house was built in Sydney to be the home of the orchestra, ballet, singers, and theatre group, a tremendous scope would be provided for Australian fabric designers and artists who knew about decor and theatre costume.’ The adventurous character of many of the Modernage designs was notable. As another of the artists in the scheme, William Constable , pointed out in the Daily Telegraph : 'One of the most curious things I’ve found about designing is that a great many people who shy at abstract or surrealist art on canvas, will buy and go on buying abstract or surrealist art in textiles or carpets.’
Writers:
Callaway, AnitaKerr, Joan
duggim
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1 August 1914
- Summary
- A painter, theatre and fabric designer who worked with some of the most significant modernist artists in Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Jun-91
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-21.141956 Longitude149.1865149 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mackay, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- comic strip artist, illustrator, commercial and fashion artist, was born in her Irish grandfather’s pub in Mackay, North Queensland, on 18 October 1914 [ sic ], daughter of Patrick and Kathleen Mary O’Brien. Her mother, who modelled Aboriginal figures in clay and was an expert hand-weaver, inspired Kate (also known as Kath) to become an artist. After a peripatetic youth travelling around the Australian interior with her family (her father was a gold prospector, horse-breaker and general outback worker), she boarded at a Brisbane convent. The sisters encouraged her talent for drawing and reassured her about the propriety of attending evening life classes at the Brisbane Technical College, which they arranged for her. In 1937, she left for Sydney to study art with J. S. Watkins for three years.
In 1942, when Sunday Telegraph editor Cyril Pearl was looking for an Australian comic strip to replace Mary and Elizabeth Durack 's Nungalla and Jungalla , Bob Slessor (brother of the poet) suggested that O’Brien prepare a sample. Wanda the War Girl (retitled Wanda after the war) appeared from early 1943 until abruptly terminated mid-adventure in 1951. Initially influenced by Black Fury , an earlier wartime comic in the Telegraph drawn by another woman, the American Tarpe Mills, and by Petts’s extremely successful English stripper Jane , O’Brien’s Wanda increasingly acquired a vernacular Australian character. John Ryan called it 'one of the first comics to reflect a female point of view’ and believed it gradually 'developed a unique style which resembled some of the work of William Dobell and represented one of the most original and individual styles ever to appear in Australian comics’.
The strip was collected into comic books. Wanda the War Girl was published as a one-shot by Consolidated Press c.1944-46, while The Wanda Comic was the first and Wanda the fifth in Consolidated Press’ Supercomic Series (1947-1950s) – the only ones of the 66 published that were not US reprints (Mick Stone in Bonzer p.174). It brought Kate a certain amount of fame. She was mentioned from time to time in 'Granny’s’ column in the Sydney Morning Herald and she was invited to live at Merioola, Chica Lowe’s 'bohemian’ artists’ house in the eastern suburbs where everybody who was anybody in the arts gathered. She became involved in the activities of the loosely federated group of artists who infested the place (including painters Anne Wienholt and Mitty Lee Brown ) but split with them when they disapproved of her involvement with an ex-naval man, Robert Blanche, who had come to Sydney from India in 1947. The group apparently considered him unlikely to accept her life as an artist, but she nevertheless married him in 1947.
After the war O’Brien took over writing as well as illustrating Wanda , basing some of her stories on the books of Ashton Woolfe, head of the French Surêté, combined with items from the newspapers. In the late 1940s she sent her material down to Sydney from the Blue Mountains, where she lived for a short period after her marriage. She briefly taught art at Springwood Ladies College; Joan Kerr was one of her pupils (another was the Sydney fashion artist and women’s magazine editor, Jill Chalker). The Judy O’Neill Comic (Golden Comic, published J.S. Wilkinson c.1948), ’32 pages of packed action’ half in colour, which cost 6d, had a woman ace detective thwarting the nefarious plots of Otto Skrenk, one of Himmler’s deputies, Saki See, chief torturer to the Japanese Kempi, Arthur Fezzi, a henchman of Mussolini, and Boris Karkoss, an ex-terrorist, all of whom had fled to post-war Australia with atomic weapons. Although retrospectively admired as 'well drawn, witty and a real gem’ (see Shiell, p.144, full page ill. p.145), only one issue was ever published. No artist is identified on the cover, but the style is obviously O’Brien’s even though Mick Stone’s checklist of comics (in Shiell ed. 1998, p.161) claims it was by Jack Kilgour .
At the same time O’Brien worked as a commercial artist and book illustrator. Altogether she illustrated 12 books with Hans Christian Andersen’s Mermaid a favourite. She illustrated Australia’s first unabridged Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass in Australia (ACP: Sydney, 1943: reprints 1944, 1946 and 1947 – all on increasingly poor quality paper) – one of several wartime versions of Alice produced along with other British classics to compensate for the fact that UK books were no longer being shipped to Australia. O’Brien’s Alice is a bold, confident and assertive little girl in a short wartime skirt. She illustrated Ella Greenway’s Peter Cat (Colorgravure: Melbourne, 1950) and one of Nourma Handford’s 'Carcoola’ books – Carloola Backstage: A Career Novel for Girls (Dymock’s Book Arcade: Sydney, n.d. [1956]).
O’Brien had a distinguished career as a fashion artist. Her fashion illustrations for Georges, Farmers, Myers and David Jones department stores gained international acclaim. Advertisements for which she did the artwork won New York’s prestigious Retail Advertising Week’s Sekleman Award in 1962 (Hordern Bros) and in 1973 (David Jones), the former being the first presented to a retailer outside the USA. She continued to produce extremely stylish fashion drawings until arthritis forced her to stop in about 1984. Late in life she was cared for by the second of her four daughters, Cynthia Blanche, who described her mother as strong-minded, strong willed and an enemy of pretension. Kate O’Brien (Blanche) died in her Hazelbrook home on 8 May 1991.
Writers:
Kerr, James SempleKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 18 October 1914
- Summary
- Kathleen O'Brien was an illustrator and fashion artist. She studied at Brisbane Technical College and also with J.S. Watkins for three years. O'Brien's comic strip Wanda appeared in the Sunday Telegraph from early 1943 until 1951.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 8-May-91
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- printmaker, was born in Sydney on 27 May 1911, eldest child of (Sir) Charles Bickerton Blackburn, a medical doctor and later Chancellor of the University of Sydney, and Vera, née Le Patouret, whom her daughter remembered as embroidering beautiful tapestries. Both parents were interested in art; there were paintings by Thea Proctor , Elioth Gruner and J.J. Hilder in the family home at Potts Point. Vera soon decided that she wished to be an artist, although not necessarily a printmaker, finding the etchings her parents owned by Norman and Lionel Lindsay 'boring’. After visiting Europe with her parents in 1927 Vera returned to study Arts at the University of Sydney, under pressure from her father. She graduated BA with Honours in Classics in 1932. She also took private lessons in watercolour and linocutting with Thea Proctor throughout her university years, who recommended that she study full-time at the newly-established Adelaide Perry Art School. Vera was there from 1933 until leaving for England with her father in 1937, her mother having died the previous year. In 1936 she showed a linocut in the Contemporary Exhibition at Sydney’s Blaxland Galleries.
In London, Vera enrolled at the Westminster School of Art for two years, studying under Eric Schilsky for sculpture and with John Howard, Mark Gertler, Blair Hughes-Stanton and Bernard Mininsky. She disagreed with Frank Medworth 's ideas about linocuts and decided to postpone further work in this medium until returning home. Her friends among the Australian students in London included Jean Bellette , Ruth Pascoe, Eric Wilson, John Passmore and William Dobell .
Vera never returned permanently to Australia for in 1939 she married P.M. Game (son of a Govenor of New South Wales). Married life, a family and World War II took up all her time; apart from an occasional sketch, and she ceased working as an artist until the late 1980s, when she produced a number of linocuts. She continued to live in England until her death in Kent on 14 August 1991 and was 'rediscovered’ as an artist only in 1979 when Roger Butler curated an exhibition of her linocuts.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 May 1911
- Summary
- Printmaker Vera Blackburn was the daughter of artistically minded parents who encouraged her practice through lessons with Thea Proctor. World War Two, marriage and family life arrested her career until the 1980s, when she again took up printmaking.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 14-Aug-91
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- respected painter and illustrator of the 1940s and ’50s. She was married to the artist and critic Paul Haefliger, but while his work tended towards abstraction her mythological paintings epitomised the best of the Charm School.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full biography.
Writers:
DAAO staff writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1909
- Summary
- Respected painter and illustrator of the 1940s and '50s and a two-time winner of the Sulman Prize.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Mar-91
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude53.3806626 Longitude-1.4702278 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sheffield, UK
- Biography
- Sculptor, was born in Sheffield, daughter of Jewish parents who migrated to Western Australia in 1923. In 1924 she was enrolled in 'Clay Modelling’ at Perth Technical School under J. W. R. Linton. The syllabus required: –
Drawing from the decorative casts, heads and figures, after this a short course of artistic anatomy; then painting from still life, drawing and painting from the life, and the study of composition.
Modelling will be carried on in conjunction with these Art Classes.
A Landscape Class will be formed for those who wish to take up this particular branch of art. A separate day will be set apart for this work, when students will be taken to some convenient sketching ground, where they may study from nature.
Students also studied Design, which included:
... historic ornament and principles of ornament, the drawing of scale plans, elevations and sections of the work to be designed, and detailed drawings of the different parts. ... Where the student wishes to apply the knowledge and skill acquired to his or her daily occupation, special attention is given to encourage the development of original design for that purpose.
The courses tried to cover the needs of designers for industry and other subjects were taught on demand. Linton for instance taught miniature painting on porcelain to those who were interested. Additional subjects introduced with the five-year Associateship included Geometry, Art & Architectural History, Architectural Drawing, Modelling from Life, Anatomy, and History of Art-crafts. A number of the students in the modelling class were talented at making portrait busts. Those who went on to make a name in this field included Mr F. Steitz, Finley, Jamie A. B. Linton and Eva Benson. Finney made busts of eminent persons. In 1926 she exhibited a study of a child. In 1928 she exhibited a bust of Mrs E. Kowadlo . In 1929 her exhibits included the Governor Sir William Campion, the Premier Mr Collier, the Lord Mayor, Rabbi Freedman, Archbishop Riley and Archbishop Clune . During the Depression she returned to England where she made figurines. She was injured in a bombing raid During World War II and returned to Western Australia in 1946. She was active in the Labour Party. In 1963 she returned to making sculpture. Some of her best known works are the portrait of Sir Walter Murdoch at Murdoch University, the portrait of Edith Cowan at Edith Cowan University, Dame Florence Cardell Oliver and others in the Parliament House Collection, Sir Harry Howard , Sir Claude Hotchin , Senator Dorothy Tangney , Aboriginal children from Sister Kate’s Home in the Western Australian Museum and Tommy Windich and Tommy Pierre in the collection of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society.
Writers:
Erickson, Dorothy (Dr)
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1908
- Summary
- Sculptor, was born in Sheffield; daughter of Jewish parents who migrated to Western Australia in 1923.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1991
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Melbourne on 12 December 1907, daughter of Charles Algernon Lempriere (grandson of the colonial painter T.J. Lempriere ) and Dora, nee Mitchell, sister of Dame Nellie Melba. Her wealthy family patronised local artists; Janet Cumbrae Stewart did a portrait of her mother and Florence Rodway and Bess Norriss Tait depicted Helen herself. Initially she studied art with Max Meldrum 's follower A.D. Colquhoun then, from 1930, with the dissident ex-Meldrumite Justus Jorgensen . For fifteen years she was one of the notorious 'bohemians’ at Jorgensen’s Eltham. She helped erect the first stage of the romantic complex of Montsalvat (begun 1935), making mud bricks for its walls and carving many of its wood and stone decorations. She also painted in appropriate tonal style. Extant oil paintings date from January 1935. On July 1940 she burst into bright pure light and colour when painting her mother’s house and garden at Lilydale – a building she designed as well as drew. Henceforth, she recollected, she was besotted with impressionism for plein air studies though continuing to paint portraits tonally. On 15 June 1945, much to Jorgensen’s dismay, his faithful disciple married Keith Wood. The following year, after Keith’s discharge from the army, they moved to Sydney. Artistically, this period is rounded off with the uncompromisingly realist Self Portrait of 1945 – her husband’s favourite portrait of her which he kept all his life.
Forty years of independent, professional practice followed. Between 1954 and 1973 Lempriere held over twenty solo exhibitions. She was one of the few Australian painters to establish an independent, international reputation in the 1950s and ’60s, but it was made in Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Utrecht, The Hague and Milan more than in London, New York or Sydney (although she had solo exhibitions in all these places too) and consequently was unappreciated in Australia. Nor did she ever abandon figurative representation, a conscious choice made when studying with Fernand Léger in Paris. A more welcome and influential mentor was the Dutch artist, Fred Klein (father of the neo-dadaist Yves). She exhibited at the Salon des Surindépendents in 1953-55 and showed L’Adieu (1958) there in 1961 in the exhibition 'Surrealistes et Symbolistes’.
Lempriere painted Aboriginal subjects almost exclusively in Paris. An early attempt to express her belief in the basic duality of the European-Australian artist by combining Aboriginal themes with European colours and techniques is the unresolved Self Portrait of 1949, painted in Sydney (ill. Heritage ). Her “Aboriginal” paintings done in France more closely resemble the surreal frottages of Max Ernst (with similar echoes of fin de siècle symbolism) than Aboriginal rock art, despite being worked on rough hand-made paper to achieve a rocky effect.
Back at Sydney in 1966, Lempriere’s themes changed. Her 1969 solo exhibition at David Jones showed the results of a visit to Cambodia, focussing on the temples and the poetic atmosphere of Angkor Wat. Her most popular exhibition was of colourful semi-abstract marine paintings inspired by a visit to the Barrier Reef. She also produced some competent romantic lithographs (NGA) and throughout her life drew lively watercolour and pencil sketches, many of birds and animals. Although never a member of any circle of artists, her paintings seem most closely allied to the Sydney 'Charm School’ artists, as she herself perhaps was in training, aspiration and influences after the Melbourne years.
After some years of debilitating illness, Helen Lempriere died on 25 November 1991. Woolloomooloo Galleries held a two-part retrospective of her work in 1993-94. In 1994 Keith Wood established a scholarship for craftworkers in her name. The first Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship was awarded to Lin Li in 1997, and in 2001 the Helen Lempriere Sculpture Award was inaugurated at Weribee Park, Victoria and awarded to Karen Ward.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Note: Primary
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 12 December 1907
- Summary
- painter and lithographer, born in Melbourne in 1907, Lempriere had a forty year career of independent, professional practice, died in Sydney, 1991.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Nov-91
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Sculptor and modeller, daughter of Dr Leigh Cook of Claremont was born in Perth and studied at Perth and Fremantle Technical Schools over a number of years. She took both art and domestic subjects. Cook had not been able to enroll full-time because of duties in the family home. Cook, as the eldest daughter, was required to look after her delicate mother and younger sisters and could only attend intermittently between 1924 and 1928. She took classes in dress cutting and design, passing with credit, as well as art classes in life-drawing, light and shade (passing with credit) and landscape. Cook earned her living as a commercial artist, primarily as an illustrator, drawing advertisements for the jewellers Levinsons and Caris Bros and for Foy & Gibson department store. She also painted white furniture and wooden objects with wildflowers for the tourist industry and designed and screened curtain fabric. Cook became head of the women’s section of the Art Department at Ajax Plaster Co., before marrying the sculptor Edward Kohler who, after returning from Europe, became the head modeller at Ajax. After her marriage she made small clay models and figurines (in collaboration with her husband) as samples for Brisbane and Wunderlich. In 1950 Cook had two kilns built by her brother at her home in Gosnells and produced 'Kohlerware’. An example of Kohlerware was her angel vase.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- Eileen Cook was born in 1906. She was a sculptor and modeller. Cook earned her living as a commercial artist, primarily as an illustrator, drawing advertisements for the jewellers Levinsons and Caris Bros and for Foy & Gibson department store.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1991
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude51.4816546 Longitude-3.1791934 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cardiff, Wales, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, muralist, cartoonist and writer, was born on 15 October 1903 in Cardiff, Wales, fifth of the eight children of George Frederick Harris (see National Gallery of Australia australianprints.gov.au website), painter-chairman of the Royal Art Society in Cardiff and RA exhibitor, and Rosetta Elizabeth, née Lucas. In 1920 the family migrated to WA, arriving in 1921. On board the Demosthenes the 16-year old Rhona was given the nickname “Pixie”, which she assumed for the rest of her life.
The family lived briefly in Perth, where Pixie exhibited fairy pictures with the WA Society of Arts, then moved to Sydney. (In 1930 the journalist 'P.P.’ claimed that 'Pat O’Harris’ had published a story and picture in the Triad at the age of 10 (i.e. before migrating), meaning c.1925 since 'P.P.’ believed that 'Pat’ was only 15 in 1930 and reported that she was studying art at East Sydney Technical College. As a result there is some speculation that Pat O’Harris might not in fact be Pixie O’Harris as has been previously assumed.) Pixie O. Harris worked as a commercial artist with the stationers and printers John Sands while attending Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School in 1922-23. In 1933 her watercolour Thieves was included in the Sydney Art School retrospective exhibition.
Her first major children’s book commission was to draw black-and-white illustrations for Maud Rennor Liston’s Cinderella’s Party (1923). She then spent a short time in Adelaide sporadically attending art school before returning to Sydney. For the next three years she worked as a fashion illustrator for Anthony Hordern’s department store, wrote and illustrated stories in the Sydney Mail , and drew cartoons and caricatures for the Bulletin . Four original cartoons of 1925-30 and two undated caricatures (both of men) are at Mitchell Library [ML] Px*D498/12-17. She also did cartoons for Aussie , eg (male swimmer to woman in elaborate bathing costume) '“It’s great! Won’t you come in?”/ “My dear, I’d have to go and change”’ 1926 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 171); (ordinary suburban couple with odd pointed gumnut hair styles) “Darling, what is the weather forecast for to-day? I want to go to town to buy a new frock and hat.”/ “Cyclonic storm, thunder, hail and possibly a tidal wave!” 15 May 1930.
The Pixie O. Harris Fairy Book , an illustrated collection of radio stories by Pixie and other authors published in 1925, made her name. Soon afterwards, however, she changed it to 'Pixie O’Harris’, admiring the apostrophe a printer mistakenly added. She wrote a fairy poem and illustrated it for Ink #1 (1932, 9), wrote and broadcast a children’s program for radio 2UE, and contributed to the Australian Women’s Weekly , e.g. illustration to poem about witches 28 October 1933, 30.
In the early 1930s Connie Robertson, editor of the Women’s Budget , invited her to do a series of 'Pictures of the Near Great’. The result was a series of weekly 'gentle caricatures’ (acc. to Pixie’s interview with Hazel de Burgh). Nine original pen and ink caricatures in the series, collected by Connie Robertson and presented to the State Library of New South Wales [SLNSW] (ML PxA30), depict Frank Dalby Davison, Dulcie Deamer (in SLNSW b/w exhibition 1999), the woman poet E.M. England, writer Louise Mack, Price Conigrave, sculptor Rayner Hoff, sculptor Eileen McGrath , artist Dora Wilcox (Mrs William Moore) and Jessie Urquhart. A pencil drawing, Freda Thompson after her flight from England to Australia 1934 is in the National Library of Australia (PIC R10895). Pixie commented not long before she died:
“I could’ve done political cartoons. I used to caricature people – I was rather cruel with my pencil when I was young – till I found people were so upset they’d tear my caricatures off the wall of an exhibition. Especially women, they didn’t like it at all, being caricatured, and some of my fellow writers. So I gave up being cruel. When I caricature now, I do it for men only, because they can take it better”. (Guiffré p.185, quoted O’Sullivan p.122).
An oil painting c.1972 (coloured photograph ML SPF/O’HARRIS PIXIE) depicts 'Henry Kendall and his brother in the bush cradle’, while an oil of Ray Mathew in Italy c.1960, painted from a photograph, is in the SLNSW (ML 89S). In c.1983 she did a self-portrait as she appeared at the age of six (obviously from a photograph), now ML 979. Any element of caricature in her portraits is minimal and becomes increasingly so, as she admitted.
In 1927 Pixie O’Harris married Bruce Pratt, editor of The Australian Encyclopedia ; they had three daughters (one is Robyn Tranter). In hospital after the birth of the third, Pixie loathed the blank walls of her room and despaired of the effect such clinical bleakness would have upon 'children who sometimes have to spend weeks or months in hospitals’. So she painted a kangaroo fantasy mural on the walls of Wade House at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children in 1939. Over the following 40 years she did about 50 murals for children’s institutions for which she was awarded an MBE in 1976.
The 22 children’s books Pixie wrote and illustrated in her lifetime include Pearl Pinkie and Sea Greenie (1935), The Fortunes of Poppy Treloar (1941), Marmaduke the Possum (1941) and Poppy and the Gems (1944). Her last, Loveleaves the Koala , appeared in 1985. The final book she illustrated (with watercolours and pen and ink drawings) was The Pixie Alice: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Melbourne: Carroll Foundation, 1990). It was listed as no.125 in US collector Charles Lovett’s ’125 landmark publications in the history of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland’ and the drawings were said to be “not only charming, they are uniquely Australian. Her Alice has pig-tails, jeans, and a T-shirt adorned with a koala bear. In the drawing of Alice falling down a rabbit hole [pen and ink, Carroll Foundation], the map on the wall is of Australia, though it is hanging sideways… ( Alice in Australia exhibition)”.
Pixie began a successful parallel career as an exhibiting painter in 1937 when she and Joyce Abbot held a joint exhibition at the Wynyard Book Club. She began painting oil portraits and landscapes in the 1960s, when fairies were unfashionable and her books had fallen from favour with publishers and librarians (some were reprinted in the 1970s when attitudes, once again, were changing). Pixie O’Harris died in 1991.
Writers:
Callaway, AnitaKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 15 October 1903
- Summary
- Pixie O'Harris was a mid 20th century painter, children's book illustrator, muralist, cartoonist and writer. It was the birth of her third daughter that prompted O'Harris to paint nearly 50 murals over the following 40 years in a number of children's institutions. She was awarded an MBE in 1976 for her efforts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-Nov-91
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brighton, Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Brighton, Adelaide on 21 January 1903 and received her early education at St Peter’s Girls’ School.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 21 January 1903
- Summary
- Painter, was born in Brighton, Adelaide on 21 January 1903. Sauerbier's initial art training was under Frederick Britton at the School of Fine Arts, Tynte Street, North Adelaide, run by Edith Napier Birks.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Mar-91
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- toymaker, was born Alison Wickham Davies on 2 October 1902 in New South Wales. After studying at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School, she married a grazier, Wilfred Hall Pownall (1897-1972), and went to live at Burleith, Gunnedah. While assisting in managing the farm and caring for her two children, Alison fostered her artistic talents by decorating the home and caring for the extensive garden. She was also well known for the finely crafted soft toys she made on her Wilcox & Gibbs sewing machine. In about 1940 she and Wilf made a miniature dolls’ house as a present for their daughter Pam. Alison Pownall died on 2 February 1991.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Black, Pru
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 October 1902
- Summary
- Alison Pownall was a toymaker. With her husband Wilfred Hall Pownall she made (c. 1940) a miniature dolls' house as a present for their daughter Pam.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2-Feb-91
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St. Kilda, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in St Kilda, Melbourne on 22 November 1899, daughter of Maria Tweedale and Arthur Edward McIntyre Berndt. She studied at Ashton’s Sydney Art School when Grace Crowley and Anne Dangar were teaching there before they left for France in 1925. She also had lessons from Dorrit Black in 1935 and from Adelaide Perry in 1943. At London in the 1950s she attended the Central School of Art and Craft. Best known as a painter, she was secretary of the Australian Watercolour Institute in the 1940s and the 1960s. Her few known prints include decorative linocuts done in the 1930s and some colour lithographs done in London.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 22 November 1899
- Summary
- Painter and printmaker, Berndt studied variously under Grace Crowley, Anne Dangar, Dorrit Black and Adelaide Perry before relocating to London to study at the Central School of Art and Craft. Best known as a painter, Berndt was secretary of the Australian Watercolour Institute throughout the 1940s and 1960s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1991
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- commercial artist and fashion designer, was born in Melbourne on 16 June 1894, third of the six children of Sylvester John Browne, a wealthy mining speculator and pastoralist, and Anne Catherine, née Stawell.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 June 1894
- Summary
- After her father lost much of his wealth, Greene, although under no pressure, felt obliged to find work. She worked as a commercial artist, specialising in fashion catalogues. She would return to her interest in fashion and art after the social upheavals of the two world wars, when she created hats and handbags in the 1950s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 31-Dec-91
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1991-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- potter, leather worker, china painter and designer, was born in England. She came to New South Wales with her family at the age of 10. In Sydney she studied model drawing and watercolour painting at Sydney Technical College under Alfred Coffey and life drawing at his private studio. After a trip to England, where she studied china painting at the Chelsea Art School, she returned to Sydney and joined the Arts and Crafts Society of NSW (in 1910). She exhibited with the Society from 1910 to 1942, and in 1922 held a joint exhibition in its rooms with her business partner Ada Newman . She also exhibited with the Women’s Industrial Arts Society and, with Ada and Jessie Newman, was a member of the 'Ceramic Art Studio’ which fired works for many Sydney China Painters.
Atkinson and Newman had entered into partnership in about 1916, establishing the Ceramic Art Studio in the Penfolds Building, 183 Pitt Street, Sydney, where both made pottery; Atkinson also taught china painting and leatherwork. The business was a great success.
In 1924 Atkinson returned to England in order to inspect Arts and Crafts 'schools and working depots’ in Manchester, Birmingham and London. She also visited the English Woman’s Exhibition of Arts and Handicrafts at Westminster Hall, London: 'a very fine display, but after diligent search [she] could find nothing essentially different from what we have in Australia’. In her opinion, the two most outstanding exhibits were the coloured woodcarvings by Ruth Bannister and the distinctive leather work by Mrs Spring – both Australians. She found little china painting of note in England, most workers being absorbed into the large potteries to work on stock designs.
She and Newman continued in partnership, their studio being relocated to 147 Elizabeth Street by 1938. In about 1940 they moved to the Newman family home in Muston Street, Mosman, where they used gas and, later, electric kilns and fired work for other potters. French porcelain blanks were favoured for china painting but were hard to obtain, so they often used Doulton and Worcester blanks purchased from Prouds in Sydney. The two women worked together until Newman’s death in 1949. Atkinson then gave up china painting and pottery, resigned from the Society of Arts and Crafts in 1950 and concentrated on watercolours until arthritis forced her to abandon this in about 1980. She died in 1991 at the great age of 103.
Many of Atkinson’s early pieces, based on the Persian scenes of Edmund Dulac, were unashamedly illustrative at a time when that style had already lost favour. Nevertheless, all her designs, while never particularly avant-garde, are very subtle and delicate, each peculiarly fitted to the shape of the vessel to which it is applied and each painted directly from nature.
Writers:
Timms, Peter
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1887
- Summary
- Potter, leather worker, china painter and designer. Atkinson set up the 'Ceramic Art Studio' with business partner Ada Newman. A regular exhibitor with the Arts and Craft Society of NSW, Atkinson also exhibited with the Women's Industrial Arts Society. Her address is given as "Braeside" Rae Street, Randwick.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1991
- Age at death
- 104
Details
Latitude-0.4192962 Longitude36.9517005 Start Date1954-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nyeri, Kenya
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1954
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Nov-90
- Age at death
- 36
Details
Latitude-21.141956 Longitude149.1865149 Start Date1943-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mackay, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 14 August 1943
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Mar-90
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude51.9847032 Longitude1.330909573 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Eygpt
- Biography
- Commercial artist and painter who was born in Eygpt and served in the American armed forces before migrating from United States of America to Perth in 1948. He exhibited an oil painting, Morning Moon, with the Perth Society of Artists in 1950 and The Oil-Can Church in 1952. He was also represented in the Festival of Perth art exhibition in 1953. In 1963 he was one of the artists in 'Artists From the West’ at the Museum of Modern Art and Design in Melbourne. Voudouris taught commercial illustration to the evening part-time classes at Perth Technical College from 1969-1981. He was also a highly respected freelance commercial artist.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- He taught commercial illustration to the evening part-time classes at Perth Technical College from 1969-1981 and was a highly respected freelance commercial artist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1990
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yarripirlangu, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c.1919 at Yarripirlangu, south-west of Yuendumu, a site associated with the Ngarrka (Initiated Men) or Ngalyipi (Snake Vine) Dreaming. He was one of the senior men whose painting of the doors of the Yuendumu school helped to start up the painting enterprise in the community. He collaborated with Paddy Japaljarri Sims , Jimija Jungarrayi and Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson on Munga Star Dreaming 1985, purchased by the Australian National Gallery from Warlukurlangu Artists’ first Sydney show at the Hogarth Gallery in December of that year. His Milky Way Dreaming 1986, also purchased by the Gallery typified the exuberance of the early Yuendumu style, which remained undiminished in Larry Spencer’s work.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1919
- Summary
- One of the original painters of the Yuendumu school doors in 1983; a project which ignited the painting enterprise within the local community. His work is in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1990
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Joyce May Abbott 1912-1990 was the daughter of Edgar Jospeh Abbott a waiter/clerk-steward and Gertude May nee Julius and grew up in the family residence 4 Cove street Watson’s Bay. She became a pupil of Fred Leist at East Sydney Technical College probably in the evenings, in the late 1920s and her interest in mural painting aligns with this influence. Abbott was active by 1932 when she exhibited but did not become a member at the Australian Watercolour Institute and had a work accepted in the Health Department Poster Competition in 1934.
Abbott became friends with the older established Sydney illustrator and children’s book author, Pixie O’Harris. The pair had enough work to have a joint exhibition at the Wynyard Book Club, Sydney, in 1937 which received several positive notices in the newspapers and was attended by notable figures including both the women’s teachers.
Joyce illustrated O’Harris’s Aboriginal theme book Goolara in 1943. Abbott contributed a picture story of her own on 'The adventures of Naroo and his playmate, Kawana’ to the 2 November issue of The New South Wales school magazine of literature for our boys and girls The story line makes for an interesting comparison with the award winning 1957 children’s photographic book by Axel Poignant Piccaninny walkabout:a story of two Aboriginal children. Abbott remained a contributor to the magazine until 1947.
Joyce Abbott was a finalist in the 1943 Wynne Prize and the 1944 and 1945 Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Abbott illustrated other children’s books including Grandpuff and Leafy(1943)and Leafy’s Seventh Wave (1948)by Gladys Lister and had a few illustrations used in a 1953 leaflet issued by the Australian Museum, Sydney, on Australian Aborigines written by Beryl Graham and F.D.McCarthy.
Abbott’s own books are school readers published by Angus & Robertson,_Playabout: A Picture-story Reader _in 1955 and _Ullagulbra. A Picture-Story Reader_in 1959. Abbott’s illustrations and a portrait of Aboriginal children at auction, suggest contact with Aboriginal people but she is not known to have travelled outside Sydney and may have used photographs.
Abbott married in 1944 but continued work under her own name -although not it seems ever working full time or being listed as a professional artist-illustrator There are no known works from the 1960s on. A scant few works in oil and on paper are listed at auction. An un-named portrait in oil by Pixie O’Harris sold at auction may be a portrait of Abbott from 1937 as both women were reported as including portraits of the other in their 1937 exhibition. Abbott has scant reference in literature on Children’s book illustration but deserves consideration as one of the illustrators of graphic stories about Aboriginal children.
Writers:
newtog
Date written:
2019
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 1 January 1912
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-90
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-27.6160323 Longitude152.7608348 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ipswich, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born Muriel Foote in Ipswich, Queensland. She acquired her lifelong nickname 'Mim’ during her formative years at the Presbyterian Girls College in Warwick. From 1930 to 1935 she attended Vida Lahey 's (q.v.) painting and drawing classes in Brisbane. She also studied pottery with L.J. Harvey in 1933. At Lahey’s suggestion, Mim moved to Sydney in 1935 to further her studies and absorb the latest European Impressionist influences. She attended Adelaide Perry’s School for Painting and Drawing. In 1937 she participated in an exhibition called “A Group of Young Painters’ at Macquarie Galleries. Included in the group exhibition were Vera Blackburn and Paul Haefliger . During this period she shared a studio in Daley Street with another former Lahey student, Rene (Toby) Williamson.
In 1938 Mim sailed to London. Whilst abroad she enrolled at Westminster Art School. She studied drawing with Meninsky, abstract painting with Enislie Owen, wood-engraving with Clifford Webb, drypoint and life drawing with Blair Hughes-Stanton and figure painting with John Howard. John Passmore and Eric Wilson were among the students in the painting class. During this period Mim also made sketching trips to Europe. With the outbreak of World War II, Mim was forced to return to Australia. Most of her paintings were left behind. The art school was closed and the buildings occupied by the army. Upon her return to Brisbane she exhibited with Ella Robinson (Fry, q.v.) and Vera M. Cottew in 1940. She was also asked to take over the arranging of the Friday lunch-time lectures at the Art Library in George Street. Lahey and Daphne Mayo , who had previously organised the lectures, received an Art Fund grant from the Carnegie Corp USA to raise money to purchase paintings for the Brisbane Art Gallery. From 1941 to 1945 Mim taught weaving, pottery, painting and art history at St Hilda’s Girls School which was situated at Stanthorpe during the War. In addition, in 1944 she taught part-time at Moreton Bay High School whilst also attending university. During this period Mim also taught weaving and design theory at the Red Cross and assisted with Lahey’s afternoon painting and drawing classes for children.
In 1945 Mim married James Graham Shaw, stepbrother of her old friend Rene Williamson. The following year they moved to Sydney where Graham worked as a biochemist at Superannuation Department, York Street. Together they had two daughters Helen Jane (born 1946) and Margaret Evelyn (born 1947). For her daughters she made toys such as jigsaw puzzles, hobbyhorses, dolls houses and leather comb-cases. Later she was to illustrate books for her grandchildren and their friends. After her marriage Mim signed her work 'M Shaw’ instead of 'M Foote’. However, illustrations, sketchbooks and cards were always signed 'Mim’.
Whilst in Sydney, Mim continued to strengthen her skills at Dora Sweetapple’s (q.v.) art school in Woollahra where she studied design and screen-printing. In 1957 she resumed teaching. Mim taught art at Queenwood Girls School in Mosman. Her husband died the following year, in 1958. She had been fortunate to have had a teaching career which enable her to support her young family. Three years after Graham’s death, she travelled England and Europe with her daughters visiting major art galleries and museums. Upon her return to Sydney, Mim resumed her teaching position at Queenwood. During the early 1960s she also taught art at Claremont Girls School in Coogee. Whilst Mim continued to teach, she also took the opportunity to be taught. She joined the screen-printing classes at the Workshop Art Centre, Willoughby, and in 1965 attended Phyllis Shillito’s Design Art School.
Due to family illnesses, Mim returned to Brisbane in 1971 and immediately joined the Half Dozen Group of Artists, which was located at St Mary’s Anglican Church, Kangaroo Point. The following year she became the group’s secretary and later Vice-President in 1974. From 1979 to 1982 she studied Fine Arts at the University of Queensland. Her lecturers included Nancy Underhill and Margaret Maynard. Mim’s desire to keep learning fuelled her interest in batik, which she later studied in Bali. In turn, Mim taught batik at The Half Dozen Group Studio. From the 1970s to 1989 Mim attended group painting sessions at The Half Dozen Group Studio and regularly exhibited in their group exhibitions. From 1987 to when her health began to fail in 1989, she attended Elizabeth Duguid’s art classes. Here she used acrylic and experimented with large still-life paintings.
During the 1970s and 1980s Mim travelled extensively visiting China, Russia, Italy, the United States of America, New Zealand and around Australia. She loved the Australian outback and travelled with art groups to Broken Hill, Cooper Pedy and central Australia. Along the way she made many sketches, notes and paintings. In 1985 she visited Kakadu in a group led by Clifton Pugh and in 1987 travelled to the Flinders Rangers with Jeff Makin.
In December 1989 Mim was admitted to Greenslopes Hospital with bowel cancer. She died at her Kangaroo Point home surrounded by family on 11 June 1990. In 1993 a retrospective of Mim’s art was held at The Half Dozen Group Studio in Kangaroo Point.
Mim Shaw lived life to the fullest. She was interested in everything and everyone. Her many interests included shells, geology, ballet, opera, music and travel. She believed art involved history, civilisation and religion. For Mim, art was a way of life.
For further information:
Photograph appeared accompanying an article by Dr Duhig. Women well known in the Art World in The Steering Wheel and Society Home, 4 May 1941 p 38. Meanjin Papers Contemporary Verse and Prose Vol 2. Number Three Spring 1942. Woodcut by Muriel Foote. L.J. Harvey and His School. Queensland Art Galley 1983 catalogue. p 101. Muriel Foote. Australian Studio Pottery and China Painting by Peter Timms. Muriel Foote p139.
Writers:
Collerton, E J
stokel
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2008
- Born
- b. 1911
- Summary
- Painter and printmaker known by her nickname 'Mim'. A member of the Half Dozen Group of Artists in Brisbane, Shaw travelled extensively overseas and taught art for many years in Sydney and Brisbane. A regular student herself, Shaw studied printmaking, painting, pottery and design.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Jun-90
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born in Sydney on 19 December 1910 and grew up in working class Pyrmont where he went to a convent school which although it was strict, allowed the children to draw on Friday afternoons. His first job on leaving school was at Paramount Pictures in Sydney, where he emptied the jars of water used by the studio artists to clean their brushes. This led to him enrolling as a part-time student at the Royal Art Society under Dattilo Rubbo and Sydney Long and at East Sydney Technical College. He subsequently became a commercial artist at Paramount Pictures before becoming a black-and-white artist on Truth . This was followed by a short stint in advertising after which he freelanced. He contributed to Labour Daily in the 1930s when he was married with a small child. A second child was born during an extended stay in England in the 1930s, where he went to study at Westminster School, London, under Bernard Mehninsky and Mark Gertler. He shared a studio with William Dobell, Donald Friend and Arthur Murch. Other Australian fellow students included John Passmore and *Jack Carington Smith*who once called him 'the outstanding draughtsman of our era’. While in the UK he worked under Arthur Murch on the Australian Wool Pavilion Exhibition in Glasgow, along with Donald Friend , William Dobell , Fred Coventry and Rosalind Edkins.
Santry returned to Australia shortly before the outbreak of WWII and joined Australian Consolidated Press as a 'creative artist’, drawing illustrations and cartoons for the Daily Telegraph and the Australian Women’s Weekly . After an incident when he and the other cartoonists all refused to draw an anti-strike cartoon he decided to resume freelancing, which he combined with part-time teaching at East Sydney Technical College. { Fifty years says he taught Creative Art at Sydney Technical College.}
He was honorary secretary of the Society of Artists, which prided itself on representing professional artists and illustrators of a progressive bent. The president was his close friend Douglas Dundas who was head teacher at the National Art School, East Sydney Technical College. Santry taught drawing to Architecture students at Sydney University with Lloyd Rees and Roland Wakelin , then at University of New South Wales with Hector Gilliland , John Olsen and Leonard Hessing . He was the artist for the popular Chesty Bond strip and at night taught WEA classes in the suburbs. After the War he joined with Lloyd Rees, Roland Wakelin and others to paint around the lower north shores of Sydney Harbour, forming a collective they called the Norwood Group. In the 1950s a young discontented boy, Brett Whiteley, tagged along with the older men, absorbing their knowledge. Santry remembered the young man as 'a nice boy,very talented’.
Santry always combined cartooning and illustrating with painting post-impressionist landscapes and more realist figure studies, mainly of Sydney people and places especially working-class areas like Glebe, Surry Hills, etc.For many years his work was not noticed by the critics, who assumed he was only an illustrator. However in 1984 the Sydney dealer gallery Hamer-Mathew held a well received retrospective of his paintings, drawings and etchings, with a catalogue introduction by Joanna Mendelssohn. At the exhibition opening Lloyd Rees compared Santry’s studies of working class life on the streets – furtive greyhound trainers, barefoot children and street flower sellers – to the work of Courbet. The following year he held an even more substantial exhibition at the Art Exchange in Melbourne.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 19 December 1910
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney painter, illustrator and cartoonist Santry taught drawing to Architecture students at Sydney University, which may have come from his association with Lloyd Rees as part of the Northwood Group.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1990
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-37.7667 Longitude144.9628 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brunswick, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Sam Atyeo was born in Brunswick, Melbourne, the son of a chauffeur Alfred Atyeo and his wife Olivia (nee Cohen). He was a sickly child who enjoyed drawing. This led him to first study architecture at the Working Men’s College and then to study painting at the National Gallery School. His time there was distinguished by a lack of respect for authority as his (unsuccessful) 1930 entry for the travelling scholarship lampooned the head of the school, Bernard Hall.In the early 1930s he came to know Cynthia Reed, who had a Collins Street shop where she sold modern furniture, including decorative designs, and some painting. He began to supply her with his work and through her met and befriended Cynthia Reed’s brother John Reed and his wife Sunday. His work for Cynthia Reed brought him to the notice of the modernist Edward Dyason,the economic adviser to the Federal Government, who commissioned him to design a new facade and shop with a steel frame, chromium plating and black Carrara marble. Robin Boyd later called this Melbourne’s first modern building.Dyason also introduced him to Dr H.V. Evatt who became a life-long friend. The Reeds’ circle was self consciously radical and they encouraged modern art. Atyeo was one of the dominant figures in the group of artists and writers who gathered at their farm, Heide Park at Templestowe. In 1934 he painted the intensely sparse Organised Line to Yellow, now in the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1936 he left Australia for Paris. As well as continuing to paint, he also made posters to support the Republicans as people fled from Franco’s Spain. In 1939 he bought a farm in Vence, in the Alpes-Maritimes. He moved there with the Australian artist Moya Dyring after the German invasion. They soon left France for the Bahamas and then to Dominica. They married in 1941 but the marriage did not survive. In the Bahamas he met again with Dr Evatt and was soon ensconced in Washington as his personal assistant as Evatt headed the Australian procurement office in Washington for the duration of the war. At the end of the War he was based in Paris, but was dismissed from the diplomatic corps in 1950 after Menzies won the 1949 election. Atyeo was not prepared to follow the directives of a conservative government. He returned to his farm in Vence with his second wife Anne Lecoultre, who he married in 1950. After some years he returned to painting and exhibited these works on occasional visits to Australia. In 1983 Heide Park, the art museum that had been the home of his friends John and Sunday Reed, held a retrospective survey of his work. He died at his farm in Vence on 26 May 1990.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 6 January 1910
- Summary
- In addition to a career in painting after training at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, Atyeo designed interiors, murals, designed and painted furniture for commercial clients, incuding Cynthia Reed's Modern Furnishings, Little Collins Street, Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-May-90
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.816667 Longitude151 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parramatta, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Sculptor, painter, printmaker, art teacher and carpenter. The son of Jesse Jewhurst Hilder and Phyllis Amy Meadmore, Vernon Arthur (Bim) Hilder was born in Parramatta, New South Wales, on 3 October 1909. His father, a respected watercolour artist, died of tuberculosis when Bim Hilder was six years old, and he and his younger brother, Brett, were raised by their mother. Photographs show that Bim Hilder bore a close resemblance to his father. In 1926 Hilder enrolled in a commercial art course at the East Sydney Technical College, but abandoned his training after one year although he continued with evening classes organised by the Royal Art Society of NSW. During the 1920s Hilder began working as a carpenter and later worked for several years with the North American architect Walter Burley Griffin at Castlecrag, Sydney, where he built several houses in the suburb as well as the Haven Amphitheatre. During the mid 1920s Hilder studied etching under Sydney Long, and one of his prints, Gum Trees, was exhibited at the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society (APES) exhibition in 1928. The following year Hilder exhibited two more prints with APES. At this early time in his career he signed his work 'Vernon Hilder’, even though he was mainly known as Bim. Hilder’s early talent with aquatints saw his election to membership of APES in 1930. By 1932 the artist was signing his work 'Bim Hilder’. In 1932 he exhibited four works at the 'Sydney Harbour Bridge Celebration Exhibition’ in Sydney, an event organised by APES. The Bridge is arguably his best known print from this period and shows the final construction of this important national structure. The artist continued his involvement with APES until 1934. In the early 1930s Hilder designed and built a home at 177 Edinburgh Road, Castlecrag. In 1935 he married the commercial artist Roma Hopkinson and the couple lived for the rest of their marriage at this Castlecrag property. Hilder and his wife held a joint exhibition of their work at the Rubery Bennett Galleries in Sydney during November of 1938. According to the review in the Sydney Morning Herald (16 November 1938, pg. 10) Bim Hilder was exhibiting watercolours and etchings: “There is some pleasant work among the pictures which Mr. and Mrs. Bim Hilder have placed on view at the Rubery Bennett Galleries… Mr. Hilder is at his best when he emulated his distinguished father, J. J. Hilder, and invests his pictures with a touch of the romantic. “Camp Fire” is deeply imaginative in its direction of tall tree trunks which look in the half-light like the piers of a Gothic cathedral, and “The Bathers” is beautifully gay and delicate. Both artists present a series of firm, thoughtful etchings in monochrome and in colours.” Perhaps not liking being compared with his father’s art, Hilder abandoned watercolour and took up sculpture. According to his obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald (13 June 1990, pg. 10) Hilder began to sculpt after breaking his ankle, and he was artistically inspired by many things: “All natural phenomena fascinates me, the flight of birds, wave formation, patterns of erosion, characteristics of plant growth, marine life, crystal structure… I don’t have any great aims or direction – I just do the best I can with the ability I have.” After the war Hilder became involved with the Contemporary Art Society (CAS) and was listed as a member of the CAS Sydney committee in November 1947. His CAS exhibits were painted landscapes, mobiles and wooden sculpture. He ended his involvement with the Society in 1949. Reflecting the interest in civic sculpture in the post war period, the Society of Sculptors and Associates was established in 1951 and Hilder was a foundation member. He served twice as President of the Society during the late 1950s and early 60s, although exact terms of office are unknown. The Society of Sculptors and Associates held most of their annual shows at the David Jones’ Art Gallery during the 1950s and Hilder regularly exhibited his carved wooden objects. In 1961 he entered two of his works, Totempole and Brookvale Symbolic Sculpture, at the 1961 'Mildura Sculpture Prize’ exhibition in Mildura, Victoria. The 1961 exhibition was Hilder’s only connection with the landmark sculpture festival which later became known as the 'Mildura Sculpture Triennial’. In 1962 Hilder won a competition for a 'wall-enrichment’ on the new Reserve Bank of Australia building in Martin Place, Sydney. A staff correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald (14 December 1964, pg. 16) described the work: “Australian artist Bim Hilder is responsible for an arresting and interesting treatment of the marble walls above the Martin Place lifts… A 'wall enrichment’, it is an arrangement of metals forming what Hilder refers to as 'an integrating and disintegrating galaxy, representative of the manner in which nations and communities come together, and separate’...The finely textured Wombeyan marble is offset by the artist’s use of cast and beaten copper and bronze… Accenting one section of the galaxy is a six inch quartz crystal uncovered by geologist Ben Flounders in South Australia’s Corunna Hills.” Hilder wrote about the Reserve Bank project in the first issue of Artviews, the journal of the Artists’ Guild of Australia: “Winning the Reserve Bank Prize for a Wall Enrichment in their new Martin Place Building brought me other commissions, and from there on, I seemed to be an established sculptor. I have two main approaches to sculpture – one is to allow the shape and grain of the wood to influence me in the form that develops; the other, for larger works, is to use copper beating, welding, cutting away and adding, like a three-dimensional drawing in space. I don’t have any great aims or direction – just do the best I can with the ability I have.” The ten years following the Reserve Bank project saw many public sculpture commissions around Australia, but the Reserve Bank wall-enrichment and the Burley Griffin Memorial Fountain in Castlecrag (1965) are, arguably, his best known public art works. In 1962 Hilder began teaching art part-time at the East Sydney Technical College and from 1973 he also gave classes in sculpture at the University of New South Wales for their Student Union. In August 1976 Hilder had a one man show of his sculpture at the David Jones’ Art Gallery, Sydney. The exhibition was of nineteen works, ten cedar objects priced between $150 and $1,700. Typical wooden object titles were Molluscia and Ritual Dance. The later work was reproduced in Ken Scarlett’s 1980 book, Australian Sculptors. The exhibition also included nine bronzes in editions of twenty-five. Most of these works had animal titles, such as Penguin feeding its young and Furious Eagle. In 1983 Hilder had an exhibition of his work at the Bloomfield Galleries, Paddington, Sydney. Titled 'Three Generations of Hilder’ the exhibition showed the work of Bim Hilder alongside his father, J.J. Hilder, and his son, Kim Hilder. For the show, Bim exhibited his sculptures, watercolours and etchings. Information about Hilder’s career is brief and sketchy. Ken Scarlet visited the artist while researching his 1980 reference book on Australian sculpture and he lists sixteen of his major commissions in his entry on Hilder. Scarlett commented on Hilder’s vagueness in his entry on the artist (pg. 249): 'When I visited Bim Hilder I found that he did not have any records of his numerous commissions, or of the exhibitions in which he had shown work. He was not at all certain of dates, or sequence of events during his career. Perhaps these are common enough characteristics of many artists, but Bim Hilder also seems to depreciate his own talent…’ Scarlett went on to comment on the differences between Hilder’s wood and metal sculpture (pg. 250): “Bim Hilder’s work seems to have gone in two main directions – his organic sculptures carved from wood and his larger commissions often produced in metals.” In 1973 Hilder wrote a short article titled 'The White Canoe’ for a book titled, Castlecrag. He designed the book in association with fellow Castlecrag resident Eva Buhrich. In 1978 Hilder was awarded an MBE for his services to art. The artist died in Sydney on 8 June 1990 and was cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium in North Ryde, Sydney. He was survived by his two sons, Kim and Larry. Examples of his small sculpture are included in the collections of the Art Gallery of NSW, University of NSW, and the University of Sydney.
Writers:
Silas Clifford-SmithNote:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 3 October 1909
- Summary
- Bim Hilder was a Sydney based sculptor, printmaker and painter active during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Foundation member of the Sculpture Society, twice president. He taught sculpture at the Sydney Technical College during the 1960s. Hilder had numerous public commissions including Reserve Bank, Martin Place, Burley Griffin Memorial, Castlecrag.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Jun-90
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Ida Isabel Martin was born in Brisbane on 29 May 1906, the second child and eldest daughter of the family of three sons and five daughters of William Henry Martin and his wife Isabella Susan née Laking. Her father was headmaster at the Oakey State School for many years. She was educated in Brisbane and the Ipswich Grammar School and subsequently became an apprentice teacher and trained in country areas. She taught at the Ascot State School from 1934 and from 1942 she began giving creative art classes there. She taught art subjects full-time from 1945 and later at the Kedron Park Teachers College. She started classes with L. J. Harvey at the Central Technical College in 1935 and when he set up art and craft classes at Horsham House she continued lessons with him until 1942. She ceased attending classes at that time due to her parents’ concern at the city’s inundation with American soldiers. Harvey’s lessons included wood carving, leather work and painting. She exhibited pottery at the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association 1938-39, 1946 and 1951 – she was awarded three first prizes in 1946. She also exhibited examples of her pottery with the Royal Queensland Art Society in 1946-47 and 1955-56.
Ida Martin later studied pottery with Hatton Beck at the Central Technical College during the 1950s when she learned to throw and decorate with under-glaze colours. From 1962 until she retired in 1972 she taught painting, drawing, pottery and carving at the Kedron Park Teachers College and it was only at this stage that she learned the skills of stacking and firing kilns. She died in Brisbane on 5 April 1990.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 May 1906
- Summary
- Ida Martin was probably L.J. Harvey's most accomplished pottery student in the last decade of his life. She also had an extensive career as an art and craft teacher and was fondly remembered by her students.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Apr-90
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1906
- Summary
- Shaw trained at the Melbourne Technical College and attended the University of Melbourne Atelier, later taking a position with Stephenson & Meldrum (later Stephenson & Turner) and Frederick Romberg (working as Romberg & Shaw). In addition to her work in interior design and architecture, she is said to have worked as a site architect for some of Stephenson & Turner's large hospital commissions. She retired in 1968.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-90
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.8349393 Longitude148.6925158 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cowra, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, ceramicist, painter, photographer, poet, pacifist, garden designer, horsewoman and sometime riding teacher, was a professional by training and track-record even if her range makes her seem a dilettante – though never an amateur. She described her restless nature in lines from Sonnet :
The unexpected waits and calls to me,
Though present joys delight, they also serve
To wake a longing for variety…
Born at Cowra (NSW) in 1905, Clare McMahon spent much of her youth in rural Australia, growing up with a love of gardens, landscape and the natural environment. She studied painting and drawing for three years at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School but thereafter did little work in these media, although she took innumerable photographs for personal visual records. Realising that she was happier working in three dimensions than two, she went to England to study sculpture at the Chelsea School of Art in the 1930s.
After a brief wartime marriage contracted in England, she returned to Australia as Clare Pitman, the name she used professionally for the rest of her life. She worked as a military transport driver in Queensland, then moved to Sydney after the war in order to nurse her ageing parents. Having turned seriously to pottery, the only place she could find for a studio was her parents’ garage, granted to her as long as the car was not permanently displaced. Her electric kiln could be fired up safely only at midnight in order to avoid the ruinous effects of blackouts, then still a frequent occurrence due to post-war power restrictions. The technical merit of Korean Lion is all the more impressive when these obstacles to its creation are known.
In her later years Clare Pitman travelled widely, spending much time in England where she had a cottage and studio. In Australia she increasingly emphasised her sculptural work, specialising in portrait heads and traditional figures. Her late career trajectory is summarised by the fact that her 1975 solo show was 'sculpture and ceramics’ but her last, in 1980, was 'sculptures in bronze and clay’. It is, however, arguable that the peak of her artistic achievement was reached when she was working in the medium of ceramics in the 1940s and 1950s in Sydney.
Writers:
Dolan, David
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- Clare Pitman (née McMahon) was a sculptor, ceramicist, painter, photographer, poet, pacifist, garden designer, horsewoman and sometime riding teacher. She studied painting and drawing at Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School. In the 1930s she went to England to study sculpture at the Chelsea School of Art.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1990
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist and commercial artist, was born in Sydney on 28 November 1905, second of the three daughters of the poet, illustrator and cartoonist Hugh McCrae and his first wife, Annie Geraldine (Nancy) Adams. Georgiana McCrae was her great-grandmother and the poet Dorothy (Dorothea?) McCrae (Mrs Perry), who collaborated with the illustrator Edith Alsop , her aunt. Mahdi’s younger sister Georgiana Rose McCrae , known as 'Smee’, was also a cartoonist and illustrator; her elder sister, Dorothea Huntly (Mrs Norman Cowper, later Lady Cowper), known as Honey, was one of the Turramurra Wall Painters and later a potter. Her father’s lifelong friend, Norman Lindsay , taught Mahdi to draw.
Mahdi McCrae contributed cartoons to the Bulletin from 1918 until the 1930s, eg Catastrophe . This very stylish minimalist drawing of a young woman with a more stereotypical cartoon of an older woman in the background is captioned: '“What’s the matter?”/ “Fred!”/ “Killed? Wounded? Prisoner? Gassed?”/ “No! COMING BACK!”’ 7 March 1918, p11. An undertaker gag was published on 3 March 1927 and the “Vot a Vaste!” on 8 August 1927, p32. Five original Bulletin cartoons published 1934-35 are in ML (PX *D488), including one of a couple snogging outdoors, with the woman asking 'does rain stop play?’
She drew for Melbourne Punch in 1924-25, including a caricature of actor George Jennings (ill. Lindesay, WWW , 114) and a fresh version of the old broken-down car gag 1925 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 175). Her Smith’s Weekly cartoons include: 'Lady (engaging cook): “Do you mean to say you were really with Mrs. Woolbags?”/ Cook: “Well, if you don’t believe me, Mum, you can see her monogram on me camisoles”’ 1 December 1923, p18; Things that might better have been left unsaid . '“You silly, silly old thing, Henry! If you think I have brains enough for two, why don’t you marry me?”’ 23 July 1927.
Mahdi regularly contributed stylish drawings to Sydney Ure Smith 's Home magazine, mainly on the social page “Sydney s’amuse”. They include witty group caricatures, like Was it really Art for Art’s sake at the Society of Artists’ opening day?’-an 'impressionistic pattern of the Artists’ Ball with caricatures of participants, including Ronald McWilliam, her future husband, and artists Adrian Feint and Wanda Radford (September 1926, p34); a respectably-dressed group of participants in the 1927 Society of Artists’ exhibition (seen from the rear) followed by a view of their uninhibited fancy-dress selves at the Artists’ Ball that evening (1 October 1927, p28). She filled 'Sydney s’amuse’ with slightly exaggerated, usually quite flattering portrait heads of friends and acquaintances such as Thea Proctor and Hera Roberts . Her caricature of Pauline Watt of 1 February 1926 is less cruel than Elizabeth Mahony 's photograph of the same subject. Her own elegant silhouette appeared in 'Sydney s’amuse’ on 1 January 1927, 34, accompanying a report of her first solo show at the Sydney Art Salon in November 1926 where she showed 49 watercolours.
Aussie magazine, which published many of Mahdi’s cartoons in the 1920s, stated in 1924 – when she was still only 19 – that her work showed 'an extraordinary delicacy of line and virility of form’. Certainly her cartoon characters were more stylised (and stylish) than her Home carticatures, including a self-portrait in a joke about the eternal problem of the portrait painter ( Aussie , 15 February 1928):
“Call yourself an artist! I think it’s dreadful – I look like an orang-outang”.
“Yes; but you should have thought of that before you began the sittings, madame!”
The artist is identified by her hallmark Eton crop, and shirt and tie, also worn in a jaunty Cazneaux photograph in Home (1 September 1926).
Among the many magazines for which she drew cartoons was Beckett’s Budget . Eg '(Little girl) “Where did you live before you came to 'us’, Daddy?”’ 23 August 1927, p12. For the New Triad , then being edited by her father, she drew the splendid cartoon of an androgynous couple fighting over their Christmas present clothing.
Most of her cartoons were on Sydney society, particularly the many cartoons she drew for Aussie , eg 'Mother: “No! It’s not nice of you at all, Maude – I never told lies when I was a little girl.”/ Maude: “Goodness! How long was it before you started, Mum?” 15 July 1922, p10. (This seems her own gag since the title Backward is included within the drawing.) The issue of 15 January 1927 had three cartoons by Mahdi: (two women walking a dog on the beach) '“He’s simply unbearable in the house – refuses to cook his own breakfast.”/ “Then why don’t you make him eat it before he goes to bed”’; Vanity Bags [about men’s trousers] and Vain gentleman [in bathing suit] before passing ladies, and after [with chest, then belly], pp.15, 33 & 42. Later cartoons in Aussie include couple in evening dress published 15 February 1927, p33; 'Father: “See, baby is learning to walk”./ Social Mother: “Do you think it worth while to teach him? Practically, nobody walks nowadays!”'15 September 1927; and [two flappers undressing] '“Just fancy, they say that 5,000 lizards a year go to make up shoes for women.”/ “Isn’t it too marvellous what they train animals to do!”’ from the 'Undies’ number of Aussie 15 February 1928 (see Heritage ).
Mahdi McCrae had two quite different cartooning and caricaturing styles in Aussie . One is close to fashion illustration in style and subject; the other – often featuring burglars, lawyers (14 January 1923, p21) and businessmen – is more realistic and darkly expressionist in mood, eg a drawing of two burglars in a dark street at night with one saying, “Well, night, night – be good!” Aussie 15 October 1927, p15. The same issue carried a stylish pair of 'before’ and 'after’ drawings in her comic linear style, She went out looking chic – and came back looking shicker (p45). Gags about working-class ignorance and fecundity were an inevitable part of her repertoire, yet they too could be given a sombre realist edge through the drawing, eg [thin mother with baby and toddler to visitor] “Yes, an’ just imagine her marrying a black-an’-white artist!”/ “Gracious heavings! Not one of those dreadful half-castes?” Aussie 1929, p21.
Naturally, this dark mood is entirely absent in her fashion-conscious cartoons of brittle socialites and in her fashion illustrations. Like many young women, McCrae worked as a fashion illustrator for a while. Her first job was drawing advertisements for Farmers department store, as she recollected to Valerie Lawson:
I was told not to put any expression in the models’ faces. I left to go to Woman because they had this horrible man who ran the advertising department who wouldn’t even say “Good morning”. Everyone was petrified of him but I wasn’t shy at all. I sat on the edge of his desk and said “I never want to work here again”. He said, “You’re nothing but a social butterfly. Get off my desk.”
She remained at Woman for many years. Her cartoons appeared from the first issue, 6 December 1934. A full-page colour set of comic vignettes 'This [very Australian] Christmas!’ appeared on 27 December that year. She had a long-running comic strip in Woman , 'Michael and Chrystabel’, detailing the ups and downs of well-heeled married life. (example in Judd, Past Present ). She also illustrated books, including George Spaul’s fantasy tale, Where the Stars are Born (1942), Hauff’s Tales (of exotic Arabia) translated by Margaret H. Gallia (Sydney: William Brooks, 1950) and William Pacey’s stories of traffic rules for children, The Adventures of King Kobar (1954).
An indefatigable, lifelong sketcher, Mahdi McCrae was capable of embarrassing friends even in old age with her habit of whipping out her sketchpad to capture fellow diners in a restaurant. A scrapbook of Mahdi original cartoons is held in private collection. Mahdi married Ronald A. McWilliam in 1930. She died on 23 June 1990, aged 85. Her three daughters, including Vivian (Vivienne?) Alcaine and Dorothy McWilliam survived her.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanJudd, Craig
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 28 November 1905
- Summary
- Mid 20th century painter, cartoonist and commercial artist. Her parents' great friend Norman Lindsay taught her to draw and throughout the course of her career she contributed to many publications including the Bulletin, Home, Aussie, Woman and Smith's Weekly.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Jun-90
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth
- Biography
- photographer and dressmaker, was born in Perth; the family first lived in Linden Terrace, then moved to James Street. Hilda attended the Perth Girls’ School but left at the age of fourteen to work in her father’s wood-turning business. At night she studied dressmaking and millinery at Perth Technical College and in 1921 was awarded a teaching cadetship. She taught dressmaking at the College until her retirement in December 1966; in 1948 she produced a series of booklets for the dressmaking course.
Hilda Wright took her first photographs in 1934 while on holiday in NSW; one of her 'pictorial’ images of the Burragorang Valley was published in the Australasian Photo-Review ( AP-R ) in 1938. She had a great love of wildflowers and in 1935 decided to photograph as many of the 6,000-odd species which grow in the West as possible. She joined the WA Camera Club and used a studio set up especially for her spare-time use at the Technical College. To recreate the natural colours of plant specimens—sent to her from all over the state—she used Winsor & Newton artist watercolours to tint her photographs.
In 1937 forty of Wright’s coloured photographs were displayed in the Kodak Gallery, Perth. 125 prints were exhibited in England in 1938: at Hatfield House, the Royal Institute, the Linnaean Society, and at the Royal Horticultural Society where she was awarded a Grenfell medal (silver) for the collection. She was again awarded a Grenfell medal (bronze) in 1950. In August 1939 she was elected an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society for her twelve black-and-white studies of wildflowers, the first WA woman to achieve this honour. (Her work for the award was in black-and-white as the Society did not accept tinted work.)
Wright’s photographs were published in Walkabout and AP-R and exhibited in many galleries, including the Art Gallery of WA (1940), the Kodak Gallery, Sydney (1941), the Royal Photographic Society Annual Exhibition (1942) and the Nature Studies section of the Royal Photographic Society centenary exhibition (1953). Each species had a botanical description provided by the Government Botanist.
Several critics have commended Wright’s work for its combination of botanical detail and artistic skill. The curator at the WA Art Gallery, George Pitt Morison, said that technically the pictures were perfect, well composed and with considerable artistic merit. Governor Sir James Mitchell said that as an 'advertising agent they are likely to do more good than the display of a million bags of wheat or a thousand bales of wool’, while the Government Botanist recognised her work as an important stimulant for the preservation of wildflowers.
Hilda Wright donated her negatives and bequeathed her collection of working and final prints and correspondence to the State Library. Another collection of her fine prints is held at the WA Herbarium.
Writers:
Sassoon, Joanna
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- Perth photographer known for her hand-coloured black and white photographs of the flora of the south-west of Western Australia. Fendick's work was widely exhibited in British Botanical Science and photographic exhibitions from the 1930s to 1950s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1990
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-23.3782137 Longitude150.5134227 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockhampton, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1902
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Apr-90
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-37.7783921 Longitude145.0312833 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Alphington, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, Melbourne, painted The Fortune Teller , an oil that won her the National Gallery Travelling Scholarship in 1926. It was sold at Christie’s Melbourne auction part 1, 26 November 1996, lot151 ill.) Guest had worked as a maid in the house of the vendor’s grandfather, where it was found in a shed along with machine parts (est. $12-15,000).Memory of a colour pattern, the painting which Guest presented to the National Gallery of Victoria after completing her scholarship, was the first in a contentious series of contemporary scholarship-related paintings either rejected or withdrawn from exhibition by the National Gallery of Victoria in the early 1930s. Other artists affected by this policy included Constance Stokes and Sam Atyeo. Guest’s painting was hung for only a short period because it 'showed modern influences’, according to the Melbourne Herald (17 December 1932, page 4).In the late 1930s Guest wrote a children’s book about international travel which was accepted by the New York publisher Henry Holt. However, the rapidly changing international boundaries during the lead up to the Second World War rendered Guest’s illustrated maps outdated before the book could go to press.After the War, Guest patented a design for a perambulator, bed or like covering. A portrait of Nancy Guest by Sybil Craig is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Eric Riddler
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 26 November 1901
- Summary
- Painter. In 1926 Guest won the National Gallery Travelling Scholarship with her oil 'The Fortune Teller.'
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Aug-90
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude53.866444 Longitude10.684738 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lubeck, Germany
- Biography
- painter, was born Elise Schlie in Lubeck, Germany, on 16 January 1897. She began her artistic studies at the age of 17 with a private tutor in Lubeck. In 1917-19 she studied at the Berlin Academy of Art under the German Impressionist Max Liebermann and saw works by many of the foremost modernists, including Feininger, Klee, Kandinsky, Chagall and Schwitters, all of whom exhibited at the Sturm Gallery.
After fleeing to Eutin during the Berlin Soviet, she renewed her studies in 1920 in the newly-liberalised Berlin Academy, then taught in a private girls’ school near Kassel until 1923, when she married Dr Arnold Blumann, director of one of the biggest chemical factories in northern Europe. From 1923 to 1934 she travelled regularly throughout Europe and became familiar with many aspects of modern art. She was particularly impressed by Cézanne and Matisse. She held only one public exhibition in Germany, at Hamburg in 1924.
In 1934 the Blumann family fled Nazi Germany. After four years in Europe, they arrived at Perth in 1938. Elise began to paint almost immediately; a lengthy series of views of the Swan River from Crawley began in 1939. Among the finest of these are On the Swan Nedlands (1942?, UWA) and Melaleuca on the Swan (Storm on the Swan) (1945, AGWA). In both, Blumann fused her understanding of European modernist painting—from Cézanne to Expressionism—with direct and detailed observation of the local light and weather.
She was able to maintain a coherent original style by developing the Jugendstil decorative sensibility fashionable in her student years. This can be seen at its best in her paintings of surfers and in Charles. Morning on the Swan (1939, NGA), a painting of her eldest son in which her knowledge of Cézanne is most evident. The composition of Surfers (1940) is closely linked to the vitalistic Jugendstil interpretation of the work of Rodin offered by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke in a book she was given in 1921 and treasured all her life. Blumann’s characteristic use of separate broad brushstrokes in a limited colour key combined with tight Cézannesque drawing marks her work as one of the few examples of an original modernism applied directly to Australian themes.
In the late 1940s Blumann became an important conduit for modernist ideas and attitudes through the Perth Art Group, which she had helped found in 1942. Summer Nude (1939, AGWA), one of the works in her first exhibition at the Newspaper House galleries in 1944, stirred up a minor scandal.
Blumann was a keen advocate of contemporary methods of art education. She made two trips to the north of WA in 1946 and 1948 recording a number of aspects of Aboriginal life such as Lenora Goldmining Town (1946, p.c.), a radical image of the devastation brought about by mining. From the 1950s she became disillusioned with the possibilities for art in WA and her work was sporadic and uneven. Nonetheless, she provided a vital example for the development of art in the state until the 1980s.
Writers:
Bromfield, David
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 January 1897
- Summary
- A student at the Berlin Academy of Art under German Impressionist Max Liebermann, Blumann fled Nazi Germany in 1938, she and her husband settling in Perth. An advocate of boundary pushing when it came to modern art, Blumann became an important conduit for modernist ideas and attitudes for the Perth Art Group, which she helped found in 1942. Furniture by the artist is also known.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1990
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude53.4258455 Longitude11.8475244 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parchim, Germany
- Biography
- Painter born in Parchim, Germany. Blumann had private lessons from the Baron Lutgendorff Leinberg, Director of the Museum fur Kunst und Kulturschlichte der Hansaat L_beck, about 1913. Following this she went to the Berlin Academy of Arts under Max Liebermann and Kathe Kolwitz for 1914-18. She fled to Eutin during the Berlin Soviet and returned in 1920. She renewed her studies and taught in a private girls school near Kassel until 1923 when she married Dr Arnold Blumann director of a large chemical factory. Blumann travelled regularly in Germany, Italy and Switzerland and became familiar with many aspects of modern art. She held a one exhibition in Germany in Hamburg in 1924. In 1934 the family fled from Nazi Germany and after four years in Europe they arrived in Perth. Elise began painting almost immediately. Her work fused her understanding of European modernist painting with direct observation of the light and weather in her new home. She maintained an individual style based on the Jugendstil sensibility fashionable in her student days. In the 1940s she became a conduit for modernist ideas into Perth through the Perth Art Group which she helped Robert Campbell found in 1942. She made trips to the northwest in 1946 and 1948 and to Europe in 1949 but became disillusioned about the possibilities of art in Western Australia and her work became sporadic and uneven thereafter. The critic Charles Lemon wrote in the West Australian 25 July 1946: “This artist makes no concessions to realism. She says that our Landscape is founded on certain elemental and primitive qualities, mysterious and ancient origins which she dimly sees but strongly feels.” She ceased doing much work in the 1960s but travelled to Europe regularly until the 1980s.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- Painter who studied at the Berlin Academy of Arts under Max Liebermann and Kathe Kolwitz (1914-1918). Blumann arrived at Perth with her family in the 1930s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1990
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-19.2569391 Longitude146.8239537 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Townsville, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Jessica Mary Woodroffe was born in Townsville on 27 April 1897 to Frederick Woodroffe (who was to become a noted gardening judge and writer) and his wife Agnes née Maynard (who exhibited flower paintings and embroideries). She was a student at the Kangaroo Point Girls State School before enrolling at the Central Technical College. She had the example of her mother who was a painter and embroiderer. She studied modelling and design with her art subjects 1914-18 and was invited by L. J. Harvey to make up the numbers for his first night pottery class in 1916. Subsequently, she produced a considerable quantity of pottery in the studio her father made beneath their home in Main Street, Kangaroo Point.
She held the first solo show of pottery in Brisbane at the Sheldon Gallery, Queen Street from 7-14 December 1922. Very few of the more than 100 items on display were left unsold. An unidentified review remarked of the display that:
'Bowls, jars, plates etc. in rich glowing colours and artistic designs abound. The various articles, which have been appropriately arranged in separate groups which include a simply delightful float bowl with a most artistic bird ornament, a dull blue plate with a latticed edge, a jade casket with a quaint fish design, and a white jar distinctively patterned in blue. Distinctly novel also is the hen egg cup. Many of the bowls display fluted edges and floral effect, and in several instances colours have been blended with the most happy result. The whole exhibition is noteworthy for its sound craftsmanship and exquisite finish’.
A small bowl dated 1921 with a deep maroon glaze suggests it was glazed in the Central Technical College’s kiln as it is not a typical Stone’s Pottery glaze. Jessie Woodroffe favoured underglaze decoration and she recalls collecting the bisque fired pieces from Stones Pottery to decorate before the glaze firing.
Miss Woodroffe exhibited pottery at the Queensland Art Society 1919-21 and from 1922-32 (as well as other craft work) at the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland. The artistic finish and fine quality of the glazes were frequently commended as in 1922 when she and the work of Mrs Devereux were praised. Unfortunately, no specific description of her work is given apart from 1928 when an “effective piece of pottery with a seascape showing palms against a sunset sky” was mentioned by The Brisbane Courier on 13 November 1928. She also exhibited pottery with the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association (QNG&IA) 1921 and 1928-9.
She was represented in the Central Technical College exhibit at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924 with a bowl decorated with bats (for which she received the first prize in the 1921 QNA&IA). She also sold some of her pieces through the Austral Book Club, Brisbane during the 1920s. She gave up pottery when she went to work for the firm of Murray Frazer Ltd. in Charlotte Street, as a half tone engraver even though L. J. Harvey asked her to work as his assistant at the College.
She died in the H.M.Weller Garden Settlement, Chermside, Brisbane on Christmas Day 1990.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Qld
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 April 1897
- Summary
- Jessie Woodroffe attended L.J. Harvey's first pottery class at the Central Technical College, Brisbane in August 1916 and was the first potter to have a solo exhibition of her work in Brisbane - at the Sheldon Gallery in December 1922.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Dec-90
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 26 January 1896
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 31-Dec-90
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude50.110556 Longitude8.682222 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany
- Biography
- sculptor, art historian and critic, came to Sydney from Frankfurt-on-Main in her native Germany in 1930 and quickly became prominent as a professional sculptor and, even more unusual, as a knowledgeable advocate of modernist art. Lange had produced a number of Art Deco-style medallions in Germany during the 1920s, and she received several commissions for similar small-scale work after her arrival in Sydney. These included a commission from Holy Trinity Church, Erskineville, for a terracotta jubilee medallion and an altar candlepiece based on Sturt’s desert pea which was to be cast in bronze.
In April 1932 she showed work in an 'Exhibition of Progressive Art’ at the Modern Art Centre in Sydney and in November exhibited a plaster figure, Meditation , in an exhibition simply called 'Seventeen Modern Artists’, again at the Modern Art Centre. Assisted by Edith Lanser, Lange made fifteen marionette figures for a three-act production, enabling her to present her own theatrical version of the Bible story in 1932-33. The first performance was at Burdekin House, Sydney, on 29 November 1932.
In July 1934 she exhibited two pieces of sculpture, The Heavy Plait (a small bronze) and Seraph of Light (a plaster figurine), in the Women Artists of Australia Exhibition at the Education Department Gallery in Sydney. The following year she designed and carved a Christmas crib for St James’s Church, King Street, which included seven painted plaster figures. Two of these, Young Shepherd and Madonna (AGNSW), were later shown in 'Exhibition I’ at David Jones Gallery (17 August-2 September 1939). She carved a cedar relief panel for the Sydney Teachers College in 1937 and in 1940 designed a memorial birdbath in cast stone for the Special School at Glenfield, but produced no more major work after that date. From 1947 until her retirement in 1954, she taught art at Frensham School, Mittagong.
Lange is remembered today for her insistent promotion of modern art. She published four articles in Art in Australia between May 1936 and March 1941 and was frequently quoted in the Sydney press. Throughout the 1930s and ’40s she made a living giving illustrated public lectures on all aspects of the history of art: at Sydney University, the Art Gallery of NSW, for the Contemporary Art Society (after it was formed in 1939) and elsewhere. During this period she was closely involved with the Crowley-Fizelle studio in George Street, associating with such artists as Frank and Margel Hinder , Ralph Balson, Frank Medworth, Grace Crowley , Gerald Lewers and Rah Fizelle. In 1939 she wrote the foreword to their Exhibition I catalogue, calling hopefully but prematurely for the 'abandoning [of] the representation of objects in order to establish a new realm of visual existence … this leads step by step to “abstract Art”’.
Writers:
Batchen, Geoffrey
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1893
- Summary
- Sculptor, art historian and critic, came to Sydney from Frankfurt-on-Main in her native Germany in 1930 and quickly became prominent as a professional sculptor.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1990
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-33.829075 Longitude151.24409 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1990-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mosman, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator, painter and printmaker, was born in Mosman, Sydney, on 29 October 1893. He studied art with Julian Ashton and Elioth Gruner (1909-15), then joined up and served with the Australian Field Ambulance in France (1915-18) including being present at the Battle of the Somme. After his discharge, he worked as a commercial and newspaper illustrator in Melbourne. Encouraged by Harold Herbert , he also painted watercolours. At Will Dyson 's suggestion, he went to London in 1930 and drew illustrations for leading magazines and newspapers, including the Illustrated London News and Country Life , as well as for Oxford University Press. He studied at St Martin’s School of Art, and in Paris.
Wenban returned to Australia in 1938 and continued to work as a commercial artist and book illustrator, including educational books. Most of his known originals are watercolours. During WWII he was chairman of the artists’ branch of the Civil Construction Corps (other artist members included Dobell and Joshua Smith ). In 1946 he was living in Sydney and still working as an illustrator. In 1954 he was one of the 10 artists of the 'Melbourne Popular Art Group’ who produced a folio of 14 linocuts, Eureka 1854-1954 (Melbourne 1954), which paid tribute to 'the stand of the Ballarat miners in the Eureka Stockade’ (copy Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery). Wenban was responsible for no.1, a silk-screen portrait of Peter Lalor. No.s 2 (“Joe! Joe! The Traps are coming” where the mine shaft is like a crucifix), 4 ('The Magistrate’) and 5 ('On Bakery Hill’) are by Noel Counihan ; no.11, 'The Sentry’ (a miner guarding the flag at night) is by Maurice Carter ; and Len Gale drew no. 8, 'The Blacksmith’. Like Counihan, Peter Miller did three – 6 (“Burn the Licences!”, a group of men), 10 ('The Sly Grog Seller’) and 12 ('The Pikeman’). Ailsa O’Connor did no.7, 'Building the Stockade’ (and erecting the flag), while Pat O’Connor did no.3, 'The Licence Hunt’ (a simplified story). Ernie McFarlane did no.9, 'The Blacksmith’ (second version, to complement Gale’s); no.13, 'Trampling the Flag’, is by Naomi Schipp ; and the last of the set, no.14 'After the Battle’ (a mother mourning over a dead body), is by Mary Zuvella .
Wenban had two painting retrospectives: at Sydney in 1989 and at Melbourne’s Galerie des Arts in 1990, the year he died.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 29 October 1893
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney, Melbourne and London illustrator, painter and printmaker, Wenban studied art with Julian Ashton and Elioth Gruner. In 1954 he was one of 14 artists who contributed to a folio of prints which paid tribute to the miners in the Eureka Stockade.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1990
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-18.324439 Longitude127.55465 Start Date1940-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Canning Stock Route, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Born 'in the bush’ near Godfrey’s Tank on the Canning Stock Route c.1940. His death in 1989 robbed the community of Billiluna, where he had lived, of a gentle, quiet man who was a good artist. Possum was a Walmatjari speaker, whose country was around Kaningarra (Godfrey’s Tank). His principal Dreaming was Water. He began painting for Warlayirti Artists in 1988. His style was less typical of Balgo and more similar to other Kimberley art (especially Turkey Creek and Fitzroy Crossing). It was simple, obviously deeply felt, sometimes with human figures and usually surrounded by a pattern of hills.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1940
- Summary
- Walmatjari artist who painted for Warlayirti Artists from Billiluna in the late 1980s, until his passing in 1989. His paintings are unusual for the Balgo region and are more similar in style to Kimberley Art.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1989
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Janyinki, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c.1932 at Janyinki, west of Yuendumu, the custodians of this area being Napanangka/Japanangka and Napangardi/Japangardi. He was Warlpiri and had lived in Yuendumu for many years. He was involved with the group of senior men who began painting at Yuendumu in the mid ’80s. His 1986 Janyinki Jukurrpa , purchased by the National Gallery of Australia, depicted the site of Janyinki, which is associated with Ngarrka (Initiated Men) and Ngalyipi (Vine) and Ruutju (Women) Dreamings.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1932
- Summary
- Warlpiri artist who contributed to the formation of the painting movement in Yuendumu in the mid 1980s. His work is in the National Gallery of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1989
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-37.8384623 Longitude145.0740767 Start Date1926-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Camberwell, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 25 April 1926
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Jun-89
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lurumbu,Napperby station, NT, Lurumbu (Napperby station), NT, Australia
- Biography
- Kaapa was born on Napperby Station c.1925. He was initiated at Napperby, and subsequently worked there as a stockman. While still in his younger days, he moved to Haasts Bluff, doing stock work at the government cattle station. Kaapa was amongst the 400 people brought across at the start of the ’60s when Papunya settlement was established. An elder of the region, Kaapa’s tribal affiliation was Anmatyerre/Warlpiri/Aranda (the name 'Mbitjana’ is an Arrente skin name corresponding to Tjampitjinpa in the Western Desert system of skin names). His father, born at Warlukurlangu west of Yuendumu, was of mixed Anmatyerre/Warlpiri descent. His mother, who was born at Napperby was Anmatyerre/Aranda. One of Kaapa’s key sites was Mikantji, a rainmaking place near Mt Denison. Other Dreamings which he painted included Owl, Shield, Witchetty Grub, Pelican, Snake (connected with rainmaking rituals), Black Goanna, Emu and Yam. Kaapa had been involved with the inception of the painting movement. His acknowledged mastery of brush technique led to his selection by the other men to paint the mural on the Papunya school wall. As Geoffrey Bardon noted in his account of these events, 'Kaapa Tjampitjinpa had been a most enterprising and independent artist in the traditional manner before my arrival at Papunya.’ (G. Bardon, Aboriginal Art of the Western Desert , {Rigby, 1979}). In August 1971 Kaapa shared first prize in the Alice Springs Caltex Golden Jubilee Art Award and when Papunya Tula Artists was formally incorporated, Kaapa was its inaugural Chairman.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1925
- Summary
- Anmatyerre/Arrente artist who was the principal painter of the Papunya school mural and a key player in the establishment of Papunya Tula Artists, being the first Chairman. He brought recognition to the group when he won the Caltex Alice Springs Art Award in 1971. His work is represented in major public and private collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Oct-89
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude-36.1281405 Longitude144.7516955 Start Date1922-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Echuca, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- painter, commercial artist and theatrical designer, was born at Echuca, Victoria on 11 May 1922. In 1940-45 she studied at the Melbourne Technical Art School (RMIT) under John Rowell (husband of Eugenie Durran ) and, briefly, with Murray Griffin then taught there in 1945-46. She met the painter Newton Hedstrom at one of Rowell’s classes and held her first exhibition with him at Melbourne’s Myer Gallery in 1946. The couple married and settled in Sydney, where they shared a studio with Theo Batten at 236 George Street.
Marjory was an inaugural member of the Studio of Realist Art and exhibited with SORA, the Society of Artists and in various competitive exhibitions. Her painting, The Headland , was hung in the Wynne Prize in 1948 and declared by Bernard Smith to be 'well above the average of the rest of the exhibits’. Her Coastal Highway was hung in the Wynne Prize (AGNSW) in 1950. She won the Warringah Prize in 1979 and the Lane Cove and Young Prizes in 1986. During the late 1940s and early 1950s she did freelance illustration work, producing a series of advertisements for Arnott’s Wafer Wheat Biscuits that revolve around the active delights of a utopian Australia. This work stands in contrast to her drawings of food rationing, e.g. a pen and ink sketch from 1948 showing a woman and a child hovering on the fringes of a street market.
Penglase sketched backstage with the Borovansky Ballet from their first Australian season. She also designed for amateur dramatic groups in Melbourne and Sydney. Her first extensive overseas tour was made in 1976, when she went to the UK and Europe. She returned to Europe in 1980 and visited China in 1982. A couple of her paintings were included in the Manly Art Gallery’s Newton Hedstrom retrospective.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanHolder, Jo
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 11 May 1922
- Summary
- Painter, theatrical designer and teacher, Marjory Penglase married fellow artist, Newton Hedstrom, and won numerous awards during her career. In later years she travelled extensively through Europe, China and the UK.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1989
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Illpili, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Ray’s first contact with whitemen was the sighting of planes overhead as a small boy. He later worked as a stockman at various cattle stations across the centre, including Haasts Bluff, before taking up painting in the early ’80s. Johnny Warangkula and his close friend Dick Pantimas taught him how to use paint and canvas. His traditional country lay around his birthplace Illpili and the site of Winparrku in this area. The stories he painted included Emu, Lightning and Rain Dreamings. His places of residence during the ’80s included Haasts Bluff, Illpili, Papunya and Mt Liebig. He was survived by his three wives, several daughters and grandchildren.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: Primary biographer.
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1920
- Summary
- Pintupi/Luritja artist from Illpili who worked as a stockman before joining Papunya Tula Artists in the early 1980s. Close friend and associate of Dick Pantimas. His work is represented in major public collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1989
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-37.7984 Longitude144.9785 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fitzroy, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Artist Ian Graham Bow is best known for his enduring contribution to Australian sculpture throughout the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. He was born in 1914 in Fitzroy, Victoria, the son of Scottish immigrants, John Roger Bow, an electrical engineer, and his wife, Mary Imrie (née Graham). During the 1930s, he attended Melbourne Technical School. Bow completed his teacher training in 1934 focusing his studies on drawing and design. The following year, he married fellow school teacher Winifred Nellie Dewey. Eventually, Bow and his young family settled in the Prahan suburb of Melbourne.
The early 1940s were an artistically productive period for Bow. In 1940 his work was first represented in the annual member exhibition of the Victorian Artists’ Society, having joined the group in 1939. Originally, Bow’s creative output centred upon painting: landscapes, interiors and still-life compositions.
Bow was a regular exhibitor at Melbourne’s Athenaeum Art Gallery where he held several solo exhibitions. By May 1945 for his solo exhibition at the Athenaeum Gallery he had amassed some 45 oil paintings of wide-ranging subjects. Bow persisted with his goal of establishing himself as a painter in Melbourne’s artistic sphere. He continued to exhibit regularly as a member of the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS) and in 1946, Bow became inaugural co-editor of the Society’s journal.
Throughout his artistic career, Bow continued to teach. During 1940, he was master at Caulfield Technical College as well as a lecturer at Melbourne Teachers College from 1942-44. Bow took the position of Art Master at Haileybury College, Melbourne in 1945, where he taught until 1971. In 1944, Bow’s passion for sharing knowledge extended to the role of art instructor for the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) of Victoria. When the WEA was replaced by the Council of Adult Education (CAE) Bow was appointed to the role of art lecturer, a position he held from 1948 until 1969. The role offered Bow great diversity, including the provision of art instruction to inmates (some serving life sentences) of Pentridge Prison.
In 1949, he remarried and was living with his second wife Andrea (nee Pitt) in Macleod, an outer-Melbourne suburb.
Bow’s career continued to gain momentum, in part fuelled by the selection of his Portrait of John Bayard, n.d., for the 1950 Archibald Prize, and by an overseas study tour he undertook during 1950-51. While overseas Bow attended the 1950 Venice Biennale, toured Italy and France, and spent time in the United Kingdom studying art-school organization and teaching. Bow also visited Henry Moore, the prominent sculptor and public figure, who advocated that sculpture, rather than painting, was the art form with greatest ties to public and social concerns.
Following his return to Australia, Bow became increasingly dissatisfied with what he saw were the conservative tastes of those passing judgment on contemporary Australian art. Bow’s passion for the modernist aesthetic put him at odds with Melbourne’s art establishment. In spite of Bow’s open criticism of the state of art-politics, a retrospective exhibition of his work was displayed at the VAS gallery in 1954. Writing about the exhibition for the Argus, Arnold Shore remarked that “[m]odernism and a desire to find a personal means to expression have impelled [Bow] from impressionism to symbolism, the abstract, and much experiment.”
Bow’s retrospective coincided with the publication of Clive Turnbull’s The Art of Ian Bow, 1954, which captured in print a selection of the artist’s paintings from his fifteen-year career. Turnbull described Bow as a “painter of our time…eager to explore ways of painting.”
In the early 1950s he also produced prints, including lino-cuts that later informed a series of wall sculptures completed by Bow in 1960 and 1961.
In 1956, while making sketches for a painting, Bow’s ideas for a sculptural series first took form. Bow remarked that up to that time he “…just did pieces of construction work and sculpture to assist the form in my painting…As it turned out…I was really a latent sculptor… .”
The 1950s Bow’s self-realization focused his creativity onto crafting in three dimensions rather than two. Bow’s early bronzes, The durable man, c.1955, and Head of Venus, 1958, were acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1958, Spencer Shier studios produced a documentary entitled: Man into Metal: Sculpture by Ian Bow. That same year Bow resigned his VAS membership, and joined the Contemporary Art Society of Australia, Victoria, until 1961.
In 1961 Bow was invited to participate in the first Mildura Sculpture Triennial event to which he sent four bronzes and a cast aluminium sculpture. Thus Bow’s life-long link with the town at the far north-west of Victoria was established.
Throughout the 1960s Bow continued to exhibit widely, including: the Mildura Sculpture Triennial events of 1964, 1967, and 1970; the ‘Transfield’ exhibition during the mid-1960s; and, the 1966 Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition ‘Alcorso-Sekers’ Travelling Scholarship Award for Sculpture. He received numerous commissions, among them: a wall sculpture “to create a significant feature in harmony with the new interior design of Michael’s Pharmacy,” Melbourne; the 1966 bronze dedication plaque titled Man, Vision and Perception, for Mildura Arts Centre, and, in 1969 a commission for a tactile work, later titled Urban Cycle, 1975, made in bronze and tin, for the Blind Citizens’ Community Centre in Kooyong, Melbourne.
Bow lost his sight due to complications from a brain tumour. Urban Cycle was his last commission. Ian Bow passed away at Melbourne’s Austin Hospital on 17 November, 1989, aged 75. His work is represented in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. Galleries in regional Victorian cities that boast Bow’s work include Ballarat, Gippsland/Sale, Hamilton, Mildura and Shepparton, while representation in University collections is at Melbourne University, Australian National University and James Cook University.
Writers:
Heather Lee
Date written:
2018
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 6 August 1914
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Nov-89
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, did the undated oil, The Little Farm House Near Coffs Harbour , which was auctioned by Christie’s from the estate of the Late Frederick D. Blain at Melbourne on 2 April 2003, lot 65.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1913
- Summary
- Painter, did the undated oil, The Little Farm House Near Coffs Harbour, which was auctioned by Christie's.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1989
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude47 Longitude20 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hungary
- Biography
- Steven Kalmar
[excerpt from Anne Watson, “Kafka and Kalmar: two European furniture designers in post-war Sydney.” Furniture History Society (Australasia) Journal, No 2, 2004, pp 10-14] (used with permission0
Steven Kalmar was [...] born in Budapest on 23 November 1909, Kalmar trained as an architect and [...] emigrated to Australia in 1939 [1]. During the war he worked in optical munitions at Sydney University and in the second half of the 1940s began to build a career designing commissioned furniture and interiors. In 1949 he opened Kalmar Interiors in Sydney’s narrow Rowe Street (demolished in 1972 to make way for the MLC building), a fashionable enclave of art, craft and design shops, galleries and cafes frequented by many in Sydney’s European community. In this tiny studio and showroom, barely four by six metres, Kalmar operated a highly successful interior design and furniture business until 1955.
Drawing his ideas from books and magazines on contemporary Scandinavian and American design trends Kalmar created a range of furniture and homewares designed to be purchased individually or as complete room suites. Consistent with the decreasing size of houses and a shortage of imported materials in post-war Sydney Kalmar’s furniture was light, compact, functional – some of it multi-purpose – and relatively low-cost. Much of it utilised local coachwood, a honey-coloured rainforest timber, and was marketed to young home owners through catalogues and regular advertising in magazines, principally Australian House and Garden and in the Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Shop Detective’ section:
Kalmar originals are designed to go well together, piece by piece. Faithfully built in solid coachwood they are finished in wax and can be purchased on terms if desired. [2]
The furniture was made in factories in Parramatta and later Glebe. Kalmar also operated an interior decorating consultancy and in the early years of his Rowe Street business even invited customers to get creative for themselves:
Design your own furniture! After all you are going to live with it. You know better than anyone else what you like, what you need. Put your ideas on paper in the form of a rough sketch and bring it to us. We will discuss with you the practical and functional aspects and will plan your furniture to be an individual expression of your personality. [3]
Perhaps not surprisingly this entrepreneurial marketing strategy was not repeated in subsequent advertising, but it did indicate Kalmar’s sensitivity to the individual needs and the adventurous tastes of some of his more creative customers. While much of Kalmar’s Rowe Street furniture can be identified today through a ‘Kalmar Interiors’ stamp or the line drawings of his frequent advertisements, the designer’s unpretentious seagrass-seated dining chairs and his chunky bentwood-armed easy chairs, both from the early 1950s, are distinctive records of his role in introducing a modern aesthetic to post-war Sydney.
Kalmar closed the Rowe Street shop in 1955 and opened slightly larger premises at 55 Castlereagh in the city, but in 1957 decided to end his retail business and concentrate on design commissions for interior schemes. These included, notably, the Indian Tea Centre in Pitt Street, restaurants and cafes in the city such as the Café de Paris and the Vienna Café, dining spaces for Anthony Hordern’s and the Cahill’s chain and a number of hotel interiors for businessman Len Plasto. Some of the furniture Kalmar designed for these interiors was made by Paul Kafka.
During the 1960s and 70s Kalmar became something of a design ‘guru’ in Sydney, writing a popular weekly page on interior decoration for the Sunday Telegraph from about 1959 and from 1971 to 1986 writing regularly on design matters for Womans Day.
In 1964 Kalmar published You and Your Home [4], now an important record of some of the more adventurous domestic architecture and interiors in and around Sydney in the early 1960s. Featured were houses by Douglas Snelling, Ken Woolley and Neville Gruzman as well as interiors by Marion Hall Best and Leslie Walford. Above all the book was intended as a practical and inspirational ‘how to’ for the modern homemaker, a theme consistent with Kalmar’s emphasis on functional and affordable modernity in his Rowe Street furniture enterprise in the 1950s. Kalmar died on 26 September 1989, just a few years after ceasing to write his influential women’s magazine design page.
[...]Kalmar’s [story] and those of the other European-born designers and architects with whom [he was] professionally or personally linked, contribute an important chapter to Australian history, one that has yet to be fully explored.
Drawing on [...] emerging international design trends, as with Kalmar, [he] played a significant role in the spread of modernist design concepts and helped strengthen Australia’s growing recognition of its need to connect more actively with the rest of the world in the post-war era. Inextricably linked to the beginning of Australia’s emergence as a vibrant, multicultural society, [...] Kalmar’s furniture survives as tangible evidence of the unique contribution of Sydney’s European immigrants and the cultures, skills and ideas [he] introduced.
^ Kalmar’s biographical details are drawn from an interview with Kalmar by the author in 1985 and Judith O’Callaghan’s interview with Kalmar’s widow in 1990.
^ Australian House and Garden, January 1955
^ Art and Design, first number, 1949, p 78.
^ Steven Kalmar, You and Your Home, Shakespeare Head Press, Sydney, 1964
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1 January 1909
- Summary
- Kalmar was an interior designer and a furniture designer. He established Kalmar Interiors, Sydney in 1949 and was an inaugural member of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia. His book, "You and Your Home" (1964), is a valuable assessment of Sydney interior design and designers ca.1964.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-89
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yarrunkanyi, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born c.1908 at Yarrunkanyi (Mt Hardy), to the west of Yuendumu. Yarrunkanyi is associated with the Initiated Men (Ngarrka) Dreaming and the Mala (Western Hare Wallaby) Dreaming. He was one of the group of senior men at Yuendumu involved in the establishment of painting at the settlement. He collaborated with Paddy Japaljarri Sims , Larry Jungarrayi Spencer and Paddy Jupurrurla Nelson on Munga Star Dreaming, 1985, which was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia from the Yuendumu painters’ first Sydney show. He was Warlpiri and lived at Yuendumu much of the time or on his outstation at Jila.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1908
- Summary
- Warlpiri artist Jungarrayi was one of the senior men who initiated the painting movement in Yuendumu in the mid 1980s. His work, including an early collaborative piece "Munga Star Dreaming", is held in major national art collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1989
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-36.7077015 Longitude144.2632351 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Eaglehawk, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- William Archibald Constable (1906-1989) was raised with two younger brothers in the family of the Reverend Archibald Henry Constable, rector of St. John’s Church of England. Bill Constable took watercolor lessons from Meta Townsend, followed by studying at the National Gallery of Victoria School of Art, and later at London’s St. Martin’s School of Art.(1) His involvement with the most advanced experimental theaters in England set his passion for life.On his return to Australia, Constable took up several commercial design projects and was noticed after his very first theatrical commission in 1933: the cubist stage decorations for the Gregan McMahon Players’ production of Bridie’s Jonah and the Whale at the Garrick in South Melbourne featuring Coral Browne, a famous English actress. The play was directed by Alec Coppel, who later returned from London, and also included actress Kathleen Robinson. The press claimed that the “production will be notable for the unusual settings by William Constable, a young artist who recently reached Melbourne from abroad… Constable’s stage settings are great fun. They are simple and attractive.” Constable met Edouard Borovansky in the late 1940s and a lifelong creative partnership and personal friendship began. As artistic director of the Borovansky Ballet Company for 15 years, William Constable was behind most productions as artistic director, designer and painter. Frank Salter described Borovansky and Constable working together “in total harmony over his [Constable] entire Australian career.” Constable “was always fascinated by Boro’s method of working with him” and often was entertained by Boro’s comments, such as “You clever bastard, Bill; you’ve realised exactly what I had in mind”.(2) Constable created a portfolio of over 100 stage productions before departing Australia again in 1955. In England Constable designed the first ballet by Sir Noel Coward “London Morning”, and then worked mainly on cult movies such as “The Trials of Oscar Whilde”, “Taste of Fear”, “The Hellions”, “The Skull”, “Doctor Who”, “ Casino Royal” and many others.In 1963-1964 he worked in Cambodia on Lord Jim” movie and stayed there for sometime to paint. His Cambodian paintings were exhibited across Australia. He returned to Sydney in the 1970s and only then was able to dedicate himself to painting. The designer was known for his illustrations, drawings and paintings. He designed and closely supervised the production of the backdrop for the Empire Theater in Sydney that unfortunately burnt down. Just as unfortunate was the demolition of his mural for the lower foyer of the Theater Royal. However, the curtain he designed and supervised in 1972 for Her Majesty’s Theater in Melbourne was recently located in Adelaide packed inside a box. Sydney Ure Smith claimed that Constable “... has unbounded enthusiasm, and does everything with distinction.” And later: “He has imagination and individuality, which, allied to an unerring color sense, place him in the front rank as a stage designer.”(3) With such artistic abilities and taste Constable created almost 160 dramas, operas (16 of these for Sir Eugene Goossens), ballets (mostly for the Borovansky ballet) and films.The culmination of Constable’s professional and artistic career was his backdrop design for the ballet, Corroboree. Creating a rock motif, he used bold organic shapes, strong details, variation in textures, and a very successful combination of light and contrasting colors. He created a minimalistic composition that accurately translated the desert of Central Australia to contrast with the night sky. The inclusion of a full solar eclipse added drama and mystery, and possibly represented the everlasting life cycle. The highlighted top of the stone is the visual focus of the composition, where a pastel pink sandy foreground grounds the center of action during the dance. The fine lines of dried trees, a ritual pole and still sand waves make a statement of human presence and support the greatness of the rock. The rock motif became a classic symbol of the newly established Australian stage design industry.In 1948 Constable and Eugene Goossens realised that the Sydney public needed “a theater for the quadruple purpose of opera, legitimate theater, ballet, and orchestra.”(4) Goossens saw his “dream child” Opera House in the style of a Greek amphitheater built at Bennelong Point as the Australian National Theater. In April 1949 Constable completed a visual interpretation of Goossens’ idea for the Sydney Opera House, a long time before the official competition for the architectural project was announced by the New South Wales Government. The two published an illustrated article with the proposal and a promise to realise the project within 5 years at Bennelong Point.(5) With Constable’s departure for Europe and the scandalous conclusion of Goossen’s career in Australia, the project was left unfinished and the proposed design is now held in the Opera House archives. In his article for the souvenir program that accompanied the Jubilee Borovanksy ballet in 1954, Constable claimed that ballet “is a blending of three arts” and that “on the ballet stage we see a meeting of the poetry of movement, music and painting – a poem distilled of these three arts and beyond the need of the spoken word.”(6) The career of Constable is a great illustration to his motto. William Constable was significant in his contributions to Australia stage design for retaining great traditions of style and perfection that were established by the Ballets Russes and its artists. His legacy in stage decor, his input into Australian theatrical design and the establishment of the stage designer as a profession is significant in Australian theatrical history.
1 Meta Townsend, wife of Reginald Sturgess, Victorian Art Society members, Australian artists, Meta Townsend’s family lived in Malmsbury2 Salter, Frank, Borovansky, the man who made Australian ballet, Wild Cat Press, 1980 3 Sydney Ure Smith, O.B.E., President, Society of artists. Introduction to Catalogue of Exhibition4 SMH, 24 July 19475 Eugene Goossens, How Long Before Our Opera House Dream Comes True?The Sunday Herald, 17 April, 19496 Souvenir program of Jubilee Borovansky Ballet, 1954 from the collection of SL of NSW
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Olga Sedneva
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- Australian film and stage designer, painter, cartoonist, printmaker, illustrator and commercial designer. Worked in Australia and UK.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1989
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Cartoonist, illustrator, commercial artist and printmaker, was born in London on 11 March 1905 (acc. Roger Butler’s National Gallery of Australia [NGA] website www.australianprints.gov.au), son of the Australian artist Frank P. Mahony and his Australian wife, Mary, née Tobin. Will came to Sydney in 1916. He began his career there as a cadet on Smith’s Weekly , to which he subsequently contributed cartoons while working as a commercial artist in 1922-27. (Ward 1979, 8), claims that he studied at East Sydney Technical College 1930-31 and that his first prints were wood engravings, e.g. Shadows 1929 (tiger in bush) and The Lotus Eaters 1930.) He exhibited prints – etchings, lino-cuts, woodcuts and wood engravings – with the Society of Artists (1930-43), at Macquarie Galleries and at Rubery Bennett’s gallery.
In 1928-30 he contributed cartoons to the Sydney Evening News . His illustration An Artist’s Impressions of The Show was published in the Sydney Mail on 16 April 1930, 24. In 1931-32 he was political cartoonist on the World , e.g. Will Mahony’s Angle on Events , an editorial cartoon on the cost of federal government, published 26 August 1932, 2. He later contributed political cartoons to other newspapers, including Labor Call c.1930s-40s (see Senyard) and Labor Daily (1932-40), while teaching at Sydney Technical College. A number of his war cartoons are illustrated in King (143-51). He was sacked from the Daily Telegraph in 1945 after refusing to draw a political cartoon demanded by the editor. His replacement George Finey left soon after also but there are differing accounts over whether Finey was fired or chose to resign. Later he drew political cartoons for the Sydney Daily Mirror (1950-53), followed by a stint as a staff artist for Australian Consolidated Press [ACP] (1954-62). Then he again taught art at Sydney Tech. and contributed cartoons as a freelancer. Will Mahony died in Sydney in 1989, according to Roger Butler’s NGA website.
The Mitchell Library’s [ML] Bulletin collection holds one original cartoon by Mahoney and 19 caricatures (1933-35), including ones of Fred Leist and J.G. Watkins (“Wattie”), painter, teacher and AGNSW trustee. Other cartoons include The Waverley Wailer’s Last Walk (featuring the “red bogey”), Daily News 1939 (ill King, 125), and the undated original The Power of the Press (re newsprint monopoly) [1930s-40s?] (Josef Lebovic Galleries). He also 'carved the most stylish woodcuts’, according to Stewart (p.36) who wrote that Mahony and “George” [Aub?] Aria were 'inseparable’ mates.
Works in public collections include a good cartoon on censorship in Tomorrow 1946 (ill. Lindesay, WWW , 152). The Spooner Papers (ML PIC ACC 4899) have several original cartoons by various cartoonists featuring and collected by Sir Eric ('Neck to Knee’) Spooner, including Mahony’s Naughty Naughty [Spring as a lightly clad allegorical female being pursued by 'Purity League’ man with 'Spooner’s Patent’ neck-to-knee costume], “Here – you indecent hussy put this on!” n.d. but clearly mid-1930s so possibly for Labor Daily . Other cartoons collected by Spooner are by Tom Glover for the Sun (1937) and Sunday Sun (Oct 1934, 1935-37); by Stuart Peterson for the Sun 1934, 13 October 1938 (straight political – Spooner was also deputy leader) and 1939; by Walter Dowman (re fatmen banks etc on the back of the thin exhausted farmer, who is being whipped along by Spooner); by George Finey , EVICTED [Spooner as Landlady evicting little man in bowler hat]: “I’m not having any of your common type here” n.p., n.d., and another re Local Government Amending Bill. Brodie Mack drew Spooner as Nelson looking through telescope towards a beach of scantily clad people, Daily Telegraph 9 February 1937, et al.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Tobree
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 11 March 1905
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney cartoonist, illustrator, commercial artist and printmaker, Mahoney was sacked from the Daily Telegraph in 1945 after refusing to draw a certain political cartoon demanded by the editor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1989
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Oswald Noel Coulson
Prepared by Catriona Quinn, July 2014
O. Noel Coulson was one of the busiest and best known decorators in Melbourne, catering for with a wealthy and sophisticated predominantly Jewish business clientele in Toorak and South Yarra, on a scale sufficient to break sales records with his suppliers. Prolific, industrious and independent, Coulson’s practice took on domestic commissions of enormous ambition and detail and yet his name unrecorded in historical reviews of Australian design of the era. [...]
[...] Though not strictly a traditionalist, Coulson turned his back on international style modernism, seeking inspiration in classical motifs and furniture design, especially as interpreted in the US. Whether Coulson was directly influenced by T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings (1905-1976) is not known, but the similarities in their work mean he may have been familiar with the American’s style. The recurrence of classical shapes in footstools, chairs and desks as well as individual motifs begs the comparison. In Sydney, comparison is warranted with cabinet maker Paul Kafka (1907-1972) and in Melbourne, Schilim Krimper (1893-1971) but neither worked on the extensive and comprehensive scale of interior design projects as O.N Coulson. [His Lipshut House, Melbourne is an outstanding example of his work. [...]
The Lipshut house at 211 Kooyong Road, Toorak was built in 1958 and the family moved in May 1959. The house was designed by Edward Billson and Partners, involving two generations in partnership, Edward Fielder Billson (1892-1986), the eminent “Melbourne Prairie School” architect and former assistant of Walter Burley Griffin, and his son, the newly qualified Ted Billson, who also undertook the structural engineering on the house. [...] Edward Fielder Billson had previously designed both the Elastic Webbing premises in Collingwood and the family home in St Kilda, both for Mary Lipshut’s father, Morris Plotkin. Billson did not get involved in the interior furnishings so Mary engaged O.Noel Coulson to design and furnish every aspect of the house.
Furniture sold by Shapiro Auctioneers in Sydney in 2009, 2013 and 2014, dates from this original scheme, which remained in place in the Lipshut house until 1996, when Mary moved and the house was sold. [...] Typical of Coulson, the interiors were the result of a single, cohesive vision for the design of the house, seamlessly blended, according to their son, Peter Lipshut, “everything worked, everything belonged, everything was functional, there was never any need for any alteration because everything in the house was as it should be and worked well.” The interiors were completed over several years, as was Coulson’s painstaking habit. [...]
[...] The furniture was custom made by S. Andrewartha, a multi generational institution in Melbourne furniture making, at their workshop in Richmond. S. Andrewartha made furniture to order, whether simple or elaborate, for most of Melbourne’s interior designers and decorating firms. [...]
Oswald Noel Coulson, known as Noel, was born in Geelong in 1905, studied architecture there at the Gordon Institute of Technology and in 1923 became a pupil of the architect I.G. Anderson, responsible for several public buildings in Geelong. During the 1950s Coulson, established his own practice and focused on the complete domestic design service, covering houses, interiors, furnishings and gardens. The firm was called O.N. Coulson and operated from an office and studio at his home at 142 Powlett St, East Melbourne. He employed only one staff member, the formidable Miss Starr, his secretary, who arranged orders and did all the administration work.
Coulson was productive and busy, running two or three house design projects at once and doing every element of the design work himself, including making copious detailed drawings for every element. [...] As a designer, he was in complete control, seen as a powerful figure and persuasive with clients.
Unusual in Melbourne at the time was his ability as a trained architect, to cope with every requirement of the client, with no need for separation between design structure, layout and the supply of soft furnishings, as was often the case at the time. His drafting skills meant he was able to design and commission carpets to be made, with intricate cut pile 'carved patterns’ and designed curtains, headings and blinds, each unique to the requirements of the house, as well as unique cast iron gates, doors and hardware. This ambitious programme of total control over design, with only Miss Starr to assist, meant that commissions sometimes took several years to reach completion, but always with the same cohesion resulting from a single design vision.
Coulson’s particular skills enabled him to establish the hallmarks of his work: bespoke, cohesively designed, unified architecture and décor with nothing extraneous or eclectic. When Australian House and Garden featured a new house in Toorak in August, 1964, they drew attention to the designer, the “noted architect Mr Coulson, who was in the pleasant position of being able to relate each piece of furniture to its room setting and determine its size, shape and function accordingly,” [...]
The variety of timbers used in this house impressed House and Garden, including teak coffee table and cabinetry with sculpted teak handles, natural maple built in TV and radiogram unit, black bean coffee table and blackwood bedroom furniture. The predominant timbers used in the house were “bleached and natural maple”. This contrasts with the more restrained, muted palette of the Lipshut house, which ranged from pale greys to light olive greens and pale gold, though the use of limed timbers and carved and gilded furniture is consistent throughout Coulson’s work.
The Sydney firm of Artistry played a key role in the development of Coulson’s style, as did Coulson contribute in turn to the growth of Artistry’s business nationally. A Sydney firm established in 1933 by Clive and June Carney, Artistry set up a Melbourne branch 1963 in Toorak Road, South Yarra. Artistry was a major importer and supplier of fabrics and carpets to the design and decoration industry. Coulson became one of their biggest customers; Artistry, through him, benefited from the large decorating projects generated by such clients as Victor and Loti Smorgon. [...] If the Melbourne showroom didn’t have what Coulson required, stock was obtained directly from Sydney. […] Commercially, Artistry sold more conservative fabrics in Melbourne than in Sydney. Coulson was seen as an exception, who demanded greater colour and richness in furnishings. His Jewish clientele drove this taste and were seen as more adventurous than others in Melbourne.
This edited version is drawn from an extended essay and research by Catriona Quinn for Shapiro Auctioneers, July 2014.
References
14 July 2014 Interview with James Fisher (employed by Artistry in Sydney and Melbourne in the 1960s)
14 July 2014 Interview with E.F.(Ted) Billson
11 July 2014 Interview with Peter Lipshut and notes from Allan Lipshut and Rae Rothfield
Built Heritage Pty Ltd, “O.N. Coulson”, Dictionary of Unsung Architects. www.builtheritage.com.au
“Coordination is the Keynote of this Melbourne Home”, Australian House and Garden, August, 1964
Loring, John, “T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings, Reviving Classical Forms for the Twentieth Century.” www.architecturaldigest.com
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 21 May 1905
- Summary
- Coulson was a Melbourne interior designer and architect initially working with I.G. Anderson, later establishing an independent practice in the 1950s. He designed interiors and furniture as well as domestic architecture. He retired in 1970 but remained active until ca.1975.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Jan-89
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.8777935 Longitude151.1156502 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Croydon, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- James Arthur Murch was born in the inner Sydney suburb of Croydon on 8 July 1902. His father, James Murch, was a carpenter-builder who had emigrated from England. He attended Sydney Technical High School at Ultimo until 1916. On 7 May 1917 he waa apprenticed as a fitter to John Heine & Son, manufacturers of sheet metal. By the time he left them in 1924 he was working as an engineer’s draughtsman. He studied mechanical drawing at Sydney Techncal college, originally planning to make decorative architectural metal work. However in 1921 his uncle Harry, a glazier, was asked to make frosted glass so that the neighbours of the Royal Art Society classes would not be offended by their nude models.He enrolled in the classes, studying under Antonio Dattilo Rubbo. Later he enrolled in sculpture classes at East Sydney Technical College, under Rayner Hoff.In 1924 he abandoned engineering to study for the NSW TRavelling Art Scholarship, administered by the Society of Artists, which he won in 1925.Murch arrived in London on 14 July 1925, and travelled throughout Britain, France, Italy and Spain, studying old masters. In Paris he took classes at the Academie Julian, and in London at the Old British School in Rome, but spent most of his time at the Chelsea Polytechnic, studying under Percy Jowett. He returned to Sydney at the end of 1927, where he became studio assistant to George Lambert as the senior artist worked on his memorial for the recumbent soldier at St Mary’s Cathedral. He was elected a member of the Society of Artists in 1928 and presented his scholarship work, a portrait of his mother. He continued to live at home with his family. During the Great Depression he supplemented his painting and sculptural commissions by working with architect Frank Molony designing and making applique rugs, cushion and stuffed-toys with Greek and modernistic designs.He also hones his drawing skills by working with anatomy students at the University of Sydney.In early 1933 he visited the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg outside Alice Springs for six weeks with the University of Sydney Physiological Research Party, and also spent two weeks on a camel trip. These Central Australian works were first exhibited at Macquarie Galleries on 30 May 1933. He returned to Central Australia in 1934, again with Professor H. Whitridge Davies. Their car ran out of petrol, and they walked for two and a half days crossing the desert. This excursion resulted in film footage showing young Aboriginal artists reproducing the kangaroo design from the reverse of pennies and re-drawing the image as side elevation view. He was subsequently awarded the Society of Artists’ Medal. In 1936, after another solo exhibition, he left again for Europe. He exhibited widely, and in 1938 he assisted in building, with about 20 others, the Australian, New Zealand and South African Wool Pavilion Glasgow Empire Exhibition. This included a 140 foot felt applique history of wool,and a colossal gilded sculpture of a ram on a rooftop.Murch was in Switzerland with fellow Australian artist Wallace Thornton when World War II was declared. The they survived a few penniless months by sketching portraits in the street before managing to travel to Italy where they boarded a ship and arrived in Sydney in early 1940. Shortly after his return he married Ria Counsell, a journalist. The young couple lived in a variety of premises in Double Bay, Mona Vale and Willoughby, where their son John was born.In April 1942 he was called up to work at the Slazengers Munitions company at Botany, where he worked on the design of the butt of the Owen gun. Soon afterwards he was reassigned as an official war artist. He travelled north to Darwin where he recorded the activities of the Australian army and the grim aftermath of the bombing of Darwin. Poor health, which had dogged him since he was ill with a fever in Rome in 1926, led to premature discharge in 1943.For the next five years the family lived at a number of addresses based around Newport Beach, before eventually buying a house at Palm Grove Road at Avalon Beach. He also taught at East Sydney Technical College. In January 1950 he was awarded the Archibald Prize for 1949.His daughter Michelle was born in 1951.Murch continued to be fascinated by Aboriginal themes and in 1950-1 painted a large corroboree themed mural for the University of Queensland. Ten years later, in 1961-63 he painted the welcome mural of European settlement at the passenger terminal at Sydney Cove. He followed this by another painting excursion to Hermannsberg, this time accompanied by his daughter. In his later years he also kept a studio at 257 Mowbray Road Chatswood, and also taught classes at the Royal Art Society.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 8 July 1902
- Summary
- Painter and sculptor, assistant to George Lambert, and in World War II the War artist who captured images of the bombed city of Darwin. Later in life became known for his constant paintings of angophoras.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Sep-89
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude51.6520851 Longitude-0.0810175 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Enfield, England
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born in Enfield, England on 18 November 1901. She came to Australia the following year with her mother and architect father. As a child, she studied ballet. In 1920 she was encouraged by her family and friends to attend drawing classes with John Shirlow who introduced her, through reproductions, to Impressionism and to Post-Impressionists such as Gauguin and Matisse.
An only child of a shy and self-conscious disposition, Craig was enrolled at the Melbourne National Gallery School in 1924-31. She felt overwhelmed by the older students but enjoyed the contact with people of similar interests. For a period of several months, she also had private lessons with George Bell .
Sybil Craig held her first solo show at the Athenaeum Gallery in 1932. Jessie Mackintosh , her friend at the Gallery School, encouraged her to exhibit with the Women Painters and Sculptors from 1933. As well, she was a foundation member of the New Melbourne Art Club. Craig enjoyed experimenting in her work and, influenced by George Bell, developed her interest in colour, pattern and simplicity. In 1933 she discovered the English artist Matthew Smith’s paintings, which utilised freedom of colour and line, at the 'Contemporary British Art Exhibition’ organised by Alleyne Zander . In 1935 she studied design and printmaking with Robert Timmings at the Working Man’s College (now RMIT). At the 1939 Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art, she rediscovered the work of Matisse.
During the war years Craig exhibited with the Twenty Melbourne Painters and attended meetings of the Women Painters’ National Service Group which organised activities and fund-raising for the war effort. In 1945 she was approached by the Australian War Memorial to accept the appointment of official war artist. With her parents’ encouragement she accepted, becoming the first woman to paint women working in the munitions’ factories.
She continued to work in Melbourne after the war. Her oil on paper Opening of the Women Painters Exhibition by Alan McCulloch c.1947 was auctioned by Deutscher Menzies on 22 November 1998 (cat.33). She spent the 1950s at the Victorian Artists’ Society, where Ian Bow helped her to incorporate rhythm into her design work. From the late 1950s she began to abandon oil painting, being committed to taking care of her parents.
In her work Craig was attracted to many changing ideas and continued to explore line, rhythm, colour, simplicity and design. She is remembered for her lively paintings filled with colour and light. Craig died in a nursing home in Melbourne on 14 September 1989. A large number of her works are in NGA, NGV and AWM.
Writers:
Wilkins, Lola
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 November 1901
- Summary
- Mid 20th century painter and cartoonist of Melbourne.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 14-Sep-89
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-37.823 Longitude144.998 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Richmond, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, ceramic and metalwork artist, cartoonist, illustrator, lecturer and art historian, was born in Richmond, Victoria, on 29 July 1901, daughter of Henry Callaway and Marguerite, née Deschamps. After attending the Presbyterian Ladies College, she studied drawing at the National Gallery School in 1916-20 under Frederick McCubbin and W.B. McInnes, then undertook an Applied Arts course at the Melbourne Working Men’s College (RMIT) and studied independently with Leslie Wilkie.
She returned to RMIT in 1930 in order to study ceramic techniques under Gladys Kelly. This was unsatisfactory, so she taught herself from books, producing her first ceramic works in 1931. They were fired in a coke kiln built by her husband, Thomas Orrock Mahood, an engineer and her 'life-long collaborator and co-worker’, whom she married in 1923. Their son, Martin, was born in 1938 but died soon afterwards.
From 1918, when she showed illustrations for a memorial volume of Adam Lindsay Gordon’s poems and other drawings, Mahood exhibited decorative art nouveau watercolours with the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS) and produced linocuts in the 1920s. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s she had successful solo exhibitions of her ceramic plaques, masks and figures in Melbourne and one (in 1947) at the David Jones Gallery, Sydney. She identified her ceramic work with her monogram and dated it with a letter code, beginning with 'A’ for the first year of production (1931).
Mahood continued to exhibit with the VAS – now showing ceramic pieces – as well as with the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria (1933-34) and the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors of which she was a member from 1927; she showed linocuts of animals at its exhibitions in the late 1950s. In 1956 her ceramic work was shown in the Melbourne Olympic Games Women’s Art Exhibition, including one of her masks, Splendour (Shepparton AG). All her female masks, she said, were based on Marlene Dietrich.
As 'Margot’ Mahood she also became known as a cartoonist and illustrator, beginning with a series of humorous natural history pictorial features in the 'Wild Life’ section of the Herald and Weekly Times in 1944 which continued for eight years. Bim in the Bush , Bim and His Friends and Bim at Bimbang Junction appeared in 'Wild Life’, Tim the Terrier in 'Our Women’ and The Scientific Adventures of Professor Smeebolger in 'Australian Boy’. Pinknose the Possum and The Sandmans were published in the Age . Her book, The Whispering Stone , also appeared in 1944. A primer, Drawing Australian Animals , was published in 1952.
She ran a screen-printing firm in 1947-51, and she also produced oil paintings such as a haunting image of a young urban Aboriginal woman, The Disinherited (c.1945, Deutscher Fine Art), in which the social realist attitudes that also made her a member of the Communist Party are most obvious.
Late in life (1970) she was awarded a PhD from the University of Melbourne for her thesis on nineteenth-century political cartoons, published as The Loaded Line in 1973 and still the standard reference. She also contributed entries on cartoonists to Joan Kerr’s Dictionary of Australian Artists’ project, most of which were published in the pre-1870 volume in 1992. She was working on a book on the development of Melbourne social and political life as seen in cartoons when she died in 1989, aged 88.
Writers:
Timms, PeterKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 July 1901
- Summary
- Prolific female artist, educator and historian who produced work in a variety of media during the twentieth century. She was awarded a PhD from Melbourne University in 1973 for her work on nineteenth-century political cartoons, published as The Loaded Line.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1989
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude45.28350435 Longitude34.20081878 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Crimea, Russia
- Biography
- Aaron Bolot (1900-1989) was born in the Crimea, arrived in Brisbane from Russia at age 11 and graduated with a diploma of architecture from the Central Technical College in 1926 with the Queensland Institute of Architects Gold Medal for best student. In 1929, he was registered to practice in Queensland. After graduation, he worked with Hollinshead and Gailey, assisting on the Melbourne Comedy and Brisbane Regent theateres. He set up a practice in Sydney’s Pitt Street during the early 1930s and freelanced during the Great Depression for other architects; including working with Walter Burley Griffin on documentation of the incinerators at Pyrmont and Willoughby. His later theatre designs were also influenced by the work of another Sydney architect, Bruce Dellit. His ouevre includes numerous theatres and cinemas; apartment buildings and houses in the P&O and Tudor/Arts and Crafts styles. Before World War II, Bolot completed the Hillside apartment building, 412 Edgecliff Road, Edgecliff (with EC Pitt, 1935); the Goulburn Ritz theatre, Goulburn (1936); the Astra in Wyong (1936); Hoyts Theatre, Goulburn (1936); the Randwick Ritz, 43-47 St Paul’s Street, Randwick (by 1937); the Regal theatre, Gosford (by 1937); the Ashdown apartment building, Elizabeth Bay Road, Elizabeth Bay (1938); remodelling the Liberty (formerly Metro) Theatre, Melbourne (1939); remodelling the West’s Theatre at Nowra (1940) and the Oatley Radio Theatre (later the Mecca; 1942). During the war, he served overseas from 1941-1946. After the war, his key projects included an apartment building at 17 Wylde Street, Potts Point (1951); the Erina drive-in theatre (1957); the Goomerah apartment building, 9 Goomerah Crescent, Darling Point (1957); the Murilla units at Bellevue Hill (1960); a project for R. Pollard and the Basser wing (both 1966); a chapel at the Temple Emmanuel, Rosemont Avenue, Woollahra and the AL Poole residence, 24 Thomas Street, Chatswood (both 1966); the Moby Dick Surf Club, Whale Beach (1966); projects for S. Pearson, Allpress & Farram and Carruthers Farram (all in 1967); Belmont Chambers for Simon Green (1968); probably houses or house renovations for JB Kirk, Edward Fay, L. Poole and Mrs RG Lamb (all 1968); Undated buildings also include the Bondi Rex Hotel, the Edgecliff Motel, Edgecliff; the Riga factory, Marrickville; an office building for Automotive Components Ltd (Blaxland Rae division); townhouses at Rosemont Avenue, Woollahra; flats at McMahons Point; the Ba Ritz flats at Point Piper; flats at Balmoral; the Silverna units, Darling Point; an apartment building at 10 Etham Avenue, Darling Point; a Tudor-style house at Edgecliff; three houses in Newcastle for the Kloster family; two houses for Bill Montham; a radio station at Dubbo; the Dorchester in Macquarie Street; enlarged windows and a motel addition to Jonah’s restaurant, Whale Beach; the Ashfield RSL Club; houses at Tamworth, Cootamundra, Palm Beach, Woollahra, Beauty Point (Griffith), Vaucluse (Bend), Wahroonga, Vaucluse (Melocco) and Point Piper (Grainger) He was elected a Fellow of the RAIA in 1978 and remained active in the Jewish community. He was survived by his wife, Thelma who at 2004 still lives in his Goomerah apartment building, ph 9363 5163. His last office (during the 1980s) was at Asbestos House, 67 York Street, Sydney.Sources—Hill, Jennifer/Architectural Projects. Undated. ‘Aaron Bolot’s contribution to cinema in Australia’ on website www.teachingheritage.nsw.edu.au—Bolot, Thelma. 2004. Interview with Davina Jackson, November, and copies of her papers and photographs by Max Dupain.—Lists of undated buildings written by Aaron and Thelma Bolot; one addressed to Trevor (probably Trevor Waters), obtained from Thelma Bolot November 2004.—Press clippings archived by the NSW RAIA 20th Century Buildings Committee.—Veale, Sharon. Undated. Research report archived by the NSW RAIA’s Heritage Committee.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1900
- Summary
- Aaron Bolot was a Crimea-born, Brisbane-educated architect who created many notable residential and commercial buildings in Sydney from the 1930s to the 1960s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1989
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-33.8583992 Longitude151.1807353 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Balmain, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Balmain, Sydney on 28 January 1898. She attended the Royal Art Society School under Dattilo Rubbo in 1913-14 before commencing studies at Blackfriars Teachers College (1915-19). While studying to be a teacher she took up a scholarship at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School then managed to divide her time between her day studies and her art training at night. At Ashton’s she was friendly with Grace Crowley and with fellow students and later Perth co-exhibitors, Muriel Southern and Florence Hall. She exhibited with various groups including the NSW Society of Artists; in 1925 she held a joint exhibition with Rah Fizelle at Anthony Horderns Gallery.
In 1921-25 Portia Bennett taught at the Teachers College then married William James-Wallace and moved to Queensland. She did little art until 1932 when, together with her family, she moved to Perth. In 1933 she joined up with Southern, Hall and Margaret Johnson to hold an exhibition in the Newspaper House Gallery. Her work was included in the 1934 Women Artists of Australia exhibition, held in the Education Department Gallery, Sydney. During the 1930s and 1940s Bennett completed some of her most powerful work, strong architectural studies of the streets and landmarks around Perth. She was fascinated by the city and drawn to modern, recently constructed buildings; her watercolours depict a fashionable and contemporary Perth.
She won the Claude Hotchin Watercolour Prize in 1952 and held solo exhibitions in 1953 and 1973. In 1986 the University of WA honoured her with a retrospective exhibition at the Undercroft Gallery. Her work was included in Western Australian Art and Artists 1900-1950 (AGWA 1978) and Beyond the Image: Western Australian Women Artists 1920-1960 (UWA 1990), the latter held after she died in Perth on 1 May 1989, aged 91.
Writers:
Gooding, Janda
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 28 January 1898
- Summary
- Portia Bennett trained at the Royal Art Society School under Dattilo Rubbo and then at the Julian Ashton Art school where she was friendly with Grace Crowley. Moving to Western Australia in 1932, Bennett's subject matter became modern Perth with its recently constructed buildings and city landmarks. Her work has featured in several major exhibitions dedicated to Western Australian female artists.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-May-89
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-37.561704 Longitude144.0040938 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bungaree, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Susan Duke was born at Bungaree, east of Ballarat, Victoria, in 1898, the eldest child of John Hallyer Duke and Sarah Ann Suckling.
In 1922 Duke was appointed sewing mistress at the Bullarook State School, teaching there and at nearby Pootilla State School. During her time teaching, Duke designed a crochet pattern for a corner piece, featuring a bush hut with gumnut decorations. This was entered into a needlework competition run by the Melbourne-based Weekly Times and reproduced in their 20 October 1923 edition. 'I daresay quite a number of women will design their own laces in future,’ she wrote, 'I know that I shall try to do so’. The Bush hut triangle design was then used in the The Weekly Times Crochet Book (1924).
In 1926 Duke married farmer William Douglas Monteith and lived on a property outside Corangamite until moving to Ballarat in the 1950s.
In the late 1970s Duke’s Bush hut triangle was used in the posters and catalogue for the D’Oyley Show which was shown at Watters Gallery, East Sydney, in 1979 and then toured. Coincidentally Duke’s great-niece, Robin Eagle, later worked with the D’Oyley Show’s poster designer, Frances Phoenix, in the Adelaide Women’s Liberation Movement, while her nephew, the performance poet Jas H. Duke, also contributed to the design of feminist posters for the Industrial women project at about this time.
Susan Monteith died in Ballarat East in 1989.
Writers:
Eric Riddler
Date written:
2018
Last updated:
2023
- Born
- b. 25 November 1898
- Summary
- Schoolteacher and sewing instructor active in the Ballarat region in the 1920s. A design for The Weekly Times Crochet Book (1924) was used in one of the posters for the D'Oyley Show in 1979.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Jan-89
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.8894781 Longitude151.1274125 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ashfield, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, was born on 30 August 1897 at Ashfield, Sydney, one of the three daughters in the family of five of Kate Edith (d. 22 July 1953) and Frederick Albert Coghlan, Auditor General of New South Wales (d. 22 July 1938).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff WriterNote: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 August 1897
- Summary
- Painter and art teacher. Resident of Sydney, New South Wales, early in her career Coghlan concentrated on oil paintings but later turned to watercolours as her principal medium.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Jun-89
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Geelong on 21 July 1889, only daughter of James Durran, an architect, and Jeannie Dick, a noted concert singer. Although she commenced her career as a concert pianist and continued to teach piano for some years, Durran turned away from this field to pursue her interest in painting. Studying under Helen Peters, a well-known painter and art teacher in Geelong as well as a pianist of some standing, Durran soon achieved moderate success as an artist, winning a number of awards for her drawings and paintings.
In 1911-16 Durran was a student at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, studying drawing under Frederick McCubbin and painting under Bernard Hall. She continued to win awards, including first prizes in the 'Drawing Head from Life’ and 'Painting Still-Life’ student competitions. She participated in painting camps at Malmesbury, and she entered portraits and landscapes in exhibitions such as the 1913 Victorian Artists’ Society Exhibition. Her early success culminated in 1917 when Home from Market gained her second place in the National Gallery of Victoria’s Travelling Scholarshi
After marrying fellow student John Rowell, Eugenie scaled down her activities as an artist, preferring to support her husband’s career, not only providing moral and critical support for his work but by 1935 managing his exhibitions. Together they became increasingly involved in the art activities of the community, e.g. she was a foundation member of the McClelland Gallery, established in 1971. She did not, however, completely cease her own artistic practice but continued to paint and exhibit a wide range of subjects from portraits to landscapes. Many were executed during joint painting expeditions throughout Australia, as well as on an overseas study tour in 1937-38; others were painted while John Rowell was away on other painting excursions.
Prompted by the completion of an unfinished painting by John, who died in 1973, Eugenie’s interest in pursuing an active career as an artist was rekindled. In 1976 she held a major exhibition at the Manyung Gallery, Mount Eliza, which included works spanning several years of her painting life. It was an instant success and she continued to produce works until 1982, when she lost her eyesight as the result of a fall. Eugenie Rowell died at Mornington (Vic.) on 13 June 1989.
Writers:
Filmer, Veronica
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 21 July 1889
- Summary
- Coming from a creative family and after studying at the National Gallery School, Eugenie had early success in her career as an artist. She was an active member of the arts community, becoming a founding member of the McClelland Gallery.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Jun-89
- Age at death
- 100
Details
Latitude-33.8772 Longitude151.1049 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1989-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burwood, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- designer, was born in Burwood, Sydney, on 31 July 1887, eldest of the seven children of John Shorter, an agent for several British firms in Australia, including Doulton’s Pottery. Her mother was a gifted artist who had studied under Louis Bilton. Lucille (known as Lulu), studied art at Granville Technical College under Alfred Coffey (c.1904-08), then travelled to England with her father in 1908 for six months. After her return she studied at the National Art School, East Sydney Technical College. She revisited Britain in 1917-18 and on later occasions.
The National Gallery of Australia holds several works by Shorter, including her pen-and-ink design for a flannel flower plate border (c.1906-07) designed for the prestigious international magazine, Keramic Decoration ; it was donated by the artist in 1985. In 1988, aged 100, Shorter was able to see her work on display with the later gift of her father’s large Doulton ceramic collection at the newly-opened Powerhouse Museum (MAAS). She died at a Mona Vale (Sydney) nursing home on 12 August 1989, aged 102.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Note: Heritage biography.
staffcontributor
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 July 1887
- Summary
- Shorter was a designer, was born on 31 July 1887. The National Gallery of Australia holds several works by her. She is the signed author of an illustration of a waratah (for Doulton) in R.T. Baker's The Australian Flora in Applied Art, Technological Museum, Sydney, 1915. Figure 26.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Aug-89
- Age at death
- 102
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, Australia
- Biography
- Artist, was included in the Tin Sheds exhibition, “Dead Gay Artists”, 1-23 February 2002.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1949
- Summary
- An artist whose work was included in the Tin Sheds exhibition, Dead Gay Artists, 1-23 February 2002.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Jun-88
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude-37.8902423 Longitude145.067469 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Murrumbeena, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Sculptor and designer of ceramics, Guy Boyd was the third child of the studio potter Merric Boyd and his wife Doris Gough, and was born at Murrumbeena, where his parents established their studio pottery. His career developed in the shadow of that of his siblings, especially his brother Arthur. After serving in the army during World War II, he studied sculpture with Lyndon Dadswell at East Sydney Technical College. His initial career direction was as a designer and manufacturer of commercial pottery. However in 1965 he changed direction and began to make sculptures, usually based on the human form. The tactile sensual quality of his bronze pieces made them especially popular, although critics tended to regard his work as old fashioned.He was successful in being commisioned to make large sculptures for Tullamarine and Sydney international airports.He also became a passionate campaigner for conservationist causes and the preservation of historic buildings in his neighbourhood.His mother’s devout Christian Scientist faith led him to understand the way in which cultural minorities are easily misunderstood. As a result of this he was an early and passionate advocate for justice for Lindy and Michael Chamberlain after they were falsely accused and convicted of killing their daughter Azaria.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 12 June 1923
- Summary
- Guy Boyd was the sculptor of the Boyd family, taking a different direction from his brothers and parents. His humanist vision is evident in all his work, especially his cast bronzes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Apr-88
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-20 Longitude133 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Northern Territory, NT, Australia
- Biography
- His country was Yaribilong, just north-west of Alice Springs. His Dreamings were Star and Shield. He was actively involved in the running of the Haasts Bluff settlement. Timmy was a friend of Limpi Tjapangati , an associate of the founding group of Papunya Tula 'painting men’, who also lived at Haasts Bluff.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1920
- Summary
- Important community leader in Haasts Bluff (NT). He often painted with Limpi Tjapangati, one of the pioneers of the Papunya Tula movement.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1988
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-33.829075 Longitude151.24409 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mosman, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor and commercial artist, was born in Mosman, Sydney, on 5 July 1912. Educated at the Presbyterian Ladies College, Pymble, she studied art under Miss Helen Crabbe. She entered art classes at East Sydney Technical College in February 1929 and is reputed to have completed both the introductory and intermediate courses in 12 months. Fletcher subsequently specialised in sculpture for four years under Rayner Hoff , graduating with her Diploma in Art (Sculpture) in 1935. She was one of a group of (predominantly female) sculpture students at East Sydney whom Hoff developed into the coherent 'school’ of sculptors which dominated Sydney sculptural production in the inter-war decades. Her work was exhibited in the 1930s with the Society of Artists and the Society of Women Painters.
After graduating Fletcher set up a studio in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, seeking commissions as a 'fine art sculptor’ but had to abandon this for employment in commercial art in 1937. She then worked for five years with Wilkins & Jones Pty Ltd at Fineline Studios, Rushcutters Bay. Fletcher married in 1941 and largely ceased sculpting. She died in 1988 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
Despite being an active and proficient sculptor under Hoff, Marjorie Fletcher had virtually 'disappeared’ as a professional artist by 1940 and until quite recently her work was little known. Now, due largely to the efforts of her son, most of her important sculptures are held in Australian public galleries, including the hieratic Mourning Arab (1935, NGA), the Norman Lindsay style nude Fear (1936, plaster NGV, bronze AGNSW) and Self Torso (1934, plaster AGSA, bronze held p.c). Unlocated reliefs recorded in photographs include Botany Bay (1936), Knowledge (a nude woman), and the huge relief The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon (1933).
Writers:
Edwards, Deborah
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 July 1912
- Summary
- A graduate of the East Sydney Technical College, Fletcher studied under Raynor Hoff and was a commercial artist before marrying in 1941 and largely ceasing to work. Her work is now held in most of the major state collections thanks to the efforts of her son.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1988
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, commercial artist, graphic and exhibition designer, illustrator, costume and textile designer, photographer and documentary film-maker, was born Dulcie Wilmott in Adelaide. In about 1926-32 she studied at East Sydney Technical College under Rayner Hoff and attended painting classes at the J.S. Watkins Art School. Her career began at Anthony Horderns in 1928, providing illustrations for the house magazine and the firm’s catalogues; she also did freelance work for other Sydney department stores, Farmers and David Jones.
In 1933 Dulcie Wilmott married Geoffrey Collings ; they had two daughters, Donna (b.1937) and the artist Silver Collings (b.1940). She and her husband worked collaboratively for most of their lives, co signing the majority of their work 'Dahl and Geoffrey Collings’, the name Dahl having been coined by Geoffrey as a term of endearment. One of their first works signed jointly was a 1934 cover design for Home .
They travelled to London in 1935, and Dahl worked as a freelance designer until László Moholy Nagy offered her a job in his studio. There she gained first-hand experience of European modernism and of Moholy Nagy’s and Gyorgy Kepes’s approach to design – which she and Geoffrey embraced wholeheartedly. With Alistair Morrison, she and Geoffrey organised the 'Three Australians’ exhibition at the Lund Humphreys Gallery in 1938 to show their British work.
In 1939 they returned to Sydney and attempted to introduce modern design to local industry. They mounted their 'Exhibition of Modern Industrial Art and Documentary Photography’ at David Jones Art Gallery and, with Richard Haughton James, established a commercial and industrial design studio, The Design Centre. Dahl was one of the very first Australian women to begin the slow process of introducing modern art and design principles to Australian industry.
During the 1940s she continued to work freelance, designing covers for Sydney Ure Smith’s new journal, Australia , and producing designs for Elizabeth Arden, David Jones, Qantas, the Orient Line and Woman magazine. She exhibited with the Contemporary Art Society and the Australian Commercial and Industrial Artists’ Association, winning (with Geoffrey) four ACIAA awards in 1940. She also painted murals for the Accountants Club, Kings Cross restaurants and a kindergarten in the Blue Mountains.
In the early 1940s Dahl and Geoffrey Collings collaborated with Alistair Morrison, Douglas Annand and Elaine Haxton to produce the 'Temple of Beauty’, Woman 's display stand at the Royal Easter Show. Dahl was costume designer for the films Eureka Stockade (1949) and The Overlanders (1946). Her paintings of Charters Towers were published in the final issue of London’s Lilliput magazine in 1950. She also designed posters for the Orient line and fabrics for SS Oronsay .
In 1950 the family moved to New York. Dahl became a design consultant to the Australian Trade Commission, in charge of the Australian Display Centre in the Rockefeller Center. Back at Sydney in 1953, she and Geoffrey established their own film company, Collings Productions. Many of the films she produced and directed won international awards. Dreaming , a film produced for Qantas about Aboriginal art, won one of the five special diplomas (the top award) at the 1964 Venice Biennale Festival of Art Films; her Opera House film, Job No.1112 , was awarded a silver medal at the 1975 Festival of Architectural Films in Madrid.
From 1971 Dahl devoted herself full time to painting. She had solo shows at the Bonython (1976) and Holdsworth (1977) galleries in Sydney and at the City of Hamilton Art Gallery (Vic.) in 1982.
Writers:
Ven, Anne-Marie Van De
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1909
- Summary
- Dahl Collings was a painter, commercial artist, graphic and exhibition designer, illustrator, costume and textile designer, photographer and documentary film-maker. Often working in partnership with her husband Geoffrey Collings, she worked in London in the late 1930s with László Moholy-Nagy
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1988
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-32.256944 Longitude148.601111 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dubbo, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- decorator, was born in rural NSW, one of three talented Burkitt sisters (another was Dora Sweetapple ).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- Interior designer and decorator whose work and achievements exemplify the best of the many dynamic and significant advances that occurred within Australian modernism in the post-war years. Hailed as an interior design 'legend', Marion Hall Best was a leading local arbiter of style who was also recognised internationally for her avant-garde modernism.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1988
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-42.8339024 Longitude147.274444 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glenorchy, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 10 September 1904
- Summary
- Playwright and actor Gwen Sherwood worked as Clerk at the then National Art Gallery of New South Wales during the 1940s. In mid 1944 Sherwood, with de facto Acting Director Bernard Smith, initiated the Gallery's travelling exhibitions of Australian art.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Oct-88
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-32.256944 Longitude148.601111 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dubbo, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 14-May-88
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.8931044 Longitude151.2040292 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Redfern, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born in Sydney. He studied with J.S. Watkins and Julian Ashton and at East Sydney Technical College. According to Rainbow, Baird, like Syd Miller , originally worked as a commercial artist at Harry Weston 's studio. In 1924 he was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists, along with 24 other men: Garnet Agnew , Stan Cross , F.H. Cumberworth , W. Dowman , “Driff” ( Lance Driffield ), George Finey , Cecil Hartt , Joe Jonsson , Frank Jessop , Fred Knowles , George Little , Brodie Mack , Hugh Maclean , Arthur Mailey , Syd Miller, Syd Nicholls , Mick Paul , Jack Quayle , Reg Russom , Cyril Samuels , Jack Waring , Harry J. Weston, Unk White and John Wiseman . All 25 members contributed to the Society’s first publication, commemorating the visit of the US Fleet in 1925.
Blaikie (91) states that Baird was an important freelance contributor to Smith’s Weekly in the 1930s, although he was never appointed a staff artist. An original drawing done for Smith’s was, A run for her money (girl in underwear, very straight, somewhat like Virgil ), that was held in private collection at the time of Brenda Rainbow’s 'golden age’ exhibition. He created the strip Pip and Emma for Smith’s . Josef Lebovic’s Australian Miscellany (collectors’ list 55, 1996, cat.62) lists an undated pencil drawing of a flapper. His drawing of the Black and White Artists’ Sketch Club was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1939.
After working as a staff artist on the Sydney Evening News , Baird was employed as an illustrator for Associated Newspapers where he worked for 30 years, including being an accredited war artist for the Sunday Sun from c.1943. He was on the art staff of the Sydney Morning Herald at some stage, and Douglas Stewart says he drew for the Bulletin before becoming 'a fine landscape painter in oils’. Baird combined oil painting and illustrating in 1946 when he painted an oil portrait of 'Model of the Year’ Patricia “Bambi” Tuckwell.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1902
- Summary
- Mid 20th century painter and cartoonist. Baird was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists, along with 24 other men. In his forties, he became known for his oil paintings, especially for his portrait of 'Model of the Year' Patricia "Bambi" Tuckwell in 1946.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1988
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher and engraver, was born in Perth on 31 March 1901, eldest of the three children of Benjamin Harvie Darbyshire, a lawyer, and Agnes, née Campbell. She visited England with her family at the age of six. After they returned to Perth, her father engaged an English suffragette governess, Miss Hall; Beatrice drew her portrait in England many years later (1920). She showed an early talent for drawing and, from the age of about twelve, attended Saturday morning classes given by Henri van Raalte . After two years at boarding school at the Hermitage in Geelong Victoria, she returned to Perth and studied under van Raalte from 1918 to the end of 1921 when he left for Adelaide. On his advice Beatrice decided to go to England to further her art studies, departing in 1924 to study at the Slade. After a term, she left to join the School of Engraving at the Royal College of Art, under Sir Frank Short then Malcolm Osborne. Fellow pupils included Eric Ravilious, Charles Tunnicliffe and Iain MacNab.
In 1924 one of her drypoints, The Cowshed, Balingup , was selected for the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. The following year another print, In the Blackwood Country , was exhibited there. Each was awarded a Certificate of Honour and a bronze medal. She graduated with a Diploma of Associateship from the RCA in 1927 and returned to Perth, where she had an etching press made and began to exhibit her work.
A trip to the Kimberleys in 1933 to stay with the Durack family ( see Elizabeth Durack ) resulted in many drawings and prints featuring Aboriginal people and the remote landscape. Her last exhibition in Perth was in 1937. In 1940 she joined the Women’s League of Health and went to Sydney to train as an instructor. On her return to Perth she ran the local branch of the League for about twelve years. Sadly, although she wrote articles and gave lectures on art to various groups, she never returned to printmaking. Her work was rediscovered and exhibited by Hendrick Kolenberg in 1979 (Art Gallery of Western Australia). She died in July 1988.
Writers:
Chapman, Barbara
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 March 1901
- Summary
- A talented artist, Beatrice Darbyshire exhibited in England and Perth throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Jul-88
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, studied at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School (in 1933 retrospective exhibition with a 'landscape’). She signed an interesting, undated, oil on board painting, The Recital , showing members of an orchestra and audience that was offered at auction by Christie’s Australia at Melbourne 1-2 May 2000 (lot 229, ill. colour $3,000-$4,000). Her Mist in the Bay was no. 127 in Wynne competition at Art Gallery of NSW in 1965 (BS cats). A large number of her oil paintings, mainly landscapes of the Sydney area, were with the family in the early 1990s, i.e. Mrs (Francine) Lazarus and Mr Philip Lazarus (portrait of him as a small child). Mary Eagle thinks she may have been associated with Undergrowth .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1901
- Summary
- Known as a painter, a large number of her oil paintings are portraits and landscapes of the Sydney area.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-88
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, etcher and art teacher, was born in Melbourne of German parents, the musicians Eduard Scharf and Olive de Hugard. A child prodigy in both painting and music (his portrait, Boy with Palette by Violet Teague , is in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT), he performed (on violin and piano?), painted and taught art in Australia and Germany. (He travelled with his parents in Germany after WWI, then was professor of painting and drawing at the Munich Academy of Fine Art in 1934-35). Not aligned with the allies during WWII, the paintings he did as a war artist for Hitler (now destroyed or lost) are believed to have been generic records of battles, rather than propaganda (see T. Ingram). After returning to Australia for six years (1950-56), he went back to Munich.
According to Ingram, interest in Scharf’s etchings was kindled in the early 1920s when Dame Nellie Melba brought a set back to Australia. His chef d’oeuvre is the series of 20 works Night in a City (1922-23), which evokes the spirit of Weimar Germany with something of the acerbic wit of Georg Grosz. (A full copy was exhibited for sale late in 1966 at Bridget McDonnell Gallery, Melbourne.) Included are: 'Restaurant I’ n.d., 'Concert’ 1922, 'Theater’ (no.12) and 'Restaurant III’. Also 'Prizefight’ 1923 (Josef Lebovic and/or Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney) and 'All Souls Day’ (old people visiting a cemetery) n.d. (ill. Lebovic & Warner, Fifty Years , cat.71).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1899
- Summary
- Painter, etcher and art teacher, Melbourne-born Theo Scharf was a professor of painting and drawing at the Munich Academy of Fine Art in 1934-35. He was also a war artist for Hitler, but his paintings have since been lost or destroyed. According to information given by him to this editor in 1980 in Feldafing, his main war artist work was done in German field hospitals in Russia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1988
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude53.2428332 Longitude-1.5277945 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wigley, Derbyshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Commercial artist, potter and painter, was born Grace Furniss in the small village of Wigley, Derbyshire. In 1902 her family migrated to New Zealand and in 1904 settled on a farm, Brooklands, near Huntly on the North Island. In her early twenties Taylor moved to Auckland and began working as a commercial illustrator, a popular career for women at the time. Her main work seems to have been advertising drawings of women’s clothing for newspapers and magazines. In 1924, she enrolled in figure drawing at the Elam School of Art. However, after six months at the school, she returned to commercial art as she could not afford to continue studying. This brief period was to be her only formal art training.
In 1926 Grace and her younger sister Amy, also an artist, travelled to Sydney in search of work. Amy returned to New Zealand in 1927-28, but Grace remained in Sydney and only returned for a brief trip in 1930 or 1931. By 1932 she was working as a commercial artist for Berlei, Sydney. In 1933 she travelled to England. On her return she moved to Brisbane and found work with McWhirter’s Department Store as an advertising illustrator.
In Brisbane Grace met and married Jimmy Taylor, who enlisted in the second AIF at the outbreak of World War II. Initially rejected because of a chronic skin condition, in 1942 Grace was accepted into the Australian Women’s Land Army (AWLA) as a field officer responsible for the administration of AWLA workers. She originated an unofficial paper for the Land Army Girls, the LAG RAG , to which she contributed humorous verse, prose and cartoons. She travelled extensively around the Queensland camps, working to improve conditions and facilities for AWLA members. Her niece recalls:
she was a dashing figure to us. When she visited on leave, there were rides in the Jitterbug, the little Austin sports car she took with her into the AWLA. It was popular with the LAGS too, who no doubt found our aunt’s driving as exciting as we did.
Soon after the war Grace and Jimmy separated and Grace returned to Sydney. In 1946 she purchased a small studio pottery in the centre of Sydney, where she produced ceramic wares under the label 'Tesmic Art Pottery’. The pottery specialised in glazed ornaments of animals, 'and as sure as we modelled an animal there was a demand for a baby animal to go with it’. In 1949 Tesmic moved to premises in Bankstown and was able to expand. During this time Taylor exhibited her work frequently, often with the NSW Ceramic Art and Fineware Association.
In 1956 she sold the pottery and returned to New Zealand. In 1958, while on holiday in England, she worked briefly as a modeller at the Spode Potteries. Returning to New Zealand, she began to sculpt large-scale figures; but increasingly she turned her energies to politics, joining the Social Credit Political League. In 1966 she married Henry Boshier, a childhood neighbour. She died in 1988 at the age of ninety-one. Her niece considers that 'the Land Army experience was probably the only major period of my aunt’s life when she didn’t earn her living from art of one sort or another’.
Writers:
Rensch, Elena
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- Grace Taylor (1897-1988) was a commercial artist and potter who grew up in New Zealand and migrated to Australia in 1926.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1988
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.8354519 Longitude151.2083011 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- puppeteer, was born Edith Constance Blackwell in North Sydney on 26 February 1897. From Fort Street Girls’ High School she went to the University of Sydney, where she obtained a BSc degree in 1920. Further qualifications were a Dip.Ed. (Sydney Teachers’ College) and a Dip.Soc.Sci. (1937). In 1935 she introduced glove puppets to a class of State wards she was teaching in Glebe and was surprised by their positive response. This experience eventually led to a lifelong involvement with puppetry, not only in therapy but also as an art form.
For many years she worked with the Children’s Library and Crafts Movement (later the Creative Leisure Movement), founded by the sisters Mary Matheson and Elsie Rivett. Edith supervised puppet making and puppet shows with children and adults at the Movement’s various centres in the Sydney area. In 1949 the Movement opened the Clovelly Puppet Theatre in an ex-army hut in Burnie Park, with Edith as director. There plays were presented by children and adults using glove puppets and marionettes on Saturday afternoons in the cooler months for some thirty years.
She encouraged children to have a free approach to the making and use of puppets, although her own were painstakingly made. Some plays, notably those for marionettes, were tightly scripted, but often the young puppeteers were invited to improvise dialogue for the glove puppets. In 1950 Edith also began instructing occupational therapists in the use of puppetry.
Edith Murray brought puppeteers together. She was a foundation member of the Puppetry Guild of NSW (later the Australian Puppetry Guild) in 1948 and its secretary for many years. She initiated the first Australia-wide gathering of puppeteers in Adelaide in 1968 (when the Salzburg Marionettes visited) and this led to the formation of an Australian Centre of UNIMA, the International Association of Puppeteers, with Edith as Founding Secretary. At the UNIMA Congress in Washington DC in 1980 she was made a Member of Honour.
Edith did not usually give performances as a professional puppeteer, but in 1957 she toured a small company with her 'Moonahwarra Marionettes’ for the NSW Division of the Arts Council of Australia. She used glove puppets for a closed-circuit test of television in Sydney’s AWA Building in 1952.
Edith visited the United Kingdom in 1963-65. She taught in Scotland, worked as a puppeteer in pantomimes and attended puppet festivals in Wales, Czechoslovakia and Russia. In 1976 she was invited to Japan as a guest of the PUK Puppet Theatre of Tokyo.
She featured in two instructional films: Let’s Make Puppets (1951) and Let’s Make a Puppet Play (1954). The play in the second is about a bushfire, and Edith had a strong love for the Australian bush. For much of her later life she lived in Springwood (NSW), at the end of a steep unmade road at the edge of the bush.
Edith Murray was awarded the BEM in 1979 for her work with children and puppetry. She died in Sydney on 30 January 1988.
Writers:
Bradshaw, Richard
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 26 February 1897
- Summary
- Puppeteer, was born Edith Constance Blackwell. She was a foundation member of the Puppetry Guild of NSW (later the Australian Puppetry Guild).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 30-Jan-88
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-27.5133345 Longitude153.0117745 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yeronga, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- Lloyd Rees was born on 17 March 1895 in Brisbane, Queensland. He studied at the Brisbane Technical College in 1910 where F. Martyn Roberts taught him drawing. He was a full time art student in 1915 before moving to Sydney in 1917.
There Rees worked as a commercial artist with Smith & Julius Studios, where he developed his skills as a draughtsman and established friendships that continued throughout his life. He made many trips to Europe, and was particularly inspired by the French and Italian countryside. In the 1930s he depicted landscapes showing light radiating from behind the hills and through the trees; and in the 1940s he moved to depict large open vistas, painted with free, spontaneous brush stokes in a high-key palette.
From 1946 to 1986 Rees taught painting and drawing and lectured in art history at the School of Architecture, the University of Sydney, which gave him the freedom to paint without being concerned about sales. As Rees became older he became increasingly exuberant and experimental in his approach to painting and used lighter tones. In 1976 Rees began his first portfolio of prints, Memories of Europe , based on his recollections of earlier journeys. The following year he made a series of Australian Landscape prints, depicting the mountains, cliff faces, rocks and valleys of Tasmania, New South Wales and Central Australia; and in 1980 he made a series of 67 lithographs, The Caloola Suite . In the 1980s he began to suffer from poor eyesight, which led him to create semi-abstract impressions from memory improvisations. Lloyd Rees died in Hobart on 2 December 1988.
Further informationLloyd Rees (1895-1988) was a widely respected painter of Australian landscapes and an exceptionally influential lecturer on the history of art to architecture students at the University of Sydney from 1946 to 1986. Born in Yeronga, Queensland, he began studying art in Brisbane before coming to Sydney in 1917 to work in the advertising firm of Smith and Julius (working for Sydney Ure-Smith, founder of Art in Australia). where he met other artists. His Australian landscapes, while based on acute observation and deep affection, showed European traditional influences, particularly those of Italy and France. In 1923, Rees left on the first of four trips to Europe. It was after this that his palette became stronger. However, atmosphere was always combined with solidity and structure until failing eyesight made this increasingly difficult. Water, particularly Sydney Harbour and the Lane Cove River, was a favourite subject. In 1984, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of letter by the University of Tasmania, and the Order of Australia the following year. During the Australian Bicentennial, he was chosen as one of ‘Two Hundred People Who Made Australia Great’.Sources—http://www.australianprints.com/rees.htm
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne Note: Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 17 March 1895
- Summary
- Lloyd Rees began his career as an architectural draughtsman, and established his reputation as an artist with detailed pen and pencil drawings of around Sydney. An accomplished landscape painter for over five decades, failing eyesight led Lloyd Rees to create semi-abstract impressions from memory towards the end of his career. Rees is represented in most of the major national and state gallery collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Dec-88
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1988-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Named after her paternal grandmother, Caroline Barker was born in Melbourne on 8 September 1894, the eldest daughter of a family of five girls and five boys born to bookseller Arthur Barker and his wife Eliza née Stribley. Her great grandfather was Henry Bone, a portraitist who exhibited at the Royal Academy and, as her mother also painted privately, a career as an artist was encouraged. Her youngest sister Agnes (qv) became a significant craftworker. Caroline enrolled at the National Gallery School in the second semester of 1912 where she studied drawing with Frederick McCubbin and painting with Bernard Hall . Her contemporaries included Napier Waller, Sheila McCubbin, Dorothy Hughes, Marion Jones, Adelaide Perry and Enid Dickson. She was awarded a second prize for watercolour in 1917 and a year’s free tuition, completing her studies in 1919. The following year the family moved to Brisbane for the sake of her father’s health.
The Barkers, in common with parents of their generation, did not expect their daughters to earn a living and were content to support their activities until their 'expected’ marriage. Caroline was the only daughter who did not meet this expectation, instead establishing a career as a professional artist. When Adelaide Perry was awarded the National Gallery School Travelling Scholarship in 1920 she suggested that Caroline take over her position as art mistress at the Ipswich Girls’ Grammar School and she taught there from 1921 to 1922. The desired focus of artistic training at that time was Europe, England in particular. She saved enough money to finance a trip to England and sailed with her mother to London on the 'Wyreema’ in March 1923. On their arrival Barker met up with her friends from the National Gallery School, Adelaide Perry and Marion Jones and Queenslander Daphne Mayo .
Caroline Barker was accepted into the Royal Academy Schools of Art where she studied under Cayley Robinson and Sir Charles Sims. The following year she enrolled at the Byam Shaw School of Art where Rex Vicat Cole taught painting and F. E. Jackson taught drawing. She visited the continent and spent a month in Cornwall on a sketching trip with Adelaide Perry and Frances Hodgkinson. Adelaide and Caroline shared a studio before Adelaide’s return to Sydney in 1925. Caroline returned to Australia the following year after her painting Delphiniums was included in the 1926 Paris Salon (no. 104).
She initially painted in Vida Lahey 's studio in Adelaide Street, Brisbane but established her own studio in Petrie Bight in 1927 and shortly thereafter at 241 George Street, Brisbane which was to remain her studio until 1954. Her sister Agnes Richardson recalled her dedication to her chosen career. Caroline would depart for her studio after breakfast and not return until the last tram at 11.00 pm. Sundays were excepted. She would appear for the evening meal as the Barkers held open house and there was always a host of visitors.
In the 1930s and especially during the years of World War II her studio became a significant meeting place for artists. Donald Friend and Sir William Dargie attended the sketching classes. The latter [in a letter to the author in 1995] recalled: 'I had acquired a few penfriends in Brisbane and one of them – probably James Wieneke – took me along to her studio in George Street and introduced me to her. I liked her at once – who could not? – her friendly bustling Queensland manner and her open-minded acceptance of all styles of artistic expression. She offered me the use of her studio and all the models of her life classes as long as I was in Brisbane.’
She taught art to the schoolgirls at Somerville House (1935-46), Loreto Convent (1938), Clayfield College and St. Margaret’s (c1936-41). A gift shop, Bronte, was set up in conjunction with her sister Agnes at her studio in the late 1940s until she gave up the premises in 1954. At that time a student portrait (identified as a Mrs Evans) was purchased for the Queensland National Art Gallery. Subsequently she taught privately at her home on Macaulay Street, Coorparoo until 1963 when she took over the portrait painting classes at the Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS) and then expanded her classes to include still life painting in 1966. By 1978, however, the classes had much reduced so she transferred the classes to her home and was still teaching two classes a week in 1986. Her notable students include Margaret Olley , Margaret Cilento , Gordon Shepherdson, Hugh Sawrey , Dorothy Coleman , Betty Churcher and Lola McCausland.
In 1928 she was elected to the Council of the RQAS and became one of the stalwarts of the Society. She served on the Council until 1937 and in 1943-45 and 1948-55 and acted as Vice President 1945, 1953 and 1956-73. Caroline first exhibited with the RQAS in 1921 and then between 1927-87, a total of more than 200 works. This included portraits (36%), still life or floral studies (56%), genre (5%) and landscape (3%). She exhibited infrequently in other Brisbane group exhibitions in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. She did not hold a solo exhibition of her paintings but was included in 'Six Past Students of the National Art Gallery’, Melbourne (July 1934) at Allan & Stark’s, Brisbane. (Melville and Yvonne Haysom, Charles Lancaster, Gwendolyn Grant and Enid Dickson were the other exhibitors.) A survey exhibition 'A Tribute to Caroline Barker’; was held at the RQAS Gallery, 18 November-17 December 1999.
The training she received in London established her credibility in Brisbane and it was clearly very important to her as in 1933 she described the daily life of the Byam Shaw Art School. She exhibited a drawing on one occasion (in 1941) as her 'sketches’ were drawn directly on the canvas. Her first 'brush with fame’ was in 1928 when she exhibited her portrait of Alderman W. A. Jolly (the first Mayor of Greater Brisbane 1925-30 and the first Lord Mayor 1930-32) at the Queensland Art Society. (The painting was donated to the Brisbane City Council by the Jolly family after the subject’s death.) Of particular interest are her paintings of children such as Joan Haldane as an Elizabethan doll 1931 and Lincoln Robbins in Indian headdress 1938. Most of her portraits were finely painted and were described with some consistency in the annual exhibitions of the RQAS until the early 1940s. Subsequently reviews of the exhibitions become sparse indeed and with the new agendas in art, portrait and still life paintings were largely ignored.
During the 1930s still life was established as an important genre in Australian art and became a consistent aspect of her production: the flowers from her garden filled the vases in her home to become the companion to those on the walls. In an article in Brisbane’s Daily Sun in 1986 she remarked, 'I love Queensland for the colours. The skies are such a vivid blue and the colours of the flowers are so sharp, so positive. I can’t imagine myself living anywhere else.’
The former Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Sallyanne Atkinson, commissioned Caroline to paint her portrait in 1986 (completed 1987). There was seen to be a special symmetry in Caroline painting the portrait of the first Lord Mayor then, some 60 years later painting, the first female Lord Mayor. There does, however, appear to be a marked difference in the execution of these portraits. This has been defended by Caroline herself, in the same 1986 Daily Sun article: 'You express things in a different way when you are young. As you grow up you loosen up.’ It was during this portrait session, however, that Sallyanne Atkinson became aware of the significance of Caroline in the context of Brisbane and her great contribution to the art produced here.
A substantial collection of Barker’s work was acquired by the Brisbane City Gallery and The Caroline Barker Award was given in 1987 through the joint effort of the Brisbane City Gallery Advisory Committee and the RQAS. She had been awarded Honorary Life Membership of the RQAS in 1964 and an MBE in the 1978 for her services to art. She was included as a Woman of Queensland in Don Taylor’s 1979 photographic essay and named the Brisbane Zonta Club’s Woman of Achievement in 1986. However, the 300 people who attended her 80th birthday party at the premises of the RQAS give the best indication of the affection with which she was held by Brisbane’s art community. She maintained her interest and enthusiasm for all varieties of artistic expression to the end of her life. She died at her home on Macaulay Street, Coorparoo, Brisbane on 23 July 1988 and was cremated at the Mt Thompson Crematorium four days later.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2005
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 September 1894
- Summary
- Caroline Barker had a long career in Brisbane as an artist and teacher and for many years, especially after the death of Vida Lahey, was regarded as the senior female artist in Queensland.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Jul-88
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1954-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane Qld, Australia
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, mainly worked in coloured pencil. Did book covers and large pictures. Included in Balance , Queensland Art Gallery.
This record is a stub. You can help by adding more detail.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 September 1954
- Summary
- A painter and illustrator, who worked mainly in coloured pencil, painting book covers and large pictures. She was included in the 'Balance' exhibition at Queensland Art Gallery.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 19-Jul-87
- Age at death
- 33
Details
Latitude-32.2675086 Longitude150.8905694 Start Date1936-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Muswellbrook, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1936
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1987
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude-36.840556 Longitude174.74 Start Date1928-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter, sketcher and art teacher, was born on 2 March 1928 in Auckland, New Zealand, daughter of Gertrude and Leonard Goldfinch. The family arrived at Sydney on 9 June 1936. On 16 November 1951 Melba married Allan Wesley Symons. Allan worked as a 'flying dentist’ in the Northern Territory from about 1955 to 1961 and they lived there. They had four children: Suellen (b.1955), a photographic artist, Peter (b.1958), a television director and cameraman, Melanie (b.1961), a writer, and Matthew (b.1961), a printer and sculptor.
As a mature age student, Melba Symons graduated from the Canberra School of Art in 1979 with a Diploma of Fine Arts (Visual). She travelled to Europe and Britain for three months in 1981 with her sister, Shirley. The wide range of subjects she employed in subsequent works included super-real portraiture, abstracted motifs and theatrical landscapes in pastel, pencil, acrylic, oil and watercolour. She was interested in the work of Cézanne, Adami and David Hockney as well as in Aboriginal art and culture; she worked with colour and light theory. She taught art, mainly to women, at Canberra Community Centres. She exhibited rarely but was included in a major Canberra Group exhibition at the Albert Hall in 1980.
Writers:
Symons, Suellen
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 March 1928
- Summary
- Painter, sketcher and art teacher, was interested in the work of Cézanne, Adami and David Hockney as well as in Aboriginal art and culture. She taught art, mainly to women, at Canberra Community Centres and was included in a major Canberra Group exhibition at the Albert Hall in 1980.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1987
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude49.4892913 Longitude8.4673098 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mannheim, Germany
- Biography
- Moegel was born at Mannheim, a small town in southern Germany, where he also studied art. He served on German submarines during World War II. He married Elsie (?) (b. 1924) and migrated to Australia when they settled near Cairns where Moegel worked with the local Aboriginal community. They moved to southeast Queensland where Herbert became acquainted with Ian Fairweather and was probably influenced by Fairweather’s style of abstraction. The couple finally moved to Cabarita, NSW, where they built house which incorporated a small studio upstairs.
Moegel exhibited locally at Tweed Heads, Kingscliffe and the Gold Coast where he contributed to the Gold Coast City Art Prize from 1971 to 1975. He held a solo exhibition in Sydney during the 1970s. He taught at the Murwullimbah TAFE for two years around this time as well as conducting lessons and holding exhibitions of his work in his home. He died on emphysema in 1987 and his ashes were scattered off Cabarita Point.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2010
- Born
- b. 1923
- Summary
- Herbert Moegel came to Australia after the close of World War II, like many migrants, to establish a new life. The work he produced was abstracted and influenced by the Dreaming stories of Aboriginal people.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1987
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- Donald Ross, or Don as he was usually known, Cowen was considered to be promising early in his artistic career in Queensland. However, after leaving for overseas at the beginning of 1953, nothing more was heard about him on the local art scene. Nevertheless, he is noteworthy as someone who pursued his art throughout his life, particularly in some interesting collaborations between art and science. Born in Brisbane in 1920, he received his art training in that city, first from local teacher Melville Haysom, and then at the Central Technical College. Next he served in the Australian Army, joining up in 1942 and being discharged with the rank of lieutenant in 1946. Resuming his artistic career in Brisbane, he became a member of the Younger Artists Group of the Royal Queensland Art Society. He exhibited a watercolour of 'Cape Byron’ at the 'L.J. Harvey Memorial Fund Exhibition’ held at the Finney’s Art Gallery in March 1950, was included in the 'Christmas Exhibition of Paintings’ held at the Marodian Gallery in December of that year, and then had a joint exhibition with his friend Quentin Hole at the same venue in April 1951. In response to the latter, Courier-Mail reviewer, Elizabeth Young, declared: “Don Cowen, broad and emotional in his approach, is, on the whole and unexpectedly, most satisfying in one or two of his watercolours.” (Young, 1951, pg. 2). Two of his paintings formed part of the 'Exhibition of Queensland Art’ held at the Queensland National Art Gallery in September/October 1951, and again he was a participant in the Marodian Gallery’s 'Christmas Exhibition’ for 1951. A busy year was capped off with the Royal Queensland Art Society’s 63rd Annual Exhibition (November 1951) in which three of his oil paintings were displayed. In February 1953 a 'Farewell Exhibition’ was held for Cowen at the Johnstone Gallery (the successor to the Marodian Gallery, situated in the Brisbane Arcade). The gap in Cowen’s exhibition profile in 1952 is probably explained by his involvement, in partnership with Quentin Hole, in two major commissions at the University of Queensland at its new site in suburban St Lucia. In 1951, in addition to their other work, the two artists produced a long mural, 15.24 × 0.9 m, situated high up on one wall of the Geology Museum in the recently completed Richards Building. Titled The Age of Reptiles and painted in oil on concrete, it showed the changes in animal and plant life from the Permian to the Cretaceous periods. The impetus for this commission came from Geology Department staff members, who also provided scientific advice and probably suggested artistic models. A number of surviving sketches show that it involved careful planning. The success of this work prompted a second commission in 1952, a mural for the short end wall of the museum depicting the Age of Mammals in Australia, an innovative subject for this date. It was completed in December 1952, shortly before both Cowen and Hole departed for overseas early in 1953. The 'Farewell Exhibition’ marks the end of Cowen’s artistic career in Australia and his movements in the later 1950s are uncertain. However, it is clear that Cowen had settled in the United States, in Tucson, Arizona, by the early 1960s. A 1998 history of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Tucson notes that church member Cowen was their 'first “Artist of the Month”’ in September 1962 (eds. Call and Mathews, 1998, p. 23). A biographical note used for publicity at the time is quoted, revealing that the artist studied in England as well as Australia (eds. Call and Mathews, 1998, p. 23). It is also stated that: “He has designed settings and costumes for the ballet and legitimate theater, is a mural and portrait painter and watercolorist, abstract and landscape painter in all media. He teaches painting and drawing at his Tucson studio” (eds. Call and Mathews, 1998, p. 23). From 1965 to 1983, he worked as a scientific illustrator at the Optical Sciences Center of the University of Arizona. Art works with a scientific theme produced during this time include a large painting depicting an early use of solar energy at the Battle of Syracuse when Archimedes supposedly deflected the sun by means of polished shields, thereby setting fire to the enemy fleet. A sculpture which is situated outside the Optical Sciences Center building was made after a large glass disc fractured into several pieces during the process of forming it into a lens. Cowen also painted a large mural with the theme of 'Man and the Universe’ for the Flandrau Science Center at the University of Arizona (Wright, 2010, pers. comm. 2 March and 4 March). The artist died in Tucson on 1 April 1987, aged 66.
Writers:
Heckenberg, Kerry
Note:
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 28 July 1920
- Summary
- Don Cowen worked for only a few years in Australia, beginning as a promising younger artist in Brisbane in the early 1950s, before departing for overseas in 1953 and settling in Tucson, Arizona; however he did leave behind some interesting and unusual work in the form of two palaeoart murals painted (in collaboration with Quentin Hole) at the University of Queensland.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Apr-87
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Of the Pintupi/Wenampa tribe, Tutuma was one of the first Pintupi to own his own camels, which he used to go on extensive trips throughout his country west of Lake McDonald. An important ceremonial leader, he was one of the original group of painters at Papunya, eager to depict his Dreaming stories onto board with paint. He travelled to Sydney in 1981 with Mick Namarari and Nosepeg for an exhibition of paintings at Sid’s Gallery Darlinghurst. His country lay west of Lake McDonald across the WA border and around Lake Hopkins. He moved out to Kintore with the rest of the Pintupi at the beginning of the ’80s and continued painting for Papunya Tula Artists until the mid ’80s, although hampered by failing eyesight.
Writers:
Johnson, VivienNote: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1915
- Summary
- One of the first Pintupi to own his own camels and one of the original Papunya Tula Artists, Tutuma was always eager to depict his Dreaming stories in a loose energetic style.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1987
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-25 Longitude133 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1910
- Summary
- Bandt was an automotive engineer and automobile body designer for Ford Motor Company, Geelong, Victoria. Notable for his design of the Ford Utility vehicle in 1933 integrating one of the Ford sedans and a truck, it went into production in 1934. Bronze Medal awards in motorcar designs in 1947-48. Later developed designs for Ford stationwagon and Fairlane sedan.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-87
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-36.75 Longitude144.266667 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bendigo, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Roger Kemp, painter and etcher, was born in July 1908 in Bendigo, Victoria, second child of Frank Kemp, who worked at a nearby gold mine, and his mother Rebecca Kemp (née Harvey). The family relocated to the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra in 1913 after Roger Kemp’s father was seriously injured in a mining accident.
In 1929, Roger Kemp enrolled in drawing classes at the National Gallery Art School where he studied alongside fellow artists including John Vickery and Noel Counihan. During 1930-32 he attended the School’s night classes and in 1932 he enrolled in the Working Men’s College (now RMIT). Roger Kemp returned to the National Gallery School in 1933 where he studied for the next three years accompanied by students such as Clifford Bayliss, Nancy Grant and Ian MacFarlane. At the same time, Roger Kemp was largely self-taught, developing his own innovative artistic vision and becoming one of the key figures of abstract art in Australia.
Kemp’s early works of the 1930s were small in scale, figural, reflected the influence of Cézanne and were inspired by the idea of analogy between art and music. His later works drew upon both geometric abstraction and abstract expressionism and were thus composed of considered lines creating geometric shapes as well as expressive, impulsive brushstrokes. After an extended period of time working away from the public eye, Kemp held his first solo exhibition in 1945 at Velasquez Galleries, Melbourne. By the late 1940s his works had grown in size and abstraction. Squares and circles appeared as recurring motifs, often fragmented across a shallow picture plane.
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Roger Kemp worked in factories to support himself and his wife Merle Kemp. His profile soon rose when in the 1960s he won the John McCaughey Memorial Prize (1961) and the Blake Prize for Religious Art (1968 and also in 1970). In 1966 he embarked on his first trip overseas at the age of 58 and travelled extensively throughout Europe. From the late 1960s and into the 1970s, Kemp began to experiment with working on paper, producing a series of etchings.
Roger Kemp taught at Prahran College of Adult Education in 1970 and then moved to London where he lived and worked for two years (1970-72) in the studio of the Space, Provision, Artistic, Cultural and Educational Project (S.P.A.C.E.). In 1972 Kemp returned to Melbourne and maintained a print studio with George Baldessin in Collins Street, Melbourne. (An exhibition of his etchings was held in 1972 at Rudy Komon Gallery, Sydney, while the Art Gallery of New South Wales toured ‘Roger Kemp: etchings’ during 1990-91).
In 1978, in celebration of his seventieth birthday, several exhibitions of Kemp’s work were held simultaneously across a number of locations: Monash University Gallery (Early Work c.1933-1945), College of the Arts Gallery (Metaphysical Paintings c.1945-1955), Melbourne University Gallery (Maturity 1955-1975), and the National Gallery of Victoria (Paintings on Paper: sequences 1968-1975). Ninety-one paintings selected by Professor Patrick McCaughey, in consultation with the artist, were exhibited across the four sites, with a fifth site, Realities Galleries, Toorak, showing a further 25 works.
After a substantial and prolific career spanning more than five decades, Roger Kemp died in Melbourne, Victoria, on 14 September 1987. In the same year he was awarded the prestigious honour of an Order of Australia, a significant accolade that complemented the order of the British Empire that he had previously received in 1978.
Throughout his career Roger Kemp received several awards, for example the D’Arcy Memorial Prize for Religious Art (1964), the International Co-operation Art Award (1969) and the Distinguished Artists Award presented by the Australia Council (1973).
The art of Roger Kemp is represented in numerous Australian public collections such the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth and the Castlemaine Art Gallery, Castlemaine. His work is also held in the Mertz Collection USA and the Australian Chancery, Washington, USA, as well as private and corporate collections across Australia, the UK and the USA. In the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, and on display in the NGVI Great Hall, are tapestries based on paintings by Roger Kemp and woven by the Australian Tapestry Workshop, Melbourne.
Writers:
ecwubben
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 3 July 1908
- Summary
- The Melbourne based Roger Kemp developed his angular abstract paintings and prints in harmony with his deep felt spiritual values. Although he was hailed at first for his abstract work, there was always an underlying structure, citing Christian and other religious iconography.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Sep-87
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-38.228973 Longitude143.136785 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Camperdown, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1987
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude52.2928116 Longitude-3.73893 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wales, UK
- Biography
- Bernard Hesling, from a Yorkshire family, was born in 1905 while the family was temporarily in Wales. They returned to Yorkshire in 1907. He left school at age 15 and was apprenticed to a firm of painters and decorators. He studied art at Halifax night-school, where his teacher was the artist Joseph Mellor Hanson.
In 1928 he migrated to Australia and worked on Sydney shop-window displays. In 1929 he exhibited his abstract paintings but sold only three. He returned to London about 1930 and worked as a display artist. Later he was an art director at Elstree film studios, London, where he worked for three or four years. He returned to Sydney in 1939. During the war he did design work at Slazenger’s Munitions Annexe, Botany. In his spare time he drew political cartoons for The Daily Telegraph later joining that newspaper full time.
He left the Telegraph in 1946, moved to The Sydney Morning Herald , then to Smith’s Weekly where he decorated 'his merry writings with his own curious humorous drawings’ (Blaikie, 132). He was an art reviewer at the Sydney Observer until sacked for a critical review of a Blake exhibition he hadn’t seen.
Hesling painted wall murals from 1950 until about 1957 for commercial and business clients. In 1957 he took up vitreous enamel painting fired on steel plate – tables, ashtrays, wall panels etc – and he exhibited his vividly coloured artwork throughout Australia.
He moved from Sydney to Adelaide in 1962. At an exhibition of his enamels at Underwood Galleries in Sydney in 1965 Hesling said: 'I have expressed myself in many different ways in order to prove the validity and versatility of vitreous enamel as a painting medium. Painting in enamel is no harder than painting in oils – merely different.’(SMH 14 Nov 1965 p97)
He was awarded an OAM in 1985 for contributions to the visual, performing and literary arts and for pioneering in Australia the use of vitreous enamels. He died on 13 June 1987.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Tony Minchin
fishel
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 8 June 1905
- Summary
- Bernard Hesling was a mid-20th century UK-born painter who lived and worked in Sydney from 1928 until 1962, when he moved to Adelaide. He was a designer and muralist in the 1950s and later a successful vitreous-enamel painter who did much to foster vitreous-enamel artwork on steel plate in Australia. He was also a cartoonist, journalist and author of humorous autobiographical books.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Jun-87
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Mervyn Angela Jones was born in Brisbane on 6 February 1903. Her father, Captain Mervyn Jones, was responsible for the marine surveying of the New Guinea coast while her mother, Zoe Annie Clara née Pollard, had considerable artistic skills as evidenced by a large painting of Port Moresby dated 1893 (private collection). Consequently, after she completed her schooling, Jones studied at the Central Technical College under Martyn Roberts and L. J. Harvey from 1919 to 1921. (She received Honours for Freehand Drawing I and passes for Modelling I and Design I in 1919.)
Mervyn, together with friends from the college, Misses Hope McKenzie, Enid Morgan Jones and Nancy Wilson, conducted a craft shop, Artcraft Studio, from 1922 to 1939. Miss Jones was the potter of the group and had her own coal-fired kiln (one of the very few in Brisbane) at her home at 'Merrilees’, Tennyson. Glazing and firing was a 'hit or miss’ procedure as she had to learn everything from books. She ceased her association with Artcraft Studio in the early 1930s when her hands became infected and she was not able to continue potting. She exhibited pottery with Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association 1922-24 and, together with watercolours, at the Royal Queensland Art Society in 1932.
Subsequently she gained a considerable reputation for her floral decorations in the foyer of the Wintergarden Theatre, Queen Street which she produced for a period of 14 years. Later Miss Jones became well known as a social announcer for radio 4BC. She died in Brisbane on 7 July 1987.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 February 1903
- Summary
- For Miss Jones and her co-workers, the Artcraft Studio was the first outlet for hand-crafted wares in Brisbane. Jones was also a capable potter in her own right and a graduate of the Central Technical College where she studied under L. J. Harvey and Martyn Roberts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Jul-87
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.8961132 Longitude151.1801893 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newtown, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Amateur painter, businessman and collector of aviation history, was born on 18 October 1902, a descendant of 'Old’ Crome the English watercolour painter. Married to Virtie Ivery [sic apparently – from manuscript by Crome], he worked in Newtown and lived, apparently, at Maroubra. Most of his time was spent as a passionate aviation collector. His large aviation collection was given and sold ($15,000) to the National Library of Australia at the end of 1965 and he acted as a consultant to the library on aviation acquisitions as part of the deal. Included in the lifetime collection he sold to the library were several paintings by Crome himself (now NLA), including a reconstruction of the first balloon ascent in Australia.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 October 1902
- Summary
- Amateur painter, businessman and collector of aviation history. Resident of Maroubra, NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1987
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.829075 Longitude151.24409 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mosman, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, illustrator and author, was born at Mosman, Sydney, on 3 December 1900, daughter of Herbert Joseph Birmingham, a doctor who was also a black-and-white artist, author of children’s books, a strict disciplinarian and a devout Catholic. Herbert’s wife was an alcoholic whom he had left behind in their native Ireland and Karna’s mother was Birmingham’s live-in maid, Kahn Marie Nielsen, a Danish woman who had previously born Herbert a son, Herbert Joseph junior. Karna was educated at Loreto College, Kirribilli. Encouraged by her father, she studied under Julian Ashton at Ashton’s Sydney Art School in 1914-20. Because 'of a lack of faith in myself & my Father’s dinning it into me from childhood that I’d never make a go of painting’, she decided 'to stick to my pen-and-ink’. Birmingham taught at Ashton’s in 1921, the year she and Olive Crane were mentioned in the Sydney Mail as young artists 'with ambitious ideas’. Birmingham was Hon. Sec. for an exhibition by 10 women held in Sydney, which sold well and received positive criticism. The following year Home reproduced her photograph by Judith Fletcher and called her 'one of the cleverest black-and-white young Australians’.
In the 1920s Birmingham exhibited with the Society of Artists alongside her friends Anne Dangar , Isabel Huntley and Grace Crowley . In 1922, for instance, Crowley exhibited a good pencil drawing of a head of an elderly woman while Birmingham showed a 'Pen drawing’ of a little girl by the edge of a river. For financial reasons, however, Birmingham was obliged to seek full-time employment and from 1922 worked at Farmer Bros. department store as a commercial artist, ticket writer and window dresser. In a letter to Mary Eagle dated 8 September 1976, she recalled: ' ...it was like being turned out of the Garden of Eden. “Commercial Art!” said one of my student friends [Dangar] “ I thought you were going to be a real artist!”’ She continued to exhibit with the Society of Artists and the Society of Women Painters in the 1920s and participated in the first exhibition of work by the Younger Group of Australian Artists, held at Anthony Hordern’s gallery in 1924. The Birthday , a story she wrote and illustrated, was published in the sophisticated art student magazine Undergrowth May-June 1927; her linocut of a tailor mending the wing of a small female angel appeared there in 1928.
Karna illustrated several children’s books, including her own Skippety Songs (Sydney, 1934), two editions of Amy Mack’s Scribbling Sue (Sydney, 1923 & 1925), The Fantail’s House (1928), The Flower Fairies (1928), The Gum Leaf that Flew (1928) and three editions (1924, 1925, 1928) of Amy Mack’s Bushland Stories ( Joyce Dennys illustrated the first edition, c.1921). Karna also illustrated Teens (1923, 1924, 1925 & 1927 edns) by Amy Mack’s sister, Louise. William Moore called her as an illustrator with a 'distinctive imaginative outlook… whose studies of children are very well drawn’.
In 1938 Karna contracted trachoma, a contagious disease of the eyes, and did not paint or draw again until 1974. She had married Robert Turvey in 1930 who, according to Terry Birmingham, drank himself to death. In 1949 she married again. She and her second husband, Arthur Alva Livingstone, ran a strawberry farm at Gosford then moved to Narooma where they had guest cabins. After Arthur shot himself in 1958, Karna moved to Turrumurra. According to Butler, she had a large house and studio there and, despite continuing problems with her eyesight, painted until the year before she died at Neutral Bay Nursing Home on 5 July 1987. Terry Birmingham says she lived in a small two-bedroom house and that her 'studio’ was the garage. According to her nephew, a friend moved Karna into the nursing home only days before she died.
Birmingham’s pen drawings, The Quince Tree and Creepers , were purchased for the Art Gallery of NSW in 1920. The Quince Tree was reproduced in a special Society of Artists Pictures number of Art in Australia that year. A collection of Karna’s papers, mainly of the 1920s-30s, remains in private collection. It includes over 20 drawings, largely of people and cats, albums and framed photographs, a collection of verses called Tinpot and two semi-biographical, manuscript novels. Birmingham also produced many exquisitely drawn bookplates; her own was given to the DAA by Mary Eagle.
IMAGES: mysterious b/w illustration (ML); Myra Cocks’s bookplate (NGA); In the Wake of the “Cheerio” 1937, linocut cover of book (NGA, ill. Butler SBD 1991, 25); 'The Quince Tree’ (AGNSW); Undergrowth linocut. Her (Four Children Fleeing from a Bat) n.d. (1920s), ink and watercolour 30.1 × 21.5 cm, Dixson Galleries, SLNSW, is clearly an illustration to a children’s story though no book using it has been located. Karna Birmingham illustrated several books for children, including her own Skippety Songs (1934) and Scribbling Sue by Amy Mack (1928). Other illustrations tend to be less intricate, suggesting that this was an early work made before her eyesight began to fail. Yet all her known illustrations are well drawn, lively and unsentimental. Even her 1920s bookplate for Myra Cocks , which shows cherubs attending the artist, is by no means saccharine; it is as much a joke about Cocks’s youthful angelic looks and far from angelic behaviour as a reference her penchant for illustrating fairy tales.
Other images establish a quite sinister atmosphere with minimal means, including a pen-and-ink illustration (ML) of three adults in early Victorian costume standing in a doorway, a woman with a warning finger to her lips facing a man shielding a young dishevelled woman from the view of anyone inside the house. Birmingham’s ability to create atmosphere, whether of pleasure, distress or the up-and-downs of contemporary childhood life, is as evident in this delicate drawing as in her 'lovely fluid line’ drawings for the 1920s reprint of Louise Mack’s Teens (first published in 1897), admired by Marcie Muir. As Muir comments, 'given greater opportunity, she would have been an outstanding children’s illustrator’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 3 December 1900
- Summary
- Karna Marie Birmingham was an illustrator of children's books and arguably may have been more widely acknowledged if she had not contracted an eye disease in 1938 that limited her artistic career.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Jul-87
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-30.9554038 Longitude148.3885885 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Coonamble, NSW, Coonamble?, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- silversmith, painter, textile designer, mural artist, window dresser, interior designer, journalist, lecturer and teacher, was very active from the 1920s to the 1970s.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1899
- Summary
- One of the three Burkitt sisters, who were active practitioners, teachers and patrons in the promotion of twentieth-century design in Sydney. Through her teaching and Marion Best's shop, she had a pivotal role in nurturing the growth of young artists such as Ann Gyngell and Marea Gazzard. Her influence extended to art criticism and she served on the editorial board of the magazine "Architecture and Arts and the Modern Home".
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1987
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tasmania
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1899
- Summary
- Hammerstein opened an interior design practice in New York in the early 1930s working as Dorothy Hammerstein Inc. After practicing in the United States, she retired in the mid-1950s. She initially worked as an actress/singer in the USA and later married Oscar Hammerstein, the composer in 1929.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-87
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-37.3536857 Longitude144.5341381 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Woodend, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator and painter, contributed to the Bulletin circa WWI, e.g. The Payment of Salome (re German head on a platter) 27 April 1916, 13; The Expression Celestial . '[Aussie digger in France] 'BILLJIM: “Say, Gustave, tell me something nice to say to her.”/ GUSTAVE: “Say 'Vous etes ange!’”/ BILLJIM (doubtfully): “But what does 'ange’ mean?”/ GUSTAVE: “Oh, he mean – er – blankee bonzaire!’” 18 November 1917; Diagnosis (re sadistic doctor) 28 February 1918, 10.
Colahan illustrated The Heart of the School: An Australian School Story (Melbourne, J. Roy Stevens, 1920) by Eustace Boylan, an Irish Jesuit priest who was Prefect of Studies at Xavier College, Melbourne, during the period his novel for boys is set. Colahan’s illustration in Niall (p.163) is a line drawing very like a cartoon.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Melbourne meldrumite painter and a cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1987
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1896
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1987
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-36.8554763 Longitude174.7805576 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parnell, Auckland, New Zealand
- Biography
- caricaturist, cartoonist, painter, sculptor and collage artist, was born in Parnell, a suburb of Auckland, NZ, on 16 March 1895 (Renniks). He was selling drawings to local Auckland newspapers at the age of 14. While apprenticed as a lithographer on the New Zealand Herald from 1914 he studied for two years at the Elam School of Art, sharing his Auckland studio with the cartoonist Unk White , among others. When war broke out Finey served with the NZ Expeditionary Force in France as an under-aged private for three and a half years (Caban, 41, says with New Zealand Transport Corps), then was appointed an official war artist.
Sergeant Finey spent his post-Armistice leave studying at London’s Regent Street Polytechnic School of Art for three months then had to leave for Wellington on the Tainui . Finding, he said, 'After four years and 50 days in the N.Z.E.F. in Egypt and France, there was no work for me at home’, he left for Sydney in November 1919, penniless. He also felt stifled by New Zealand’s strait-laced conformity. In Sydney he contributed joke cartoons to Aussie and the Bulletin until 1921 when Alek Sass, art editor of Smith’s Weekly , engaged him as a staff artist at £9 a week (annually increased until he was finally paid £2,000 p.a.). Cartoons done during his 10 years at Smith’s include: The Spirit of Anzac 28 April 1928, 3; Asking for it (man with bum as target, in set of drawings called 'Finey’s Outlook on Life’, 12 January 1929, 23; St. Peter announces the 10 per cent. cut in Paradise 20 September 1930, 1; They Struggle On, and On, and On! 4 April 1931, 22; two original cartoons collected by Thomas Finch Roy Ottaway (ML PXD 619/13) connected with Mercantile Rowing Club, presented 1994. An outstanding caricaturist, he initiated the popular 'Man of The Week’ feature in 1922, his first subject being Archbishop Mannix of Melbourne (ill. Blaikie, 73). Many others followed (originals ML?). Many of Finey’s cartoons also appears in Salt ( e.g. Vol. 8, No. 13, 28 August 1944, p 2) but there is some speculation that these were reproduced from other papers.
Finey became known around Smith’s as 'the Bolshie’ after drawing a cartoon of the NSW coalminers’ strike, Mass Picketing . Editor Frank Marien put off publishing it until Virgil Reilly bet him £2 that he wouldn’t, so he did (acc. Blaikie?). It led to recriminations. Finey considered his left-wing sympathies 'truthfulness’ (Caban 42-43), especially in the light of increasing lack of editorial freedom for cartoonists. Vane Lindesay states that he was sacked from Smith 's for wanting to hold an exhibition of his originals, which the paper claimed it owned. He took Smith 's to court, won, and was given his originals along with his dismissal notice.
In the late 1920s he contributed caricatures of NZ politicians based on photographs to Pat Lawlor’s NZ Artists’ Annual . Other freelance contributions were to the Australian Budget , e.g. (two dandies) 'HAROLD: “This dashed depression is too simply awful”/ ETHELRED: “Yes; I have deprived myself of bath salts, but when I think of the vast army of unemployed who have done likewise, I don’t feel the blow so much”’, 12 December 1930 (see file); '[MAN]: “What’s the trouble with my wife, doctor?”/ [FAT DOCTOR]: “I don’t know – she’s not dead yet!”’ 7 November 1930, 18. A strongly political cartoon of a fanged gorilla holding weapons and money , Sitting on Top of the World-War Debts , appeared in Ure Smith’s society magazine Home in March 1931, 23. Finey was one of the founders of the New Theatre in 1932 (when it was known as the Workers’ Art Club). He was its first president and when new clubrooms were acquired at 36 Pitt Street, held the first exhibition there, opened by Dame Sybil Thorndike, showing paintings, cartoons and other works (Fox).
Finey freelanced for a while, then accepted a job drawing political cartoons for the Sydney Labor Daily , though this meant taking a pay cut of £30 a week from his Smith’s salary, to £10. It was here, however, that he is considered to have best captured the mood of the Depression, e.g. (Coleman & Tanner, ills 38-39, 41-44, 70, 108, 174), Basic Wage February 1931, Dole Queue September 1931 (which Mary Eagle says prefigures similar representations by Bergner, Counihan and Vic O’Connor by more than a decade); The Most Reverend Michael Kelly DD, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney ; The Illegal Gift 16 May 1932; The Branding Iron 1932 (ill. King, 120); and (after Governor Game dismissed the Lang government) Plutocracy/ Autocracy May 1932 (ill. Caban 46-7).
He had free reign on Labor Daily for about six months, then found his cartoons were increasingly being rejected. A year later he was sacked, which he blamed on the influence of Albert Willis, a Jack Lang offsider, Lang being one of Finey’s major targets. Again unemployed and on the dole, he was surprisingly offered a job on Truth by Ezra Norton, but it did not last long either (there is some speculation it was only two years). Perceived anti-British sentiments in a cartoon about the departing Governor of NSW, Sir Phillip Game, whom Finey had been caricaturing for years (e.g. when he’d sacked the Lang government in 1932), was said to have lost the paper advertising revenue and Finey was reprimanded by Norton and editor Mark Gallard. (Game, on the other hand, sent him a letter inquiring whether he could purchase the original, stating that he had a scrapbook of cuttings of the many caricatures Finey had drawn of him: Caban 42-46.)
He contributed to Saga: A protest in linocuts by the Worker Artists , published by the Worker newspaper in 1933 [c.1932-35 acc. JH] (ML F7741/W) (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 106), e.g. lino block depicting a skeleton head with a factory crown spewing/eating workers, with a splash of red blood for effect.
About the same time Finey contributed 'Armistice Day’, a bleak illustration to Geoffrey Cumine’s poem 'The Crimson Path’, Railroad 10 November 1933 (ML, ill. Kirkpatrick, 251), which ends:
“Remember such as set the path
Whereon the soldiers died…
Unheedful of the aftermath,
They lied, my Lord, they lied.”
Original Bulletin cartoons (ML) include six drawings of 1920 and 1934, and 11 caricatures of 1930, 1940, 1945 (including one of Bruce Dellit). He drew cartoons for the left Red Leader (21 August 1931-July 1935) and for the capitalist Daily Telegraph , where he was political cartoonist from at least 1936: three originals, Signs of the Times published DT October 1936, Non-aggression pacts – Portugal, Germany, Italy, Spain – scraps of paper , published 1 October 1936, and another published 17 March 1937, are at ML PXD 619 (collected by Thomas Finch Roy Ottaway and presented in 1994). An original c.1940s cartoon is at ML PXD 764, while EVICTED [showing Sir Eric Spooner as a landlady evicting a little man in a bowler hat] “I’m not having any of your common type here” [1940s?] and another about Local Government Amending Bill in the Spooner Papers (ML mss) were evidently also for the DT . A 1941 cartoon is illustrated in Coleman & Tanner (p.130).
Finey and Will Mahony left the Telegraph in 1945 after refusing to draw an anti-Labor propagandist subject demanded by the editor. Mahony was fired but there are differing accounts about whether Finey, as his replacement, was fired or resigned. Finey then drew for the Federated Miners’ newspaper the Common Cause , often producing versions of his Worker prints, e.g. Daily Press , 20 July 1946, 3 (acc. Graeme Byrne). He ended his newspaper career producing political cartoons for the communist weekly Tribune .
Finey was especially admired in his lifetime for his caricatures. An issue of Art in Australia devoted to them was published on 15 June 1931 (they alone are numerous in ML). A lifelong bohemian, he always wore a white shirt and white trousers and was coatless, hatless and sockless whatever the weather. His photograph at the Artists’ Ball in Pix (23 April 1938, 34) is captioned: 'George Finey, famous Australian caricaturist and cartoonist, arrived in full evening dress – except trousers. Startling effect was enhanced by Artist Finey doing a wild dance. Moustache is false.’
He was equally dedicated to the fine arts. His 1935 solo exhibition was the first exhibition of 'modern art’ to be held at David Jones Gallery. It included The Milky Way , a cluster of coloured marbles set in wood decorated with whorls of oil paint direct from the tube and framed in corrugated iron. Late in life he held exhibitions of his paintings and collages in Japan, London and New York. From the late 1970s until his death in June 1987, aged 92, he lived in a humble cottage at Warimoo in the Blue Mountains. At his last painting exhibition, held in the Blue Mountains when he was in his eighties, he accepted the tag 'the last of the great bohemians’ (there’s a good description of his 'bohemianisms’ in Caban, 40), although during the 1920s he lived with his wife at Mosman (see Joe Lynch ). By 1940 he was long married (to Nellie) and living at Turramurra, an outer Sydney suburb, then utterly rural and non-bohemian (Unk White, 'My rendezvous with reminiscence’, Second Laugh Anthology 1940, 19). In his eighties in the Blue Mountains he continued to experiment with avant-garde ideas that combined art and music. A retrospective was held at the Sydney Opera House in 1978.
Finey was an inaugural member of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Society in 1924. All 25 (male) inaugural members contributed to 'the first publication issued under the auspices of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists’, The U.S.A. Fleet Souvenir , published in July 1925 to commemorate a visit of the American Fleet to Sydney (ill. Lindesay 1994, 7). The 48-page book, which cost 1/-, included cartoons and comic strips by: Garnet Agnew , Jack Baird , Stan Cross , F.H. Cumberworth, W. Dowman, “Driff” (Lance Driffield), George Finey, Cecil Hartt, Joe Jonsson, Frank Jessop, Fred Knowles, George Little, Brodie Mack, Hugh Maclean, Arthur Mailey, Syd Miller, Syd Nicholls, Mick Paul, Jack Quayle, Reg Russom, Cyril Samuels, Jack Waring, Harry J. Weston, Unk White and John Wiseman , while the writer and poet Will Lawson contributed verses. 'A major contribution… was the wonderful series of caricatures of American high-ranking naval officers drawn by George Finey, then working with Smith’s Weekly ', says Vane Lindesay (1994, 9). He remained a lifelong member of its successor, the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club, attending the 1986 presentation of the Bulletin Stanley awards only a few months before he died.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 16 March 1895
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Auckland and Sydney left-wing caricaturist, cartoonist, painter, sculptor and collage artist. Infamous for his bohemian lifetsyle.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Jun-87
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-37.8576088 Longitude145.0350666 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Malvern, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, art teacher, writer and collector of child art, was born in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern on 15 November 1894. For a few years c.1903-6 her family lived in New Zealand then in Ireland where she attended classes at the Belfast School of Art. The Andersons returned to Australia in 1906 and Frankie (as she was known) spent her teenage years in rural Victoria, where she taught herself drawing and sculpture. At the age of sixteen she went to Melbourne to study at the National Gallery School (1911-13). There she met her lifelong friends Ethel Spowers and Mary Cecil Allen . She took additional classes in sculpture and design at the Eastern Suburbs Technical College, finally qualifying as an art teacher from Swinburne Tech. In 1916 she was appointed foundation art teacher at the Junior Technical School for Girls. Because government policy forbade the employment of married women, this career ended after her marriage to Alfred Plumley Derham in 1917.
Derham took an active interest in the Arts and Crafts Society (Vic.). Inspired by Baldwin Spencer, she began to incorporate Aboriginal motifs into her designs from 1925, particularly in her linocuts of the 1930s. Her interest in Aboriginal art was no passing phase. In 1938 she visited Hermannsburg Mission in Central Australia and taught art to the young children there. She collected more than 200 drawings on this visit, which she showed in numerous exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart. In 1948 she travelled to the Aurukun Mission in far North Queensland and once again taught art to the children of the settlement. She visited Papua New Guinea for five days in 1960 and again in 1967.
From 1928 to 1963 Derham was an art teacher at the Melbourne Kindergarten Training College at Kew, where she influenced several thousand teachers. She also taught in the teacher-training program at Mercer House Associated Teachers Training College. Much of her energy was devoted to the reform of art education in Victoria through her many publications and by serving on numerous committees in the 1950s-70s. In the 1960s she represented Australia at congresses held by the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) at Manila and Montreal.
Derham was also involved in many community activities, including war relief work during World War II. In 1950 was awarded the MBE for services to the community. Despite a steady output of paintings and drawings Derham never practised full time as an artist. Nevertheless, she continued to expand her skills. In the 1930s she studied printmaking with Ethel Spowers and Eveline Syme and painting, sporadically, with George Bell from the 1930s until he died in the 1960s. She rarely exhibited, preferring to give her work away. The most comprehensive exhibition of her art was held at Jim Alexander’s Important Women Artists’ gallery in 1986. She died in Melbourne on 5 November 1987 and was buried at Kew.
Frances Derham donated her personal papers to the University of Melbourne and her children’s art collection of some 7,000 paintings and drawings to the National Gallery of Australia in 1976. A few of her own prints are in public collections, but her paintings and collages are held privately.
Writers:
Piscitelli, Barbara
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 November 1894
- Summary
- Frances Alexander Mabel Letitia Derham (née Anderson) was a painter, printmaker, art teacher, writer and collector of child art. She was the Australian representative at congresses held by the International Society for Education through Art (InSEA) at Manila and Montreal in the 1960s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Nov-87
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- CHECKhis pink and purple paintings of serene river landscapes were keenly sought in the 1980s, often nudging six-figures. But his prices have since fallen dramatically making his paintings less profitable to forge. Refunds, however, were paid on two dubious paintings by Bennett sold at Lawson-Menzies on 20 November 2001, while Noon Day Campsite sold at Goodmans on 19 November as by Bennett was declared a fake by artist Colin Parker (son of the owner of Parker’s Gallery, The Rocks, where Bennett had shown his work), Edward Craig and Vi Bennett, the artist’s widow. Both carried labels from Artlovers Gallery, Artarmon (Artarmon Gallery), now run by Philip Breckenreg who said his father, John, sold only about 20 works by Bennett, usually resales. Bennett, who was also an art dealer, sold most of his paintings himself. Macquarie Galleries labels have also appeared on suspect works.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
zauthor
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1893
- Summary
- William Rubery Bennett was an artist and art gallery owner from Brisbane who lived and worked in Sydney for much of his career.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1987
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-34.188889 Longitude142.158333 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1987-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mildura, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Harold Hughan, called “Buzz” by his close friends, was born in Mildura, the second of ten children born to Emily (née Clayton) and Randolph Hughan. He spent most of his childhood in Hamilton. It was here that he was first apprenticed as a mechanical engineer. In 1910 he moved to Geelong where he completed a correspondence course to qualify as an electrical engineer.In 1915 he enlisted in the AIF and subsequently served on the Western Front, being commissioned as a lieutenant in 1918. In 1919 he married Lily Booth. The couple returned to Australia the following year. He subsequently worked as an electrical engineer until his retirement in 1963.Hughan had always been interested in crafts especially woodwork and weaving. In 1940 his wife Lily and son Robert introduced him to pottery. As with many in the English speaking world, he was profoundly influenced by Bernard Leach’s studio approach in 'A Potter’s Book’. In 1941 he put his engineering skills to good use by designing and constructing a Leach style potters wheel from the crankshaft of a motorcar engine. He also designed and built a kiln at the studio he established at his Glen Iris home.
His son, Robert, became a ceramic technologist with the CSIRO. Both men collaborated on developing stoneware bodies and glazes. As a result, Harold was able to create the effects he had envisaged using stoneware, porcellaneous stoneware and earthenware. These were decorated with celadon, tenmoku, oatmeal and gold metallic glazes with slip decoration, sometimes incised.
Harold Hughan was honoured with retrospective exhibitions in 1969 and 1983, both at the National Gallery of Victoria, both curated by Kenneth Hood.
Writers:
Ross Barnard
Joanna Mendelssohn
7write6
Date written:
2019
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 11 July 1893
- Summary
- Although Harold Hughan admired the genius of the Song and T’ang dynasty potters, his own practice as a studio potter was devoted to developing a distinctive Australian idiom.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Oct-87
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude40 Longitude-100 Start Date1947-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- USA
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1947
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1986
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude53.7975 Longitude-1.543611 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leeds, England, UK
- Biography
- Laurence Collinson was born in Leeds, England in 1925, the only child of David and Sarah Collinson. After moving first to New Zealand, the family came to settle in Brisbane while Laurence was still a young child. David Collinson was an importer/exporter and the family lived in comfortable circumstances in a Kangaroo Point flat, although their fortunes fluctuated as David Collinson also gambled. Collinson was educated locally and, together with fellow students Barrie (later Barrett) Reid and Cecel Knopke, established the Senior Tabloid of the Brisbane State High School in 1943. In 1944 this student literary journal made the transition to a national bi-monthly magazine for youth. Under the name Barjai , the journal survived until 1949. After the famous Ern Malley hoax involving the Adelaide publication Angry penguins in 1945, Barjai became more directly involved with the visual arts.
Collinson’s interests were artistic as well as literary. During this time he took private art lessons and, as he became aware of the various modern art movements, produced paintings in different styles. A junior section of the Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS) had been established in 1941 and members exhibited in the annual exhibitions of the parent body. A watercolour painting by Collinson, View from Oxley Memorial Library , was included in the junior section in the Society’s 1944 annual exhibition. The junior members decided that they would hold an independent exhibition following that of the senior members in 1945 and received the approval of the Council to do so. They became the Younger Artists Group of the RQAS, and held their first exhibition 29 Oct. – 1 Nov. 1945. Earlier in the year Collinson briefly attended the Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney, where he lodged in a room above the Studio of Realist Art. The socialist concerns of that group probably inspired Collinson to become the polemicist of the group as reflected in his catalogue foreword to the Younger Artists Group exhibition:
Queensland art today is practically sterile. Year after year the same pretty still-lifes, the same pretty landscapes, the same pretty figure studies are disgorged in their hundreds. Technically pleasing many of these paintings are, but the ability to make a good representation of a natural object on canvas is no proof that the craftsman is also an artist. It would seem the discoveries and re-discoveries in art over the past fifty years, the wars, the revolutions, the terrible events that have taken place in that time, have made little or no impression on our local painters: they are working with their eyes closed.
This provocative statement caused considerable offence to the parent body so the RQAS Council imposed a 20 year upper age limit on group members, effectively removing Collinson from participation in the Younger Artists Group. This sparked the formation of the Miya Studio, which held its first exhibition in the basement of the School of Arts in Stanley Street on 12 December 1945 and was opened by Dr Gertrude Langer. The Miya Studio shared key members, including Collinson, with the Barjai literary grou
Collinson moved to Melbourne in the early 1950s and lived with his family in East St Kilda, where he began an extensive literary production that eventually included ten plays and books of poetry. It seems Collinson’s career as a painter did not extend much beyond his time in Queensland. After he returned to England in 1964 he became a prominent gay rights activist.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2002
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 September 1925
- Summary
- Laurence Collinson was a significant youth activist in Brisbane in the early post World War Two period both as a member of both the Bajai literary group and the Miya Studio painters.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Nov-86
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-37.8334603 Longitude144.9570188 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, cartoonist and caricaturist, was born in South Melbourne. Although he attended evening classes at the National Gallery School in 1930, he was mostly self-taught as an artist. He did a linocut cover for the second issue of Proletariat (organ of the Melbourne University Labor Club) vol.1 no.2, July 1932 and drew weekly caricatures for the Melbourne Argus from 1935. He also did caricatures for the Bulletin , Table Talk and Sun News-Pictorial during the Depression years. As 'Cunningham’ he did the cover 'Port Kembla Solidarity’ for the Trade Union Leader (Central organ of militant unionism), vol.1, no.8, March 1936 and the linocut Tycoon , 1931 (initialled 'C’ for Cunningham; copy owned Pat Counihan lent to S.H. Ervin black and white show). The Art Gallery of Western Australia has an original 1937 caricature of H.M. Jackson done for the Bulletin (957/0D54) and the Mitchell Library also owns original caricatures of various prominent men, now mostly forgotten.
Influenced by George Finey , the German Simplicissimus artists and the full-page cartoons of the American William Gropper in the left-wing journal New Masses , Counihan contributed to publications in London, Melbourne, Sydney, New Zealand (gallery of prominent New Zealanders, NZ Observer 1939-41), Warsaw and Prague. He began painting in 1941; he also made lots of prints. In Melbourne he was a foundation member of the Workers’ Art Club and of the Print Council of Australia (later president); for a time he was chairman of the Victorian Printmakers’ Group. He was one of ten artists in the 'Melbourne Popular Art Group’ who produced a folio of fourteen linocuts, Eureka 1854-1954 (Melbourne 1954), paying tribute to 'the stand of the Ballarat miners in the Eureka Stockade’ (copy Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery); numbers 2 (“Joe! Joe! The Traps are coming”), 4 ('The Magistrate’) and 5 ('On Bakery Hill’) are his.
Counihan’s contributions to Overland included writing and illustrating 'Scenes of Venice’, no.9 (autumn 1957), 20-21, 'Russian Scenes’, 10 (spring 1957), 20-21, etc.
IMAGE: 'Albert Namatjira’ 1959, linocut edn 50 (copies at Queensland Art Gallery [QAG]; Art Gallery of New South Wales; National Gallery of Australia; et al.). Counihan first met Namatjira in February 1954 and sketched his portrait. Five years later, when Namatjira was being prosecuted for providing liquor to his extended family, Counihan organised a letter of protest to the Menzies Government. In 1959, the year of this linocut, Counihan wrote passionately in Namatjira’s support in Tribune (1 April). Namatjira died three months after his release from prison (see Bernard Smith biog.). The print was included in Sotheby’s Fine Australian Paintings 22-23 April 1996, cat.344 with this information (estimate $500-800).
He also drew a caricature of Mick Armstrong of the Age with his nose being manipulated by the bosses to draw cartoons (ill. King, 1st edn, p. 136).
Worked for Worker or Common Cause cartoon of the 1930s? “An Important Conversation” (man and woman in street) and “In a Foundry” (working men in foreground and two bosses on other side of wall) are two of the six lithographs in his 1948 folio done in Simplissimus style (QAG). A folio of six linocuts (1959) includes “Peace means Life”, “Strontium 90”, “Hunger” and “An Old Man”. The Broadsheet (8 issues, QAG; donated Pat Corrigan) was a large single sheet of relief prints, screenprinting and printer’s type on contemporary social issues, produced in six issues at Melbourne from October 1967 to July 1971. No.1 (1967), screenprint with typset text on paper, edn. 372/1000, 63.5 × 50.5cm, anti-Vietnam 'Napalm Sunday – Coming next year – Ash Wednesday’, was illustrated by Noel Counihan et al. Counihan was also in no.4, 'Up You Cazaly’ (the football issue), 1968, and in no.6, 'A Time for Peace’, 1979. In 1998 Josef Lebovic was offering Counihan’s 'The Good Life’, 1968, pen and wash, for $7,500.
The 1999 S.H. Ervin b/w show included 9 works by Counihan from the Pat Counihan collection: the linocuts 'Tycoon’ (1931), 'Albert Namatjira’ (1959), 'Laughing Christ’ (1970) and 'Demonstrator’ (1978), the original ink cartoon 'The Crisis Facing Us – From the “Land of the Golden Fleece” to Monopoly Capitalism, Censorship and Repression’ (not dated), and three bronze cartoons done late in life (1970s?), 'Laughing Christ’, 'Rabelais’ and two versions of 'On the blower’, depicting a capitalist on the phone, one naked.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1913
- Summary
- Important mid 20th century Melbourne political painter, printmaker, cartoonist and caricaturist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1986
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- painter and advertising artist, was born in Launceston on 3 April 1911; he studied commercial art in Melbourne and worked in advertising 1930-34, then as a newspaper artist for the Launceston Examiner . Enlisted in AIF 1940 and spent 1942-45 as a POW in Timor, Java and Japan. Sketches done as POW are his best-known works.
Returned to Launceston and taught at Launceston Tech. Later he went back to advertising art and painting. Member Tasmanian Group of Painters, Launceston Art Society and Victorian Artists’ Society.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
stokel
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 3 April 1911
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Launceston art teacher, painter and advertising artist. Known for sketches made while a Prisoner of War during WWII.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1986
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-37.823 Longitude144.998 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Richmond, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 11 February 1908
- Summary
- Painter and art teacher, trained at the National Gallery School. Nephew of pottery glaze specialist Jack Gare.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1986
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1907
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 14-Dec-86
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-31.95 Longitude141.466667 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Broken Hill, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- caricaturist and cartoonist, son of a newspaper linotype operator, was born in Broken Hill. He moved to Adelaide with his family at the age of two and was educated there. After leaving school, he became a cadet reporter on the Adelaide News in 1923. Inspired by May and Low’s cartoons in the Bulletin , he taught himself to draw and changed his job, becoming the first black-and-white artist employed by the Adelaide Register . His first cartoon was published there in 1928 then reproduced in London’s Evening Standard , according to Germaine. The Register expired during the Depression and Coventry freelanced, mainly doing 'art deco’ portrait caricatures for the Bulletin in the 1930s and for several Adelaide newspapers. During WWII his blocky, simple line strip Alec the Airman was featured in the Mail (1941 example ill Lindesay 1979, 278). In about 50 years of newspaper work Coventry is said to have had over 30,000 caricatures and cartoons published in over 100 newspapers and magazines, including the Bulletin , the Adelaide News , Mail , Advertiser , Register and Register Pictorial , as well as in book anthologies and overseas. His cricket cartoons on A. P. Chapman’s England touring cricket team were published in London’s Evening Standard in 1928-29. He was, however, best known as a caricaturist.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- Prolific mid 20th century Adelaide caricaturist and cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1986
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Born in Sydney in 1906, Harold Frederick Abbott was a portrait painter and teacher of art by profession. From 1923 he began studying art part time at the Sydney Art School under Julian Ashton and Henry Gibbons. In 1931, after being awarded the NSW Society of Artists Travelling Scholarship, Abbott moved to London where he spent the next two years studying at the Royal Academy, returning to Australia in 1933. Having years of academic training behind him, Abbott became highly accomplished in portraiture and still life studies, as well as genre paintings and in 1940 Abbott won the Sulman Prize for his painting Vaucluse interior . Portraiture was of particular interest to Abbott, and the influence of Old Masters such as Velazquez, Rembrandt, and Goya is evident in the portraits he produced. Of portraits, Abbott wrote in an article in Art in Australia in 1939 “...that welling-up of the unconscious that we call inspiration only appears in a portrait when the artist understands his subject intuitively as well as consciously”. His dedication to depicting his subjects with great honesty and likeness is evident in all of the portraits he produced throughout his career. Characteristics of his style were his simplicity in approach, his awareness of compositional balance, his use of light to create depth and shadow, and his narrative painterly style.
In 1941, Abbott enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and in 1943 he was appointed acting lieutenant as a war artist in 2/9 Australian Field Regiment. Abbott spent the next two years serving as an official war artist for Australia, during which time he produced a large body of works documenting scenes and portraits that reflected his experiences and encounters from the Second World War. As a result of his commission, the Australian War Memorial holds 180 of these works in their collection.
Abbott’s skills in genre painting were well suited to his duties as a war artist; he constructed highly balanced scenes with a strong underlying narrative that provided a comprehensive and truthful documentation of Australia’s involvement on the home front, in the Pacific Islands, and in Singapore during the Second World War. On the home front, works such as Main Street , Atherton (AWM collection, ART22293) emphasise the effect that the military presence had on the rural town of Atherton, Queensland – impacting both physically and visually upon the otherwise sedate backdrop. Abbott did not often portray the horrific events of war; rather he focused on those specific elements that formed a part of every soldier’s day to day life. His genre works evoke a sense of calm tranquillity, and provide eyewitness accounts of everyday life at war – ranging from hygiene and recreation, to machinery and repairs, as well as general camp scenes which incorporate the local flora, fauna, and surrounding landscapes. In a marked departure from the relatively calm documentation of daily activities, Abbott produced a highly confronting and dramatic triptych depicting the fall of Singapore and prisoners of war working on the Burma-Thailand railway. In a triptych of suffering ( Defeat, Singapore ; On the Thailand Railway, 1 ; On the Thailand railway [all 1946]) Abbott is no longer concerned with the subtler elements of war and portrays the traumatic and deeply disturbing devastation he witnessed in Singapore. Sombre images of emaciated prisoners of war disintegrating under the weight of hard labour and destruction confront and shock the viewer. Abbott’s natural colour palette is replaced by bold reds and yellows that serve to heighten the dramatic representation of torment and suffering. These works are demonstrative of Abbott’s engagement with emotion and drama – a theme that he again touches upon later in life.
As a war artist Abbott also produced many portraits, each one reflecting his skill in being able to capture an individual with great honesty and likeness. His subjects ranged from high-ranking officials and officers to local natives and Japanese prisoners of war. For all those of whom he made portraits, Abbott endeavoured to collect as much information as possible; he would spend time talking with them and observing their behaviour, consequently producing works of a very sincere and personal nature.
In the 20 years following the war, Abbott did very little painting and exhibiting. He instead applied himself to teaching at the National Art School in Sydney, where he later became the head and State Supervisor of Art. In the late 1960s, when he was in retirement, he resumed painting again – however his style was markedly different. Narrative and figurative works in oils and watercolours gave way to bold abstract compositions in acrylics. Abbott ventured away from much of his academic training towards explorations in form, colour, design, technique, and mood. Starting with the use of bold colours and semi-abstract configurations, his works became increasingly non-figurative, eventually discarding all familiarity in form to develop purely abstract expressions in art. Prior to his death in 1986 in Sydney, Abbott held eight solo exhibitions and his work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as well as various regional art galleries across Australia.
Assistant Curator, Australian War Memorial
Writers:
Dimcevska, VickyNote: Assistant Curator, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, ACT
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- An official war artist during the Second World War, Harold Abbott was an accomplished portraitist who had studied at the Royal Academy of Art in London before returning to Australia and enlisting in the Australian Imperial Forces. After the war he returned to teaching, working at the National Art School in Sydney before becoming the State Supervisor for Art.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1986
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-36.8590029 Longitude143.7337931 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunolly, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, graphic artist and writer, was born in Dunolly (Victoria). He studied at the National Gallery School’s evening classes in Melbourne 1927-28 and won many student prizes; two of his prints were purchased for the National Gallery of Victoria. A colleague of Buzacott and Counihan, he made strong 1930s linocuts, many as book illustrations. Inspired by Norman Lindsay, he also painted many watercolours of pirates and produced a sumptuous book, Pirates (Sydney: Frank C. Johnson, 1931), introduced by Blamire Young , in an edition of 50 with 6 full page colour linocuts the largest colour linocuts produced by an Australian artist in Australia until then (cf Napier Waller 's linocuts). His total output of prints, however, was relatively small (30 images).
The Collegiate Etchings and Fine Arts Company of Melbourne and Sydney issued a series of postcards after Flett’s black and white drawings of well known Victorian explorers such as Lonsdale, Batman, Henty and Fawkner. Later, he devoted himself to writing historical books, e.g. a history of Dunolly (see McCulloch).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- A painter and graphic artist whose book of pirates featured the largest colour linocuts produced by an Australian artist at that time. He also produced a series of drawings of well known Victorian explorers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1986
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- Perth born artist John Brackenreg trained at the Julian Ashton School in Sydney. His friendships with older artists led him to being the conduit directing major Australian works into public collections. However he is best known for his acquisition of Albert Namatjira's copyright.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Dec-86
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-43.53 Longitude172.620278 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Christchurch, NZ
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1986
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-36.840556 Longitude174.74 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator and painter, was born in Auckland, New Zealand. He came to Sydney with Joe and Guy Lynch in 1922 and was soon one of Sydney’s best-known cartoonists and bohemians, leading a colourful but impoverished existence (Kirkpatrick) – a great friend of Phil Lindsay . He was married three times: to Mabel (their daughter is Leiba Stewart), to Kath McShine (brief and disastrous) and to Nancye (Nance) for 35 years (who helped Kirkpatrick with his book, when she was in a nursing home).
“Unk” White contributed to the Bulletin , Melbourne Punch , Beckett’s Budget – including various covers – Aussie and other papers, especially Smith’s Weekly in its early days (examples of 2 April 1923, 16, and 2 June 1923, 6). An original drawing in the Sue Cross collection, evidently done for Smith’s , shows a lot of feet beside a rowing boat labelled 'What happened when the beer fell overboard./ A suggested solution of the Marie Celeste mystery’ (ill. Rainbow, p.56). Three other originals – 'Jus’ put yerself in my shoes lady, an’ yer won’t 'ave a care in the world’, 'Hey! Who th’ell yer shovin’ and 'Now then, that’s just wher you put your foot in it’ – were donated to the Mitchell Library (ML PXD 840)in 1999 by the wife of a former Smith’s reporter along with c.20 other originals and 2 copies of the final issue (28 October 1950) signed by all the cartoonists.
Unk White was the inaugural secretary of the Black and White Artists’ Club, founded in 1924 (see Harry Weston ). When living in Europe for 'study and experience’ c.1927-30 (France then London), he sent illustrations back to the Sydney Mail , eg 'Unk White, Sydney Artist, in Paris’, 30 July 1930. He drew for the Tatler , Sketch and Bystander in London, apparently mainly doing animal drawings. An original 'Unk’ White dated 1932 – when he was back in Australia, mainly drawing for the Bulletin – is at ML PXD 764. In 1936 he revisited Europe and made a sketching tour of Mexico.
White drew a comic strip, 'The Adventures of Blue Hardy’, for Pix (e.g. 10 September 1938). He also contributed to the Sydney Morning Herald at some point when he was freelancing. A 'brilliant penman’, he contributed many cartoons to the Bulletin as a freelance from the 1920s, although he never became a staff artist (Blaikie, 91). At the Bulletin office he was 'always conspicuous for his height and his continual uproar’, said Douglas Stewart (p.36). He was known for the glamour girls he drew, e.g. And Safer Too. 'Birdie’s gentleman friend: “Why ever did you coax your husband to buy such a small car?”/ Birdie: “Oh, it’s more comfortable – you see, there’s no place for private detectives to hide in the back”’ 1929 (ill. Rolfe, 182); (very large original, ML PxD478/44) '“Sure you know about any bad habits your boy might have.”/ “I ought to. I taught him all he knows”, published 21 May 1934. Others include domino-playing men, Bulletin 1935 (no ML original) and Unk’s popular 'moo cows’, e.g. 1939 (ill. Lindesay 1994, 24).
WWII Bulletin cartoons include: “Jus’ sharpenin’ up Cleopatra’s Needle in case any of them paratroops arrive”, 1940; (two servicewomen) “May I borrow your lipstick for a moment, general?” 1940; (heavily tattooed male soldier) “Well, if a man’s got t’ be vaccinated, do it where it won’t show”, 1940; (two old fellows knitting) “Forget the club tonight, John – we must do all we can for the brave girls defending us”, 1941; (female general) “Don’t call ME sweetie!” 1941; (woman naval officer re swearing parrot) “I bought it to teach me the language”, original ML (PxD 548/169) published 25 June 1941; '“Gott in Himmel! I’m sure someding hit me”’ 1941 (Aussie digger 'disguised’ as a classical statue biffs Nazi officer); (two artists with portfolios labelled 'Van Gogh’ and 'Gaugin [sic]’ roller-skating down the [National] Art Gallery of New South Wales’ courts with Poynter & Riviere evident of the walls) “We’ll get through the old stuff much quicker this way” 3 December 1941, 14 (original ML Px*D548/105 included in Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White ); “Blime, them Russian blokes are doin’ good-oh!” (male ballet dancer reading of 'Russian Victories’), 1942.
Unk became an accredited war artist in 1944 and saw active service in New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. The collection of originals in the Frank Johnson papers (ML PX*D68) includes 'Darwin “Tit-Bits” [boobs] and a very racist 'Dutch New Guinea’ of 1944, showing a woman with boobs to her knees captioned, 'this is no Dobell exaggeration mark you’. The Henry Lawson collection of 14 drawings and cartoons 1899-1948 (Pic Acc 1444 vol.2) includes work by Unk White.
From the late 1960s Unk White drew many of the architectural drawings in the Rigby Sketchbook series, e.g. John Bechervaise, Ballarat and Western Goldfields Sketchbook (Adelaide, 1970). He also painted in watercolours. Indeed, Kirkpatrick believes that his Paddington landscapes from the 1960s and his late Spanish watercolours are his 'crowning masterworks’ (p.358). He died in March 1986.
Portraits of Unk White: good self-portrait head from the Artists’ Atomic Ball program 1946 (illus. Lindesay 1994, 26); small younger one (ill. Stone, 9); very good Ted Scorfield cartoon of Unk White and “family” (i.e. wife) as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Bulletin 1 April 1936, 14; 'Unk White Caught in the Act [of drawing a glamour girl] by Ron Broadley’ (large Frank Johnson original, ML Px*D69/no.702) with poem, the second verse of which reads:
“So here’s to Unk’s glamorous pin-up
A joy that has beauty forever
With a figure that’s fine, & her chin up
Who the Hell cares if she’s clever.”
H. A. (Henry) Hanke did a painting of Unk White 'in fencing togs’ (unlocated; it is mentioned in Unk White, 'My rendevous with reminiscence’, Second Laugh Anthology 1940, p 22, and was possibly the portrait exhibited in the 1935 Archibald Prize). Photo at the 1938 Artists’ Ball, Pix 23 April 1938, 34, titled 'Artist Unk White’s famous cow took the Trocadero floor to be slain by his creator, in Panamanian rig, after an hilarious “bull fight”. Unk White recently returned from Central America, has been to Spain.’ Another photograph, Pix 6 May 1939, 21, is captioned: 'Turkish Delight! Unk White, with false nose on chin, wonders whether he will remove his necklet of frankfurts and set up a hot-dog stand. He is a well-known artist.’
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1900
- Summary
- Popular mid 20th century Auckland and Sydney cartoonist, illustrator and painter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Mar-86
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-26.6257326 Longitude152.959953 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nambour, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- needleworker of Nambour, Qld, exhibited needlework and handicrafts from the 1920s to the 1970s at agricultural shows and Country Women’s Association competitions throughout Australia. In 1980 she donated a collection of her work to the Queensland Museum – 129 pieces of needlework and handicrafts, prize certificates and sashes, her embroidery needles, a needlework encyclopaedia and photocopies of her scrapbook of undated press clippings. A significant figure who achieved a national reputation in her lifetime and won some 10,363 prizes and awards.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kleinschmidt, Kerry
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1898
- Summary
- Needleworker of Nambour, Qld, exhibited needlework and handicrafts from the 1920s to the 1970s at agricultural shows and Country Women's Association competitions throughout Australia. She won some 10,363 prizes and awards.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1986
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude49.8268798 Longitude24.03341884 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lvov, Poland
- Biography
- painter, teacher and lecturer, born Lvov, Poland; came to Australia in 1950. Several nudes were included in Josef Lebovic Collectors’ List 56 (1996).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1896
- Summary
- Polish-born painter and lecturer who came to Australia in 1950. Several of his nudes were included in Josef Lebovic Collectors' List 56 (1996).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1986
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, was born in New Zealand. He served at Gallipoli in WWI and came to Sydney after the war (1920). From 1941 he worked as a newspaper and magazine illustrator and exhibited his paintings in the Archibald, Wynne, Sulman and Blake Prize exhibitions. From 1952 he was a committee member of the Contemporary Art Society.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1894
- Summary
- Mid 20th century painter and illustrator originally from New Zealand. He came to Sydney in 1920 and from 1941 he worked as a newspaper and magazine illustrator and exhibited his paintings in the Archibald, Wynne, Sulman and Blake Prize exhibitions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1986
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude47.687609 Longitude17.6346815 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1986-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Győr, Hungary
- Biography
- Painter, teacher. Although he liked to describe himself as self-taught, Desiderius Orban was very much a part of the Central European modernist tradition that had a significant influence on Australian art in the mid-20th century. His other claim, that of being the Western world’s oldest living artist, was verified by the Guiness Book of Records shortly before his death at the age of 101.He was born with the name Orbán Dezső at Győr, Hungary on 26 November 1884. After graduating in arts at the University of Budapest in 1904, he enrolled in art classes with János Pentelei Molnár.In 1905 he enlisted in compulsory military service. On completing this service he , like many other young artists of his generation, travelled to Paris where he studied at the open classes of the Academie Julian in 1906.On his return to Budapest in 1909 he joined with other young artists to become Keresők (The Seekers), who consciously rejected the popular academic realism that was mainstream taste. In 1911 the group renamed themselves The Eight.It was not possible for a young man to stay an artist in the years leading up to World War I. In 1912 he was called up to serve in the Balkan wars, and these evolved into World War I. His wife, Alice Vajda, was a doctor serving in the army.After the war he returned to painting, and also to teaching. In 1931 he started his own art school, the Atelier, in Budapest. Neither his painting nor his Jewish cultural background found favour with the rising Nazi tide of the 1930s. One of his paintings was exhibited in the 1937 exhibition of Degenerate Art. The attacks on his art meant that he had an earlier wake up call than many of his fellow Jewish citizens, and he left continental Europe for London before the outbreak of war. Subsequently he relocated to Australia and on arriving in Sydney modified his name to be Desiderius Orban. Even though he was no longer young, he enlisted in the Australian army as a private. By the end of the war he had started his own school, and work had been purchased for the Art Gallery of New South Wales. His long Australian career was marked by many solo exhibitions, and some prized. However his greatest impact was not so much in his art as in the impact of his teaching on generations of Australian artists as he helped free their approach to paint and materials and to dare to experiment.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 26 November 1884
- Summary
- Desiderius Orban came to Australia from Hungary as a refugee from Hitler's European invasion. His intuitive modernist approach was especially reflected in his practice as a most influential teacher. in his later years he became known as the oldest living Australian artist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Oct-86
- Age at death
- 102
Details
Latitude-23.8530869 Longitude131.8260046 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mereenie, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born at Mereenie near Haasts Bluff c.1930, Limpi Tjapangati was one of the pioneer painting group at Papunya who developed a distinctive 'striped’ style, which remained constant over a long period of time, and influenced other artists, especially those also working out of Haasts Bluff. Warlpiri artists like Paddy Carroll and Two Bob Tjungurrayi adopted the striped style for a period, and Turkey Tolson also experimented with it. Until his dramatic death in 1985 – he collapsed while addressing a Land Council meeting – Limpi lived with his family at Haasts Bluff. His traditional country Mereenie Bore was the site of a rich find of natural gas. He painted Wild Tomato, Magpie, Bush Onion and Crow Dreamings.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- One of the pioneer painters of Papunya whose distinct aesthetic ('Haasts Bluff') style influenced the work of his artist colleagues. An Arrente and Luritja speaker, his traditional country was at Mereenie Bore.
- Gender
- Unspecified
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gravesend, London, England, UK
- Biography
- Douglas Snelling (1916-85) was born in England and grew up in New Zealand. He taught himself commercial art and window display techniques in the early 1930s, then spent six months in Hollywood (1937-38) as a freelance cartoon illustrator of actors on movie sets. On return to NZ, he became a nationally celebrated Hollywood commentator on radio and in entertainment magazines, then a publicity manager for Warner Bros in Wellington, 1939. In 1940, he toured the Indonesian archipelago by ship, then disembarked in Sydney — where he worked first as a publicist with J. Walter Thompson, then for Otis Waygood and Kriesler, a Newtown electronics factory, where he was involved in designing a new style of surround-sound radio. Near the end of the war, he was commissioned to paint murals and redesign interiors for the Roosevelt restaurant and US Navy Enlisted Mens Club at Potts Point. From the mid 1940s to the mid 1950s, he designed two nationally retailed ranges of furniture called 'the Snelling line’ (chairs and tables) and 'the Snelling module’ (storage), as well as many commercial interiors in the American ‘Googie’ style. In 1947-48, he completed his first building, a factory for Functional Products Pty Ltd, at St Peters, then spent another six months in California, including a few months working for Beverly Hills architects Douglas Honnold and John Lautner and a visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West camp in Arizona. On return to Sydney, Snelling continued designing commercial interiors and began private study towards the NSW Board of Architects’ exams. He was registered to practice in 1952 and joined the Royal Australian Institute of Architects in 1953. His oeuvre of more than 70 projects included several of Sydney’s largest houses of the 1950s and 1960s, two apartment blocks, several notable commercial buildings in central and suburban Sydney, two large houses in Noumea and detailed schemes (unbuilt) for 'indigenous modern’ holiday resorts in Fiji and Vanuatu. He retired to Hawaii in 1977, travelled regularly to the US and Europe as a collector-trader of Khmer antiquities and died on a visit back to Sydney in 1985. His one work of architecture after 1975 was 1979 additions to his own house, designed by Honolulu architect Vladimir Ossipoff.Sources—Original Snelling plans lodged with the NSW State Library by Peter MacCallum and Christopher Snelling.—Sydney: State Library of New South Wales, 'Davina Jackson’s research on Douglas Snelling’ MLMSS 8801, including the PhD thesis 'Douglas Burrage Snelling: Adventures in Pan-Pacific Modern Design and Architecture’.—University of Technology, Sydney B.Arch theses on Snelling by Gary Pemberton, Andrew Kovacs and James Trevillion.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 24 February 1916
- Summary
- Snelling created more than 70 residential and commercial buildings in Sydney and Noumea. He was born in England, moved to New Zealand (1924), practised design and film promotions in Wanganui and Wellington (1935-1940), worked in Los Angeles (1937-38 and 1947-48), became a leading Sydney architect (registered 1952) and designer (1940-1972) and retired to Hawaii (1977).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Sep-85
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-37.805278 Longitude145.035833 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kew, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1914
- Summary
- Dean was initially employed in engineering but turned to racing cars producing three Maybach special vehicles. He established the REPCO Research Centre in Victoria where he designed and tested automotive concepts and products. After 1973, he began development work on electrical vehicles as the "Electrodrive" business, an area he had begun to explore as early as 1940 when he produced an electric-powered delivery van.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-85
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude51.0575 Longitude-1.3075 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hampshire, England, UK
- Biography
- poster designer and cartoonist, designed Orient Line Cruises 1937 (NGA).
He contributed to Australia: National Journal and Australia Week-end Book 2 (1943), p.111: 'The art of being rude: Cairo impression’ – Egyptian man poking out his tongue.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1912
- Summary
- Beck practised as an industrial designer and graphic artist in the UK and Australia. He designed travel posters for the Orient Line, London Transport, stamps for Australia Post and the 1956 Melbourne Olympics among others. His package design work is illustrated in R. Haughton James, The Arts in Australia series, "Commercial Art", Longmans, 1963.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and teacher, born Perth. Came to Sydney and studied with Desiderius Orban c.1948. Married painter James Sharp. Inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, she made her first linocuts and woodcuts in 1956; in 1964 she began to teach at the Willoughby Art Centre. From 1961 she exhibited with the Sydney Printmakers’ Group (of which she was a founding member)and had work included in many international exhibitions. Prizes: Maitland 1969, Berrima (shared) 1974. Most works seem to be abstract and symbolic.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1910
- Summary
- In 1964 she began to teach at the Willoughby Art Centre and was founding member of the Sydney Printmakers' Group.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-33.283333 Longitude149.1 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Orange, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1909
- Summary
- Painter and historian based in Sydney
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, photographer, garden designer, theatrical designer and producer, was born in Perth. She came to Sydney with her family in 1924, where she practised photography with her twin sister, Jean. (Jean Ramsay won a prize in a photographic competition conducted by Home in 1931.) The two subsequently became involved with the Turramurra Wall Painters. Together they painted murals from 'top to toe’ on the bedroom walls of their home, Oakwoods, at 17 Water Street, Turramurra, and won a prize for 'Reproduction of existing mural panel’ in a special exhibition held by the Sydney Society of Artists in 1929. Both were pupils of their cousin, Roy de Maistre , and both exhibited with the Contemporary Group in 1932. Several of Gwen’s painting are extant (private collections).
Gwen Ramsay married Tommy Brooke in the mid-1930s and lived in India and England. In India she was very involved with stage production and design for the Mannar Club. In England she was instrumental in persuading Sir John Rothenstein to donate de Maistre’s colour wheels, charts and colour exercises to the Art Gallery of NSW.
Writers:
Johnson, Heather
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1908
- Summary
- Gwen Ramsay, painter, photographer, garden designer, theatrical designer and producer was greatly influenced by her cousin, Roy de Maistre. She travelled extensively and lived in India and England whereby she was involved with stage production and design. Most significantly, she was instrumental in the donation of de Maistre's colour wheels, charts and colour exercises to the Art Gallery of New So
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude54.31536155 Longitude-1.918023495 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Britain
- Biography
- Richard Haughton (Jimmy) James. (1906-1985). Known as “Jimmy” to acquaintances, Jimmy James was a key figure in shaping the practice of Australian industrial and graphic design in the 1940’s. Emigrating from England (born in Sussex) in 1939, he joined the Army Education Corp During the 1939-45 war and taught art appreciation. As a designer, he practised in Sydney and Melbourne from 1939. He became one of the founding members of the Society of Designers for Industry in 1948 in Melbourne and served as President. From the security of a partnership with the Melbourne advertising firm Briggs, Canny, James & Paramour, he wrote and lectured tirelessly on the necessity of Modernism and the importance of the Bauhaus-derived concepts of design. He edited Australian Artist from 1947-48. He retired in 1966 and devoted himself to painting. He played a key role in establishing credibility for the design profession in Australia. He later moved to Melbourne where he worked for advertising agencies and ultimately established his own business in partnership with John Briggs and others. According to an interview with Harold Mitchell, a former employee, in August 2012, James was the first advertising executive to insist of formalising “The Rationale” as the core idea in developing a brand identity and promotional strategy. He is a key figure in the creation of the professional associations of designers in Australia. He wrote and published widely on graphic design, industrial design and art. His son, John James is a architecture teacher, architect and writer.
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1 January 1906
- Summary
- R. Haughton ["Jimmy"] James's first local practice, the Design Centre, Sydney, was with Geoff and Dahl Collings. His first known designs in Sydney were radio cabinets for AWA. During the 1939-45 war, he joined the Army Education Corp and taught art appreciation. He later moved to Melbourne where he worked for advertising agencies and ultimately established his own business Briggs and James (est.1958).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-85
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Walthamstow, Essex England, UK, Walthamstow, Essex (Greater London), England, UK
- Biography
- Ernest Sidney Philpot was a painter, signwriter and poster artist. Born in Walthamstow in Essex, he arrived in Western Australia in 1913 with his parents. Schooling was undertaken in Toodyay and Northam. He was apprenticed to a painter, decorator and sign writer in 1921 and started his own business in 1926, moving to Perth in 1929. He studied art part time in the evenings. In 1930 he joined the West Australian Society of Arts and exhibited with them from 1934 to 1953. His exhibits in 1934 were the watercolours Old Comrade and The Blue Bowl. In 1936 he exhibited eight oil paintings including a portrait. In 1937 Philpot won a share in a lottery and moved to Melbourne to study at the National Gallery School under Charles Wheeler and W. B. McInnes. While in Melbourne he exhibited an oil painting The Garden Path with the Victorian Artists Society. During WWII he enlisted in the Survey Corps. After the war he exhibited with the Western Australian Society of Arts in 1949. He was a member of the Perth Society of Artists and President exhibiting with them from 1946. His 1950 exhibit was an oil painting titled Ballet Fantastique. In 1953 he had four paintings hung. In 1948 he won the Hotchin Prize and in 1952 the Inaugural Perth Prize for Landscape at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. He was commissioned to undertake murals at various hospitals. In 1957 he became Art Master at Wesley College following Wim Boissevain. He taught until 1968 and was art critic for the Sunday Times between 1961-1965. In 1959 he exhibited in London with five others and in 1960 he held a solo show in London.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- Painter, signwriter, poster artist and muralist who exhibited internationally and had a long association with art societies in Victoria and Western Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-28.2163204 Longitude152.0327039 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Warwick, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Gladys Emilie Fell was born in Warwick on 17 July 1906, the daughter of a nurseryman, John Barlow Fell and his wife Emilie Katrine Edvardine née Sundstrup. Her sister Elsie Maud (1904-89) and she were encouraged in their artistic pursuits by their parents. They were among the first students of the pottery classes at the Warwick Technical College and High School, which were instituted by Charles Astley in 1920.
Fell’s work is a typical of the product of Astley’s pottery school as it is press moulded – the students added the carved decorative details. The restricted colour range is typical too; mulberry, brown, red and green. The use of three colours in the glazing of the poppy vase in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection is highly unusual as all other items from the school identified to date have a single-colour glaze. Low, very shallow float bowls are extremely typical of the school.
Her work was included in a display the Warwick Technical College contributed to the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association Exhibition, Brisbane in 1923 before it was forwarded to London for inclusion in the Technical College Section of the British Empire Exhibition, Wembley Stadium, London in 1924.
Fell taught art to primary school students. She married Albert Reginald Palmer on 1 January 1955 and died in Brisbane on 18 June 1985.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 July 1906
- Summary
- The pottery of Gladys Fell is representative of the experimental work produced under Charles Astley's tutelage at the Warwick Technical College and High School in the early 1920s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 18-Jun-85
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist, commercial artist and singer, was born in Perth, eldest of six children. His father, an ardent supported of the Labor Party, worked for most of his life as a wood engraver; his mother loved music, and his uncle was Alexander McClintock (1869-1922), a part-time painter associated with the Heidelberg School. In 1912 the family moved to Adelaide, then to Heidelberg, outside Melbourne. Herbert began his career as an apprentice process engraver and sign writer. His commercial art included doing the process engraving for The Art of Harold Herbert . He later worked as a signwriter, then got a job where a condition of employment was to study at the Melbourne NGV School. He studied painting under Bernard Hall and William McInnes (1925-27, acc. McCulloch). Fellow students were George Bell , Eric Thake and James Flett . The four met together in the bohemian Fasoli’s Cafe in King Street on Friday nights, with Roy Dalgarno , Judah Waten, Dominic Leon , Bill Dolphin etc.
McClintock left Melbourne in 1927 and found a job as a commercial artist on the Sydney Morning Herald . He joined a Neitschean group of social protest artists in Sydney (including Ray and Phil Lindsay and George Finey ) before returning to Melbourne late in 1929 to re-enrol at the National Gallery School and revive old friendships, especially at the Swanston Family Hotel where he met Noel Counihan and Nutter Buzacott. He also joined the Communist Party. In July 1930 he first exhibited his art in a show of work by young bohemian gallery students including Flett and Thake called The Embryos , held at Melbourne’s Little Gallery. His painting called Me was reproduced in the Illustrated Tasmanian Mail .
In October 1930 McClintock was art editor of Strife (with Judah Waten as literary editor), a magazine advocating immediate revolution and the violent overthrow of moribund institutions, including art galleries. The magazine’s artists were Counihan, Flett and Buzacott; the writers, Bernard Burns, Brian Fitzpatrick and Colin Wills as well as Waten; financial assistance was provided by Pat Stanley. Published in support of unemployment relief, it consisted of one number only – and police seized most of the copies as they were handed out. McClintock and Waten were given a day to leave Melbourne and when they didn’t go were arrested for vagrancy. (The charges were later dropped.) 'Mac’ finally left Melbourne in 1931. After two years wandering the country looking for work, he ended up back in Sydney. There he met Pat, who was working in a legal office. They married in Brisbane on 8 September 1933, then moved to Perth (later they divorced). While he worked in advertising at the Daily News Pat organised exhibitions for him and his friends. His painting flourished in Perth, changing from constructivism to surrealism. He used the pseudonym 'Max Ebert’ for these paintings because he already had a promising career as a singer as 'McClintock’. His paintings became notorious in the late 1930s when surrealism was the subject of heated debate – which 'Ebert’ loved.
After holding his first solo show in 1939, McClintock returned to Melbourne in 1940 with the writer John Hepworth. He stayed at Warrandyte with his sister Winnie and his new brother-in-law Buzacott, met Vassilieff, helped with the CAS then returned to Sydney, presumably via Perth. (His oil painting Strange Oversight signed 'Max Ebert’ 1940, p.c., reproduced in Merewether, was exhibited at Newspaper House, Perth in July 1940.) He showed surrealist work at Sydney’s Macquarie Galleries in September 1940. The show was opened by George Finey and a feature article on it, 'Dreams Inspire Australia’s Art’, appeared in Pix on 28 September 1940, 7.
During WWII McClintock was rejected for active service on medical grounds and conscripted into an iron foundry. Later he was moved to camouflage. In July 1943 he began work with the Allied Works Council and Civil Construction Corps, painting images of labour beside William Dobell. He used a new, far more social-realist style and his own name. A 1944 series of paintings of labouring men used rhythmic repetitions suggestive of musical harmonies. He also painted images of the suburban street and the monotonous domestic life of the cities, eg Street Scene 1944, oil on board exhibited SORA July 1947, now AGNSW (repro. B. Smith, Place, Taste and Tradition and in Merewether). A founding member of SORA (1945-50), he gave art lessons to members; Len Fox was among his oil painting students in the late 1940s (Fox, 133).
Throughout the 1930s and ’40s McClintock was a prolific cartoonist for trade union and communist publications, including the Maritime Worker , The Boilermaker and Building Workers . He held his second solo exhibition in 1947, by which time he had moved out of the city and was living at Freeman’s Reach, later at Kurrajong. He continued to contribute cartoons to trade union papers and especially to the Communist Party’s Tribune , for which he drew a weekly cartoon in the late 1940s-50s, eg “Quick, wire Mr Menzies and have that man declared!” Tribune 1950 (man painting a post box red, ill. King, 162, & attributed to 'McLintock’ [sic]; also p.166). Len Fox notes (p.133):
he used to come in to Tribune office every week to get instructions for next week’s cartoon. I felt sorry for Mac; it seemed to me that every week we gave him dull instructions that could only lead to a dull, stereotyped cartoon, and yet we expected him by some miracle to produce something new and startling. But he never complained; he always turned up with a well-executed drawing – the best that he could create.
Crib Time 1970 (used on the cover of Len Fox’s 1996 book) was first published in Common Cause [of the Coalminers] , where he did regular illustrations from at least 1949 (when Graeme Byrne has identified a cartoon). Len Fox got to know him there from 1958, when Fox joined the paper. Edgar Ross and Fox got to know him well since he regularly dropped in to discuss possibilities for the next week’s cartoon once more.
Sometimes, instead of asking Mac to draw a narrowly political cartoon, we would ask him to do a drawing to illustrate a scene in Australian history, Australia’s first May Day procession in 1891 at Barcaldine in Queensland, for instance, when more than 600 of the shearers and other workers in the procession were on horseback, or the NSW South Coast miners and their womenfolk stopping a train-load of strikebreakers headed for the Mount Kembla mine back in 1887. Mac put a lot of work into these; some of them, I am sure, will live as part of the record of Australian working class history. (As I write this, his 1891 May Day drawing is being exhibited at the “Artists and Rebels on the Waterfront” exhibition at Sydney’s Tom Nelson Hall; it is also included, with other McClintock drawings, in the booklet May Day – 100 Years of Struggle published in 1986 by the Sydney May Day Committee. One of his drawings in this booklet is a call for peace in Vietnam in 1968; McClintock’s drawings and cartoons were an important part of the campaign to end the Vietnam war.) (Fox, 135)
For some years 'Mac’ produced banners for May Day marches as well as continuing to paint landscapes. After a trip to the NT, Aboriginal subjects dominated his late work. He did illustrations for Overland , e.g. Burning the Licences, 1854 , cover of Eureka Centenary Issue no.2 (Summer 1954-55). In 1960 he was one of four Australian artists whose work was shown in the USSR (Fox). Late in life he returned to singing, now in duets with his second wife, Marie, a singer with the Australian Opera Company. He also wrote on music and art for Tribune .
'In mid-1976 he spent two months with his son and daughter-in-law Malcolm and Vivienne who were working at the Amata settlement among the Pitjintjara Aboriginals. He did much drawing and painting there’ (Fox 134), e.g. Old Man and His Dog, Amata . A large retrospective of McClintock’s art was held at 27 Niagara Lane Galleries, Melbourne, in September 1980 (see review by Andrew McKay, Australian 16 September 1980).
There are two original McClintock cartoons in the SLNSW ML Bulletin collection, one of 1936 and another of 1930 showing two unemployed men in the Botanic Gardens, captioned If he were king! '“If you was Mussolini, Bert, what’s the first thing you’d do?”/ “Up’olster the blanky park seats”’ (ML PX*D488/128). His more schematic, propagandist cartoon of the unemployed in the Botanic Gardens in Strife became better known (although artistically inferior), being reproduced in left-wing publications both in Australia and abroad, according to Merewether (I think). He also did a good cartoon of the censor banning a film about peace, published in the Guardian (Melbourne) on 21 February 1952 (ill. Senyard, 83).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- Mid 20th century political and surrealist painter, cartoonist, commercial artist and singer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1985
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Wildflower painter and embroiderer, Violet Easton was born in Perth. Her father was a postmaster and she lived as a child and young adult in Roebourne, Perth, Ora Banda, Gwalia and Coolgardie. In 1948 she painted a jarrah screen with a bouquet of wildflowers. This was a wedding present to her brother and remains in the family. In 1950 she became the second wife of her childhood sweetheart, whom she had first met when the family lived in Gwalia during World War I. He worked on the railways and they lived in Ravensthorpe, Hopetown and other country places. During this time she filled notebooks with paintings of wildflowers, pressed specimens and notes on their habits and habitat. She designed and embroidered table linen. Her husband left her in 1960 and she lived in a cottage in Bullsbrook. She was partially supported by her family and earned a meager living painting on wooden artifacts such as bowls for Boans department store and also engaged in china painting. In 1962 for the Empire and Commonwealth Games she mounted a display of her work in an Aherns Department Store window. Her family hold a number of pieces of her work. These range from oil and watercolour paintings of wildflowers, china painting featuring Geraldton Wax and gum blossom, embroidery and the fire screen.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- Wildflower painter and embroiderer. The family hold a number of pieces of her work and these range from oil and watercolour paintings of wildflowers, china painting featuring Geraldton Wax and gum blossom, embroidery and the firescreen.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1985
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- George Alexander Needham (1903-1985). Also known as George Robb (pseudonym).
George Alexander Needham was born in London, England, on 3 May 1903. He emigrated to Australia in 1915. At the age of twenty-one he married Ada Mary Needham, and had two children, Mary and John Christopher (d. 1976). There was a divorce and George brought the children to Sydney, New South Wales. They lived with him during their schooling, and later returned to their mother.
In 1946 Needham married Elmer Noeline Roberts (b.1922) in Sydney. They had one daughter, Penelope. They lived in East Roseville (a Sydney suburb, later named Roseville Chase). Needham died in Sydney on 29 January 1985, aged eighty-one.
Needham studied at the Prahran Technical College in Melbourne, Victoria, and got a job at the Art Department of Union Theatres in Melbourne. In 1923 he was Head Artist for Victory Publicity. In the late 1920s, he created the comic 'The Dwight Family’ for the magazine Table Talk Magazine (Melbourne). In the 1930s he drew cartoons for the first Melbourne Age newspaper.
In the 1930s Needham also made illustrations and paintings, which were exhibited in a one-man show at Margaret McLean’s Gallery in Melbourne in 1938. That same year he moved to Sydney. During World War II, he made propaganda art. After the War, he created the black-and-white comic series 'The Bosun and Choclit’ using the pseudonym George Robb. This comic series ran until the late 1950s.
Writers:
Rost, Fred
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 May 1903
- Summary
- Graphic artist, best known for comic strips, particularly The Bosun and Choclit'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Jan-85
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude49.9112146 Longitude19.007564 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dzieditz, Poland
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born on 6 April 1902 in Dzieditz, Poland. She studied at the Graphische Lehr und Versuchsanstalt (Institute of Graphic Arts and Research) in Vienna in 1917-21 and began her photographic career working in various Viennese studios, initially as a retoucher and later as a photographer. She lived in Prague in 1928 and the following year moved to Berlin with Rudolph Michaelis, whom she married in 1933.
Following Hitler’s rise to power and their brief imprisonment as a result of separate incidents, the couple moved to Barcelona in late 1933. There Margaret opened a studio 'foto-elis’ on the Avenue Republica Argentina. She worked closely with a group of progressive architects associated with Jose Luis Sert and produced the photographic documentation for a proposed redevelopment of a slum area in Barcelona.
In November 1937 Rudolph and Margaret Michaelis divorced. She left Barcelona, travelling first to France and then to Bielsko, Poland, to see her parents. On this visit she visited Cracow and took a group of photographs in the Jewish ghetto (NGA). In December 1938 Margaret was granted a visa to take up employment in the UK. She worked briefly in domestic service in London before being granted a visa to enter Australia. She arrived at Sydney on 2 September 1939 and in 1940 opened her 'Photo-studio’ on the seventh floor of 11 Castlereagh Street, where she specialised in portraiture and dance photography (principally of the Bodenwieser company).
Michaelis joined the Professional Photographers Associations of NSW and Australia in 1941 and was the only female member of the Institute of Photographic Illustrators. Failing eyesight forced the closure of the studio in 1952, and she subsequently found employment as a typist with Richard Hauser and Hephzibah Menuhin, then involved in social research. In 1960 she married Albert George Sachs and moved to Melbourne. She assisted her husband in his framing business until his death five years later.
During the late 1960s and ’70s Margaret Sachs travelled extensively in Europe and Asia. She continued her involvement in the arts, studying painting with Erica McGilchrist and contributing a drawing to the Women’s Art Forum Annual in 1978. Her photographs were included in the 1981-82 touring exhibition, 'Australian Women Photographers 1840-1950’, organised by Barbara Hall and Jenni Mather, and in their book of the same title published in 1986.
After her death in 1985 the photographic archive of Margaret Michaelis-Sachs was donated to the National Gallery of Australia. A selection was presented in a solo exhibition held at the Jewish Museum of Australia in 1987. Michaelis’s Spanish photographs were exhibited in Margaret Michaelis, Fotografia, Vanguardia y Politica en la Barcelona de la Republica held at the IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez in Valencia, Spain in 1998 and subsequently shown in Barcelona.
Writers:
Ennis, Helen
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 April 1902
- Summary
- professional photographer who also dabbled in painting and drawing later in her career, migrated to Australia from Europe, specialised in documentary photographs, portraiture and dance photography.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-37.7867587 Longitude144.9193668 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Flemington, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, commercial artist and art teacher, was born in Flemington, Victoria, second eldest of the eleven children of Richard Wilson, co-founder of Wilson Brothers Engineering in North Melbourne. After leaving Essendon High School in 1924, she studied art at Melbourne Technical College (1925-26) then worked with the Griffin Shave Advertising Service (now George Patterson Pty Ltd) before going to London in 1928. There she studied drawing and lithography at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and worked at Brockhurst Studios as a commercial artist. She returned to Melbourne in 1929 but was back at London in 1931 where she worked for Levers (Lintas) Pty Ltd and studied drawing, painting, lithography and etching at the Central School (1931-32) and painting and drawing at St Martin’s (1933-35). She exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1935 and 1936 and at the Royal Academy in 1936.
The designer and film maker, Geoffrey Collings (widower of Dahl Collings ), remembers that Nell was much sought after as a commercial artist in London, reputedly able to command 100 guineas a drawing. She worked through advertising agencies, lived at Earls Court with another Australian commercial artist, Lyndon Miller, and took painting holidays in Spain. She returned to Sydney in 1937 by the overland route. In the mid-1930s Nell was married for a short period to the artist and cartoonist Strom Gould . She lived at Elizabeth Bay, Sydney.
During the late 1930s-40s she was among Australia’s most sought-after commercial illustrators, one of the few professional women to travel regularly by aeroplane to clients and agencies in Melbourne and Sydney. These included Levers (Lintas), J. Walter Thompson, George Patterson, Paton Advertising Service and the Commonwealth Advertising Division. She produced advertisements for Trans Australian Airlines, Cadbury Chocolates, Pelaco, Lux, Shell, British Nylon Spinners, Government War Bonds and Mazda electric globes.
During the war, Nell was retained by the Commonwealth Government to work on national campaigns for recruiting, war loans and rationing. In 1947-49 she did the artwork for the campaign opposing the nationalisation of Australian banks. She was sponsored to study in 1951-52 at the Art Students League in New York, where she also worked for J. Walter Thompson—for the Canadian firm in 1952. Then she moved to London (1952-55) and back to Sydney (1955-56) where she won the Australian Commercial and Industrial Artists Association bronze medal in 1956. In 1955 she was the first Australian to be admitted to the New York Society of Illustrators and in 1957 became a foundation fellow of the ACIAA.
Nell’s advertising style was very emotive and is characterised by naturalistically rendered, almost photographic portraits, usually of women or children. Many of her advertisements appeared in the Australian Women’s Weekly in the 1940s. She also painted a mural on the wall of the home of Sir Harold White and her sister Elizabeth in Mugga Way, Canberra. In the mid 1960s she put her age back to about sixty to obtain a teaching position at East Sydney Technical College. She also taught art at a private school in Sydney. Just before she died, she moved to Melbourne. Some of her artwork survives with family members; that for Prestige Ltd advertisements is held by the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences.
Writers:
Ven, Anne-Marie Van De
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1901
- Summary
- Nell Wilson was a painter, commercial artist and art teacher. She was one of the Australia's most sought-after commercial illustrators in the late 1930s-40s. Wilson made advertisements for Trans Australian Airlines, Cadbury Chocolates and Shell, amongst others.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude46.9570611 Longitude8.3661026 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stans, Switzerland
- Biography
- Swiss-born artist and designer, who was responsible for (or contributed to) the interior design of the Hydro Majestic, Medlow Bath; Civic Theatre, Auckland; Anzac Memorial, Sydney; Paragon Cafe, Katoomba; Luna Park, Sydney, and many other Art Deco buildings in Australia and New Zealand.
'Modern in the extreme, without the slightest suggestion of the bizarre, is the keynote of the design [of the (Parramatta) Civic Theatre] which has been carried out by Arnold Zimmerman’, _Cumberland Advocate _[Parramatta], 18 May 1938.
Writers:
Eric Riddler
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- Swiss-born artist and designer, who was responsible for (or contributed to) the interior design of the Hydro Majestic, Medlow Bath; Civic Theatre, Auckland; Anzac Memorial, Sydney; Paragon Cafe, Katoomba; Luna Park, Sydney, and many other Art Deco buildings in Australia and New Zealand.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-29.6694129 Longitude152.9571882 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Clarence River, Grafton, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Bird painter in watercolours, was the eldest of the five children of Thomas Robert O’Grady of 'Tristania’ on the Clarence River and his wife Villette, a school-teacher and amateur painter who was the only child of Thomas Flintoff (the son of the colonial painter and photographer Thomas Flintoff and his first wife) and Harriet Hearn, Flintoff senior’s retoucher and tinter, who settled at Grafton. Gladys painted watercolours of birds.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1894
- Summary
- Watercolour painter of birds, descendant of the artistic 'Thomas Flintoff' family from Grafton, NSW.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-36.0538594 Longitude146.4601363 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rutherglen, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- embroiderer, was born of English parents, Frederick William Field and Hannah ('Annie’) née Cutler, at Rutherglen, Victoria, and grew up an only child in rural Australia. Her life work was embroidery, and when she died in 1985 she left behind her a legacy of excellence and an enormous body of work which ranged from exquisite lacy Richelieu mats and Hedebo tablecloths to Elizabethan blackwork cushion covers and tiny flower trimmed felt rabbits. She began to sew as a rather solitary small child who preferred making dolls clothes to playing games with friends. She was educated at convent schools in Rutherglen and Temora (NSW), where she studied both books and piano with characteristic dedication.
What might have been disaster struck when Roma was 17 and she became ill. Confined to bed off and on for the next 15 years of her life, with periods in hospital and sanatorium, Roma turned her undivided attention and very strong will to the serious study and practice of embroidery. Gathering to her what little scattered information she could find about the topic, and depending to a large extent on mail ordering for periodicals, patterns and instructions, as well as for materials and threads which were unavailable in Australia in the early part of the twentieth century, she experimented and persevered with different stitches and materials, slowly obtaining command of a range of traditional European embroidery skills. While her work is in itself of quite extraordinarily fine quality, the number of techniques at which she excelled is equally exceptional.
Roma began to enter competitions during this period of her life. She was very often successful and found the prize money a boon as it enabled her to plunder the mail order catalogues anew for different materials and threads with which to work and experiment. Ultimately, she exhibited widely in Australia, as well as in London, Denmark and Holland. Her most notable overseas success was probably the exhibition held in the 1920s by the Old Bleach Linen Company of Randaltown in Ireland at which, among a wide international field, Roma won second and fourth prizes with her two entries. The piece which won second prize (a medal, a silver cup, a goodly sum of money and a precious parcel of linens) was a Hedebo table cloth.
Roma Field’s dedicated focus on embroidery gave her long life purpose and direction and attracted a wide range of friends with similar interests. She met many through the societies she joined: the Arts and Crafts Society of NSW, the Industrial Arts Society, and the Country Women’s Association for which she helped found a Handicrafts Committee. She travelled for the CWA committee throughout New South Wales in the 1930s and 1940s, teaching the wide range of handcraft skills at her disposal. They included glove and toy making, cane seating and leather work as well as needlework and embroidery.
When she met Margaret Oppen, founder of the Embroiderers Guild of NSW in 1957, Roma Field was invited to join the new committee and to teach. Her long-term involvement with the Guild was thus under way, leading her from committee member to life member, trustee and president. She continued to teach, always in a voluntary capacity, until shortly before she died, and she frequently served as a judge at country shows, as well as twenty nine times for the Royal Easter Show in Sydney between 1940 and 1978. In June 1981, she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for service to the community.
Writers:
Sumner, Christina
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1891
- Summary
- An accomplished self-taught embroiderer, Field experimented with different stitches and materials and also mastered traditional European embroidery skills. A lifelong member of the Embroiderers Guild of New South Wales, Field was awarded the Order of Australia Medal in 1981 for services to the community.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-33.25604115 Longitude139.0634707 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wonna, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- lacemakers and needlewomen, were all native South Australians eminent in their art. Jessie Rebecca Cowley was born on 2 March 1862 at Reynella, south of Adelaide. As a young girl she was accomplished at the keyboard and had a talent for design and a seemingly natural skill with a needle, being particularly noted for her fine embroidery and needlepoint lace. In the nineteenth century, these were considered desirable accomplishments for young women of marriageable age.
In 1885, in her twenty-third year, Jessie Rebecca married Frederick I’Anson, a farmer ten years her senior. They first farmed at Wonna, district of Burra, in the mid-north, then moved south to Kadina where Frederick farmed with his wife’s father, Thomas Cowley. Frederick and Jessie had three children: Rebecca Maria, born at Wonna on 28 October 1887; Jessie Cowley, born 13 May 1889 at Wonna, and Thomas Leonard, born in 1891. Jessie taught her two daughters needlework and lacemaking from a very early age: they received their first instruction at the tender ages of three and four. The girls were first taught to work needlepoint lace borders on muslin handkerchiefs, then progressed through the full range of whitework embroidery, needlework and needlepoint lace.
Needlework skills were often taught to girls in the hope that they could be advantageously used in unexpectedly straitened circumstances but few ever had to test the rationality of this notion. The I’Anson women, however, were among the few to test the principle, when in 1898 Frederick I’Anson’s over-strained heart caused his death at the age of forty-five. Their only son died a few months later, aged seven. The thirty-six year old widow was considered 'frail in health’, but her needlework talents and the skills she had imparted to her daughters were put to practical use, providing a means of financial support for herself and her two young daughters, then aged nine and eleven.
The diminished family continued to live in Kadina, Mrs I’Anson giving Saturday afternoon needlework classes, charging pupils two shillings a lesson, and mother and daughters making and selling fine needlework. In about 1920 they moved to a small row cottage in North Adelaide, where they remained for decades, continuing to support themselves by giving classes in needlework and from commissions for and sales of needlework items ranging from d’oyleys and handkerchiefs to tablecloths and bedspreads.
Mrs I’Anson continued to execute fine needlework; even in her eighty-eighth year, when confined to bed, she still managed to use her needle to make gifts for friends. She died in 1958, aged ninety-six. Her daughters continued teaching and producing commissioned needlework and special pieces for sale. Their lives had been dedicated to their mother and to the craft at which she excelled, one which had provided a means of support for them for most of their lives.
The discipline and patience required for fine needlework had been instilled in them from early childhood. Later in life they saw these as 'a form of character building which could help equip a girl for life’. In their terms this meant supporting themselves by dedication to fine, traditional whitework in an era when most young women saw needlework as a leisure pursuit. Jessie Cowley died in 1976, aged eighty-seven; Rebecca Maria in 1985, aged ninety-seven.
Writers:
Heaven, Judith
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 28 October 1887
- Summary
- Daughter of Jessie Rebecca Cowley, was taught needlework and lacemaking from a very young age. Along with her mother and sister, helped support the family after the death of her father by teaching and selling work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1985
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1985-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Stella Marks was a painter of portraits and is chiefly known as a portrait miniaturist. She studied at the Melbourne National Gallery School of Art under Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin. There she met fellow student, Montagu Marks, whom she married in London in 1911. She exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1913 and the Atheneum Hall Melbourne in 1914. She lived in New York from 1914 until 1934, when she moved to the UK. In 1916 she was commissioned by the Governor General of Canada to paint a portrait miniature of his daughter HRH The Princess Patricia of Connaught. Over 30,000 copies were sold to raise money for the Canadian Red Cross.
Stella was member of the Royal Miniature Society (as it was then known) and the American Society of Miniature Painters. In 1934 she was invited to become President of the latter, but had to decline owning to her move to the UK. In 1925 and 1926 Stella visited Australia, at which time her portrait miniature of Maud Allen was purchased by the National Gallery of Melbourne (Felton Bequest). In 1931, 1936 and 1937 Stella’s works were exhibited at the Royal Academy, London. In 1937 and 1938 Stella made another visit to Australia and a second portrait miniature, of Mr Justice McKenna, was purchased by the the National Gallery of Melbourne (Felton Bequest).
In 1948 Stella was commissioned by HRH Prince Philip to paint a miniature portrait of HRH The Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen. There followed commissions of all member of the Royal family. In 1979 H.M. Queen Elizabeth II awarded Stella the Honour, Member of the Victorian Order.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
antandart
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 27 November 1887
- Summary
- Stella Marks, portrait miniaturist. Born Melbourne 1887; studied at the Melbourne National Gallery School; exhibited 1913 with the West Australian Society of Arts. Lived in New York 1914 to 1934. The National Gallery of Melbourne purchased 'Maud Allen' and 'Mr Justice McKenna'. Following numerous commissions from the Royal Family was awarded the MVO in 1979.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 18-Nov-85
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1962-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Cartoonist, was born in Sydney. Wanting initially to be a vet, he attended Hurlstone Agricultural College but developed an interest in being a cartoonist after publishing gags in the school newspaper. After completing his School Certificate and having some cartoons published in the National Review , he was employed as a cadet artist with the Sydney Fairfax group and was a graded artist within three years, Aged 18 he became editorial cartoonist with the Sydney Sun . He claimed his major influences varied from the American Mad magazine cartoonists to contemporary editorial cartoonists (eg. Paul Rigby ) and even Walt Disney and Warner brothers. He hid a Gladstone bag in every cartoon and often featured a ginger striped cat and a budgerigar that commented on the news. His first book, Pracy: Draw Your Own Conclusion… , an anthology of his Sun cartoons, includes a self-portrait (inside back cover). A second collection, Hawke, Line and Sinker , was endorsed both by Neville Wran and Nick Greiner.
Pracy died suddenly at work on 19 September 1984, aged 22. He had not long returned to Sydney after some weeks in the US on a travelling art scholarship. His last Sun cartoon, drawn on 19 September 1984 and published the following day, was a comment on Peacock being banned from a TV show. It shows a couple in front of a television set watching a program featuring Bob Hawke, with the wife saying: “… Personally, I think it’d be a good idea if ALL Pollies were banned from ALL T.V. shows” [caption in caps].
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1962
- Summary
- Late 20th century Sydney newspaper cartoonist. Pracy began as a cadet artist with the Sydney Fairfax Group before becoming an editorial cartoonist at the age of 18. He published two anthologies of cartoons before his sudden and premature death at the age of 22.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Sep-84
- Age at death
- 22
Details
Latitude47.4925 Longitude19.051389 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Budapest, Hungary
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1932
- Summary
- Joseph Szabo was part of a new generation of European artists who helped transform Australia's cultural life in the decades after World War II.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1984
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude-22.5216511 Longitude132.7344955 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Napperby Creek, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Born in Napperby Creek, probably in the ’30s, he grew up around Napperby station, on his traditional Anmatyerre country. Like his younger 'brother’ Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri , he had such skill at wood carving that his name was already known in Central Australia as a brilliant craftsman before the painting movement began in Papunya. From Narwietooma station, where he had worked as a stockman, he moved to Papunya with his wife Daisy Leura , and their young family when the construction program for the new settlement began. When painting started up, he presented himself to Geoff Bardon and asked to paint. The two men became friends, and from this position Tim Leura played a leading role in the emerging painting enterprise, including his enlistment of his 'brother’ Clifford to the group of artists. Geoff Bardon’s 1991 book, Papunya Tula: Art of the Western Desert , contains a detailed map drawn by the artist showing his Dreaming area and the sites of the Possum, Yam, Fire, Blue Tongue Lizard, Sun, Moon and Morning Star and other Dreamings which were the subject of his paintings. His 27’ (8.2 m) Napperby Death Spirit (Possum) Dreaming (painted in 1980 with assistance from Clifford Possum ) was the centrepiece of the Dreamings: Art of Aboriginal Australia exhibition which toured the USA in 1988-9, and is increasingly cited as one of the greatest paintings of the movement. The painting of Warlugulong , 1976 (Art Gallery of NSW) with his brother Clifford is documented in the BBC documentary Desert Dreamers of that year. He died in 1984 after a long illness.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1930
- Summary
- Anmatyerre artist who was renowned for his wood carving skill before beginning to paint in Papunya at the beginning of the 1970s. As a close friend of Geoffrey Bardon, he was a key figure in the beginnings of the painting movement at Papunya and one of Papunya Tula's leading artists over the company's first decade.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1984
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 14 July 1916
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1984
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-35.5302183 Longitude144.9597178 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Deniliquin, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1913
- Summary
- Hazel de Berg trained as a photographer at Paramount Studios, Sydney, later working in the studio of Noel Rubie Pty Ltd., illustrative photography, Sydney. She took up voice recording in the 1950s becoming a notable 'oral historian' undertaking over 1200 voice recordings for the National Library of Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-84
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 July 1908
- Summary
- In 1939 Karl and Gertrude Langer came to Australia as refugees from Vienna. Her subsequent career as both a critic for the Courier-Mail, a collector, a purchaser for the Queensland Art Gallery and as a mentorled to her becoming a major force in art in Queensland
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 19-Dec-84
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.829075 Longitude151.24409 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mosman, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1908
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1984
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, illustrator and cartoonist, studied with Dattilo Rubbo in evening and weekend classes at Sydney’s Royal Art Society from the late 1920s, while working as a commercial artist and cartoonist during the day. By 1930 he was regularly drawing cartoons for the Bulletin , earning two guineas for every one published. A large collection of original cartoons by Johnston, mostly done for the early 1930s Bulletin , is in the Mitchell Library [ML] (possibly also works signed 'Harry Johnston’). Examples include an undated cartoon of two young men in front of a line of chorus girls: '“I saw Mae out with John last night. Thought she’d thrown him over.”/ “She did; but you know how a girl throws”’ (ill. Rolfe, 281); undated waiter and diner joke (ill. Rolfe, 289).
Large Bulletin originals in ML signed 'Johnston’ with the first 'n’ crossed and initial letter mixture of 'G’ (or 'H’?) – which seems to be George’s signature – include an orchestra and flimsily clad singer joke: '“She seems to have a break in her enunciation tonight, Mr. Leader”/ “Say, you keep your eye on your music”’ (Px*D37/32), published 25 October 1933; *salesman asking man if he wants stockings for wife or 'something better’ (Px*D437/23), published 20 December 1933; 'Manager: “Are you never fired with enthusiasm my boy?”/ Boy: “Oh yes – sir every job I get”’ c.1933 (PXD 437/26: included in 1999 State Library of New South Wales [SLNSW] black and white exhibition under 'workers’, cat. 201); librarian and fat man image with joke missing (at least in photocopy, Px*D437/50) published 14 March 1934; two men in dinner suits in a library (joke missing in photocopy, Px*D437/40) published 26 December 1934; *couple in bed with woman asking if 'sport’ likes milk in his tea (Px*D437/25) published 9 Jan (or June) 1935 (included in 'Sex’ in SLNSW exhibition); and '“The press would like to have your lordship’s views on this country.”/ “Certainly boys, certainly. Which country is it?”’ (PXD 437/33), published Bulletin 1 January 1936, 18, and used in 'Royals’ in 1999 SLNSW b/w exhibition.
In 1934 George Johnston married the painter and illustrator Thora Ungar at St John’s Anglican Church, Glebe. They rented a Griffin house at the Parapet, Castlecrag (the Moon House), next door to Walter and Marion Mahony Griffin , and both freelanced, with George also illustrating for small tabloids. Like many cartoonists, he really wanted to be a fine art painter and did bushland views at Castlecrag, which he exhibited and sold. The Art Gallery of New South Wales owns two portraits.
In 1937 the pair decided to go to London and sold up everything in order to afford the cheapest route, via China and across Russia on the Transcontinental Express. They had been in Shanghai for about six weeks when the Japanese invaded on 13 August 1937 – six days before they were booked to leave. George remained in Shanghai throughout the occupation and later had a job in charge of silkscreen work with the China branch of the cigarette company W.D. & H.O. Wills. In 1941 he and Thora returned to Sydney – just before Pearl Harbour. He then seems to have served in New Guinea, was wounded and repatriated to Croydon Hospital in Sydney after Milne Bay. He was in Croydon when Thora’s Kokoda Trail drawing appeared on the cover of the Women’s Weekly , an event which strained their marriage . George and Thora eventually divorced and both subsequently remarried, George to Norma. Late in life he is believed to have mainly executed courtroom drawings. He died in 1984.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 7 November 1908
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney painter, illustrator and cartoonist who contributed drawings to the Bulletin and Sydney Morning Herald. Johnston's first wife was the well-known painter and illustrator Thora Ungar.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1984
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter and theatrical designer, was born in Ballarat and studied art with Archibald and Amalie Colquhoun in Melbourne. With her sister Kathleen, Florence exhibited watercolours of fairy-tale subjects at Melbourne in the mid-1930s. The sisters’ first exhibition was held at Margaret MacLean’s Gallery in Kodak House in 1935, and they exhibited with MacLean again in 1937 and 1939 at her Riddell Galleries.
By then they were also designing for the theatre. In 1936 they designed a production of The Lower Depths for the Ribush Theatre Company. This was followed in 1937-38 by designs for Chekov and Gorky plays and for a starkly modern Murder in the Cathedral . La Lutte Eternelle represented their debut as ballet designers in 1940, and in the same year they submitted a scenario and designs for an Australian ballet, Flagstaff Hill , in a competition run by Colonel de Basil. In 1942 the sisters went to the USA, where Florence underwent some years of treatment for the paraplegia which had resulted from a car accident in 1928.
In 1945 Florence began to exhibit her paintings—many inspired by theatrical fantasies—at the George Binet Gallery in New York. She continued to design for the theatre and joined the United Scenic Artists of America. Over the next three decades she was to exhibit regularly in Australia, London and New York. With her sister she travelled widely. In 1952 they went to live in London, remaining there until the 1970s.
Writers:
Sayers, Andrew
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1908
- Summary
- Painter and theatrical designer who worked in theatre in Melbourne, New York and London with her sister, despite suffering paraplegia from a car accident.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1984
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 4 February 1904
- Summary
- When John Passmore returned to Sydney from an extended stay in Europe in 1951 he galvanised a generation of young painters. They were led to understand that paintings need not be smooth and precious, but could be rough, tough, but still have an underlying structure – inspired by Cézanne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Oct-84
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-27.4498447 Longitude153.0600915 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bulimba, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1984
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-32.05423 Longitude115.74763 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fremantle, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Alex Matier was born in Fremantle, Western Australia on April 7, 1901. He attended drawing classes at Fremantle Technical School and taught himself to paint with watercolours later in life. In 1949 he exhibited Fair Weather in the Claude Hotchin Art Prize. In 1952 he exhibited two watercolours titled Fishing Boats and Winter Sky with the Perth Society of Artists, though he was not a member of the Society. In 1958 he won the Claude Hotchin Prize for Watercolour with A Calm Departure. This is now in the City of Fremantle Art Collection. Matier won the prize a further two times, in 1968 with In the Halls, and in 1970 with Pastoral. Both of these works are now in the collection of the Royal Perth Hospital.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 April 1901
- Summary
- Western Australian painter who was awarded The Claude Hotchin Prize for Watercolour three times in 1958, 1968 and 1970.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1984
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-22.1646782 Longitude144.5844903 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Queensland
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, journalist and publisher, was born in Queensland on 25 May 1900, younger son of the three children of George(?) and Harriet Wallace-Crabbe. The family moved to provincial Victoria, where Ken completed school and enrolled in a mechanical engineering course. His brother Keith was killed in WWI and Ken, aged 17, enlisted in 1918(?). He served briefly in the air flying corps, then became a journalist on the Sunraysia Daily at Mildura after the war. By the 1930s he was living in Melbourne, a motoring writer on the Herald and a 'distinguished dilettante’, friend of many leading artists and encourager of many younger ones (acc. McCulloch).
Wallace-Crabbe was a great admirer of Norman Lindsay 's nudes and pirates, according to Robin Wallace-Crabbe [R. W.-C.], who states in his autobiography, hostile to his father ( A Man’s Childhood , p.185):
“Kenneth based his drawing style on that of his hero, Norman Lindsay. Without trying too hard, he absorbed the two principal characteristics of a Lindsay image of a woman, and learnt to replicate them in his own work. He mastered the Lindsay idea that the features of the human face are stuck like a mask in front of where the face should properly be, and he got the feel of anatomical discontinuity between the torso and the neck and the head. Also, come to think of it he was able to draw breasts so that they didn’t fit naturally over the rib cage.”
Wallace-Crabbe did a large number of cartoons, illustrations and paintings in the course of his career, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, e.g. A Divorce Suit , original cartoon (Mitchell Library Px*D457/105) published in the Bulletin 20 April 1922 (re clothing available in shop for every role in a divorce), signed 'K. Wallace-Crabbe/ 1922’, address Box 269, PO Mildura, Vic. He contributed cartoons to Smith’s Weekly , according to Robin Wallace-Crabbe ( Australia Australia ). During the three years of its existence he was publisher, editor, story writer and illustrator of Cross Roads , a magazine for girls and boys published fortnightly, price 3d. Cover of 1/21 (14 November 1939), a cavalier/pirate with a sword signed 'asole’, is presumably by him (ill. Lindesay, Way We Were , 123).
His art prints include a colour linocut, Kava c.1936 (ill. Josef Lebovic Gallery, 20th Anniversary Exhibition Collectors’ List 1997 No.63 , 12 April-17 May 1997, no.129), and an etching, Peacock (nude Indian woman with peacock feathers) 1925, edn 10/15, (ill. R. W-C, 1997). Also a keen photographer, he took lots of images of Asian women with his Leica during WWII.
Wallace-Crabbe was working as a motoring journalist at the Melbourne Herald at the outbreak of WWII, when he tried to join the RAAF but was considered too old (according to Robin Wallace-Crabbe). Accepted as a pilot by the British RAF, he was lost, believed dead, in the jungles of Burma for over a year. After being found he worked in India for Lord Mountbatten and was awarded the OBE. Then, still in the RAF, Group Captain Wallace-Crabbe worked at the Australian army barracks on St Kilda Road, Melbourne. After he left the RAF, he returned to the Melbourne Herald as sub-editor. Later he became public relations’ officer with General Motors in Victoria, where he edited and wrote much of its in-house magazine, People . From 1955 he hand-printed 22 books, including many of his own.
Wallace-Crabbe married Phyllis Vera May Cox Passmore (who predeceased him). They had two sons: Christopher (Prof. English, University of Melbourne, born 1934?), and artist, writer, lecturer and farmer Robin Wallace-Crabbe (born 1938).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 25 May 1900
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Melbourne painter, printmaker, journalist and publisher.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1984
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-18.90206605 Longitude143.1816644 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Croydon, North Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- photographer and painter, was Brisbane’s leading society photographer between 1935 and 1960. She was born in Croydon, in the Gulf Country of North Queensland, on 9 January 1899, to Owen Duffy, a red-haired American gold-miner then aged sixty-one, and his wife Henrietta, who had formerly run a hotel in Croydon. Her father owned a crushing mill outside Croydon; the family, which included a younger brother and sister, lived in a corrugated iron cottage on site until 1908 when her parents separated. Her mother managed various hotels in Queensland until purchasing a guest house at South Brisbane in 1912. Dorothy completed her education in Brisbane, studied painting with Oscar Fristrom, then got a job at the age of fifteen in Thomas Mathewson & Son’s photographic studio, North Quay, where she became an expert retoucher.
In 1920 she married John Coleman. Dorothy’s talents were in such demand that she mainly did freelance retouching from her home until her daughter (b.1921) went to boarding school in 1927. Then, after working for two Brisbane studios, 'D.C.’ (as she was known to her staff) opened her own studio in Ascot Chambers, on the corner of Queen and Edward Streets, in 1935. Portraiture in all its forms, including miniature painting, made the Dorothy Coleman Studios famous. She had a staff of about ten, largely women, including retouchers, colourists, darkroom assistants, finishers and receptionists. Clients were charmed when they visited the studio, which was always filled with bowls of roses.
When World War II was declared in 1939, business boomed. With General MacArthur’s headquarters across the street, portrait commissions for soldiers on leave and war weddings flooded in. Dorothy’s energy and artistic flair was surely the reason for her success at a time when all her contemporaries were men. She could remove a moustache from a soldier’s portrait intended for his mother, or enhance an image from a war widow’s faded snapshot. The Manpower Office praised the work done by the studio.
Publicity photographs for balls, beauty quests, and all shots of Twelfth Night Theatre productions were taken by D.C. herself. She also covered the smartest weddings, christenings and other social events: 'to be photographed by Dorothy Coleman was itself an accolade’, stated the Sunday Mail (23 April 1978).
Dorothy closed her studio in 1960. Colour film had arrived and her husband died that year. Having studied painting with Josephine Muntz Adams , Caroline Barker and Martyn Roberts, she now had time to pursue her love of painting, working from a small studio in her exquisite garden at Everton Park (where she reared many a stray dog and cat). She became a member of the Royal Queensland Art Society. Her first solo painting show was held at the Galloway Galleries, Bowen Hills, in 1978, when she was seventy-nine. It consisted of flower studies and landscapes, popular for their almost photographic detail. Her exhibition the following year sold out before the opening.
Dorothy Coleman died on 1 January 1984, survived by her daughter, Denise Thorpe. Rhoda Felgate compiled a history of Twelfth Night Theatre, complemented by a wealth of photographic evidence by Dorothy, and donated it to the Fryer Library (University of Queensland) before her death in 1990.
Writers:
Robins, DeborahNote: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 January 1899
- Summary
- Photographer and painter. She was Brisbane's leading society photographer between 1935 and 1960.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-84
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Kilda East, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Best known as the author of Picnic at Hanging Rock , Joan Lindsay began her creative life as a painter in Melbourne. Despite her adult fame as an author and being married to a prominent member of the Lindsay family of artists, her own artistic life has been overlooked by many art historians, including those with a special interest in womens’ art.
Joan Lindsay was born Joan a’Beckett Weigall on 16 November 1896 in St Kilda East, Melbourne. She was the daughter of Sir Theyre a’ Beckett Weigall and Annie Sophia Henrietta Hamilton. Her parents socialised with many of the National Gallery of Victoria’s early trustees including Professor Sir Baldwin Spencer. Joan’s father was a well respected lawyer (later a judge) and was involved in the establishment of the National Gallery of Victoria’s, Felton Bequest. Joan was related to the Boyd art family, and the potter Martin Boyd was her cousin.
After leaving school she enrolled in art classes at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). From 1916 to 1918 Joan was a pupil of Frederick McCubbin at the NGV’s, School of Drawing. Under his instruction she copied endless antique plaster casts of classical origin mostly using charcoal, this being a compulsory requirement before being allowed to enter the life and painting class. In 1919 Joan studied life drawing and painting under the head of the art school, Bernard Hall .
While she barely mentioned her art career in her memoirs, Joan wrote of her art training in a posthumously published article in the magazine, Overland . This article, based on a 1960s lecture, offers a fascinating insight into Australian art education during the early years of the twentieth century, although rarely mentions her own artistic achievements. As her art school training was undertaken during World War I nearly all her fellow students were women although things changed at the end of the war. One notable male student at the School of Painting in 1919 was the artist Godfrey Miller .
By early 1920 Joan had a studio in Bourke Street, Melbourne and she had a solo exhibition of her landscape work at the Decoration Company’s gallery in Collins Street, Melbourne in July 1920. This exhibition of oils and watercolour was positively reviewed in The Argus (12 July 1920, p 9):
'A strong feeling for the beauty of panoramic views is conveyed in some sketches of subjects of this character painted in the neighbourhood of Greensborough and Warrandyte. Some pictures in which the human figure, and in others ducks and geese are introduced, add variety, and show a decided interest in the decorative placing of figures, and also have much charm of colour… In water-colour, Miss Weigall shows several examples notable for breadth of handling united to charm of colour.’
During 1920 the artist shared her studio with her close friend Maie Ryan (later Lady Maie Casey ). This shared studio was described by Joan in her memoir Time Without Clocks (p 206):
'Before either of us was married we had shared a studio in Bourke Street somewhere near Spencer Street Station – not a party giving studio but a big dusty room – it never entered our heads to dust it – where in frenzied bursts of amateur energy we really worked away at our drawing. We even wrote a book together about the ballet dancer called Anna… When we got bored with the illustrations for Anna or painstaking drawing of Miss Minty – a professional model who only consented to sit if the poses were not what she called 'rude’ – we would take our 'Greyhounds’ (packets of cheap coloured chalks) and go off somewhere by tram sketch out of doors.’
Around this time Joan and Maie Ryan held an exhibition titled, 'The Neo-Pantechnicists’. This portentous title was, according to Maie Ryan, a 'leg-pull’, but with the support of Rosemary Reynolds and Ethel Spowers the exhibition was a sell out with prices between two shillings and five guineas.
Soon after leaving the art school Joan met Daryl Lindsay at M.J. MacNally’s Melbourne studio in Bourke Street, and Daryl soon became a regular visitor at her studio. By this time Daryl Lindsay (a member of the large family of artists) had become interested in art and the couples shared interest led to an emotional attachment. Joan and Daryl were married on Valentines Day 1922 in London. After returning from their European honeymoon Joan and Daryl continued to paint together although she soon stepped back from art in favour of writing short stories, novels and memoir.
Joan Lindsay exhibited some of her work at exhibitions of the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS) in the early 1920s. Two works were mentioned by the prominent critic J.S. MacDonald in his review of the 1922 VAS exhibition published in Art in Australia :
'Joan Weigall Lindsay exhibits two Riviera watercolours. The larger of the two is attacked with boldness and decision refreshing to see, and the decorative impression of the steep face of the hill on which all the values “close” has been well maintained. Mrs. Lindsay has plenty of courage and enterprise.’
Joan Lindsay held a joint exhibition of her watercolours with her husband in 1924 at the Fine Art Society Gallery in Melbourne. The only (known) published image of her work was a watercolour titled 'Gum Tree’, which was reproduced in black and white in the June 1925 'Daryl Lindsay’ issue of Art in Australia .
Daryl only mentions Joan’s art practice once in his own autobiography ( A Leafy Tree , p 128), and this comment is rather derogatory:
'Hers [Joan Lindsay] was only a minor talent but she had much more intuitive and mature judgement than most of the other students [at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School], and a lively inquiring mind.’
From 1941 to 1956 Joan’s husband was the director of the National Gallery of Victoria and during much of that time she worked as his part time administrative assistant. In 1957 Daryl was knighted and Joan became known as Lady Lindsay.
Although a well known writer Joan continued to paint in oil and watercolour after abandoning her short lived professional career. Popular themes with the artist were beach scenes and landscapes. In late 1972 Joan Lindsay and her old friend Maie Casey held a joint exhibition of their painting at the McClelland Gallery, Langwarrin near Mulberry Hill . This was described in Maie Casey’s biography, Glittering Surfaces , as 'a historical rather than a commercial exhibition’. During the early 1980s artist Rick Amor lived on her Mulberry Hill property and he illustrated her last book, Syd Sixpence (1982). Joan Lindsay died on 23 December 1984, at Frankston, Victoria.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 November 1896
- Summary
- Best known as the author of 'Picnic at Hanging Rock', Lady Joan Lindsay was also also a talented oil and watercolour painter.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Dec-84
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-37.247494 Longitude144.4552171 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kyneton, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- printmaker and painter, born Kyneton (Vic.). Enrolled NGV School 1926, then went to England where she painted near Cornwall and Devon with various artists. On her return she was associated with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, with whom she exhibited continuously (see Peers).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1894
- Summary
- Printmaker and painter, trained at NGV School in late 1920s then lived and worked in England. On her return, she exhibited continuously with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1984
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-33.8342887 Longitude151.2182049 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1984-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Neutral Bay, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born at Neutral Bay, Sydney, second of the five children of Ernest Augustus Smith, a solicitor, and Grace, née Fisher, daughter of the rector and squire of Cossington, Leicestershire, who had studied music in Germany. Grace junior was a boarder at Miss Connolly’s school at Point Piper, Sydney then attended Abbotsleigh, Wahroonga, where she was taught art by Albert Collins and Alfred Coffey . She was also encouraged by the headmistress, Marian Clarke, herself a talented watercolourist. In 1910 she began drawing lessons with Dattilo Rubbo ; her early sketchbooks consist of realistic pencil drawings of familiar household articles. On a two-year trip to England with her sister in 1912, she attended drawing classes at Winchester School of Art, and also at Stettin, Germany.
In 1914 Cossington Smith rejoined her family in their newly acquired home in Turramurra, built by a previous owner to accommodate Quaker religious meetings and renamed Cossington by its new owners. It was Grace’s home for 65 years. She also returned to Dattilo Rubbo’s classes. With the help of overseas magazines and books and reproductions brought from England by a former pupil, Norah Simpson, Rubbo encouraged enthusiasm for modern art. Cossington Smith absorbed modernist ideas quickly and in 1915 exhibited The Sock Knitter – 'perhaps the first fully Post-Impressionist work painted in Australia’, Daniel Thomas states. Although several of her paintings depict social conditions – Troops Marching , Strike , Crowd at the Races and Rushing – she described her work at this time as being primarily concerned with technical issues such as how to bring forms up to the picture plane and the effects of colour.
In 1928 she held her first solo exhibition and had her work reproduced in Art in Australia . She was interested in religious subjects in her paintings and was loosely involved with Ethel Anderson 's Turramurra Wall Painters. The construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge inspired a major series of paintings and pastel drawings depicting the bridge as a symbol of modernism. She also painted landscapes and streetscapes on excursions with artist friends or family, and native flowers.
In 1938, following the death of her father, the artist moved from her garden studio to one added inside the house beside her bedroom, an environment that resulted in the dominance of interior subjects in her later paintings. Juxtaposed pure colours, applied with a distinctive broad brushstroke, depict intimate views of her home, light-filled and spiritual. She described her work as 'expressing form in colour, colour vibrant with light – but containing this other, silent quality which is unconscious, and belongs to all things created’.
Cossington Smith never married; she was 'wholly interested in painting’ and one of a close family group. She had a private income, but taught art for several years at two small private schools and to private pupils. She held 18 solo exhibitions at the Macquarie Galleries between 1932 and 1977 and showed her work in many group exhibitions in Sydney and overseas. The many awards she received included the OBE and AO. She is represented in all state and major regional galleries. Daniel Thomas held a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Art Gallery of NSW in 1973. She died on 24 December 1984.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FROM JOAN KERR’S BLACK AND WHITE FILES:
Late in the war and/or in the immediate post-war period (c.1919-20) Cossington Smith drew a set of anti-German propagandist cartoons, The Great Illusion (originals NGA), showing how Germany had underestimated Britain’s military capabilities and ending in a plea for conscription to foil German expectations once more. They feature the British Lion nonchalantly licking his paw while German officers mock him, '“HE won’t do anything – he’s decadent”’, ’1913/ (The Wowzers) [disaffected Englishmen in bowler hats] “Boo-hoo – the poor animal – he’s going to the dogs’', ’1914/ '“Bah! you contemptible little thing – what can you do against my beauty”!’; ’1916…(Chorus) Conscription! – NEVER!! he’s too conservative!’; ’1917… – “If only we humbug him enough, he will fall in” -’ and '(Knowing one) “He can’t hold them any longer – they’re waiting for the chance to break loose“–’. In the last the lion’s ranks have swelled to include an army of cubs (the Commonwealth countries) who, despite contentedly licking their paws, are believed by the Germans to be about to desert Britain. These may be the drawings War Phrases shown in the Royal Art Society annual exhibition in October 1919, alluded to by Bruce James in his monograph on the artist. An apparent addition to the series, The revival of German music 1920 (copy in Joan Kerr Archives, NLA), comments on the dangers of underestimating German post-war economic rebuilding. A choir of blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy singers wearing leiderhosen – labelled 'mercantile navy’ (sporting a naval cap labelled 'DEUTC[H?]’ [ sic ]), 'trade’, 'commerce’ and 'industry’ – are being conducted by an elderly gentleman '(Herr Professor)’, who is saying: “Quite a nice little class again – now, altogether my children”.
Cossington Smith also drew caricatures of some leading, international, wartime figures c.1919. They include the American President, Woodrow Wilson, and a double-page spread featuring, on the left, Field Marshall General Sir John French, commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Forces at the beginning of the war, and, on the right, Lord John Fisher, First Lord of the Admiralty. Cossington Smith’s Wilson as The Idealist looks ineffectual as, with his hands clasped in front of him and his feet together, he says: 'I am an Idealist/ -it’s my Temperament/ -I can’t help it./ During the/ Great War I/ helped by writing/ Notes./ When Peace came/ I helped by pointing/ out “14 Points”, & by/ making acute/ situations more acute./ I invented the League/ of Nations. Another of/ my high ideals is “to/ make the world safe/ in Democracy” -/ I am “too proud/ to fight”. When others/ have done the fighting/ I step in & say/ what should be done./ This is my Chief Role/ -I love it -it makes/ me feel so/ acutely idealistic’. French, who resigned as commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force after a series of military defeats in France and Belgium, is pictured at his writing desk, proclaiming '“I am really/ a Great Soldier/ – but lately I’ve/ taken to writing/ books about/ things that needn’t/ be written about”’. The reference is to his book 1914 (1919) in which he revealed details of his protracted, wartime quarrel with General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, an account described in The Dictionary of National Biography as ill-judged and deplorable. Cossington Smith seems to have been more enamoured of Lord Fisher (there is some speculation he may have been a relative of her mother’s.), who holds a book labelled 'MEMOIRS’ and states: ''I have also taken to/ writing books, but my real/ business is THE NAVY./ -I am the Creator/ of the Navy as it is To-day.’'
Her cartoon, The Davis Cup goes home , is stylistically similar to her war drawings and was presumably drawn in 1920, the year the Cup was won by the United States after being retained by Australia from 1914 to 1919 (no competition was held in 1915-18 because of the war). Australia is represented by a kangaroo holding a tennis racquet looking back at his 'Uncle Sam’ competitor who strides off, cigar in mouth, holding the Cup and saying: '(The Yank) – “I guess this little trinket belongs to me again”-’.
Two pencil drawings that parallel May Gibbs’s gumnut babies, Xmas Belle and ''What a Xmas Belle you are’' , were presumably drawn c.1930; the undated NGA sketchbook 51 in which they appear contains a flier for the 1930 Empire Fête, held at St James’s Church, Turramurra.
Daniel Thomas held a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Art Gallery of NSW in 1973 and a drawing exhibition at the NGA in 1993 (see Grace Cossington Smith: A Life from drawings in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia , Canberra, 1993).
Writers:
Johnson, Heather
Note: Heritage entryKerr, Joan
Note: On Smith's cartooning
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 20 April 1892
- Summary
- Painter, born in Neutral Bay, Sydney. A student of Dattilo Rubbo, Cossington Smith was quick to absorb modernist ideas and in 1915 exhibited 'The Sock Knitter', described by Daniel Thomas as 'perhaps the first fully Post-Impressionist work painted in Australia'.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Dec-84
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-33.827964 Longitude151.1782693 Start Date1937-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Northwood, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1937
- Summary
- Photographer who worked as an assistant to Max Dupain and had a number of photojournalistic articles published in Australian magazines in the 1950s and 1960s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude-20 Longitude133 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Northern Territory, NT, Australia
- Biography
- Dick Pantimas’ country was Yippa, north of Sandy Blight Junction, near NT/WA border. Like his older brother Johnny Warangkula , his Kalipinypa (Water) Dreaming was often the subject of his paintings when he began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in the late ’70s. Dick was a close observer of the older artists for many years before beginning to paint himself. He was a close friend of Ray Inkamala . Until his unfortunate death in 1983, the artist was one of the most promising of the second generation of painters which began to emerge in Papunya in the early ’80s. He was survived by his wife Wendy and their several children. In 1990 the central Water Dreaming iconograph from one of his paintings was used as the design for a mosaic in the new Alice Springs Airport.
Writers:
Johnson, Vivien
Note: primary biographer
Date written:
1994
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1935
- Summary
- Dick Pantimas was one of the second generation of painters which began to emerge in Papunya in the early '80s and before beginning to paint had been a close observer of the older artists for many years, including his big brother Johnny Warangkula.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude-33.690833 Longitude117.555278 Start Date1934-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Katanning, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Revel Ronald Cooper was born of Nyungar descent, probably in 1934, at Katanning, Western Australia. Cooper was one of six siblings; their mother died in 1940. As a young boy Revel and his sister Maude were declared wards of the state and placed in Carrolup Native Settlement (now known as Marribank), established in 1915 as a place of internment for Aborigines. The 'Carrolup School,’ as it became known, developed through the significant contribution made by Noel White who was appointed head teacher in 1945 and remained at Carrolup until its closure in 1951. White, together with his wife Lily, developed educational programs in art, music, dance and story telling to encourage the children’s imagination and creativity. Inspired by this interest and support, a number of children produced drawings, pastels and watercolours evocative of their Nyungar heritage: complex geometric designs, dramatic landscapes and animated figures engaged in dance. Cooper worked alongside a number other children many of whom went on to forge a career as an artist: Parnell Dempster, Reynold Hart, Milton Jackson, Ross Jones, Claude Kelly, Allan Kelly, Simpson, Greg and Goldie Kelly, Barry Loo, Cliff Ryder, Alma Toomath, A. Ugle, Primus Ugle and Vera Wallam. The children’s art was widely exhibited and generated considerable interest, winning a number of awards in Australia and overseas. Following an initial invitation to exhibit at the Katanning Agricultural Show (1946) drawings and paintings by Carrolup children were exhibited at the Lord Forrest Centenary Exhibition in Perth (1947); Boans Ltd. department store, Perth (1947); Albany, WA (1948); Sydney (1948) and at a UNESCO sponsored seminar in Mysore, India (1949) (Stanton 1992: 29). The Carrolup School also attracted the attention of a visiting Englishwoman, Florence Rutter, and she arranged for a selection of work to tour Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the Netherlands. The 1952 publication by Mary Durack and Rutter Child Artists of the Australian Bush contributed to national and international recognition for the Carrolup School. Providing a detailed history of the Carrolup movement, photographs and documentary evidence and over fourty reproductions of children’s artwork, Child Artists of the Australian Bush went some way towards redressing assimilationist attitudes by drawing attention to the significance of children’s art for social cohesion and cultural maintenance. The closure of Carrolup in 1951 thrust Cooper into a wider world where he experienced both isolation from his friends and the expectation of success imposed by assimilation. Cooper initially gained employment with J. Gibbney & Son Pty Ltd, a commercial art firm in Perth, before returning to the Katanning area where he worked as a farm labourer and as a railway fettler. Cooper’s struggles with alcoholism were already in evidence when, in November 1952, he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. From the mid 1950s onwards Cooper lived 'on the road’, travelling extensively. In Victoria he worked for a brief period at Aboriginal Enterprises, the tourist outlet established in 1952 at Belgrave by political activist Bill Onus. A photograph from this period shows Cooper and Onus holding a boomerang made in the workshop and painted by designer Paula Kerry (1923-2008) in what she termed the 'Carrolup’ style (Kleinert 1997: 90). It has been acknowledged that Cooper was a formative influence on the young Lin Onus, the son of Bill Onus, who went on to achieve recognition as an artist (Onus 1990: 15; 1993: 290). During the 1960s and 1970s Cooper painted prolifically. While he continued to paint the corroborees and landscapes familiar from his Carrolup childhood, his subject matter expanded to include Aboriginal myths and the recurring image of a bitumen road winding through a settled landscape – like the Waugul serpent of Nyungar legend. Stylistically his work is characterised by the vivid, rich colours typical of the south west region and became progressively more expressive. Although Cooper served a number of prison sentences in Western Australia and Victoria he had the opportunity to exhibit regularly in Victoria and interstate through the assistance provided by art collector James Davidson who worked in association with the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League. At the time the attention of the art world remained focused on the bark paintings of Arnhem Land as a paradigm for an authentic and traditional Aboriginal art. By contrast, Davidson broke new ground by exhibiting the work of Cooper, a city-based artist, alongside bark paintings from east Arnhem Land, Arrernte watercolours from Hermannsburg and woven rugs from Ernabella. While Cooper was in prison, Davidson provided encouragement and support through regular correspondence and the supply of painting materials. The publicity achieved by these exhibitions began to create a wider audience for Cooper’s work: artist Noel Counihan wrote appreciatively in Melbourne’s communist weekly, the Guardian (28 March 1963), of Cooper’s 'strongly original artistic talent’. During a period of prison reform in the 1960s and 1970s, prison provided a productive site of cultural practice for many Aboriginal artists including Ronald Bull, Gordon Syron, Kevin Gilbert and Jimmy Pike. In Fremantle prison well-established Nyungar artists like Cooper, Goldie Kelly and Lewis Jutta were able to pass on their skills and techniques to a younger generation of artists who included Graham Taylor (Swag). During the 1970s Cooper’s repertoire widened to include sculpture, at least one portrait – of Gundidjmara man, Captain Reginald Saunders (1973) (Croft 2003: 25-26) – and several murals (located in Fremantle prison and the Aboriginal Medical Service, Redfern) (Croft 2003: 36). While in Geelong training prison Cooper published writing and in Fremantle prison he made and painted guitars and he completed several commissions including illustrations for a second edition of Durack’s book Yagan of the Bibbulmun (1976). In 1962, whilst Cooper was an inmate of Pardellup Prison Farm, he was commissioned by the then chaplain Father James McCarthy to paint twelve Stations of the Cross as part of the restoration of the Sacred Heart Church in Mount Barker (WA). At the consecration of the rebuilt church Cooper’s Stations of the Cross attracted considerable attention described in the parish newsletter, The Record, as 'realistic and challenging’. Under the leader 'Pardellup prisoner paints Stations of the Cross’, The Record added: 'Portrayal of the various scenes is vivid and imaginative. A new approach was used in the expression of the face of Christ and the facial lines are said to be provocative of deep thinking by the viewer’ (The Record 8 June 1962). These observations suggest that this was indeed a very significant project for Cooper. Regrettably the Stations of the Cross painted by Cooper were replaced at a later, unknown date and all attempts to ascertain whether the Stations of the Cross are still extant and, if so, where they are located have proved unsuccessful. This very significant subject would benefit from further research. Cooper’s struggles with alcoholism and his itinerant lifestyle created both opportunities and difficulties. He died tragically at the age of 49, bludgeoned to death in his car at Buxton, Victoria, sometime around April 1983. His body was not found until several years later after Matthew De Carteret confessed to the murder. Cooper was buried on 30 January 1987 in the Catholic section of the Fawkner cemetery. Later that year on 1 September 1983 Cooper featured posthumously in the Encounters program 'The Broken Covenant’ produced by David Thompson for ABC Television. In the film Cooper protests vociferously against his experiences of injustice and inequality. As Cooper makes clear, 'painting the country of his heritage’ is a means of redressing this problem: he is painting 'for whites not himself.’ The film is also testimony to Cooper’s considerable musical talent concluding with a spirited performance by Cooper, accompanying himself on guitar, of Black American Big Bill Broonzy’s 1951 protest song 'Get Back (Black, Brown and White)’. Cooper is today regarded as one of the key figures in a distinctive Nyungar landscape tradition that is the heritage of the Carrolup School. Through the role model he provided, Cooper contributed to cultural renewal and was influential on a later generation of Nyungar artists including Troy Bennell, Tjyllyungoo (Lance Chadd), Christopher Pease and Shane Pickett. The rediscovery in 2005 of almost a hundred drawings and pastels by Carrolup children in the collection of the Picker Gallery in Colgate University (NY) has given new momentum to the Carrolup School, resulting in several exhibitions, including 'Koorah Coolingbah – Children Long Ago’ at the Western Australian Museum and the Katanning Shire Gallery, WA, and a major publication by Tracie Pushman (2006). Cooper’s work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, Berndt Museum of Anthropology (University of Western Australia), Art Gallery of Western Australia, Fremantle Prison, Fremantle Hospital, the Aboriginal Medical Service in Redfern, the Holmes à Court collection and Colgate University, (NY).
Writers:
Kleinert, Dr Sylvia
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. c.1934
- Summary
- Revel Cooper is a key figure in the Carrolup School of Nyungar landscape painting.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.April 1983
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1932-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Peter Upward was born in Melbourne in 1932 where he studied art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1951. Later that year he moved to Sydney in the hope of escaping the figurative expressionists and social realism dominating the Melbourne art scene. From 1951 to 1955, he studied at the Julian Ashton Art School under John Passmore where he began exploring abstraction as a viable alternative to realism. Upward’s first significant series reflected Passmore’s interest with the semi-figurative abstraction and the earthy tones of the Australian landscape seen in Untitled (1958).
In 1955 Upward moved back to Melbourne where he married Joan Russel and had two children. Returning to Sydney in 1960, Upward worked closely with fellow artists John Olsen and Clement Meadmore, rapidly developing an iconic abstract style with confidence and originality.
Upward had no direct contact with the emerging Abstract Expressionist movement in America and Europe although its influence can be seen in many of his works. Curator of the 2007 retrospective Frozen Gestures: The Art of Peter Upward, Christopher Dean, writes that ‘Upward invented a highly individual visual language that reacted against, rather than conformed to, American abstract expressionism’ (Dean 2007). Dean argues there is a sense of restraint in Upward’s works that would not easily classify him as an Abstract Expressionist, despite being exhibited in Abstract Expressionism in Australia at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney in 1980. Upward’s ‘frozen gestures’ embody the energy, movement and action of the artist. The all-encompassing oversized canvases depict form, colour and stroke over emotionally charged representations of self or feeling setting him apart from traditional abstract expressionists. Rather, Upward’s limited colour palette and considered movements bridge the gap between expressive abstraction and minimal art with an immediate emphasis on process over representation. It was this unique approach that predicted the emergence of colour field and hard edge painting that would infiltrate Sydney and Melbourne in the 1960s and 1970s.
Upward was strongly influenced by Jazz music and the principles of Zen including the book by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki titled Studies in Zen. Here Upward encountered the ‘Zen Paradox’ whereby actions are connected to reactions like the transformation of water to ice. June Celebration (1960) explores the unique transformative qualities of the paint medium while capturing the energetic gesture that goes into its production. Inspired by this study of Zen, Upward’s paintings echo the smooth lines, symbols and expressive characters of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. This saw his paintings chosen to be included in the 1976 exhibition The Calligraphic Image with Brett Whiteley and Royston Harpur at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Abandoning what was a successful painting formula, Upward moved to London in 1962. Gestural painting became a therapeutic exercise where he could explore different ideas, mediums and boundaries – a process he attempted to enhance with the assistance of large quantities of drugs that would have long term affects on this physical and psychological health. In 1971 Upward returned to Australia in a compromised financial and physical state. Despite entering an art scene where he was largely forgotten, Upward continued his art making producing a series brightly coloured resin works on circular canvases. Although his works were reviewed with support and admiration, they were commercially unsuccessful.
Towards the end of the 1970s Upward began teaching at East Sydney Technical College where he was greatly admired by his students. With improved health, he began building a home north of Sydney in the bushland of Wollombi. He married Julie Harris in 1979, and in 1982 they had daughter, Asia. Upward was in the process of moving to the new property when he suffered a fatal heart attack while walking near Sydney’s Balmoral Beach.
Peter Upward explored his career as an artist, student and teacher with bold dynamism as evidenced in the legacy of his paintings, friendships and students. At times life proved difficult but he continued to face his trials with optimism and perseverance as artist, John Olsen fondly recalls: ‘he refused to be bored and everything about him was based on spontaneity and improvisation’ (Olsen, 1984).
In recent years a new generation of curators and critics, including Christopher Dean and Christine France, have written on the complex and valuable contribution of this innovative and remarkable pure abstractionist to the development of minimalism and contemporary Australian art. His standing as a key figure in Australian lyrical abstraction is best indicated by the decision of the National Gallery of Australia to make June Celebration one of the key Australian works included in the Abstract Expressionism exhibition of 2013.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
GretaStevens
Eric Riddler
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 29 September 1932
- Summary
- Peter Upward's gestural calligraphic works are possibly the closest Australia came to mid-twentieth century American Abstract Expressionism. However he was more inspired by the metaphysics of Japanese calligraphy.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Nov-83
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude-19.2569391 Longitude146.8239537 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Townsville, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- potter, leather worker and illustrator, was born on 15 June 1913 in Townsville, third of four children of Andrew John Baxter McMaster and Maria Frances Maude née Kennedy. Her father established a series of properties in central western Queensland as well as a wool scour before moving his family to Brisbane in 1922. Val was educated at Somerville House. Aged eighteen, she enrolled in the full-time art course at the Central Technical College, Brisbane. She took up pottery under L.J. Harvey as an elective in her third year and became his most enthusiastic pupil, working many additional hours and cutting other classes to do so.
Val showed pots at the annual student exhibitions in 1933 and 1934 (and probably in 1935-36). She exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland in 1933-36 and was also the most successful prize-winner at the Royal National Agricultural Show during these years; in 1933 she was awarded six firsts, two seconds and two highly commended prizes, in 1936 eight firsts and two second prizes. She also exhibited black-and-white work and pottery with the Royal Agricultural Society of Queensland at Toowoomba in 1932 and 1934.
Her uncle Sir Fergus McMaster, one of the founders of Qantas, purchased pieces from Val for official company gifts. In 1937-41 she worked for William Bustard at R.S. Exton & Co. painting Bustard’s designs onto stained-glass panels, Owen Maguire, the head artist, adding the final details. Although continuing to produce ceramics at Exton’s, she largely ceased her exhibiting career at this time. In the war years she joined the Women’s National Emergency League and worked as a driver for the 5th USA Airforce. Pottery was no longer a major concern, but she produced prodigious quantities of pokerwork to distribute at Queensland Country Women’s Association and political fetes. Virtually nothing of this survives.
Val McMaster cared for her mother for several years before she died in 1948. Three years later, Val married Edward Potts, a chartered accountant. Hitherto, she had had a surprisingly productive career for one of Harvey’s 'social’ students, and even after this late marriage she learned to throw from Jack Breedon at the Kitty Art Pottery, Albion, and to decorate pottery similarly. However, because she travelled extensively with her husband for most of her married life, she produced little other work.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 June 1913
- Summary
- Maude McMaster won a swathe of prizes in her youth for her pottery, which she entered in shows in her native state of Queensland. She was an enthusiastic student and would work extra hours and cut classes to devote more time to her art while studying at Central Technical College in Brisbane.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- photographer, film-maker, editor and Presbyterian clergyman, was born and educated in England. He came to Australia as an adult in 1942 and played an influential role in the Presbyterian Church for 40 years. He was the first Director of the Audio Visual Department of the Church in Victoria, he ran the first Stewardship campaign in the country in 1955 and he was founder and first president of the Australian Film Society. In 1953 he produced a film about Aborigines entitled Man of the Mulga .
In 1966 Aikin became a freelance professional photographer. In 1970 he was appointed editor of the Church’s paper, Outreach , and then often took photographs to illustrate articles. His widow, Margaret Aikin, said that 'he always saw photography as a means of communication’. The National Library of Australia holds a collection of about 1,000 of Aikin’s gelatin silver photographs taken 1942-c.1978. Most are of young people, both indigenous and non-indigenous, in schools or church-related activities throughout Australia. 81 are exhibition prints. 21 photographs, ranging in size from exhibition prints to reference prints, record the traditional life of the people of the South Australian Musgrave Ranges region (c.1950). They include portraits of individuals, e.g. a man holding a baby (P3499), groups such as a large group of hunters (P3506) and people engaged in activities like skinning a kangaroo (P3498) or milking a goat (P3501). There is a photograph of the opening of Ernabella Church in the Musgrave Ranges in 1953, showing a large mixed population waiting outside before the ceremony began (P846/120). 14 photographs of Yirrkala Aboriginal Community on the Gove Peninsula at the north-eastern tip of Arnhem Land (c.1974) include buildings around Yirrkala and construction work around the college and a portrait of Wandjuk Marika. (Aikin took another portrait in the 1970s when Wandjuk was a member of the Australia Council for the Arts.)
His photographs of Aurukun (Cape York) people include one of an Aurukun (Wik?) woman teaching her weaving skills to a Spinners and Weavers Guild Exhibition crowd at Melbourne in 1975. 16 (c.1968-78) are portraits of young people living in the Top End, ranging from kindergarten children to young girls sewing and young men with guitars or harvesting pawpaw on Elcho Island. Photographs in his Australian Inland Mission (AIM) frontier services collection taken 1974-75 show various people involved in education, from primary school to health education, including a white teacher learning the Aboriginal language Anindilyakwa (or Warnindilyakwa, P846/940); also a blacksmith shop (P846/948).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1904
- Summary
- English male photographer, film-maker, editor and Presbyterian priest who went outback for Outreach, a Church journal, documenting indigenous cultures and mission activity.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1904
- Summary
- Teltscher attended the School of Arts and Crafts, Vienna, later studying at the Bauhaus 1921-23. He later immigrated to England where he was interned and deported to Australia aboard the vessel Dunera. While interned at Hay, he designed "camp currency" printed locally. He returned to England in 1941 to take up a teaching career, design for Thames and Hudson, later taking a teaching post in Nigeria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-83
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, teacher, illustrator, graphic artist and cartoonist, was born in Sydney of French ancestry. She studied in Paris under Andre L’hôte and at Colarossi’s. According to Power (p.47, apparently quoting Margaret Coen but without acknowledgement), Dora was 'pretty, petite, very proud of her French ancestry and recently returned from Paris’ when a student of Dattilo Rubbo 's in the late 1920s. She shared a studio in a condemned building owned by the Electricity Commission near Circular Quay with fellow students, the lovers Alison Rehfisch and George Duncan , and was the only member of their set to have travelled overseas. (George Duncan was a New Zealander, but that of course didn’t count.) Jarret’s Awful results of sketching on a roof , an undated gentle caricature of a woman sketching from and subsequently falling off a roof with her sketchbook, pencils and chair preceding her, was apparently a joke about her friend Grace Cossington Smith’s plein air painting habits. Found as a loose sheet inside Cossington Smith’s sketchbook no.5 (NGA), it seems likely to have been drawn in Sydney when both were studying with Rubbo.
In the 1920s Jarret exhibited with the Royal Art Society, had work in the Australian Art Society’s first exhibition (1927) and was a regular exhibitor with the Australian Watercolour Institute. With Rehfisch, Neville Barker and Arthur Murch, she exhibited as 'Four Young Artists’ at Farmer’s Blaxland Galleries in 1929. She showed watercolours, travel sketches and linocuts; the AGNSW purchased An Italian Bypath . The Bulletin (3 December 1929) noted:
Dora Jarret, looking like a rose adorned with pearls instead of dewdrops, was a radiant spot on the balcony at the Blaxland Galleries last week. Chum Alison Rehfisch looked smart as paint, which was all to the good, as the two young creatures were welcoming the world to a show of their canvases. Neville Barker and Arthur Murch, who are also exhibiting, added male support and nice manners to the gathering (quoted Power, 47-48).
On the closing night of the exhibition the artists held a party in Alison and Dora’s new studio at 8 Bridge Street, which was apparently attended by the NSW Governor’s wife Lady de Chair (see Sunday Sun 15 December 1929, cited by Power, p.49). A weekly sketch club had its headquarters at 8 Bridge Street; Elaine Haxton was one of the younger members until she went overseas in 1931: 'We paid half a crown for a model and a cuppa tea’ (Haxton, 'A Reminiscence’ in Alison Rehfish and George Duncan catalogue 1976, quoted Power, p.49. SEE also Meg Stewart, Reminiscence of My Mother ). George still officially lived at Tempe, but actually inhabited the place too. E.A. Harvey (unpub. Mss) recalled that they 'shared a big studio in Bridge Street and went everywhere in a baby Austin. George was as big as the other two put together; the car was Jarret’s (Jar Ray as everyone calls her), and she drove, consequently the car had a perpetual lean’. A photograph of Alison and Dora painting beside a car in 1932 is included in Power (p.52), alongside one of the three of them in the Blue Mountains (apparently Katoomba lookout). The three of them beside the car near Cooma in 1933 is on p.53.
Alison and George moved in together to 12 Bridge Street, the site of more notoriously licentious parties, e.g. a 'loincloth party’ held in honour of Christopher Brennan, which Jarret attended dressed as a Pierrot [sic] with frilled collar (described Power, p.49). The 'Prehistoric and Primitive Party’, held in 1933 in honour of George who was leaving 'Sordid Sydney for Peppy Paris’, included Dora and Alison, wearing grass skirts, welcoming guests into 'the jungle’ decorated with friends’ 'island treasures’ and with 'tribal drawings’ on the walls. The colourful send-off included Norman Lindsay’s hornpipe act and a dancing exhibition by Ellen Gray with a male partner from the German School of Dancing where she took lessons (Power, p.53). It was this party that inspired Norman Lindsay’s watercolour The Party (1933, p.c.), with its bare-breasted woman dancer in the centre (called Coen but clearly Gray and her male partner) and reputedly including Jarret, in grass skirt and bra, seated on the floor on the right (reproduced Power, p.48). Norman sent a photograph of the painting to Rehfisch with the note: 'To Alison – with thanks for the best of all possible parties’. After George went to Europe and Alison followed with her friend Ellen Gray in 1933, Norman Lindsay took over the studio, moving down from Springwood at a time of personal and artistic crisis so he could devote himself to oil painting. When Lindsay left, Margaret Coen, Douglas Stewart and their daughter Meg took it over (Power, p.57). Jarret remained in Sydney; in 1936 she passed on the news that George had three paintings hung at the RA, two 'on the line’, to the Daily Telegraph (Power, p.77). Alison alone returned to Sydney in 1939 and, following Rehfisch’s death, a party was held at Dora Jarret’s studio that included Alison’s daughter Peg, B.J. Waterhouse, President of the AGNSW board of trustees, and various artists (Power, p.81). A photograph taken after the 'Show of Fives’ at Macquarie Galleries c.1940 (Power, p.97) includes Jarret between Jean Bellette and Rehfisch along with other artists including 'George Duncan just back from London’.
Germaine states that Jarret mainly painted landscapes, old houses and portraits in oil and watercolour. She also illustrated Henry Handel Richardson’s The Bath , published in 1933, with elegant drawings of four pubescent girls in various stages of undress, and she designed bookplates (Mark Ferson). Germaine claims that her first solo show was at Brisbane in 1929, but this must be an error. She was, however, a member of the Royal Queensland Art Society in 1946. In 1951 she was included in a small group exhibition in the foyer of a J.C. Williamson theatre in Melbourne with Elsa Russell and Piers Bourke (cited Paula Furby). When Sydney Rubbo interviewed some of his father’s former students (tape recording n.d but after Rubbo’s death, AGNSW, mentioned Power 35), Jarret was living in Neutral Bay (Cossington Smith was at Turramurra, Janna Bruce was at Warrawee and Alison Rehfisch was at Pymble).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1904
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney painter, teacher, illustrator, graphic artist and cartoonist.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-19.2569391 Longitude146.8239537 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Townsville, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- Kathleen Judith Coren was born in Townsville in 1903 the second daughter of Francis De Sales Coren and Elizabeth Gray. Her sisters Doris and Belle, who were talented in different fields, were born in 1901 and 1908 respectively. Their father worked for the Langdon family on a property outside Muttaburra and the girls were schooled locally and later at the Mundingburra State School, Townsville. Kathleen, who was a proficient violinist throughout her life, first studied her chosen instrument at St Patrick’s High School, Townsville.
Kathleen worked as a photographic retoucher for Laurie’s Studio, Townsville, under the guidance of Elsie Lampton and was encouraged to study drawing at the Townsville Technical College. Subsequently, she worked at the Graham Studio, Mackay, before making her way to Brisbane. Here she took further lessons with the artist, Vida Lahey, and began to exhibit, largely portraits, with the Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS) in 1938.
During the years of World War II she served as draftswoman for the construction business owned by Jack Mulholland and was stationed at Kissing Point, Townsville. While here, she painted the portrait of USA Army Nurse, Lt. F. Miller which was exhibited in the RQAS’s Annual exhibition in 1942.
When she returned to Brisbane Kathleen painted and exhibited with the Brisbane Art Group from 1948 to 1953 which included Dorothy Coleman, G. Wilson Cooper, Marion Finlayson, Flora Hosking, Vera Leichney, Wal Potts and James Wieneke. She also studied with Richard Rodier Rivron (a student of the Royal Academician, Glyn Philpot) whose teaching methods brought a fresh approach to her art practice in the years from 1950 to 1954.
She married George Leichney in 1953 after the death of his first wife, Vera, in 1951 and as Kathleen Leichney served on the committee of the RQAS from 1956 to 1969. For some reason her exhibition career slowed significantly during the 1950s, but revived the following decade in which she exhibited from 1960 to 1971. Leichney was made an honorary life member of the Society in 1978.
Kathleen became a close friend of the prominent sculptor, Daphne Mayo, and they painted portraits of each other. Mayo’s portrait shows Kathleen clasping her violin as she performs with Brisbane’s String Orchestra. Mayo also produced a bronze head of Kathleen, ca. 1955, which is in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. It is probably through this connection that Daphne Mayo received the commission from Mulholland’s for the bronze Jolly Swagman at Winton installed in 1958.
Leichney suffers from the obscurity that burdens many portrait painters as her major works are unseen in the private collections of the families that commissioned the portraits. Two only are in public collections: Little girl in the RQAS Collection, Brisbane, and Self portrait in the Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville. Her funeral service was held at St Andrew’s Anglican Church, Indooroopilly, in 1983.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- Kathleen Leichney had an extensive career in Queensland in both the visual arts and in music. She painted and exhibited in Brisbane (largely portraits) and played her violin in amateur orchestras for over forty years.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.8718758 Longitude151.2192218 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Woolloomooloo, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, commercial artist and printmaker, was born on 26 February 1903 at Woolloomooloo, Sydney. A mural painted with her husband Bim Hilder for the staff restaurant, Grace Bros., Sydney is also known.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Note: Primary
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. c.26 February 1903
- Summary
- Painter, commercial artist and printmaker, a life long Sydney resident, the city was her main theme. Worked with her husband, sculptor Bim Hilder, exploring print techniques.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Aug-83
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.8798136 Longitude151.078522 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Strathfield, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and caricaturist, was born in Strathfield, Sydney, son of a newsagent. He left Fort Street High in 1916 and became an apprentice process engraver on the Bulletin . Like many of his Bulletin colleagues, he attended classes at the Royal Art Society and graduated to doing cartoons for the paper. In 1917 he joined Smith and Julius 's commercial art studios where Australia’s first commercially made animated films were produced through Julius’s 'Filmads’ company.
Miller drew cartoons for various periodicals as a freelance, including the Bulletin (including one particularly good 1930s Bulletin cartoon) and Aussie . Two undated original Bulletin cartoons, “I thought you said your new gown was backless” and The Monkey Glands , are in AGWA. He was a founding member of the Black and White Artists’ Club in 1924. In 1920 (acc. Shiell & Unger, 'Fifty Years’ & Rainbow), 1922 (acc. Blaikie) or 1919 (acc. Lindesay), he joined Smith’s Weekly , when Frank Marien was editor-in-chief, and remained for 12 years (until 1939 acc. Rafty & Mack and Rainbow). He drew caricatures of artists, eg An Unexpected Response (Streeton, Lambert, Gruner & J.S. Watkins), published 2 April 1923, 15; Dictators of “Art in Australia”, (left to right) Harry Julius, Sydney Ure Smith, Charles Lloyd Jones [q.v.] , and Ernest Watt savour a new Lindsay etching 14 May 1927, 13 and Sydney’s “Royal” Artists discuss a hanging matter. Left to right (back row): Henry Fullwood, Oxnard Smith, Will Ashton, Syd. Long, Charlie Bryant, Lister Lister; (front row): Dattilo Rubbo and J. S Watkins , 20 August 1927, 13. Also (prophetic shades of Lyndon Johnson and Robin Askin in 1966?) 'Mr Jock Lenin Garden: “What’s holding us up here, chauffeur?”/ Chauffeur: “One of these unemployed processions, Sir.”/ Mr Jock Lenin Garden: “Aw, toot and drive through 'em!”’ Smith’s 11 October 1930, 10.
Miller was said to have specialised in drawing elephants and monkeys at Smith’s (monkeys as an angry father and smooching daughter, plus dogs, a leopardess, lions and monkey dresser and 2 gags about chooks are illustrated in Rainbow, pp.43-45). He also did many political and sporting cartoons and wrote and illustrated film and theatre critiques. He was one of the first cartoonists to use the scraperboard technique (in the 1930s). After being dismissed then re-instated during the Depression, he insisted on signing all his work 'Noel’ – the name he had been using for the outside work that led to his dismissal. Later cartoons include [maid peering through hotel room keyhole], “I thought so; none for number 8 and two cups for number 7!” 21 September 1940.
During the 1930s Miller continued to create newspaper comic strips, including his best-known character Chesty Bond (from 1938) and A little Bear will fix it . He published numerous comic books in 1943-45 and his strip Animal Angus was syndicated overseas as well as throughout Australia. He worked on the Melbourne Herald in 1945-56. In 1957 he resigned from his job of producing the daily strip Us Girls and became involved in making TV animation and sound-slide films.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1901
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney and Melbourne cartoonist, animator and caricaturist. Creator of logo/comic strip character Chesty Bond
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-38.243315 Longitude145.0885432 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mornington, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 25 September 1901
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude52.634444 Longitude-1.131944 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leicester, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illuminator, illustrator, weaver, potter, leather-worker, embroiderer, jeweller and enameller, was born in Leicester, England. She gained a Diploma of Arts and Crafts at the Manchester College of Art on a scholarship (1915-18), then spent three years working as a designer for a Lancashire firm of textile printers until marrying the Queensland pastoralist Andrew Pedersen in 1921. They came to live on a property outside St Laurence, from which she published some cartoons in the Sydney magazine Aussie in the 1920s. Lilian revisited England in 1925-26. On her return she settled at Emerald and continued to produce cartoons, as well as making weavings which she exhibited at local shows.
In 1936 Lilian Pedersen lived in Brisbane in order to take refresher courses with Martyn Roberts and L.J. Harvey at the Central Technical College. She produced pottery in 1936-40 and became a member of the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland. She was noted for the variety of her exhibits at the annual exhibitions in 1937-40; needlework pictures, pottery, tapestry chairs, leatherwork, weaving and illuminated manuscripts were all mentioned in 1939. She exhibited weavings, pewter, embroidery and illuminations in the Queensland display at the NSW Society of Arts and Crafts in 1940. Independently in 1941 she showed seven illuminations; one of her illuminated books was included in the Elisabeth S öderberg Memorial exhibition in 1948. She exhibited with the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association (Qld) in 1937-38 and with the Australian Watercolour Institute (Sydney) from 1951.
Pedersen’s role in Queensland arts organisations was just as significant. With Mona Elliott, she founded the Half Dozen Group of Artists at Brisbane in 1941 and acted as Honorary Secretary for 31 years. The photograph of Lilian with her illuminations and Mona with her pots was taken at the Group’s inaugural exhibition, and she continued to show her craftwork and oil and watercolour paintings at the annual exhibitions until 1955. Under her direction it actively promoted art and craft in Queensland; the L.J. Harvey Drawing Prize was established in 1951 and she acted as organising secretary for the exhibitions 'Queensland Artists of Fame and Promise’ in 1955-63. In 1975 she established the biennial Andrew and Lilian Pedersen Memorial Prize for printmaking, drawing and small sculpture administered by the Queensland Art Gallery. The Gallery reciprocated. In 1982 Lilian Pedersen was presented with its inaugural Trustees’ Medal for distinguished services to art in Queensland.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1898
- Summary
- Ella Lilian Pedersen was a painter, illuminator, illustrator, weaver, potter, leather-worker, embroiderer, jeweller and enameller. In 1941, with Mona Elliott, she founded the Half Dozen Group of Artists in Brisbane.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-32.9186415 Longitude151.7487447 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamilton, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Norman Lloyd was born on 16 October 1895 near Newcastle, NSW, where he also attended primary school. Leaving school in 1911, Lloyd started to work and study painting with Julian Ashton and James R Jackson in Sydney. On his 21st birthday in 1916 Lloyd enlisted with the Australian Imperial Forces and was transported to Europe where he was seriously wounded in battle a year later. Returning to Sydney in February 1918, he re-commenced painting lessons at the Julian Ashton Art School. From 1921 to 1926, Lloyd exhibited with galleries in Sydney and Melbourne, showing landscapes and Sydney harbour scenes painted in the more traditional style of his teachers. From 1926 to 1929 Lloyd visited Europe and travelled widely in Italy and France, exhibiting in the UK, France and Australia, culminating in a solo exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney.In the 1930s, Lloyd emigrated permanently to London with his wife Edith, setting up a boarding house in upmarket St Johns Wood and establishing himself quickly in the new society as a kind, generous and interested man with a broad horizon. His mansion became a meeting point and home for many Australian expatriates, among them painters Will Ashton , Alison Rehfisch and George Duncan . The Lloyds hosted pianist Nancy Weir, and war correspondent Harold Fyffe was a close friend who introduced Lloyd to H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Lloyd also established himself professionally when he was elected member of the exclusive Royal Institute of Oil Painters (ROI) in 1936 and of the London Sketch Club, over which he presided during 1941 to 1942. He also kept his connection with Australia by becoming a Fellow of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales, and in 1949 Henry Hanke’s portrait of Norman Lloyd was chosen to be hung in the Archibald Prize of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. From 1933 until 1970, Lloyd exhibited regularly with the ROI, and showed at the Royal Academy of London. The titles of his work testify of Lloyd’s love for mediterranean Europe – Italy, Spain, France, Turkey and Morocco – which inspired joyful land, sea and mountainscapes in a style that evoked impressionism. Lloyd was a prolific painter who was able to paint fast, preferring textural oil and pastels. From 1947 onwards, Lloyd spent the summers with Zénaide Chaumette – whom he had met in Paris after the war – in the heart of France in Chassignolles. This liaison strengthened his connection with France and probably led to his exhibiting at several Salons of the Société des Artistes Français from 1947 until 1962, and also at the Salon d’Hiver in Paris. After the death of Zénaide Chaumette in 1954, Lloyd was willed Chaumette’s house in Chassignolles until he died, and it seems that he moved to Chassignolles permanently in 1974, at the age of 80. It appears that he later returned to London to live and he died there on 5 March 1983. The Times of London printed a short obituary.In 1989 and 1990, Lloyd’s work was shown at Savill Galleries in Sydney alongside a number of important Australian artists. In 1990 Christopher Day Gallery, Sydney, dedicated a solo exhibition to Norman Lloyd, and 1991 saw his work hung again in a group exhibition in Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne. Lloyd’s work is now represented in the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the Queensland Art Gallery, the University of Sydney Art Collection and numerous private collections in Australia, Europe and the United States of America.
Writers:
Banziger, Brigitte
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 October 1895
- Summary
- A student of Julian Ashton's, Lloyd migrated to London in 1930 where he became a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the London Sketch Club. For a time Lloyd was also the proprietor of an upmarket boarding house whose guests and associates included Australian artists Will Ashton, Alison Rehfisch and George Duncan, pianist Nancy Weir and war correspondent Harold Fyffe.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Mar-83
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-33.8945061 Longitude151.1554222 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Petersham, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, eg “Wilga” of the Arunta Tribe 1929, woodcut, ill. Josef Lebovic 1995 special collectors’ list no. 54A, cat. 36.
There is some speculation that Paul may be Dorothy Ellsmore Paul as they share the same birth and death dates according to Lebovic 1995.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1895
- Summary
- Early 20th century painter and illustrator in Australia. Archibald Prize finalist with her painting of Walter Burley Griffin Constance moved to London and had a BBC tv series Careering with Constance about her travels overseas.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1983
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- printmaker, designer and illustrator, was born in England. She studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London, specialising in wood engraving, lithography and copperplate engraving. She illustrated numerous books in the 1930s before moving to Australia in 1939. Began exhibiting with the Contemporary Group of Artists under her married name (Rees) from 1941.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1893
- Summary
- Ann Gilmore Rees, an English printmaker, designer and illustrator, migrated to Sydney Australia in 1939. She regularly exhibited with the Contemporary Group in Sydney from 1941 onwards.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-41.19414 Longitude147.19892 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tunnel, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- rug-maker, was born on 25 February 1893 at Tunnel. Widowed in 1936, she brought up her nine children at Retreat in north-eastern Tasmania. Continuing the tradition of her mother, Maude Kettle began to make hooked rugs in the late 1930s and continued to do so until the mid-1970s. Most of her designs were geometric, the earliest employing straight lines while later examples incorporate circles and scrolls. Charcoal from the fire was used to draw up the designs, at first on chaff bags and later on lengths of hessian. The rugs were edged with pieces of men’s old work trousers and the fabric used in the hooked areas came from old clothes. Commercially produced rug-hooking needles were generally used, but at one time a needle was made by her son-in-law from a six-inch nail. The rugs were not made for sale but given to the children and grand-children who collected the old clothes for her.
Maude Kettle died in Launceston, Tasmania, on 1 October 1983. One of her daughters has continued the tradition of making rugs.
Writers:
McPhee, John
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 February 1893
- Summary
- Maude Kettle lived and worked in Tasmania. She began making hooked rugs in the late 1930s and continued until the mid-1970s, mostly in geometric designs.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Oct-83
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-37.8 Longitude144.9 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Footscray, Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, cabinetmaker and restorer of antique furniture was born in Footscray, Victoria son of a cabinetmaker from whom he learnt the trade. By eighteen Lander was foreman of a joinery workshop. He studied art at night at Gordon Technical College, Geelong, Victoria from 1909-14. His teacher was A. Anderson and his subjects included drawing, design for the applied arts, modelling and woodcarving. His friends included Arthur Streeton, McCubbin, Daryl Lindsay and others. Streeton told him to forget the detail in watercolour and concentrate on creating a mass effect. Lander went to work for Buckley & Nunn in Melbourne before enlisting in 1915. He served at Gallipoli and the Western Front and was wounded twice but survived and opened a cabinet making and furniture restoration business in Toorak. About 1937 Lander decided to paint for a living and when World War II broke out he became a camouflage officer. In 1943 was transferred to Western Australia. His wife and family came too. He and Allon Cook went on painting excursions together and exhibited together. Lander exhibited with the Perth Society of Artists in 1945, “a luminous study of water and boats, just as good as any in his just concluded show”. He exhibited watercolours and an oil painting in the 'Art Competition’ at Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1950. His entry in the Perth Prize for Contemporary Art in 1956 was a watercolour Winter Sky. Lander won the Claude Hotchin Art Prize in 1957 and 1959 and the Bunbury Prize in 1959. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Artists of South Australia in 1946 and a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute in 1964. Lander exhibited regularly in South Australia and Tasmania. His work was described by Charles Hamilton in the following way: now and then he he gives us a bit of rich and strong hue and tone as we see in 'Canal Rocks’. He has the same deliberate procedure in working out his theme step by step as we may see in his demonstrations to students and amateurs. But his style is swift and confident if unhurried, and he seldom tinkers with a painting thereby setting a good example to his students.Lander taught watercolour painting to adult education classes at the University of Western Australia in the 1960s. He had quite a following as the subject was not taught at Perth Technical College or the new art school at Western Australian Institute of Technology. Charles Hamilton wrote: “Lander’s influence on local painting rivals that of Linton and Benson, who directly and by example taught many of our painters to look for and select for themselves the material for their pictures, and to work hard at the techniques of painting through which they expressed themselves.”
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1892
- Summary
- Cyril George Lander was born in 1892. He was a painter, cabinetmaker and restorer of antique furniture. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Artists of South Australia in 1946 and a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute in 1964.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- VIC
- Biography
- Although the exact location of her birth is contested, Maie Casey was born Ethel Marian Sumner Ryan in Victoria on 13 March 1891. Her parents were the Melbourne surgeon Sir Charles Snodgrass Ryan and Alice Sumner (Lady Ryan). Maie was the niece of the well known botanical illustrator Ellis Rowan (1848-1922) and in later life she inherited much of her aunt’s art collection.
It seems that Maie first became serious about art when she was aged in her late twenties. She was a close friend of Joan Weigall (later Lady Joan Lindsay) and during 1920s the pair shared a studio in Melbourne. This workroom was described by Joan Lindsay in her memoir Time Without Clocks (p 206):
'Before either of us was married we had shared a studio in Bourke Street somewhere near Spencer Street Station – not a party giving studio but a big dusty room – it never entered our heads to dust it – where in frenzied bursts of amateur energy we really worked away at our drawing. We even wrote a book together about the ballet dancer called Anna… When we got bored with the illustrations for Anna or painstaking drawing of Miss Minty – a professional model who only consented to sit if the poses were not what she called 'rude’ – we would take our 'Greyhounds’ (packets of cheap coloured chalks) and go off somewhere by tram sketch out of doors.’
Around this time Maie and Joan apparantely held an exhibition titled, 'The Neo-Pantechnicists’. This portentous title was, according to Maie, a 'leg-pull’, but with the support of Rosemary Reynolds and Ethel Spowers the exhibition was a sell out.
Maie later married the Australian conservative politician and diplomat, Richard (Dick) Casey in London on 24 June 1926. In 1932 Maie studied at the George Bell Art School with the modernist artist Arnold Shore in Melbourne and continued to attend classes at the art school intermittentely during the mid 1930s when she was living in Melbourne. Fellow students included Russell Drysdale, Peter Purves Smith, Geoff Jones, Sali Herman and Frances Burke. Despite being a well known student at the school, Casey was rarely mentioned in Mary Eagle and Jan Minchin’s fascinating 1981 history of the George Bell School.
During their long marriage Maie and Dick lived in many overseas postings including London, Cairo, Washington and Calcutta. During these extended residencies Maie continued to paint and draw more out of pleasure than a need to make an income. More importantly for local art Maie actively advocated Australian art while abroad. This was especially the case in Washington D.C. and London where she promoted the work of Sidney Nolan. During the 1930s Maie purchased a Picasso oil work in London titled, Le Repos (1932) which returned home with her, making it one of the first known examples of the Spanish artist’s work in Australia.
From the late 1950s there was increasing international fascination with botanical illustration. Reflecting this interest saw the publication of a biography about Maie’s aunt Ellis Rowan titled Wild Flower Hunter: the Story of Ellis Rowan by H.J. Samuel. For this publication Casey not only illustrated the book but also wrote the foreword.
On 22 September 1965 Richard Casey was appointed to the role of Governor-General, a position he held until 1969. During this period Maie publically promoted Australian art and literature and often invited local artists to visit Government House , Yarralumla and Admiralty House , Kirribilli.
In late 1972 Maie Casey and her old friend Joan Lindsay held a joint exhibition of their painting at the McClelland Gallery, Langwarrin near Mulberry Hill . This was described in Maie’s biography, Glittering Surfaces , as 'a historical rather than a commercial exhibition’.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 March 1891
- Summary
- Maie Casey was an amateur painter, who as the wife of the Governor-General did much to support the arts both in Australia and overseas.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 20-Jan-83
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-37.8611788 Longitude144.8898569 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1983-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Williamstown, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- botanist and educator, was born on 15 March 1891 at Williamstown, Victoria, second child of George McLennan and Eleanor, née Tucker. She lived all her life in Hawthorn where she was educated at Tintern Church of England Girls’ Grammar School. After matriculation in 1910, she studied Science at the University of Melbourne, majoring in the Biological Sciences. She was particularly interested in Botany, then taught by Professor A.J. Ewart. In Zoology she was instructed by Professor (later Sir) Baldwin Spencer, a great advocate of clear-cut scientific illustrations.
Ethel was employed by Professor Ewart as a tutor-lecturer in Botany straight after graduation in 1915; she published her first paper in 1916. She had a heavy teaching load in the small department, specialising in plant pathology and mycology. These two subjects were also the main objects of her research and she never veered from her chosen path.
McLennan focused her early interests on the endophytic fungus associated with the seed of the grass Lolium . A detailed, illustrated, scholarly study of this gained her the DSc degree in 1921. With a second publication on the same subject, she successfully entered for the David Syme Research Prize given for the best original research in Science in 1927. She was only the second woman to win the award, after Dr Georgina Sweet. She was also second to Dr Sweet in becoming a woman associate professor at Melbourne University, in 1931.
When the first Botany Department (1928) was built for Melbourne University, McLennan helped to plan and furnish the building (she had a strong influence in all departmental matters). The furnishings of the entire Department, made from Tasmanian blackwood ( Acacia melanoxylon ), reflected her taste and her advocacy of Australian timbers and other raw materials.
In charge of the Department after Professor Ewart’s death, she organised his memorial window in the Botany School, employing the Australian artists Napier and Christian Waller and choosing native flora – ground orchids – as the subject. Although disappointed not to have been appointed to the Chair, she gave the successful applicant, Professor J.S. Turner, full allegiance and support and indeed greatly helped the newcomer find his feet in the new country and flora. She trained generations of students, giving them a good grounding in the subject and fostering their research and career paths.
Dr McLennan’s own research in the 1920s was directed towards economically and agriculturally important plant diseases, finding the pathogens and suggesting treatments. During World War II she was a leading member of a team working on bio-deterioration of optical instruments, particularly those used by the Forces in the Pacific. After successful elucidation of the fungal causes, she devised remedies which were adopted by all Allied units. With the discovery of Penicillin in the 1940s, she turned to searching for Australian antibiotics, particularly in soil fungi. Her published work spans seven decades.
She was strict with her students but her sense of duty, wit and humour endeared her to all of them. She died in Melbourne aged ninety-two.
Writers:
Ducker, Sophie C.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 March 1891
- Summary
- McLennan had an admirable academic career in the area of botany. She lived a full life, managing to teach and research while still maintaining her wit and sense of humour.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1983
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1935-01-01 End Date1982-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1935
- Summary
- Cooper was involved in motor racing as a teenager and in 1959, he designed and built the first Elfin Streamliner. In 1961, he was producing vehicles as Elfin Sports Cars. In the Formula Junior class, he designed the Elfin FJ and went on to design and build racing cars across a number of vehicle classes. Elfin Sports Cars produced some 240 vehicles until Cooper's death in 1982.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-82
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-37.823 Longitude144.998 Start Date1927-01-01 End Date1982-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Richmond, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Frederick Ronald Williams was born in the inner Melbourne suburb of Richmond on 23 January 1927. On leaving school he was apprenticed to a company fitting out shops and making boxes.In later years when he was trying to establish himself in London, he would support himself by making picture frames.At the age of 16 he began classes at the National Gallery School, including painting under William Dargie. He also took painting classes with the gently modernist painter, George Bell.In 1950 he left Australia to further his studies in London. He furthered his studies at the Chelsea Art School, and also studied etching at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. His subject matter from these years was often figurative, as he drew elements of London life and music hall performers, almost in the tradition of Sickert usually on a small scale. He absorbed as much as he could from the great collections of European art, and from the start was especially influenced by the work of Cézanne.These were years of considerable poverty for him, but he wanted to absorb as much knowledge about art as he could. Patrick McCaughey wrote that bq). He would allow himself a trifling sum, say half a crown, for dinner but would frequently pass it up for an extra pint or two at the pub where Francis Bacon and his crew regularly drank.bq). In 1956 his family were able to arrange a cheap passage home on one of the ships taking visitors to the Melbourne Olympics. Back in Melbourne he saw afresh both the landscape and the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria. These were both intellectually rigorous and emotionally responsive works. His understanding of the value of imagery meant that he was a surprise omission from Bernard Smith’s polemical Antipodean exhibition – especially as it otherwise included all his closest colleagues. But Smith rejected Williams’ essentially apolitical vision. Although he had an exhibiting profile, Fred Williams was less than financially successful until after 1960. That was the year he met Lyn Watson, who was to become his wife. He also changed dealers from Australian Galleries, to the entrepreneurial Rudy Komon, who was able to effectively market his work to the new breed of corporate collectors.In 1963 the Williams family moved to Upwey in the Dandenongs, which became the subject of some of his most iconic works. He flattened the space of the scrubby bush so that it could be read in different ways. The subjects for his graphic work now included his three daughters,drawn on an intimate scale. The following year he was awarded a Helena Rubenstein Travelling Scholarship and the family travelled to Europe. On the return to Upwey Williams continued to paint the landscape around his home. There was a changed response in 1968 when bushfires threatened the house, but then he was also able to make works based on the rebirth of the land. Eight years later, he was flying to China and saw from the plane the lines of bushfires crossing the land. The drawings based on these were mingled with a new appreciation of Chinese aesthetic values.In 1969 the family moved to a house in Hawthorn which remained his home. The 1970s saw more experimental approaches to his art. He returned to painting figures, including some of the subjects from his London years. 1977 Williams was the first Australian artist to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.In 1979, on his return to Australia, Williams painted in far north Queensland, and later was encouraged by Sir Roderick Carnegie CRA to paint in the the Pilbara region in Western Australia. These brilliantly coloured gouaches and oil paintings were his last sustained body of work. In 1981 Willams was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, and died on 22 April 1982. At Williams’ funeral his friend John Brack said: bq). The work speaks to usnow, in his voice, as it will speak to those yet to come.bq).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 23 January 1927
- Summary
- Fred Williams' paintings of the Australian landscape can be seen as a modernist reinterpretation of the Heidelberg tradition. He was a figurative artist who valued abstract qualities, a maker of figures as well as landscape. Williams was also a printmaker who made almost 300 etchings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Apr-82
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date1982-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Painter, art director, commercial artist was born in London to Swiss parents. Lunghi studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and worked as a commercial artist before moving to Western Australia in 1937. He joined Gibbney & Son, later becoming Art Director. Lunghi was to hold this position for thirty-five years. He joined the Perth Society of Artists and exhibited from 1937. In 1950 Lunghi won the Thorogood Prize with Off Stage in the society’s annual exhibition. He was one of the artists who exhibited in the 'Recent Australian Painting’ at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in 1961. When he retired in 1972, he promptly altered his age and went to lecture in the evenings at Perth Technical College for five years. Lunghi held only three solo exhibitions. He won the 'Festival of Perth Art Exhibition’ in 1958 with his entry Boy on a Donkey now in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia. His final solo exhibition was at Davro Interiors in 1973. Lunghi firmly believed that a solid academic background was required for abstraction.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1907
- Summary
- John Lunghi was born in 1907. He was a painter, art director and commercial artist. He joined the Perth Society of Artists and exhibited from 1937. In 1950 Lunghi won the Thorogood Prize in the society's annual exhibition. He firmly believed that a solid academic background was required for abstraction.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1982
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-33.8805556 Longitude151.1783333 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1982-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Forest Lodge, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, comic strip artist, theatrical scene painter and commercial artist, was born in Forest Lodge, Sydney. He attended Ultimo Technical College and studied art with J.S. Watkins. Then he began a career as a scene-painter and pictorial artist with Greater Union Theatres under Fred Finlay (w/c of Theatres Art Studio by Lyon in Burgess, p.3). Went to Queensland as a cane-cutter in 1929 'hoping to avoid the Depression’ (Sheill) but was back in Sydney in 1930 working as a freelance artist (which he continued to be all his life). He contributed cartoons and illustrations to Smith’s Weekly , the Bulletin , Guardian , Sydney Mail (including covers), the Australian Women’s Weekly , Wireless Weekly and Humour (including covers). Good caricatures made from paper cutouts were published in various papers, e.g. 'Laurel and Hardy’ for Smith’s Weekly 13 June 1939, Prime Minister Lyons for the Sunday Sun and Billy Hughes (illustrated in monograph, p.5). In June 1936 he created Humour 's first comic strip, Tootles (“a dizzy blonde”), followed in late 1938 by Shaver: A Dinkum Aussie , a strip used as the cover of the Sunnyside supplement to the Daily News .
In the late 1930s and early 1940s Lyon drew eight adventure strips for Frank Johnson publications (some listed Sheill 1998, p.120). In the early 1940s he produced Avian Tempest for Frank Douglas James. In 1945 he drew 'New Chum’ for the Syd Miller publication Monster Comic and in 1946 produced 'Tim O’Hara’ for the Daily Mirror . He created the detective comic 'The Astounding Mr Storm’ in 1954. From 1930 to 1957 he also did many covers for Western and Detective Story magazines, e.g. The Sheriff and County Jail (both which combined watercolours and oils). Lyon also painted traditional oils and watercolours, many being bush landscapes done on regular holidays in the Burragorang Valley, now flooded by the Warragamba Dam.
In November 1948 he began the adventure strip 'Black McDermitt’ in the Sydney Sun ( supplement ). Set in 1812 it 'demonstrated … that a historical subject such as the crossing of the Blue Mountains by Blaxland, Wentworth & Lawson, could be produced in an educational and entertaining manner, of interest to adults as well as children’ (Burgess, 12). Did lots of other adventure strips and magazines, children’s book illustrations, advertisements, fashion drawings, etc.
In 1957 Lyon agreed to assist Stan Cross drawing daily and weekly Wally and the Major strips (NB: there are two strips by Stan Cross and Carl Lyon, dated 1938 and c.1938 by PICMAN cataloguer (ML PXD 764), presumably misdated. Lyon solely drew the weekly strip in 1966-70 and when Cross retired in 1970 took over the daily one too, devoting himself entirely to Wally and the Major for the next ten years. Hundreds of his 1970s original strips were presented to the SLNSW by Fairfax Press c.1979 (ML Pic Acc 3088). In 1969 and 1973 his colleagues at the Sydney Savage Club presented him with the Cartoonist Award for Best Comic Strip. He retired from Wally and the Major in 1979 and died in 1982.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney cartoonist, comic strip artist, theatrical scene painter and commercial artist. Worked with Stan Cross on 'Wally and the Major'
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1982
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1982-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in Sydney on 13 September 1901, only daughter of Guy Ernest Huntley, an engineer who later worked on the Sydney Harbour Bridge (of which Isabel made a print in July 1930), and of Mary Edith, a sister of Andrew Barton Paterson and niece of Emily Paterson ; Miriam Moxham was her aunt.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 September 1901
- Summary
- Painter and printmaker, taught at Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School, and played an active role in the Sydney Scene during the 1920s and 1930s. In the late 1930s her creative focus shifted to music.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 18-Feb-82
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-33.8583992 Longitude151.1807353 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1982-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Balmain, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Sir Erik Ziegler Langker was born in the Sydney harbour-side district of Balmain on 3 November 1898. The artist’s father, Christian Langker (1854-1914), was a Danish sailor from Schleswig-Holstein who jumped ship in Sydney fearing that he would be conscripted into the Prussian armed forces if he returned home. In his adopted land he pursued his association with the sea and became a master mariner. Christian met an Australian woman of German heritage named Elizabeth Rebecca Ziegler (1863-1936), and the couple married in 1882. Christian and Elizabeth had a large family and Erik was their sixth and youngest child.
Langker was educated at Balmain Primary School and later attended Fort Street Boys’ High School. While at high school he showed an aptitude for art and decided to pursue it as a career. After leaving school he studied with Julian Ashton and subsequently with A. Dattilo Rubbo at the Royal Art Society School. He also studied with J.S. Watkins and the marine artists James R. Jackson and Will Ashton.
In 1921 Langker began his long association with the Royal Art Society (RAS) when he exhibited two works, Haystacks and Sunlit Hills, at their annual spring show. The following year he exhibited twelve works with them and his seascape Clouds at Evening was illustrated in the exhibition catalogue. Despite his youth, Langker’s art showed promise to the leaders of the RAS and in 1923 he was made an Associate of the Royal Art Society (ARAS) and served a one-year term on the RAS executive council.
In preparation for his first major exhibition Langker purchased a horse and old caravan so he could visit isolated rural painting spots. During May and June 1924 he exhibited sixty-nine works at his first one-man show at Anthony Hordern’s department store gallery in Sydney. The event was reviewed by several newspapers including the critic from the (Sydney) Sunday Times on 12 May 1924: “Mr Langker is to be commended for his undoubted earnestness and industry. That he will reach a high place among Australian artists would seem highly probable from the present show.”
During 1928 Langker became one of the first Australian artists to be heard on the newly developed medium of radio. He gave several lectures on art and other subjects for the Sydney radio station 2FC. In August 1928 he exhibited forty works at Ormsby’s Galleries in Pitt Street, Sydney. He garnered a positive review in the Sydney Morning Herald (16 August 1928), but received a mixed notice from the influential landscape artist and journalist Howard Ashton ( Sun , 18 August 1928). In 1932 his oil Gathering Clouds was purchased by the (then National) Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW). Five further images were purchased by the AGNSW during the 1940s and 50s.
On 1 December 1928 Langker married Alice Pollock. The couple had two children, Robert Ziegler Langker (1929-2010), and Elizabeth Diana Langker (b. 1932). By 1934 the Langkers had built a cottage in Wollstonecraft, Sydney, which they named 'Lombardy’. Despite the Italian name of the house, Langker never travelled overseas and, according to his family, he had a lifelong fear of cars, boats and aeroplanes. Despite this he was a regular user of public transport and would accept lifts in cars.
In late life Langker described himself as a “middle period” painter of the impressionist school ( North Shore Times , 3 December 1980). His work was primarily in landscape painting with popular subjects including coastal scenes, cloud studies, and formally arranged flower portraits. His daughter tells that he especially enjoyed painting at Narrabeen Lakes (northeast of Sydney) where his friend, the artist Sydney Long, had a weekend cottage. Other favoured painting spots included the south coast of NSW, Tumut, and around the bays of Sydney Harbour. While never a keen traveller, Langker once visited the Barrier Reef on a painting tri
While painting was his main love, Langker supplemented his income for many years by working as an art valuer for the London and Lancashire Insurance Company. By the early 1930s Langker was re-appointed to the RAS executive council, a position he held for the rest of his life. As well as his council responsibilities he was also a regular exhibitor with the Society, and in 1936 he was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Art Society (FRAS), the group’s highest honour. In 1941 Langker was appointed joint Vice-President of the RAS with Sydney Long.
The late 1930s and early 1940s was a dynamic period within the Australian visual arts where realists battled with modernists for patronage and attention. After the retirement of long-time RAS President William Lister Lister in 1942, the leadership of the RAS was taken on by artist and reviewer Howard Ashton, who had been publicly critical of Langker’s early career work. During Ashton’s leadership the RAS took a defiant conservative stance against the increasing influence of modernism within the visual arts. In 1946 Langker replaced Ashton as President of the RAS, a position he held up to the time of his death. More progressive in his opinions than his predecessor, Langker set a more tolerant tone in the RAS during the post-war period, as can be seen in his 'Foreword’ to the 1952 RAS annual exhibition catalogue:
The Art here will, no doubt, be described by some critics as 'Conservative’ and this is so in the true sense of the word. We desire to conserve those qualities and standards which we believe to be necessary foundations of the pictorial arts. While we believe that experimentation is necessary, we do not depart too far to the left or right and the Society, for this reason, has been described as the “Centre of Gravity of Art” in this State.
In 1947, after the resignation of Sydney Ure Smith, Langker was appointed a trustee of the (then National) Art Gallery of NSW, a position he held until 1974. He worked well with the institution’s modernist post-war Director, Hal Missingham, and in 1958 was appointed Vice President of Trustees. Subsequently, in 1961 he was promoted to President of the Trustees. During his time on this board the AGNSW became increasingly welcoming of new modern styles of art. Langker acted as a mentor to emerging artists and musicians and advised them “to do what you have to do with zest” ( North Shore Times , 3 December 1980). His best-known pupil was Victor Cusack who painted two paintings a week for Langker’s approval during the late 1950s.
In 1952 Langker held his last one-man show at the Grosvenor Galleries in George Street, Sydney. The exhibition included thirty-one works and the show was opened by his friend B.J. Waterhouse. A mid-career assessment of his work came from Herbert E. Badham, the modernist artist and author of A Study of Australian Art , (1949, p. 152):
It is a long step from the “modern” to Erik Langker who renders landscape as did his fathers, literally and with respect to the broad Impressionist principles introduced to Australia by Tom Roberts. This is quite legitimate because much lovely subtlety and vital understanding of nature’s ageless facts are neglected in the restless search for new expressions. Langker has found enough significance for his practice in the painting of forty years ago, and aims to show the public what it is likely to miss by the pursuit of what seem to him false interests. His painting is direct, with some bravura and self-confidence.
Although best known as an oil painter, Langker also worked with watercolour. One such work, River Reflections, was purchased by the AGNSW in 1948. In 1970 Langker wrote an article in Art and Australia on the watercolourist G.K. Townshend ( March 1970, pp 338-341).
As well as his love of painting, Langker had a love of music and the theatre. He enjoyed playing the piano and wrote several compositions for the instrument. In 1949 he became actively involved in organisations that led to the establishment of the Australian Opera. He was also chairman of the Independent Theatre in Sydney. According to his obituary in Art and Australia , Langker “is regarded as one of the four pioneers of the Sydney Opera House the others being Clarice Lorenz, Joseph Post and Sir Eugene Goossens.”
While a trustee of the AGNSW, Langker was made an Ordinary Member of the British Empire (OBE), and in 1968 he was awarded a knighthood (Kt) for services to the arts. Although Langker was deserving of these honours, some family members have suggested that he was nominated for his knighthood by the NSW Liberal Party Premier, Robert Askin, after Langker (as president of the AGNSW trustees) allowed the Sydney Gallery to be used as the principal venue for the 1966 visit of USA President, Lyndon B. Johnson.
While his main exhibiting career ended in the 1950s, Langker continued to paint and show with the RAS up to 1980. While the rival Society of Artists disbanded during the 1960s, Langker’s major achievement with the RAS was maintaining the relevance of the Society during a period of radical cultural change. During his RAS presidency he purchased two houses in North Sydney, which, after conversion, became the new exhibiting headquarters of the Society. He was proud of his achievements at the RAS and the AGNSW and often judged regional art shows as well as the annual Archibald and Wynne competitions. Langker became ill in 1980, and died on 3 February 1982.
Writers:
Silas Clifford-Smith
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 November 1898
- Summary
- Erik Langker was an influential member of the Sydney art establishment during the middle decades of the twentieth century. As well as being a leading arts administrator he was also a distinguished landscape and still-life painter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Feb-82
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1982-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Apr-82
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1982-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kent Town, Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- former actress and elocution artist from childhood, turned theatre designer, cartoonist and illustrator, stage and film actress, was employed as a wellpaid commercial artist by David Jones department store in the mid 1920s. Wanda drew illustrations in Home c.1924-27, her subjects being social events like the David Jones’ Ball (1 June 1924, 58A) or people at a gymkhana (cover, 1 November 1924). Blanche Wanda Radford, was daughter of the secretary of R Radford the A.B.C.Cafe in Pitt street Sydney, later manager of Tattersalls (George Adams) Hotel in Sydney for 15 years, also manager of the Grand Hotel, Mildura. Showing precocious talent as a reciter and performer Wanda was sent for training under elocution teacher Mr A.B. Flohm in Ballarat and left for further studies and performances in Germany under her parent’s care in 1905. The family had relatives in Germany. Her carreer was followed by Australian newspapers.The Adelaide observer__23 March 1907 reporting she had been employed by the German Kaiser to give his children acting lessons. Wanda had a number of successful concerts and stage roles and became a film actress by 1916 under the name Beryl Bryan. Wanda had been sketching and designing since her teens turned to art studies after WWI. She returned to work in Sydney for David Jones’ in the 1920s but appears to have ceased work by the 1930s possibly spending time in America she was living in Sydney in 1946. Radford remained unmarried until her death in 1982.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 22 June 1896
- Summary
- Illustrator and Cartoonist, 1920s. Radford's subjects were social events like the David Jones' Ball. Appears to withdraw from public life and work in the 1930s
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Aug-82
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1982-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, was born in Sydney on 1 October 1895, daughter of William McArthur Mayo, an insurance executive, and Lila Mary, née Jaxelby. The family moved to Brisbane where Daphne attended the Eton High School at Hamilton before studying for a Diploma in Art Craftsmanship at the Brisbane Central Technical College in 1911-13, specialising in modelling under L.J. Harvey. In 1914 she was awarded the first Wattle Day Travelling Art Scholarship. When her departure was delayed by the outbreak of war she attended Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School and worked with an Ipswich (Qld) stonemason, Frank Williams.
Arriving at London in 1919, she worked as an assistant to the sculptor John Angel before being admitted to the Sculpture School of the Royal Academy. Upon graduation in 1923, she was awarded the gold medal for sculpture and the Edward Stott Travelling Scholarship. For the next two years she toured France and Italy, beginning her travels with fellow Brisbane student Lloyd Rees , to whom she became engaged in 1923 although no marriage eventuated. Mayo returned to Brisbane in 1925 and resolved to pursue an independent career in her home city. She never married. She soon received large sculptural commissions, which were carved in situ, including the Brisbane City Hall tympanum (1927-30), the Queensland Women’s War Memorial, Anzac Square (1929-32) and relief panels for the original chapel at Mount Thompson Crematorium (1934).
She performed equally monumental feats to promote art in Queensland, suspending her sculptural work for much of 1934-35 in order to do so. Her vision was shared with her friend, the painter Vida Lahey . In 1927 they founded the Queensland Art Fund to purchase contemporary British works for the Queensland Art Gallery; in 1936 they established the state’s first Art Reference Library. In 1931 Mayo obtained for the Queensland Art Gallery its first major monetary bequest, the Godfrey Rivers Bequest, with which contemporary Australian works were acquired, initially through prize exhibitions. Her major feat for art in Queensland came in 1935 when she led a public appeal for the £10,000 needed to secure the John Darnell Bequest for Queensland University. For her public service she was awarded the Society of Artists’ medal in 1938 and the MBE in 1959.
Mayo travelled in Europe, the USA and Canada in 1938-39 to observe modern developments in sculpture. On her return she moved to Sydney in search of a more stimulating environment and to undertake the bronze doors for the Public Library of NSW (1940-42). She worked speculatively on small-scale sculpture, experimented with ceramics and exhibited regularly with the Society of Artists until 1958. With Lyndon Dadswell and Arthur Fleischmann , she staged the Three Sculptors exhibition in 1946, Sydney’s first sculpture exhibition for years. The Olympian was acquired in 1949 by the Felton Bequest (NGV), but the mainstay of her late career were her portrait commissions.
Appointed Queensland Art Gallery’s first woman trustee in 1960, Mayo resumed living in Brisbane and undertook her last large commission, a statue of Sir William Glasgow (1961-64). Her public career of extraordinary tenacity and courage ended in 1967 when she resigned her post as trustee, voicing her disapproval of the Gallery’s administration. She stayed in Brisbane in her retirement while maintaining her Sydney studio.
Mayo died on 31 July 1982. A retrospective exhibition of her sculpture was held at the University Art Museum, Brisbane, in 1981. Her work is widely represented in Australian state and provincial galleries. {Bronzes of “Banjo” Paterson and his creation, The Jolly Swagman, are in the main street of Winton, Qld, home of the Waltzing Matilda legend. The NPG has her bronze portrait bust of {Lahey?}.
Writers:
McKay, Judith
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 January 1895
- Summary
- Stronger than the stone she carved, this widely collected female artist's promotion of the arts rivalled her international sculpting career, by setting up several bequests and the first Art Reference Library in Queensland.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 31-Jul-82
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude50.8036831 Longitude-1.075614 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1982-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Portsmouth, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born on 17 December 1890 at Portsmouth, England, seventh of the eight children of John White (d.1910), a sculptor, and his wife Sophia, née Welch (1850-1943). Winifred studied at the Portsmouth and Gosport Schools of Art and was awarded a three year scholarship to the Royal College of Art, London, but was unable to take up the offer. In Portsmouth during World War I she was employed as a press illustrator for the Evening News and Hampshire Telegraph and Post . She also undertook portrait commissions and conducted private art classes.
Late in 1918 Winifred White moved to London. In 1921 she married Alfred Towers (1895-1980), a telegraphist on the headquarters’ ship of a North Sea trawling fleet operating out of Hull. Winifred Towers spent the next six years in London working as a commercial artist, mainly in advertising, for firms such as Muller Blatchley. During this period she also worked with the cartoonist Millar Watt.
In 1926 Alfred Towers migrated to Australia, settling at Glenel, a dairy property situated on the Nogo River, near Abercorn in the Upper Burnett region of Queensland. The following year he was joined by his wife and in 1928 by the artist’s mother, sisters and several other family members. Alfred and Winifred Towers spent the next thirteen years at Glenel, moving to Brisbane in 1940. During World War II Alfred served as a telegraphist in the Royal Australian Air Force. Following his discharge in 1945, the couple built a cottage at Sunnybank, on the southern outskirts of Brisbane, where they farmed a small property for a livelihood.
Over the next two decades Winifred Towers gradually established herself as a talented and accomplished painter in oil and watercolour. Her subject matter embraced still life, landscape, portraiture and figure studies. She also engaged successfully in book illustration, her most important work being for the children’s book Little Words to God by Maureen C. Meadows (Sydney 1949).
Towers first exhibited in Australia in 1937, with the Royal Queensland Art Society, and continued to show intermittently at their annual exhibitions until 1949. Between 1945 and 1972 her work was included regularly in the annual exhibitions of the Half Dozen Group of Artists (its founder Lilian Pedersen became a close friend) and she served as vice-president in 1947-48. Two of her paintings were included in the Commonwealth Jubilee Celebration Exhibition of Queensland Art (Queensland Art Gallery, 1951). In the late 1950s she exhibited with the Fellowship of Australian Artists in Melbourne. Although she never returned to England, she maintained links with her homeland through membership of the Portsmouth and Southsea Art Clubs and the Portsmouth Art Grou
The artist died in Brisbane on 28 February 1982, aged ninety-one. Her works are held by the Queensland Art Gallery and Queensland University of Technology Art Collection, Brisbane.
Writers:
Rainbird, Stephen
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 December 1890
- Summary
- Oil and watercolour painter, illustrator of children's book by Maureen C. Meadows 'Little Words to God' (Sydney, 1949). Regularly exhibited with the Half Dozen Group of Artists, where she served as vice-president in 1947-48, was included as well in major national art surveys such as the Commonwealth Jubilee Celebration Exhibition of Queensland Art and the Fellowship of Australian Artists in 1951.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 28-Feb-82
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1982-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Florence Eleanor Bland was born in Brisbane on 22 April 1890, the only daughter of Charles Edwin Bland and Margaret Ann née Murtagh. She was educated in Ipswich and later exhibited with the Ipswich Technical College at the Queensland National Association in 1905. She enrolled at the Central Technical College in 1914 where she received an honours for Painting I and later began pottery classes at the College in 1923 with L. J. Harvey. She worked in association with fellow potter Mrs Littlejons. She exhibited pottery 1925-28 at the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland where in 1927 a “toilet set in a soft dull green tone” received special comment and at the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association 1923-29 where she was awarded several prizes.
In 1928 her vessel with scraffito decoration received special comment from L. J. Harvey who acted as the judge of the pottery section. It, and a work by Kitty Collings were described as “. . . admirable examples of work with two clays, which had only recently been done.” This particular vase was reproduced in the 1983 publication 'L. J. Harvey & his School’ (p. 40). A note by Florence Bland was inserted in the vase which stated it was the first example of double scraffito work and that it was her idea to attempt such a piece. There is no reason to doubt this assertion as other suggestions by students were taken on board by Harvey and incorporated into the School style. Double scraffito is one of the most complex decorative techniques produced by the Harvey School in Brisbane.
Florence Bland numbered her pieces consecutively and while she produced only 80 plus works this is a considerable output for a member of the Harvey School. She had ceased making pottery prior to her marriage to Ernest S. O’Riley on 2 October 1942 and died in Brisbane on 22 March 1982.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Qld
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 April 1890
- Summary
- Florence Bland was one of the most accomplished potters of the Harvey School. She is credited with being the first to attempt the double scraffito technique, one of the most complex decorative techniques produced by the Harvey School.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 22-Mar-82
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-24.8653253 Longitude152.3516785 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bundaberg, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- Frank Fox was born in Bundaberg, Queensland, and was apprenticed to design firms in Melbourne and Sydney. He also studied through the International Correspondence School (ICS), then moved to London in 1939 for further study. After the Second World War, in 1946, he set up his own 'commercial and industrial design’ practice in Sydney, Frank Fox and Associates (also known as Frank R. Fox), specialising in store design and remodelling hospitality venues. Some of his early projects included Oxford Square, Central Square, the Crest Hotel and the Granville RSL Club. He also completed redesigns of the Searles flower shop at 104 King Street and Penguin book Shop at Hosking Place (then existing between Pitt and Castlereagh Streets), Sydney. He also worked in Queensland, Victoria. In the late 1960s, he began to develop Old Sydney Town, a tourist attraction on rural land near Gosford, which recreated Sydney Cove during its early years of settlement as a British colony. The Town opened in 1975 and was sold to the NSW Government and Bank of New South Wales before Fox retired in 1976.
Sources—'Two Shops with A Narrow Frontage: Searle’s Flower Shop, Penguin Book Shop’, in Decoration and Glass,November-December 1948, pp. 12–13.—'Modern Basement Cafe’, Decoration and Glass, Mau-June 1948, pp. 20-21.—'The architect founder of Old Sydney Town’, in The Sydney Morning Herald (Obituary), 23 May 1981.
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1913
- Summary
- Frank Fox was an architect (perhaps not registered?), industrial designer and interior designer who initially was successful as the designer of late 1940s and early 1950s shops and restaurants, but became best known as the entrepreneur who created Old Sydney Town, a tourist attraction which opened in 1975 and recreated the buildings and cultural life of the waterfront convict settlement of Sydney's The Rocks district.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1981
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude59.4372155 Longitude24.7453688 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tallinn, Estonia
- Biography
- cartoonist and illustrator, the 'incomprehensible wild wee man from Estonia’ (Stewart, 36) was born in Tallinn, son of a jeweller. His father migrated to Australia with his family after losing a fortune at the beginning of the Depression. They reached Sydney in 1929 and Hardtmuth (also spelt Hardmut or Hartmut) enrolled at ESTC, where he was christened 'Hotpoint’ by Mollie Horseman (usually shortened to 'Hotti’ or 'Hottie’), as he reminded his lifelong friend on an annotated photograph he sent her for Christmas in 1970. Lahm sold his first cartoon to the Sydney Mail while still a student, the second two years later. During the 1930s he took whatever freelance work was offered, contributing both to Smith’s Weekly and the Bulletin . In 1934 he created two comic strips for Fatty Finn’s Weekly . After it folded in 1935, he travelled around the country drawing caricatures of pub customers at two shillings a sketch but claimed he spent most of his earnings shouting his offended subjects drinks (Ryan 74).
He returned to Sydney and in December 1936 began work as a general cartoonist for the Sun- Associated Newspapers Group, drawing covers, caricatures and cartoons for their various publications. He contributed to K.G. Murray’s Man for its entire existence (December 1936 to May 1974), where he – and the magazine itself – was renowned for the piddling dog 'Snifter’, born in 1937 and continued until Man 's demise (ill. Lindesay WWW , 139). As well as pissing on the back page of Man for over thirty years, Snifter acquired a life of his own in numerous anthologies. Lahm also drew many other cartoons for Man , especially during the first decades, e.g. coloured April 1948 cover of animals boarding the ark with an elderly gent with flowers accompanying the wolf (ill. Lindesay, WWW , 142). Man cartoons in file include one of a man looking into a mirror while seated beside a cross female on a desert island (March 1937, 37), Hitler as a boy in class saluting (April 1937, 95) and Hitler walking through the glove department of a store with all the gloves saluting him (September 1938, 15).
The comic strip David and Dawn (one original strip AGWA – possibly also in ML?), written by George Edwards and illustrated by Lahm, appeared in the centre pages of Smith’s Weekly 4-page comic book supplement published in 1938-39 in an unsuccessful effort to stave off falling circulation. It then became a radio serial on 2UW, which led to various books illustrated by Lahm, including David and Dawn with George Edwards in Fairyland and David and Dawn with George Edwards under the Southern Cross . The latter marked the first appearance of an Aboriginal piccaninny, Tuckonie of the Arrente tribe, a supporting character who became a star in Edwards’s subsequent and far more successful radio 2UW serial, The Search for the Golden Boomerang . It too resulted in a number of books illustrated by Lahm in 1941-46.
For the Sunday Sun he wrote and drew the strip Snowy McGann (1951-54), an ultimately unsuccessful replacement for Ginger Meggs after Bancks moved from Associated Newspapers to Frank Packer’s Sunday Telegraph (the comic relief in Snowy is provided by 'Pistol Packer’). He also illustrated numerous books, e.g. Musette Morrell, The Antics of Algy , col. plates & or. 1-col. illustrated by Hartmut Lahm , A/R, Sydney, 1946, pp.69.
An undated Smith’s Weekly original, There’s no need for me to go home early, my husband doesn’t eat breakfast , was donated to ML (PXD 840) in 1999 by the wife of a former reporter, along with over 20 originals by other Smith’s artists and a copy of the final issue (28 October 1950) signed by them all. 111 original cartoons and 15 caricatures by Lahm dated 1934-60 are in the ML Bulletin collection. An original 1965 Lahm cartoon is at ML PXD 764, while the NLA has the pen, ink and watercolour original of 'Time you decided who you’re going to listen to…” (NLA R11404), published in Man in September 1963. 19 originals acquired from the proprietors of the Sun-Herald are in the AGWA, including several caricatures, e.g. “Modern Art Bah!” Jimmy McDonald, Director Art Gallery of New South Wales (957/D288). From their titles others appear to be more general, e.g. The end of the war! or ration books, a Panorama of Sydney on V.J. day (957/D374) and The Gum-tree Gully Show! 1941 (AGWA 957/D371).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1912
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney cartoonist and illustrator, an "incomprehensible wild wee man from Estonia", creator of 'Man' magazine's Snifter
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1981
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude50.7834973 Longitude-0.6730718 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bognor Regis, Sussex, England
- Biography
- Sir George Russell Drysdale was born on 7 February 1912 at Bognor Regis in England. His father, also called George Russell Drysdale who led a private life, was the son of George Russell, the pioneer pastoralist who had with his brothers established the Pioneer Sugar mill on the Burdekin River in far north Queensland. His mother, Isobel Gates, was English. In 1919 the family returned to Australia, to the Pioneer plantation. Then, in 1923 they moved to Melbourne where the young Tas, as he was called by family and friends, was sent to Geelong Grammar School. In 1929, his last year of school, Drysdale was discovered to have a detached retina in one eye. As a way of encouraging him to focus, he was given extensive drawing lessons, five days a week.The following year he stayed on another family property at Boxwood, in the Riverina district to help with the shearing before travelling north to Pioneer. His first European travel as an adult was with his uncle Cluny Drysdale in 1931. On his return to Australia he had decided to be a farmer, and settled on the family farm at Boxwood.However when he was in Melbourne recovering from a further eye operation, his surgeon showed some of his drawings to Daryl Lindsay, who suggested that he take art classes with George Bell. When Bell encouraged him to look at modern (Post-Impressionist) art, Drysdale was less than impressed. However on his next journey to Europe in 1932, he saw enough modern art to convince him to move towards a more liberated style, albeit one firmly based in the European academic tradition.In 1935 he married Elizabeth (Bon) Stephen, a friend of Macquarie Gallery’s Lucy Swanton, who encouraged him in his art. After further eye surgery Drysdale renewed his classes with George Bell, and became a friendly rival with fellow student Peter Purves Smith.In 1938 they travelled again to London and Drysdale enrolled in classes with Iain Macnab at the Grosvenor School. He also joined Peter Purves Smith in his Paris studio and painted there with him. The threat of war caused them to return to Australia. In Melbourne Drysdale shared George Bell’s studio, but disliked the acrimonious politics of the Contemporary Art Society. He was now blind in one eye and was not allowed to enlist in the army. Instead he tried managing Boxwood, but realised that he lacked the necessary skills so the family moved to Sydney, and art. The 1940s to the early 1960s were his most productive years. He travelled to the old gold mining town of Hill End and neighbouring Sofala and immortalised the sparse townships of the outback. He drew the devastation of the El Nino drought of the 1940s and turned it into Henry Moore influenced deep red-toned landscape paintings. He honoured the aspirations of the Aboriginal people of the far north, and the harsh life of outback Australians.He did not ignore the family business. In 1947 he joined the Board of Pioneer Sugar Mills, and often visited the property up north which he called his bq). Spiritual homebq). . Russell Drysdale, along with Sidney Nolan, came to characterise the international face of Australian art in the early 1950s. He had frequent successful exhibitions in London, and his work was purchased by both the Tate and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1960 the Art Gallery of New South Wales organised the first scholarly retrospective of his work.His private life was not so fortunate. The suicide of his son Tim in July 1962 was followed by that of his wife Bon in November 1963. Seven months later he married Maisie, the widow of his friend Peter Purves Smith. They bought land outside Gosford on the NSW Central Coast, and there built Bouddi Farm, a place to live and to work. There was little art made in his last years, but he was active as both a member of the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board and the Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He was knighted for his services to art in 1969 and died of cancer on 29 June 1981.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 February 1912
- Summary
- Russell Drysdale painted some of the iconic landscapes of the Australian outback, and in the 1940s his paintings and drawings enabled city people to see the devastation of drought on a dry land. His modernism was sufficiently muted to enable him to be accepted by many conservatives, and the exotic nature of his subject matter led to significant international success.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Jun-81
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-33.7718546 Longitude151.0745367 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Epping, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- The younger son of pioneer watercolourist Jesse Jewhurst Hilder, Brett Hilder was born in Epping, Sydney, in 1911. His father died when he was young and he was raised by his mother. As a young man he was offered free tuition from his father’s friend and mentor Julian Ashton, but declined the offer. In 1927 he joined Burns Philp & Company and, as one of their sailors, travelled to the Dutch East Indies and the South Pacific Islands. A decade later he became a ship’s master, and during World War II, taught navigation to Australian air crews and later flew Catalina flying boats for the Royal Australian Air Force.
After the war Hilder returned to his former profession and commanded vessels between Sydney and the Solomon Islands. During the war he started painting and drawing, creating many watercolour landscapes and portraits of the people and places he visited. These were exhibited in Sydney (1950) and Melbourne (1951). He also had shows in Port Moresby, Honiara and New York during the 1950s and 60s. He also exhibited his work with the Australian Watercolour Institute and the Royal Art Society of NSW.
Hilder wrote extensively on navigation and his travels for magazines such as Walkabout . In 1961 he wrote Navigator in the South Seas . Captain Hilder also founded the Australian Institute of Navigation and in 1964 became Senior Captain of Company with Burns Philp Ltd.
His interest in his father’s art career saw him write The Heritage of J.J. Hilder . This work was published in 1966 (the fiftieth anniversary of his father’s death) and supported a national touring exhibition of his father’s work organized by the Queensland Art Gallery. In this book Hilder corrected errors made in earlier texts about his father’s career, and also produced an expanded list of his father’s works. The 1966 book also included profiles of his artist brother Bim Hilder, and his own work. Brett Hilder died on the 9 April 1981.
Writers:
Silas Clifford-Smith
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 March 1911
- Summary
- The son of artist J.J. Hilder, Brett Hilder was a painter, author and distinguished sailor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Apr-81
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude53.9825271 Longitude-1.385249993 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- black-and-white artist, was born and worked in Melbourne. He specialised in caricatures of celebrities connected with the theatre and was caricaturist on Table Talk in the early 1930s when Percy Leason was the cartoonist. Parker lived in London from 1936, where he drew for the Bystander and Tatler . He revisited Australia in 1952. Andrea Hull emails (1999): 'Mary Cecil Allen’s 1935/36 scrapbook contains a terrific cartoon of his, with the caption “A very sophisticated time bomb. Mary Cecil Allen clad for cocktails, is let loose in local society”’.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 15 March 1909
- Summary
- A mid 20th century Melbourne and London caricaturist, Parker specialised in caricatures of celebrities connected with the theatre.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Mar-81
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator, painter, sculptor and art critic, was born in Paddington, Sydney. He studied art at the J.S. Watkins School and East Sydney Technical College. In 1925, aged 16, he became a cadet artist on the Evening News (Sydney), then went to the Daily Guardian ('as little finger to the editor’s right hand’) where he 'filled the paper with half column blocks until it looked like “Comic Cuts”. Later drew a comment on the daily news strip.’ For the Sunday Guardian he illustrated Colin Wills’ Rhymes of Sydney (1933) with excellent modernist drawings (reproduced in Spearritt and in Kirkpatrick xv). He 'was sold with the “Guardian” to the Sydney Sun ', but the managing editor was said to dislike his work and he was sacked. He then drew cartoons for the Sunday News and the World , e.g. 'How Phar Lap’s American Path Could Be Made Easier’ 24 November 1931, 2. After the Depression he resurrected a news strip on the latter, which lasted for about a year. He also contributed to Smith’s Weekly , e.g. 'He did wrong by our Nell’ (a cubist artist painting a pretty young thing) 25 April 1931, 4.
WEP’s early illustrations were modernist and innovative but he is far better known as a jovial Australian Women’s Weekly illustrator, e.g. Cup Parade 7 November 1956 (ill. Lindesay WWW , 136), and Saturday Night (large coloured original Mitchell Library [ML] V*CART). He began working on the Weekly as an illustrator, e.g. 'No longer a delicately-reared young woman, she was now a throw-back to the primitive female. Her civilisation was only a veneer’ (girl clobbering a Native American with a hammer) 13 July 1935, p.7, but then became known for the long-running strip 'In and Out of Society’, for which he prepared the first mock-up dummy in June 1933. He is also remembered for his illustrations to the comic writings of Lennie Lower, first published in the Weekly in the 1930s and later in book form (e.g. Here’s Luck A&R, 1930, 11 reprints, new edn 1955 with at least two reprints, including a 1957 edition).
In the 1940s WEP drew illustrations for the service magazine Salt , e.g. “What! No letters, blokes?” 1944 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 268), and he illustrated stories in Australia: National Journal . His war cartoons mainly appeared in the Sydney Daily Telegraph – including the Sunday edition – where he was also the regular art critic. The original of his DT caricature showing all the protagonists in the 1944 Archibald Prize court case over William Dobell’s portrait of Joshua Smith, with Dobell being interrogated by Garfield Barwick, was in 'Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White’ in 1999 (borrowed from Bridget Mcdonnell Gallery, Melbourne, but held in p.c).
WEP began working at the Telegraph as an illustrator, drew a news-strip then was appointed relieving editorial cartoonist after the war, which was later made permanent. His many post-war illustrations include those in Nino Culotta’s They’re a Weird Mob (Ure Smith, Sydney 1957) and in Cyril Pearl’s So, You Want To Buy A House? (Cheshire, Melbourne 1961). Five original 1960s-70s works are at ML PXD 764.
As a painter Pidgeon won prizes in the 'Australia at War’ exhibition in 1945, and he won the Archibald Prize three times (1958, 1961 and 1969). He finally retired from newspaper work disillusioned with its lack of status and freedom, though he continued to illustrate books. His article 'What price independence?’ in the final issue of Australian Artist (2/2, winter 1949, 12-15) was a bitter commentary about restrictions on the cartoonist:
“The proper degree of independence of the cartoonist is complete independence -without it there is no passion, and without passion, no greatness. (In an effort to avoid the friction that striving after independence causes, the tendency today is to get closer and closer to a comic gag drawing on local and topical affairs.) ...
“The daily life of the people is today reflected back to them in terms of gentle, even inane satire. Jocularity is wearing out a million pencils and the straight cartoon is as rare as a bonus.”
As a result:
“An enormous amount of cartoon work is done to a type of formula that simply cannot be adapted to a serious theme. Even the solidly based handling of Low can look merely theatrical. In any case the hackneyed symbols of weeping nations and broken men seem to me mawkish and as subjects appropriate more to the music hall than to a newspaper. However Dyson, and at times Finey, can achieve dignity in this line.
“Practically all cartoonists in Australia have drifted into this work from other phases of newspaper art. First as temporary, later as permanent, replacements of someone else. Editors seem to entertain the notion that because a man draws, he is a veritable fountain-head of ideas, both political and funny. Certainly to be any sort of cartoonist an artist must have a journalistic mind…
“The insistence on the journalistic approach places the prime emphasis on the idea of the cartoon.
“This is often carried to the conclusion that the idea is all that matters and that the drawing is sufficient even if it only just adequately interprets the thought.
“All of which militates against the production of good draughtsmanship.”
WEP died in February 1981. His widow, Dorothy, was still alive in 1996, living in Northwood.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Peter Pidgeon
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1909
- Summary
- Popular mid 20th century Sydney cartoonist, illustrator, painter, sculptor and art critic. Pidgeon won the Archibald Prize three times - in 1958, 1961 and 1969, but is probably best known for his work as an illustrator on the Australian Women's Weekly.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Feb-81
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, painter, illustrator and journalist, was born and raised in Brisbane. He studied art at Brisbane Technical College. In the late 1920s he began sending work to the Bulletin , e.g. (two flappers) A Single Thought . '“I simply adore George.”/ “So does he”’ 1927 (ill. Rolfe, 270); The Soft Answer. 'Irate Wife: “However did I come to marry such a perfect idiot?”/ Humble Husband: “Just because I was such a perfect idiot, dear!”’ Bulletin 1928, original ink cartoon, QAG (ill. Radford, 71) – not as sinister as others in the Bulletin ; The philosopher. “Was it a very fashionable wedding?”/ The flapper: “Fashionable! Why even the champagne bottles wore garlands of frangipani”’ 1929 (ill. Rolfe, 280); (very Beardsley-like androgynous pair in top hats, veils and long cloaks) Dreams/ MEG: “Are you thinking of buying anything?”/ PEG: “No – not a thing.”/ MEG: “Oh well, then, let’s go and look at something frightfully expensive”’ 30 March 1929; How Percival Felt About It (small groom and large bride, very stylishly drawn) n.d. (ill. Rolfe, 262). ML Bulletin collection has five original drawings 1929-30 and 40 caricatures 1929-37, including one of Ann Weinholt’s father.
Gall is said to have begun drawing for the Brisbane Courier as well as continuing with the Bulletin during the Great Depression, and for a time he was relieving cartoonist on the Melbourne Herald . He then lived in Sydney before returning to Brisbane in 1932 to work on the Telegraph for six years. (Three original cartoons dated c.1940s at ML PXD 764 were probably done for it in the 1930s) He moved to the Courier Mail in 1938 where he drew many notable wartime cartoons before travelling to London in 1946 to work as chief cartoonist on News of the World . Two years later, he returned to Brisbane as political cartoonist for the Courier Mail , where he remained until he retired in 1969. Examples include Another Record Breaker re road toll c.1964 (King, 180). He also drew the weekly 'Radish’ comic strip (initiated by Joe Johnsson) and for a time produced an adventure comic strip Dave Dalton . From 1961 he contributed a Saturday illustrated nature column to the Courier , 'Going Bush with Ian Gall’, which was anthologised in 1971. After 42 years as a cartoonist, Gall died at Brisbane in June 1981, aged 76.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1904
- Summary
- Prolific mid 20th century Brisbane cartoonist, painter, illustrator and journalist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Jun-81
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-22.2745264 Longitude166.442419 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Noumea, New Caledonia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Noumea, New Caledonia, on 10 August 1901, son of a French baker. He spent some of his boyhood in Sydney and briefly attended Darlinghurst Public School. Aged eighteen, he came back to Sydney and took a clerical position doing translations in order to study art at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School at night (1919-20). He returned to Noumea to serve with the French Colonial Army then came back to Australia permanently. His first cartoon was published in 1923 – in Smith’s Weekly acc. 1965 Yearbook, elsewhere Aussie . [Macqueen says: 'Mercier sold his first cartoon to Smith’s Weekly in February 1923, using the tired formula in which a householder asks: “What are you doing there?” to which the burglar in front of an open safe replies: “Struth, yer not blind are yer?” After that triumph, Mercier sold nothing for six months, surviving on odd translating jobs. He freelanced for much of the next twenty-five years.’] From then on Mercier drew full time, more or less freelance until 1945 (acc. 1965 Year book) though apparently briefly employed by Sir Keith Murdoch at the Melbourne Herald office in the 1920s – presumably for Melbourne Punch – where he reputedly horrified his employer by drawing dirty dust-bins in back alleys. Typically, Murdoch’s reaction led to Mercier making them a speciality.
Although a prolific cartoonist, Mercier was unable to make a living from his work for many years. While employed in a variety of casual jobs in the 1920s, he contributed drawings to Mustard Pot , e.g. illustrations of scantily clad females, and to Beckett’s Budget , e.g. EXHIBITOR: [re bunch of flappers at an exhibition] “Ah! I see that at least one of my pictures attracts attention.”/ FRIEND: “That’s not a picture, Aristol, that’s a looking-glass” (2 August 1927, 19). He had cartoons in the Bulletin and contributed to Man in its palmy early days (late 1930s). His glamour girls were never much good, but his depictions of the unexpected, often maniacal, activities by tiny bearded old men, often mad scientists, and large fat old ladies were good-natured and utterly distinctive, e.g. “Amskra!” [old lady to boys stealing fruit as a policeman approaches in the distance], Man June 1937, 96.
With the profits of the 1927 Black and White Artists’ Ball and the Club’s American Fleet Souvenir book (see Harry Weston ), the Black and White Artists’ Club purchased an etching press and offered classes conducted by Henry Fullwood . On this press Mercier subsequently produced several small editions of fine plates on satirical subjects – with admirable skill and delicacy, acc. Lindesay 1994, 10, who reproduces a dull etching of three mice attracted to a cheese trap (p.11).
Mercier joined Smith’s Weekly as a staff artist c.1937 (c.1940 acc. to Blaikie, 93, who tells the story of a raised cat’s tail that offended Claude McKay). He was one of the artists who illustrated Lennie Lower’s comic writings in Smith’s . Vane Lindesay owns his header for Lower’s 'Detour of Art!’ column (in S.H. Ervin exhibition and Joan Kerr book, 1999). Cartoons for Smith’s include: (arguing couple) “All right! All right! Don’t let’s have a row in the street, let’s go home!” 1 May 1937 (sic), 20, and the undated “Look, Jim can you do this?” (ML PXD 840, donated in 1999 by the wife of a former reporter).
He was political cartoonist for the Sydney Daily Mirror and Truth during WWII (from 1940). He created several comic strips for the latter, including 'News Splashes’ and 'Week Spots’. He drew 'Pen Pushers’ for the ABC Weekly in 1941. From 1949 (1945 according to 1965 Year Book) until his retirement in 1971 (1968 acc. Shiell & Unger) Mercier had daily cartoons in the Sun and Sun-Herald , e.g. [trumpet player to other members of orchestra] “Rest assured there will be many orchestral concerts in the new Opera House. After all, it’s not being built merely for a song, you know”, Sun 1964 (reproduced Grollier Year Book, 1965). ML has the original 1964 cartoon (PXD 764).
“Gravy speciality!” The peak of his career was the 1950s in the Sun , according to McQueen.
Many of Mercier’s cartoons reappeared in anthologies published annually by Frank Johnson in the 1940s, e.g. Supa Dupa Man , Wocko the Beaut (originals ML Px*D69 vol.2) and Krazy Kracks – 'The funniest collection of drawings and humour ever crammed into one book’, according to the publisher’s ad. in Lock (1941). Humphrey McQueen says he collaborated with his first wife, Flora, on a couple of kids’ alphabet books for Frank Johnson Publications c.1941 as well as doing other children’s books (see Muir). Angus & Robertson took over publication of the cartoon anthologies, resulting in Wake Me Up At Nine! (1950), Sauce or Mustard? (1951), Gravy Pie (1953), Hang On Please! (1954), My Ears are Killing Me (1955), I’m Waiting for an Earthquake! (1956), Follow that wardrobe! (1957), My Wife’s Swallowed a Bishop (1958), Is My Slip Showing? (1959), Hold It! (1960) and Don’t Shove! (1961).
Mercier contributed to the annual 'Salon Internationale de la Caricature’ at the Pavilion of Humour inMontreal,Canada, until his death in 1981. His favourite hobby was collecting native plants [acc. 1965 Year Book] and he was an avid North Sydney Bears Rugby League supporter. He died on 17 March 1981, survived by his second wife, Pat, the two sons from his first marriage and three step sons from his second marriage.
Original images include: Mercier originals in Frank Johnson papers: Two women at a 'sale of masterpieces’ – Hals’s Laughing Cavalier , Ingres’ La Source , a Claude landscape, a Crome windmill, a Gainsborough lady in profile with black hat and, in upper left corner, the edge of a painting labelled 'Unk’ (i.e. his fellow cartoonist 'Unk’ White ) – with one woman saying: '“Mere imitations some of them, my dear. Why, my grocer has a calendar with the identical picture of one here.”’ undated (ML Px*D68/387); Artist kissing man offering him a £50 note – '“Three hundred quid for my painting, ah, you’re a man after my own art!”’ – annotated as having been published in the Daily Telegraph on 11 April 1938 (ML Px*D68/405). Other originals in the Frank Johnson Papers include “Look Bert, I caught a Jewfish” n.d. (two fishermen with fish with nose and black hat) annotated verso 'It’s a Beaut’ (ML Px*D69/no.1110). There are lots of Mercier original cartoons with wartime joke subjects in vol.10 of the Johnson Papers (ML Px*D68) plus cards and notes by and from Mercier et al. ( Broadley , Cook , Jessup , Lock , Weston, Unk White).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 August 1901
- Summary
- Popular and prolific French-New Caledonian born Sydney cartoonist and illustrator.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Mar-81
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-40.4730011 Longitude175.2822068 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Foxton, Horowhenua, NZ
- Biography
- cartoonist and comic strip writer, was born in New Zealand. In the 1920s he shared a room in Sydney with fellow Kiwi, Cecil ('Unk’) White , drawing cartoons for Smith’s Weekly and the Bulletin. His Smith’s cartoons include: 'Foreman (to worker): “Now, don’t you take no risks, me lad. Think of your wife – brokenhearted, if anything was ter 'appen to yer – yer kids grievin’ – and me! I’d 'ave ter put in two blanky reports about it”’ 1 November 1924, 23.
The first of Cook’s many popular comic strips, Roving Peter (late 1920s), was drawn for the Sunday Times . His strip Bobby and Betty , published in the Daily Telegraph from August 1933, was initially old-fashioned in style with text below each panel, but it became more modern under the influence of US artists Alex Raymond and Burne Hogarth. Cook was also interested in the science fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and drew sci-fi comics in the 1940s, eg Pirate Planet and Peril Planet for the NSW Bookstall Co. and The Blue Ray for K.G. Murray publications (1946).
Noel Cook also created adventure strips for Frank Johnson publications, eg Boris of Mars and Hawk Larse – in the Year 2000 AD . Undated (c.1940s) originals in ML include gag cartoons like (man about to be grilled by cops) “Well boys, what’s it to be? – Humor? Pathos? Fiction?” (Px*D69/no. 789, used in SLNSW 1999 b/w exhibition) and (woman in funny hat in surgery) “I’m obsessed with the idea, doctor, that people are looking at me!” (Px*D69/ no.737). Late in 1947 Elmsdale Publications introduced Cook’s Kokey Koala and his Magic Button for young readers.
Later Cook was a staff artist with Associated Newspapers and ACP in Sydney. He also produced children’s comics. In 1950 he left Australia for London. He became art director of children’s magazines for Fleetway Publications in 1964.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1896
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Auckland/Sydney/London based cartoonist and comic strip writer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1981
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- painter, china painter, potter and art teacher, was born on 1 April 1888 in Adelaide, daughter of John Le Cornu, a gardener, and Emma, née Cole. The family moved to Western Australia in 1896 and lived in Guildford until 1905 when they moved to the country. Seventeen-year-old Flora remained in town, to study and earn her living giving art lessons. Thus began a career as an artist and teacher spanning more than sixty years. She painted in oils on canvas, in watercolours on paper and on china and clay. She was WA’s first studio potter.
Flora commenced her studies in 1903 at the Perth Technical Art School under James W.R. Linton and John Edgar. She proved an outstanding student and was soon enrolled in a five-year Associateship in Art. Her subjects included freehand, model, cast, life, antique and light and shade drawing, plus still-life painting and design. She achieved first-class results, winning scholarships that paid her fees. Her 'art exhibits’ formed part of the School’s contribution to the Perth Women’s Work exhibition of 1907 forwarded to the national exhibition in Melbourne. Select examples of Landells work were then sent to the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition in London, where they were awarded a Grand Prix and a Diploma of Honour.
In 1908 Flora set up art classes at the Midlands Junction Technical School, which she continued until 1930 when social pressures during the Depression forced her to resign. In 1909-49 she taught art at the Methodist Ladies’ College. She joined the WA Society of Arts in 1904 and exhibited regularly with it, winning the open competition and the Hackett prize for drawing in 1906. She held a number of solo exhibitions, the last at Pastoral House in 1960.
In 1913 Flora Le Cornu married Reginald Landells, an engineer and industrial chemist who worked as a Health Department inspector. They lived at 34 Tenth Avenue, Maylands, where in 1925 she set up the Maylands School of Art and later (with Reg’s help) a pottery. In about 1927 she established the Landells Studio Pottery, making handbuilt work and learning to throw pottery from the Royal Doulton-trained potter, Frederick Piercy, owner of the Westralian Pottery Company, about 1929. Clay was dug from local pits. Reg prepared the clay, made all the glazes and built much of the equipment. During World War II they catered for shortages of domestic ware. Reg died in 1960 and the pottery was closed. Flora then held her final exhibition of pottery, but she continued china painting almost up to her death. She did much to encourage an interest in pottery in Perth. A role model for younger potters, she was in demand as a speaker, teacher and maker.
Writers:
Erickson, Dorothy
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 April 1888
- Summary
- Flora Landells was born in 1888 in Adelaide. She was a successful painter and potter and did much to encourage an interest in pottery in Perth. A role model for younger potters, she was in demand as a speaker, teacher and maker.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1981
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-37.78887735 Longitude144.9953627 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Clifton Hill. VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Edith Rebecca Trumble Ward was born in 1888 in Clifton Hill, Victoria, the daughter of Alfred Trumble Ward and Emma Hodgson. She became an enthusiastic amateur photographer. exhibiting her work in local shows in Bendigo and mentoring her niece, the photographer Mattie Hodgson. In 1921 she married a grazier, Richard Charles Darton, who was killed in a motorcycle accident later that year.After her father’s death in 1923 she moved to Perth to live with her sister Ellen Hodgson. By 1931 she was a student of Flora Landells at her Maylands School of Art and exhibited in the 1931 exhibition organized by Landells in the Industries Hall in Barrack Street, Perth. When Lottie Lapsley, Mrs Irving died in 1936, Edith Darton taught china painting at the Young Women’s Christian Association. There is a lovely lustre compote/vase in a private collection in Perth.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1888
- Summary
- China painter who was a student of Flora Landells at her Maylands School of Art in Perth.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1981
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-33.6713629 Longitude138.9300733 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burra Burra, SA, Australia
- Biography
- China painter was born in Burra Burra South Australia in 1887 and moved to Boulder after her marriage. The couple then moved to Perth where they lived in Bayswater, Mt Lawley and Attadale. Eugene was taught by J. W. R. Linton, A. B. Webb and Mr Rowbotham at Perth Technical School. She commenced painting c.1918 and learnt her china painting from the Misses Creeth. She exhibited china painting with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1935. Joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment during World War I. At some later stage she attended art school in North London. She visited United States of America on a regular basis from 1961 to learn china painting from an expert in depicting roses, Sony Aimes.
Writers:
Erickson, Dorothy (Dr)
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1887
- Summary
- Menz commenced painting c.1918 and learnt her china painting from the Misses Creeth. She exhibited china painting with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1935.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1981
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-37.063611 Longitude144.217222 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1981-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Hilda Geraldine Leviny was the youngest daughter of Ernest Leviny, a notable colonial silversmith, and his wife, Bertha. Although never married, Hilda lived away from the family home, Buda, for almost 30 years, not returning permanently until she was in her early 50s.
Hilda studied art subjects as well as woodcarving and needlework and had a particular aptitude for embroidery. She exhibited three pieces in the First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work 1907, including a three-panelled draught screen with hand embroidered and appliquéd panels which is on display at Buda.
In 1906 Hilda studied at the Domestic Science College and then worked as a bursar at Merton Hall for three years. She then took up a position as Matron at Grimwade House, the preparatory school for Melbourne Grammar, where she stayed for 15 years. In 1929, she became Matron at the Women’s College in the University of Sydney, where she remained for a further 7 years.
Hilda enjoyed travel. Her trips, between 1912 and 1939, included Ceylon, Lord Howe Island, Norfolk Island, England, America, and Europe, including Hungary, the homeland of her father. It was largely through her efforts that the Buda Museum exists today. She sold the house to the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum in 1970 on the proviso that she could live out her days at Buda. She died eleven years later in 1981, aged 98. (SOURCE: Culture Victoria: Goldfield Stories, The Leviny Sisters)
Writers:
Staff Writer
fulleg
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1883
- Summary
- Artist,woodcarver, embroiderer and college house matron. The youngest of the Leviny sisters.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1981
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-37.768844 Longitude145.0455919 Start Date1949-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ivanhoe, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 14 March 1949
- Summary
- Carol Jerrems was the first contemporary Australian woman photographer to have work acquired by a number of museums including the National Gallery of Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Feb-80
- Age at death
- 31
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1948-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1948
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1980
- Age at death
- 32
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1930-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1930
- Summary
- Scriven was one of the founders of the Puppet Guild of Australia, founding Peter Scriven Puppets ca.1953, later expanding into the Marionette Theatre of Australia. ca.1965. Centred on puppetry, he worked as a designer, performer and writer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-80
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- painter, sculptor, printmaker, author and teacher, was born in Melbourne She spent her childhood at Heyfield and, later, at Portland. In 1936 she recollected:
'I left home at fifteen, was at school in Melbourne, and at sixteen commenced an art course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology on a technical scholarship which paid an allowance of £7 a term plus fees. I used up two years of the four-year scholarship, managed to cram in a teaching course as well as a fine art course by going to classes every night, then a further year of teacher training, and at nineteen I was on the payroll in front of those large wartime classes of Brunswick boys, ousted from their classrooms by the needs of airforce trainees’.
Once embarked on her art course, O’Connor became involved in all the highly charged meetings of the period. She identified with the radical forces supporting modern art against Menzies’s push for an Academy and joined the Contemporary Art Society at its first meeting in 1938. She became increasingly politicised and was the only woman to exhibit in the 1942 Melbourne 'Anti-Fascist Exhibition’, where she showed 'crayon drawings’. That year also saw her marry fellow artist Vic O’Connor , whom she had met at the George Bell School’s Saturday classes. In 1945 she was awarded first prize for painting in the 'Women in Industry’ section of the 'Australia at War’ exhibition, but her political interests began to take precedence over her art. For the next nine years she became a political activist among women, having joined the Communist Party of Australia in 1944 after the birth of her first child, Megan: her second, Sean, was born in 1946. During the Cold War period she served as Victorian secretary of the Union of Australian Women (1950-55). In 1953 she was the Victorian delegate to the World Congress of Women in Copenhagen, a trip which also took her to Eastern Europe. That year she won first prize in the May Day Art competition and was an initiator of the Asian Australian Child Art Exchange. This effort to counter Cold War propaganda and anti-Asian sentiments lasted until 1956.
In 1955 domestic difficulties demanded a return to full-time teaching for the next 15 years. Yet, in spite of her various activities, O’Connor continued to paint. She exhibited regularly during the 1950s and early ’60s with the Realist Group, whose members included Noel Counihan , Mary Hammond and Vic O’Connor. She was one of 10 artists of the 'Melbourne Popular Art Group’ (including Counihan, Peter Miller et al.) who produced a folio of 14 linocuts Eureka 1854-1954 (Melbourne 1954) that paid tribute to 'the stand of the Ballarat miners in the Eureka Stockade (copy Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, et al). Ailsa O’Connor did no.7, Building the Stockade (and erecting the flag); Pat O’Connor did no.3 The Licence Hunt (a simplified story); no.13 Trampling the Flag is by Naomi Schipp and the last of the set, no.14 After the Battle (a mother mourning over her son’s dead body), is by Mary Zuvella.
In 1962 O’Connor was offered the opportunity to undertake a two-year retraining course at RMIT and chose sculpture, a medium in which she had always wanted to work. In 1965 she studied Fine Arts at Melbourne University. In 1979 her sculpture won the Caulfield City Council invitation Art Award. Throughout the 1970s she travelled, worked, exhibited, wrote and actively participated in the feminist movement. Until her death in 1980, she provided important leadership to a new generation interested in producing socially relevant art by bringing to bear her political, theoretical and historical perspectives on feminist and left wing debates.
Writers:
Kirby, Sandy
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1921
- Summary
- Ailsa O'Connor was a painter, sculptor, print maker, author and teacher. She studied at both the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Melbourne University and was politically active, joining the Communist Party of Australia in 1944. She later initiated the Asian Australian Child Art Exchange and represented Victoria at the World Congress of Women in Copenhagen in 1953.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1980
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude51.4817512 Longitude-3.1442697 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Pengam, South Wales, UK
- Biography
- Painter and engineer, was born in Pengam, South Wales on 31 December 1920 and migrated to Australia with his family when he was three. He left school during the Depression aged 13 and worked at the BHP Port Kembla Steel Works. He began attending night classes in building construction in 1937 and taking correspondence courses in mathematics at London University. After completing his studies in structural and civil engineering, he moved to Hobart where he was appointed engineer in charge of power station designs with the HEC 1950-55. He studied part-time at Hobart Technical College under Jack Carington Smith in 1951-55, winning the Tasmanian Sesquicentenary Prize silver medal in 1954 and formally graduating in 1956, then did a part-time BA at the University of Tasmania in 1955-57. He won a commemorative medal for painting at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games and did preliminary work towards a MA degree in Philosophy at Monash in 1969.
Tanner moved to Melbourne in 1957 to work as a chief engineer and later as a consulting engineer in private practice. He travelled to Europe in 1966-67 and also travelled extensively in Asia, the Middle East, UK, Ireland and the USA.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 December 1920
- Summary
- Painter and engineer, won a commemorative medal for painting at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. Tanner also did preliminary work towards a MA degree in Philosophy at Monash in 1969.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1980
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-32.9277778 Longitude151.7108333 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Lambton, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Irvine Homer was born in 1919 in Newcastle, NSW. His family moved regularly around New South Wales, New Zealand and Fiji, and in at the age of fifteen, Homer left school and pursued a variety of odd jobs including shearing in the Willow Tree and Merriwa districts of New South Wales. Homer entered rodeos, where he enjoyed picking up prize money.
In 1938 he met Sylvia Blencowe and they married at the Smithfield Methodists Church, Grafton, on 19 October 1940. It was around this time that he began receiving treatment for violent bouts of epilepsy. He had enlisted in the army at the outbreak of the war but was discharged as medically unfit within a year. The Homers lived at Hilltop near Mittagong, eking out a living charcoal burning. He later worked on the railways near Woy Woy, and after the birth of son Wally (b. July 1942 – d. 6 April 2000), was hit and injured by a train. A daughter, Pearl was born in January 1948. In 1949 Homer bought land at Butta-Ba and built a house.
The Homers divorced in March 1954. Irvine later married Yvonne Dreis, with whom he had three children; Lynda (b.1950) Irvine (b.1951- d.1974) and Wayne (b.1953) (Blencowe to Rumley and Robson, pers. comm. May-June 2003).
In the early 1950s Homer was diagnosed with spondylitis, an incurable and degenerative inflammatory arthritis that particularly affects the spine. Reading in an Australian Women’s Weekly that painting could be therapeutic for illnesses, Homer began daubing on the walls, furniture and plates of his house. Gil Docking, then Director of Newcastle City Art Gallery, encouraged Homer’s painting and arranged his first exhibition there in January 1959; William Dobell, an early supporter, opened the exhibition. As a result of the exhibition, Women’s Weekly visited Homer at home in Butta-Ba and ran a feature on him. Homer, not wishing for sympathy, was upset when the article appeared as he felt that it overemphasized him as an invalid rather than primarily focusing on his career as a painter (Canu 1977). The shy and reclusive Homer was greatly affected by publicity and couldn’t paint at times throughout his career due to the intrusions of what he related to the Women’s Weekly reporter Ron McKie, as “rubbernecks and stickybeaks” (McKie 1959).
Humble and down to earth, Homer did not like hanging his paintings at home and often burnt paintings he was not happy with. He also burnt a batch of early paintings because someone had likened them to Russell Drysdale’s work, and although Homer had not heard of Drysdale, he did not want to be thought of as a copyist (Alliston 1971). Anne Von Bertouch was a major supporter and regular exhibitor of his works throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including staging his first retrospective in 1965. Homers’ painting Approach of the Big Dust was acquired for the later disbanded Mertz Collection of Australian Art in 1966.
With the impending marriage of his daughter Lynda, Homer moved to a nursing home during 1970 where he remained bedridden for the majority of the rest of his life. Replacing Lynda, who had applied base colours to paintings and assisted by tying brushes on his fingers (and later when the disease worsened to his wrists) was Rose-Anne Hall, who helped Homer for a couple of hours each day after school ( Newcastle Herald 27 December 1971). In June 1972 Homer was made Honorary Life Member Newcastle Art Gallery Society, an honour only previously conferred to Dobell ( Newcastle Herald 25 May 1972).
In March 1973 Homer set off, accompanied by his nurse aide Marie Dixon and a helper in a converted ambulance to travel by road through Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia. The work Alice on Todd Regatta (1974) was a result of this trip and is unusual for Homer as he worked the layout of the composition on paper first due to the large amount of people in it (Homer to Thomas, pers. comm. 28 February 1975). In September 1975 the Newcastle Region Art Gallery held a major retrospective of his work. Homer attended the opening in his wheelchair where the Newcastle Gallery Society presented a painting, Skeeta gets Home from the Show (1971), to the Gallery.
Homer’s late paintings are of a predominantly blue hue, and limited to a maximum size of 55cm, being the extent his disability allowed him to reach, even when turning the painting upside down while working (Craig 1975).
Early in 1976, due to the onset of severe blindness, he ceased to paint, instead dictating anecdotes about the characters and incidents he had painted. This added disability did not prevent Homer from visiting London in June 1976 with the assistance of a grant from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council. To assist in overseas travel Homer had had his legs amputated in March 1975. He made the decision so that he would not be classified as a stretcher case and be charged more expensive airfare. Homer enjoyed visits to the Tate Gallery, in particularly enjoying the Constables (Homer to Fergusson, pers. comm. 22 July 1976). In 1977 he again visited London to attend the 'Commonwealth Artists of Fame’ exhibition where, together with Sidney Nolan, he had been chosen to represent Australia. Homer received generous support from the people of Newcastle through the Morning Herald Irvine Homer Appeal, that afforded him and his carers travel expenses. On 9 August 1980, at the age of sixty-one, Homer finally succumbed to his illnesses at the Riversdale Nursing Home.
Pro Hart was an admirer and collector of Homer’s work. Homer was called the Henry Lawson of Primitivism by Elwyn Lynn as his highly personalised paintings recollect the incidents, characters and idiosyncrasies of his childhood or of people he had met while travelling about the bush from job to job as a young man. Lynn likened Manhunt Near My Home (1960) to the “turbulently compressed” style of Albrecht Altdorfer (c1480-1538),while Geoffrey Lehmann, launching Homer’s 1972 exhibition, compared Homer’s work to Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) and Pieter Breughel (c1525-1569) (Lynn, 1965; Alliston, 1977). Likenesses to Cubism were also identified in several early paintings (Fergusson 1975).
Unlike contemporary primitive artists Sam Byrne and Henri Bastin, whose work numbered in the thousands, Homer’s output is estimated to number little more than 250 paintings and plates (Allison, 1971). As with many Australian primitive artists, public recognition of Homer’s work waned in the 1980s and 1990s, as what had become a frequently emulated and hence often seemingly contrived parochial idiom became less fashionable with art critics and curators. In addition, many of its originally proclaimed proponents died (James Fardoulys d.1975, Sam Byrne d.1978, Roma Higgins d.1979, Henri Bastin d.1979, Irvine Homer d.1980, Charles Callins d.1982, Muriel Luders d.1984). Homer’s entry in the first McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art (1968) was retained in the 2006 edition.
Writers:
Bull, Julian
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 April 1919
- Summary
- Homer was a self-taught primitive artist who rose to prominence in the late 1950s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Aug-80
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- graphic artist and teacher, born Melbourne; first wife of Leonard French. Studied RMIT and George Bell School. Showed drawings with the Victorian Artists’ Society (where she won a prize for figure drawing in 1948, w/c prize in 1970, 1971, and special prize in 1972), Contemporary Art Society (Victorian Branch) and Albury Prize (graphics 1972) exhibitions.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1917
- Summary
- A graphic artist and teacher who studied at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the George Bell School. French also exhibited with the Victorian Artists' Society, winning numerous prizes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1980
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude64.6863136 Longitude97.7453061 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Russia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1914
- Summary
- Shapiro was a cabinet maker, arriving in Perth in 1939. He worked in uncle's cabinet-making factory, later for Paul Ernest Kafka, Sydney (1948-1951), he returned to Melbourne in 1958.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-80
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-27.4736234 Longitude153.0364287 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- Painter, mural painter, modeller, puppet-maker, theatre and diorama artist, Clothilde Highton was born in Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, daughter of Major D.R. Harris DSM and his wife, Bertha, of the pioneering pastoral Collins family. Clothilde was raised on the family property, Eurara, at Tamrookum near Beaudesert, where she was privately educated by a governess. She studied art at the Brisbane Central Technical College under L.J. Harvey and Martyn Collins in the early 1930s, then worked in Sydney for a time. There she met, and in 1940 married, Lieutenant Michael Howard Highton RN. He was posted missing after the sinking of HMAS Perth in the Battle Of Sunda Strait in 1942; she was officially informed of his death in 1946. Soon afterwards, Clothilde and their five-year-old daughter, Caryl, left for London. Her watercolour paintings executed in the early years, mainly Australian snow-gum scenes, were sold to art-lovers and collectors from all over the world. She also worked for a local pottery in Sussex, making dressing-table ornaments and cat figures in large numbers, anything at all that was required of her, simply to ensure an income to support herself and her young daughter until she became well-known.
Clothilde came to be highly regarded as a sculptor in England in the 1940s and early 50s. Her work was largely in the repair and reconstruction of external statuary severely damaged in the bombing of London during the blitz. She had invented a synthetic stone, a combination of cement and silicas that resembled natural stone in appearance and aged and weathered exactly like the real thing. For this work she was in great demand. Any person looking at the work would be hard-pressed to tell the original parts of figures from the repaired sections.
In London, Highton met and studied painting with the Australian artist Will Longstaff. Longstaff was making dioramas for Australia House, London, and after seeing Highton’s large religious figures encouraged her to make dioramas too. In three months she had made and sold her first diorama to the Mowbray Gallery. Her Castles and Carriages toured provincial England and was shown in London. She produced scenery and costumes for operettas, murals, displays and puppet theatres. The major work she undertook in England was a larger than life-size Crucifix with subsidiary figures of Mary and and St John, for St Nicholas’ Anglican Church in Arundel, Sussex. It was included in the religious art section of the 1951 Festival of Britain, resulting in her being elected a member of the Guild of Memorial Craftsmen of Great Britain that year (membership was restricted to fifty, five of whom were women). The figures were originally placed above and behind the altar in front of the rood screen at St Nicholas separating the church from the Fitzalan Howard Chapel (the private – Catholic – Chapel of the Duke of Norfolk) which adjoined it. Recently the figures have been placed in the garden of the church, under the branches of a flowering cherry tree, with Arundel Castle in the background.
Clothilde also undertook private commissions for statues and other large works for domestic garden settings, and executed a portrait bust of Lord Gowrie, then Governor of Windsor Castle, where she stayed while making the clay model for the work. While there she also did several small watercolour paintings of the Queen Mother’s private gardens. When Clothilde was constructing some of her larger diorama series Lavinia, Duchess of Norfolk, offered her a very large hall in Arundel Castle in which she could spread out and work uninterrupted. The only visitors were the Duchess herself, and on one occasion, the Queen when she was staying at the castle to inspect some of her horses that were kept there.
Clothilde wrote a Nativity play, 'The Cradle of the Dove’, for performance in St Nicholas’ church, Arundel, which required a special dispensation from the Bishop. This play was later performed at St Michael and All Angels at New Farm in Brisbane in 1961, with her three-week old granddaughter Gaynor playing the baby Jesus. The play was in verse, and incorporated singing and dance, and was accompanied by songs from the Oxford Book of Carols and anthems from the Book of Common Prayer.
In the fifties, Clothilde designed and made unique Christmas windows for the department store Allan & Stark (later Myer) when she returned to Brisbane, by reproducing with life-sized figures some of the most famous religious paintings by the Old Masters, such as The Madonna of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci. These were huge dioramas, a combination of painting, sculpture, lighting and fabrics and were very popular with Christmas shoppers. Highton exhibited Coronations through the Ages in Brisbane in 1953, then toured it to other state capitals. As a result of its popular appeal she was commissioned by Qantas to produce Fifty Years of Flight , shown in Farmers Gallery at Sydney and Georges Gallery, Melbourne. Australia’s Links with the Crown , consisting of ten dioramas, was executed for the 1954 Royal Tour; Fashion Fads and Fancies , twenty-four dioramas depicting ’2,000 years of fashion’, was shown at Ball & Welchs, Melbourne, and at Anthony Horderns, Sydney in 1955.
She turned her hand to the production of other theatrical enterprises, including puppets for the Queensland Road Safety Police in 1959 and the Spastic Children’s Centre in 1960. She designed many displays for firms in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, as well as exhibits for the Queensland Industries Fairs from 1955. But the advent of television in Australia largely destroyed the popular appeal of dioramas and she stopped producing them.
Highton cared for her widowed father and, later, remarried and moved to Ormiston. Between 1947 and 1963 she had occasionally exhibited paintings with the Royal Queensland Art Society and from 1964 exhibited with the Yurara Art Group, of which she was a founding member (it merged with the Royal Queensland Art Society in 1983). Her paintings were also hung in the Redlands Art Prize competition in the 1960s, a prize that she inaugurated through the Yurara Art Group sponsored by the Redland Shire Councel.
Eventually Highton moved back to the bush not far from where she’d grown up, retiring to a farm at Boonah, where she still painted, but also bred Arabian horses, her great love, for the last years of her life. Clothilde died in Brisbane on 7 June 1980, and was buried in the private Collins family section at All Saints’ church, Tamrookum, Queensland on 10 June 1980. She left one daughter, five grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
duggim
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1914
- Summary
- Painter, mural painter, modeller, puppet-maker, theatre and diorama artist. Her dioramas were popular and toured extensively in the UK and Australia during the 1950s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1980
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-37.8001 Longitude144.9671 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North Carlton, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1980
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- painter, etcher and art teacher, was born in Melbourne in Septemer 1906, daughter of Dr R.J. Bull. She began her career in 1929 at the National Gallery School, where she produced some fine portraits and competent etchings, eg Batman’s Landing 1935, etching and aquatint, National Gallery of Australia. In 1937 she won the Sir John Longstaff scholarship to travel and work overseas. She went to London, where she was an accredited Australian war artist during World War II. An exhibition of these artists’ works recording the damage caused by German bombing raids on cities and towns throughout Britain – about 200 paintings and etchings in all – was held at London’s Australia House in November 1947. Until then they had been 'censored and on the official secrets list’, according to a report in the Sydney Sun . Bull’s war pictures are represented in the Imperial War Museum, London, as well as in Australia.
On her return to Australia after nine years abroad Norma wished to do something different. For over twelve months she followed Wirth’s Circus around Australia, passionately painting the acrobats, animals, clowns, people and scenes of circus life. From then on she lived at the family home, Medlow, in Warrigal Road, Surrey Hills (Vic.). From 1960 she was secretary of the Fellowship of Australian Artists. This artist and teacher would spend part of each year at her holiday homes in Anglesea and Bright, painting and drawing Australian landscapes and seascapes. She loved nature and was very much a conservationist, noted for her expressions of despair that so many forest areas were being destroyed, as she said, 'to make room for buildings and freeways’. Norma Bull died in Melbourne in September 1980.
Writers:
Rollason, Tim
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. September 1906
- Summary
- accredited Australian war artist during World War II.conservationist.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Sep-80
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-33.8772 Longitude151.1049 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burwood, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Burwood, NSW. He was apparently christened John but was always known as Jack. His nephew, the Sydney journalist Mike Gibson, called him 'Gibbie’ and said he 'one of the true Bohemians of the old King’s Cross’ – 'a member of the hard working, hard drinking group of journalists and cartoonists who haunted the Cross’. Gibson’s 1930s House of Horror Luna Park, 'Our Town’, appeared in Man , along with many other cartoons, and he also illustrated for Adam , Man Junior and Cavalcade . He drew stylish society and other cartoons in a sophisticated modernist/abstract Art Deco style for Man , e.g. 'Gibson symbolises Nazism, not forgetting the salute’ May 1937, 13. His first cartoon for Man appeared in the March 1937 issue. He had three highly stylised cartoons in the 12th issue (November 1937): a waitress and customer; a couple unable to marry until they can afford a divorce; and “Cheer up, Blondie. Every cloud has a Silver Fox lining” .
In the December 1937 issue, Gibson wrote an article entitled, 'So this is Surrealism; Giving you the lowdown on Modern Art’ (pp.45-46). He had two cartoons in the issue, along with a photo (p.7) that accompanied a description of him as:
“MAN’s modernist artist, who in this issue gives us the low-down on surrealism, affected the modern style because he was not satisfied with “drawing things as they are”. “I endeavour to twist existing forms into decorative designs, not to distort nature into unrecognisable monstrosities”, he says.”
His cartoon (p.44), “It’s either symbolism or … it’s LOUSY!” faced his article 'So This is Surrealism’, which featured and illustrated Picasso, Ben Nicholson and a lump of clay in a London gallery titled 'Two Ideas and a Navel’. The text also noted the 'monstrosity that was exhibited under the title “Captain Cook’s Last Voyage of Discovery”. It was a dressmaker’s dummy surrounded by a network of wire like a clumsy bird-cage.’ He damned the breakfast cup and saucer covered in brown fur [evidently by Meret Oppenheim] and was against Nicholson, Klee (though he was not 'strictly speaking’ a surrealist, he admitted), Picasso ('Femme Lisant’ 1934 ill. and text p.46), Dali, Dadaists and Freud.
The December 1939 issue of Man had another two Gibson cartoons, one being the coloured cover cartoon showing Hitler in bed being visited by Santa with a pistol, the other a black-and-white cartoon of a man being blown up in the loo. In Man Annual (undated but evidently 1944 – the date on a Hayles cartoon), Gibson had 12 cartoons about: a hot dog stand; water on the knee; bathroom; woman playing poker with three men and asking if four aces is any good; a rain cloud over a single car; mint; cannibal complaining about a wartime privation dinner of Jap (in the pot); butchy man arriving in drag at a poker party because his wife had hidden his clothes; a ferocious dog; wife in bed photographing her husband’s dream; trains about to crash while the operator tries to work out which handle to pull; and an advertised 'room with private bath’ that proves to be a hammock in a bathroom.
This was probably Gibson’s peak period of productivity for Man , but it was not his most distinctive since it pre-dates the subject for which he became world famous. From the 1940s until the demise of the magazine in 1974, Gibson drew madly intricate monthly cartoons for Man set in Hell. They were quite as lunatic as Roland Emmett’s world but more crude, e.g. August 1952 (when Frank S. Greenop was still editor) he did a two-page spread of two men emerging from a rocket into Hell with one saying, “Our calculations may have been a trifle faulty … ask if this is Mars anyway”. The September 1952 double-page spread focuses on a new arrival (“Ah! Dentist Jones! ... Take a seat …’ It won’t hurt a bit’... to coin a phrase”). Part of the pleasure of these drawings is the great variety of intricate (but not realistically painful) tortures and sinful (but not offensive) pleasures taking place all around. Man Annual 1952 had no Hell cartoon by Gibson but only a weak half-page b/w nudist club gag showing a fence and a tree, the speaking male inmates being hidden behind the fence; but the March 1959 and January 1966 issues both contained a double page b/w Hell scene (the only Gibson cartoon). By February 1970 his 'Infernal Nonsense’ had been reduced to a single page, coloured yellow. This one featured two fencers running each other through and other devilish delights. Even so, the Hell series continued until Man’s demise.
Gibson was one of the few local cartoonists to survive for the duration (the only others were Lahm and Vernon Hayles ). The central theme of his intricate 'Infernal Regions’ drawings, usually printed as a double-page spread, is normally a character or couple who have just arrived to find 'Hordes of devils – tempting naked sheilas and boooze’ as well as a certain amount of light-hearted torture. In a 1943 article explaining how to write gags for cartoons ( Man April 1943, 18-19) Albert A. Murray, 'cartoon editor, Man ', wrote:
“Gibbie” said he hit on the idea when he was drawing a couple of blokes digging a hole in the ground. They dug deeper and deeper. Suddenly they crashed through the ceiling as it were and landed in Hell!
Man January 1939 tells the same story, while Albert A. Murray in 'Sweating to Make 'Em Laugh’ ( Man April 1948, pp.18-19) repeats the tale of the trench-digging genesis of Gibson’s 'widely famous’ Hell cartoons filled with 'strange little “djits”, as he called them, (those formless, headless gremlins with a penchant for murmuring tender thoughts like “terts, nertz, adink, adonk”)’. By 1948 the results of Gibson’s watching a trench being dug and wondering what would happen if the bottom of the hole collapsed and the men fell through had been going 'nearly ten years’, Murray noted. “Gibbie” told his nephew Mike that one of the few restrictions K.G. Murray, 'the boss of Man’, put on these cartoons was that no Australian serviceman was to be depicted: 'Old K.G. said Australian soldiers would never go there’.
Gibson retired in the 1970s. He had married three times. His first wife, Anne née Bowley, later Jensen, was the mother of cartoonist John Jensen and Ingrid. His second wife was Daphne Winslow. Gibson died at Sydney in 1980.
Gibson’s son, the cartoonist and illustrator John Jensen of London, has the only known extant original Hell cartoon, although vast numbers are rumoured to be hidden away in some ACP/PBL warehouse (who acquired K.G. Murray publications at some stage).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1904
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney magazine writer and cartoonist for 'Man'. Journalist Mike Gibson, described him as 'one of the true Bohemians...'a member of the hard working, hard drinking group of journalists and cartoonists who haunted the Cross.'
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1980
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-34.81502565 Longitude147.672675 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Junee, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist, commercial artist, clerk, theatrical designer and producer, was born in Junee, NSW but moved to Melbourne as a young man. When WWI broke out, he enlisted and served at Gallipoli. After his return, he devoted much time and energy to working against war and imperialism. Studied at the Working Men’s College (RMIT) in the 1920s, then worked in various commercial art studios, finally becoming a tally clerk in a shipping office where he remained for the rest of his working life. The Depression led him to join the Communist Party.
Reproductions of anti-war images by Otto Dix and George Grosz had a deep and lasting effect on Maughan and inspired him to begin drawing. In 1931, with Noel Counihan, Judah Waten, Nettie Seeligson and Nutter Buzacott, he formed the Workers’ Art Club. He was allocated the first exhibition of the 'worker artists’, which had a catalogue by Guido Baracchi, a founding member of the Party. ( Portrait of a Man c.1931, pen and ink on paper, private collection, reproduced Merewether, depicts a working man in a cloth cap.) At the same time Maughan began to contribute cartoons and illustrations to labor publications like Stream , Proletariat and the first issue of the Workers’ Art Club magazine Masses (1931). In late 1932 he held another exhibition at the Club with Counihan and Buzacott but mostly did stage designs and produced agit-prop (agitation-propaganda) sketches and full-length plays. The first play performed, Ernst Toller’s Masses and Man , was condemned by sections of the party for its expressionist defeatism and pessimism, as was Maughan’s own artwork like Civilization 1931 (pen, indian ink and watercolour on paper, La Trobe Library: ill. Merewether in b/w), a great image of ant-like workers dwarfed by their factory.
The Workers’ Art Club was disbanded in 1935 and the New Theatre set up. There Maughan continued his stage work and wrote even more one-act plays. In 1937 he produced a scene from Irwin Shaw’s Bury the Dead at the Princess Theatre, part of a programme sponsored by the 'Movement Against War and Fascism’ with half the proceeds going to help Australian nurses serving with the Spanish Republican Army. The full play, staged at the Apollo Theatre by the New Theatre Company in 1938, had a poster and handbill designed by Maughan (poster with Hitler-skull reproduced in Merewether, 102). The plays he produced throughout the 1930s and 1940s included Storm Over St. Kilda (1939), which starred his wife, Leila. He also did the stage design for Vic Arnold’s production of Clifford Odet’s Waiting for Lefty . Jack and Leila Maughan continued to work in theatre for the rest of their lives, with Jack retaining his daytime job in the shipping office. He also continued cartooning, at least for some years, e.g. for the Melbourne Guardian 1943.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- Maughan was a painter, cartoonist, commercial artist, clerk, theatrical designer and producer. Reproductions of anti-war images by Otto Dix and George Grosz had a deep and lasting effect and inspired him to begin drawing.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1980
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Goodwood West, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born at Goodwood West, Adelaide, on 8 September 1896, youngest of the four children of William Irven Dawkins, an accountant, and Annie Eliza, née Roberts. For many years the family lived at 'Karadoc’, 36 Young Street, Parkside (no sale of their home was recorded until 1933-34) and Mabel studied at the South Australian School of Art for five years. During WWI she worked primarily as a commercial artist from a studio in the Hindmarsh Buildings, Grenfell Street, Adelaide. On 14 March 1916 she wrote to the South Australian State War Council with a proposal for a recruitment poster: 'Dear Sir,/ I wish to submit to you a miniature recruiting poster design/ which I would be pleased to/ present to the state on the condition that my name/ appears on each copy issued.’ (Information Samantha Littley)
Her design was accepted and 1,000 copies of the poster ordered from the Government Photolithographer, A. Vaughan, at a cost of £10 (SL). The graphically powerful Enlist!! (colour photolithograph, AWM V1074) understandably presents the most attractive face of World War I – the 'six-bob-a-day tourist’ image that attracted many young men. Seeing Egypt and visiting the Pyramids and the Sphinx in sunny spare moments was a vastly more attractive prospect than the mud of the Somme, although joining 'our boys beside the Nile’ was a far less likely destination. The appeal of the accompanying verse to mateship (where the mate is wounded and needing help – but still smiling) combined with a pleasure trip visiting some of the world’s greatest monuments would never have fooled the family man, the old hand or those critical of the war. Such simple propaganda was aimed at the young men who still believed that war was an adventure, more fun than staying at home.
That it appeared early in the war made the message more believable, probably to the artist as much as to her audience. Thousands of Australian recruits unwittingly colluded in this propaganda exercise by sending home postcards and photographs from Egypt, frequently with themselves and their 'Hale and Hearty’ mates posed with pyramid, Sphinx and camel en route to France. Such symbols of Egypt alone signified duty done. Dawkins does not entirely dispense with the military presence but her line of distant silhouetted marchers are an attractive compositional device, no more realistic or militaristic than comparable pre-war silhouettes by Blamire Young or the influential English 'Beggarstaff Brothers’ (William Nicholson and James Pryde).
As a member of the South Australian Society of Arts (SASA), Dawkins exhibited in the Society’s annual exhibitions in 1916-18, showing (inter alia) Orient in1916, Ballet Costume Designs and Head of Old Man in 1917 and Theatrical Costume in 1918, which suggest she may also have been designing for the theatre at the time. She certainly designed the program (with an allegorical woman on the cover) for a SASA Patriotic Evening held on 3 July 1917, which included banjo duets, recitations, papers, a dramatic sketch and the judging of an Exhibition of Pictures (listed) by Art Club members (the artists are unnamed but presumably included Dawkins).
Dawkins’ illustrative work for the Adelaide magazine Shopping : The Australian Housewife’s Monthly Newspaper , published July-December 1918, includes a page of witty cartoons parodying the current theatrical production of the Bing Boys. She drew art nouveauish illustrations for each segment of the publication, including 'Miss Vanity’s Page’, 'The Garden of Beauty & Usefulness’, 'Poultry Notes’ and 'Who’s Who & What’s Doing’. In 1918 she also designed two covers, a Japonaise image of a woman peeping over her fan with a cherry blossom branch behind her for September and a smart girl-about-town twirling a striped umbrella in her hands for November.
Dawkins moved to Melbourne about 1920. (She disappears from the Adelaide electoral roll in 1919 and is not listed in the SASA annual reports after this date.) In 1925, as a witness to her sister Eva’s marriage, she gave her place of residence as South Yarra, Victoria, her occupation 'home duties’. In the 1930s she married John Francis Williams, later Sir John, chairman and managing director of the Herald and Weekly Times ; they had a son, John Irven. The family lived in Broken Hill and Brisbane before returning to Melbourne, where Mabel studied with George Bell in 1948-54. Bell had considerable influence on her style. According to McCulloch, 'the qualities that give her work identity are lightness and soft colour, combined with firm cubist structure, all carefully considered elements in the pattern of George Bell’s teaching and philosophy’.
She also studied briefly under Iain MacNab at the Warwick Gardens Art School, London (Grosvenor School?). She exhibited with the Melbourne Contemporary Artists and was its president from 1957 [1959 acc. to McCulloch] to 1965, when the society was disbanded. She used her position to promote the cause of art and artists. During the late 1950s, having identified a paucity of exhibition space in Melbourne, she initiated the building of the Argus Gallery. For six years, she was chairman of the Red Cross Picture Library sub-committee (see McCulloch 1984, memorial exhibition catalogue, 1981).
Mabel Williams died on October 24 1980 at Freemasons’ Hospital, East Melbourne. A memorial exhibition was held at the Melbourne Lyceum Club in January 1981. The catalogue lists 85 paintings by Williams (and gives their owners), not all of which were in the exhibition. In his introduction, Alan McCulloch called her 'a woman who loved art and artists, and was herself a painter of great sensitivity’.
Writers:
Littley, SamanthaCallaway, AnitaKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 8 September 1896
- Summary
- Mid 20th century modern artist and cartoonist.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Oct-80
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude53.7229229 Longitude-1.8604874 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Halifax, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 29 April 1895
- Summary
- Shillito was a designer and educator. She taught in the UK, Brisbane Technical College 1923, Sydney Technical College 1925. She became Head, East Sydney Technical College (Women's Handicrafts) 1958 and was the founder of Shillito School of Design in 1962. She was a noted colourist and taught and published on colour theory and practice.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Mar-80
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude53.7229229 Longitude-1.8604874 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Halifax, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Designer and painter
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 28 April 1895
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney-based designer and painter
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Mar-80
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Potter, was born in Adelaide in December 1892, oldest of the four children of Hubert William (Bill) Holden and his wife Annie Maria Turner. She was also a niece of Win Preston, a talented amateur artist ( History , p.67), and a cousin of May Gibbs . Her two younger brothers were Leslie, a WWI air ace, and James, at one time director of General Motors-Holden, the company formed by Nell’s cousin Edward and uncle H.J. Holden. The youngest member of the family was Winfred [sic] Turner Holden, born in Adelaide in October 1904. Soon after Win’s birth, the family moved to Sydney where Bill Holden and his brother-in-law Herbert Preston established the Australian subsidiary of the Nestlé Swiss Milk Company. The family initially lived at Mosman then c.1911 moved to Lynwood a large property in Winton Street, Warrawee. During WWI Nell was in charge of a Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross that established a nursery at Turramurra, growing cut flowers and raising seedlings for sale to raise funds for the war effort. After the war Nell planned to take up commercial art in order to be financially independent, but her father vetoed this.
In 1971 Nell wrote a record of her early struggles (published in History pp.67-71) to become a potter, which she decided to be in 1926 – inspired perhaps, Martin suggests (p.7), by the British studio and industrial pottery she had seen on a visit to England in 1925. Pottery was also an acceptable hobby for a young lady, the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW (which the sisters joined in 1928) having vice-regal patronage. Opportunity came when the Warrawee land was subdivided and the house sold (the family retained part of the bottom of the garden containing a gardener’s cottage in the form of a Swiss Chalet imported from Switzerland in the early 1920s for use as a pavilion for Nestlé at the Royal Easter Show that had been re-erected with additions at Warrawee in 1925). In 1927 the Holdens moved to Edgecliff Road, Woollahra, making it convenient for Nell and Win to enrol at ESTC in 1928 for pottery, clay modelling and china painting classes taught by J. Arthur Peach and 'Design’ taught by Phyllis Shillitoe .
The sisters found the pottery classes quite unsatisfactory – Mr. Peach was a devotee of china painting – and left to learn from Mr Guthrie, a thrower at Fowlers [Commercial] Pottery: 'Mr Guthrie helped us fire our first kiln (which was built in my Aunt’s [Win Preston’s] garden at [Shellcove Road,] Kurraba Point)… [using coal as well as wood and coke] The chimney smoked like a warship and there were complaints from the neighbours so we had to give up firing in that way.’ No gas kiln in Australia was suitable and the sisters and their mother visited England again in 1929 and learned about kilns, glazes and wheels. There the English Gas Light and Coke Company arranged to send plans for a small kiln to Sydney. Made (with difficulty over almost 12 months) by the Australian Gas Light Company, it was set up in a small pottery studio at 'The Chalet’, Winton Street, Warrawee, Bill, Annie and Win having returned to live in the cottage in late 1929. Nell joined them 12 months later. The kiln was installed in 1930 and the company’s achievement was publicised in Building in December 1931, illustrated with a photograph of Win and Nell Holden loading their new kiln. Woman’s Budget (30 December 1931) carried a similar story and the Building article was reprinted by AGL in a brochure promoting the product, illustrated with photos of Win and Nell in the 'Wynnel Pottery Studio’ erected just behind the Chalet.
There the sisters experimented with local clay and made some of the earliest coil pots in Sydney, which they sold through the Arts & Crafts Shop in Rowe Street. Win married in 1932 and gradually abandoned pottery, but Nell continued, buying a commercial wheel with a 1-horsepower motor 'which was good for any amount of clay’. In November 1933 an extension housing a showroom, 'architecturally in sympathy with the house and connected to it by a stone-flagged path bordered with Japanese iris’, was built at right angles to the studio (Martin). The Daily Telegraph (December 1933) published several photographs of the sisters in the studio (reproduced Martin), followed by Woman’s Budget in August 1934 and the Sydney Morning Herald on 16 November 1934 ('Exhibition in a garden studio’) and 17 January 1935 ('Swiss chalet with additions’). It was by no means the first pottery studio in Sydney (see Martin p.11), but the Wynnel Pottery Studio attached to the Holdens’ picturesque chalet had more media appeal in the 1930s than any of the others.
An active member of the NSW Society of Arts & Crafts from 1928 until her death, Nell made a great variety of pots in her Warrawee studio pre-WWII, as can be seen in late 1930s photograph ( History pp.30-31 and Martin). Despite a government regulation that restricted potters to utilitarian ware only during the war, she was able to continue to produce her distinctive 'banksia man’ jugs, based on her cousin’s creation since the mould had been made pre-war (an example of a cream slip-cast earthenware banksia jug c.1945, private collection, is illustrated by Martin, p.8). Nell wrote in 1971:
My speciality was “slip” ware – white with blue slip colours – green – also pink etc on white clay. White slip on brown clay pottery is an endless subject… When the Second World War came, I was told by the authorities (as others like me were) I could make only utility ware. I did make endless cups and saucers, teapots etc, as these articles were not coming into Australia.
She also helped with the Red Cross classes for convalescent ex-servicemen during the war. In 1950 she taught at the Society’s pottery class at North Sydney and after it closed had 10 pupils at her Warrawee studio for about 2 years, then abandoned teaching for her own work.
In 1954 Holden won the Society’s Elisabeth Söderberg Memorial Award (est. 1940) for her pottery. She won it again in 1956. That year she judged the crafts at the Castle Hill Agricultural Show with Myrtle Innes , another longstanding member of the NSW Society of Arts and Crafts. The Society’s Christmas party was held in Holden’s Turramurra studio in 1957. In 1965 a small members’ exhibition preceding the annual exhibition in November was held there and the Söderberg Memorial Award made (Miss Row’s christening robe won; Miss Woods’s 'bark picture’ was equal third). Sales totalled £327/6/-. She held another exhibition in her studio-home in 1966. Nell was President of the Society in 1966-68 and she succeeded Olive Nock as Patron in 1978. She died in 1980.
EXAMPLES: a sky blue wheel-thrown earthenware vase with simple carved slip decoration c. 1940 private collection, is on the cover of Australiana Feb.2003; others in Martin also pcs.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. December 1892
- Summary
- Nell Turner Holden was a potter. An active member of the NSW Society of Arts & Crafts from 1928 until her death in 1980, Turner Holden also taught at the Society's pottery class at North Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1980
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-23.3782137 Longitude150.5134227 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1980-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockhampton, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- wood-carvers, were mother and daughter who worked in central Queensland from the turn of the century. As well as being an accomplished wood-carver, Daisy Archer , was prominent in the social life of the area. Born Alice Manon Marwedel in Tasmania in 1862, Daisy, as she was known, and her twin sister Jessie Marie Martha later moved to Toowoomba, Queensland, with their family. Jessie married George Allan, a schoolmaster at Rockhampton, and when Daisy came to stay she met, and in 1889 married, the pastoralist Robert Archer (1858-1926). They lived at the Archer family property, Gracemere, outside Rockhampton, which Robert had inherited.
Daisy Archer’s interest in carving was sparked off by the work of the station bookkeeper Henry James King-Church (c.1869-1905). She appears to have had no formal training in art, although she may have had lessons in carving from her eldest sister, Emma, who cared for the twins after their mother died. Daisy also produced her own embroidery designs.
Robert Archer was extensively involved with the Rockhampton Agricultural Society, and Daisy acted as judge and steward of the Women’s Industries’ section at the Rockhampton Annual Show on several occasions. She was instrumental in setting up the local branch of the Queensland Country Women’s Association and during the 1930s became increasingly involved in this organisation. From the early part of this century until her husband died, she produced an extensive body of carving.
Daisy and Robert Archer’s daughter Joan was born in Rockhampton. She studied art in England in 1905-09 at the Croamhurst School in Croydon, where her best subject was watercolour painting. Her initial interest in woodcarving was also fostered by King-Church. Unlike her mother, Joan exhibited her work. In 1910 she was awarded a prize for woodcarving from the Rockhampton Agricultural Society, and in 1939 from Toowoomba.
While engaged to her cousin Alister Archer, Joan completed a carved chair after an original in an Oslo museum while he was on active service during World War I. They married in 1919. She continued carving after her marriage and produced many items for the Comforts Funds during World War II, until a stroke put an end to these activities.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- Queensland born artist, daughter of accomplished woodcarver Daisy Archer and a woodcarver herself. Produced many items for the Comforts Fund during World War II.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1980
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1979-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter, has been linked stylistically to Norman Lindsay , for whom she occasionally modelled. Norton’s art usually featured visionary and occult imagery and was influenced by European Vorticism. Born in Dunedin, New Zealand on 2 October 1917, Norton came to Sydney with her family in June 1925. Her father, Albert, a merchant captain, was a cousin of the composer Vaughan Williams. The youngest of three sisters, Norton was expelled from Chatswood Girls’ Grammar for producing 'depraved’ drawings of vampires, ghouls and werewolves thought likely to corrupt the other girls. She subsequently enrolled at East Sydney Technical College under Rayner Hoff for two years. Hoff encouraged her 'pagan’ creativity, but she did not graduate. While still a student, Norton dabbled as a pavement artist near the Sydney GPO. After leaving college, she worked variously as a kitchen maid, night-club waitress, PMG messenger and trainee journalist for Smith’s Weekly . Her first published illustrations – two fantasy works of ghost-like entities and a pencil study, The Borgias – appeared in the monthly Pertinent in October 1941. Through the magazine she met her creative partner and lover, the poet Gavin Greenlees.
Norton first attracted controversy when she exhibited a series of pagan, sexually explicit drawings at the Rowden-White Library, University of Melbourne in August 1949. Police raided the exhibition – which included such works as Lucifer , Witches’ Sabbath and Individuation – and Norton was charged with obscenity. The charges were dismissed after she provided detailed explanations of her occult symbolism to the court. She derived much of her imagery from a type of psychic exploration based on self-hypnosis and what in occult circles has been described as 'wanderings on the astral planes’. Many of her works are based on trance-encounters with archetypal beings whom Norton considered had their own independent existence. She began to compile a series of these mystical drawings with Greenlees providing accompanying poems. Under the sponsorship of the publisher Walter Glover, they appeared in The Art of Rosaleen Norton in 1952. This attracted even more controversy than her Melbourne exhibition. Glover was charged with producing an obscene publication and the book could only be distributed in Australia with some of the more controversial – sexually explicit – images blacked out. Export copies were burnt by US Customs, and Glover became bankrupt. Greenlees and Norton, who had been financially assisted by Glover, were forced to scrounge a living by other means.
Norton became well known as an occult artist and bohemian personality in the 1950s and early ’60s and would sell her sketches and paintings to whomever expressed an interest. She acquired a persona as 'The Witch of Kings Cross’, openly advocated her dedication to occult beliefs and the Great God Pan and was falsely accused by the tabloid press of holding Black Masses. This was not without its consequences either. On the basis of a series of confiscated photographs simulating ceremonial rituals, she was charged with 'engaging in unnatural sexual acts’. She unwittingly played a part in the downfall of Sir Eugene Goossens, the first conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and a member of Norton’s occult group, who was charged in March 1956 with importing ritual objects and pornographic photographs. His career never recovered from the publicity and he was obliged to return to England, where he soon died.
Norton continued to produce macabre supernatural works until her death from cancer of the colon on 5 December 1979, but these became increasingly lurid and repetitive. Her most accomplished works are the early drawings reproduced in The Art of Rosaleen Norton (1952) and in a small publication released by Walter Glover in 1984, The Supplement to The Art of Rosaleen Norton . Glover reissued The Art of Rosaleen Norton in 1982 after emerging from bankruptcy.
Writers:
Drury, Nevill
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 October 1917
- Summary
- A painter who produced pagan and sexually explicit drawings. She attended East Sydney Technical College but didn't graduate due to the kind of work she produced. Her work and life regularly attracted controversy.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Dec-79
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-35.4388907 Longitude149.7955552 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date1979-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Braidwood, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and commercial artist, was born in Braidwood (NSW) on 25 May 1916, daughter of H.R. Beatty, the local doctor at Braidwood, and his wife. Attended Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Croydon until 1933 and probably made her first linocuts there. Studied at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School from 1933 and with Adelaide Perry (1934-37). Her only known linocuts were produced in 1936 and include a scene on the sailing ship Joseph Conrad owned by the businessman Alan Villiers, entitled Holy Stone, Joseph Conrad (men scrubbing deck) 1936, linocut, National Gallery of Australia. The subject was also used for prints by other art students.
In the late 1930s Beatty worked as a commercial artist from a studio in Daley Street, Sydney, which she shared with Betty Arnott and a few other students producing black and white drawings and paintings for advertisements and dress illustrations. In 1943 she married William Fesq, a wine and spirit merchant. After raising a family, she returned to painting in the late 1950s. Her last works were life drawings done with Mary White. Died Sydney in 1979.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 25 May 1916
- Summary
- Margaret Checkley Beatty was a printmaker, painter and commercial artist who attended Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School with Adelaide Perry from 1933. Her linocut of the sailing ship Joseph Conrad is held in the National Gallery of Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1979
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1979-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- painter; was born in the UK (in 1908 according to McCulloch & Edward D. Craig, 1909 acc. Deutscher-Menzies). She came to Australia as a child (McCulloch says 1914). She had no formal art training and did not start painting seriously until 1972 (Craig). Her naïve oil on composition board paintings signed 'Roma’, which reflect her life on a farm at Bangalow, NSW, were exhibited in most Australian capitals and in London. They include: Country Corner auctioned at Deutscher-Menzies’s Australian and International Paintings, Sculpture and Works on Paper , Melbourne 22 November 1998, lot 79; Interior Leonard Joel April 2000, $1,600; The Christening Party Gregson Flanagan (Perth) June 2001, $1,800; and Country Fair , Deutscher-Menzies August 2000, $2,200. She won the Albury Art Prize in 1976.
There is some speculation that she was probably the married Roma May McBurney, who lived at Abbotsford and died on 15 December 1979, aged 71.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1908
- Summary
- Painter who began painting in her sixties and whose naïve oil on composition board paintings were signed 'Roma' and which reflected her life on a farm at Bangalow, NSW. Her work was exhibited in most Australian capitals and in London.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 15-Dec-79
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1979-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- painter, was born in Victoria on 30 December 1900.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 30 December 1900
- Summary
- Painter, was reluctant to speak about her art and left little information about herself.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29-Oct-79
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude52.2055314 Longitude0.1186637 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1979-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cambridge, England, UK
- Biography
- Born in Cambridge, England. When his mother, who was a talented painter, died he left England at seven years of age to go with his father to Argentina. He returned to go to boarding school. Upon the start of World War I he became an artilleryman. He studied watercolours with T. I. Hallett for six years, tried farming and horse breeding and then came to Australia in 1923 where he was a jackaroo on a northern cattle station, before trying mining and then the civil service. He was married to Ellen Benedict. He exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts about 1923. When World War II broke out he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. After the war he became the secretary of the Perth Club. He exhibited two oil paintings The Road by the Creek and River Reflections, North Fremantle in the Claude Hotchin Art Prize in 1949. He became a member of the Perth Society of Artists. In 1950 his exhibit was The Shadowed Peak. In 1952 he exhibited watercolours Peewees and Clouds and Shadows. He had fourteen exhibitions in Perth between 1946 and 1973. Murray Mason wrote of his 1973 sellout exhibition, “His admirable handling and vision are certainly evident in this present exhibition. Whether in translating landscapes, birds, river scenes or horses he depicts with extreme accuracy and matching sensitivity. His ability to suggest sheen is splendid.”
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1898
- Summary
- Painter who had fourteen exhibitions in Perth between 1946 and 1973. He was an artilleryman in the World War I and when the World War II broke out he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1979
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1979-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in Sydney. He studied at the Sydney Art School under Julian Ashton and Mildred Lovett in 1913. In 1921 he began wood engraving with assistance from Lionel Lindsay and was included in Tyrell’s exhibition of woodcuts 1923. Apparently, he mainly did views conveying atmosphere and light, e.g. The Back Gate 1924, wood engraving (AGNSW) – though see A Mate O’ Mine 1924, wood engraving (edn 36) (ill. Bloomfield). M. Danvers Power’s Verse (published byBeacon Press, Sydney, in an edition of 150 in 1930) was illustrated with original black and white linocuts by Davies. He executed a number of large linocuts for a projected work Ecclesiasticus to be published by Ashendene Press, England, in the 1930s, which never eventuated. He showed work regularly with the NSW Society of Artists between the wars and was the first principal of the National Art School, ESTC (1960 61). His work was included in A Survey of Relief Prints 1900 1950 (Deutscher, Melbourne 1978).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- Printmaker and the first principal of the National Art School, East Sydney Technical College. His work mainly deals with atmosphere and light.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1979
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude50.6402809 Longitude4.6667145 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1979-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Belgium
- Biography
- Henri Joseph Bastin was born on 27 June 1896 at Châtelet Faubour near Charleroi, Belgium.
During World War I he was allegedly wounded by a German sniper as he cut telephone wires, and after receiving a silver anklebone from his captors, worked as a civilian prisoner on farms and road gangs near Magdeburg, Germany (Lehmann 1977, pg 87). Curiously he made two arrivals in Australia following the cessation of hostilities. The first was aboard the SS Raimund in Fremantle on 6 August 1919 without identification papers, apparently having walked on board the ship in Cherbourg, France, that was repatriating Australian troops (Riddell 1974, pg 7). Bastin’s second arrival was in April 1922 at Port Pirie, South Australia, aboard the SS Conde which had left Newcastle, UK, the previous year. This time Bastin had obtained a passport from the Belgium Counsel in London.
Bastin initially worked as a blacksmith and carpenter at Crystal Brook, near Port Pirie, and Broken Hill. It was in Broken Hill that he began his life long passion for opal mining. In September 1931 he married Minnie Wallsmith (b 1903), an English born station schoolteacher he had met in Bundaberg, Queensland. They had three children; Nancy (b 1931), Gerald (b 1933) and Peter (b 1938). Life in the 1930s for Bastin and his family was hard; moving around Queensland and New South Wales, prospecting as well as labouring at a variety of jobs for short periods, interspersed by periods on Intermittent Relief Assistance and often living in a tent. Bastin was frequently away from his family, and by the early 1940s it appears he was estranged from his wife. Despite their difficulties the Bastins were able to buy a house at Bunyaville in Brisbane, and on 4 September 1943, with support from his wife, Bastin became a naturalized citizen of Australia.
Bastin began painting around 1954 during a rainy day marooned in a shed on a station in southwest Queensland, having seen another’s pictures dabbed on the wall. Fashioning a brush out of horsehair and using branding paint on paper he had whitewashed, Bastin painted a picture of the shearing shed which he sold to the station owner ( The Herald [Melbourne] 1958, pg 1). Encouraged by the station’s owner, Major Harold de Vahl Rubin, a philanthropic grazier, art-collector and birder, Bastin continued to paint on readily available materials such as newspaper and cardboard signs, supplemented by paints and artist supplies Major Rubin exchanged for the paintings he and others in Brisbane bought (Lehmann 1977, pg 92).
His first exhibition was at the newly opened Gallery of Contemporary Art in Melbourne during 1957. Other exhibitions quickly followed including two at the Museum of Modern Art of Australia (Melbourne) in 1958 and 1959, where Alan McCulloch proclaimed the emergence of Australia’s first true modern primitive (McCulloch 1958, pg 20). It appears likely that John Reed introduced Bastin to Henri Rousseau’s oeuvre through the same 1942 Chicago exhibition catalogue that Sidney Nolan had seen at Heide. Bastin painted several homages to Rousseau centered on the burial of a dead Aboriginal queen. Bastin was fascinated by aspects of Aboriginal culture he encountered in the outback especially after working with Dr Flynn, who appropriated their churingas, and Daisy Bates. His paintings of Aboriginal people, such as those depicting ballerina and clown clad participants in corroboree have, far from intending any racial slur, been described as having “quirky integrity” (Pearson 1991, pp. 326-337). Similarly Primitive art (1965), Bastin’s interpretation of the Mona Lisa , with the figure set in the Australian outback replete with painted red fingernails, indicates the artist’s impish wit.
Bastin’s early works were of landscapes; intricately diverse coral reefs and beaches of tropical Queensland as well as drier inland plains and mountains of central Australia. He completed many paintings of the opal mining areas he lived and worked in, taking pride in displaying the accoutrements of his own mining camp; his tent, gun, shovels, axes, pots and pans all laid out around a campfire set among the opal field. He painted largely in gouache until the mid 1960s when he discovered that enamel house paints best caught the particular light he felt emanated from Australia’s landscapes. Bastin was also known for his restless inventive energy and generosity; fashioning toys for friends’ children, making “feel” paintings for the visually impaired and on creating “opal” out of coloured foil and epoxy resin, declaring “I mine opal – and I make opal!” (in Lehmann 1977, pg 83).
Animals, especially cockatoos, budgerigars and birds of paradise with outstretched wings became a recurring motif from the late 1960s onwards. While these were popular with the public some critics found Bastin’s work too “decorative” (McCaughey 1968, pg 6) and “knowing” (McCulloch 1971, pg 25), an accusation often made in attempts to distinguish the 'true’ primitive’s spontaneity with the formulaic and contrived arrangements of imitators of the 'style’. Bastin would methodically outline in pencil his gum trees, leaves and animals before painting them, and like many artists, created multiple versions of paintings. Unlike his fellow primitive painters whose work tended to be largely associated with one area, Bastin painted scenes from across Australia, often homogenizing disparate elements together, indicative both of his own peripatetic nature and his indiscriminate delight in the natural world he encountered.
The popularity of primitive painters in Australia during the 1960s and 1970s reflected an international trend. Bastin was the most represented artist in the now disbanded Harold E. Mertz Collection of Australian Art. Along with other leading Australian primitives Sam Byrne, Charles Callins, Lorna Chick, James Fardoulys, Irvine Homer, Victor Litherland & Muriel Luders, the National Gallery of Australia actively purchased Bastin’s work in the mid 1970s, acquiring ten of his paintings. Bastin’s work was included in the inaugural Christies in Australia auction on 24 September 1969 where realized prices were comparable to those of Albert Namatjira, Sali Herman, Donald Friend and Ray Crooke.
Henri Bastin died at a bus stop at Henley Beach in Adelaide following his usual evening walk on 28 September 1979 (Dutton 1979, pg 94). He was buried in Brisbane alongside his wife (d 1971) and youngest son Peter (d 1968) who had been accidentally electrocuted while serving with the RAAF. A couple of weeks before his death Bastin was afforded the accolade of “a living national treasure of Australia, one of the last of an extraordinary generation of primitive artists whose like we will never see again” (Dolan 1979). His friend Geoffrey Dutton established a public memorial fund with which money was raised to buy a large hanging canvas Australian Paradise , completed shortly before his death, for the Adelaide Festival Centre.
Writers:
Bull, Julian
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 June 1896
- Summary
- Bastin emerged in the 1950s as a key figure in Australian primitive/naive art.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Sep-79
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-30.2328885 Longitude150.5785678 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1979-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cobbadah, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born on 28 May 1890 at Cobbadah (NSW), a daughter of Henry Crowley, a wealthy grazier of Glen Riddle, Barraba. She was educated at home by a governess and attended a Sydney boarding school. In 1907, while still at school, her uncle, the Rev. Archibald Crowley, encouraged her to join him in weekly classes at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School. These lessons lasted only a short time; Grace was soon back at Barraba, expected to play a domestic role as dutiful daughter.
Her parents did not want her to pursue a career as a painter; however, Grace managed to return to Sydney in 1915 and began to study seriously under Ashton, Mildred Lovett and Elioth Gruner , eventually becoming Ashton’s assistant in 1918 (replacing Gruner). She taught there until 1923, the year she entered – but did not win – the NSW Society of Artists’ Travelling Scholarship (it was won by Roi de Maistre ). In 1926 she went to Europe anyway, without a scholarship, travelling with Anne Dangar , a fellow teacher at Ashton’s. Grace was supported -grudgingly – by her family: her parents gave her the fare and her brother sent her an annual allowance.
In Paris (1926-29) she studied at Colarossi’s briefly, then with Louis Roger, André Lhôte, Amedée Ozenfant and Albert Gleizes. At first Lhôte was dismissive of Grace’s work; 'The two things he hated most’, Grace remembered, 'were “Les Beaux Arts”, and “les impressionists”’. Under Lhôte’s influence – in Paris and especially at his summer school at Mirmande which Dangar and Dorrit Black also attended – Grace discarded her earlier style and her landscapes and figure paintings began to take on a characteristic geometric form. In 1928 her Girl with Goats (NGV) was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, being hung next a painting by Lhôte.
After returning to Australia early in 1930, Grace spent some time at Barraba. By 1932 she had moved back to Sydney, where she helped Dorrit Black at her Modern Art Centre. That year she started her own school with ex-student Rah Fizelle – whose work closely followed Crowley’s – in premises at 215a George Street; during its five-year existence the school became a focus for modern art in Sydney.
Grace Crowley was part of an informal but important network of Sydney modernist artists. Crowley, Black, Eleonore Lange , Frank and Margel Hinder and Ralph Balson all produced 'difficult’ work which was not promoted in that organ of decorative 'easy’ modernism, the Home , so was not as influential in forming Sydney’s taste. The circle held a group exhibition ('Exhibition I’) at David Jones Gallery in 1939, opened by Justice Evatt (husband of Mary Alice ), but no more followed due partly to the outbreak of war and partly to the formation of the Sydney branch of the Contemporary Art Society.
Grace Crowley never married. She remained close friends with Ralph Balson, travelling to the USA with him in 1960-61. She died on 21 April 1979.
Writers:
Burke, Janine
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 28 May 1890
- Summary
- Painter and resident of Sydney, New South Wales. She started her own school with ex-student Rah Fizelle which during its five-year existence the school became a focus for modern art in Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Apr-79
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1979-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, TAS, Australia
- Biography
- printmaker and bookplate designer, was born in Hobart on 9 March 1887, daughter of George Lovell Dwyer and Margaret Jane, née Shield.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 March 1887
- Summary
- Ella Maggie Dwyer was a printmaker and bookplate designer. She was a foundation member of the Australian Bookplate Club in 1932. In 1928 Dwyer was elected a member of the Australian Painter-Etchers' Society.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Sep-79
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-42.80792 Longitude147.63436 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1979-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Forcett, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- painter, etcher and monumental mason, was born Violet Emma Alomes in Forcett, Tasmania, in 1886. A painter by training and a monumental mason by chance, she studied art with Lucien Dechaineux at Hobart Technical College in 1928 and 1931-32, later sharing a studio with fellow students Mildred Lovett , Florence Rodway , Edith Holmes , Dorothy Stoner and Ethel M. Nicholls. It was presumably during this period that Holmes painted her portrait. She took private classes with Max Meldrum in 1936-39, travelling regularly to his Melbourne studio from Hobart.
In 1939-40 her work was included in the exhibition, 'International Women: Painters, Sculptors, Gravers’, held by the National Council of Women of the United States at Riverside Museum, New York. She painted in oils and watercolours, made etchings, and was an active member of the Art Society of Tasmania, exhibiting with it from 1932 to 1975; in 1936-52 she was a member of its Council. She also joined the Hobart Soroptomist Club and the First Settler League (her great-grandfather, a Royal Marine, had arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in the Calcutta in 1804).
Violet married Amos William Vimpany, a monumental mason and another former student of Hobart Technical College (1897-1902); they had two daughters, Gwendolene and Violet. After her husband’s sudden death in 1945, Violet Vimpany took over his stonemasonry business. In 1973 she was named one of Tasmania’s Women of Achievement. Having sold the business in 1969 and retired definitively in 1973, she died at Hobart on 2 March 1979.
Writers:
Steggall, Susan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1886
- Summary
- Vimpany painted in oils and watercolours, made etchings, and was an active member of the Art Society of Tasmania, exhibiting with it from 1932 to 1975.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2-Mar-79
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-33.8839305 Longitude151.2769347 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1979-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waverley, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, exhibited with the Society of Women Painters in the1910s. The Mitchell Library holds her watercolour Gloucester Street, Old Sydney , 26.2 × 36.8 cm (ZML660), which has a plaque on the mount that reads: 'Gloucester St., Old Sydney. Laura Booth. Society of Women Painters, 1919 (First Exhibited Society of Women Painters, 1913). Transferred to the Mitchell Library from the Art Gallery of NSW 1967.’ As 'Miss L. Booth’, she exhibited at the Royal Art Society of NSW in 1916.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- Booth was a painter who showed her work with the Society of Women Painters throughout the 1910s. She also exhibited with the Royal Art Society of New South Wales in 1916 and later held the position of Treasurer.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 18-Aug-79
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude45.6848725 Longitude12.3773466 Start Date1939-01-01 End Date1978-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- San Biagio di Callalta, Italy
- Biography
- printmaker, sculptor and teacher, was born in San Biagio di Callalta, Italy. He migrated with his father in 1949 to join his mother in Carlton, Melbourne. After studying at Royal Melbourne Institure of Technology [RMIT] (Fine Art Diploma 1961) he went to London and began studying printmaking at the Chelsea School of Art in 1962. Later that year he moved to Milan and spent a year with Marino Marini at the Brera Academy. He returned to Australia in 1963 and became part-time instructor in the Printmaking Dept of RMIT, full-time in 1968-74. He held his first solo exhibition, featuring sculpture, drawings and prints, in 1964. Visited Japan in 1967. Set up a studio in Paris in 1975, the year he was represented in the Bienal de Sao Paulo. In 1976, with Imants Tillers (b.1950), he did a series of etching/aquatints, According to Des Esseintes (ill. MacIntyre, in Art Gallery of New South Wales collection). Albury Regional Art Centre owns his Personage and Entrances 1974, etching, 2 sheets (ill. Hanson, cat. 210) and Head 1965 is at Museum of Modern Art at Heide (ill. Hanson, cat.209). Baldessin died in a car accident aged 39. Several memorial exhibitions were held, most notably one at the National Gallery of Victoria.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1939
- Summary
- Widely travelled, Baldessin honed his art through formal training and collaborative projects. He was a highly respected printmaker who studied at the Chelsea School of Art in London before teaching in the printmaking department at RMIT in Melbourne. In 1975 he was represented in the Bienal de Sao Paulo in Brazil and despite his premature death in a car accident at the age of 39, he is well represe
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1978
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude50.0874654 Longitude14.4212535 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date1978-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Prague, Czech Republic
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1929
- Summary
- Kral was a designer initially active in Melbourne where he was a founder member of the Gallery A commercial design team. He carried out exhibition work for the Commonwealth Department of Trade (Tokyo 1961) and undertook commercial interior design and display work in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and internationally. He was also active in the graphic arts. Active member of AIDIA, ACIAA.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-78
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude-33.829075 Longitude151.24409 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date1978-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mosman, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator, did linocut covers for the New Theatre Review (Melbourne). That of November 1943 shows Germanic style soldiers, while the one for October 1944 depicts Aboriginal women (ill. Merewether, 81-82, along with covers by Bucknow, Eve Harris , Vane Lindesay , Jack Maughan and Menkhorst).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1919
- Summary
- Illustrator who worked in Australia during WWII. Bainbridge's work includes linocut covers for the Melbourne publication 'New Theatre Review' in the early 1940s. Later worked as a poster designer for London Transport.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1978
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude-33.829075 Longitude151.24409 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1978-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mosman, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- A painter and craftworker, Margot Lewers is best known for her abstract paintings produced after 1955. An innovative approach and exploration of different media informed her entire professional life. Born in Sydney to a German father, Adolph Plate, a painter and writer who travelled extensively in the Pacific before his early death in 1913, Margo and her brothers, one of whom was the painter Carl Plate , grew up in an improvised one-parent household. However, their mother, Gilly Plate, gave the children the confidence to believe in themselves and this enabled Margo to embark on a lifelong career as a visual artist and craftworker without formal training. The little art education she did receive consisted of a short period studying drawing, painting and textile design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London (1934) and irregular painting classes with Desiderius Orban in Sydney (1945-50). By the age of 21, Margo had established a studio in Sydney, making and selling a range of craft objects, including pottery, hand-printed fabrics and wooden utensils. With funds from this venture she started a successful commercial pottery business, employing a production potter who worked to her designs. Following her marriage to the sculptor Gerald Lewers in 1933, she travelled to England and Europe. Visits to exhibitions and meetings with artists such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and the art critic Herbert Read introduced her to the ideas underpinning modernism. A commitment to them shaped the direction of all her future work.
Lewers was an admirer of the Bauhaus design movement which she experienced during travels in Germany in 1934. An illustrated article on the Bauhaus had previously appeared in an Australian magazine, “The Home”, in 1 October 1928 Henry Pynor. “Visit old Countries for New Ideas for your Home.” The Home 1 October 1928, pps. 48-49. and her associate Sydney Ancher had travelled in Germany in 1931 and returned home with the same enthusiasm. After Lewers returned to Sydney in 1935 she opened a consultancy design service and shop called Notanda in Rowe Street. The stock included simple hand-made pottery, designed by her or imported from Mexico, bold linoblock-printed fabrics, small, carved wooden sculptures by Gerald Lewers and undecorated timber furniture designed with strong flowing lines. She combined the Arts and Crafts tradition with a minimalist approach to interior design.
In 1941 Margo was a founding member of the Contemporary Art Society in Sydney. Her active involvement provided the impetus for a shift away from design towards painting. In order to create a feeling of depth and space, she began exploring the relationship of colour and light. She held her first solo exhibition of abstract paintings in 1952 and was soon making a significant contribution to the development of modernism in Sydney. As a leading abstract expressionist painter, she received favourable reviews, won 14 art awards and during the 1940s and ’60s her work was included in major Australian contemporary exhibitions that toured overseas.
Margo also explored other media such as plexiglass, painted fabrics and mosaics, undertaking significant public commissions including mosaic walls and landscaped gardens. After Gerald’s death she completed a relief sculpture for the Reserve Bank, Canberra, based on his model. Her work is represented in all state and national collections
Margo Lewers held a joint exhibition with her husband, the sculptor Gerald Lewers, at the Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne in 1952. In that exhibition Studio stood out as Margo’s most accomplished work in geometric abstraction. This watercolour is characteristic of the painting style known as geometric constructivism, a mode of painting based on the principles of dynamic symmetry commonly attributed to the painters Grace Crowley , Ralph Balson and Frank Hinder, leading members of the Sydney Modernist School. The influence of these artists on Margo’s work at this time was significant, as was the work of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, two of the British modernist artists she had met in England in 1934. In particular, Nicholson’s abstract still lifes and painted reliefs of the early 1930s had a profound influence on her later abstract compositions.
After returning to Australia, Margo Lewers studied under the influential teacher and artist Desiderius Orban. He encouraged her to be spontaneous and to adopt a more intuitive approach to colour, line and space. However, it was not until the early 1950s and her involvement and experimentation with constructivism that her paintings successfully synthesised the technical qualities of geometric abstraction with the transparency and luminosity of watercolour. This transitional period was significant in several respects. It shaped her career as a painter and was a major influence for her more mature expressionist and abstract works in the late 1950s and 1960s. Interestingly, Margo’s arrangement of translucent overlays of subdued colour punctuated by a vertical thrust of overlocking diagonal lines and semi-circles evident in Studio later recur in her painted fabrics and coloured plexiglass constructions of the early 1970s.
Studio exemplifies the culmination of Margo Lewers’s early formal study and experimentation with abstraction, with the technical qualities of watercolour painting and the oblique framing of space through drawing. Studio is unlike her earlier geometric compositions of the late 1940s. These preliminary, painterly investigations into formal abstraction were laboured and contrived and her watercolour techniques were not as refined or skilfully executed. It took several years while living at Emu Plains-where she devoted herself to full-time painting-for the transition from academic abstraction to personal iconography to manifest itself. Characteristically, Studio articulates an inner tension and spiritual presence suggestive of stained-glass windows. The painting also symbolises and signals Margo Lewers’s departure from geometric abstraction to abstract expressionism.
Writers:
Lewers, DaraniCrothers, Tanya
Michael Bogle
Davina Jackson
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1908
- Summary
- Margo Lewers was primarily a painter and an admirer of the Bauhaus movement which she experienced during travels in Germany in 1934. She was initially active as a commercial artist, textile designer, potter and gallery manager [Notanda, Sydney, closed in 1939, reopened 1940]. As a leading abstract expressionist painter, she received favourable reviews, won many awards and her work was included in major exhibitions.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1978
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-37.7667 Longitude144.9628 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1978-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brunswick, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- Melbourne-born, Sydney-based designer and advertising agent whose collection of Papua New Guinean art and artefacts played a significant role in Australia's understanding of Melanesian art and culture during the 1960s and 1970s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1978
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-33.8772 Longitude151.1049 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1978-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burwood, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and commercial artist, was born in Burwood, Sydney. She was educated at home until she was twelve then went to SCEGGS Redlands, Cremorne. She left school aged sixteen, spent two years at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School then worked for the advertising agency of Smith & Julius. Afterwards she freelanced for publications such as the Australian Woman’s Mirror , Home and Sun . She shared a studio with Betty Rogers, another former Ashton student, who modelled for Horder.
Horder worked and saved hard as she wanted to try her fortune in London. She arrived there in 1929 and was fortunate enough to get work with a publicity agent. She began to attend the Westminster Art School, and she obtained commissions to design a group of posters for the Great Northern Railway of Ireland and the Great Southern Railways of England. Horder mixed with various young Australians living in London, including Arthur Freeman, also from Sydney, who had come to England on a Society of Arts’ Travelling Scholarship and was studying at the Royal Academy. They married in 1936. Both enrolled at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts and became interested in printmaking. Arthur was employed as a lithographer with the printers Sun Press, while Margaret began to work for Oxford University Press. She illustrated at least two books a year for Oxford from 1936 until 1952 as well as doing illustrations for other publishers. This continued throughout the war, when Arthur joined the Water Police.
After the war, Australia came vividly to mind when she was offered Nan Chauncy’s They Found a Cave to illustrate. This was a landmark publication, which became a pioneer of modern Australian children’s books. For it, she had to try to remember Australia all over again. It was a challenge she enjoyed, and it may have been partly responsible for the decision to return to Australia. In December 1948 the Freemans arrived back at Sydney.
Although Horder was still illustrating two books a year for Oxford, she began working for Angus & Robertson in Sydney, designing as well as illustrating books. Her first success was Good Luck to the Rider , also the first for its author, Joan Phipson. The book thoroughly justified Angus & Robertson’s faith in Horder, for it was a popular as well as artistic triumph. It began a partnership between author and illustrator which resulted in seven most successful children’s books of high quality, all a pleasure to handle and look at as well as to read, and two of them winners of the Children’s Book of the Year Award. She illustrated five novels by Patricia Wrightson and three by Nan Chauncy with the same care and enthusiasm, enriching them with her thoughtful, interpretative drawings. Again, they included several award winners.
Horder stopped book illustrating in 1968. For a time she continued to work for the New South Wales School Magazine , which she found less demanding. After a few years retirement in Europe, the Freemans returned to Australia in 1977. Margaret Horder became ill the following year and died in August 1978.
Writers:
Muir, Marcie
Note: Primary
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1903
- Summary
- Painter, illustrator and commercial artist, she was a prolific and successful book illustrator. She illustrated seven books by Joan Phipson, two of them winners of the Children's Book of the Year Award.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Aug-78
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1978-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and commercial artist, was born in Paddington, Sydney but the family soon moved to Tasmania. Mick had his first cartoon published in the Bulletin when aged 16, and he continued to contribute to it occasionally while working as a survey draughtsman, evidently after moving from Tasmania to Melbourne. He also contributed gag cartoons to Smith’s Weekly , Aussie and other papers, e.g. Smith’s Weekly 26 January 1924, 19: 'MAN: “Feelin’ crook?” WOMAN: “No” MAN: “Got a pain?” WOMAN: “No” MAN: “Well, d’yer think yer goin’ ter be crook?” WOMAN: “No” MAN: “Aw, yer contrairy cow. Yer won’t give a block a chance ter drink yer bloomin’ 'ealth.”’
Mick Armstrong drew political cartoons for Melbourne Punch in 1925, for the Sydney Sun in 1932 then worked for several conservative Melbourne papers: the Herald (1932-34), Star (1934-36), Argus (1936-57) and Sun News Pictorial (1957-59). Best known for his work on the Argus during WWII, his wartime subjects include: a wounded tattooed soldier, a cow giving black milk in the blackout, both 1941; The Case for a National Government (a Japanese soldier looking over a map of Australia) 1943 (ill. King, 142); and a plump bespectacled land army girl with an angry cow saying, “Yoo hoo, Mister Cowpaddock – I can’t get this separator thing [udder] to work!” 1943 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 250, 259, 265).
Armstrong published 10 cartoon anthologies, most during WWII (nine listed in refs). His 'Sam N Eggs’ strip circulated widely in the US and in one year during WWII he had 56 cartoons reproduced overseas. National Library of Australia (NLA) has at least three of Armstrong’s original ink cartoons published in the Argus : 'Comp. cook-gen., small fam., live in’, n.d. [1940s?] re Billy Hughes; 'To a miniature’ published 1 September 1949; and 'Barrel of mon [money]’ published 27 June 1955 (re Tatts), while the Victorian State Library (VSL) has at least 11 originals, mostly WWII period. Armstrong worked as a commercial artist from 1959 to 1964 then joined ATV Channel 0.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- Prolific mid twentieth century war and political cartoonist and designer. Armstrong contributed to a number of publications including the Argus, the Sydney Sun, Smith's Weekly, Melbourne Punch and Aussie. His first publication, at the age of 16, was in the Bulletin.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1978
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1978-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and decorative artist, was born in Victoria on 6 June 1902, a grand-daughter of the soap manufacturer and keen amateur painter John Sutherland and a cousin once removed of Jane Sutherland . Her mother died before she was two and she was brought up by her father, George Sutherland, a real estate agent, and a housekeeper who lived with the family for many years. From 1918 Jean studied at Melbourne’s National Gallery of Victoria [NGV] School, winning the NGV’s prestigious Travelling Scholarship in 1923. She travelled to Europe with her aunt Jean Goodlet Sutherland (c.1879-1968), a painter and sculptor who won second prize for sculpture at the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition (after Margaret Baskerville ) and had given the younger Jean her first art lessons.
In London Jean Parker Sutherland enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools (RA), studying figure drawing and portraiture in oils. In September she travelled to Brittany, resuming her RA studies in 1926. She also took a correspondence course in black-and-white decorative art. She was keen on photography, decorative stencil work, ceramics, printmaking, languages, maths and geometry, all of which skills she improved in London. In spring 1926 her portrait of Miss Erskine (NGV) was hung at the RA. An extra year in London beyond her fellowship reputedly included a period at the Slade under Henry Tonks and some time in the studio of Beatrice Bland (1867-1911), a still-life painter who exhibited at the RA. Phipps mentions that she sent back reports of art seen in Paris in 1926 as a casual correspondent for Melbourne newspapers. One of her 'decorative paintings’ was included in the Rome Scholarship exhibition at the British School, Rome and she visited Italy later that year.
On returning to Victoria towards the end of 1927, Sutherland joined the Victorian Artists’ Society. She sent four paintings to the 1928 exhibition, but none sold and she never exhibited with the Society again. That year she became engaged to the painter Ernest Buckmaster, whom she had known since her student days, but it was broken off before he left for London in 1929 and she never married. She lived quietly on a small private income in the family home in Gardenvale (left to her when her father died in 1936). Many weekends were spent painting at her cottage at Kalorama in the Dandenongs, often with Enid Philip, runner-up for the 1923 scholarship, until about 1933 when the place burnt down. Ethel Carrick Fox stayed with Sutherland at Gardenvale in 1937 and encouraged her to take a renewed interest in the local art scene. She joined the Melbourne Society of Women Painters in 1940 and met Sybil Craig , who became her closest friend. She exhibited with the Women Painters until the early 1950s. In October 1944 she held her only solo exhibition, at Melbourne’s Sedon Galleries. Again few pictures sold.
Jean Sutherland died in Melbourne in July 1978. The National Gallery of Victoria holds five early oils and the National Gallery of Australia has many of her prints, but most of her work is held privately.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 June 1902
- Summary
- In 1923 Sutherland was awarded the National Gallery of Victoria's prestigious Travelling Scholarship and after enjoying the cosmopolitan lifestyle of Europe for four years, training and exhibiting in London, Brittany and Rome, she eventually returned to a more provincial artist's life in Victoria in 1927, exhibiting with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters for a number of years.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Jul-78
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-36.840556 Longitude174.74 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1978-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- Landscape painter known for her Capertee paintings.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1978
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-37.048901 Longitude143.8143583 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Carisbrook, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 30 June 1908
- Summary
- Procter was a glass and metal artist, working as Glad Procter as a Metalcraft teacher at the Ballarat Technical Art School, Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-77
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude53.55 Longitude10 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamburg, Germany
- Biography
- Painter and cartoonist, according to one account, was born Arthur William Olday in Hamburg, Germany, the illegitimate son of a German woman and a Scotsman. Another account has him born in London, not Hamburg— spending his early childhood in New York, where his mother had relocated after his birth. When she visited her native Germany in 1913 she left him there with her mother. Always known as John, at the age of eleven he joined the Hamburg hunger riots of 1916 during WWI. Two years later he participated in the sailors’ mutiny and the workers’ uprising, acting as an ammunition hauler for a Sparticist machine gun emplacement. When the year-long struggle was crushingly defeated, he made a last-minute escape, barely avoiding certain execution. In the early 1920s, as an agitator with the 'Communist Youth’, he got involved in plundering and looting by masses of starving people suffering from food shortages but was soon expelled from the movement for 'anarchist deviations’. He became a member of the 'Anarcho-Sparticists’ and fought in one of their guerrilla squads during the workers’ uprisings in October 1923, then was active in the movement for workers’ councils in industrial western Germany under French occupation.
In 1925-32 Olday withdrew from the revolutionary movement and devoted himself to political cartooning and expressionist graphics. He also wrote socially critical theatre sketches, performed in Hamburg cabarets. In 1933 he illustrated flyers for his Sparticist friends with incisive anti-Nazi caricatures. Acting the 'eccentric gay artist’ for the Nazis, he was accepted and able to help his friends until 1938 when, threatened with imminent arrest by the Gestapo, he escaped to England. Pacifist friends in London helped him publish a collection of his anti-Nazi drawings, The Kingdom of Rags , in 1939. He worked underground with exiled communists in Paris and other parts of Europe. In 1942, he secretly married Hilde Monte, a German Jew and 'dogmatic Marxist intellectual’ who edited German language newspapers and supported Jewish underground resistance, in order to protect her against deportation. In 1944 she was captured by an SS patrol on the Swiss-German border and summarily executed.
When compulsory military service was instituted in Britain in 1940, Olday was to have served as a sapper, but he deserted before he could be sent to 'the imperialist war’. He remained at large until 1944, drawing caustic political cartoons and caricatures, working as an editor and, with two well-known libertarian activists, writing a fortnightly anti-militarist broadsheet distributed to soldiers in the British Army. At the same time he provided numerous drawings and poems for a Scandinavian paper, the Industrial Worker , distributed in German ports. In 1943 he published a collection of 41 of his political drawings, The March of Death . According to Peter Peterson, this 'unexcelled classic of anarchist anti-militarist propaganda’ sold 10,000 copies in a year and a half.
In 1944 Olday was arrested trying to procure a typewriter for the 'Freedom’ group that had supported him since his desertion. In January 1945 he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, having been found guilty of 'theft through the finding and fraudulent use of an identity card’. He served eight months, gained early release then was immediately taken to prison camp by the military authorities to serve another 2 years for desertion. A public campaign by 'Freedom Press Defence Campaign’ friends supported by sympathisers like Herbert Read and George Orwell resulted in his release after only 3 months. The Adelaide Quaker artist Mary P. Harris believed that Olday drew passionate anti-war cartoons and pictures while imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs as a conscientious objector during the war. 'Even while in prison… his leaflets, his drawings of the agony of war and its circumstances were leafletted by air over Germany’, she wrote in her autobiography (p.46).
After the war, says Peterson, Olday carried out anarchist propaganda programs and other anarchist activities in German prison camps under the guise of giving education lectures in democracy. Inevitably finding himself disagreeing with the aims of the various Spartacist groups, he dropped out of international anarchist activity altogether at the end of the 1940s. At the beginning of 1950 he migrated to Sydney. According to James, he found only a small group of feuding Yugoslavs there, organised the anarchists among them to move to outback NSW and train, then took himself off to Adelaide, where he had been invited by a group of artist sympathizers while still in England. His first exhibition at the Royal Society of Arts 'was the prelude to 12 successive exhibitions within one year’ (James). All were in aid of charity organisations such as the United Nations’ Children’s Fund since Olday didn’t believe in selling his work. In order to survive he took a job as attendant at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Harris met Olday through her friend Fred Whitney, whom she called another [ sic ] Quaker Conscientious Objector in Wormwood Scrubs. When Olday’s exhibition of war art was on at the SA Society of Arts Gallery in 1955 Whitney suggested Harris visit it. She 'met the fair-haired John Olday’ and responded to his cartoons: 'I quivered under the physical and spiritual contact of the cartoons displayed… prisoners; barbed wire; klink parson [a portrait of a Prison Chaplain wearing immaculate lawn sleeves which dominated the exhibition]; and the unmitigated suffering of women and children, each cartoon with its own peculiar case history typed and hung alongside.’ As a result, the two held an exhibition in the Friends’ Meeting House, Adelaide called War and Peace – the former being Olday’s cartoons, the latter Harris’s watercolours. It opened on 6 August 1955, World Peace Day. (His contributions were apparently on the horror of nuclear war, the known subject of one of his Adelaide exhibitions.)
Olday gave Adult Education classes and broadcasts 'attacking Art racketeers, Art snobs, censorship, state education, state sponsorship of the arts, exploitation of the artist by means of taxation, and organised the artists in boycott against the commercialised Galleries. The “Rainbow Group” exhibited works of Arts [ sic ] not acceptable to Galleries, on account of their “indecent”, “blasphemic” or radical political character. J. himself refused to sell at all, but offered his works as a gift to National Galleries on his terms (never to be sold nor to be lent to State officials, but to be kept accessible to anybody at any time). (All State Galleries accepted, bar Sydney and Melbourne.)’ James also adds: 'After aiding Greek New Australians to produce a play, displeasing to the orthodox authoritarian Rulers of the Community; writing and producing incidental music to a play of Irish [ sic ] (The Wake) and next scoring a success with his one-man cabaret 'Roses and Gallows’ he left Adelaide, as the Press put it “in a blaze of glory”.’
He went to Melbourne and released an LP record, Roses and Gallows . He joined the Melbourne University Repertory Company, acting, writing ballads and producing sketches that caused a scandal. He opened a studio in a stable that became a hotbed for student radicals, broadcast, lectured, and joined the editorial staff of the German language paper 'Anker’. To make a living, he worked in a hospital.
Back at Sydney, living on a houseboat moored on Fisher Bay (whose chains were mysteriously cut adrift after he discovered a Nazi conspiracy to set up a major steel industry in Australia that had been suppressed by the Australian government), Olday staged a mime show ( The Immortal Clown ) with Robin Ramsay, the disowned son of the millionaire owner of the Kiwi shoe polish factory who had made a fortune in arms manufacture in WWII. Olday’s Yugoslav friends joined him at the theatre with the aim of attracting New Australians from many countries to work against fascists and Nazis. They subsequently collected amazing (and unlikely) scandals about collaborators and war criminals in Australia.
In March 1964, coinciding with the third Adelaide Festival of the Arts, Olday booked into the Royal Admiral Hotel on Hindley Street and obtained management cooperation in displaying 40 paintings and 70 drawings throughout the premises.
Olday regularly held lectures and recitals on board his houseboat, now protected by a German shepherd called Wolf. Later his son rented a house in Sydney with rooms converted into exhibition and meeting spaces. The basement was turned into an 80-seat theatre, but the Council refused it a license. So a new harbour location was found, known as “Café” la Boheme and “Genius Corner” cabaret. By charging tourists and society people high prices, students, artists and 'sailors from East and West’ could be subsidised. One night Olday and his son were attacked by two men who had asked for shelter; J’s son was knifed and J. was stunned and half blinded. The police later caught the men and the Oldays were told to hold themselves in readiness to appear as witnesses at the trial. 'They decided not to aid the prosecution, sold the café in a hurry and left Australia’ (James).
In the late 1960s Olday returned to London via Hamburg and Berlin. There he worked mainly with the anarchist papers Freedom and Black Flag . In 1974 he founded the 'International Archive Team’, a worldwide correspondence bureau, and again took up a politically active anarchist life. 'He worked for the I.W.W.; he published the German-English information bulletin Mit Teilung ; translated materials of the I.W.W. into German; drew caricatures and kept up contact with exiles and prisoners throughout Europe and Japan. In spite of poor health, he continued to draw social-critical cartoons and worked on two new plays./ In the summer of 1977 at the age of 72, death tore him away from this last creative period’ (Peterson). Harris, however, in reminiscences published in 1971, states that Olday died after working at the gallery for two years. Although he had always refused to sell his work, she believed that he bequeathed some of his cartoons to the AGSA and left other works in the hands of a few disciples called 'the Rainbow Group’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Brian Jenkins
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- Mid 20th century European political painter and cartoonist who lived in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne in the 1950s and 1960s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1977
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- designer, publisher and feminist, was born in Glebe, Sydney. She specialised in modern industrial and interior design in her art studies at ESTC from 1923 and was the first woman to hold a solo design exhibition at the College. In 1939 she set up Viking Press, publishing anti-war material and poetry mainly by women (Dorothy Aucherlonie, Elizabeth Riddell, Elizabeth Lambert, Muir Holburn, Harley Matthews) illustrated with her own artwork and block designs (as Bessie Mitchell). Wartime paper shortages ended the venture in 1943. During the War she was head draughtswoman at Hawker de Havilland, then worked for the Commonwealth Government. After the war, Bessie taught and lectured on design at ESTC and for the WEA and wrote and lectured (especially on radio) about design in the home. In June 1950 she married the social realist painter Clive Guthrie. She was a friend of Rosaleen Norton and Dulcie Deamer. In the 1970s she joined MeJane and was one of the founders of Elsie Women’s Refuge.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- Bessie Jean (née Mitchell) Guthrie was a designer, publisher and feminist. She was the first woman to hold a solo design exhibition at the East Sydney Technical College. In 1939 she set up Viking Press, publishing anti-war material and poetry mainly by women.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1977
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-33.8125405 Longitude151.1115717 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ryde, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Raymond McGrath (1903-1977) trained at Sydney University (B. Arch 1926) after he enrolled in the nation’s first university course in architecture established under the foundation Professor of Architecture Leslie Wilkinson. The Sydney University degree-granting course had produced its first graduates in 1922. Raymond McGrath was intensively creative in a range of media outside of his architecture and each possessed celebrated skills in drawing, water-based media and print-making. Raymond McGrath studied painting and drawing in Sydney and was active in graphic design and private press book printing early in his career. Literature seemed to be his destiny until he was drawn to architecture while he was at University.
McGrath had begun his Sydney University training in the arts and became an acknowledged poet, editor and short-story writer before his graduation. During his undergraduate era, he also published a collection of verse, Seven Songs of Meadow Lane, that he personally illustrated, printed and bound. His private press work has not been fully studied. He continued to write poetry throughout his lifetime.
He studied art with Julian Ashton, modelling with Rayner Hoff, bookbinding with Walter Taylor (c.1921-26) and made etchings from c.1921. Inspired by Tyrell’s 1923 exhibition of relief prints, he began doing linocuts in 1923 which were soon supplanted by wood engravings from 1924, notably The Seven Songs of Meadow Lane (J.T. Kirtley, Sydney 1924), written and illus. with b/w engravings by McGrath. In 1926 he travelled to England, studied at Westminster School of Art, London, and became an important modernist architect, writer and industrial designer in the UK. Official British war artist during WWII (mostly doing drawings of aircraft production). He died in Dublin on 23 December 1977. The biography by Donal O’Donovan, God’s Architect. A life of Raymond McGrath, Kilbride Books, 1995 is the most complete treatment of his life to date.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 7 March 1903
- Summary
- Raymond McGrath studied under Raynor Hoff and Julian Ashton. He trained in architecture but also turned his hand to bookbinding, etching, linocut and wood engraving. After moving to the UK in 1926, he became an important London modernist architect before the 1939-45 War. He published a major survey of modernist domestic architecture and a later volume on architectural glass.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Dec-77
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in Sydney on 25 December 1903, daughter of William Walker, a restauranteur, and Myra, née Tindall. She studied at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School in the early 1920s, where she contributed to the student magazine, Undergrowth , e.g. design of 1927 showing two women reading (ill. Butler, Sydney By Design [ SBD ], 10). Her teachers included Henry Gibbons, Ashton’s associate and successor as principal of the school, whom she married in 1922. They had 2 children and separated in 1937. In the late 1920s Gladys attended art classes given by Thea Proctor, who became a lifelong friend.
Gladys exhibited with the Society of Artists in the late 1920s and 1930s, and regularly with the Contemporary Group throughout the 1930s. She produced woodcut and linocut prints and watercolour paintings, e.g. In The Garden (a loving couple) 1928, linocut, National Gallery of Australia (ill. SBD , 30). In 1938 Proctor commented:
The watercolours of Gladys Gibbons are in the tradition of English watercolour painting, or it would be more correct to call it watercolour drawing, as they are light washes of colour over pencil drawing.
From the late 1930s Gibbons taught art, first at St Gabriel’s School for Girls, and later at Roseville (Sydney), Brighton (Melbourne), and at Ravenswood Girls’ School, Sydney. She died at Sydney in 1977 [1969 according to Roger Butler].
Writers:
Johnson, Heather
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 December 1903
- Summary
- Starting her art training at the Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School in the early 1920s Gladys married its future principal and became good friends with artist and teacher Thea Proctor. She regularly exhibited her work and taught in schools in Sydney and Melbourne.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1977
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude50.110556 Longitude8.682222 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Frankfurt, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1901
- Summary
- According to interviews and an investigation by architect Bruce Eeles, Herzger studied at the Bauhaus, Weimar in 1919-1920. Herzger drawings for Walter Gropius's design for the Adler motorcar are known. In 1939, she became a principal of Furnishing Weavers Ltd, the firm closed in 1949. She also worked in jewellery. Her design work in Sydney has not been closely studied but a portfolio assembled by Eeles has survived.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-77
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude50.110556 Longitude8.682222 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1901
- Summary
- Herzger-Seligmann was a bauhaus-trained designer (1922-1924), working in Frankfurt-am-Main, then for the Gropius practice before he immigrated to the UK. She left Germany, arriving in Australia in 1937 working as a textile artist, jeweller and teacher.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-77
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-27.777295 Longitude152.812909 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mt. Perry, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- To describe the life of Florence Broadhurst as eventful, or highly unusual would be an understatement. It would be more accurate to say that her life was a series of phases, each inhabited by a different persona: singer; dancer; actor; couturier; painter; charity worker and fund raiser; car and truck yard operator, fashionista and finally, wallpaper designer.
Florence Maud Broadhurst was born 28 July 1899 at Mungy Station, near Mount Perry Queensland, Australia. She was musical and had some success as a singer in local musical competitions.
In 1922, she left Australia for China and South East Asia where she performed in musical comedy under the stage name ‘Bobby Broadhurst’. She became well known for her singing and Charleston dancing. In 1926, Florence established the Broadhurst Academy in Shanghai. Here, she offered tuition in ‘violin, pianoforte, voice production, banjolele playing1 (taught by Florence), modern ballroom dancing, classical dancing, musical culture and journalism’.[1]
Three years later in England, Florence married her first husband Percy Kann, and began a new career as designer-cum-dress consultant for Pellier Ltd, Robes & Modes, in New Bond Street, Mayfair. With her second husband, Leonard Lloyd Lewis, a diesel engineer, Florence lived out the World War II years in England.
In 1949, she returned to Australia with Leonard and their son Robert. It was here that she took up painting, and toured around northern and central Australia. In 1954, the David Jones art gallery in Sydney, held solo exhibitions of her work. There followed further exhibitions, including group shows, in various galleries. During this time Florence became a founding member of the Art Gallery Society of NSW (1953), and a member of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia (c1954).
Around 1960, Florence established Australian (Hand Printed) Wallpapers Ltd in St Leonards, Sydney. Here Florence, with an initial staff of two, began designing and manufacturing the brilliant, flamboyant wallpapers that were to become her trademark.
The company moved to Paddington in 1969 and changed the name to Florence Broadhurst Wallpapers Pty Ltd. Both Florence and the company flourished. As designs and production techniques developed, the wallpapers found eager buyers in the international marketplace. Meanwhile, Florence became famous for her extravagant clothes and jewellery and vivid red hair.
On 15 October 1977, Florence Broadhurst was brutally murdered at her Paddington premises. The killer has never been identified.
Since her death, Florence Broadhurst’s reputation has been enhanced by a resurgence in popular appreciation of her extraordinary wallpaper designs, re-released by Signature Prints, who hold the licence to reproduce her work. The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney also holds a collection of her work, and a Broadhurst display was included in the exhibition 'Inspired! Design across time’ which was on show at the Museum between 2005 and 2010.
^ Anne-Marie Van de Ven (2006), ‘Broadhurst, Florence Maud (1899-1977)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Online Edition, published by the Australian National University. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/AS10059b
Writers:
Rossiter, Philippa
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 28 July 1899
- Summary
- Acclaimed singer, dancer, actress, artist and designer. Broadhurst was most well known for her vibrant wall-paper designs which were sought after in Australia and internationally during the 1960s and 1970s. These designs continue to have a following as a result of their re-release by Signature Prints.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.15 October 1977
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-42.91702 Longitude147.60205 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Frederick Henry Bay, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator, painter and publisher, was born in Port Frederick Bay, Tas, son of Herbert Jordan, a watchmaker and jeweller, and his wife. After his parents divorced and his mother remarried (in 1908) Syd took his stepfather’s surname. Most of his youth was spent in King Country, New Zealand where his stepfather worked on the construction of railway tunnels.
After moving to Sydney Syd studied at the Royal Art Society until he was 21. His first published cartoon, an attack on Billy Hughes, appeared in the International Socialist in 1912, when he was sixteen. By the time he was eighteen he was having cartoons published in the Bulletin (contributor 1914-26) and in the IWW newspaper Direct Action . His most famous (if not best) cartoon War! What For? was used as the cover of the second issue of Direct Action (Sydney, 10 August 1914) (ill. Harris 227, King 101). He continued to contribute anti-war cartoons to the paper throughout WWI, including several powerful indictments of wartime politicians and profiteers. His most notorious cartoon was (The Commonwealth Government is floating a further £10,000,000 for the War Chest. The prospectus calls upon Investors to “show a patriotic spirit…especially as no sacrifice is entailed…the rate of interest being far higher than in normal times.”) / FAT (intoxicated with “patriotism”: “LONG LIVE THE WAR! HIP, HIP, 'OORAY! FILL 'EM UP AGAIN.” Published in Direct Action on 4 December 1915, this attack – the culmination of a series of anti-profiteer war cartoons he drew for the paper (see file) – earned editor Tom Barker a sentence of twelve months hard labour under the War Precautions Act because it 'prejudiced national recruiting’. All his anti-war cartoons are (properly) rather gruesome, e.g. cartoon sympathetic to the returned soldier (maimed and unemployed), Bulletin 1 June 1922.
In 1918 Nicholls was employed to draw the titles and posters for Ray Longford’s film The Sentimental Bloke . In 1920 he went to the USA to study art title design for motion pictures. He returned in 1923 to become senior artist on Sydney’s Evening Standard . In September he created the comic strip Fat and his Friends for the Sunday News to rival Bancks’s Ginger Meggs in the Sydney Sun ; it was renamed Fatty Finn on 10 August 1924 and was for some time a real rival. Three Fatty Finn annuals were published in 1929-30, then the strip became a victim of the Great Depression.
Armed with his strip Middy Malone , a tale of piracy on the Spanish Main, Nicholls went to New York at the onset of the Depression in search of work. He was unable to secure a buyer for the strip, so he spent 12 months in America, where he 'ghosted’ for Ad Carter’s __Just Kids ** comic strip before returning to Australia in 1932. When Middy Malone was finally self-published in book form during the 1940s it sold over 80,000 copies. More Middy Malone books followed.
A foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists in 1924, Nicholls contributed to the Society’s first publication along with the other 24 male founding members (see Harry Weston ) – a book of cartoons commemorating the visit of the US Fleet in 1925. In 1934, with Stan Clements , he published Fatty Finn’s Weekly , a black and white eight-page tabloid with a spot colour cover considered to be Australia’s first locally produced comic book ( Sydney Morning Herald , 20 May 2002, 42).While continuing to draw cartoons, e.g. Smith’s Weekly 1940: “So you’ve lost your father little man? Don’t cry, we’ll find him – what’s he like?”/ “Aw, beer an’ 'orses!” Nicholls wrote and illustrated a reliable, detailed text on shipping, About Ships (1947).
In 1946 he attempted to fight increasing American syndication by establishing his own 'Fatty Finn Publications’. It published comic books using his own strips and some drawn by other Australian artists, including Keith Chatto and Monty Weld , but did not prove financially viable. He returned to freelance work in 1950, then joined the Sunday Herald (Sydney) where Fatty Finn appeared from December 1951 [ Sun-Herald (Sydney) from October 1953] until Nicholls died in 1977, having fallen to his death from his Potts Point, NSW, apartment (having long been troubled by failing eyesight rather than suicide).
Many of his 1970s Fatty Finn strips were presented to the Mitchell Library c.1979 by the Fairfax family, proprietors of the Sydney Morning Herald and associated publications (Mitchell Library Pic Acc 3088). At the time of his death he was preparing a book of pencil drawings of Australian historic buildings, many of which had been previously published in the Teachers’ Federation Magazine, e.g. St James – Sydney (ill. Rae, 73).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Nat Karmichael
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. c.1896
- Summary
- Cartoonist, creator of "Fatty Finn".
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1977
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-33.8961132 Longitude151.1801893 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newtown, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Sydney on 31 August 1895, ninth child in a family of 10. In 1920-21 she enrolled at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School as an evening student while supporting herself by working as a designer of patterns in an embroidery factory during the day. Her teachers at the school included Grace Crowley and Anne Dangar . A promising student, she was quickly promoted from the Antique to the Life Class. The 1920s were exciting years, with knowledge of overseas developments in art filtering back to Australia. Dore was an early member of the Art Students’ Club, formed in 1923 as a forum for discussion of new art trends. In 1925 she and Nancy Hall established Undergrowth: A Magazine of Youth and Ideals , which came out bi-monthly until its demise in 1929. Dore’s November-December 1927 cover shows a woman watching a man at an easel (ill. Butler, SBD , 8).From humble beginnings Undergrowth became the voice of modernism in Sydney. During this time Dore also attended Roland Wakelin’s drawing and painting classes.
Like many women artists of her generation Dore Hawthorne never married. Unlike many others, however, she had no independent means of support and lived frugally. She possessed a strong social conscience and was particularly interested in C.H. Douglas’s economic theory of Social Credit, which stated that mal-distribution of wealth was the cause of economic depressions and had led the world into a long series of wars.
In the mid-1930s she obtained a position teaching art at Frensham School in Mittagong but found the routine stifling and left after several years (cf. Ruth Ainsworth ). About this time she built a cottage for herself in the Burragorang Valley, northwest of Sydney, an area in which she had made many walking trips with friends. Soon after the outbreak of World War II she applied for a job at the Lithgow Small Arms Factory, which manufactured Bren guns. She painted her Factory Folk series under the pseudonym 'Brendorah’, conflating her name and the gun that dominated her life.
When her employment was terminated in April 1945 she returned to Sydney. Some of her Factory Folk paintings and Portrait of a Mining Engineer, Lithgow 1949 (Deutscher-Menzies 2001 auction, lot 23) show her continuing interest in Lithgow and its workers. No.28 in the Factory Folk series, War Loan Rally Appeal 1945, oil on canvas on board, 63.5 × 78.5 cm, offered at Deutscher-Menzies auction in August 2001, is annotated verso:
no28
WAR LOAN RALLY APPEAL
BY DORE HAWTHORNE 1945 POST WAR
MYSELF IN BLUE CAP
NEXT TO FELLOW WITH
VERY WAVY RED HAIR
NEXT TO RIGHT LEG
OF APPEALING SOLDIER
THE FAT FACED FELLOW
BEHIND ME ON MY LEFT WAS NAMED BOBBY PINN.
In Sydney Dore 'lived with excruciating frugality, great creative energy and a Spartan spirit’ and this may have contributed to her collapse in 1968. Afterwards she lived in a convalescent home in Manly until her death on 23 July 1977. Nancy Hall wrote in a tribute to her friend in 1978:
Dore felt the ugliness of materialism and pollution as keenly as she felt everything that was fine and beautiful and much of her painting and writing was a great cry of protest.
Writers:
Rensch, Elena
Note: Primary.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 31 August 1895
- Summary
- Painter, teacher and co-founder of Undergrowth: A Magazine of Youth and Ideals, 1925-1929. Worked at the Small Arms Factory, Lithgow NSW manufacturing guns 1942-1945 and sketched and painted her fellow factory workers.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Jul-77
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-36.75 Longitude144.266667 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bendigo, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born on 18 February 1895 in Bendigo, eldest child of George Freeman, principal of St Andrew’s College and later Vice-Principal at Bendigo High School, and of Frances, second daughter of Charles Ross, a partner in a Bendigo store. She was educated at Girton College and Bendigo High School. In 1911-15 she studied art at the Bendigo School of Mines under Arthur T. Woodward, then was appointed assistant drawing mistress at her former high school. In 1916, however, she left Bendigo to study at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, where she remained until 1921.
Determined to study abroad, Madge worked with Elma Roach in 1922-23 to raise funds, the two painters holding joint exhibitions of their romantic Hilderesque watercolours and selling their painted and laquered 'Madgelma’ woodwork. Freeman had a painting included in the 1923 Exhibition of Australian Art in London. The following year she sailed to England and enrolled at the Slade School, London. In 1925 she was in Paris, studying under Adolphe Milich and exhibiting there.
In 1926 Madge married Lanfear Thompson, an engineer working on the African Gold Coast, and moved there. She continued to paint, and sent work back for a solo exhibition at the Bendigo Memorial Hall in 1928. In 1929 she returned briefly to visit her family following her husband’s premature death. Returning to Europe in 1930, Madge travelled around the Mediterranean, France and England for some time, sending back paintings for a solo exhibition at Sedon Galleries, Melbourne, in 1934. Late the following year she returned to Bendigo to live, paint and teach, holding classes at her studio in Barkly Place.
Madge had exhibited with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1923-26, then again in 1938, and regularly showed work in their annual exhibitions until 1971. She also exhibited with the Independent Group and for many years attended George Bell’s classes in Melbourne. For fifteen years she was convenor of the Art Circle of the Lyceum Club, Melbourne.
Madge Freeman remarried in 1940 and moved to Koongarra, a property at Longwarry, Gippsland, where her husband, Basil Davies, bred Ayrshire cattle. She also maintained a studio in the family home at South Yarra. In 1952-53 Madge and Basil travelled to England and Europe to look at art galleries and 'cows and bulls’. In 1956 they moved to Lower Plenty and three years later to Ivanhoe. From the late 1950s her health deteriorated and she painted less frequently, often reworking earlier paintings. She entered a convalescent home in the early 1970s, where she remained until her death in February 1977. She bequeathed her painting collection to Bendigo Art Gallery, which mounted a retrospective in 1981. When her husband died in 1979 he left funds for a Madge Freeman Prize to be administered by the gallery.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 February 1895
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Victorian painter who travelled extensively. Freeman exhibited with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Feb-77
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydenham, London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and printmaker (etchings, linocuts and monotypes and woodcuts), was born in Sydenham, London, on 28 August 1893, the son of an architect, Edgar Hawkins, and Annie née Weaver. He attended Alleyn’s School from 1906-10 and won art prizes every year. Because of his talent he was able to take extra art classes in place of scripture. His initial tertiary studies were at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts under A.S. Hartrick, F. Jackson and R.Savage. His student friends included David Jones and Frank Medworth .In 1914 he left Camberwell without graduating, and enlisted in the British Army. He served on the Western Front and on 1 July 1916 he was left for dead at Gommecourt at the Battle of the Somme. Two days later he crawled out of No Man’s Land. He was hospitalised, mainly at Bristol where a series of 20 operations by Major Hey Groves saved his arms from amputation. His right arm remained useless, so he learnt to paint with his left and took some classes at Bristol Art School before discharge. He was financially supported for the rest of his life by a British Army disability pension.
His etching and drypoint Refugees 1918 (edn 10; AGNSW), made England is inscribed in pencil '2nd etching. Done while in hospital 1918’. Carnival 1920, etching (AGNSW), and ( Fountain, Trafalgar Square ) 1920, etching and aquatint, (AGNSW) are also English works.
He attended etching classes under Sir Frank Short at the Royal College of Art, London from 1921-22 eg. Roadmakers 1921, etching (AGNSW), and Coffee Stall 1921, etching (edn 40; copies AGNSW, Josef Lebovic). His linocut, The wood engraver 1923, was in Bridget McDonnell’s exhibition Australian Prints (Melbourne 29 October-22 November 1996: not illustrated). Later he made linocuts in a style comparable to those by Frank Medworth who also migrated to Australia , eg. The Spring 1926 (AGNSW).
On 15 September 1923 he married Irene Villiers, a printmaker, and left England. They travelled and worked in St Tropez, Siena and Sicily.
His most productive period began after he moved to Malta in 1927(eg. The Two Minutes’ Silence c.1928, linocut [AGNSW], and Puberty Ritual (Drunken Maltese Boys) c.1928 [edn 10; AGNSW]). He wrote and illustrated with original b/w woodcuts, A Zoological Alphabet , self published, Malta [1929].In Malta he began to use the signature 'Raokin’, a phonetic version of the local attempt to say the name 'Hawkins’.
In 1933-34 the family travelled to Tahiti and lived for 18 months at Paea where they were adopted by the local Turai family and named 'Maui’. After travelling to New Zealand they then settled in Mona Vale at a house they called 'Maui Ma’. Here they lived until 1959. He made artist friends from his neighbours – Arthur Murch, Paul Beadle, Rah Fizelle and John Eldershaw – but did not at first exhibit. After Frank Medworth came to Sydney to head the East Sydney Technical College art school in 1939, he persuaded Hawkins to begin to show his work, and he first exhibited again in 1941. Weaver Hawkins became active in the fledgling Contemporary Art Society of NSW. From 1948 he was on the Committee and later became President. There were other connections as friendship with the artists Frank and Margel Hinder preceded the later marriage of his son Laric with the Hinder’s daughter Enid. Hawkins advocacy for art included giving many lectures and statements to UNESCO’s Australia’s Advisory Council for Visual Arts and its International Association of Visual Arts.He was a regular exhibitor at both the Blak Prize and the Sulman Prize.In 1956 he paid a return visit to Britain where he met again with David Jones, as well as visiting his brother Ernest in Turkey. On their return to Australia Weaver and Irene Hawkins settled at North Sydney, then Willoughby. Later they moved to Northbridge where he lived until suffering a stroke in 1975 when he moved to a nursing home at Castlecrag.Hawkins died at on 13 August 1977.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 28 August 1893
- Summary
- One of the great advocates for contemporary art in New South Wales. After he was left on the Western Front in World War I, he rehabilitated himself to paint with his left arm. He left England in the 1920s and travelled widely before settling in Sydney in 1935 where he actively supported younger artists in experimenting with modern art.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Aug-77
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.8387588 Longitude151.2306477 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mosman Bay, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- china painter, leather and poker worker, embroiderer, fabric printer and book binder, was born at Mosman Bay on 26 April 1893, into the dynasty which controlled Sydney’s famous hardware store, Nock & Kirby. As a child, Olive roamed the bush surrounding her home at Lindfield on Sydney’s North Shore and developed a keen awareness of the native flora and fauna. Her observations were to provide her with a lifetime of inspiration and a serious interest through membership of the Royal Zoological Society.
Disappointed by Chatswood Public School’s failure to prepare her for tertiary study, Olive entered the family business at the age of sixteen, where she undertook clerical and financial duties and supervised the observance of industrial awards. With the encouragement of her family, who allowed her time off from work each week, Olive attended drawing classes at Hornsby Technical College under George Collingridge and china painting classes with Gertrude Brown, a former assistant to J. Arthur Peach, the first teacher of china painting at Sydney Technical College.
In 1925-27 Olive travelled extensively in England and Europe, visiting the Paris International Exhibition and potteries in London and Staffordshire. Seeing china painting and fabrics in England inspired her to design comparable works, but using Australian motifs. In 1929 Eirene Mort proposed her for membership of the Society of Arts and Crafts. Over the next four decades Olive Nock was a deeply committed member, exhibitor, office bearer and ultimately Patron of the Society. It offered her the outlet for her creative energy that had been denied her in any professional area. Many of the skills she acquired were self-taught. From the early 1930s she worked in an increasingly Art Deco style, influenced too by the Aboriginal bark shields she studied at the Australian Museum.
Olive Nock dedicated her life to increasing opportunities for men and women in the areas of craft, colour and design. She was a tireless demonstrator at exhibitions held by the Society of Arts and Crafts and willingly shared her knowledge and experience. Through her Red Cross activities, she assisted with the war effort and participated in repatriation schemes at Concord Repatriation Hospital.
In 1946, following the establishment of the Society’s Craft Training School at Double Bay and the appointment of Mrs Ann Gillmore Ross as its director, Olive taught classes there in design and colour. She undertook numerous commissions, including a bird’s-eye maple and satin fan hand-painted with blue wrens for Lady Gowrie and batik car pennants for the Australian Ambassadors to the USA and Canada. Many of her designs were reproduced on letterheads and cards used by the Society of Arts and Crafts.
Writers:
Betteridge, Margaret
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 April 1893
- Summary
- A china painter, leather and poker worker, embroiderer, fabric painter and bookbinder. Whilst working at her family's hardware store she studied at Hornsby Technical College.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1977
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.8857968 Longitude151.2440867 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Woollahra, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, illustrator and designer, was born in Sydney in 1893 (see Australian Dictionary of Biography, 15). His interest in Aboriginal art as a source of general nationalistic art was inspired by materials collected by Sir Baldwin Spencer on various expeditions (especially Museum of Victoria) and by a set of Arnhem Land photographs obtained from C.P. Mountford (from expedition?) in 1948. His study of them led to prints, paintings, watercolours, fabrics, scarves, greeting cards, ceramic murals and even furniture in which 'rich colours “dug from the earth, powdered to a fine powder, mixed with cactus juice” were applied to works with a parrot feather brush’ (Baddelely). Baddeley catalogues his Motifs from NSW Aboriginal weapons 1949, watercolour on cardboard (private collection [p.c.]), The White Moth, Part 3 , n.d., pen and ink on paper (p.c.), The Kangaroo Hunt – Australian Aboriginal Legend n.d., gouache on paper (p.c.), Coo-ee! n.d. , gouache on paper (p.c.), Honey Ants Nest 1950, mixed media on paper (p.c.), and Ingar the Crab 1950, mixed media on paper (p.c.).
Mansell also painted murals and did theatrical designs. He designed the sets (and costumes?) for The Kulaman 1952, with music by Alfred Hill and words by W.E. Harvey & A.P. Elkin (sheet music in the Performing Arts Museum, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne). In 1956 he presented a large pottery dish with Aboriginal motifs and [some] colours to Dame Mary Gilmore on the occasion of her 91st birthday (now National Library of Australia [NLA]: see Joan Kerr, essay in Remarkable Occurrences , NLA, 2001).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1893
- Summary
- Mansell was a painter, illustrator and theatre designer whose work diverse artistic practices, which ranged from painting to set design, were very much influenced by his interest in Aboriginal art. Murals by Mansell for Melbourne's Capitol Theatre (c.1939) are known.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1977
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-36.75 Longitude144.266667 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bendigo, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Bendigo, daughter of Frederick Douglas Jones, a barrister and solicitor. She was educated at Girton College, Bendigo, and from 1912 studied art at the National Gallery School under Bernard Hall , winning several student prizes. In 1917, at the end of her studies, she won the coveted Travelling Scholarship, which offered overseas study for two years. Unable to take this up immediately because of World War I, she painted portraits in Melbourne. Her solo exhibition in 1918 included a portrait of Ola Cohn . A photograph of her painting a client in her Melbourne studio at about this time includes her winning scholarship painting. She also painted Prime Minister Billy Hughes (Parliament House, Melbourne) and Viscount Novar, Governor-General of Australia [ 1914-20 ].
Jones finally left for London in 1921 where she had a moderately successful career. She exhibited at the Royal Academy (1921, 1923), at the Paris Salon (1923), at the Royal Scottish Academy, at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, with the New Society of Artists and with the London Portrait Society. A flamboyant personality, she was popular in London society – which led to several portrait commissions. Later in the 1920s she returned to Australia and in January 1926 was busy at work in Adelaide Perry 's 'Chelsea Art School’ at Bulletin Place, Sydney, painting a portrait of Mrs Hewson of Queensland and completing other Australian commissions. Although proposing to return to England in February, this seems to have been postposed. She was called 'a young Victorian artist who is revisiting Australia’ in the October issue of Home , which illustrated her 'Lady Keith Smith, a canvas painted in 1924’, Summer (a portrait given this title for exhibition, not an allegorical work) and 'A portrait of John, the son of Falkiner Hewson Esq’. In January 1926 Society reported on her painting of three-year-old Patricia Bousfield 'listening to some fairy folk who surely dwell somewhere in the woods near Bowral’.
Back in London, Jones continued to specialise in portraiture. The Australian Woman’s Mirror of 30 April 1929 mentioned her exhibition held with a 'sister-painter’ who also had Australian associations, the miniaturist Hon. Lady Henniker-Heaton (born Hon. Catherine Mary Sermonda Burrell, daughter of the 5th Baron Gwydyr) whose husband the John Henniker-Heaton, 2nd Baronet, was born in Sydney, (son of Rose Bennett, daughter of the proprietor of the Sydney Evening News and the weekly Australian Town and Country Journal and wife of Sir John, the 1st Baronet – who, as plain Mr Heaton, had been a NSW journalist in the 1870s-80s). Jones’s oil portrait of Senator D. Andrews was presented to Bendigo Art Gallery in 1930, the year her oil painting of Margaret Itarman was hung at the Royal Academy. She returned to Victoria in 1932, exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society then abandoned painting professionally, partly because of family bereavements.
During World War II Marion Jones worked in the Bendigo Ordnance Factory. Much of her London work, which had been left in storage, was destroyed during the blitz. 'The world has changed. There is no place for art and beauty’, she stated after the war. Despite living on for another three decades she never painted again. Extant work includes a self-portrait Moi Même (p.c.), which Peers calls 'Lambertesque’.
When Cui Bono was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1923, London critics interpreted it as a late example of the 'Problem Picture’ genre so popular in the Edwardian era. From the late 1890s people of all classes had flocked to the Royal Academy to see paintings depicting mental anguish in high society, especially examples by the Hon. John Collier. In both London and Australia they also attended Problem Plays, notably those by Sir Arthur Pinero in which, George Taylor wrote, 'the question of the wife’s chastity was stretched over three long acts’. Although a prone girl in a tutu labelled Cui Bono ( Who Benefits? ) does not pose a very profound problem, but part of the enjoyment, or otherwise, in solving Problem Pictures was the shallowness of the message. Ten years earlier Theo Cowan had exhibited a sculpture at the Chenil Gallery, London called The Problem , which, according to the Sydney Morning Herald of 10 June 1913, showed 'a young girl lying on a grassy bank, gazing into a bowl held up by a faun, the problem being the maiden’s choice of good or evil’. Jones, wisely, was more discrete about explaining her problem. Had her ballerina suddenly realised that those glorious, dominant pearls were the first step on the 'Road to Ruin’? If so, had the realisation come 'Too Late’ (another popular title of the day)? Is there perhaps a hint of criticism of ambitious middle-class mothers driving their inadequately talented daughters to despair? Whatever the answer, the ambiguity appealed to the British public and won the picture a certain fame. As Juliet Peers points out, Jones’s painting was reproduced in colour in the Tatler , mentioned in a contemporary novel and lampooned in Punch .
In fact, the painting’s Problem Picture characteristics were largely fortuitous. It is more accurate to state that Cui Bono is a reflection of Jones’s Melbourne training, both subject and style being in the manner of her painting teacher at the National Gallery School, Bernard Hall , a man fond of painting off-stage ballerinas and moody atmosphere. Jones had triumphantly graduated six years earlier by winning the 1917 National Gallery Travelling Scholarship ( Eugenie Durran was runner up), but she had only been in London for little more than a year when she exhibited Cui Bono , having been forced to remain in Melbourne painting portraits during World War I. The homage to Bernard Hall may have been deliberate, for Cui Bono was destined to return to Victoria. Jones offered it to the National Gallery of Victoria after it was shown in London as the original work required under the terms of her scholarship. It was a most acceptable proof of her prowess. The fact that it had been hung at the Royal Academy (and noticed!) could not fail to impress. Unfortunately, its popularity soon waned. Since Jones was a native of Bendigo, Cui Bono was despatched to that city’s more youthful and less well-stocked gallery where it remained until 1994 when it was then returned to the NGV.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
John47
jrwilliams
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 1892
- Summary
- Victorian painter, painted numerous portraits and exhibited in England, Scotland and Paris. Ceased painting around 1933, stating 'The world has changed. There is no place for art and beauty'. Father, Frederick Douglas Jones, Mother Annie Elizabeth (nee Craven).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1977
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- potter, china painter, needleworker, carver and metal-worker, was born Daisy Morris in Brisbane. Educated at the Brisbane Normal School, she studied art at the Brisbane Technical College under R. Godfrey Rivers . She married Edward Peter Nosworthy in 1908. Three years later, she went to England with her mother and daughter Susan (b.1909), where she studied under Barret Carpenter at the Rochdale School of Art, Lancashire, while supporting herself by working as a retoucher in a photographic studio. She returned to Brisbane in 1919. From 1922 she began studying pottery with L.J. Harvey at the Central Technical College; her potpourri jar was included in the College’s exhibit to the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, London.
Daisy Nosworthy was one of the principal exhibitors of pottery in the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland’s exhibitions in 1923-41 and again in 1946. As well, she exhibited pewter work, silver, weaving, carving, embroidery and leatherwork. She showed modelling, china painting, pottery and woodcarving in the exhibitions of the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association in 1923-29 and won many prizes. Pottery was shown with the Queensland Art Society at its joint exhibition with the Arts and Crafts Society in 1922-23 and 1927-32. She exhibited collections of pewter work in 1931-51 and silver jewellery in 1948 and 1952. She also exhibited pottery with the NSW Society of Arts and Crafts in 1927 (when the Powerhouse Museum acquired a piece) and in 1931. She showed pewter at Sydney in 1940.
From about 1935 Daisy took lessons in working silver from S.S. Sawyer; in 1936 she began exhibiting pewter work and from 1937 silver. Pewter remains in the majority as it was simpler to make. Her delicate silver jewellery is typical of the Arts and Crafts style with tendrils of small leaves framing semi-precious stones.
During World War II Daisy worked as a colourist at the Noel Maitland Photographic Studio. She retired in 1948 to Redcliffe, a seaside resort near Brisbane, and devoted herself to gardening. Except for pottery, she maintained her craft interests and acted as a judge for the craft sections of the Redcliffe Show.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- A potter, needleworker, china painter, carver and metalworker. She studied at Brisbane Technical College and Rochdale School of Art.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1977
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, eldest daughter of Alistair Ronald Mackenzie and Rosalind Isabel Agnes, née Walker, was born in Melbourne. She spent her early years in WA and Victoria before moving to Dubbo (NSW) with her family at the age of twelve. Her youngest sister was Nan Mackenzie . An interest in the techniques of painting and drawing led her to train as an art teacher as well as a painter. Her classes at the Royal Art Society (RAS) in Sydney under Dattilo Rubbo and James R. Jackson were in the academic tradition of drawing from the antique. Early works were in charcoal, but oil painting was to become Isabel’s preferred medium. Between 1924 and 1928 she won three first prizes for landscape painting and one for still life from the RAS. She was secretary of the Fine Arts Club which met in the ballroom of Burdekin House in Macquarie Street.
When she began teaching in 1922, there were only twelve qualified art teachers in NSW schools. Her career spanned fifty-six years and she was active in gaining recognition and increased status for art teachers within the profession. She was Secretary of the Art Teachers Group of the Teachers’ Federation until 1940. In March 1936 she sailed for England on the Balranald armed with letters of introduction. She visited London schools where innovative methods of teaching art to children were being practised by the New Education Fellowshi
On her return Mackenzie was appointed lecturer at Sydney Teachers’ College (in 1941). In 1942 she was asked by the Director of Education at the College to write a series of articles on paintings in the Art Gallery of NSW for the Education Gazette , but conflict within the gallery prevented publication. That year she became responsible for the art department at the College and developed a correspondence course in art for soldier students which became the basis of a text she wrote in 1946 for children taking art as a correspondence subject. She left the Teachers College in 1955 but continued to teach privately until 1968. Her book, The Why and How of Child Art (Sydney 1955) aimed to help parents understand the work of their young children.
Isabel Mackenzie exhibited in many solo and group shows between 1924 and 1972. Her first exhibit, a view of the gun emplacement at Bradley’s Head, shown with the RAS as a student member, won first prize for landscape painting and was subsequently exhibited with the Society of Artists and the Watercolour Institute. In 1926, 1927 and 1928 she won further first prizes with the RAS.
In the 1930s she exhibited with the Society of Artists, the Watercolour Institute and the Women Painters. Her first solo exhibition, in 1933, was at the Macquarie Galleries; others followed in 1934, 1936, 1937 and 1942 and she participated in many group shows there in the 1930s-40s. In 1935 she had a solo exhibition at the Sedon Galleries, Melbourne. In 1936 her work was included in the Women Artists exhibition in Sydney, in 1938 in ’150 Years of Australian Art’ at the Art Gallery of NSW. That year she also participated in the inaugural Australian Academy of Art exhibition. She exhibited only once in the 1950s, with the Watercolour Institute, with which she mainly showed her work in the 1960s and early ’70s along with local council exhibitions at the Blue Mountains, Blackheath, Macquarie Towns, Penrith, Ashfield and elsewhere.
Writers:
Cuthbert, Penny
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- Female drawer and painter of landscapes and still-life who dedicated her life to improving art education in New South Wales, while continuing to exhibit until her death.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1977
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude34.0536909 Longitude-118.242766 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Los Angeles, California, USA
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born on 3 December 1888 in Los Angeles, California of English parents who met in Queensland, married in Sydney and left for America after the wedding. His architect father hoped to make money there but only found work as a carpenter (he became secretary of the American Carpenters’ Union). In 1892, when Stan was aged four, the family settled in Perth. Stan left school at 16 and worked as a clerk (draughtsman) in the WA Railways Department, studying Fine Art at Perth Technical College at night and doing freelance work for various Perth newspapers: the Sunday Times , the Western Mail and the United Licensed Victuallers Association Journal . He wrote in a private letter (quoted Lindesay 1994, 6): 'We had quite a considerable art colony in Perth in those days: one quite big enough to support a sketch club, of which I was secretary and treasurer’.
In 1912, Cross resigned from the railways to go to London and study at St Martin’s School for a year. (His daughter says it was actually the Slade and Lindesay and Blaikie are wrong, but Rainbow also says St Martin’s; Shiell (ed.), p.115, says he spent 18 months in London at St Martin’s and other studios.) While in London he had some cartoons accepted by Punch . He returned to Perth and worked freelance, contributing drawings to the Western Mail and the Sunday Times . In 1918, still in his early 20s, he was invited to Sydney by Claude McKay to join Cecil Hartt on the forthcoming Smith’s Weekly at £5 a week (a rather different story appeared in Smith’s 20/4/1935, 20). He became its highest paid artist and second art editor. Short-run series he devised included: 'Things That Make Stan Cross’ (political and economic criticism), 'Places We Have Never Visited’ (Law Courts, Parliament, the players’ room at a test cricket match, etc.), 'Museum of the Future’ and 'Firsts in Australian History’ (the first barmaid, the first strike, the first football match).
Cross was renowned for his Aboriginal (“Jacky”) jokes, which Blaikie calls merry and never cruel (ill. Blaikie, e.g. p.107) but which were condemned as stereotypes after Cross’s death, usually in letters defending Jolliffe 's superiority. Sue Cross says she and her son sighted a letter from a tribal Aborigine many years ago, since lost, thanking him for being the first to portray Aborigines as real people. Examples are: 'On the lot with the first All-Darkie Super Production’ 9 August 1930, 2, 'Governor Phillip Founds Australia’ 28 January 1933, 9.
Other subjects included anti-communist cartoons, e.g. Dignity and Impudence 26 November 1927 and one with Marx Turning in His Grave over 'Soviet Military Preparations’ 1 April 1922,1. Depression cartoons, e.g. 27 September 1930, 23: “Cheer up, Joe! Spare me days, anybody’ud think you owned the ___ depression!” Art v. progress joke showing two men looking at an industrial scene, Australian Landscape : Critic: “That’s not very artistic.” Australia: “No, but wouldn’t it be bonzer”’, Smith’s 28 July 1923, 3. A cartoon parodying Virgil shows two flappers, one scrawny the other fat, 21 January 1933, 11, with the note below:
Virgil, having gone into smoke to dodge a man who wanted to lend him £500 free of interest for 100 years, Stan Cross answered the urgent appeal of the art editor for a couple of flappers in deshabille for this page. Stan Cross’ flappers, it is confidently expected, will start Virgil drawing horses again with two left feet.
An anti-Nazi cartoon is dated 4 August 1934 ( German Frightfulness-Born in 1914, Still Going Wrong ), while Hollywood Brings Australia to the Films was published on 2 September 1939. SLNSW holds the original of An Olive Branch (couple having a 'domestic’) of 1937 (DG SV *CART 7).
Above all, Cross has been immortalised by “For gorsake stop laughing-this is serious!” ( Smith’s Weekly July 1933), Australia’s best-known single cartoon. Although the original is lost, tens of thousands of copies were printed on glossy paper and mailed throughout the world. See reprint by Smith’s titled The Joke of the Decade 12 August 1933, 7, with details of copies available for purchase and a photogravure (copy dated 5 August 1933 used in SH Ervin b/w exhibition 1999). Stan’s story of its creation was recounted in a letter to George Blaikie, dated 24 March 1967 (quoted Blaikie 65-66, Caban 40, and Lindesay (1994) 51-52, 55, original ML). It originated in editor Frank Marien inviting Stan to improve on a student’s flat joke about a falling builder having his leg pulled (Sue Cross claims the student was the artist Donald Friend, who certainly did draw cartoons in youth) – builders working on tall building sites being popular subjects for jokes at the time, especially in the US. A story about Cross’s version becoming popular in London too was published in Smith’s on 20 April 1935, 20. The ABWAC’s Stanley Award statuettes based on the two figures in the gag have been presented annually to the top black-and-white artists since 1985 (see Kerr, 1999).
Cross was keen on anatomical accuracy in his drawing (Caban, 40) and kept a life-size wooden dummy in the studio he shared with Hartt at Smith 's. It often appeared in the pub downstairs and stories about it abound, e.g. Henry Lawson reportedly tried to start up a conversation with it. Cross pioneered the comic strip in Australia in 1920 when he devised a running weekly commentary on the butter subsidy for Smith’s called 'You and Me’. 'Mr. Pott’ and 'Whalesteeth’ appeared in it and it led to his popular, syndicated strip 'Mr and Mrs Potts’ ('Mr Pott’ ill. Caban, 41). This was inherited by Jim Russell as 'The Potts’ in 1940 when Cross left Smith’s (in 1939) and Russell continued to draw it in the SMH until he died in 2001. Other strips by Cross were 'The Vaudevillians’, 'Norman and Rhubarb’ (begun 1928), 'Dad and Dave’ (including Dad and Dave’s trip to England) and 'Wally and the Major’. As 'The Winks’, he began drawing the last for the Melbourne Herald in 1940 (the first year he was working there). Later syndicated, it became the most popular daily and Sunday strip in Australia. Two originals drawn with Carl Lyon in 1938 and c.1938 (ML PXD 764) are presumably for it; another Cross original of c.1930s is in the same collection. Wally and the Major: An Advertiser Feature was published at Melbourne in 1945. Cross technically continued to draw the strip for the SMH until 1970, although after having a stroke in early 1960s resulted in Lyon drawing the strips in Stan’s name for a few months, then they were signed by both and finally Lyon took them over altogether, acc. Sue Cross. (Sue Cross also claims that he drew a strip, 'Rupert the Rabbit’, which was taken by the art editor and sold to the USA.)
Cross was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists in 1924, along with 24 other men. He was president from 1931 to 1954 of its successor (generally seen as a continuation, especially by the ABWAC), 'the Black and White Artists’ Club’, having succeeded Cec. Hartt and being succeeded by Jim Russell, other foundation members.
Although working for the Melbourne Herald from 1939, Cross was always based in Sydney. He also wrote books on accountancy, economics and English grammar and treatises on soil conservation. He painted watercolours and there is some speculation that Cross and George Finey held the first exhibition at David Jones’s Art Gallery. In 1970 he retired from the Melbourne Herald and joined his family at Armidale (NSW) where he died on 16 June 1977, aged 88. The epitaph on his tombstone reads, 'Stop laughing, this is serious’. In 1985 a statuette based on his most famous cartoon was designed for the Stanley Awards, presented by the ABWAC. His wife Jessie died in 1972. Cross’s papers are now in the NLA.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 3 December 1888
- Summary
- Significant mid 20th century newspaper comic strip artist. Created 'Wally and the Major', 'The Potts' and 'For gorsake, stop laughing: this is serious!'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16-Jun-77
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Miniature painter, china painter and gardener, was born in Melbourne, youngest child of the Scottish sawyer Alexander Paterson and his second wife, Mary Ann née Purcell, a Londoner, who were married at St Arnaud. Her father and his first wife, Margaret, had come to Melbourne in 1862 as assisted emigrants from Scotland. Not long before Agnes was born her parents and siblings settled in the Warragul district of Gippsland. Her father died there when she was five. In 1909 Agnes married the telegraphist Stanley James Davis at Warragul; Gwendoline was born in 1911 and Stanley Douglas in 1921. Agnes outlived them all.
According to Ann Mitchell, Agnes was a brilliant gardener. With the assistance of her husband, she turned their home garden at Surrey Hills into a showplace. She is also reputed to have been an excellent painter on porcelain, as well as a miniaturist. Her miniature of Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash and his lover Miss Lizette Bentwitch, a 1927 watercolour on ivory signed by Paterson (Monash University), was exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society in April 1927, April 1926 and April 1931. The locations of two companion pieces – separate portraits of Monash (certainly by Paterson) and Bentwitch (probably by Paterson but this is uncertain since Lizzie was said to be a miniaturist of some skill herself) – are unknown.
Known portrait miniatures by Paterson include Mrs Arthur Boyes, May Maxwell, “Varna”, Colonel George Horne VD, MA, MD, Ch.B, an artist and child (identities unknown), Esther Paterson (Mrs G.H. Gill) – perhaps a distant relative – Kenneth, Mrs W. Mortill (known only in reproduction), William Patrick Melville Esq., Miss Gwendoline Davis (the artist’s daughter, known only in reproduction). She also painted a series of images of her daughter from infancy onwards.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1883
- Summary
- A twentieth-century miniature portraitist; also reputed to have been an excellent painter on porcelain.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1977
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-37.8611788 Longitude144.8898569 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Williamstown, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- photographer, was born in Williamstown, Victoria, on 17 March 1883. That year, the family moved to the nearby Melbourne suburb of Moonee Ponds. In 1902-6 she was a student at the National Gallery School where she formed lifelong friendships with other women artists, notably Dora Wilson and Pegg Clarke . The earliest evidence of Hollick’s interest in photography dates from about 1907, when she began to make portraits in a small darkroom set up in the family home. The following year she commenced her professional career. In 1908-09 she travelled by car through west and north-western Victoria advertising her services as a portrait photographer at various country towns en route . Within three years she had established a studio in Moonee Ponds from which she operated for much of her career. In 1918, however, Hollick and her partner, Dorothy Izard, took over the Collins Street studio of May and Mina Moore . Here Hollick established her reputation as one of Melbourne’s leading photographic portraitists.
She produced society portraits of wealthy Melbourne women as debutantes, brides and young matrons as well as fashion plates and portraits of visiting celebrities; she took the official Australian portrait of the American aviatrix Amy Johnson on her world tour in 1930. In particular, she became renowned for her child photography. Her seemingly casual, candid portraits belie her adept handling of her subjects and her expertise in the use of both studio and natural lighting. Hollick’s photographs were regularly published in Art in Australia , Home and Harrington’s Photographic Journal during the 1920s-30s. She also participated in numerous photographic exhibitions and salons, including the London Salon of Photography (1920), the Chicago Photographic Exhibition and the Colonial Exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society in London (both 1927). In 1929 she was the only woman exhibitor in the Melbourne Exhibition of Pictorial Photography. She held her only solo exhibition at her Collins Street studio in 1928. The Depression forced her to close the city studio. In 1932 she recommenced working from her home in Moonee Ponds, where she continued to take photographs until 1950. Then, aged sixty-seven, she retired from business to travel.
Writers:
Wyk, Susan VanNote: Primary
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 March 1883
- Summary
- Photographer, during the early 1920s established her reputation as one of Melbourne's leading photographic portraitists. She became renowned for her child photography.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1977
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1977-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, Melbourne.
The Fancy Dress 1909, oil on canvas in Sotheby’s Fine Australian Paintings 22-23 April 1996, cat.294, is a portrait of Janet Agnes Cumbrae Stewart modelling an 'Arts Ball’ gown for the Sunday afternoon class of the National Gallery of Victoria [NGV] Art School. Formerly in the Baldwin Spencer collection, shown Fine Art Society’s Galleries, Melbourne, May 1919 (ill. fig.12).
The Portfolio by C. Wheeler, exhibited in 1909 Victorian Artists’ Society and 'a work recommended for purchase by the Felton Trustees [NGV], was a great thing in color, manipulation and design. The proper place for a work of this kind should be a public gallery; and it is a pity that the Felton commissioners’ choice was not ratified’: [Anon], 'The Art of the Year’, Lone Hand 1 April 1910, p.672. The Portfolio was in fact acquired by the [National] Art Gallery of New South Wales, while the National Gallery of Victoria puchased The Poem .
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help DAAO by expanding it.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 January 1880
- Summary
- painter and art teacher, Melbourne. His artwork 'The Fancy Dress' 1909 was shown in the Fine Art Society's Galleries, Melbourne. Another artwork of his is 'The Portfolio' exhibited in 1909. Uncle of New Zealand landscape painter Colin Wheeler.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Oct-77
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-33.481536 Longitude150.1564887 Start Date1951-01-01 End Date1976-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lithgow, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1951
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1976
- Age at death
- 25
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1976-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- [Biographic material based on 2012 correspondence with Lee Dunn, descendent and legacy information].
Buzacott was painter, printmaker, illustrator and commercial artist, was born in Perth. After his father died he moved to Melbourne with his mother to join his grandfather, a noted seascape painter, at Caulfield but spent his holidays with his grandmother at Kalgoorlie. He later remembered the impression that the isolated, barren life of the Kalgoorlie miners had on him. In Melbourne he attended Wesley College, where he was a champion athlete.
He attended a commercial art college (Leyshon White) and left Melbourne to study commercial art in Sydney (1924-26), working at Farmers during the day and studying at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School at night. After returning to Melbourne he drew fashion designs for various commercial art studios and became friends with a young developing group of commercial artists, including James Flett , Dominic Leon and Mervyn Wallis. Together they began experimenting with various printing methods, especially linocut, lithography and etching.
In October 1930 Buzacott helped found Strife , a magazine that lasted only one issue before being banned by the police. He drew woodcuts in it as 'N. Vellis’. In 1930 he exhibited with The Embryos, and in 1931 Buzacott, Dalgarno , Flett, Eric Thake , R.V. Francis, J. Vickery and Bill Dolphin, calling themselves 'The New Group’, held an exhibition at the Athenaeum Gallery. All except Dolphin (a violin maker), showed prints, drawings or oils. Buzacott was then sharing a studio with Noel Counihan and Roy Dalgarno and had become increasingly attracted to Marxist ideals. He used stark b/w wood and linocuts to convey the mood of the Depression and draw attention to its victims, e.g. Queensland Roadworker c.1931, linocut on tissue paper, NGA, and West Melbourne Street Scene c.1938, wood engraving, QAG, a dark image of cheerful people in slum housing (both ill. Merewether). He often used the pseudonym 'N. Vellis’ for his magazine illustrations too.
In late 1931 Buzacott was a foundation member of the Workers Art Club. In 1933 he met and married Winifred McClintock, Herbert McClintock 's sister. Three years later, he used two small inheritances to travel to England where in 1936-38 he studied with Iain MacNab at the Grosvenor School, London. There he met the Australian painter George Bell , a key figure in the foundation of the CAS where Buzacott was to exhibit, and with whom Buzacott briefly studied during WWII to develop his painting skills (according to McCulloch Buzacott trained with Bell in 1940.)
Buzacott returned home in 1938 and soon moved to Warrandyte, where he shared the late Penleigh Boyd’s studio with for a time. He continued to exhibit with a group formed in Melbourne in 1935, the New Melbourne Art Club, which included Flett, Dalgarno and Heffernan. In 1940 he won the BFAG Crouch Art Prize for a painting. In 1942 he exhibited at the Kadimah cultural centre in Carlton alongside Bergner , Counihan, O’Connor and Wigley .
During WWII he joined the Cartographic Corps of the army stationed in Bendigo and Brisbane. Buzzacott and other artists were trained in plotting aerial photographs which became the major source of wartime mapmaking.] Buzzacott also designed posters for the war effort (said to be unsigned). He exhibited in Melbourne with other soldiers known as The Five Group during the 1940s.He sold his paintings only to friends and acquaintances while continuing to make a living from commercial art and from illustrating pamphlets and books, including Alan Marshall’s These Are My People (Cheshire, 1944).
He was transferred to Brisbane with the Mobile Lithographic Printing Company. The intention was to have a fully equipped drawing and printing unit close to the front line. This unit produced 1:25,000 maps (artillery) and photo maps. Buzzacott made pocket money painting small portraits of American soldiers that they sent home. Roy Dalgarno also worked for the Camouflage Section in Brisbane at that time.
‘Carto Corps’ included many commercial artists including the artists Arthur Boyd and John Perceval. It was known as “The Zebra Corps” because all became Sargeants [three stripes indicating rank] as soon as they joined up. (information supplied by Jim Wright & Murray Young letters,1979).
He was transferred back to Melbourne to Design Division in 1943 (Grahame King letter 1979). He was Art Director for United Service Publicity (John F. Barnes, founder, Karl Morris, Director) founded 1945 by returned soldiers. He became a freelance commercial artist around 1946 and rented space in the studio of Jim and Joyce Wright 44 William Street. (Jim Wright letter 1979).
After the war Buzacott became a member of the VAS, along with others who stopped exhibiting with the CAS. By then, he was mainly painting landscapes. In 1949 He left Melbourne for Brisbane to work in commercial art. He later undertook work with Garnsey Green & Clemenger (founded ca.1955). He lived in Wynnum, near Brisbane, site of an artists’ colony that developed around John Manifold, a communist poet and musician who had fought as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. He continued to paint landscapes while employed on commercial art and teaching at QIT. He won the Redcliffe Art Prize in 1969. Later he moved to South Tweed, where he died in 1976.
Some of Buzacott’s paintings combine modernism and realism, e.g. Scene at Doncaster 1940, o/c, BFAG (like US country town painting, ill. Hansen, cat.144, and Merewether, cat.18). His work was included in exhibitions at the AGSA in1984, QAG 1985, McClelland Gallery 1981.
[Lee Dunn also notes that Buzacott painted a milk bar mural in the late 1950s or early 1960s for a milk bar in the Wynnum/Manly bayside area of Brisbane. It was described as large cartoonish and kind of anthropomorphised map of Stradbroke Island and Moreton Island]
[Biographic material based on 2012 correspondence with Lee Dunn, descendent and legacy information].
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
LeeDunn
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- Buzacott was a printmaker, commercial artist (graphic designer), political illustrator, painter and teacher. A mural by Buzacott is also known. He travelled widely in Australia and Europe and settled in Queensland in his late career.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Aug-76
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-27.5610193 Longitude151.953351 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1976-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toowoomba, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Born in Toowoomba in 1903, Douglas Annand was a highly accomplished graphic designer, textile designer, muralist and sculptor. Having grown up in Brisbane, where he attended night classes at Brisbane Central Technical College, Annand moved to Sydney in 1930. In Sydney, Annand became highly successful as a freelance designer; his work included the development of corporate images for such well-known Australian companies as Union Oil, Farmer’s and David Jones, as well as designs for The Home magazine and the Australian National Travel Association [see NGA 2001 exhibition catalogue]. His design for the ceiling of the Australian pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition, along with his role as art director for the Australian Pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, gained Annand international recognition and brought Australia to the forefront of international design.
In anticipation of the Second World War, during the late 1930s Annand became involved in a camouflage group formed by zoology Professor William Dakin in response to the severe lack of camouflage and concealment strategies specific to the Australian environment. With members including Frank Hinder, Robert Emerson-Curtis, Sydney Ure Smith , Russel Roberts and Professor Leslie Wilkinson, the group dedicated itself to exploring issues of concealment and developing new techniques for camouflage in Australia, independent of any Government support. At the outbreak of war, the group became the foundation of the Camouflage Committee, which was formed by the Ministry of Home Security. Annand’s background in design, together with his strong interest in nature made him the perfect candidate for the role of a camouflage artist, and from 1941-1944 he was employed by the Royal Australian Air Force as a camouflage officer. During his years of service, Annand produced a large body of works documenting aerial surveillance of coastlines and islands off the Queensland coast. Through his attention to detail and understanding of colour and landscapes Annand provided a significant contribution to Australian camouflage research.
Following the war, Annand went back to his work as a freelance designer, whilst simultaneously expanding his range of skills and knowledge in a variety of new media. He produced textile designs, sculptures, murals, mixed media designs, and later became interested in architectural design and glass structures. Throughout his life, Annand illustrated a perpetual passion for all aspects of art and design, and this did not go unnoticed. Prior to his death in 1976 Annand won the Sulman prize three times, and his posters received prizes in Adelaide and Milan. The Australian War Memorial holds 72 of the studies and watercolours he completed during his work as a camouflage artist.
The Powerhouse Museum collection includes two Douglas Annand design archives, which are a valuable record of the design and architectural activity occurring in Sydney and Australia between the 1930s and 1970s. The first archive consists of material taken from Annand’s studio in Killara after he passed away. It includes ideas, sketches and exhibition catalogues, Annand’s designs for national and international architectural murals, posters and textiles, and objects relating to architectural commissions which Annand undertook during the 1950s and 60s.
The second archive includes material such as catalogues, notebooks, sketches and drawings, photographs, posters and correspondence relating to most of the projects Annand undertook during his career. The collection also includes artworks, sculptures, and textile, metal and glass objects.
The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra also holds a collection of Annand’s art-related material.
Addendum from Eye magazineDouglas Annand (1903-1976) was part of an Australian graphic design tradition concerned more with art and aesthetics than commercialisation. Unlike most of his colleagues, he chose not to work overseas and instead set new standards for Australian designers, creating images that were international in their philosophy, yet typically Australian. He was also a watercolourist, a textile designer, a muralist and a sculptor of originality and style. In 1937 Annand was commissioned to design the brochure and ceiling mural for the Australian Pavilion at the Paris Exposition designed unsuccessfully by architects Stephenson & Turner. In 1939 he was made design director for the Australian Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair, this time supervising Stephenson & Turner. This widely admired design was featured in Australian Art Annual 1939 and the Architectural Review selected it in its Special New York World’s Fair issue. He was rewarded in 1940 with a bronze medal from the Australian Commercial and Industrial Artists’ Association. In 2003, Melbourne’s Heide Museum and Gallery staged a retrospective exhibition of his work.Source—www.eyemagazine.com/feature.php?id=77&fid=439
Writers:
Dimcevska, Vicky, Assistant Curator, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, ACTGabrielle Eade, Powerhouse Museum
staffcontributor
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- One of Australia's best known graphic and poster artists, Douglas Annand also had a distinguished career as a camouflage artist during the Second World War. As a member of the Camouflage Committee formed by the Ministry of Home Security, Annand was instrumental in developing new techniques for camouflage in Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1976
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-33.829075 Longitude151.24409 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1976-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mosman, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by completing this biography
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- Enid Cambridge's gently modernist paintings on a domestic scale gave her many supporters in the first half of the 20th century.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1976
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1976-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and caricaturist, was born in Adelaide. After studying art at the National Gallery Schools in Melbourne he spent eight years as editorial cartoonist on the New Zealand Free Lance (1927-34), e.g. The Old Horse Takes the Road Again (United Political Party) 1928 (ill. Grant, 114), Slaying the Goliath of Unemployment 1929 (ill.119), Handicapped by their Friends 1931 (ill.122), The Universal Squeeze 1932 (ill.121) and A High Exchange Altitude Record? 1932 (Heath Robinson/ Emmett style inflation of a cow to help farmers). He returned to Sydney in 1934 and freelanced until employed by the Sydney Sun and Sunday Sun to draw the main political cartoons after Tom Glover died in 1938. His original Sun cartoons include ones about Sir Eric Spooner (Spooner Papers ML), done in 1934 as a freelance, and ones done on 13 October 1938 and in 1939 as straight political cartoons when Spooner had become deputy leader. A wartime cartoon of world leaders (reproduced Pix 12 May 1945, 30) calls him 'Stuart Peterson of Sydney “Sun”’. He was included in the National Gallery of Canada’s War Cartoons and Caricatures of the British Commonwealth at Otttawa in 1941. Two original cartoons dated 1944 and 1945 are in the Mitchell Library (PXD 764). The National Library of Australia, Canberra, has a plate of 'Ever feel like this?’ showing a huge bomb as an owl gazing at the world as a mouse, evidently from the Sun . F.F. Lynx, The Pen is Mightier (Lindsay Drummond Ltd, Great Britain 1946) and/or Joseph Darracott, A Cartoon War (London, 1989) illustrated his Keeps Rolling Along of 1943 showing Stalin as a bulldozer.
Peterson contributed to the Bulletin in the 1920s and 1930s (included in c.1930s list of Bulletin Artists, Px*D557 pt 5 '46’). 8 original cartoons of 1923-37 and 117 caricatures of 1923-28, many of NZ subjects, are in the ML Bulletin collection.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1900
- Summary
- Mid 20th century New Zealand and Australian newspaper cartoonist and caricaturist
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1976
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1976-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lambeth, London, England
- Biography
- Artist & engraver (1994 – 1976). Born into a London working class family in 1894, Frank Davies Manley was educated at local schools. His innate ability to accurately render an evocative image with a few well placed lines was evident as a teenager. Encouraged by his headmaster, he was accepted in 1909 at the prestigious De La Rue and Company to undertake a seven year apprenticeship as an engraver. He attended London’s Central School of Art & Crafts and Bolt Court School of Engraving & Lithography, later both to become part of London University of the Arts, for formal tuition as an adjunct to the apprenticeship. WWI intervened and the period of indenture was never completed.
After working in the publishing industry, Manley was recruited in 1928 by the nascent Commonwealth Bank Note Printing Branch in Melbourne and there his fine engraving ability proven, his role grew to include design. The first stamp wholly designed and engraved by Manley was the 1930 Kingsford Smith Commemorative Series and his last, Archer , was to mark the 1960 Melbourne Cup Centenary. Of all the stamps issued by the Australian Post Master for mainland and territorial use during this thirty year period, in excess of ninety were designed by Manley. He engraved a larger number of the dyes for printing plate production.
Manley’s designs included native animals, royal definitives, historical commemoratives, war and peace time acknowledgements and Australian iconic images for everyday postage.
Two hundred and twenty-three Australian artists anonymously submitted six hundred and sixty-three designs to a competition organized by the Post Master General in 1946 in an effort to find some exciting new stamp design ideas. Eight were short listed for production, but only two were seen to fruition. F. D. Manley’s Hereford Bull’s Head design issued in 1948 was one of these.
Bank note design and production fell within the scope of work carried out at Note Printing Branch during this period and of the notes in the series released 1933-34, Manley designed the rear face of each denomination. Of the series that was released 1953-54, Manley designed the front face of the ten shilling and ten pound notes and the rear face of the five and twenty pound notes. He also designed Government documents which required nationalistic, security quality graphics, such as war bonds and savings stamps, food ration coupons, postal notes and naturalization certificates.
The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology approached Manley in the post-war years to teach etching, engraving and die sinking to apprentices in the printing trade, a post he held for five years concurrent with his full time employment at Note Printing.
Manley was an active member of the Victorian Artist’s Society and a member of their governing board in the 1940s and 50s. He used his personal time to dabble in many artistic media. He excelled at fine detailed work that mirrored the techniques he applied in the workplace. He painted the Australian landscape in watercolour and oils, produced linocuts and etchings, some which he hand coloured, and in his later years he produced many ink and wash drawings of the facades of Melbourne’s historic buildings. In 1964 the Victorian State Library purchased a watercolour painting of the Melbourne Town Hall for its collection.
After his retirement, in January 1960 Manley was invited to join the Stamp Advisory Committee which has the ultimate power over the choice of prospective and finished stamp designs. He served on the committee for five years.
Between February and June 2007, the Post Master Gallery in Melbourne held an exhibition featuring the work of the master engravers of the Note Printing Branch of the Reserve Bank, those who had skillfully incised the dies used to produce all Australian postage stamps in the period 1937 to 1973. The 'Artists of Steel’ exhibition subsequently went on tour of Australia to major cities and regional towns. Speaking about the exhibition, curator Richard Breckon (Australia Post Historian) named Frank Manley as the pre-eminient artist of steel, having engraved and/or designed almost all stamps released in the 1930s and 1940s and a large number from the 1950s.
The enormous body of work attributed to Frank Davies Manley is a valuable legacy to philately, engraving, art and design.
Writers:
Gay, Sandra
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 October 1894
- Summary
- Manley was a prolific designer of Australian postage stamps 1929 - 1959.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Jan-76
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1976-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- Watercolourist, teacher and illustrator. Born in Sydney in 1898, Phyllis Tindall was the youngest child, and only known daughter, born to Charles and Mary Tindall. Her early interest in art seems to have come from her father who was a notable watercolour artist best known for his many images of ships on Sydney Harbour. Her older brother, M.C. Tindall, was also an artist.
Despite her birth name, Phyllis was known professionally as 'Nessie Tindall’, this forename being a Scottish colloquial shortening for the fabled Loch Ness monster, and may be a nickname given to Phyllis by her father who was born in Scotland. Nessie made her artistic debut aged (approximately) ten at the annual spring show of the Royal Art Society (RAS), where she exhibited four watercolours priced from three to ten guineas. In the July/August 1913 issue of The Salon (the journal of the Institute of Architects of NSW) Nessie Tindall was listed as being the First Prize Scholarship Winner of the RAS Students’ Annual Exhibition. A well observed pencil study of a nude woman by the artist was illustrated on page 37 of this 1913 publication.
Nessie exhibited almost every year with the RAS from 1910-22 and advertised her availability to teach “outdoor lessons in landscape painting” in the Society’s annual exhibition catalogue several times during that period, the first time being in 1915 when she was aged only seventeen. In 1915 she was living at her parents’ home in Gordon Road, Lindfield, while working from a studio at Norwich Chambers, 56 Hunter Street, Sydney.
Tindall’s last involvement with the RAS was in 1922 when she exhibited two works at the annual spring show. Late that year her father, along with several other longstanding members, was removed from the RAS executive council. This snub to her father’s reputation may explain why she stopped exhibiting with the RAS, even though her father returned to exhibiting with the Society in the late 1920s. While her father was a foundation member of the Australian Watercolour Institute (AWI) in 1924, Nessie never exhibited with the AWI, despite being proficient in the medium. In the 1925 Sands Directory she was listed as “lady tracer” (for the record a lady-tracer was an early twentieth century position; women would copy detailed plans in architectural or engineering offices by carefully tracing the original, this trade ended with the invention of mechanical copying machines after World War II).
During the early 1920s Nessie contributed several cartoons to The Bulletin . These were all ink wash joke blocks, such as: 'She was no gambler’ (22 July 1920, pg 18); 'When great minds, etc’ (7 October 1920, pg 16); 'A stitch in time’ (28 October 1920, pg 14); 'Great work’, (24 July 1924, pg 19); and 'A woman of her word’ (21 August 1924, pg 16).
In 1928 she married bank clerk Oswald Ernest Piper. It is unclear whether she abandoned her art after her marriage. While electoral roles in 1930 and 1936 list Tindall doing “home duties” rather than working as an artist, Sands Directory lists her working from a studio at 10 Bligh Street up to 1932. The last known work created by the artist is a simple pen line image of flannel flowers that was used as the frontispiece for A first-year Australian Botany by Elsie A. Cooke and Myrtle Gillham (Dymocks Book Arcade, Sydney, 1932). Nellie Tindall died, aged in her in her early fifties, in 1950.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- Sydney based watercolourist, illustrator and teacher active during the first half of the twentieth century. The artist was the daughter of the Scottish born marine watercolourist C.E.S. Tindall.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-Jul-76
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-22.1646782 Longitude144.5844903 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1976-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Queensland
- Biography
- Kenneth McConnel (1895, 1898* or 1899-1976) was born in Queensland and graduated from the University of Sydney in 1924 or 1925, as a student of Leslie Wilkinson and AS Hook, after serving in the First World War. He spent four years in London, working at Sir Ashton Webb’s office and attending night lectures. On return to Sydney in 1928, he became a partner with Joseph Fowell, who had been working with Wilkinson when McConnel was a student. Fowell and McConnel won the design competition for the BMA Building in Macquarie Street, which was the first Australian building to win an RIBA Medal (Bronze) in 1933. Further partners were taken on and the firm was known as Fowell, McConnel and Mansfield when it completed the Orient Line Building in Spring Street, Sydney in 1940 (with London architect Brian O’Rorke). This work won the NSW RAIA Sulman Medal in 1943 and the RIBA Bronze Medal in 1947. In 1938 however, McConnel withdrew from the firm because of ill health, but he recovered enough to serve in the army during World War II and afterwards joined the NSW Housing Commission. In 1949, he set up a new practice – focusing on houses; many on country properties. Between 1949 and 1973, he also designed a variety of residential buildings for the War Veterans Home in Dee Why. To cope with an expanding workload, Melbourne architect Stan Smith joined the practice in 1950 (partner 1952) and Peter (RN) Johnson in 1951 (partner 1954) and the practice was formally named McConnel Smith and Johnson in 1955. Initially they worked in McConnel’s garage at Edgecliff; moving to nearby stables in 1952.Sources—Decoration and Glass biography, 1 July 1935, p41.—Jackson, Davina. 2004. Information supplied by McConnel Smith and Johnson, November.—NSW Architects Registration Board database, December 2004. This lists his birthdate as 1899; sometimes dates were listed for 1 January of the year after the actual birthdate. He was last registered in 1976; contradicting other information that he died in 1973.—Taylor, Jennifer. Undated. Article on McConnel Smith and Johnson for a monograph not yet published.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1890s
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1976
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-37.425 Longitude143.891667 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1976-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Creswick, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and gallery director, was born at Creswick (Vic.) on 31 December 1889, the second youngest child of Dr Robert Charles Lindsay and his wife Jane Williams. Early childhood ear infections left him with permanent deafness in one ear, which he sometimes used to his advantage. Because he was so much younger than his artist siblings Daryl had little contact with them as a child, and did not join them in their Melbourne illustrating careers. Indeed he was at first more interested in horses than art, and spent some years working as a jackaroo. Even though his hearing problems should have precluded him from a military career he enlisted in the AIF, in the Service Corps and served in France. In 1916, while on leave in London, he met with his sister Ruby and her husband Will Dyson , who was Australia’s first official war artist. On 31 December 1916, Daryl’s birthday, his brother Reg who was a gunner, was killed. within weeks Dyson had organised for Daryl to become his batman. This new position moved him away from the front line and also introduced him to art, encouraging him to draw alongside him. C.E.W. Bean, Australia’s official historian for World War I, appointed him as an artist alongside his mentor. Daryl also drew studies for army surgeons, creating an accurate medical record of injuries. This led to being appointed as the official medical artist to the Sidcup Hospital for facial reconstruction. He subsequently befriend the plastic surgeon, Harold Gillies, who was also a landscape painter. This connection led to a friendship with Sir Henry Tonks of the Slade. Daryl subsequently studied drawing at the Slade one day a week and through this connection as well has his family links, came to mix socially with artistic and literary London.
In early 1919 Daryl and Ruby paid a short visit to their Irish relatives. She became ill on the journey home, and died soon after, an early victim of the Spanish Influenza. He returned to Australia the same year, and held his first exhibition of dawings at the Decoration Galleries in Melbourne. In 1921 he returned to London where he became he became engaged to Joan a Weigall, a cousin of the Boyds. They married on 14 February 1922 and as Joan Lindsay she became one of Australia’s most loved writers.
In 1925 they built their home at Mulberry Hill, at Baxter on the Mornington Peninsular. Here Daryl painted: landscapes, still lives and his most popular subject matter, race horses. Friends, including the artist George Lambert , came to stay and it was here that Lambert drew his portrait of the elderly Jane Lindsay.
When the Great Depression made life too expensive they leased Mulberry Hill, and moved to Bacchus Marsh where he scraped a living as a black and white artist and made paintings on a small scale. Although without money, he was not without influence and in 1930 was able to lobby to have his brother Norman 's novel Redheap banned in Australia. He invented the 'Ben Bowyang’ comic strip for the Melbourne Herald in 1933 with gags supposedly by C.J. Dennis, who rarely delivered them. Once they had money saved Daryl and Joan Lindsay travelled by cargo boat to Europe. In London Daryl made many studies of the de Basil company’s ballet dancers. The subsequent exhibition was a resounding commercial success. After returning to Australia and Mulberry Hill, Daryl was persuaded by Sir Keith Murdoch to take the post of curator at the National Gallery of Victoria. After Murdoch engineered the removal of J. S. (Jimmy) MacDonald, Daryl Lindsay was offered the post of Director in 1942. Daryl Lindsay encouraged the scholarship of his curator of prints and drawings, Dr Ursula Hoff, and also worked with Professor Joseph Burke to lift the standard of art scholarship in this country. Through his friendship with Sir Robert Menzies and as a member of the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board he advanced the cause of national gallery for Australia and ensured that its first interim director was his nominee, James Mollison.
In his old age Daryl continued to paint, and also kept a connection to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery where he was Trustee. The last young gallery director he mentored was Ron Radford, later director of the National Gallery of Australia.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanMendelssohn, Joanna
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 31 December 1889
- Summary
- Artist, illustrator and the most influential gallery director in 20th century Australia. The second youngest of the 10 Lindsay children.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Dec-76
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-25.5942221 Longitude151.3008262 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1976-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bowen, North Qld., Australia
- Biography
- photographer, was born in Bowen, North Queensland, youngest daughter of Isobel and William Agar. She trained at the Bain Photographic Studios in Toowoomba, run by James and Annie Bain, becoming their chief photographer. In 1918 she moved to Sydney and opened her own studio at Denison House, George Street, where she employed several people, including her sister Alice as a retoucher.
Agar’s stylish portrait photographs – with strong, dramatic cross lighting and theatrical, almost unnatural, poses – appeared regularly in Sydney magazines such as Home and Society in the 1920s. These photographs (of brides, society misses and 'wannabes’) are highly distinctive, each unmistakably Agar’s work although revealing very little about the sitter. Her niece recalls that Agar herself was as glamorous as any of her photographs – as is evident from her self portrait.
In April 1933 Agar 'slipped off quietly’ and married James W. Hardie, an accountant. Not for her the wispy veils and long bridal trains of the brides she had photographed:
She wore a frock of parchment satin covered with a velvet coat of the same shade with a lovely collar of sable, into which she had tucked a spray of orchids. Her small brown velvet hat matched her furs, and the 'tout ensemble’ was very charming indeed.
Agar subsequently retired from her photographic career. At this, according to Cato, 'the leading camera men of this country breathed a sigh of relief’. She died at Edgecliff, Sydney, in 1976.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- Glamorous and highly accomplished photographer best known for her images of Sydney socialites and brides. Such was her skill that when she retired upon marriage Cato claims 'the leading camera men of this country breathed a sigh of relief'.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1976
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.8894781 Longitude151.1274125 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1976-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ashfield, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Born in 'Moonagee Hall’ Ashfield, New South Wales. Richardson trained as a nurse and nursed in hospitals and privately for eleven years. She came to Western Australia frequently to visit her family and stayed in 1924 to nurse an aunt who had demetia and could not be left alone. Richardson remained with her to 1936 and during this time started to paint wildflower photographs. These were published in 1929 in a book with Helen Odgers. The originals are with the Department of Agriculture. Richardson then decided to paint properly and studied with Florence Fuller and later with A. B. Webb. She exhibited three oil paintings A Spring Day, Pelican Point and Queen’s Lilies with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1936. In 1937 the reviewer remarked, “Ida Richardson’s no 31 Geraniums is a distinct improvement over previous work”. In 1939 when she showed with the Western Australian Women Painters and Applied Arts Society Charles Hamilton noted that her Bowl of Roses was the best of the “relatively unimportant” oil paintings. Richardson moved to Albany, Western Australia in 1940 and attended Albany Summer Schools. This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- Miss Ida Worsley Richardson was born in 1881. She was a painter and a nurse. Richardson exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1936.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1976
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1950-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1950
- Summary
- Philippa Cullen was one of the performers closely associated with Aleks Danko and other performance artists in the 1970s. She died suddenly while visiting India in 1975,
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1975
- Age at death
- 25
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1938-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Wendy Paramor was the only woman artist to flourish in the very male atmosphere of Sydney’s Central Street Gallery in the late 1960s, yet she did not personally benefit from the reassessment of women artists in the mid-1970s. By the time the world became a friendlier place for artists who were also single mothers, she had died too soon.She was born in Melbourne, but when she was five her family moved to Sydney’s north shore,and she attended school at SCEGGS Redlands and then Wenona. When she left school at the age of 15 her father insisted that she take a secretarial course, but the following year she enrolled in art school. As was common in the 1950s she enrolled at both East Sydney Technical College, and the smaller atelier classes of the Julian Ashton Art School.In 1960 she joined the exodus of young Australians seeking adventure in Europe. For most of her time there she was based in the south of France, but also received a grant from the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, so was based in Portugal. She was able to exhibit in Lisbon, Coimbra and Oporto. Before she returned to Australia she travelled to New York, where she also exhibited. She returned to Australia in 1963. The work she had seen in Europe, and especially the USA, profoundly influenced the direction of her art, and she easily gravitated to the radical USA influenced artists who formed the nucleus of the Central Street collective in 1966. The year before she had held her first solo exhibitions at both Watters Gallery in Sydney and the Bognar Gallery in Los Angeles.Although she was exhibiting in Central Street, Wendy Paramor was physically removed from the stark white gallery walls and the narrow city lanes. In 1966 she removed herself to West Hoxton, in the south west of Sydney, in a house designed for her by Philip Cox. It was here, in 1967, that she brought her newborn son Luke home. She made the decision not to marry his father, the artist Vernon Treweeke.In 1968 three of her sculptures were included in The Field, the groundbreaking exhibition of Australian abstract art at the National Gallery of Victoria. Her work was selected for major exhibitions including International Young Contemporaries in Tokyo in 1969, the Marland House Sculpture competition and the innovative Mildura Sculpture Triennials of 1970 and 1973. This was the time just before new wave feminism once again made women artists visible, and she received neither critical acclaim not commercial sales.In 1973, the year Luke turned six, she was diagnosed with a cerebral tumor. In the last two years of her life she returned to semi-figurative work and landscapes. She died on 28 November 1975 at the Wolper Jewish Hospital in Woollahra.In 2000 Alan Oldfield, who had been a close friend, curated a major exhibition of her sculpture for the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, a western Sydney arts organisation that was not even imagined when she was living in its neighbourhood.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 December 1938
- Summary
- Wendy Paramor was the only woman painter and sculptor to flourish in the hard edge colour field abstractionist Central Street. She died young, of cancer, at a time when this art was out of fashion. More recently her oeuvre has been reassessed and she is now recognised as a significant artist of her time.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 28-Nov-75
- Age at death
- 37
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1925-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Brian Finemore, the first curator of Australian art, was born on 8 October 1925 in South Yarra. His old friend, Stephen Murray-Smith, wrote that his birthplace “was about as far from the centre of Melbourne as he ever cared to wander”. He lived his entire life either in the city or close to it. In his later years when he moved to a flat at East Melbourne he proclaimed: “Imagine a man of my age and position being forced to live in the suburbs!”He attended school at St Patrick’s College in East Melbourne, and in 1948 became one of the first undergraduate students to enrol in Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne. His initial years at university saw him more engaged with social life and the performing arts than study and he did not graduate until 1959. His final results were however sufficiently distinguished to gain him an appointment to the National Gallery of Victoria. He was initially appointed Assistant Curator of Australian Art, but the position was soon changed to a full curatorship as he easily extended his role to collecting, exhibiting and advocating for Australian art. By the time of his death Finemore had been personally responsible for the acquisition of over a third of the works in the Australian collection of the Gallery. He took an essentially provincial Victorian collection and gave it a national focus. On occasion he would pay for his own research travel to Sydney so that he could gain a national perspective. When the gallery was not prepared to pay exhibiting artists a stipend, he did on occasion pay them out of his own salary. Finemore also focussed attention on the quality of Australia’s colonial art, especially the work of Eugene von Guerard and S. T. Gill. He was also very involved in the art of his own time. Two of his later exhibitions, The Field (1968) and Object and Idea (1973, effectively defined the art of their time. His other great contribution was as a mentor, as he happily shared his knowledge and his insights with younger colleagues. Finemore was however very much a man of his generation, and shared the “progressive” distaste for the art of Albert Namatjira, perhaps because those who most intensely championed Namatjira’s work came from the suburbs, and he loathed the suburbs.His friend and colleague, Gordon Thomson, called Brian Finemore “the last of the boulevardiers”, and he relished the cosmopolitan style.Brian Finemore was murdered at his flat on 23 October 1975. Two years after his death the National Gallery of Victoria published a collection of his writing on art, under the title Freedom from Prejudice.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 8 October 1925
- Summary
- Brian Finemore was the first curator of Australian art. He both shaped the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria and mentored a new generation of curators. He died in 1975.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Oct-75
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude43.7009358 Longitude7.2683912 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nice, France
- Biography
- Jean (Georges Henri) Fombertaux (1920-1975) was born in Nice, France, gained his diploma of Architecture from the Sydney Technical College in 1948, when he was working for Lipson & Kaad. Shortly after he was registered that year, he left for an architect’s job in South Africa, returning in 1951. He set up in private practice and later joined HP Oser & Associates, becoming a partner there in 1961. For further information, his daughter is Francois Fombertaux, ABC TV.Source—Correspondence and clippings archived by the NSW RAIA’s 20th Century Building Register, accessed 2004.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1920
- Summary
- Jean Fombertaux was a notable architect in Sydney during the 1950s and 1960s, a partner of Oser and Fombertaux.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1975
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude-37.9006286 Longitude145.0886389 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Oakleigh, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 30 July 1913
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1975
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 13 August 1908
- Summary
- Michael Gerstl was a Viennese designer who emigrated to Australia in 1947 to set up Gerstl, a cabinetmaking business with many European immigrant clients. Commissions for hotel groups saw it grow to over 3,500 clients and expanded premises. Remembered for use of exotic, detailed timber veneers, the range of their work was, in reality, broad, reflecting the variety of architects and clients the company served.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Jun-75
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter and commercial artist, born in England 12 October 1906, where she trained as a commercial artist. Her English commercial work includes Dainty Doris Goes Shopping 1927. In 1936 she left her first husband for Bill Courcier (with whom she had four children); they emigrated to Sydney in 1937. Long had a solo exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in 1943. She won third prize for portrait of seaman in the 'War at Sea’ section of CEMA’s (Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts) 'Australia at War’ exhibition (NGV, then AGNSW 1945). She was regularly hung in the Archibald Prize exhibition and with the Sydney Society of Artists; also a member of CAS Melbourne. Lived in Paddington, Sydney, until 1967 when she and Bill moved permanently to their cottage in Bundeena. They finally retired to Cambridge (UK), where she died on 3 June 1975.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 October 1906
- Summary
- Known for her commercial work in England, Long worked mainly as painter after emigrating to Australia. Her work was regularly included in the Archibald Prize.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Jun-75
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude36.29776655 Longitude22.96564518 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Potamos, Kythera, Greece
- Biography
- Dimitrios Nikolois (James Nicholas) Fardoulys was born at Potamos, on the Grecian Island of Kythera in 1900 the youngest of the four sons born to Nikolois Fardoulys and Rosini née Konninos. Opportunities for the next generation were limited in this farming community so he was sent to Australia at the outbreak of WWI, aged fourteen years. His journey was disrupted by an enforced stay in Colombo before he finally made his way to Warwick where he was under the care of an uncle, Mick Catsoulis. For the next twelve years he worked in cafes in Queensland and New South Wales including the Golden Gate Café, Southport, which he operated for a year in 1922. He also worked on farms and sheep stations which were later to be the inspiration of some of his paintings.
In 1925 Fardoulys married Gladys Elizabeth Mary Knight (1904-70) who performed as a ventriloquist with a travelling troupe and joined them in their tours of country Queensland and northern New South Wales. Later they operated the Olympia Café in Goondiwindi (then owned by Mick Catsoulis) until it burned down in 1931. The family, which now included two girls and two boys, settled in Brisbane the same year and for the next twenty-nine years Fardoulys worked as a taxi driver.
It was after his retirement and following the example of his fellow naïve artist Charles Callins (1887-1982) that he took up painting seriously in 1960. He recalled of his school days in Kythera: “Art was compulsory, and I was pretty good at school as a youngster in black and white. From that I went to oils without any tuition whatever.” He also admitted that when in Brisbane during the early years of the Great Depression “I used to do a little painting to amuse myself and could always sell one for £2 or £3. This kept us going” (in Bruce 1968).
Matilda Joe at Cleveland was included in the HC Richard’s Prize at the Queensland Art Gallery in 1961, the first in what became a significant body of work. He regularly participated in group exhibitions in Brisbane including the Queensland Art Gallery’s HC Richards and LJ Harvey Prizes from 1965 to 1972 and received special encouragement from the members of the Contemporary Art Society of Australia (Queensland Branch). A widely recognised work, Blue Roses , was acquired by Ray Hughes (later a prominent Sydney art dealer) after being exhibited in the Society’s Annual Autumn Exhibition in 1965.
Brisbane’s principal art critic of the period, Dr Gertrude Langer, became familiar with Fardoulys’s work and she awarded him a joint first prize at the 1964 Warana-Caltex Queensland Art Competition for The story of the Nativity in the north-west . She continued to demonstrate her enthusiasm for his work in her review of his first solo exhibition at the Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane, two years later – it was a sell out:
“The collection is a joy. Fardoulys has the wonderful innocence and intensity of vision characteristic of the genuine artists of the people. Like them he paints straight from the heart and has no recourse to methods devised by others to express his own feelings… An instinctive sense of sequence, rhythm and balance give his work a charming decorativeness…” (Langer 1966).
Langer also praised his work in the concurrent Warana Caltex Prize and awarded him the 'Traditional oil’ category for The strawberry pickers, Glasshouse Mts for the 1969 exhibition.
Other solo exhibitions of his work were held at the Design Arts Centre, Brisbane, in 1968 and 1970, Bonython Art Gallery, Sydney in 1969 and, jointly with Charles Callins the year following his death, at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane in 1976.
Although Fardoulys’s work had been well received in Brisbane, he attributed his greatest promotion to the efforts of the humourist Barry Humphries. When Humphries was in Brisbane during October 1965 for his production of Excuse I, Another Nice Night’s Entertainment for J C Williamson Theatres he brought The land of milk and honey from the Contemporary Art Society (Queensland Branch) Annual Interstate Exhibition held at Finney’s Auditorium. Subsequently Humphries wrote from London to commission the portrait used for the cover of his 1968 publication The Barry Humphries book of Innocent Australian Verse ( The Sunday Mail , Brisbane, 16 Oct 1966, p 17). By this time Fardoulys was already represented in the collection Art Gallery of New South Wales; The Cattle rustlers, Carnarvon Ranges was purchased by the gallery after the then Director, Hal Missingham, judged the 1966 HC Richards Memorial Prize.
Fardoulys was very proud of his categorization as a naïve painter and stated his qualifications for being so considered: “I work for depth and clarity as far as the eye can see. You must be able to see all the detail, even from a distance. There is no haze in my paintings.” But he also asserted that “All my paintings are purely imagination, and they all have a story. To be a 'primitive’ you give all the detail and more or less a story as well” (in Bruce 1968). His paintings are distinctive for the colourful palette he favoured. He did not mix colours, generally working directly from the tube without a palette and using very small brushes. Fardoulys’s output was slow as he could only produce one small painting a week, larger works would take two weeks or more if he suffered from his not infrequent attacks of asthma. The sale of works was of great financial advantage as he and his wife relied on the old-age pension. Consequently he found it difficult to assemble enough pieces when he had to pull works together for an exhibition.
As he stated, his works were imaginative, though his imagination was inspired by actual incidents. He heard the story on the ABC of Grace Bussell who in 1876 rode her horse through raging surf to rescue forty-eight people from the steamer Georgette near Cape Leeuwin, Western Australia, and from this story he produced Heroine of the ages – Grace Bussel 1876, which he exhibited first in the Queensland Branch of the Contemporary Art Society in 1964 (P Fardoulys pers. comm. 2009). Imagination also inspired his paintings of key adventures in Australia’s colonial past such as The start of Burke and Wills 1860 ( 1972, Queensland Art Gallery) and Through plain and canyon the Redford drive goes on 1870 (1971, National Gallery of Australia). Although covered wagons were in use in the years of Australian settlement their portrayal in The start of Burke and Wills 1860 and Migration to Queensland 1840 (location unknown), like the occasional vulture in his early works, probably owes more to the influence of western movies.
Pharlap’s win in the 1930 Melbourne Cup had already entered Australian mythology and in 1968 Fardoulys painted The surge of the crowd – the red terror – Melbourne Cup 1930 (location unknown). Fardoulys also essayed paintings on Indigenous people in works such as The story of the Nativity in the North-West , Jedda , A gallery in the Never Never , A tucker walkabout and Indigenous pride as well as imaginative works in The cross currents, Magellan Straits, South Pacific , Symbolism of peace in the Green Vastness and Reincarnation . Despite his assertions of imagination in his works he unashamedly copied images of horses or cattle from newspapers to give a sense of reality to his work ( The Sunday Mail , Brisbane, 16 Oct 1966, p 17) but the disjuncture of these images imparts a great deal of the charm to his works.
His favoured subjects were decorative panels of exotic birds and his part-Persian cat, Doula. He recalled:
“My cat is a famous cat you know. He is in a lot of paintings. They want him. He is about fourteen years of age. He has been painted dozens of times, you know, by request. ... There was an exhibition about a year ago. There were big abstracts on the walls and that sort of thing, and the only painting that sold was my cat.” (in Lehmann 1977, p 58).
Increasingly poor health by 1974 saw Fardoulys’s output much reduced. He died on 15 September 1975 and was interred at the Mt Gravatt Cemetery. Callins and Fardoulys were widely accepted as Queensland’s leading naïve artists: they were paired in an article in The Bulletin in 1968 and were the focus of a survey exhibition at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, in 1976.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2010
- Born
- b. 1900
- Summary
- Naive painter James Fardoulys was born in Greece in 1900 and came to Australia in 1914. His work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of NSW and the Queensland Art Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Sep-75
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-33.8225666 Longitude151.1923402 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Leonards, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, drew cartoons for Smith’s Weekly in the 1920s, e.g. 'Smith’s Tutankhamania; Cleopatra has some trouble with an extra large pearl’ 10 November 1923, 17; (fat lady to artist) '“And do you really paint pictures in the nude?”/ “Rarely; usually in this gown”’ 24 November 1923, 16; '“Awfully topping nudes you did for me, old boy. I’ve got them hung in the dining-room. Only trouble is the bally gardener insists on having all his meals with us”’, Smith’s Weekly 14 June 1924, 23.
Whiting published Bags! , a book of jokes about trousers (Melbourne: Ramsay Publishing, n.d. [1926?]). A cartoon of a woman, man and caddie on golf links appeared in Table Talk 1931 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 189). Several of his originals are in the Mitchell Library’s Bulletin collection. William Moore notes that caricatures by Ray Whiting were favourably received when shown at Melbourne in 1934.
Whiting served in the AIF during WWII. A cheerful and lively Bulletin cartoon, published 16 December 1942, which shows a soldier querying a mate’s bent bayonet – “Jerry?”/ “Bully!” (original PxD547/7) – is signed 'Ray Whiting Western Desert A.I.F. '42’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 7 October 1898
- Summary
- Whiting was a mid 20th century newspaper and wartime cartoonist who contributed to Smith's Weekly, Table Talk and Bulletin. He served with with Australian Imperial Forces during WW2.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1975
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude47.4925 Longitude19.051389 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Budapest, Hungary
- Biography
- cartoonist and illustrator, was born and educated in Budapest where he worked primarily as a cartoonist and illustrator. He had contributed to about 100 books, including editions of Poe and Baudelaire, before he migrated to Sydney in 1939. The Jew with a Fiddle ( Der Yidel mit der Fiedel ) 1960s, watercolour and crayon, and Morning Prayer 1960s, watercolour, are illustrated in Josef Lebovic, Australian Miscellany collectors’ list no.55 (1996), cats 102-103. In Australia he exhibited his b/w work mainly with Holdsworth Galleries. His work has also been shown with Josef Lebovic.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Hungarian cartoonist and illustrator who migrated to Sydney in 1939. Before arriving in Australia Szigeti contributed illustrations to nearly 100 books, including editions of Poe and Baudelaire.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1975
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-38.1913998 Longitude144.5571182 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bellarine Peninsula, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1895
- Summary
- Artist and masseur
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1975
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-32.8983333 Longitude151.7344444 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mayfield, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, illustrator, printmaker and writer, was born Margaret Arnott at Mayfield, NSW, on 6 June 1890. She visited England frequently and made etchings, linocuts, screenprints and woodcuts. She exhibited linocuts with the Younger Group of Australian Artists in the Education Dept Gallery, Sydney, in 1924-25. As Margaret Oppen she made bookplates, including Bookplate for Eirene Mort c.1930 (wood engraving, NLA S9651) and a linocut bookplate for Edith Potter in 1934 of butterflies with an inscription in German, 'I love the little denizens of air’ (ill. The Age of Ex Libris: Bookplates from the Library’s Collection , Baillieu Library MU 1996, n.p.). She was included in Deutscher’s Survey of Relief Prints, 1900 50 in 1978. Her granddaughter is the artist Monica Oppen.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 6 June 1890
- Summary
- A painter, illustrator, printmaker and writer, Margaret Arnott visited England frequently and exhibited with the Younger Group of Australian Artists in Sydney. Her granddaughter is the artist Monica Oppen.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1975
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- painter and commercial artist, was born in Brisbane. lways known as Frank, she was educated at All Hallows Convent, then studied art at the Central Technical College under Godfrey Rivers. She exhibited with the Queensland Art Society from 1902 until leaving Australia in 1905 to continue her studies in Paris and London. For two and a half years she wrote regular articles for the Brisbane Courier on her travels and art studies. She joined two mixed studio classes at Colarossi’s for nine months, followed by a shorter period at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, briefly attended La Grande Chaumiére and was taught black-and-white work by Steinlen. After a summer spent sketching and painting in Brittany, she moved to London to study in Frank Brangwyn’s studio, where a teacher called Swan advised her to 'draw with her brain and not her fingers’ – advice she repeated back home on several occasions.
After returning to Brisbane in late 1907, Frank began doing freelance work for the Courier and the Sydney Bulletin, commercial catalogues for Finney’s department store, illustrations for the Queenslander and travel brochures for the AUSN shipping line. In March 1916 Lone Hand published an article by Freda Sternberg in which she was called 'an exceptional business woman’ as well as artist. She was then living in Sydney working for Smith and Julius drawing catalogue illustrations for David Jones and Farmers, covers for Woman’s Mirror, modelling bowls and jugs and painting and illustrating. She also drove her own car.
In 1921, aged thirty-five, she married Andrew Clinton, a naval captain. They had three sons before separating in 1928. From then on, she supported her sons herself. She was said to be one of Australia’s highest paid working women. She painted throughout her long commercial career, holding her first painting exhibition at Sydney in 1922 with Alice Norton. She showed regularly with the Royal Art Society from 1923 until the 1950s; in 1930 she won its George Taylor Memorial Prize of 25 guineas for her oil painting, Rehearsal. She joined the Society of Women Painters in 1919 and exhibited with them annually from 1921. She also held several solo exhibitions.
Her speciality when 'painting seriously’, she said in 1930, was 'children [often her own] in natural surroundings’. Her oil painting, Sydney Water Babies, was reproduced on the cover of B.P. Magazine in December 1930. Feeding Time (c.1920, private collection) is the best known of her many pictures of children among chickens or other animals. She also painted portraits of women; an undated double-sided oil, Chapeau and Interior with Seated Woman in White, is in the Fred and Eleanor Wrobel collection, Sydney.
Wishing to promote more commercial opportunities for younger women artists Payne led the movement that transformed the Sydney Society of Women Painters into the Women’s Industrial Arts Society (thereby alienating Ethel Stephens and other Fine artists). She became the first president in 1935 and gave a series of ABC radio broadcasts for the society. She was friendly with many women artists, including Jessie Traill, Ethel Carrick Fox and the writer Dorothea Mackellar. She championed Daphne Mayo and Lloyd Rees early in their careers in Brisbane. In 1937 she was awarded the King’s Coronation Medal for her work in the arts. In 1946 she helped Billy Hughes in his campaign for the Federal seat of North Sydney.
Writers:
Philp, Angela
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- a painter and commercial artist who was born in Brisbane, Queensland. Payne is said to have been one of Australia's highest paid working women of her time.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1975
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-38.1511747 Longitude146.7878527 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rosedale, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1884
- Summary
- Crochet and knitting demonstrator based in the Apollo Bay area in Victoria. A design for The Weekly Times Crochet Book (1924) was used in one of the posters for the D'Oyley Show in 1979
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1975
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.8583992 Longitude151.1807353 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1975-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Balmain, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator and cartoonist, regularly appeared in the Bulletin and Lone Hand from c.1911 to the early 1930s. Her Lone Hand work includes a one-off strip Ferry Passengers (about different passengers at different times of day, by 'Grace Burn’ [ sic ]) 9 (October 1911), 562, and Renouncing the Vanities (part of a story on Spring Hats illustrated by 'G. Burns’) 10 (February 1912), 322.
Her Bulletin cartoons were far more numerous. They include: The Solution (re temperance) 19 January 1911, 10; Love Versus Pity : 'FIRST LADY: “Whom did you vote for?”/ SECOND LADY: “Oh, dear, I WAS worried! The Liberal was such a darling; but he has money, and the poor Labor man has six children”’ 23 March 1911, 18; The Emancipation of Woman . '“Hurrah! Out of hobbles into trousers”’ (re oriental dress) 27 April 1911, 10; The Urgency of City Reconstruction (re large size of ladies’ hats) 8 June 1911, 11; Where Woman Makes Her Presence Felt . 'Mrs Suburbia after a day’s shopping catches the same train as the business man-and pays her penny fare’ (despite gigantic hat) 31 August 1911, 10; The Pride of the Family 21 September 1911, 11; Her First Cigarette (bilious young thing) 25 January 1912, 11; The Comforter . 'ARTIST: “I wish I had never taken up art.”/ SHE: “Well, there is no direct evidence that you have, is there?”’ 27 June 1912, 10; Cheap Labor (gentry objecting to notice asking everyone to keep streets clean) 24 October 1912, 13; (almost Arthur Rackham drawing style) After the Accident. 'WIFEY (as hubby hits the ground): “There! How careless of you, John! Didn’t I tell you I had on my new hat?”’ (aeroplane accident) 5 February 1914, 22; Comparisons . '“Dear me! What a hideous costume those poor natives wear! Thank Heaven I live in a civilised country”’ (black and white women in almost identical outfits) 4 June 1914, 11; Impudent Hussies (re women threatened by clergyman “Wowser” with Hell for smoking), 'That’s all right; we’ll never be short of a light!’ 12 December 1914, 20; The Temptation of a Modern St Anthony (surrounded by girls) 12 December 1914, 28; A Christmas Card . 'War conducts the orchestra’ 24 December 1914, 11; (clothes) 27 May 1915, 10; His Place in the Sun (re man in swimsuit sleeping on an Australian beach while three destroyers approach) 16 May 1918, 13; 'Your friend is too sweet for words …’ Mitchell Library [ML] original, annotated published 17 October 1918; The Evolution of the Office Girl (in 1915, 1918 & 1922), published 23 February 1922, 18; The Debutante Old and New. '(1) When a girl left school, (2) she used to “put up” her hair and lengthen her skirt. (3) Now she bobs her hair and shortens her skirt’ (3 figures again, like Evolution ) 9 March 1922, 18; How Santa Claus Came (chimney labelled Australia, Santa is a beardless Jap with sack labelled 'Made in Japan’) 30 December 1920, 9; The Girl Who Got the Job c.1922 (large Bulletin original ML 'sent to etcher 31/8/22’: reprinted Heritage 'War’ chapter); (Pierrot and Pierrette) 29 January 1926, 36; Filled the Bill c.1924 (Bulletin original ML Px*D447), published 21 January 1926, 17; (2 young women dressing) No Comfort In It . '“Can you live within your income?”/ “Yes. But I’m terribly overcrowded”’ 13 January 1927, 17; The Higher Mathematics (a woman’s age) 29 December 1927, 34; Nursed it when it was a baby 2 July 1930; (women in boudoir, one at mirror) PETER AND PAUL . '“How do you mean her love is Apostolic?”/ “Why, it palls as his cash peters out!”’ 21 September 1932; (dark realism in 2 frames, one showing three shabby bent men outside unemployment bureau, the other rich couples living it up) THE UNEMPLOYED , 3 February 1932.
On the verso of the Bulletin original Filled the Bill c.1924 (ML Px*D447), published 21 January 1926, 17, is a glued-on joke signed 'Sucre’, who was paid for the gag. It’s better than the gag 'Sucre’ (M. S.(?) Nally, 297 New South Head Road, Edgecliff) did for Betty Paterson (et al.). More significantly, almost obliterated on the back is the address 'Mrs Syd Sullivan, Tryon Road, Lindfield’. Burns married Syd Sullivan , another cartoonist working in quite a different in style, in Mosman, NSW, in 1912. Grace Burns is included in c.1930s list of Bulletin artists (ML Px*D557 pt 5, '4’).
The Edward Burns contributing cartoons to Scribner’s (NY) in 1930s might have been a pseudonym for Burns, or a mistake by Moore.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1883
- Summary
- Early 20th century Bulletin cartoonist.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1975
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1915-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Kilda, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- This entry is a stubb. Please help the DAAO by beginning to write
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 19 January 1915
- Summary
- Laurie Thomas was a pioneer for professional standards in the two state galleries he headed, Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Queensland Art Gallery. Later he was the most influential art critic of the Australian and that newspaper's nominee for director of the Australian National Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Aug-74
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude-36.3569068 Longitude144.7010197 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rochester, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born in Rochester, Victoria, on 9 December 1911.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Note: Heritage biography.Staff WriterNote: Additional information.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 9 December 1911
- Summary
- Mid 20th century painter, illustrator and cartoonist. Probably the most prolific female cartoonist of her generation, Horseman was almost certainly the most visible. Never out of work, she enthusiastically diversified into whatever was offered in these exceptionally misogynist years of cheap syndicated imports.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-May-74
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-37.585285 Longitude141.4037762 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Casterton, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- “I don’t have any detailed biographical material but I do have three small paintings that I think he painted. My father was a psychiatrist in Melbourne in the thirties, forties and early fifties. He specialised in child psychiatry. I know that he knew Mervyn and that Mervyn gave him some works. Dad might well have known him from the left wing art circles that he was part of. However, I think that Mervyn might well have been a patient at Mont Park mental hospital at some stage. When I was a child, we lived at Mont Park. My three paintings are filed away in my flat file but I have scans of them.” [Supplied by contributor Neil Phillips]
Mervyn also exhibited with theSeven Watercolourists Society : [Australian Gallery File].Other AuthorsSeven Watercolourists SocietyContentsFile holds the following annual exhibition catalogues:-First (1931), [Second] (1932), Third [1933?] (2 copies), [Fifth], (1935).
Some artists exhibiting with the Society were :- Geoffrey R. Anderson, James F. Farrell, E. Bonaventure Heffernan, Harry E. Hudson, Dominic Leon, John A. Munro, Mervyn Officer, Rex Battarbee, John A. Gardiner, C. Dudley Wood, James D. McMahon, and by invitation W.H.A. Constable.
Files contain material such as art exhibition catalogues, invitations, press clippings, media releases and/or other ephemeral items relating to Australian artists and galleries, where there are more than three artists exhibiting at the one exhibition. Other material may be collected under individual artists in the Australian Art and Artists file.
Notes
A society based in Melbourne, Victoria. Their first annual exhibition was held in 1931. Alternative spellings of the Society’s name are :- 7 Water-colorists OR 7 Watercolourists.
[https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/32484979?keyword=%22Mervyn%20Officer%22]
Writers:
Neil_Phillips
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2021
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 4 December 1906
- Summary
- Mervyn Officer is described as a commercial artist in an 1941 obituary for his father, the Secretary of the Victorian Graziers Association. He was a student at the National Gallery School (1926, 1927) also illustrated theatre programmes (1926). By 1931, he was exhibiting landscape works at Tavistock House and abstract watercolour works at the Athenaeum Gallery in 1932.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Aug-74
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- Painter, was born in New Zealand to Australian parents uninterested in art on 7 January 1904. Forced to go to work aged 14, he took up a position with an oil company that required him to complete a science and mathematics degree despite always yearning for 'a life of art’. When he discovered the existence of art classed in Australia in his late teens and became a long-term student at Dattilo Rubbo 's classes at the Royal Art Society, where he met Alison Rehfisch , who became his lover. In 1926 he won the Royal Art Society’s student exhibition prize.
6ft 7 ins tall and weighing 20 stone, he was 'the guardian angel of the Royal Art Society. Big, blond [sic], blue-eyed obliging George – if anything went amiss in the place, we said, “Let George do it.” “Let George do it” was the class catchword’ (Power, p.43, quoting Margaret Coen but not acknowledging source). Alison left husband and daughter to go with George to Europe to study and paint. They stayed away five years.
In the 1980s Stephen Scheding owned The Fisherman’s Dawn, Concarneau , oil on hessian 50 × 60 cm, signed 'DUNCAN’.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 January 1904
- Summary
- Painter, was born in New Zealand to Australian parents in 1904; a student of Dattilo Rubbo.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1974
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude51.7957409 Longitude-0.078521 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hertford, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator, printmaker (etchings and woodcuts) and journalist, was born in Hertford, England and educated at Portsmouth High School followed by training as a fashion artist at Portsmouth Technical College. Coming to Australia at the age of 18, she worked as a fashion illustrator and occasional Bulletin cartoonist. Dorothy Ellsmore married Mick Paul , another Bulletin cartoonist and son of Emily Letitia Paul, in 1925 – “And I married an encyclopaedia as well as an artist”, she commented in 1927. Before her marriage, when living in Manly, she signed her Bulletin cartoons 'Dorothy Ellsmore’, afterwards 'Dorothy Ellsmore Paul’.
Occasional political cartoons by Dorothy appeared in the Bulletin in 1922, eg The Coal Position . 'INDUSTRY: “Oh, dear, this suspense is killing me”’ ['Capital’ and 'Labour’ fighting over 'Industry’ – a young woman suspended over a cliff] 8 June 1922, 8. She also drew a cartoon showing NSW as a young woman deciding whether to become 'Extravagance’ or 'Economy’ (the two women flanking her), published 27 April 1922, 9. But she usually drew more naturalistic, 'feminine’ 'society’ cartoons, eg With Her To Help Him . 'MISS WHITE: “I don’t believe there is a thing in the world that George would not dare do with me to help him.”/ MISS BLACK: “Yes, he proposed to you, didn’t he dear?”’ (original ML Px*D503/11), published 13 March 1924; Over-Worked . 'MISS WHITE: “What’s the matter with Dauber? He’s not looking at all himself lately.”/ MISS BLACK: “No, he’s painted a self portrait and he’s trying to look like it”’, ML original Px*D503/13 (colour), published 26 February 1925. The ML Bulletin collection has 78 original cartoons by Ellsmore Paul, dated 1922-32 or undated. NGA has five prints c.1930. Also did bookplates (which NGA may have).
Encouraged by her husband, Dorothy studied painting under Lawson Balfour , Julian Ashton and Sydney Long at Ashton’s Sydney Art School. (She was included in the 1933 Sydney Art School Retrospective exhibition with a drypoint Nude .) Possibly as a result, her cartoons are stylistically schizophrenic. (Or did it have something to do with the fact that she was perfectly ambidextrous?) In black and white work, she said, she most liked the Americans Raleigh and Gruger while among overseas contemporary painters William Orpen was most revered, especially for his portraits. In a 1927 interview she added that the Australian artist she most admired was George Lambert , especially his self-portrait, which she considered was 'the best portrait ever painted by an Australian’. The male in her 1930 cartoon of a couple at the beach Safety in Numbers (ML original) closely resembles Lambert – evidently a deliberate in-joke. A journalist noted she had 'a quaint humor of her own’ after Dorothy told her a story about a policeman visiting the Pauls to check that the occupation of 'domestic duties’ on the electoral rolls really did apply to Mick, not to her.
Ellsmore Paul illustrated stories in a naturalistic style, eg illustration captioned 'Big Ben’s daughter found herself sitting in the dust of the stockyard with the man’s head upon her lap’ for a story in the Sydney Mail of 5 February 1929, 17 (which also has a stylish flapper illustration by her), or a drawing of two flappers with a man on the beach for 'The Flapper’s Romance’, Wentworth Magazine December 1929, 4-5. She did regular illustrations for the Australian Women’s Mirror in the 1920s. Most of all, she drew society cartoons for the Bulletin , eg The Ruling Passion . 'THE DOCTOR: “Well, young lady, what do you imagine is the matter with you now?”/ THE INVALID: “I’m not sure, doctor. Is there anything quite new?”’ 1 April 1926, 18; (blonde artist – possible self portrait? – painting a portrait of a brunette friend) “An artist’s life is terribly poverty-stricken. I have to pinch whenever I want a new frock.”/ “Oh, but do be careful dear. They’re so hard on shoplifters now” 23 December 1926, 16; Well Balanced [two very stylish modernistic women fencing]. '“But, dear, he has such offensive ways.”/ “Yes, dear, but such defensive means”’ 15 December 1927, 3 (paid 45/-); More Of This Depression : '“I MUST have pretty things – you married me for my looks, remember!”/ “Well, you married me for my money – and there’s been a slump in both markets”’ 23 July 1930; Another Case Of Safety In Numbers : '“So you think it is better to pay six small bills than one big one. On the principle that it makes six creditors happy instead of one, I suppose.”/ “Oh, no – because it is easier to dodge one creditor than six” (A3 original ML Px*D503/27) published 11 October 1930; The Mistress of Her Fate 29 July 1931. These are among her 78 original Bulletin drawings in ML (Px*D503).
Some of Ellsmore Paul’s cartoons in Aussie are extremely elegant and stylised (a whiff of Souter?). She was also very fond of puns. Her Aussie cartoons include: two stage performers in gym clothes with giant modernistic balls – yet there is also a far straighter cartoon of three women in short evening dresses by her in the same issue, 15 December 1927, 31 & 43; (woman at dressmakers) “Yes, miss, you just leave yur trousseau to me and there’ll be no mistakes; I never make no bloomers” 15 February 1928, 47; (couple in train – snooty female) 15 January 1929, 18; (formal dance setting) '“What happened to all those nice Jones girls?”/ “Oh, one is living, and two are married!”’ 15 April 1930; (woman and lawyer crossing street) '“But why was the revolver loaded in only one chamber?”/ “Great Scott, man! How many husbands do you think I have?”’ 15 September 1930; (elegant couple at home) '“Do you know, my dear, that in these hard times you’re spending more than you ever did.”/ “Of course, isn’t this the rainy day we’ve always been saving up for!”’ 15 January 1931: two women dressing: '“I’ve changed my mind.”/ “Excellent! Does the new one work any better?”’ 15 June 1931, 17; (modernistic linear drawing of a flapper in pyjamas reclining on a lounge with an angry man in a dinner suit behind her) '“Sowing your wild oats, indeed! I’ve never heard of such a thing – didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t have it!”/ “It’s quite all right, Father, as I am trying to tell you, the crop failed.”’ 15 December 1931; (stylised beach scene) '“They say the bustle is coming in again.”/ [elegant & expressively lethargic woman] “Not into our office; I work for the Government!”’ 15 December 1931.
Some of Dorothy Ellsmore-Paul’s cartoons are more naturalistic, e.g. a crowded mass of women’s heads (more like Esther Paterson ) '“I’ve never heard a word uttered against her.”/ “Goodness! Has she no friends?”’ Aussie 15 October 1931. Several cartoons use figures in fancy dress, eg The Mistress of her fate [English Victorian hunting dress], published Bulletin 29 July 1931, and especially ones in Aussie : (crinolined powdered lady and early Australian military man) '“But, why were you so surprised? I told you that I was coming as my grandfather, and that Grannie used to say I am the image of him!”/ “Yes, but I had no idea the convicts wore such attractive uniforms!”’ 15 November 1928, 25; (early colonial scene comparable to Ure Smith or Thea Proctor figures) 15 [illeg.]ary 1930, 43; (more crinolines) 15 September 1932, 45; (fancy dress ball) 1931; 18th century curls and hats (date obscured).
Ellsmore-Paul also wrote art criticism, including 'The etched work of Sydney Long’, Attic Sydney 1928 and reviews in the Sydney Mail . For the Australian Women’s Mirror she wrote about domestic decoration, e.g. 'The Lily in Design’ 8 May 1934, 13, and 22 May 1934, 13, and 'Art in the Home’ (mildly cynical do-it-yourself advice) 8 November 1927, 18. In 1932 she and Mick Paul exhibited bookplates at David Jones It is unknown if the bookplates were Paul’s own work, her husband’s, both and/or her/their collection as she noted in 1927 that she was a collector of bookplates. She also claimed to have ambitions to be a sculptor then too, despite being already involved in etching.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1900
- Summary
- Early 20th century cartoonist, illustrator, printmaker and journalist, Ellsmore Paul was married to fellow cartoonist Mick Paul. She regularly contributed to the Sydney Bulletin in the 1920s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1974
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude52.9534193 Longitude-1.1496461 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nottingham, England, UK
- Biography
- Watercolorist Ellen Chappell was born in Nottingham, England and came to Australia as a child. Her brother was the sculptor Victor Wager. She studied art at Perth Technical School under J. W. R. Linton and A. B. Webb. Chappell exhibited watercolour scenes with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1922 and 1923 under the name Ellen Wager. She married John Chappell and exhibited thereafter as Ellen Chappell. She exhibited with the Western Australian Women Painters’ and Applied Arts Society in 1939 when the critic Charles Hamilton described her work as, “[f]lower paintings are not numerous, but M. Kimber and E. Chappell have some good ones. E. Cappell’s Kangaroo Paws are her best being strongly and cleanly painted though rather over-detailed in style.” She was a member of the Perth Society of Artists and exhibited regularly from 1950 into the 1960s. Chappell also had a number of solo exhibitions. Her oeuvre was Western Australian wildflowers and landscapes, which were described as “strong and vigorous”. Chappell exhibited Banksias and Sunflowers in the Art Competition at Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1950. She was a member of the Perth Studio Club – a group of women artists who met weekly and shared a studio in the Turf club building in Howard Street. Chappell was art mistress at St Hilda’s School for five years. She also was a member and President of the Western Australian Women’s Society of Fine Arts and Crafts in 1951. Chappell did not enjoy good health and was not always being able to work. A painting of hers was used on a 1962 souvenir calendar for the British Empire and Commonwealth Games held in Perth. Chappell’s work was also included in an exhibition entitled 'Wildflowers in Art’ shown at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1991 to coincide with an International Protea Conference.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1899
- Summary
- Ellen Eva Chappell was born in 1899. She exhibited with the Western Australian Women Painters' and Applied Arts Society in 1939. Chappell was a member of the Perth Society of Artists and exhibited regularly from 1950 into the 1960s. She was a member of the Perth Studio Club.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1974
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Australian-born painter Norah Simpson was born on 5 July 1895 in Sydney. She studied under Dattilo Rubbo at his Rowe Street School in 1911 and travelled to London with her parents in 1912. She attended the Westminster Technical Institute where she studied under Spencer Gore, Harold Gilman, and Charles Ginner. She visited Paris and, through introductions to dealers and collectors from Gilman, viewed works by Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso. Simpson collected books and photographs of the work of these artists and, in 1913, returned to Sydney full of enthusiasm for what she had seen in Europe.
Simpson played an important role in providing first-hand information about Post-Impressionism to young Sydney artists such as Grace Cossington Smith , Roy de Maistre and Roland Wakelin . In 1915, she returned to London and studied with Walter Sickert at the Westminster Technical Institute and also at the school that Gilman and Ginner ran in Soho. In 1919, she lived and worked in Glasgow and was in Paris in 1920. In 1920, Simpson married Edward Richardson Brown and travelled with him to Paris to paint. Following the birth of her son, Donald, she gave up painting and devoted most of her spare time to politics. Sometime before the Second World War she started living with William Henry Cockren whom she married in 1950. Norah Simpson died at Crossways, Instow, North Devon, on 19 February 1974, at the age of 78.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne Note: Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1895
- Summary
- Painter Norah Simpson studied under Dattilo Rubbo in Sydney before studying in London under Walter Sickert. While in Europe she collected books and photographs and viewed works by Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Matisse and Picasso and on her return to Sydney played an important role in providing first-hand information about Post-impressionism to young Sydney artists such as Grace Cossington Smith.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1974
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-36.6194331 Longitude142.4678219 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Murtoa, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, was born Amalie Sara Field at Murtoa, Victoria.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1894
- Summary
- Painter and art teacher, born in Murtoa, Victoria. Her work encompassed meldrumism, landscape, still life and nude subjects.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Jun-74
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude56.1550362 Longitude-3.9480672 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire, Scotland
- Biography
- He was born 29 September 1891, the youngest of nine children of Annette Thorpe and James Fairweather, Deputy Surgeon General of the Indian Medical Service. In keeping with the culture of the time, the baby was left behind in Scotland with his aunts while his parents returned to India. The family was not reunited until 1901, when his father completed his Indian service. They then moved to Jersey, where his mother’s family lived, but the young Ian was sent to school in London. In 1912 he joined the Army and was sent to Officer Training School at Belfast. He was commissioned as an officer in June 1914. Two months later he was captured by the Germans, and spent the rest of the war in POW camps in Germany. He used this time to begin studying Japanese, learning drawing and illustrating Prisoner of War magazine, which alternated with attempts to escape. In 1918 he was repatriated to the Hague, where he began to formally study art. At the end of the war he enrolled at the Commonwealth Forestry Institute, in Oxford, but changed directions and a year later he enrolled at the Slade School in London under Henry Tonks. While studying art by day, he spent his evenings at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London learning Japanese and Chinese. He was beginning to see the inadequacy of the western visual tradition. One of the most important friends he made in London was H.S.Ede, a young curator at the Tate Gallery, who was to become a life-long friend and supporter. Thanks to Ede, Fairweather held a successful exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in London and at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh in 1937, at a time when he was essentially a vagrant artist in South East Asia.Fairweather’s wandering took him to Canada, where he worked as a farm labourer, and then to China. He travelled to Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, before setting out for Bali. He landed in Australia for the first time at Broome in 1933. Fairweather arrived in Melbourne in February 1934. The quality and originality of his art impressed fellow artists George Bell, William Frater and Arnold Shore and he had a successful exhibition at Cynthia Reed’s gallery. Within six months he had left for Davao in the Philippines, which he travelled to via Sydney. After painting there for some months he returned to Beijing, then Formosa (Taiwan) and Hong Kong, fascinated by the Chinese calligraphic tradition. He also travelled to Borneo. In Manila, in 1937, a house fire destroyed much of his earlier work. Fairweather was not especially mindful of his health. He lost a part of a finger after it was infected. Back in Australia, in Brisbane, he could not afford paints.In June 1939 he travelled north to Cairns and lived with Aboriginal people near Alligator River. At about this time he turned from oil paintings to using gouache, often painting on the fragile surfaces that make his art a challenge to conservators.In May 1940 Fairweather left Australia to join the British war effort. After a short stay in Singapore, he was transferred to India, and ended up as a captain in a prisoner of war camp for Italians. He was discharged in 1943 and returned to Melbourne. Again, thanks to Ede, his work had been exhibited in London, including at the National Gallery in 1940. He travelled north again to Cooktown, but had problems with obtaining materials so he tried soap and casein as a way of holding the pigment.Frustrated with poverty, Fairweather applied for the vacant position of Director of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales. Hal Missingham was appointed in his stead, while Fairweather took a job as a labourer in an aircraft factory.In March 1945 he set off in a lifeboat, without any plan for the voyage, and landed at Bribie Island, off the Brisbane coast. He stayed for seven months, but after his diaries were stolen he travelled down to Melbourne where he stayed with the community of artists, including fellow Scot Jock Frater, who were supported by Lina Bryans at her Darebin Hotel studio at Heidelberg. He stayed two years.At the end of 1947 Fairweather travelled north to Cairns. He had made arrangements with Macquarie Galleries in Sydney to both exhibit his work and to organise materials. He was to hold annual exhibitions with Macquarie from 1949 until the rest of his life. In 1949 he moved to Townsville and then Darwin, where he lived in an old boat. On 29 April 1952 Ian Fairweather set off to sail to Timor in a raft he had made from discarded junk. It was assumed he had died from from his own foolish misadventure. Sixteen days later he arrived at the beach in Roti, Indonesia. The years after World War II were less than kind to adventurers. Fairweather was interned, sent to Singapore and then after a spell in a home for derelicts, was deported to England.He dug ditches to raise the money so he could return south. Fortunately his British relatives helped with funds and he was able to return to Australia. He arrived in Sydney and went straight from there to Bribie Island. Here he built two thatched roof open-walled huts, and this became his home and his studio. This period at Bribie Island was the most productive time of his life, as he was able to easily work and there was no shortage of materials. Unfortunately his fame led to many curious onlookers. In 1965 he briefly left Australia for Singapore and England, but he soon returned. In 1966 he travelled to London to investigate the possibility of basing himself there, but again returned to Bribie. His last major painting, House by the Sea, was painted in 1968. In his last years he was both honoured for his art, and financially well rewarded, although he had little understanding of how successful he was.He died of a heart attack on 20 May 1974.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 29 September 1891
- Summary
- The Scottish born artist Ian Fairweather travelled extensively throughout South East Asia and China before finally building a thatched hut on Bribie Island off the Queensland coast. Here he painted his mature works, combining elements of Buddhism Taoism and even western visual arts traditions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-May-74
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- Dick Wittman, 'William Frater: A Life With Colour’. Melb Uni Press, 2000.
'Jock Frater was on of the first modern painters who opposed the fashionable and academic schools of painting. During the 1930s he exhibited with the Contemporary Art Group along with Arnold Shore and George Bell. During a very conservative period in Australian Art John Frater advanced the cause of innovation and modernism.’
Writers:
Michael Bogle
7write6
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1 January 1890
- Summary
- Frater's career began with an apprenticeship in glass design in Scotland. He arrived in Melbourne 1910, worked with Brooks, Robinson and Co. in stained glass, later with E.L. Yencken, Melbourne. Best known as a figurative painter following training at the George Bell School, Melbourne. Elected President of the Victorian Artists Society.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1974
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.9019365 Longitude151.2558816 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waverley, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, daughter of artists Joseph A. Bennett and Jessie Bennett . Active circa 1906-1922. The Art Gallery of NSW holds Poppies , watercolour on cardboard, 62 × 47.8, purchased 1914.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- Bennett, the daughter of artists Joseph and Jessie Bennett, was a painter whose watercolour work 'Poppies' was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1914.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1974
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Kilda, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1888
- Summary
- Marjorie K Smyth was a modernist painter and designer who exhibited in Sydney in the 1920s and 1930s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1974
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude41.0091982 Longitude28.9662187 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey
- Biography
- sculptor and carver, was born Ernestine Haim in Constantinople (Istanbul) in December 1887, daughter of a Yugoslavian father and an Italian mother. The family lived first in Vienna, then in Berlin where Tina attended the Woman’s Art School, women not then being permitted to enrol at the Berlin Academy. Her carved limestone bust of her sister was hung in a Berlin Secessionist exhibition (c.1905). She later spent about three years studying at the Académie Julian, Paris (c.1912-14).
Forced to return home at the outbreak of World War I, Tina worked as a portraitist and made reproductions for the Berlin Academy of some of the treasures unearthed in the Tel Amarna excavations, including a copy of the head of Nefertiti which was on display for years at the Bode Museum while the original was kept in the vaults. In about 1915 she married a Prussian academic painter, Julius Wentscher (spelt 'Wentcher’ in Australia) but continued to exhibit as Haim. After the war, the couple travelled to Greece, Italy, Egypt and Abyssinia. In Greece she met painters and poets bent on reviving Greek folk culture and made two miniature bronze copies of the Delphic Charioteer.
In 1931 the Wentchers won a cruise to South East Asia at a Press Ball and left Germany for an intended six months visit. The holiday was extended as the political situation in Germany worsened. They spent three years in Bali and Java, then visited China, Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia, remaining at the last for five years. Tina (as Haim-Wentscher) received numerous commissions for portrait busts and held several exhibitions in Malaysia. She also worked in 'the native beeswax … to produce portraits and figure designs of tremendous delicacy and intensity’, O’Connor notes. Virtually all were lost during World War II, apart from some small pieces brought to Australia. Peers considers these 'late reflection of the Jugendstil ' to be her best work. With her husband, she also produced large dioramas of life on Malaysian plantations for the government to exhibit at the 1937 Glasgow Empire Exhibition and the 1939 San Francisco World Fair.
In 1940, following the outbreak of war, the Wentchers were deported to Australia and interned until 1943. On their release they set up professionally in Melbourne, holding a joint exhibition at the Kozminsky Galleries. Tina joined the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors. Her Bessarabian Boy , a small bronze head acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria, was stolen in 1945 so she made a pewter replica at her own expense in 1946. That year, she and Julius were naturalised.
Tina Wentcher’s first solo exhibition was held in 1951 at Georges Gallery, Melbourne. She exhibited with the Contemporary Art Society, the Victorian Artists’ Society, the Society of Artists (NSW) and elsewhere. A joint exhibition with her husband was held at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1974. After she died the Association of Sculptors of Victoria set up an annual prize in her memory. The Queen Victoria Hospital and the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, own commissioned works. The McClelland Gallery, Langwarrin holds numerous small sculptures, including several executed in South-East Asia.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanNote: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1887
- Summary
- Sculptor and carver. Trained in Paris and Berlin and well travelled through Greece, Italy, Egypt, Abyssinia, and S.E. Asia before settling in Victoria following the outbreak of WWII. Produced portrait busts and figure designs.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Apr-74
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, was a student at Julian Ashton and Sydney Long’s Sydney Art School in 1908.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1886
- Summary
- Ruby Winckler was a painter and illustrator who exhibited with the NSW Society of Artists. Winckler spent some time in America after accepting a commission to illustrate two books 'The Arabian Night's Entertainment' and S.S. Vanderbilt's 'Who's Who in the Land of Nod', both published in 1915 in Boston.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1974
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-33.914121 Longitude151.2410046 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- The third son of Thomas Squire Morgan and Louisa née Koch, James Squire Morgan was born in Randwick, Sydney, on 25 November 1886, and spent his childhood living at the family home, 'Morganville’, on Bishops Avenue in Randwick. Thomas Morgan was partially responsible in the 1880s for the development of the Mount Morgan gold mine in Queensland. James Squire Morgan was educated at Sydney Grammar School and Sydney’s Fort Street High School. Not long after leaving school he decided to become an artist, and from 1905 to 1909 he studied with Julian Ashton and Sydney Long at the Sydney Art School (later known as the Julian Ashton Art School). By this time Morgan seems to have been known personally, and professionally, as Squire Morgan. While his relationship with the influential Julian Ashton is unknown, Morgan was clearly on good terms with Long, and during the early 1920s acted as his agent in Sydney. Morgan’s debut as an artist was at the Society of Artists’ (SOA) 1908 spring show at the Society’s rooms at Sydney’s Queen Victoria Markets, where he exhibited five works. One jocular work, Washing Day, was mentioned in the Sydney Morning Herald (14 October 1908) and in John Barlow’s review in Art & Architecture magazine: 'An equally humorous, if perhaps not quite so quaint drawing, is one by Squire Morgan, which he calls Washing Day. Half-a-dozen puppies have been given a bath, and are being hung out to dry, pinned up by the ear to the line by clothes-pegs’ (Barlow, 1908). He exhibited with the SOA again in November 1910 where he exhibited two works, The Destroyers and Magpies (the latter work being a subject much associated with Sydney Long). Little is known of Morgan’s activities from 1911 to 1921. His later membership of the London based Society of Graphic Arts suggests he may have been resident in the UK sometime during this period. The interwar period saw a growing local interest in etching and printmaking. This interest led to the formation of the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society (APES) in August 1920, with Lionel Lindsay as President and Gayfield Shaw as Honorary Secretary and Treasurer. Inspired by the possibilities of printmaking, Morgan mainly abandoned painting in the 1920s in deference for a career as an artistic printmaker. Despite missing the first APES show in 1921, Morgan exhibited six works at the June 1922 exhibition and was listed on the catalogue as a member of the Society. One of these works, The Deserted Hut, was illustrated in the August 1922 issue of Art in Australia. Shaw stepped down as Honorary Secretary and Treasurer in 1923 after a dispute with Lindsay, and was replaced by Morgan. Despite hosting many successful exhibitions, APES seems to have been a victim of bitter internal squabbles indirectly caused by competing egos. Not long after Morgan became Secretary and Treasurer, the founding President, Lionel Lindsay, resigned from the Society in November 1923 citing 'cliqueism’ in the organization: 'Lionel Lindsay told a Guardian representative last week that he was tired of the cliqueism that existed in the society. He specially referred to the “Pommy Clique”, which The Guardian understands is comprised of Sid Long, Squire Morgan, [G.H.] Godsell, [Thomas] Friedensen, and others.’ (Daily Guardian, 29 November 1923, pg 6). Whatever the reasons for the split, Morgan acted as Secretary and Treasurer of APES until October 1931 when he became the President of APES after the resignation of Sydney Long from the leadership position. In 1934 APES merged with the Graphic Art Society and became known as the Painter-Etchers’ & Graphic Art Society of Australia (PEGASA). The new merged society’s president was John Longstaff, while Morgan became one of four vice-presidents of the amalgamated group. Morgan continued to exhibit his prints with PEGASA, as he had done with its predecessor, and by late 1937 he was elected their last President. Perhaps reflecting the declining interest in etching, PEGASA held its last exhibition in 1938. As a protest against the formation of the Australian Academy of Art, and the selection policy of the existing art societies, fifteen Sydney based male artists, including Morgan, formed their own breakaway art group known as the 'XV Independent Artists Group’ in 1938. Unconnected with the Melbourne based 'Independent Group’, the fifteen Sydney dissidents’ debut exhibition was held in October 1938 at the Blaxland Galleries, located in Farmer’s department store, Sydney. More than fifteen artists eventually exhibited with the 'XV Group’. Known members were: Howard Ashton, Richard Ashton, Will Ashton, J. Lawson Balfour, Arthur d’Auvergne Boxall, George Finey, James R. Jackson, Fred Leist, Norman Lindsay, Percy Lindsay, Sydney Long, Squire Morgan, W.E. Pidgeon, H. Roy Rousel, A. Dattilo Rubbo, G.K. Townshend & B.J. Waterhouse. The diverse group was all-male but allowed some women to exhibit as 'guest exhibitors’. One member, Howard Ashton, writing in the catalogue of the first 'XV Group’ exhibition expressed, in perhaps a parody of European modernist art manifestos of the early twentieth century, what the Sydney based dissidents believed in: 'This Group of artists sets out to prove nothing and to challenge nothing. It is composed generally of professional painters who are not concerned with 'isms, are not devotees of any school, whose views on art, apart from certain fundamental matters of good craftsmanship, are as divergent as their styles. They are, in fact, a group of independents, as their title denotes’ (1938). Morgan was listed in catalogues as the Honorary Secretary of the 'XV Independent Artists Group’ although there are no known public comments attributed to him. While the 'XV Group’ was formed in opposition of the main art societies, by the early 1940s many of its members (including Morgan) had joined the long established Royal Art Society (RAS). Morgan’s first involvement with the RAS began in 1924 and he occasionally exhibited with the group during the 1920s. From 1940 Morgan became a regular exhibitor with the RAS, and by 1942 was listed as a member of their Council. By the late 1940s he was listed as an Associate (A.R.A.S.), and in 1957 was elected Fellow (F.R.A.S.). While Morgan only occasionally exhibited his work after the 1960s, he became an honorary life Vice-President of the RAS in 1961. From 1946 to 1970 he was also a member of the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship Committee and Applied Art Advisory Committee of East Sydney Technical College, Sydney. While far from being a prolific artist, Morgan produced at least fifty prints during his career, mainly using the etching technique, although he did produce some dry points and aquatints. The most popular theme in his work was landscape views of the New South Wales coast and Sydney’s rural hinterland. Popular sketching spots included Sydney’s northern beaches, especially Dee Why, and the Canberra region. Being an artist mostly associated with print making, Morgan’s work is rarely mentioned in classic studies of Australian art history, and criticism is only found in reviews of art society exhibitions. No solo exhibitions by the artist are known. Morgan’s etchings and drawing are included in several public collections, including the Art Gallery of NSW, Mitchell Library, and the National Library of Australia. On the 21 November 1925, Morgan married Gladys Hall and the couple had one daughter, Jascha. As well as his artistic activities, Morgan’s recreational activities included (according to various editions of Who’s Who) a love of the violin, chess, cricket, photography and motoring. Morgan’s interest in driving saw him become a Vice-President of the Royal Automotive Club of Australia (1947-70) and in 1961 he became an honorary life member of the organisation. While he had lived in central Sydney for most of his career, Morgan moved to a house at 5 Punch Street in Mosman for the final decade of his life. James Squire Morgan died in hospital on 18 March 1974. He was survived by his daughter, his wife having predeceased him. He was cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium, Sydney, on 22 March 1974. No obituaries or lengthy profiles are known.
Writers:
Silas Clifford-Smith
Note:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 25 November 1886
- Summary
- Prominent interwar period etcher who studied under Julian Ashton and Sydney Long.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Mar-74
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-37.8611788 Longitude144.8898569 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Williamstown, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Art dealer, sister of artist Arthur Vincent (Vincent) Sheldon (1895-1945), who both lived in Brisbane.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 May 1885
- Summary
- Art dealer, Eliza Jeanette Sheldon and her artist brother, Edwin Arthur Vincent, lived in Brisbane, Queensland. She owned the Sheldon Gallery (1921-23) and the Gainsborough Gallery (1928-39) and actively promoted modern art in Queensland.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 30-Jul-74
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude55.8455828 Longitude-4.4239646 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1884
- Summary
- Scottish trained Sydney architect who oversaw the design or remodelling of many commercial buildings, including stores for David Jones, Gowings and Woolworths.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1974
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia
- Biography
- painter, art critic and town planner, was born in South Australia on 18 January 1879, fourth of the eight children of William and Julie Rossi. She studied art at the Adelaide School of Design and had established a modest reputation as a portrait painter before moving to Western Australia in 1905, where she continued her painting studies under Florence Fuller . Daisy received a number of portrait commissions and a large portrait by her won a certificate at the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne. Encouraged by Fuller, Rossi went to London and studied at the Grosvenor School under Walter Donne, winning first and second prizes for poster drawing. She visited France and saw the work of the Impressionists. On her return to Perth, she secured work in the Art Department at Fremantle Technical School in 1911. She held a solo exhibition in 1915, and her work of this period shows the strong impact that French Impressionism had made on her. Included were oil paintings of WA wildflowers, the subject for which she is best known locally.
In December 1918, at the age of thirty-nine, Daisy married the architect George Temple-Poole but continued to use 'Rossi’ as her painting name. In 1920 their only child, Iseult, was born and Daisy became immersed in family life. As well, she became the first woman member of the Town Planning Board and wrote for various magazines and newspapers. In 1920 a devastating studio fire destroyed most of the work she had done in Europe.
Why should Australia always be represented by dull colored bush, huge, unwieldy eucalypts? We should have more frequently artists who will rise up and say, “Australia shall be shown in riotous, beautiful, blatant coloring”
- she stated in an interview in 1924. That year she was represented in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, London, with two wildflower pictures and a series of panels. But bad eyesight troubled her and soon afterwards she ceased to paint. For several years she taught art to kindergarten students at her 'Rossi School of Art’.
Rossi was interested in women’s issues, believing that women should be more involved in decision making. In a 1918 interview, she said:
Man has no more right to say that all women should be domestic workers against their inclination than that women should insist on all men becoming gardeners or handy men around the house.
After her husband died in 1934 she lived in the suburb of South Perth. In her seventies she began to paint wildflower studies again. In the late 1960s she moved to Victoria to be near her daughter. She died in 1974 at the age of ninety-five.
Writers:
Gooding, Janda
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 January 1879
- Summary
- Daisy Mary Rossi was the first woman member of the Town Planning Board in Perth, WA. She made a number of interesting statements such as, "Why should Australia always be represented by dull colored bush, huge, unwieldy eucalypts? We should have more frequently artists who will rise up and say, "Australia shall be shown in riotous, beautiful, blatant coloring".
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1974
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-43.53 Longitude172.620278 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1974-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Christchurch, New Zealand
- Biography
- Influential New Zealand painter, art teacher, psychotherapist, cartoonist and illustrator, contributed (from New Zealand) to the Sydney Bulletin from c.1900, e.g. gags re: street urchins and an office clerk (ill. Lindesay 1979, 118, 120). Others include: 'THE ONE: “Since I have taken that treatment I have been a different woman.”/ THE OTHER: “I am so glad. And how pleased all your people must be”, 12 November 1914, 29; 'SUPERFLUOUS ADJECTIVES: (Little Girl) “What is redundancy, Pa?”/ (Artist) “Redundancy, my child, is the use of more words than are necessary to express one’s meaning – such as WEALTHY dealer, POOR artist”’, 24 June 1915, 34. For the NSW Bookstall Co. he illustrated – with Norman and Lionel Lindsay and Norman Carter – the 1909 edition of Steele Rudd’s Our New Selection , a reprint of the first edition, published by the Bulletin Newspaper Co. in 1903 which used earlier illustrations and text from the Bulletin .
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1879
- Summary
- Influential early 20th New Zealand painter, art teacher, psychotherapist, cartoonist and illustrator, Booth contributed cartoons (from New Zealand) to the Bulletin and other Sydney publications. In 1909 he, Norman Lindsay, Lionel Lindsay and Norman Carter illustrated the reprint edition of Steele Rudd's "Our New Selection."
- Gender
- Unspecified
- Died
- 1974
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude30.3671977 Longitude32.1565462 Start Date1921-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ismailia, Egypt
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by completing this biography.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 18 January 1921
- Summary
- For much of his life Tony Tuckson's reputation was as the Assistant Director of he Art Gallery of New South Wales, passionately advocating for Aboriginal art. It was only near the end of his life that the wider arts community realised that he was an artist of great significance.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Nov-73
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, served in the RAAF in Australia and New Guinea during WWII. On his return he was appointed to the Victorian Air Board where he illustrated many RAAF magazines before returning to civilian life. He worked as an artist for Sir Frank Packer’s ACP, drawing political cartoons for the Daily Telegraph c.1949-50 (examples Rae, p.83) and illustrations for the Australian Women’s Weekly and other Consolidated Press publications. According to Alex King, when Jim Bancks died suddenly in 1952, Packer held a competition among several artists to select a suitable person to continue to draw Ginger Meggs . Vivian’s entry was chosen. He drew the comic for ACP’s Sunday Telegraph for 21 years, without acknowledgment, until his own death in 1973.
Married with two daughters. His hobbies were carptentry and sailing, and he built, over many years, a 32 foot yacht entirely with his own hands.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 19 February 1914
- Summary
- Ron Vivian was a mid 20th century Sydney cartoonist who is credited with keeping "Ginger Meggs" in print after the sudden death of Jim Bancks. Vivian drew the comic fo Sydney's Sunday Telegraph for 21 years without acknowledgement until his own death.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1973
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude36.5297438 Longitude-6.2928976 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cadiz, Spain
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1911
- Summary
- Peter Fox, photographer, born in Spain and raised in Germany, arrived Australia 1937 and granted refugee status as a stateless person. Fox operated from a studio in Collins street from 1942 expanding to several locations and a camera store. He developed touring service through Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia using specially fitted buses and teams of operators and sales staff.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.14 July 1973
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude41.0195659 Longitude-92.4116886 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ottumwa, Iowa, USA
- Biography
- painter born in Iowa (USA) in 1898. Also known as 'Mas’.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
DAAO staff writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 15 December 1898
- Summary
- Artist, social activist, art collector and Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Evatt's best known work was an oil painting entitled 'Footballers' which she made while studying under George Bell.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1973
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude53.9825271 Longitude-1.385249993 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- photographer and landscape designer, was born in Yorkshire, on 4 December 1896, second daughter of William and Margaret Walling. Her businessman father was disappointed that Edna was not a boy and (in contrast to her sister) treated her as if she was one anyway. She grew up at Bickleigh, near Plymouth, learning woodworking and exploring the Devonshire countryside with him. In 1911, aged fourteen, she moved to New Zealand with her family. Her father soon transferred to Melbourne and the rest of the family joined him in 1914. They settled at Arundel, in Commercial Road, South Yarra.
In 1916-17 Edna attended Burnley Horticultural College. After gaining her certificate and working as a jobbing gardener for a year, she began to get landscape designing jobs. An early client was Dame Nellie Melba. In 1921 Walling designed and built a rustic house for herself, called Sonning, on a three-acre block of farmland at Mooroolbark, east of Melbourne. After it was destroyed by fire in 1936, she redesigned, rebuilt and expanded it. She gradually converted eighteen acres adjacent to Sonning into Bickleigh Vale village.
Despite an unconventional lifestyle – she wore jodhpurs, jacket, shirt and tie, never married and lived in primitive style at Sonning with a group of friends/employees – Edna made a name for herself as a landscape gardener in the English tradition of Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson among wealthy Melbourne families, including Mrs Keith Murdoch (now Dame Elisabeth), Mrs Harold Darling, Sir Clive and Lady Steele and Sir William and Lady Irvine. Many clients owned large homesteads in the Western District of Victoria, the Riverina (NSW) and elsewhere. Some of her beautiful watercolours of proposed garden designs survive. She carried out many in conjunction with the builder Eric Hammond.
In 1926 Walling began writing regularly for Australian Home Beautiful . As well as many articles for a range of magazines and newspapers, she published four books illustrated with her own photographs, garden plans and drawings: Gardens in Australia (1943) – which went into several editions – Cottage and Garden in Australia (1947), A Gardener’s Log (1948) and The Australian Roadside (1952). She lived at Sonning until 1951 then shifted to The Barn on her nearby Bickleigh estate, partly because of the lack of privacy resulting from featuring her home in such detail in her 1947 book. In 1948 she acquired sixteen-acres at East Point, near Lorne on the Great Ocean Road, and built a cottage there; a late unpublished manuscript, 'The Happiest Days of My Life’, is about it.
Walling planned several villages yet few were realised. After moving in 1967 to Bendles at Buderim, Queensland to escape encroaching suburbia, she planned an Italian-style village but age prevented it proceeding beyond a few sketches. Here she was cared for by Mavis Morris while Lorna Fielden, a Bickleigh neighbour who had edited her books, came to live nearby. A devout Christian Scientist, Edna Walling died on 8 August 1973 regretting that she was unable to finish all her projects or begin new ones.
.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 December 1896
- Summary
- Early 20th Century landscape designer in the English tradition of Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson. Walling wrote many articles for a range of magazines and newspapers, she published four books illustrated with her own photographs, garden plans and dra
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 8-Aug-73
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-34.6717242 Longitude138.8905114 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Williamstown, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Personal
Leila Constance McNamara was born on 7 June 1894 in Williamstown, South Australia. She lived mainly at 11 Arthur Street, Medindie, South Australia. She travelled to Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart during the 1920s to 1950s. She died on 11 November 1973 in Adelaide, SA.
Career
McNamara studied under James Ashton, Will Ashton and Leslie Wilkie in Adelaide in the 1920s or thereabouts. With Leslie Wilkie she studied painting from life. In Sydney she studied with Dattilo Rubbo, James R. Jackson and modelling with Joseph Choate.
She painted mainly in oils on canvas, and also made drawings and watercolours. Her subjects were still lifes, landscapes and seascapes, painted mainly in a post-impressionist or late impressionist style. She is known to have signed works “McNAMARA” or “L.McN”. She became a Member of the Royal South Australian Society of Artists in 1915, a Fellow in 1923, Vice-President 1954-1961, and Life Member from 1962. She exhibited with the Society from 1915. She was an early member of the United Arts Club, formed in Adelaide in 1923. She also taught privately in Adelaide.
Writers:
Rost, Fred
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 June 1894
- Summary
- Leila Constance McNamara (1894-1973), painter and teacher, active mainly in Adelaide, South Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Nov-73
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-38.3826241 Longitude142.4814191 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Warrnambool, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- painter, made a second visit to Central Australia with his friend John Gardner in 1934 and they were invited to show their art at Hermannsburg Mission. In 1945 Battarbee set up a gallery, the Tmara-Mara Gallery, in his Alice Springs home to sell the work of the Arrernte (Hermannsburg Aboriginal) artists.
Battarbee died in the Old Timers Home, Alice Springs.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1893
- Summary
- An early advocate of indigenous art, Rex Battarbee represented Arrernte artists in his Alice Springs home, which he later turned into the Tmara-Mara Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Sep-73
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-42.5571184 Longitude146.8344 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamilton, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born at Hamilton, Tasmania, on 9 March 1893, third of the five children of Lilla Edith, née Thorne, a schoolteacher from a pioneering family in the Carlton district, and William Nassau Holmes, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, who became a schoolteacher, then headmaster, in Tasmania. During her childhood the family lived at Devonport and Scottsdale, until finally settling near Hobart at Dilkhoosha, 62 Charles Street, Moonah. This remained Edith’s home until her death.
Her artistic talents were encouraged by her painter mother, who had 'a good sense of colour’ particularly in the decoration of the family home, as Edith recollected:
One room, very vivid in my mind, daffodil wallpaper with a lovely white design, rich texture, and in the room ruby velvet chairs on a light brown carpet, and ivory black shelves in the walls with pink French china with romantic figures as a pattern, and an easel in one corner of the room with a study of flowers.
Edith studied art at the Hobart Technical College under Lucien Dechaineux in 1918-19 and 1922-24 and under Mildred Lovett in 1925-26, 1928-31 and 1935:
Lucien Dechaineux was the Art Master when painting in tone was most important, which was of great help to me later … Mildred Lovett … was most interested in my work and encouraged me in every way … [She] had a modern outlook and at first was not well received in Hobart, but later she was appreciated.
She also studied at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School under Henry Gibbons and Ashton himself (1930-31) and there met Thea Proctor and George Lambert.
During the 1930s Holmes shared a studio in Collins Street, Hobart, with Mildred Lovett, Florence Rodway , Violet Vimpany , Dorothy Stoner and Ethel M. Nicholls. She travelled regularly to Melbourne where she held her first seven solo and joint exhibitions (1938-51) and met Eveline Syme , Danila Vassilieff, Arnold Shore and George Bell. Her work created a great deal of interest in Melbourne in the 1930s and 1940s, although this seems to have declined in the 1950s. Other than that, she remained little known outside her own state.
Holmes exhibited annually with the Art Society of Tasmania (1927-72) and was a council member for many years (1930-52). She was a founding member of the off-shoot Tasmanian Group of Painters in 1940 and exhibited regularly with it until 1969. In 1954 she was awarded a special prize in the Tasmanian Sesquicentenary Art Competition and in 1972 a prize by the Contemporary Art Society (Tas). She went overseas for the first time in 1958 with her aunt, Mrs Ada Newberry, visiting England and France and holding an exhibition in Tasmania House, London. Other trips followed in 1960 and 1971.
Holmes actively participated in the Victoria League, the English Speaking Union and the Women’s Non-Party League; she was a life member of the United Nations Association. She died in Hobart on 26 August 1973. TMAG (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tas) has a good pencil portrait of the elderly Edith Holmes by Patricia Giles.
Writers:
Backhouse, Sue
Note: Primary
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 March 1893
- Summary
- Painter, she spent most of her life in Tasmania, but also exhibited in Melbourne where her work was popular in the 1930 and 1940s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Aug-73
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-36.3594929 Longitude146.687012 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Beechworth, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and art teacher, was born in Beechworth, Victoria on 23 June 1891, second of the five daughters of Richard Hull Perry and Eliza Adelaide, née Reardon. Her father, a solicitor, died when she was an infant and her mother moved to Melbourne with the children. The family moved to Dunedin, New Zealand after her mother remarried in 1904. Adelaide returned to Melbourne to study at the National Gallery School under Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin in 1914; in 1920 she won the prestigious National Gallery Travelling Scholarship. After teaching at Ipswich Grammar School (Qld) in 1919-21, she went to London in 1922 and enrolled at the Royal Academy. She also worked in Paris and exhibited at the Salon (Societé des Artistes Française); but, as she said in 1965, it was the English Royal Academy painters – Charles Sims, Walter Sickert, Gerald Kelly, Glyn Philpot and Ernest Jackson – who 'taught me all the art that I know’.
Returning to Australia in 1925, Perry settled in Sydney (where her family was then living) and remained there for the rest of her life. On 1 January 1926 she opened her own studio and art school in Bulletin Place, which she called 'The Chelsea Art School’. She exhibited in the first Contemporary Group show, organised by Thea Proctor and George Lambert , and at Sydney’s Grosvenor Gallery in 1927. She also showed with the more conservative Society of Artists, to which she was elected a member in 1928. She was happy to join the Australian Academy of Art – that litmus test of conservatism – when it was formed in 1937.
For four years from 1930 Perry taught part-time at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School with Thea Proctor, taking day classes and encouraging the students 'to work from the real object, in the traditional manner, and base their work on the old masters as much as possible’. Though primarily known as a painter, she also produced linocuts and woodcuts from the late 1920s and taught others these techniques. Her pupils included Vera Blackburn , Lisette Kohlhagen and Mary Cooper Edwards. An article on her work appeared in Art in Australia in September 1927, while three of her prints-a woodcut, a wood engraving and a linocut – illustrated Ethel Anderson 's 'The Subject in Art’ in Art in Australia in September 1929. Her pleasant view of women and children at the beach, Coledale Beach and Village 1929, oil on double sided board (with unfinished portrait study verso), was said to have been illustrated on page 31 of the former – though the article predates the image (another version of it?) – when auctioned at Christie’s Sydney on 14-15 August 1994, lot 194B.
Perry opened another school-the Adelaide Perry School of Art-at Pitt Street, near Circular Quay in May 1933, which continued until forced to close because of the war. Later she had a small studio in Castlereagh Street then took on teaching art full-time at the Presbyterian Ladies College, Croydon, where she remained until retiring to her Hunter’s Hill home in 1962. She continued to paint landscapes, still life and occasional portraits until her death, on 19 November 1973. Her body was cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 23 June 1891
- Summary
- Painter, printmaker and art teacher with her own studios and art schools in Sydney. Perry also studied, worked and exhibited in London and Paris. Her work is well represented in Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 19-Nov-73
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- Mary Troy a still life, landscape and figurative painter, was born in Ireland. She studied art at the Sorbonne, Paris, and in London where she exhibited five paintings of flowers or genre/figure scenes at the Royal Academy between 1937 and 1942. She also exhibited 48 times with Cooling and Sons Gallery, London (no longer extant). She taught art in NSW from about 1935 (or 1943?) to 1953. Her oil on board work Country Town, New South Wales c.1940s was offered at Sotheby’s on 14 August 1990 and there is some speculation that the town in question might be Bathurst.
A finalist in the 1951 NSW Jubilee Art competition, Troy’s Caroline Chisholm Pioneering New Australians was described as 'all theatre – a comedy in one act, and very charming at that’ ( Sun 16 July 1951). Her entry in the 1952 Wynne Prize, the 'dark and dramatic’ Winter Morning near Blackheath 'seems to derive more from the reds and dark swirling shadows of the Vlaminck in another part of the Gallery than from a winter morning near Blackheath’, the Bulletin commented (30 January 1952: article headed 'Archibald Prize’). The Goldfish 1957 (oil on hardboard 55.9 × 76.8 cm) is in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW (see Art Gallery of New South Wales Acquisitions 1958, 15). Troy is said to have had her first solo show in Sydney in 1958, at David Jones Art Gallery. (Craig states that she exhibited in Sydney from 1958, but she obviously showed work competitively before this.)
Home after Shopping n.d. (oil on board, 107.5 × 68 cm) was offered at Christie’s Melbourne on 30 July 1990. Craig lists five undated oils sold at Lawson’s in 1991-92, including Artist and Model Relaxing (64 × 76 cm) – possibly the Sotheby’s self-portrait – while Poppies and Fruit was sold at Gregson’s, Perth in November 1992.She died in 1973
Writers:
Staff Writer
MuchAdo
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 1889
- Summary
- Irish born Mary Troy was a still life, landscape and figurative painter. She studied at La Sorbonne in Paris and was a regular exhibitor at London's Royal Academy. She was held a number of solo exhibitions, both in Sydney and London and in 1952 her 'Winter Morning in Blackheath' was hung in the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1973
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-41.2333395 Longitude146.5417751 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Latrobe, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- Born at Latrobe, in Tasmania, on 8 December 1887, Ebenezer Marchant, known as ‘Ebb’, was the son of Philip Marchant. Before his third birthday, his mother died, and at the age of eight, Philip moved the family back to Gawler, where he re-established his career as a local photographer. It was in his father’s studio that Ebenezer worked. He married Elvira Elsa Klaebe on 2 September 1922 and together they had a son, Trevor, who was born in 1923.
The Marchants were a large South Australian family that spanned three generations of photographers, as well as a fourth generation that was also associated with the photographic field. His brother Samuel Bowering Marchant and son Trevor Marchant were both photographers. One of his granddaughters, Coralie, was a colourist, whilst another granddaughter, Janine, was a technician in a photo laboratory.
In the years leading up to his father’s death in 1910, Ebenezer took on various responsibilities in the studio, eventually taking on the running of the business. He is credited with producing a one-piece, 180 degree panoramic photograph with the use of a Cirkut panoramic camera in the late 1920s. The enlargement he produced measured six feet in length and ten inches in width.
Ebenezer is recorded as having many talents and interests including conjuring, hypnotism and gardening. He also enjoyed music and was skilled in playing the organ, piano and violin.
Though his son Trevor continued the photographic tradition for some time, his move from Gawler to Adelaide to pursue printing and processing marked the end of the family’s link with studio portraiture.
Writers:
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 8 December 1887
- Summary
- Ebenezer Marchant was part of a large family of photographers who worked primarily in South Australia. Originally an assistant in his father’s studio in Gawler, Marchant took over the family business in 1910.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1973
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-32.4925 Longitude137.765833 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Port Augusta, SA, Australia
- Biography
- potter, sculptor, enameller, china painter, illustrator and author, was born on 14 July 1886 at Port Augusta, SA. Known as 'Lalla’ – a name she sometimes used on less-valued pots – she moved to Victoria when young and lived much of her life in the family home, Palermo, in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, later with her sister, Alice, a doctor. She trained in art and craft at the Working Men’s College, Melbourne. Her training did not include pottery, which was only taught there after Alan Finlay was appointed in 1910 (who may have then given her some lessons); her mother was a potter and she first made pottery at home.
Correll exhibited sculpture at the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition in Melbourne and won second prize (after Margaret Baskerville ) in class 21, 'figures in bas relief’, for Day Dreams . Both pottery and enamels were shown with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors (MSWPS) in 1910-12, and her enamels were presented to members of the MSWPS as gifts. She continued to show her pottery with the Yarra Sculptors’ Society and the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria until after World War II.
Correll’s early work tended to be hand built and fired by Mr Walker of the Tessellated Tile Company at Mitcham, although Peers states that in the 1920s her pots were fired by Blanche Davies, a fellow member of MSWPS. They included richly coloured art nouveau bowls, some decorated with animals à la Castle Harris . In 1941 she built a kiln at her Kew home, and it was here that she produced her distinctive lightly coloured, hand-modelled figure groups of modern life. The work she fired there is often marked 'Australian China’.
Valeria Correll also wrote and illustrated a children’s book, Gay Gambols: A Nonsense Story , published by Edward Vidler at Melbourne in 1923. She died at Melbourne on 29 April 1973, survived by her sister who donated some of her pottery to the National Galleries of Australia and Victoria.
Writers:
Miley, Caroline
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 July 1886
- Summary
- Potter, sculptor, enameller, china painter, illustrator and author, born in Port Augusta, SA. Resident of Melbourne, Victoria, she produced distinctive lightly coloured, hand-modelled figure groups of modern life.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29-Apr-73
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-36.840556 Longitude174.74 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1973-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Biography
- Amateur woodcarver who was born in Auckland, New Zealand to George Francis a Welsh sea captain and his wife Catharine Isabella Tait of the Shetland Isles. George Francis was working on ships plying between New Zealand and Mauritius for many years and three daughters Pansy, Catherine Isabella (known as Lily) and Ivy were born in New Zealand. Three more children were born when the family were living in Wales (Myrtle, Hazel and Richard). Pansy was educated at boarding school at Longford in Gloucester. The three girls were accomplished musicians. Pansy played the banjo; others played the harp, piano or sang. The family came to Australia during the gold boom. Their home was “Hazelmere”, 79 South Street, Fremantle, Western Australia. It was and is a large and gracious home. Pansy as the eldest daughter lived with her parents at this address until her death in 1973. She helped run the household and was a good cook and keen gardener. The garden was typical of the time, figs, grapevines and citrus fruit with a fowl yard. Pansy also spent a few years with her father in Broome where he had pearling luggers. In 1908 she passed a woodcarving exam at Fremantle Technical School. She may have been studying with George Stirzaker at Fremantle Technical School for some time before sitting the exam as seemed to be the case with many woodcarvers or she may have been inspired to take up the discipline after seeing examples in the 1906 Industries Exhibition or the 1907 Exhibition of Women’s Work where examples of such industry were displayed. There were a number of good professional woodcarvers in Perth at this time. The most famous being William Howitt who won medals at many international exhibitions. There were also very many amateur carvers who exhibited with the Western Australian Society of Arts in the first decade of the century and even more who attended classes and made purely for their own homes. Pansy was one of these. Over the years Pansy carved a very considerable number of pieces of furniture. The first works were panels carved in the classes that were then applied to furniture built to take them. Two examples of this type of work are the music cupboard in the West Australian Museum carved with Pan playing his pipes on the upper section and the inset panel of Pan’s face on the door. A more ornate version is still held by the family. This is a china cabinet deeply carved with almost three-dimensional dolphins and scallop shell on the pediment and lower definition panels of the Loch Ness monster and foliage on the frames of the glass doors. Pansy carved for herself and other members of her family. For Catharine, called Lily, she carved a harpist’s seat that featured arum lilies. For her cello playing niece, Iris Francis, she carved an elegant chest 'glory box’ with a large panel of irises and a two-door music cupboard with inset panels of irises. For her father she carved a holder for his telescope which is carved with “so far and yet so near”, and a scallop shell while three-dimensional dolphins protrude to form a cradle to hold the telescope. A small coffee table is carved on the top with the seated figure of Iris as a muse. Bellows for the fire feature the Greek god of the winds, Boreas and another a dolphin motif. An oval hall mirror is deeply carved with what appear to be tiger lilies. A turn-of- the-century settle has pansies carved on it. The chair and chest are particularly attractive. The Western Australian Museum’s (Ch 82.187) jarrah stand is carved with kangaroo paws and other wildflowers. There are other pieces: a bath stand, and a small table, a third bellows in oak, a small coffee table, another music cabinet and glory box.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1884
- Summary
- Pansy Georgina Francis was born in 1884 in Auckland, New Zealand. In 1908 she passed a woodcarving exam at Fremantle Technical School. Over the years Francis carved a very considerable number of pieces of furniture.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1973
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude55.9340823 Longitude23.3157775 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Siauliai, Lithuania
- Biography
- Olegas Truchanas, wilderness photographer and conservationist, was born on 22 September 1923 at Siauliai, Lithuania, the son of Eduard and Tatjana Truchan. Affected by the social upheavals of World War II he fled to Germany in 1944 where he studied law briefly at the University of Munich.
Migrating to Australia as a displaced person, Olegas landed in Melbourne in 1949. He chose to settle in Tasmania and worked a two-year contract as a labourer at the Electrolytic Zinc Company at Risdon. In 1951 he left Risdon to take up a job as a meter reader with the Hydro Electric Commission, eventually progressing to the position of engineering clerk.
Like many other post war emigrants, Olegas arrived in Tasmania with a sense of loss and dislocation. However through early exploits with his camera into the largely unexplored south-west Tasmania he quickly developed a new sense of place, which grew to become a lifelong passion for the protection of this unique wilderness environment.
In 1956 Olegas married Melva Stocks. Later with their three small children, they spent some of their leisure time bushwalking and skiing. They built a home in Hobart on the eastern flank of Mt Wellington. It was destroyed in the 1967 Hobart bush fires, together with all of Olegas’s photographic works.
From 1950 until 1954 Olegas exhibited black and white portrait and landscape photographs with the Southern Tasmanian Photographic Society. Using photographic skills gained in Germany he dominated these competitions, winning many awards. He was also a member of the Tasmanian Miniature Camera Circle, a club established in Hobart for devotees of 35 mm photography.
Beyond Tasmania, Olegas was one of eight Australian photographers to receive an award at the 'Jubilee International Salon’ exhibition in Canberra in 1951. Between 1951 and 1953 he won many competitions organised by The Australasian Photo-Review, who published eight of his black and white photographs, including Oily Waters on the cover of the February 1954 edition. A prestigious boxed portfolio of photographs by Dr Julian Smith Fifty Masterpieces of Photography was one of Olegas’s treasured prizes.
A move was necessary from his black and white photographic work, to record in colour his explorations along Tasmanian wild rivers, then later Lake Pedder, the flooding of which in 1972 attracted attention throughout Australia and internationally.
From the early 1950s until 1971 Olegas presented numerous public slide shows of south-west Tasmania. With the threat of hydro-electric development in this area, these presentations became a persuasive medium in showing what could be lost forever. The shows drew increasing audiences intrigued with the mystery and wonder of this little known corner of Tasmania. Topics included a recently discovered natural alpine garden at Mt Anne, the Arthur and Frankland Ranges, Bathurst Harbour and the Old River by canoe, the Denison and Gordon Rivers, the distinctive crescent shaped beach of Lake Pedder as well as Tasmania’s unique wild flowers and spectacular geological features.
In the late 1960s the Dutch born emigrant photographer Frank Bolt proposed annual camping trips to Lake Pedder for artists, photographers, writers and musicians. Olegas Truchanas was a member of the group that evolved loosely around Tasmanian watercolour artists led by Max Angus and included Harry Buckie, Elspeth Vaughan and Patricia Giles.
Arising from the 1970 artists camp were the key double exhibitions of their work 'Lake Pedder 1971’ held in November that year at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart and at Saddler’s Court Gallery, Richmond, Tasmania. The waters were rising into the Lake Pedder impoundment and further hydro-electric development was proposed for the Lower Gordon River. At the exhibition opening at Saddler’s Court Gallery Olegas made his much feted speech about the threats to the natural environment.
…This vanishing world is beautiful beyond our dreams. It contains in itself rewards and gratification never found in the artificial landscape, or man made objects so often regarded as exciting evidence of a new world in the making. This is where my friends who paint, who have painted Pedder, I am sure will agree with me entirely. The natural world contains an unbelievable diversity, and offers variety of choices, provided of course that we retain some of this world, and that we live in the manner that permits us to go out, seek it, find it, and make those choices…
In December 1971 after spending the holiday break with family and a small group of friends at Lake Pedder, Olegas prepared for a solo canoe trip down the Gordon River. He intended rephotographing his river images collection destroyed by bushfire five years earlier. On 6 January 1972 Olegas Truchanas accidentally drowned in the Gordon River aged 48 years.
Following his death books such as The World of Olegas Truchanas and Scott Millwood’s 2003 film Wildness confirmed and further enhanced Truchanas’s reputation outside Tasmania as a passionate advocate for environmental protection. His images began to feature in art museum exhibitions. Perhaps the most important was the exhibition 'In the Balance: Art for a Changing World’ where his work was exhibited amongst other Australian and international artists concerned with current environmental issues.
His work for this exhibition, Lake Pedder – the Audio Visual, revealed the dramatic effects of light, rain and shadow on the ever changing mood of this mysterious and stunningly beautiful landscape.
Olegas was an important and influential photographer whose vision, creative skills and untiring devotion to the protection of Tasmania’s wilderness was to inform and inspire future generations. Fellow conservationist and friend Peter Dombrovskis acknowledged Olegas Truchanas as a leading influence in his own photographic practice.
The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston hold the Truchanas Family Collection, which includes Olegas’s extensive 35 mm colour slide archive of south-west Tasmania, taken between 1967 and 1971. The National Library of Australia, Canberra holds digital copies of the Lake Pedder audio visual collection.
Writers:
arvh
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 22 September 1923
- Summary
- Olegas Truchanas was renowned for his slide presentations which brought ever-increasing attention to Tasmania's unique south-west landscape. Using a collection of colour slides accumulated from his trips in the area, he unveiled the beauty and distinctive value of this wilderness in a subtle and powerful manner. He believed that if people could see this exceptional landscape, they would be moved to protect it.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Jan-72
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 11 June 1916
- Summary
- Brisbane born artist Francis Lymburner first came to prominence as one of the members of Sydney's Charm School in the late 1940s. His subject matter favoured performers – actors and harlequins were among his favourite. His romanticised vision of human figures, especially circus people, did not find favour in later years although he was always admired by his fellow artists
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Oct-72
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Sydney, NSW?
- Biography
- cartoonist, son of Hal and Vi Eyre , began his career as a cadet reporter on the Sydney Evening News then became a cartoonist on the Melbourne Herald . He had cartoons in the Sydney Morning Herald from 1944 (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 49-51) and was employed as its leader page cartoonist until his death, sharing the position with George Molnar . The first original Australian cartoon published in the SMH on 21 October 1944 was by Eyre Jr; it showed a tidal wave of occupied countries about to overwhelm Hitler (ill. Souter, 257: of historic interest). From then on cartoons appeared sporadically in the Herald until the Bulletin cartoonist John Frith was appointed full-time in December 1944. Eyre Jnr had a regular cartoon feature, 'Family Man’, in the Sun Herald . Art Gallery of Western Australia have 2 undated cartoons acquired from the Sun-Herald : “All right you volunteers, the deal’s off!” and “Follow the Band”.
Eyre Jr’s SMH cartoons on the 1954 Royal Visit are illustrated in Souter (328-29). Cartoons on the creation of the DLP (“He’s disgustingly advanced for four months isn’t he?” SMH 1957) are in King (170). National Library of Australia has 145 of Eyre’s original ink and wash cartoons published in the SMH c.1960-65. Mitchell Library (Pic Acc 3088) has hundreds of originals of 'The Family Next Door’ done in the 1960s-70s, donated by the paper in c.1979. When Eyre Junior died in 1972, “emeric” (Emeric Vrbancich ) took over as the Herald 's editorial cartoonist.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1908
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney and Melbourne newspaper cartoonist. Son of Hal and Vi Eyre, cartoonist and ceramicist respectively. The first original Australian cartoon published in the Sydney Morning Herald was by Eyre.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1972
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, TAS, Australia
- Biography
- Artist and teacher born 26 February 1908 in Launceston, Tasmania. The son of shipping and general merchant Robert Norman Smith, Jack Carington Smith had four brothers [one died in childhood] and two sisters. He attended Launceston Church Grammar School, as his father had before him. In 1925, aged seventeen, he relocated to Sydney were he worked as a clerk for the Shell Oil Company for three years. In the evenings he attended art classes at the East Sydney Technical College. In 1928 Carington Smith suffered a gangrenous appendix and returned to Launceston after the operation. While recuperating, he made the decision to become an artist and devote his life to art. He returned to Sydney, resumed his night classes and began working as a commercial artist. Over a period of eleven years, Carington Smith studied four nights a week under the guidance of Fred Britton, Douglas Dundas and, later, Fred Leist. In 1936, he was the first night student to win the New South Wales Government Travelling Art Scholarship. The terms of the scholarship secured him a place in the Royal Academy School, London, where he studied under Fred Ernest Jackson. While in London he also attended Bernard Meninsky’s classes at the Westminster School. Carington Smith’s wife, Ruth [née Walker], whom he married in 1934, accompanied him with their baby daughter, Jill. They travelled to France and Italy before returning to Sydney in 1939. Upon their return, Carington Smith held his first solo exhibition at the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney. The exhibition was opened by his former teacher Dundas and showcased work completed abroad. He received some success and continued to exhibit regularly with Macquarie Galleries until 1971. With a young family and seeking financial security, Carington Smith accepted the position of Head of the Art Department at the Launceston Technical College. The following year, 1940, he took a similar position, Head of the Art Department, at Hobart Technical College. The Art Department separated from the Hobart Technical College in 1963 and became the School of Art, with Carington Smith continuing as Head of the Fine Art Department. Teaching was stimulating for Carington Smith: his experiences abroad had enlightened him, resulting in his desire to instil in his students the importance for artists to travel. Carington Smith was a prolific painter who straddled genres and mediums. In 1949, he won the Sir John Sulman Prize for Mural Painting with his landscape Bush Pastoral. Dundas observed of Carington Smith’s technique: “His unerring appreciation of tonal values, fostered by his early training, was a key factor in all his work, particularly in oils, and nowhere is it more apparent than in these paintings of the night.” (Dundas 1973, p262) Strange Night won the 1953-54 Tasmanian Sesquicentenary Art Prize. Over time, Carington Smith’s work became more abstract. His large abstract Garden Fantasy won the 1965 Tasmanian Art Prize. Sue Backhouse, author of his 1976 retrospective, recounts his comparison of music and art and his progression towards abstraction: “It seems reasonable to me that the painter should put colour and tone on the canvas in places that, in the moment of inspiration or clear thought, he feels they should go. it needs the public to rid its mid of the pre-conceived idea of what a painting should be and to think more, as it does a piece of music, appreciating the emotional, dramatic or poetic value of its arrangement in tone and colour.” (Backhouse 1976, p19). Carington Smith established a reputation in portraiture through commissions and art prizes. Over the years he painted numerous portraits, including over sixty commissions of academics, explorers (Sir Edmund Hilary, 1960), architects (Leighton Erwin, Architect for the Royal Hobart Hospital, 1954), administrators and businessmen. In 1959, the Commonwealth Government commissioned him to paint murals for Australia House in London. Joseph Burke, Professor of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne, observed in 1963: “He is also one of the few contemporary painters who can execute a portrait which is simultaneously an authentic likeness, a psychological study and a work of art.” (Burke 1963). He preferred to familiarise himself with his sitter before painting them. His portrait of Leslie Greener, which was awarded the 1966 Helena Rubenstein Portrait Prize, is reported to have taken fifteen two-hour sessions. In 1955, Carington Smith was awarded two portrait prizes, the Adelaide Melrose Prize for his portrait of Professor A.L. McAulay, and the first Women’s Weekly Prize for Portraiture (1500 pounds, at the time the largest sum offered in the world for an art prize) for Arrangement in Green. In 1963, he was awarded the prestigious Archibald Prize for his portrait of Professor James McAuley. Carington Smith was honoured with a solo exhibition of his paintings in the 1962 Adelaide Festival of the Arts. The following year, a retrospective of his work was organised by the Adult Education Board of Tasmania. He was represented in the 1956 Arts Festival of the Olympic Games exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. His work was included in several travelling exhibitions, including 'Contemporary Australian Painters’, which toured Canada in 1957-58; the 'Matson Line Exhibition of Australian Painters’, held in San Francisco 1959; the 'Contemporary Australian Art’ exhibition at Auckland City Art Gallery, New Zealand, in 1960; and the 1962 Transfield Art Prize, which was displayed at Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1964, he became a fellow of the International Institute of Arts and Letters in Switzerland. Despite the international and interstate exposure, Carington Smith spent the majority of his life in Tasmania, a place he cherished deeply. Towards the end of his life he travelled to Europe twice, first in 1964 and again in 1969. On his first visit, Carington Smith and his family travelled via caravan through France, Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia, Holland, Greece and Great Britain. Shy and introspective by nature, he was highly respected among his peers. Lloyd Rees (in Gertsakis 1985) wrote of Carington Smith: “Among my most precious Tasmanian memories are visits to the Carington Smith home. We would think and talk far into the night. The tranquil beauty of this has come through in pictures by Jack that are almost abstract in quality, the room itself seeming to merge with the river beyond. To my mind these works associated with his home are unique in Australian painting, and how truthfully they express the man, reserved and gentle, but behind them a disciplined and determined authority.” Due to deteriorating health, Carington Smith retired from teaching in 1970. He continued painting and was awarded the Sir Warwick Fairfax Prize in 1971 for his abstract The Human Image. He died in Hobart on 19 March 1972. His ashes were scattered into the sea off Cloudy Bay, Bruny Island. He was survived by his wife, two daughters and son.
Writers:
E J CollertonNote:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 26 February 1908
- Summary
- Prolific mid 20th century painter based in Hobart and Sydney. Jack Carington Smith won numerous awards and prizes including the 1949 Sir John Sulman Prize for Mural Painting and the 1963 Archibald Prize.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Mar-72
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- Painter and gallery administrator, was born on 18 July 1902 in Edinburgh, eldest son of Alfred Richmond Campbell, commercial traveller, and his wife Isabella Jane, née Thompson. Educated in Edinburgh at George Watson’s College and at Wallasey Grammar School, Cheshire, England, in 1916 he migrated with his family to Brisbane, where he worked as a commercial artist. Determined to become a painter, he moved to Melbourne and from 1922 to 1940 lived mainly by his art. The success of his first solo exhibition at Sedon Galleries in 1928 enabled him to travel to Europe with Rupert Bunny [ ADB 7]. He lived in Paris and London and sketched through France, Spain, England and Scotland. Under the influence of Pissarro, Monet, Turner, de Wint and Wilson Steer his work became impressionistic and atmospheric, but he had to paint cheap portraits to make ends meet in the Depression and returned to Australia in 1932.
On 13 June 1933 Campbell married Jean Elizabeth, daughter of J.H. Young [ ADB 13] at Waverton, Sydney, then working as an assistant in her father’s Macquarie Galleries. They lived in Sydney and on islands off the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, which Campbell painted. By the 1950s he was regarded as a leading Australian watercolourist. Having taught part-time in Sydney, Campbell moved to Tasmania in 1941 to head the art department at Launceston Technical College. He was appointed curator of AGWA in 1947 and became president of the Perth Society of Artists. In 1949 he became first director of QAG, then director of the AGSA (1951-67). He was on the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board in Canberra from 1952 to 1972.
Campbell died in Royal Adelaide Hospital on 30 September 1972 and was cremated. Six retrospective exhibitions have been held since his death acc. Finnimore.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 July 1902
- Summary
- Painter and gallery administrator. Born in Scotland and resident of New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and Queensland. By the 1950s he was regarded as a leading Australian watercolourist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Sep-72
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-23.3782137 Longitude150.5134227 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- photographer and author, was born Mary Ernestine Hemmings at Rockhampton, Queensland. After studying to be a stenographer, she became J.F. Archibald’s secretary in Sydney in 1919. She began her journalistic career working for Smith’s Weekly and the Sydney Sun in the 1920s. After the publication of The Great Australian Loneliness in 1937 – written after several years travelling through the remotest stretches of the Australian continent – Ernestine Hill was arguably one of Australia’s most popular writers until the 1950s. Her other books include My Love Must Wait (1941), Water into Gold (1943), Flying Doctor Calling (1947) and The Territory (1951). The Great Australian Loneliness was used as briefing material for visiting American troops in World War II, and My Love Must Wait – a novel about Matthew Flinders – was a bestseller. She was also a regular contributor to Walkabout magazine and editor of the women’s pages of the ABC Weekly . Yet Ernestine Hill has been written out of orthodox Australian literary history, as Meaghan Morris notes. Indeed, the whole genre of popular travel writing has fallen out of critical favour. Hill’s voyage of discovery – personal, political, historical, cultural, geographical – also produced an archive of over 3,000 photographs (Fryer Library, Queensland University), which are quite unknown, as well as many manuscripts, letters, articles and other pieces of writing.
Ernestine Hill’s portrait, painted in 1970 by Sam Fullbrook , is in the Queensland Art Gallery. She died on 21 August 1972, aged seventy-three.
Writers:
Bruce, Candice
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1899
- Summary
- Photographer and author. After the publication of The Great Australian Loneliness in 1937, she was arguably one of Australia's most popular writers until the 1950s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Aug-72
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hammersmith, London, England, UK
- Biography
- Douglas Laurie Cummings, born in Hammersmith in London, was a sign writer, watercolourist, policeman, photographer and graphic artist. He obtained a commercial illustrator’s diploma and took art lessons at Hammersmith School of Art at night before enlisting in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry Regiment in World War I. He fought on the Somme and was taken prisoner-of-war. He emigrated to Western Australia with his wife Nell in 1921 as a soldier-settler. They lived at Talley Farm in Denmark (South-West WA) at first but soon moved to Perth where their son was born in 1924. Cummings joined the police force and became a sergeant. He was appointed official police draughtsman drawing plans of traffic accidents. He also drew cartoons for the police column of the West Australian newspaper. He designed the Pitman & Walsh Memorial which was erected in Perth in 1929. A complete set of the originals of over fifty-six drawings of homesteads commissioned in 1929 by the Western Mail is held by the Royal Western Australian Historical Society. He also painted shop windows, parking signs and other similar commissions. In 1930 he exhibited an oil painting titled Departure for United Kingdom. He exhibited the oil paintings Bathurst Point Lighthouse and Jetty, Rottnest in the Claude Hotchin Art Prize in 1949 and The Causeway, Rottnest and Henrietta Rocks, Rottnest in the Art Competition at Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1950. In addition to painting he was a keen photographer. The Art Gallery of Western Australia has a watercolour by him and a drawing of a lighthouse. His watercolours are pleasant but not distinguished. RED SECTIONS
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- Sign writer, watercolourist, policeman, photographer and graphic artist who exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts and designed the Pitman & Walsh Memorial in Perth.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1972
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-33.829075 Longitude151.24409 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mosman, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Architect, worked in Sydney, on for example extensions to Women’s College Sydney University.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- Architect, worked in Sydney, on for example extensions to Women's College Sydney University.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1972
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-37.8753817 Longitude142.2915453 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Penshurst, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- The son of William Waller, contractor, and Sarah Napier, he spent his early years on his father;s farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, and first exhibited at the the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the AIF, but before he left for France he married a fellow student, Christian Yandall, better known as the artist Christian Waller. He was wounded in action at Bullecourt in May 1917, and lost his right arm. While convalescing in France he learnt to write and draw with his left. On discharge in 1918 he exhibited a series of war subjects.In the 1920s he turned to linocuts as well as beginning to design murals. He completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel in Melbourne in 1927, followed by _Peace after Victory _ at the State Library of Victoria in 1928.In 1929 the Wallers travelled to Europe to study stained glass, and were especially impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and Venice. From then on he worked almost exclusively with these forms. The work of his maturity gave the public architecture of Melbourne the flavour of dignified decoration, classical forms with a modern twist.Four years after Christian’s death in 1954, he married Lorna Reyburn, the New Zealand born artist who had long been his assistant. Despite failing health he continued to work until shortly before his death at home in Ivanhoe 30 March 1972.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 19 June 1893
- Summary
- World War I veteran printmaker, painter, stained glass artist, mosaic artist and muralist. whose work epitomised Art Deco in Australia. Husband of Christian Waller.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Mar-72
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.8894781 Longitude151.1274125 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ashfield, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- etcher, eg Dawe’s Point from McMahon’s Point 1925, Baillieu Library MU.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1888
- Summary
- Walker is one of the many artists who recorded views of Sydney in the midst of her development as a metropolitan city.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1972
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.8354519 Longitude151.2083011 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Popular political and sporting cartoonist who worked predominantly in Melbourne, Victoria. Samuel Garnet Smith Wells was born in North Sydney, New South Wales, on 2 February 1885. He was the son of Samuel Smith Wells, who was born in Middlebie, Dumfries, Scotland, and his mother was Emmeline Little who was born in Sydney. Wells’ mother passed away in December 1885 and his father then remarried Anne Collier. Wells and his two elder sisters were then raised at Kiama, New South Wales. He was educated at Kiama Grammar School and upon leaving school Wells started a career as a sailor. He married his first wife, Grace Maud Pike, in 1907 in the Sydney suburb of Manly. Her family were landowners in the Junee District of New South Wales. However, the financial crisis of 1907 in the USA created a protracted trade depression and Wells went to New Zealand looking for work. In 1909 Wells was at the Royal Artillery South Channel Fort at Portsea in Victoria working in the draftsman’s office and later was in charge of the guns at the fort after the draftsman’s office was disbanded. The fact that he was often away from home resulted in a rift with his wife and baby son, and the couple divorced in 1910. The earliest evidence of Wells’ capacity for artistic drawing was in 1911 when he was a Bombardier member of the Royal Australian Garrison Artillery at the Queenscliff Fort. While stationed there he would constantly amaze and astonish his friends with his ability with a pencil and eventually he gained enough confidence to send contributions to the weekly newspapers. As his popularity grew Wells found that there was more demand for his work. In 1911 Wells married Margaret Elizabeth Egan, daughter of farmers Kevin and Maria Egan of Warragul, Victoria. However after six children this union was to suffer the same fate as his first marriage. It is understood that Wells was still a member of the Permanent Garrison Army at Port Nepean in 1914 and was present when a shot was fired at the German Steamer Pfalz as it tried to escape from Port Phillip Bay; this was reputedly the first shot to be fired against the Germans by the British Empire of the First World War. The Commonwealth Government of Australia purchased Wells’ watercolour painting depicting this event. It is held in the National Library of Australia collection, Canberra, ACT. Wells decided in 1919 that the pencil was mightier than the sword and determined to stake everything on his bid for artistic success, disregarded his uniform and went to Melbourne. Within eighteen months he was holding his own in the art world; he joined the Melbourne Herald in January 1922. He also published a book of cartoons and caricatures the same year. During this time he was also instrumental in the Geelong Victorian Football League team receiving the nickname the “Cats” (Wells always eagerly awaited the opening of the Victorian football season). One week in June 1923 he suggested in one of his drawings that a black cat would give Geelong better fortune against the leading Carlton Blues. Geelong then went on to unexpectedly win against Carlton and won the premiership in 1925 and the “Geelong Cats” nickname very quickly took hold. Wells popularised his own character, John Citizen. It is believed that he jointly collaborated with renowned author C. J. Dennis and Alexander Gurney to pictorially create the first 'Gunns Gully’ characters for Ben Bowyang. Wells’ favourite character was the Prime Minister of the time, William (Billy) Morris Hughes, and in 1926 Hughes opened an exhibition of some four hundred of Wells’ original drawings at the New Gallery in Melbourne. Original works were very rarely seen in public. He married Vera Murray, an artist and daughter of a Melbourne accountant, on 9 February 1932 at Caulfield. In 1935 Wells went to the United Kingdom and worked with Allied Newspapers Ltd, returning to the Melbourne Herald in 1941. Family folklore has it that he was a war correspondent during the Second World War and went to Italy where he covered the story of Mussolini. In addition, it is believed that he was later asked to work for Walt Disney in the United States; however Wells again returned to Melbourne. According to former deputy editor of The Bulletin and former President of the Australian Cartoonist’s Association, Lindsay Foyle, Wells was forced to retire from the Herald in 1950 due to its compulsory retirement at sixty-five policy (Inkspot, pg10). Wells was then the contributing cartoonist with The Age through to 1967 and produced a cartoon on a Monday and Friday each week. Often there was a dig at his mates, if not within the actual cartoon, on the bottom right hand corner. Sometimes it was a message for someone who had helped him. Affectionately known as 'Sammy Wells’ by his peers at both The Age and The Herald, Wells was held in high regard in the Melbourne community. People from the man in the street, football and racing club presidents, through to Defence Force Generals and the Governor of the State of Victoria all liked and respected him. He was a member of the prestigious Kelvin Club of Melbourne and was also a member of the Victorian Division of the Australian Journalists Association. Sam Wells died on 12 March 1972 at his flat in Powlett Street, East Melbourne, having lived in Victoria for forty-eight years. His wife, Vera, placed a memorial notice in The Age every year after his death, and Richard Berry purchased the majority of Wells’ original works at a Melbourne estate auction in the mid 1980s.
Writers:
Dietrich, Roger
Note:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 2 February 1885
- Summary
- Popular political and sporting cartoonist who worked predominantly in Melbourne, Victoria. A number of his cartoons from the 1920s-50s are in the collection of the National Library of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12-Mar-72
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-30.5144881 Longitude151.6656564 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Armidale, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- photographer and school-teacher, grew up on her parents’ property, Craigie Lea, near Armidale (NSW).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1882
- Summary
- Photographer and schoolteacher. Resident of Armidale, New South Wales, Lucy felt very much at home with an independent, outdoor way of life.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1972
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-38.1992753 Longitude144.3351609 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelong, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator, was born of Cornish parents in Adelong, Victoria, on 13 April 1882. Minnie spent much of her childhood in the Victorian Alps. With her siblings she spent her childhood recreation time prowling the hills and gullies in the valley of Wandiligong. From these childhood experiences she gained first-hand knowledge and keen powers of observation of the natural life of the hills. Minnie had no formal art training; she began her career as a schoolteacher.
Minnie’s work is strongly informed by the 'art nouveau’ illustrative style. While it is difficult to establish evidence of direct influence, her work shows similarities to the illustrative work of Arthur Rackham, falling within the 'fairy’ tradition of children’s writing and illustrating. Her books include colour plates and black-and-white (pen and ink) sketches.
Minnie Isabella Rowe (1882-1972), Gully Folk 1910, watercolour, pen and ink; original drawing for The Wand of Dawn , Melbourne 1916. Private collection, exhibited Dromkeen Collection of Australian Children’s Literature 1991.
Writers:
Gray, Pamela
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 13 April 1882
- Summary
- Minnie Rowe's oeuvre is strongly influenced by the 'art nouveau' illustrative style. Her work demonstrates similarities to the illustrative work of Arthur Rackham and the 'fairy' tradition of children's writing and illustration.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1972
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-33.8349393 Longitude148.6925158 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1972-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cowra, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Leatherworker and metalworker, joined the Society of Arts & Crafts of NSW in 1917 and exhibited with it 1927-29.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1880
- Summary
- Young was a leatherworker and metalworker, who exhibited with the Society of Arts & Crafts of New South Wales during the early twentieth century.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1972
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude49.4871968 Longitude31.2718321 Start Date1946-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ukraine
- Biography
- Marie Briebauer, painter and etcher, was born in the Ukraine in 1946. Briebauer met George Gittoes in San Francisco in 1969 and corresponded with him throughout 1970-71. She came to the Yellow House on June 13 1971 and hung her work in Gittoes’ Puppet Theatre. Briebauer died at the Yellow House on 13 August 1971.
Writers:
Mendelssohn, Joanna
Date written:
1990
Last updated:
2010
- Born
- b. c.1946
- Summary
- The painter and printmaker Marie Briebauer was one of a number of artists who travelled to the Yellow House and worked there in the Spring of 1971.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Aug-71
- Age at death
- 25
Details
Latitude-33.8342887 Longitude151.2182049 Start Date1916-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Neutral Bay, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, sketcher, craft-worker and art teacher, was born in 'Cooinda’, Wycombe Road, Neutral Bay, Sydney on 3 February 1916?, the elder of the two children of Florence E. Kent and John Dumeresq Cunningham ('Jock’) Lyall – called 'shipping clerk’ on Nan’s birth certificate but later a prosperous importer/ businessman – who had married in Sydney in 1915. The family moved to Adelaide when Nan was young. She attended the Adelaide Presbyterian Ladies College, learning music, dancing and sport; she also kept a horse. When Nan was about 14 her mother died, aged 38, and Jock married Florence’s sister Violet (Vi) Kent, then middle-aged. Soon afterwards the Depression started and Jock’s business failed. The family returned to Sydney where they mainly stayed with family until taking up residence in an old house after Jock was given the unofficial Engadine Post Office in the mid-1930s and Vi was postmistress. When Vi retired, Jock purchased a soldiers’ settlement block at Engadine. Nan’s sister Jean died of polio aged about 14 (c.1936).
In the early 1930s Nan got a job at David Jones. Because Engadine was too far to travel she lived in Sydney, where she studied art at East Sydney Technical College at night and with Rah Fizelle. She met Bill Hortin at art school, a commercial artist with a club foot who was an extrovert with a great sense of humour and lots of friends. They lived together for years until marrying in 1939, then separated six months later. With many others, they suffered near starvation during the Depression and became committed members of the Communist Youth League (later the Eureka Youth League). Bill became manager of the Communist Party of Australia studio, which employed a number of people to produce banners, etc. for the party and for unions. Since most cultural circles in Sydney were interconnected, Nan knew Rosaleen Norton , the Andersonian libertarians and several dance circles. A number of her sketches of dancers are probably of the Borovansky Ballet, perhaps their productions of 'Scherherazade’ or 'Terra Australis’ (costumes and decor by Eve Harris ) cf Marjorie Penglase 's Borovansky sketches, Pix 10 August 1946, 12-15, 'Is Australian Ballet dying?’
Nan’s main income during WWII came from teaching art at various NSW Dept of Education schools, including the Kindergarten Teachers College in Waverley and North Sydney, and at Technical Colleges. Before this she had a range of casual jobs. {Merewether claims she attended life drawing classes at the George Bell School, Melbourne, in the mid-1930s before travelling to England and India.} Nan and Bill parted in 1939 when Nan went off to China with a member of the Repin family, owners of the Repin chain of coffee shops in Sydney, who was going to Russia to reclaim some of his family’s property and possessions. Nan was refused entry at the Siberian-Sino border so travelled round China alone. She spent some months in Shanghai as governess in a British army family then accompanied them to India for a few months. On her return (with drawings of her travels) at the outbreak of WWII her drawing 'Bombay’ was reproduced in Art in Australia 4/2 (June-August 1941, 63) under the name of “Nan Lyall” but signed 'Nan’ (also represented in the Museum of Art, Bombay, according to 1946 Women Painters’ exhibition catalogue). Merewether claims she began to exhibit with the Contemporary Artists Society on her return, but this was the Melbourne not Sydney Contemporary Artists Society; she submitted 5 works to the 1942 Victorian Contemporary Artists Society exhibition. For the Sydney Contemporary Artists Society Holder has found her exhibiting only in 1950 and 1951, having checked cats of 1946, 1949-51 and 1953-54.
Her partner in 1945-46 was Douglas Campbell, an artist who chiefly made woodblock and linocut prints, often published in the Saturday Herald , and who later became a fervent Anglican. They lived in Forbes Street, Woolloomooloo, with Jean Kelly, Studio of Realist Art Secretary (later Jean Smail), until moving to a flat over Grubbs the Butcher’s in a lane off George Street, near Circular Quay. Smail describes Nan as 'a genius of a dressmaker… whatever she saw she could do… for example she took up shoemaking after she had observed the process in China’. In 1943 she made papier-mâché sculptured figures that were shown in 'Woman Represents Peace’ for the Australian Women’s Charter in 1943 (the organisation that published Australian Women’s Digest in 1944-48).
A foundation member of Studio of Realist Art in late 1944, Hortin was an active committee member. She also prepared Studio of Realist Art banners and other visual material for May Day marches and scenery and costumes for productions at the New Theatre. She exhibited in all Studio of Realist Art’s exhibitions (1946-49), showing oil paintings and crayon drawings in the first show (August 1946) at David Jones Art Gallery (see catalogue). One of her drawings of dancing couples became the cover of the March 1946 (no.9) Studio of Realist Art Bulletin (ill. Merewether, 79), for which she occasionally wrote as well as drew. She made gigantic papier-mâché figures for the Immigration part of the Australian section of the 1947 British Empire Exhibition at the Sydney Showground. (Was it part of that year’s Royal Easter Show?)
After the Studio of Realist Art studio was gutted by fire in 1947 the group was allowed to use the Waterside Workers’ Federation Hall, where they set up the Wharfies Art Group (active 1947-58) and where Nan taught art to wharfies’ children, with Vi Collings assisting from c.1952-55. She painted some wonderful murals on the history of the working class in the WWF canteen. Smail says that by 1945-46 she was very involved in painting murals, influenced by Diego de Riviera and José Orozco. She showed mural proposals in the 'Art in Public Life’ exhibition at the Education Department Gallery in October 1946. 'Arrival of Ordinary Settlers’ (convicts in chains), a drawing illustrated in the 1946 Women Painters’ catalogue, looks like a sketch for a mural.
In the late 1940s Hortin went to Brisbane, held a solo exhibition at Brisbane’s Moreton Galleries in 1950, then returned to Sydney. Her son, Michael George Adams, was born in Sydney in 1953. Nan had married the child’s father, George Adams, when she became pregnant, but they separated well before the birth. She purchased and did up a very small house in Euroca Street, North Sydney, and lived there for years with her son. In 1963, when Michael was 10 or 11, they moved with Tom Morrison to Yorkies {sp?} Knob in North Queensland, about 20 km outside Cairns, where they built their own 'ridiculously designed’ house. Ray Crooke was a close neighbour. Nan taught at the local TAFE.
Nan died in 1971. Then Michael, who had just started a course at Rockhampton TAFE, was killed in a motorcycle accident aged 19 or 20 and within the same eighteen-month period Tom Morrison died 'in the garden’. Nan’s estate went to George Adams, who sold most of it. Her collection of books, mostly socialist literature and philosophy, was donated to Townsville Library.
In Queensland her style changed completely to mainly pastel sketches and oils of tropical landscapes, seascapes and views. Almost all her work has disappeared, apart from a couple of oil paintings and some works on paper found in the Balmain markets one Saturday morning, acc. Merewether (late 1970s or c.1980?). They include Embracing Figures c.1947, pencil and pastel, Cafe Benefit c.1946, coloured crayon on paper, and Form c.1946, oil on masonite. All were still privately held when shown by Charles Merewether in 1984 (NB: NGA now has 15 drawings by Hortin). Hortin is not mentioned in Serle’s Artist in the Tropics .
Writers:
Holder, Jo
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 3 February 1916
- Summary
- A committed member of the Communist Youth League, Hortin was also a foundation member of the Studio of Realist Art, and while in Sydney was influenced by the Mexican muralist Diego Riviera. After she moved to North Queensland in the early 1960s however her style changed completely.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1971
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude43 Longitude12 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Italy
- Biography
- Painter, born Italy. Graduated in Arts from Sydney University. Taught at the Dattilo-Rubbo Art School in Sydney and at East Sydney Technical College. Won Sulman Prize 1945. The mural he painted for St Stephen’s Catholic Cathedral, Brisbane, behind the altar and on north-south walls of the crossing, commissioned by Archbishop Duhig during WWII, is now painted out. Duhig also commissioned a canvas of 'The Martyrdom of St Stephen’, measuring 25 feet by 12 feet six inches – 'the biggest of its kind ever undertaken in Australia’, according to the archibishop, who also said: 'The drapery and setting are really perfect and the figures seem to throb with life. I regard Mr Lo Schiavo as the most gifted artist in Australia, and I regret that his work is not much more before the public’ (Duhig letter, 17 June 1943 (Art File, Brisbane Archdiocescan Archives), cited Grice.
Lo Schiavo also painted an enormous mural for the Union Building, University of Sydney.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1909
- Summary
- Painter, born Italy. Won Sulman Prize 1945 for the Shakespeare Mural at the University of Sydney Union. Had a work commissioned by Archbishop Duhig during WWII.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Sep-71
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-31.9807252 Longitude115.7814486 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Claremont, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Vigneron and painter was born in Claremont, Western Australia and educated at Thomas Street School followed by Fremantle Technical School around 1920-21 under Muriel Southern. Cook also took a commercial art diploma by correspondence and later had lessons from Margaret Saunders and in the 1950s-60s he had further classes – adult education – with the influential Henry Froudist. Cook exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts and later with the Perth Society of Artists. George Benson, the painter and critic, described his work in 1931 as “Distinctly promising”. In 1933 he exhibited oil paintings in the landscape competition of the West Australian Society of Arts as well as charcoal drawings, tempera paintings and pencil drawings. Benson wrote of this work, “Two oils are shown by Allon Cook Herne Hill from the Darling Ranges and Autumn, each is a great improvement on the work he showed last year though 'Autumn’ is not altogether suggestive of 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’. Two landscapes in body colour or tempura, reveal his tendency to follow in the footsteps of his uncle, the late Delafield Cook.” In 1934 Cook exhibited an oil painting of “Whiteman’s Brickyard”, a watercolour of “Belvoir” and a drawing of Fremantle. He developed into a competent painter who won the Claude Hotchin Art Prize for oil painting on three occasions, 1950, 1951 and 1958. Cook was a friend of Cyril Lander and they held several exhibitions together.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1907
- Summary
- Allon Cook was born in 1907. He was a painter who exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts and with the Perth Society of Artists. Cook was a friend of Cyril Lander and they held several exhibitions together.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1971
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1971
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-33.283333 Longitude149.1 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Orange, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- poet, journalist and sketcher, studied art and drawing at Stott and Hoare’s design school in Sydney c.1916. He was always good at drawing and often decorated his letters with sketches. He drew his own Christmas cards from c.1908/9 onwards.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 27 March 1901
- Summary
- Influential 20th century poet, journalist and sketcher.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Jun-71
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-39.6766915 Longitude175.7983062 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Taihape, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 25 February 1900
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Apr-71
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-34.5926463 Longitude146.7000438 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Narrandera, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, bookplate designer, illustrator, commercial artist and gallery director, was born at Narrandera (NSW) on 26 June 1894.
Prints include woodcut Circe 1927 (edn 50) (Lebovic & Warner, Fifty Years , cat.16), The Offering-Bali n.d. (c.1932), edn 20/50 (Mitchell Library, SSV 99/INDO 1), and Ned Kelly. Pen drawings include a group of women in late Victorian costume under trees, exhibited Society of Artists 1922 (ill. in cat. plate 47).
Oil paintings include The Little Farm, Bengarby 1947 offered by Bridget McDonnell Gallery, Carlton, Early Australian Painters , catalogue of exhibition 25 May-15 June 2001 (cat 39 ill. from col. Dr Grant Lindeman) originally exhibited in Australian Red Cross Society exhibition, David Jones Gallery 1949, no.80 and on p.78 of Adrian Feint Flower Paintings , Ure Smith, 1948.
Illustrations in various styles were done for Home . Did story illustrations in Australia: National Journal and Australia Week end Book no.1 (1942), e.g. angel of resurrection in Prague for M.W. Peacock’s 'Requium’, p.86, historical illustrations 1788-1940 for Marjorie Barnard’s 'Parade of Women’, pp.113-122, and outback scenes for M.W. Peacock’s 'Wings’. Art Gallery of New South Wales has pen and ink drawing, 'The Old Bachelor [18th century man in bed with sleeping woman]’ 1924, purchased from Exhibition of Younger Group of Artists, Anthony Horderns 1924 (10 gns).
Feint was renowned for his bookplates.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1894
- Summary
- Feint was a painter, printmaker, bookplate designer and illustrator who provided illustrations for a range of books and journals and was well-known for his bookplates. He was associated with "The Home" magazine published by Sydney Ure Smith.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1971
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Esther Paterson, painter and illustrator, was born on 5 February 1892 at Carlton, Melbourne, the second child of Scottish-born parents Hugh Paterson (the first chairman of the Commonwealth Art Advisory) and his wife Elizabeth Leslie, née Deans. Paterson’s father and uncle (John Ford) were both artists and through their example she was introduced to the Melbourne art scene from an early age. Her younger sister Betty also became an illustrator, cartoonist and journalist and as young girls, the Paterson sisters played games with the children of the prominent artist Frederick McCubbin, as the McCubbin family lived on the same street.
Paterson was educated at Oberwyl School, St Kilda, and studied painting at the National Gallery of Victoria School (1907-1912) under the tutelage of English artist Bernard Hall, where she attained a reputation in portraiture. In 1915, three years after her studies at the NGV School, an exhibition of her work was held at Besant Hall, Centreway, Collins St, Melbourne, receiving critical acclaim in The Argus newspaper. Her work as an illustrator can be seen in ‘Aussie Girls’ which was published towards the end of 1918, following the First World War. In her private life, on 2 June 1923, Paterson married George Hermon Gill (1895-1973), a London-born mariner and naval officer who had emigrated to Melbourne in 1922.
During her artistic career, Paterson formed many friendships with fellow artists including W.B. McInnes, who painted her portrait ‘Silk and Lace’ for which he was awarded the Archibald Prize in 1927. She admired the art of McInnes, as well as the work of other noted Australian artists such as George Lambert, John Longstaff and Max Meldrum. When her husband resigned from his post with the shore staff of the Commonwealth Government Line of Steamers in 1929, Paterson and her husband went on a trip to England and Scotland. While in England, they made a pilgrimage to Great Ayton in Yorkshire and Paterson took the time to create a large number of sketches and watercolours inspired by her trip.
In 1930, Esther Paterson supplied the cover illustration for the ‘Table Talk Annual’ and she continued to exhibit her work regularly in Melbourne. As an established artist, she also served as a dignitary at events, and, for example, opened an exhibition of paintings by artists including Phyle Waterhouse and Arthur Read at Velasquez Galleries, 100 Bourke St, Melbourne, on 5 October 1943.
In 1950, Paterson achieved the honour of being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, London, which was a society founded in the eighteenth century for the encouragement of the Arts. Her work had become known in England and several of her portraits, including one of Dr Thomas Wood, were in London. Her popular reputation in portraiture was further reflected by the praise she received from the Governor of Victoria Sir Dallas Brooks in 1955 with regard to her portrait of his wife Lady Brooks, which was exhibited on 2 May at the Victorian Artists’ Society in Albert St, East Melbourne.
During the later years of her artistic career, Paterson served as a council-member (1954-68) of the Victorian Artists Society, of which she became an honorary life member, and she was the President of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1966. She passed away on 8 August 1971 at her family home in Middle Park, Victoria.
The art of Esther Paterson is represented in several prominent public collections in Australia, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and the Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong.
Writers:
Staff Writer
ecwubben
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 5 February 1892
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Melbourne cartoonist, painter and commercial artist. Sister of fellow artist Betty Paterson.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 8-Aug-71
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- John Cyril (Jack) Cato (1889-1971), photographer, was born on 4 April 1889 at Launceston, Tasmania, son of Albert Cox Cato, salesman, and his wife Caroline Louise, née Morgan.
Early LifeAt the age of 12 years he did an apprenticeship, and studied arts in night school. His father arranged for him to have lessons from a friend who was a metallurgist at Queenstown, Tasmania, where he learnt the properties of metals in photography. John Watt Beattie, a Scottish landscape photographer and also the son of a photographer, introduced young Jack to the medium in 1896. From 1901 Cato worked under Percy Whitelaw and John Andrew, both local portrait photographers. He was further trained by Lucien Dechaineux at Launceston Technical School.
CareerIn 1906, aged 17, Cato joined Beattie in his Hobart premises and set up his own studio. Later he applied to be official photographer to (Sir) Douglas Mawson’s 1911 Australasian Antarctic Expedition. However, Mawson passed up he and Frank Mallard in favour of Frank Hurley [Murphy, Shane & Hurley, Frank, 1885-1962 (2000). Shackleton’s photographer: the annotated diaries of Frank Hurley, expedition photographer, Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914-17 : a book (2nd electronic ed). Shane Murphy, Scottsdale, AZ]. Cato travelled that year in Europe finding work with photographers in London, among them Claude Harris and H. Walter Barnett, the fashionable society and vice-regal portraitist. Having contracted tuberculosis and, seeking the relief of a warm climate, Cato left England in 1914 for six years working on expedition in South Africa. The anthropological photography earned him a fellowship (1917) of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.
In 1920 Cato returned, ill, to Tasmania, where he operated his own portrait-studio in Hobart, and there married Mary Boote Pearce (d.1970) on 24 December 1921. In 1927 they moved to Melbourne. With the patronage of Dame Nellie Melba [DAME NELLIE MELBA OPENS SHOW. (1927, October 7). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 13.], whom he had met in London, and through her introductions to society and to theatrical circles, he set up as a social portraitist. He put his pictorial style, natural gregariousness, love of theatre and technical knowledge to effect in becoming a leader of the trade in Melbourne for two decades. [“He was also a singer, he loved the stage. I think that was more behind Jack Cato than anything: he was a performer, he loved performing, during the African years he was a member of a Pierrot troupe.”[Narkiewicz, Ewa (2000). Jack Cato’s Melbourne: an interview with John Cato. In La Trobe Journal. (65), 17-27.][“JACK CATO, photographer and raconteur, who, not long ago, produced a most readable book of reminiscences…” Clive Turnbull, in Portrait of A City. (1949, October 15). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 10.]
His photographs were frequently published in The Australian Womens Weekly, The Argus,, Table Talk, The Hobart Mercury, The Australasian, He maintained links with professional associations and amateur clubs through occasional exhibitions of his best work [Arthur Streeton reviews “an exhibition of photographs by Mr. Jack Cato opened at the Athenaeum Gallery bv the Prime Minister (Mr. Lyons)”; ART PHOTOGRAPHS. (1932, May 31). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 8.] , and was senior vice-president (1938) and a life member of the Professional Photographers’ Association.
Cato retired from his Melbourne studio in 1946 to begin a career as an author. In addition to a large number of articles in photographic, philatelic and other magazines, as well as serving as chronicler for the Savage Club, he published an autobiography, I Can Take It (1947), and a pictorial documentary, Melbourne (1949)[reviewed by Clive Turnbull, in Portrait of A City. (1949, October 15). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 10.].
Cato’s The Story of the Camera in Australia (1955) is acknowledged [“It is unlikely that new research will alter substantially the outlines of the story which Cato set down, although these might be filled in by pursuing more material outside the Sydney-Melbourne axis.” Humphrey McQueen in THE STORY BEHIND THE LENS. (1977, November 5). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 – 1995), p. 12.] as the first Australian national history of the medium, though it is more populist than academic. A keen stamp-collector from childhood (also 1935 president of the Royal Philatelic Society of Victoria) he was able to sell his stamps for about £10,000 in 1954 to finance six years of research for this book. He used the La Trobe Library picture and newspaper collections in Melbourne [Narkiewicz, Ewa (2000). Jack Cato’s Melbourne: an interview with John Cato. In La Trobe Journal. (65), 17-27.], making only one visit to Sydney and Canberra institutions. Cato also relied on written accounts such as the 100 or so letters from Harold Cazneaux, as well as corresponding with Keast Burke in Sydney, a photography historian and campaigner for the recognition of photography as a historical resource and was engaged in 1964 as consultant to the collections at the Australian National Library.
From 1960-63 Cato was photography columnist for the Age.
He died on 14 August 1971 at Sandringham, survived by his son, photographer John Cato and daughter.
A collection of his photographs is held by the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
References
Cato, Jack & Institute of Australian Photography (2009). Charles Nettleton (3rd ed). Institute of Australian Photography, [Melbourne]Cato, J. (1971) Philately from Australia, Sept 1971Cato, Jack (1963). Some early Australian Commonwealth postage stamp essays. Review Pubs, Dubbo, N.S.WCato, Jack (1955). The story of the camera in Australia. Georgian House, MelbourneCato, Jack (1949). Melbourne. Georgian House, MelbourneCato, Jack (1947). I can take it : the autobiography of a photographer. Georgian House, MelbourneDow, D. M. (1947) Melbourne Savages (Melb)Cosier, I. (1980) Jack Cato (M.A. prelim thesis, University of Melbourne). Ennis, Helen & National Library of Australia & National Portrait Gallery (Australia) (1996). The reflecting eye : portraits of Australian visual artists. National Library of Australia, [Canberra]Narkiewicz, Ewa (2000). Jack Cato’s Melbourne: an interview with John Cato. In La Trobe Journal. (65), 17-27.Newton, G. (1980) Silver and Grey (Syd,)Newton, G. (1993 ) ’Cato, John Cyril (Jack) (1889–1971)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 13, (MUP).Professional Photography in Australia, 23, no 5, Aug-Sept 1971Photofile, 4, no 1, Autumn 1986The Great Lindt; a compilation based on research by Jack Cato, R. J. Barcham and Keast Burke. (1955-10-01). In Image. 4 (7), 54(1).
Writers:
Staff Writer
James McArdle
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 4 April 1889
- Summary
- Professional photographer and photographic historian.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Aug-71
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-30.7465571 Longitude150.7218323 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manilla, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Catherine Maud Womersley was born at Manilla, New South Wales on 21 September 1886. Her father died when she was quite young and, as her mother remarried, she was raised by her paternal grandmother in Melbourne. She studied drawing and watercolours from early childhood. She married Jack O’Reilly in Sydney about 1920 and came to live in Brisbane where he was superintending engineer for the GPO. She became a student of L.J. Harvey at the Central Technical College and exhibited her pottery and was awarded several prizes at the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association 1923-5. She was included in the Central Technical College display of pottery at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924 and it was the only year she exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Society of Brisbane where “. . . handsome pieces beautifully modelled in the 'Louis’ style” were noted.
In 1925 she and her husband travelled to England where she enrolled at the Royal College of Arts (April-July) and later studied ceramics at the London County Council School of Art Studies where she learned to throw. She was keenly interested in studying historic ceramics in London museums, especially Chinese ceramics of the Ming and Sung eras. The ceramics she produced there (she had 3 cwt of Queensland clay sent over to her) had simple profiles and sometimes vestigial dragon handles but principally relied on superb glazes for effect. In an article titled “Woman’s realm” in The West Australian on 23 April 1936 she remarked “I have always concentrated on form and proportion, the use of subtle colourings and high quality glazes particularly suited for each piece of work rather than the more modern style of decoration.”
At this time she made a plaque which incorporated the signatures of the Australian Test Cricket team for 1926. It was displayed at the Queensland Agent General, London, together with other items of her pottery.
She exhibited a collection of her pottery in the Women’s Artists Society, London in 1926 and later the same year she exhibited a model of a kookaburra at the Royal Academy (no. 1445). These items were also exhibited in Brisbane at the annual Queensland Art Society exhibition in November. She also exhibited a collection of pottery in the Queensland Art Society’s 1927 April exhibition. This appears to have been the end of her pottery career.
The couple returned to live in Melbourne and then in 1936 to Perth where a group of her pottery and painting was one of the main features of the first exhibition of the West Australian Women Painters and Applied Arts Society. She was also a member of the committee. The couple went to England as part of a round world trip in 1937. After the death of her husband three years later she returned to live in Brisbane where she died on 13 September 1971. She had made some items of poker work in earlier years but in her last years she restricted herself to watercolours.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 September 1886
- Summary
- Maud O'Reilly was one of L.J. Harvey's students who furthered her skills by studying wheelthrowing and glazing when she visited London in 1925. She made her kookaburra statuette in Brisbane and in 1926 produced numerous casts, one of which was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London the same year. The auction of these casts has given her a considerable profile in recent years.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Sep-71
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.713759 Longitude150.3121633 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Katoomba, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born at Katoomba (New South Wales) on 30 June 1886, one of the five children of the headmaster of Katoomba College (where Blamire Young taught mathematics). Judith’s mother, Ann Marion Fletcher, was a gifted embroiderer, exhibiting an impressive needle-painting designed by Blamire Young in the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne which won first prize in its class. Judith also made embroideries in her youth.
Later, the family moved to Greenwich, Sydney and Judith lived in the family home until she married late in life. Having exhibited through the photographic salons as an amateur for some years and adopted some of the principles of art photography, she may already have set up her own studio there by 1908, doing at-home portraits, especially of women and children.
One of the first women studio portrait photographers to establish a name in Sydney (along with May and Mina Moore ), Fletcher established a studio in the city in 1909. In 1916-18 she was advertising her 'art photography’ at George Street in Art in Australia with full-page portraits of celebrities, Sydney socialites and stylish young women. She also did fashion photography, and she took many photographs of Sydney artists, particularly women artists, several of which are included in the biographical section of this book. She owned a sketch by Grace Cossington Smith , a friend of both Judith and her sister Dorothy (McLaurin). Her portrait photographs of male artists include a fine informal portrait of Arthur Streeton (Art Gallery of New South Wales). A theosophist, Fletcher is said by the family to have been one of the participants involved in the Krishnamurti Star Movement amphitheatre at Balmoral Beach in the 1920s.
After 1920 Fletcher evidently worked solely from her Greenwich home. She continued to exhibit in photographic salons until the early 1930s. A close associate of the Manly photographer Frank Bell for many years, she is said to have helped him with the supply of equipment and in developing his technique. Later she married a Polish violin-maker, Gerard Paszek, probably just before World War II. They lived at Mount Kuringai, then at Glenorie. He was an extremely possessive man – Fletcher’s niece recalls that he 'wouldn’t let Judith out of his sight’ – and she had little to do with former colleagues after her marriage. She died in 1971.
Writers:
Newton, GaelNote: Primary biographer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 30 June 1886
- Summary
- One of the first female portrait photographers to establish a name in Sydney, Fletcher had her own studio on George Street in the city where she photographed Sydney socialites and fellow artists including Arthur Streeton. Fletcher was a close associate of photographer Frank Bell.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1971
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- embroiderer and watercolourist, was born in Hobart, eldest daughter of Charles Henry and Esther Ann Robey, members of a prominent Tasmanian Quaker family. Known as Linor, she was a very individual woman of marked uprightness of character and with a notable sense of humour. During much of her life she shared a home at Bellerive, Hobart, with her sister Margaret, her sense of history leading to the house becoming a notable archive of Tasmanian Quaker history.
While attending the Friends’ School at Hobart in 1892-1908, Robey developed an interest in art and craft. This took her to Hobart Technical College to study design and craft, where she was greatly influenced by the teaching of Lucien Dechaineux . In 1910 she went to Woodbrooke (Quaker) College in Birmingham, England, to further her studies. In 1913 she enrolled in the Educational Needlework course under Anne Macbeth at the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland. On her return, she taught needlework and drawing at the Friends’ School from 1914 until she retired c.1931 (acc. to Backhouse, TMAG cat.).
As a student Elinor Robey had exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Society of Tasmania in 1909, including examples of stencilling. She showed leatherwork in 1921 and 1922. She also painted native Tasmanian flora (TMAG). During World War II she was active in war work, especially connected with UNRAA. After the war she returned briefly to her old school as a house-mistress. Robey’s home was decorated with a fine embroidered panel of Glasgow School design, which must have been a continuing source of inspiration. Examples of her embroidery and leatherwork are in the National Gallery of Australia and in private collections.
Writers:
Miley, CarolineNote: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- Linor, as she was known, was a women of upright nature, and a passion for history. Born of a Quaker family, she studied both in Hobart and Glasgow before returning to her old school to teach needlework and drawing.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1971
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-34.0819102 Longitude137.6081151 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Moonta Mines, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- black and white artist, was born on 15 February 1881 at Moonta Mines, SA, second of the three surviving children of Cornish parents, James Pryor, a mine agent, and Caroline Jane, née Richards. He grew up in Moonta and began working for the Wallaroo and Moonta Mining and Smelting Company at the age of 13, under H.R. Hancock (Oswald Pryor wrote the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry on Hancock). After night classes at the Moonta School of Mines, Pryor became a mechanical draughtsman then from 1911 manager of Moonta Mines cementation works. In 1902-3 he attended the SA School of Design, Painting and Technical Art under H.P. Gill . On 8 January 1908 he married Mabel Dixon; they had one son. He was an accomplished organist at Moonta Methodist Church, later Kensington Park Methodist Church, Adelaide.
Having drawn caricatures signed 'Cipher’ for the Adelaide Critic , edited by C.J. Dennis from 1897 (attributed to Pryor by Joe Harris, ill. Harris, 142), Pryor moved to Adelaide in 1919 or 1920. He later wrote to William Moore:
It was while I was drawing for the Critic that C.J. Dennis, its then editor, made the suggestion that the Cousin Jack miner was a good subject for pictorial treatment. I did not adopt it for several years, as I thought Cornish humour would not be widely understood. I was surprised to find later that it had a very wide appeal, letters of appreciation coming from out-back prospectors and mining camps in all parts of Australia and New Zealand, and occasionally from overseas. (Moore ii, 120)
Also signed 'Cipher’ are caricatures of George Reid, Alfred Deakin et al in the Melbourne Clarion of 1904 (ill. Lindesay Way We Were [ WWW ], 53) and cartoons in the 1907 Adelaide satirical journal Gadfly (washerwomen joke, ill. Lindesay 1979, 134; 'advice for his own good’, i.e. two country bumpkins in the city, 12 February 1908, 8). 'Cipher’ also contributed to the 1907-09 Bulletin , eg Deakin to the 'Out of Work’ about 'Protection’ and 'New Protection’ policemen 1907, and caricature of SA Premier J. Verran 1909 (ill. Harris, 169, 216). 'Cypher’ also drew small illustrations of a mining town (Moonta?) in 1907.
'Oswald Pryor’ had cartoons published in Quiz 9 October 1901 (his first published cartoon according to the ADB ), in Lone Hand on 1 June 1909, 205, 1 December 1909, 161 and 1 March 1910, 495, as well as in various other magazines including the weekly Comic Australian (Sydney 1911-13) and SA Wireless Monthly . With J.A. Pearce , he was staff artist on the Adelaide News in the late 1920s-1930s, succeeding Hal Gye (Moore ii, 122) in drawing the weekly cartoon (see anthology Cornish Pasty , 1950, republished 1961). 'Oswald Pryor’ cartoons also appeared in Aussie , e.g. “What is your husband doing?”/ “'E’s done it; 'e came out yesterday.” n.d. (ill. Lindesay, WWW , 97). Later he ran the small SA distributing office for the Sydney Bulletin . But mostly Pryor drew for the Bulletin . Fifty years… notes that his Bulletin cartoons are '...mostly Cornish, or “Geordie”, subjects derived from Moonta (South Australia)’. The ML Bulletin collection has 163 original cartoons of 1906-22, 143 of 1930-36, 121 of 1937-41, 118 of 1941-60 and 36 caricatures of 1920-33 and n.d., mostly of South Australian topics and subjects.
Early Bulletin cartoons signed 'Oswald Pryor’ include Labour’s Real Identity ('Red Objective’) n.d. (courtesy Oswald Pryor) and The Enfant Terrible (Communism interrupting Labor wooing Miss Elector) n.d. (ditto), reproduced Harris p.289. Cartoons done in his later Bulletin years when he was freelancing from his home in Stanley Street, Leabrook, Adelaide, which are signed 'Pryor’ or 'Oswald Pryor’, include: Our Arbour Day (large Mitchell Library [ML] Bulletin original Px*D507/109) published 13 November 1924; Another Convert… , pen and ink political cartoon (ML SV*/CART/7) about Tom Walsh, Secretary of the Australian Seamen’s Union (ASU) during the 1925 Shipping Strike; 1926 driver joke (ill. Rolfe, 285); 1931 Another Little Misunderstanding (ill. Rolfe, 80): '“Parson do be tryin’ to strike good treble [female singer].”/ “What! And him so set and all against horse-racin’!”’
Pryor retired to Canberra and lived with his son Lindsay Dixon Pryor, Professor of Botany at Australian National University. His last cartoon was published when he was 85. He died at Queanbeyan on 13 June 1971. His grandson Geoff Pryor , political cartoonist on the Canberra Times , 'recalls many hours spent studying the works hung on his grandfather’s walls – works by Bulletin greats like Ted Scorfield, Norman Lindsay and David Low’ ( Pickering & Pryor 2002, p.7).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 15 February 1881
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Moonta and Adelaide cartoonist. Pryor's last cartoon was published when he was 85.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Jun-71
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- Rodway, apainter, pastellist and illustrator, was born on 11 November 1881 at Hobart, daughter of Leonard Rodway, a dentist and botanist, and Louisa Susan, née Phillips. She studied art at the Hobart Technical College (1897, 1899-1901) under Ethel Nicholls and the sculptor Benjamin Sheppard; fellow pupils included Mildred Lovett and Eileen Crow. After exhibiting with the Art Society of Tasmania from 1898 and teaching art at the College in 1902, she travelled to London to study at the Royal Academy Schools under Sargent, Bacon, Leslie, Storey and other visiting masters, for which she won a four-year scholarship. She gained a credit in the Academy examinations with work in which Bertram Stevens saw 'breadth of treatment, fecundity of imagination and persistent earnestness’.
After returning to Australia in 1906, Rodway set up a studio in Sydney and continued to study under Sydney Long at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School. Her dramatic depictions of draped figures entered with several other works in the 1907 First Exhibition of Women’s Work at Melbourne were referred to as 'titanic’ by D.H. Souter. In the first issue of Art in Australia (1916) her portraits were described as having 'considerable power … certainty and grace’. As well as oil studies, she drew black-and-white illustrations for journals such as the Lone Hand , e.g. illustration to Arthur H. Adams’s poem 'Loneliness’ in June 1907 (p.177), a very odd drawing titled The Sisters showing a naked (dead?) woman in a cave accompanied by a skeleton (September 1907, 494) and illustrations to Furnley Maurice’s poem 'Exile’ in May 1907, 105. 'The Australian Girl as seen by Florence Rodway’, one of a series, was published on 1 January 1910, 282(?). Sleep , a pastel of a sleeping girl awarded an Honorable Mention at the 1909 Society of Artists’ exhibition, was reproduced in the magazine on 1 April 1910, accompanying a review of the show which stated:
Miss Rodway has come with pastels into her kingdom, to which her familiar charcoal studies seem to-day but a highway. Unlike her charcoals, she does not over-work her pastels; and the several children and fair girls that she shows are handled with a most refreshing directness.
Rodway was an active member of the Society of Artists from 1908 to 1930 and a committee member in 1912. She was also a foundation committee member of the Society of Women Painters in 1910 and a member of the exhibition committee in 1910-12. By then she was receiving regular portrait commissions, especially for children and mostly in pastel or pencil. Three of her pastels, Toffee (a little girl), a portrait, and The Interview , were purchased for the Art Gallery of NSW in 1910, 1916 and 1920 respectively. By 1916 she was producing about twenty portraits a year but really preferred to do more complex compositions with several figures, like The Interview , in which a prospective young woman employer is interviewing a servant (evidently a cook) accompanied by her daughter. She received commissions to paint famous figures like Sir Adrian Knox (1920, ML), Sir William Cullen, Dame Nellie Melba, Julian Ashton, W.C. Wentworth and Henry Lawson (1913, ML). In 1919 the Art Gallery of NSW commissioned portraits of J.F. Archibald (1921) and Major General Sir William Bridges, the University of Sydney commissioned a portrait of Sir Alex McCormick. The Australian War Memorial commissioned portraits of Major General Sir William Bridges (1920), Brigadier General Henry MacLaurin (1922) and Captain Walter Gilchrist (1925).
Rodway exhibited throughout her life, most frequently before her marriage in 1920 to Walter Moore, a civil engineer, the birth of a daughter and the family’s return to Hobart. Even so, her work was included in the 1923 Exhibition of Australian Art at Burlington House, London, and in the following year’s British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. With Thea Proctor, Margaret Preston and thirteen male artists—including Sir John Longstaff, Arthur Streeton and Hans Heysen—she was again chosen to represent Australia (with The Interview ) in the second (1928) London exhibition of contemporary art of the Empire at the Imperial Institute, South Kensington. She had paintings in the 1934 Women Artists of Australia exhibition at Sydney and in the 1950-51 exhibitions of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors (when living in Melbourne). She died in Hobart on 23 January 1971.
Writers:
Bell, Pamela
AntheaGunn
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 11 November 1881
- Summary
- Florence Aline Rodway had a splendid career as a portraitist but preferred to do more complex compositions with figures. Together with artists such as Thea Proctor, Margaret Preston, Sir John Longstaff, Arthur Streeton and Hans Heysen she represented Australia in the second London exhibition of contemporary art of the Empire at the Imperial Institute in South Kensington in 1928.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Jan-71
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-37.8246698 Longitude140.7820068 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1971-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mount Gambier, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- foundation member of SA Society of Arts in 1892. Continued to exhibit until she was 90.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- Ethel Annie Bloxam was a founding member of the South Australian Society of Arts in 1892 and a frequent exhibitor, showing her work regularly until the age of 90.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1971
- Age at death
- 101
Details
Latitude-32.9483779 Longitude151.7566681 Start Date1923-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mereweather, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- (Helge John) Jon Molvig was born at Mereweather, Newcastle, NSW on 27 May 1923 to Helge Molvig, a Norwegian sailor and Bernadine Ward, whose family settled in northern New South Wales in 1852. After his mother’s early death in 1925, he was cared for by his grandmother, Isobel Ward, and after her death in 1932, by his aunt Eleanor Malley. On completing his primary schooling he worked in a garage and the Newcastle Steelworks.
Molvig enlisted in the Australian Citizen Military Forces 5 December 1941, was called up in the 4th Field Regiment R.A.A. at Greta 12 February 1942 and finally discharged 27 January 1944 after service in New Guinea. His early interest in art was rekindled when he saw the sketches by fellow soldier Stanislaw Payne and enrolled at the Strathfield branch of the East Sydney Technical College under the terms of the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme in 1947. His skill as a draftsman was acknowledged by fellow student (and his long time friend) John Rigby. He exhibited with the Strath Art Group during its active years 1949-1954 but being an intensely private man and a committed individualist, it was also the only organised group in which he ever participated.
His visit to Europe from late 1949-1952 with other students introduced him to the modernist paintings he had known only in reproductions. The work of the German and Norwegian expressionist painters he viewed at the Nasjonalgallerier, Oslo were later to prove very influential. He visited Brisbane in 1953 when his own expressionist leanings were reinforced with the underlying looseness of local art attributable to the senior Brisbane artist W.G. Grant (1876-1951) and established his individual style in paintings such as Crucifixion (private collection). He settled permanently in Brisbane two years later and produced a series of expressive figurative paintings in the years 1956-1957 whose aggressiveness and intensity (eg. Bride and groom 1956, Art Gallery of New South Wales and A twilight of women 1957, Queensland Art Gallery) is almost without parallel in the history of Australian art. In a 15-year survey at the Rudy Komon Gallery in August 1966, James Gleeson admired the strength of Molvig’s work but was dazzled by his output in the years 1955-61. Writing in the Sun Herald Glesson noted:
'No one in Australian art has painted so nakedly as Molvig did at that time. There was no covering his emotions. He had torn away the last skin of reserve, and painted the world he knew in his blood, his nerves and his heart. In a sense it was orgiastic – a great Dionysian acceptance of those ecstatic storms that sometimes blow up from the subconscious with such violence that the government of reason is overwhelmed. Even the paint looks as if it has been blown on the canvas by tremendous gusts of passion.’
The art scene in Brisbane was remarkably conservative so when he took over John Rigby’s classes at the studio beneath St. Mary’s Anglican Church, Kangaroo Point in November 1955 it became a focus for a closely knit group of students and fellow artists and the centre of innovatory art practice. Molvig quickly became the exemplar of the committed artist. He did not impose his own style on a student but created an environment in which they could establish their own voice. Naturally, some were profoundly influenced. The most significant students include John Aland, Maryke Degeus, Gil Jamieson, Mervyn Moriarty, Joy Roggenkamp, Andrew Sibley and Gordon Shepherdson. He was appreciated as a consummate draftsman promoting, in the words of Andrew Sibley 'the malleability of line and mass to create the pulse of the line.’ This was probably his greatest influence locally as he conducted life drawing classes until 1966 as opposed to the two years he taught painting.
Other important associates included his first dealers, Brian and Marjorie Johnstone (with whom he exhibited 1956-59), and the art critic Dr Gertrude Langer. Langer was to be a staunch supporter throughout Molvig’s career though she acknowledged, because of the nature of expressionist art, the unevenness of his production. Another was the director of the Queensland Art Gallery 1961-67, Laurie Thomas. Thomas’s support is evident in awarding Molvig the exhibitions he was invited to judge: the 1963 Perth Prize for Painting ( The family ), the 1964 Finney’s (David Jones) Art Prize ( Under arm still life No. 2 ), the 1966 Corio Five Star Whisky Prize ( The publican ), and the 1969 Gold Coast City Art Prize ( Tree of Man ).
Molvig’s career manifested further radical shifts of style. He exhibited at the Johnstone Gallery (the last at the city venue) in December 1957 before departing on a tour of Central Australia, with fellow painter Maryke Degeus, which became the inspiration of his 'Centralian’ series at the Johnstone Gallery in 1959. Although some of his paintings depicted the dispossession and alienation of the Aboriginal people, the series was more colourful than the preceding work – it was even designated by Dr Langer as 'lyrical’. Shortly afterwards Molvig was the first artist the Sydney dealer Rudy Komon contracted to his gallery with a monthly retainer. This provided Molvig with a stable income but he did not participate in the marked commercial and critical success of the Johnstone Gallery during the 1960s. Rudy Komon held exhibitions of his work in 1960, 1962, 1964, 1966, 1968, 1978 and 1984 and organised exhibitions in other venues; Argus Gallery, Melbourne 1962 and Grand Central Galleries 1966, Kennigo Street Gallery 1966, Johnstone Gallery 1972 and New Central Gallery 1977, all in Brisbane.
The 'Eden industrial’ series 1961-62 marked another shift into the remembered images of his childhood in the industrial city of Newcastle. His need to create a means of expression appropriate to his subject lead to his blow-torching the oil paint to create suitably eroded surfaces for some paintings. Predictably, this was sensationalised in the press. His first major award, the first Transfield Art Prize, 1961, at that time the nation’s richest award, was for one work from the series 'City industrial’. (He had received the Lismore Prizes in 1955 and 1956, the Rowney Drawing Prize in 1960.) Other major paintings include Eden industrial: The garden 1961 (Queensland Art Gallery).
The generative impulse for his work is largely conjectural as he was notoriously reticent in discussing his art and, as frequently, confrontational but his integrity and commitment to his art was unquestioned. His emphasis on figuration included his 'Pale nude’ series (the rendering, however, is more attenuated), dating to 1964 although his work did veer towards abstraction in his last major series, that of 'Tree of Man’ series, in the years 1967-69. These paintings, comprised of target shapes and skeletal forms, were described by Dr. Langer as 'expressive symbolism’ and may have a connection with Patrick White’s book of the same name (published 1955).
The divergence of his techniques becomes even more obvious in his justly famous portraits which include the hewn, massiveness of his Self portrait 1956 (Queensland Art Gallery) the spidery elegance of Janet Mathews 1957 (private collection), the grim monumentality of Russell Cuppaidge 1959 (Queensland Art Gallery) and the voluptuous brushwork depicting a close friend Joy Roggenkamp 1963 (private collection). He entered the Archibald Portrait Prizes at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 1952 but it was not until 1955 that he was actually hung. Although reviewers considered he merited the prize on several occasions it was not until 1966 that he received the award with his portrait of Charles Blackman (now in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia) and ceased exhibiting there.
The Transfield Prize enabled Molvig to purchase land in the outer Brisbane suburb of Mt. Cotton and after his marriage to Otte van Gilst on 26 August 1963 he devoted a major part of his time to the construction of a house into which they moved in 1967. His output decreased even further during these years as Molvig was now seriously ill. His childhood nephritis, together with the malaria he suffered during the war years and his alcohol intake, finally resulted in kidney failure. Molvig received the first kidney transplant to be performed in Queensland on 17 February, 1970 but died three months later on 15 May.
Although Molvig’s work is highly regarded, especially by artists, it still has not achieved the prominence it merits despite exhibitions toured nationally by the Newcastle Region Art Gallery (curated by Bronwyn Thomas in 1978 and Katrina Rumley in 2002) and the book on his career by Betty Churcher Molvig – the lost antipodean , 1984.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2000
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1923
- Summary
- Apart from being one of Australia's major figurative expressionist painters, Jon Molvig became a significant inspiration for the art scene in Brisbane when he settled there in 1955.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-May-70
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude51.2 Longitude0.7 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- Painter, was born on 1 April 1920 in Kent, England. Molly Pascall studied at the Medway School of Art, Rochester (1932-36) and at the Royal College of Art (1940-43) then taught at the Chesterfield School of Art. In 1945-46 she taught at the Girls’ School, Alexandria in Egypt where she married Douglas Stephens in December 1945. In 1951 the family came to Smithton, Tasmania. Molly moved to Hobart in 1954. She accompanied Max Angus and Patricia Giles on regular painting excursions, and she worked on portrait commissions, particularly of children. Her matter-of-fact classic surrealism is evident in Saturday Noon , oil on canvas 122 × 81 cm, n.d. (Nevin Hurst 2002, cat 82, $4,750): three women boiling the billy for a picnic on rocks near the sea – one naked brunette, another brunette in her underclothes and a dressed, barefooted, blonde pigtailed child who is opening the picnic basket.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 April 1920
- Summary
- Molly Stephens (née Pascall), born in Kent, England studied at both the Medway School of Art and the Royal College of Art, before going on to be a teacher. After moving to Egypt she came to reside in Hobart Tasmania, in 1951, painting mainly portrait commissions.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1970
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude51.0690613 Longitude-1.7954134 Start Date1919-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, UK
- Biography
- David Edgar Strachan was born on 25 June 1919, at Salisbury in England. His mother was Eleanor Margery Isobel Strachan née Tapp of Bath, his father, Dr James Charles Power Strachan, had been a major in the Royal Australian Medical Corps. In 1920 he travelled to Australia, first to his father’s home in Adelaide and then to the old gold mining town of Creswick in Victoria where Dr Strachan became the town doctor. Dr Strachan’s patients included the elderly widowed Jane Elizabeth Lindsay, her daughters and her son Robert. Norman, Lionel and Percy Lindsay were the town’s most famous sons, and their many activities were the stuff of local legend. The youngest Lindsay boy, Daryl was a frequent visitor with his wife the novelist Joan Lindsay. Mrs Strachan in particular befriended Mary Lindsay, so young David was early embedded into a culture where art was a suitable career path.After attending Geelong Grammar school, the 16 year old David travelled to England with his mother, where he enrolled in the Slade School of Fine Art for two years. Here he met and befriended Godfrey Miller. In 1937 he travelled to France where he attended summer classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and travelled south to paint at Cassis on the Riviera. On his return to Australia in 1938 he enrolled in classes at the George Bell School. In 1941 Strachan moved to Sydney, where there were other artists who shared his interest in classical form and mythologies. He lived at first on the top floor of the home of the artist Jean Bellette and her husband the influential art critic Paul Haefliger. Along with many other artists in their circle they travelled to the picturesque abandoned gold mining town of Hill End. The lively and supportive artistic community of what became known as the bq). Charm Schoolbq). was contrasted with his war work of painting camouflage against possible Japanese bomb attacks.At the end of the War he left Australia for Paris, where he joined with former Sydney friends, Hélène Kirsova and Peter Bellew, who was working for UNESCO. Bellew had included Strachan in an exhibition at the Musée National d’Art Moderne two years earlier, and his work was well received. In 1950 Strachan began to experiment with printmaking, both making individual prints and publishing artists’ books. Along with Alister Kershaw and Jacques Murray he founded Stramur-Presse which printed etchings and lithographs by other artists as well as their own work in exquisite artists’ books. He maintained close friendships with others in the Australian expatriate community including the Haefligers at their Majorca home and undertook extensive painting trips with Moya DyringBy the late 1950s Strachan was increasingly interested in Jungian psychology and spend most of 1957 and 1958 at the C. G. Jung-Institut in Zürich. He returned to Australia in 1960 and in 1963 bought a house in Paddington. The food he made at his Paddington home formed aspects of his carefully considered subject matter. He also became an inspirational teacher of printmaking to young students at East Sydney Technical College, and helped foster a new Australian generation of artists in print.His starkly elegant landscapes and symbolist inspired still-lives were not fashionable with the avant-garde, but remained highly regarded by the Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales,who twice awarded him the Wynne Prize. He did not forget his Creswick past, but when he painted landscapes of abandoned gold mines, his paintings were based on Hill End in NSW, not Creswick in Victoria. His last major painting, Lewers Freehold Mine, an historical re-imagining of what the mine may have looked like in 1874, was given by him to the Creswick Historical Society to honour his late father.David Strachan was returning to Sydney from presenting this work when he died after a motor accident on the Hume Highway on 23 November 1970.
Writers:
Staff Writer
staffcontributor
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 25 June 1919
- Summary
- David Strachan, the son of the Lindsay family's doctor, studied in London and Paris before attending the George Bell School in Melbourne. He is most identified the Sydney Charm School of the 1950s, and with the revival of etching in Australia. He was awarded the Wynne Prize in 1961 and 1964.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Nov-70
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator and writer, was born in Adelaide. Studied South Australian School of Art, Adelaide with Wilkie. Began working as an illustrator in Adelaide in the 1930s (see Peaceful Army ). Apart from a visit to Sydney in 1937, she lived in England from 1935. A coloured poster she designed for London’s Southern Railway is in the James Hardie Childhood collection (now Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW), which also holds a Chinese scene. Her children’s books were published in England from 1952.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
staffcontributor
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1912
- Summary
- Elizabeth Skottowe, illustrator and writer, was born in Adelaide. She studied at the South Australian School of Art, Adelaide and worked as an illustrator in the 1930s. She designed a coloured poster for London's Southern Railway and also wrote children's books.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1970
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-37.87731945 Longitude145.042234 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Caulfield, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, painter and illustrator, novelist and journalist, was born in Caulfield, Victoria. While studying in Melbourne with Sam Atyeo (and possibly at the National Gallery of Victoria) he drew cartoons for several publications including the Bulletin and Smith’s Weekly . He also did illustrations for the Australian Weekend Book and other publications. Original cartoons in Mitchell Library include one of 1933 (Mitchell Library PXD 764). Then he turned to journalism and travelled the world for many years as a foreign and war correspondent, living and working in 46 countries, including Tibet, China, and Burma. After the war he settled in London as editor of the European bureau of Australian Associated Newspapers but resigned in 1954 in order 'to gamble on life as a free-lance novelist’. He lived on the island of Hydra in Greece with his Australian-born wife, Charmian Clift, and their three children. Best-known as an author of war books, travel books, novels, and thrillers, including My Brother Jack and a slightly autobiographical detective story Death Takes Small Bites .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 20 July 1912
- Summary
- Noted mid 20th century novelist and journalist, Johnston also worked as a cartoonist, painter and illustrator. He travelled the world for many years as a foreign and war correspondent, living and working in 46 countries, including Tibet, China, and Burma.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Jul-70
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-32.05423 Longitude115.74763 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fremantle, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, illustrator, designer and art teacher born in Fremantle, Western Australia. His father was a teacher in the Education Department and the family moved about. He studied at Northam High School, graduating in 1926 and then at Fremantle Technical School under Muriel Southern, obtaining credit passes in both Light & Shade I & II in 1927. A 1927 cutting in the Art Gallery of Western Australia files confirms his skill stating that, “Mr. R. Thompson showed remarkable ability for the delineation of character in four pencil sketches.” He had exhibited the four studies with the West Australian Society of Arts. Thompson went on to study at Swinburne Art School in Melbourne in 1928 and later at Julian Ashton’s in Sydney each weekend from 1936 to 1938. He worked as a poster designer and lino-cut reproducer for Renwick, Pride and Nuttall in Melbourne, then the Woodward Advertising Agency from 1929-1930 until the Depression forced him to return to work on the family property at Serpentine. He then became a poster designer for the Imperial Printing Company, before working freelance in Sydney in 1935. He designed covers for the Women’s Weekly and later for the Western Mail. In 1933 he exhibited a number of entries with the West Australian Society of Arts, six watercolours in the landscape competition, five oils in the portrait section as well as pencil drawings and other watercolours. “Renee”, the critic, wrote of his 1935 exhibits, “The most successful exhibitor was R. M. Thompson, who carried off the prize for the best watercolour, with his On the Hillside, and also the portrait prize for an unfinished self-portrait in oils. Also commendable were his River Scene, Fremantle and Sand Dunes, Cottesloe.” Thompson returned to Perth in 1941 where he worked for Art Photo Engravers as an advertising illustrator before enrolling in the Royal Australian Engineers in 1942. He was sent to a course in camouflage design in Sydney and served on the front in New Guinea before lecturing in camouflage at Kapooka. He married Beatrice (Biddy) Cullingworth during the war. After the war he became an advertising artist with West Australian Newspapers where he met Ivor Hunt and in 1948 began teaching at Perth Technical College where he became a Senior Lecturer and on occasion Acting Head of Department. He also exhibited with the Perth Society of Artists. His 1950 exhibtion piece was a watercolour, Canning River, Kelmscott and 1953 his entries were oil paintings Man Reading and The Little Gardener. Thompson illustrated many books and also designed The Sower a sculpture for Bible House in Perth. Thompson, who had a very sensitive skill with the pencil, went on to lecture at Western Australian Institute of Technology until he retired with ill health about 1969 and died soon after. He was a very gentle man remembered with affection by past students.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1910
- Summary
- Painter, illustrator, designer and art teacher. He was a very gentle man remembered with affection by past students.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1970
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and illustrator, was born in Brisbane on 24 July 1907, daughter of an Englishman. Confined to bed with TB of the spine as a child, she lost two fingers of her right hand in her teens and learnt to write and draw with her left. In some accounts Botterill left for England in the 1920s when she attended the Royal Academy Schools in 1928-30 and studied art under Stephen Spurrier for a year before becoming a freelance commercial artist. In other accounts the family settled in England in 1915 when Antonia was three and she had no further connection with Australia.
As 'Botterill’, Antonia freelanced as a fashion and commercial artist in 1932-37, producing numerous advertising posters and showcards. In 1937 she formed a cartooning partnership with her brother, Harold Underwood Thompson (b. Cheshire 1911 & apparently still alive in 1994), who had begun cartooning as 'H. Botterill’ in 1935. They called themselves 'Anton’. During the war, when Harold was on active service in the Navy, Antonia drew all the Anton cartoons. They teamed up again after the war and produced many cartoons for Punch , Lilliput , Men Only and others, until 1949 when Harold’s work as director of an advertising agency left him less time for drawing and Antonia again took over the name entirely.
Anton’s drawings of spivs, forgers, dukes and duchesses were very popular and appeared in the Tatler , Evening Standard (where the weekly cartoons were entirely by Harold) and Private Eye , as well as in Punch etc. Antonia was the only female member of Punch 's Toby Club and the first woman elected to the Chelsea Arts Club. She also illustrated 17 books, drew a series of popular advertisements for Moss Bros and, with Harold, published two cartoon anthologies: Anton’s Amusement Arcade (1947) and Low Life and High Life (1952). She died in England on 30 June 1970.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 24 July 1907
- Summary
- Mid 20th century cartoonist and illustrator, born in Brisbane. She moved to England as a young woman where she studied art under Stephen Spurrier at the Royal Academy Schools. She later formed a cartooning patnership with her brother under the pen name 'Anton'. Botterill also worked as a commercial and fashion artist and was the only female member of Punch magazine's Toby Club and the first woman
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 30-Jun-70
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Cartoonist, caricaturist, songwriter and radio broadcaster, was born in Adelaide. After a brilliant university career in Adelaide, his father became a Far Eastern correspondent on various newspapers but returned to Adelaide after some caustic, witty remarks were reprinted in Tokyo dailies. There he founded University College, of which he was headmaster, then unexpectedly threw up everything and moved to Coff’s Harbour with his wife and five children to manage the British-Australian Timber Mill and its 'couple of hundred’ employers that dominated the settlement. Kerwin spent his childhood there. His eldest brother, Hugh, tally clerk of the B.A.T. Timber Mill at Coff’s Harbour Jetty from the age of 15 (when Kerwin was 'about seven’), served as a lieutenant in France with the AIF, was severely wounded at Bullecourt and awarded the Military Cross in WWI; he also served in WWII.
Kerwin, who was left-handed, did drawings, cartoons and (kind, flattering) caricatures that were widely published from the 1920s to the 1960s. He was especially interested in cricket and in 1934, while in England, drew sporting caricatures of the Australian XI touring cricket team for London newspapers and magazines. For this, Florence Taylor claimed, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (he was also proud that 'Three British Kings’ – Edward VIII (the Duke of Windsor), George V and George VI – had 'stood for Kerwin Maegraith to draw them’. His page of caricatures 'Some Sydney Artists’, published in the Sydney Mail on 11 August 1937 (p.32), included Joan Morrison and 25 men connected with that year’s Artists’ Ball identified as: A. Aria , Will Ashton (Director of the NAG NSW), Jim Bancks , Maurice Bramley, Stan Cross (President of the Ball Committee), George Finey , John Frith , Tom Glover , Raynor Hoff ('brilliant sculptor’), Arthur Horner , Lahm , Norman Lindsay , Peter Lindsay, George Little , Brodie Mack ('cartoons sporting celebrities’), Will Mahoney , Arthur Mailey (cricketer and cricket cartoonist), Emile Mercier , Syd Miller , Syd Nicholls , Virgil Reilly , Dan Russell , Jim Russell (Secretary of the Ball Committee), Ted Scorfield ('the man who so happily satirises life’s foibles’) and Frank Whitmore . In old age Maegraith drew murals for the Illawarra Master Builders’ Club at Wollongong, similarly consisting of dozens of black and white caricatures of local members drawn from life.
Maegraith wrote the words and lyrics of It Ain’t Cricket , a musical revue performed in Melbourne in 1935 starring Don Bradman. He was also interested in surf lifesaving and flying. He wrote a memoir (an undated recording of him reading from it is at ML OH 37/1-8), a biography of Florence Taylor (a recording of him reading from it, ML OH 37/9-21, c.1969), a short appreciation of George Taylor , the fellow cartoonist who had founded Construction in which Maegraith published most of his cartoons, and a memoir of his family’s early years in Coff’s Harbour entitled 'Timber … We Were The Pioneers’, included in his book of cartoons (pp.51-53). In 1988 the SLNSW acquired his papers (ML MSS 4944) and pictorial material (Pic.Acc.6514) from Peter Maegraith, evidently his son.
The ML’s Bulletin collection holds 109 original caricatures by Maegraith of men from South Australia (mainly), WA and Victoria (1924-33 and undated). He also contributed to Beckett’s Budget , e.g. 'MADGE: “Why did you quarrel with Ethel last night?”/ MABEL: “She called me an old scandalmonger.”/ MADGE: “But, my dear, you’re not old!”’ (25 November 1927, 18). He wrote reports of visits to country towns, which he illustrated with caricatures, e.g. Kerwin Maegraith visits Griffith 14 June 1927, 6. ML also has a Sam Hood photocopy of a 1945 caricature of Sammy Lee by 'newspaper artist Kerwin Meagraith’. He drew instant caricatures on TV.
His book (p.27), made up of cartoons from Construction , Australasian Engineer and Building , edited by Florence Taylor, includes If Joern Utzon Is Not Long, We Will Wait For The Opera House! – 10 amiable caricature heads of Sydney businessmen in the building industry dominated by a full-length and very, very 'long’ Utzon taking up the length of the page ('Up in the Clouds Joern Utzon hopes they will be getting going pretty quickly on The Opera House’).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Adelaide born, well travelled Sydney based cartoonist, caricaturist, songwriter and radio broadcaster. Maegraith drew instant caricatures on TV.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1970
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- Stewart's paintings were discovered by the artist Clifton Pugh in a junk shop in Echuca, Victoria in 1970 and he was subsequently recognised as a 'primitive painter' of great talent.
- Gender
- Unspecified
- Died
- 1970
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude58.7523778 Longitude25.3319078 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Estonia
- Biography
- graphic artist and industrial designer, born Estonia; arrived Australia in the 1930s from Germany. Won Sulman Prize in 1939. One of the first poster artists to work in a semi abstract style in Melbourne. Later adapted Aboriginal Art to advertising. Stamp design featuring Aboriginal rock carving of crocodile 1948, pen, ink gouache on card, National Philatelic Museum, Melbourne (ill Baddeley).Did the colour lithographic posters Sunshine and Surf, Australia 1932 (National Archives), Surf Club Australia 1935 (National Archives) and Australia [Boomerang] 1957 (National Gallery of Australia) for the Australian National Travel Association; The Grampians, Victoria, Australia c.1939 (NLA) for the Victorian Railways (poster no.117).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1901
- Summary
- Sellheim was a graphic artist and industrial designer. He won the Sulman Prize in 1939 and was one of the first poster artists to work in a semi abstract style in Melbourne. He also undertook work as a muralist for the Victorian Tourist Bureau, the NZ Centennial Exhibition 1939 as well as domestic clients.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1970
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-32.9316667 Longitude151.7677778 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cooks Hill, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter and graphic artist. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, holds William Dobell was born on 24 September 1899 at Cooks Hill in Newcastle, the sixth and youngest child of Robert Dobell, a bricklayer,and his wife Margaret Emma Wrightson. At Cooks Hill Commercial Public School his teacher, John Walker, noticed his talent for drawing and encouraged him. By 1916 he was working as a technical draughtsman for a local architect, Wallace Lintott Porter. In 1924 he moved to Sydney where he worked for the pressed metal manufacturers’ Wunderlich, while undertaking evening classes at the Sydney Art School under Henry Gibbons. His precocious talent for drawing soon attracted attention. When he was awarded the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship in 1929, both Wunderlich and the Committee for the Artists’ Ball supplemented the funds as they knew this student did not have a wealthy family to subsidise his international travel.He travelled to London and enrolled in the Slade School in late 1929. In 1930 he was awarded first prize for a painted nude study by a student. Financially, the London years were hard for Dobell as the Travelling Art Scholarship only had funds for two years, and he moved from a series of basement and attic rooms in a series of boarding houses. In order to survive the bleak years of the Great Depression Dobell drew illustrations for magazines and advertising agencies. Mary Eagle records that Dobell told his biographer James Gleeson 'that the editors of illustrated magazines only wanted corny jokes about sailors and pretty women’. She notes a drawing in cartoon style in one of his sketchbooks (c.1933, National Gallery of Australia [NGA]) showing a Salvation Army officer peering through a bathroom keyhole and saying to a fellow officer, 'Quick Joey! Play the National Anthem!’ He also designed posters, e.g. Orient Line to Australia (NGA).A fellow student, Nancy Kilgour (married to Jack Noel Kilgour) noted in her diary how awkwardly Dobell behaved in the presence of women. He had an acutely cynical observant eye, and his small swift paintings of these years effectively captured the follies and the pretentions of London life with paintings such as Mrs South Kensington (1937 AGNSW) and The Dead Landlord (1936) a painting which inspired Patrick White to write The Ham Funeral. He could also paint gently romantic studies such as The Boy at the Basin (1932 AGNSW) and his sensuous study The Sleeping Greek (1936 AGNSW). In cosmopolitan London, in the company of openly gay friends like Donald Friend, Dobell could relax somewhat about his sexuality, and his drawings of the late 1930s are more frank in their admiration of the male body than previous work. At the beginning of 1939, on hearing that his father was ill, he began the long journey home, but decided to travel home via Paris. Robert Dobell died in February 1939, before his son could return.As his paintings had been hung bq). On the Linebq). at the Royal Academy, and as he had easily mastered the ironic yet technically adept academic style of the Slade tradition, Dobell was received with some enthusiasm in Sydney. He was honoured with a survey exhibition at the National Art Gallery of NSW and when war broke out was able to become one of the group of artists painting camouflage. Homosexuality was illegal for all of Dobell’s lifetime and in Sydney he was careful to remain both in the closet, and in the background at any social meeting. This attempt at personal camouflage was destroyed in 1944 when he was awarded the Archibald Prize for the portrait of fellow artist, Joshua Smith. Smith had been one of three other men sharing a tent with Dobell in Army service, but this detail did not stop the Daily Mirror from publishing a headline that was designed to imply a greater intimacy. The painting was under attack partly because in awarding the prize to Dobell, who was associated with the Society of Artists, the Trustees had broken a time-honoured unwritten agreement that it was the turn of a Royal Art Society painter to win. The fact that this was a modernist portrait by an artist only recently returned from London compounded the insult. The Trustees awarded the prize to Dobell because there were at this time fewer votes aligned with the Royal Art Society. Their president, William Lister Lister, had died suddenly on 6 November 1943 and the Minister for Education, Clive Evatt, had not replaced him. The Minister had two unaligned nominees on the board. One of these was the former State Librarian and deputy-director of the Department of War Organisation of Industry in New South Wales, W.H. Ifould. The other, appointed in March 1943, was his sister-in-law Mary Alice Evatt, the first woman to join the board. She was a vocal advocate of modern art and not inclined to support conservative artists with a sense of entitlement.Two unsuccessful artists who were also members of the Royal Art Society, Mary Edwards and Joseph Wolinski, sued the Trustees of the National Art Gallery of NSW, claiming that Dobell’s portrait of Smith was bq). not a portrait but a caricature bq)..It was hard for the Trustees to openly defend the case, as those associated with the Royal Art Society were happily providing information to Howard Ashton who was the art critic of the Sydney Sun, as well as the plaintiffs. Tensions on the Trustees were compounded when in April 1944, some eight months before the case was heard, Clive Evatt appointed Dobell to the Board as a replacement for the Royal Art Society’s Lister Lister.Despite the attacks and innuendo in the media, support came from surprising sources. Lionel Lindsay, a fierce anti-modernist who nevertheless saw merit in Dobell’s work, secretly provided detailed briefing notes to the defence barristers. His briefing notes included the information that the principal witness for the plaintiffs, J.S. MacDonald, had written his attack on the portrait of Joshua Smith without seeing it. This formed the basis of the rigorous cross examination of MacDonald, and damaged the credibility of the plaintiffs. Dobell, who was called as a witness, spoke well to defend his practice as an artist and as a painter of portraits. As colourful as the Dobell Archibald case was (and it certainly provided a useful distraction from World War II), the plaintiffs attack on modern art was doomed. Justice Roper ruled that the only question that could lawfully decided by the court was the competence of the Trustees to make a decision to award the prize, and therefore the case was dismissed. Even though he had not been on trial, Dobell was traumatised by both the courtroom experience, and the media attention. He retreated to his sister’s house at Wangi Wangi on Lake Macquarie. Oddly enough the ordeal by media had made Dobell a popular figure. His paintings never fully recovered the satirical edge of his earlier studies, but their sweetness made them greatly admired as subjects for reproduction in Womens’ Weekly and other magazines. He was awarded the 1948 Archibald Prize for his portrait of fellow artist Margaret Olley, and the Wynne for Storm approaching Wangi.He visited New Guinea as the guest of Sir Edward Hallstrom and made many delightful small oil sketches of a more exotic life, as well as painting society portraits. He painted the aged poet Dame Mary Gilmore, and eight portraits of the beautician Helena Rubenstein. His most famous commission was of the Prime Minister, Robert Gordon Menzies, a commission for Time magazine. Neither the subject nor the artist had much sympathy for each other, and both placed this on the public record. He was knighted in 1966, a year after Menzies’ retirement.Dobell died at Wangi Wangi of congestive heart failure, on 13 May 1970 and directed that his estate be used to establish the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 September 1899
- Summary
- William Dobell came from a working class family in Newcastle to become one of Australia's most loved artist and the creator of fashionable portraits. He was awarded the 1943 Archibald Prize for his portrait of fellow artist Joshua Smith and in 1960 his portrait of the Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, was on the cover of 'Time' magazine.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-May-70
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist, violinist and singer, was born in Melbourne on 18 March 1895, daughter of the artist Hugh Paterson and Elizabeth Leslie, née Deans, and younger sister of Esther Paterson .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 18 March 1895
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Melbourne painter, cartoonist, violinist and singer. Sister of Esther Paterson.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Jul-70
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-37.7667 Longitude144.9628 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brunswick, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- China painter was born in Brunswick, Victoria and moved to Western Australia where she lived in Midland Junction and became a student at Midland Junction Technical School under Flora Landells in 1912-13. Mechenstok married and became Mrs Lange and moved to Pingelly where she continued to paint. In 1933 she signed her work “B. Lange”.This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1894
- Summary
- Bertha Marianne Helene Mechenstok was born in 1894. She was a student at Midland Junction Technical School under Flora Landells in 1912-13.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1970
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and commercial artist, was born in Melbourne and received her artistic training at the National Gallery School in 1907-10.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1890
- Summary
- Although born in Melbourne, Molly O'Shea came to favour Sydney's bays and beaches. Landscapes and floral arrangements were her forte, but she was also awarded the Francis Zabel Prize in 1932 for a bookplate design at the International Exhibition of Bookplates in Sydney. She was a member of several artist societies and was hung in the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1970
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-37.7867587 Longitude144.9193668 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Flemington, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- was born on 18 November 1889 at Flemington Melbourne, second daughter of George Hendry Hardess and Ann Emma, née Taylor.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Note: Primary
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 November 1889
- Summary
- Fabric designer, she worked in collaboration with Mollie Grove. Together they established a business and from 1940 until the early 1960s, they worked as artist-craftswomen producing Australian woven textiles. Work by Hardess is shown in "Design in Everyday Things" ABC, 1941 where she is described as an interior designer and fashion designer.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1970
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-27.3181585 Longitude153.063315 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sandgate, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Frank Waldo (Wal) Potts was born at Sandgate, 1888, the youngest child of the three daughters and three sons born to William Potts and Selma née Hartenstein. His father was a tailor with premises in Queen Street whose clients included the Queensland’s Governors. He attended the Normal School, Anne Street and later became a student of Richard Godfrey Rivers at the Brisbane Technical College. Potts exhibited original oils and copies at the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association from 1906 to 1907 and worked for a time in a hardware store. Potts served in the AIF during World War I (1916-19) where he met David McHaffie at the Enoggera Army Barracks in Brisbane who became a lifelong friend. When the war ended they settled on a fruit farm at Flaxton on the Blackall Range. Potts, like Kenneth Macqueen , painted after his work on the farm had been completed and during the years from 1926 to 1966 exhibited more than 170 landscape and still lifes (mainly watercolours) at the Royal Queensland Art Society annual exhibitions.
When he retired to Woody Point, subjects on the Redcliffe Peninsular became dominant and he exhibited extensively in the Redcliffe Art Contest from 1957 to 1966. He was also a member of the Brisbane Art Group from 1948 to 1953 and was included in the 1951 'Exhibition of Queensland Art’ at the then Queensland National Art Gallery. Potts held solo exhibitions at Finney’s Art Gallery, c.1953-54, Don McInnes Gallery, Brisbane, September 1968 and two (one of which was in 1957) at Allan & Stark’s Gallery, Queen Street.
He produced attractive oil paintings but was largely noted for the quality of his watercolours. Indeed, Dr Duhig, a noted art patron in Brisbane during the first half of the 20th century, commented about Pott’s watercolour, Valley of the Maroochy , when he presented it to the Queensland National Art Gallery Collection, '... I believe that this is a particularly fine piece of work and I doubt whether a better water-colour painting of a landscape has even been done in Queensland.’ (1) This is no doubt a fine work but the claim may be a little excessive as Kenneth Macqueen was producing his stylish watercolours of the Darling Downs by then. Watercolour was a particular strength in Queensland art practice at this time and Potts contributed significantly both in his floral still lifes and landscapes. His landscapes of the hilly countryside where he lived (such as The Obi from Mapleton Range also on the QAG Collection) can have a peculiar vertiginous quality about then. He died at Chermside, Brisbane on 27 July 1970.
1. Letter from Dr. J. V. Duhig, 30 Oct. 1939.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1888
- Summary
- Wal Potts was a proficient exponent of the watercolour medium which was, during the 1930s to the 1950s, favoured by Queensland artists. Potts excelled in both landscape and still life studies and their decorative patterning were typical of modern styles in Queensland.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Jul-70
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in Sydney, daughter of Rachel M. and Harry E. Farmer, owner of Bullivant’s Australia Company.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1888
- Summary
- Painter and etcher who studied under Sydney Long and was taught the intaglio printmaking technique by Sir Will Ashton. Regarded as one of the principal women etcher-painters during Australia's Golden Age of Etching (1920/1930).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Apr-70
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-34.5672546 Longitude150.3212358 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sutton Forest, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born Sutton Forest NSW but left Australia aged 18 months. He became a well-known English cartoonist with work in Tatler, Sketch, London Opinion, Passing Show etc., especially Punch where he became known for his 'The Man Who…’ series of cartoons. The Art Gallery of Western Australia (958/0D65) has The Making of a Reformer n.d., acquired from the proprietors of Punch . Bateman revisited Australia in 1939, touring Fremantle, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney (March-April 1939) with an exhibition of his work sent out from England.
Cousin of sculptor Daphne Mayo .
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1887
- Summary
- Popular early 20th Australian-born English Punch cartoonist. Bateman was the creator of the well-known "The Man who.." series.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1970
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-22.1646782 Longitude144.5844903 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1970-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Queensland
- Biography
- craftworker, came from Queensland. After studying tailoring, she supported her family by designing and making fashionable dresses and theatrical costumes. Her designs featured decorative beadwork and hand embroidery. In the 1920s she opened a small dress shop in Bondi Junction, Sydney. A talented artist, she was able to learn and adapt new craft techniques quickly and the business apparently did quite well. In 1928 she and her daughter Olive visited London where they attended classes in pyrography (pokerwork). They returned to Australia at the onset of the Great Depression and used their new skill to provide a living for them both.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Toy, Ann
Note: Heritage biography.
stokel
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1878
- Summary
- Craftworker, working with fashion and costume designs featuring decorative beadwork and hand embroidery.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1970
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1918-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- Artist and stage designer
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 9 January 1918
- Summary
- Sainthill was involved in a number of mural projects while in Melbourne. He became a leading mid 20th century painter and theatre designer who lived in Merioola, Sydney, before moving to London.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Jun-69
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude51.3104474 Longitude0.302977975 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wrotham, Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Wrotham, Kent, England (with a Danish grandmother). The family moved to Tasmania when she was three. She had juvenilia published in local newspapers, notably the Tasmanian Mail , to which she is said to have contributed an annual decorative panel for years after leaving Tasmania. The Triad published a piece by her in its Children’s Page before she moved to Sydney to study art under Rayner Hoff at East Sydney Technical College [ESTC], specialising in sculpture. 'The Revival of Sculpture’ in Art in Australia (March 1927) mentioned that Morrison’s scultpures – along with works by Vic Cowdroy , Mavis Mallison, Mollie Rohr and Coral White – 'had a fresh and original outlook which invested it with considerable interest’, although Eileen McGrath was the star.
At ESTC the 15-year old Morrison met Norman Lindsay , who encouraged her to illustrate her first book. Her illustrations to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales were published in the Triad in April 1927 (then being edited by Norman’s great friend, Hugh McCrae). A serial, 'Little Bo’ by Madeleine Honey illustrated by Morrison, began in Australian Childhood on 20 June 1930. By 1930 she was also doing humorous drawings for the Sporting and Dramatic Magazine and illustrations for the Sydney Mail . She also contributed to Smith’s Weekly . Her (first?) cartoon, published on 5 January 1929, 12, was typical of the direction her work was to take: She: “Your face seems familiar. Haven’t we met before?”/ He: “Rather! I was the second co-respondent in your first divorce case” . With Mollie Horseman , she was appointed to the permanent staff of Smith’s later that year.
Morrison drew a few joint 'Smith’s Sisters’ strips with Horseman, e.g. showing them together (i) shopping and (ii) refusing to do a strip for the editor. Her own cartoons for the paper came in two different styles, comic dolls (like Mollie’s English style) and more US-inspired glamour girls. Sometimes the two are mixed, as in an early example with a stereotypical caricature of a hen-pecked husband on the beach clutching a giant fish toy beside a glamorous young wife (published 3 February 1934). The glamour style that became her trademark was evident a couple of months later in a rear view drawing of a glamorous beach couple, with him saying, “What would you do if you had a face like Mabel’s?” and her replying, “I’d start saving up for my old age” (14 April 1934).
Other Smith’s Weekly cartoons by Morrison include: TEACHER: Why has Australia a wonderful future before her?/ JOHNNY: Because Bradman’s still young” published 20 May 1934; (rear of woman in backless dress looking into mirror beside husband dressing) WIFE: “I have to have decent clothes.”/ HUSBAND: “What, are the police complaining?” 26 May 1934; SHE: “How do you account for your success as a futurist painter?”/ HE: “I always use a model with St. Vitus’s dance” 2 June 1934, 2; (three women in boudoir) BETTY: “There was something about the party I don’t understand.” / MOLLY: “What was that?”/ BETTY: “How I got home from it “ 16 June 1934; (two cheerful fat, working class women on husband being cremated in order to ensure that at least his ashes will do some work – in an hour glass) 30 June 1934; (glamour girl in charge of exercising four fat females) She Knew a Fat Lot 7 July 1934; (very Virgil-like glamour girl on couch) Some Body 11 August 1934; (comic English) AUNT: “What sort of sports do you go in for?”/ FLAPPER: “The ones who give you a good time” 25 August 1934; YOUNG WIFE: “I used to cook for an hotel before you married me.”/ HUSBAND: “I suppose the bar trade pulled them through” 15 September 1934; (beach) Girls of the wide, open spaces 29 September 1934; LODGER: “Ah, Mrs. Mangle, half the world is ignorant of how the other half lives.”/ LANDLADY: “Not in this boarding 'ouse, miss!” 15 December 1934; one-page spread 16 April 1938, 3; (old comic woman and glamour gal) “She doesn’t seem to take marriage seriously.”/ “Well, it’s only her second wedding” 18 August 1934; (two showgirls) “I can’t decide to accept this year’s contract or get married.”/ “Well, which do you think would last the longest?” 25 August 1934; [strip cartoon of woman doing exercises] 6 January 1940; [ Chorus Girl 1 ] “I had chapped lips all last winter.”/ [ Chorus Girl 2 ]: “Who was the chap?” 1941. Her original cartoon “All men are the same to me.”/ “It’s a wonder your husband stands it” was donated to ML (PXD 840) in 1999 by the wife of a former Smith’s Weekly reporter along with 20+ works by other artists and a copy of the final issue (28 October 1950) signed by all the cartoonists.
In the 1930s Morrison briefly drew theatrical caricatures in Smith’s , e.g. Highspots from the Shows , published 3 March 1934, 16. Along with other Smith’s artists, she illustrated Ken Slessor’s later verses after Virgil ceased drawing his girls to accompany them. A selection collected by Julian Croft containing a couple of Morrison girls was belatedly published in book form as Backless Betty from Bondi (Sydney, A&R, 1983). Morrison trod a fine line between pandering to her audience’s prejudices and sending them up. The results are certainly of their time, yet her best cartoons survive despite radical changes of attitude towards her subject matter over the years.
Her work was rarely treated seriously, either at the time or retrospectively, mostly because she drew cartoons, but also because she was a woman whose glamour-girl subjects were identified with her. Pretty, 'with a rounded figure and fluffy dark hair, readers were convinced she was her own model and she received a large fan mail’, Blaikie remarks. When Morrison, a member of the Black and White Artists’ Club, was reported at the 1937 Black and White Artists’ Ball, it was as wearing 'a frock of baby blue georgette… among her guests were Miss Olive Cleveson wearing gold lame, Miss Sybil Winter in violet taffeta, and Pixie O’Harris [q.v.] wore black velvet and a shoulder spray of clover-pink carnations’. Quoted by Vane Lindesay in his 1994 history of the Club (p.21), this is his sole mention of Morrison apart from a brief biography in the footnote appended to the quote. In fact, Morrison was an active member of the Black and White Artists’ Association and was (gently) caricatured by Kirwin Maegraith in the Sydney Mail (11 August 1937, p.32) among Some Sydney Artists responsible for organising the 1937 Artists’ Ball – the only woman among 25 men.
The 1940 Smith’s Weekly Christmas holiday number featuring Morrison cartoons (28 December 1940), was reportedly censored. On page 1, the artist was reported to be in the West Indies:
The gifted young artist – herself as pretty as a picture – took her sketch book with her. She will draw and air-mail to “Smith’s” her studies of American and West Indian feminine types. These alluring girls will appear in “Smith’s” at an early date.
Shortly before she left on her flying holiday Miss Morrison received Mr. Neville Cardus in her studio at “Smith’s”, and gave him tea. In the opinion of Mr. Cardus, who is a connoisseur in art, Miss Morrison ranks high with the black-and-white artists of the world. “She has depicted the Australian girl in all her grace as no other artist has succeeded in doing,” he said.
Blaikie comments that she continued to draw her 'dainty damosels’ at Smith’s until Virgil Reilly tired of drawing 'The Virgil Girl’ and 'The Morrison Girl’ was born. During World War II 'Morrison Girls’ were favourite pin-ups with the troops. Their primary appeal was certainly as objects of male desire, but Morrison Girls were nevertheless independent beings: powerful, funny, amoral, greedy and in control of most situations.
Morrison married a sea-going captain, Paddy Wilkinson. From the early 1940s, she drew cartoons for Man , e.g. undated wartime Man Annual (evidently 1944) with two full-page cartoons in crude colour. A red and yellow “What the heck are you looking at, stupid?” shows a brunette displaying a lot of leg at a bus stop with a man looking at her hat. The other depicts a fisherman saying to a glamorous brunette coming up from the water at the end of his boat, “I must be mad, but go away, you’re scaring the fish”.
Other Man cartoons include (old gent in tropical paradise surrounded by gorgeous women) “They won’t let me go. At nights I lie awake… it fills my thoughts… it’s becoming an obsession… supposing they change their minds?” February 1949, 24-25; night-club scene with female photographer snapping glamour girl and hidden sugar daddy, cover of issue for June 1951 (used in Heritage ); full-page colour cartoon of smooching blonde and indiscreet parrot, September 1952 (still ed. Greenop and same art staff). Man Annual 1952 contains five full page colour cartoons: (1)”...watch it fetch”; (2-3) “Why, I’ve practised self-control for years. Mind you, I’ve never been any good at it…” (repeated about 20 pages further on); (4) [old man with blonde on knee in solicitor’s office] “...and being in full possession of my faculties hereby bequeath”; (5) [male reporter to beauty contest winner] “To what do you attribute your success?”
Morrison also painted murals, including several at Gordon East Public School on topics like Enid Blyton’s Magic Far-a-way Tree . All are now painted over, although her mural of Christ with the children of the world reputedly survives in the old hall of St John’s Church of England, Gordon. She married and had at least one son, David Wilkinson, a professor of Environmental Engineering at UNSW later in New Zealand (Christchurch?). She continued to work as a freelance illustrator throughout the 1950s but was then was forced to retire through illness. Her last known work was to illustrate Ronald McCuaig and Isla Stuart’s You Can Draw a Kangaroo/The Poems Tell You What to Do , published by the Australian News and Information Bureau in the early 1960s and reprinted as a supplement to the Australian Woman’s Weekly on 30 December 1964. This charming booklet for children was recently reprinted and has sold well at the Museum of Sydney Booksho
A self-portrait simply captioned 'Morrison, Joan’, shows her holding a drawing of a man with a gun, Smith’s Weekly 15 April 1933, 3, plus joke biography evidently by Kenneth Slessor, which includes: 'Is dangerous when roused; killed her first editor, 1927’. Another caricature is included in a line-up by Frank Dunne , 'Seeing’s Believing – “Smith’s” Artists On Parade’ (30 July 1932, 7) with the description:
First there’s JOAN MORRISON. She wears three-quarter skirts without any visible reason. Apart from that, she has a proper sense of man’s ugliness (she’s only seventeen) and of woman’s dependence upon foundation garments. Above all, she’s a First Impressionist, though she’s open to argument.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1911
- Summary
- Morrison was an accomplished mid-20th century cartoonist and book illustrator. Her cartoons, published in Man and Smith's Weekly, were populated by sassy glamour girls that came to be known as 'The Morrison Girl' and during WW2 they were a popular pin-up among the troops. In 1929 she and Mollie Horseman were the first female cartoonists to be appointed to the permanent staff of Smith's.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1969
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-30.748889 Longitude121.465833 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kalgoorlie, West Australia , Australia
- Biography
- Arthur Baldwinson,1908-1969
Arthur Baldwinson is one of Australia’s first generation of prominent modernist architects who experienced the European modernist movement first hand. His modernist contemporaries include Roy Grounds and Frederick Romberg in Victoria and Sydney Ancher and Walter Bunning in New South Wales; their respective Australian architectural careers in modernism began in the late 1930s. Baldwinson’s active professional career as an independent practising architect was relatively short (1938-1960).
Baldwinson was born in Kalgoorlie, West Australia in 1908. He trained in architecture (1925-1929) under George R. King, the head of the architecture programme at the Gordon Institute of Technology, Geelong, Victoria. Baldwinson’s work, especially in the areas of drawing and rendering, was exemplary and this led King to ask him to stay on as “Architectural Instructor”. Baldwinson held a teaching position from 1930 until 1932 when he left for London.
In London, Baldwinson was first employed in the office of Raymond McGrath, an architecture graduate from the University of Sydney. Whilst there, Baldwinson worked with such major talents like Serge Chermayeff and Wells Coates. McGrath’s practise at the time included designing the interiors for the BBC’s studios at Portland Place, London. Concurrently with work, McGrath was compiling one of the first international surveys of residential modernism for publication, Twentieth Century Houses (1934); some of the plans that accompany the photographs appear to be drawn by Baldwinson.
In mid-1934, Baldwinson worked for the firm Adams Thompson and Fry during the period when principal partner and co-founder of MARS (Modern Architectural Research group), Maxwell Fry, in collaboration with social reformer Elizabeth Denby, was designing the progressive, modernist housing scheme for the Gas Light and Coke Company, Kensal House in Ladbroke Grove, London.
In October 1934, Maxwell Fry formed a partnership with Walter Gropius with whom Baldwinson worked directly until early 1937. Gropius departed for the United States in March 1937. Baldwinson was actively involved in the design and drawings of Gropius’s commissions including: Isokon 3 medium density project, Windsor; the E. W. Levy House, Chelsea; the Donaldson House, Sevenoaks; the Impington Village College, Cambridgeshire and the Christ’s College project for Cambridge University.
In January 1937, Baldwinson began his return trip to Australia with a determination to plant the flag of “the new architecture”; he took up a position with Stephenson & Meldrum, first in their Melbourne office, then later in Sydney as Stephenson & Turner.
In early 1938 Baldwinson entered the annual Victorian Timber Development Association (TDA) prize for residential timber buildings and won in three categories. Soon after this success, he established his own practice in Pitt Street, Sydney. In 1938-1939, he formed a brief design partnership with fellow-West Australian, John Oldham (Oldham & Baldwinson) to design a housing project near Coomaditchy Lagoon, Port Kembla, New South Wales.
In 1938, Baldwinson had his first solo commission, Collins House at Palm Beach; the site was difficult, on a steep north-facing sandstone and clay slope with extensive views of Barrenjoey Head and Broken Bay. Baldwinson designed a red-stained weatherboard house on a sandstone plinth comprising an external stair ramp, two bedrooms, upper level verandah and “playroom” on the lower level. The house received considerable media attention when it was completed.
Before the second World War disrupted his career, Baldwinson was on the organising committee for the formation of the Australian Modern Architecture Research Society (MARS) and Australia’s first industrial design organization, the “Design and Industries Association of Australia” (DIAA), while focusing on designing modernist houses, drawing on his British experiences with McGrath, Gropius and Fry.
During the Second World War, Baldwinson worked for the Commonwealth Aircraft Factory designing and constructing buildings engaged in the manufacture of Beaufort Bombers. By 1943, he had been promoted Chief Architect of the Beaufort Division, Department of Aircraft Production (DAP). Baldwinson later developed an all-steel pre-fabricated “Beaufort” house for DAP post-war sale to the Victorian Housing Commission in 1946. This was Australia’s first factory-manufactured prefabricated that did not require traditional trade skills to assemble and erect.
In 1946 Baldwinson returned to Sydney and formed a partnership with Melbourne engineer, Eric Gibson. As Gibson and Baldwinson, Gibson managed the office in Melbourne and Baldwinson the Sydney office. In this partnership Baldwinson produced his best residential designs for a number of Sydney’s Contemporary Artists Society (CAS) members. These avant-garde clients included Alistair Morrison, William Dobell, Harold Clay, Geoff and Dahl Collings, James Andriesse, Max Dupain and Elaine Haxton. These works form an outstanding cohesive group best described as the “Artists Houses”. In 1950 he concluded his partnership with Gibson and in early 1951 applied for a lectureship at Sydney University. By 1952, he was a Senior Lecturer in the architecture faculty, a position he occupied until his death.
In 1953, Baldwinson formed a partnership with Charles Vernon Sylvester-Booth; in 1956 Charles Peters joined the firm to form Baldwinson, Booth and Peters. The partnership lasted until 1958 with Baldwinson concentrating on residential designs, which he favoured, while Booth and Peters pursued commercial work. One of their designs, Hotel Belmont, in Belmont, Newcastle won the NSW RAIA Sulman Award in 1956.
During this partnership, Baldwinson also designed the Mandl House, Wahroonga (1953) and the Simpson-Lee House, Wahroonga (1957). He also designed and built his own residence at 79 Carlotta Street, Greenwich (1954) funded by his teacher’s salary. The Carlotta Street house is a white-bagged brick building with tallow-wood tongue and groove siding and is the most precise essay on Baldwinson’s restrained modernist philosophy.
Baldwinson’s palette of materials was consistent throughout his practice: bagged brick, weatherboard or vertical tongue-and-groove cladding and concrete contrasted against the irregularities of regional sandstone. Although his practice was occasionally involved in commercial commissions, his greatest accomplishments lie in the adaptation of the principles and materials of European modernism for site-specific suburban Australian houses. He helped to pioneer free-plan concepts, site-adjusted residential design, the “scientific kitchen”, flat roof treatments and the functional placement of windows and doors to create a distinctly regional variation of European modernism. In his development of a Sydney basin form of regionalism, he is a precursor to the much-debated “Sydney School” of residential architecture of the later 20th century.
Internal disputes forced the dissolution of the Baldwinson, Booth and Peters partnership whereupon Baldwinson immediately formed a new partnership with recent Sydney University graduate Geoffrey Twibill. The partnership lasted until late 1959 during which Twibill played a major role in the design of the Commonwealth Film Studios, Roseville, and the prefabricated design of the Overseas Telecommunications Commission’s (OTC) modular housing in the Cocos Islands.
In 1960, Baldwinson closed his formal practice but continued to accept private commissions in the Sydney suburbs, designing the Hauslaib House, Point Piper (1960), the Pennington House, Whale Beach (1960), the Robinson House, Castle Cove (1963) and his last completed house for the artist Desiderius Orban, in Northwood (1968).
The last years of Baldwinson’s life were devoted to teaching and travelling. In 1969 he died in Sydney from congestive heart failure as a complication of influenza.
References
Arthur Baldwinson. www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A130117b.htm
Michael Bogle. PhD thesis “ARTHUR BALDWINSON. REGIONAL MODERNISM IN SYDNEY 1937-1969.” RMIT, 2009.
Greg Holman, “Arthur Baldwinson, His Houses and Works”, B.Arch. Thesis, University of NSW, 1980.
Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW. PXD 356 (includes Architectural & technical drawings, 2,686 architectural plans and private papers.)
Writers:
Staff Writer
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1908
- Summary
- Baldwinson was a regional modernist architect. He was a founder member of Modern Architecture Research Society (MARS), Sydney, Australia’s first industrial design organization, the “Design and Industries Association of Australia” (DIAA) and Sydney’s Contemporary Artists Society (CAS). He was also a printmaker, painter and sketcher and an officer of the Sydney CAS.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1969
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude52.2319581 Longitude21.0067249 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Warsaw, Poland
- Biography
- Painter and teacher who was born in Warsaw, Poland where he studied German, French, violin and art at school. He then studied at the Warsaw School of Applied Arts and went to Paris in 1922 where he met Marc Chagall. Froudist then went to Berlin where he studied at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts until 1924. He admired Kokoschka, Chagall, Picasso, Klee and Kandinsky. His teachers included Alexander Archipenko for drawing and modelling and Max Liebermann for painting. On his return to Poland he was a freelance artist. Froudist joined the Polish army in 1939 and was captured by the Russians who released him to fight against the Germans and he was sent to Iraq and Iran. In 1942 he was discharged as medically unfit and stayed in Iran where he taught art painted for the Shah of Persia as it was then called. He married one of his students and moved to India and then Uganda where he taught and then to England where he also taught before immigrating to Western Australia in 1952. Froudist taught in the Summer Schools at University of Western Australia and became art master at Fremantle Boys and John Curtin High School where he made quite a name as a teacher. He taught adult education classes from 1957 in a studio upstairs on the corner of Hay and Milligan Street. John Birman, the head of Adult Education wrote of him, “His unassuming manner and unlimited patience endeared him to all who came in contact with him and his influence had a lasting effect. A significant feature of his work was that in his advanced classes he attracted not only serious amateurs but a considerable number of practising artists and art teachers.” These included Tom Higgins, Cliff Jones, Miriam Stannage, Brian Simmonds, John Wilson, Marlene Page-Sorrin and Dorothy Erickson.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1902
- Summary
- Painter and teacher who was born in Warsaw, Poland where he studied German, French, violin and art at school. He went to Paris in 1922 where he met Marc Chagall.Froudist came to Western Australia in 1952. He taught in the Summer Schools at University of Western Australia and became art master at Fremantle Boys and John Curtin High School.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1969
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-43.53 Longitude172.620278 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Christchurch, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1901
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1969
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Henry Franklin Eddy was born on 10 January 1898 in Melbourne, Victoria, probably the son of Sidney Jonathan Eddy and Agnes Eleanor Eddy. He had a brother, Charles S. Eddy (d. 1917). He appears to have worked at “Terciverina”, Cathundral, which was on the Mitchell Highway and railway between Nevertire and Trangie, about 15km southeast of Trangie (New South Wales). In World War II Eddy was in the Australian Army as a private. He appears not to have married. Eddy died in 1969 in Sydney, New South Wales.
Eddy is known for only one artwork, a competent pen-and-ink on paper sketch of The Old Shack , undated.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Rost, Fred
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 October 1898
- Summary
- Henry Franklin Eddy (1898-1969), known for one pen-and-ink drawing at Cathundral, NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1969
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-32.256944 Longitude148.601111 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, designer and commercial artist, was born in Dubbo in 1892, daughter of Robert I.A. and Nina I. Roberts. She is best known for her many Home magazine covers of the 1920s and ’30s: flat, stylised images rendered with bold colour combinations. As an aspect of commercial art, she also arranged photo-spreads for the magazine featuring the fashionable new Art-Deco objects on sale in Sydney. Her cover for Home 's 'Interior Decoration Number’ of 1930 signalled other interests. It was self-consciously modernist, illustrating circular blonde-wood furnishings, a sheet-glass lamp base after French designer Djo-Bourgeois and a suitably modish woman. She designed a complete room, including chairs and cabinets, for the 1929 Burdekin House Exhibition. This room was later reproduced with full-scale furniture for an exhibition, “Sydney Moderns” held at the Art Gallery of NSW in July 2013.(Emma Glyde. Life in Colour, The Modern Vision of Hera Roberts. Look (AGNSW), May 2013, pps.16-18)
Similar pieces, often employing a ziggurat form with gloss painted finishes, were illustrated in the 1930s. Manar, the Macleay Street flat of her publisher and long-term companion Sydney Ure Smith , included designs by Roberts. She also designed at least one piece of furniture for the Stuart-Low Furniture Studio: a straight-sided writing desk in figured Queensland walnut with synthetic ivory pulls illustrated in Art and Australia (16 November 1936). After a trip to Europe in 1934 Roberts stated: 'In Sydney I think women would prefer to follow the English method in interior decoration rather than the Continental’.
Roberts was part of a large network of women involved with interior decoration. She was the student, and cousin, of Thea Proctor while another cousin, Mrs C. Dibbs (née Mary Proctor), conducted a country 'Shopping Club’ which offered to undertake any kind of buying 'from furnishing a house to buying a piece of cherry ribbon’. The rise of this vocation signalled dissatisfaction with the products and services of trade outlets and the new decorator would be consulted as much for her distinctive taste as for the supply of products. The profession was reviewed enthusiastically in the Australian press as a suitable and lucrative job for women. Its connection with the home ensured its respectability, and it was argued that women held a natural advantage in the domestic sphere. These women were clearly 'ladies’, spelled out in their glamorous appearances in the social Home and Society magazines, but they were also artists – a combination that considerably fuelled their credibility and appeal.
The December 1929 issue of Home carried a full-page advertisement for 'Kit Kat Powder – Society’s Choice’, comprising an elegant portrait of Roberts by the society photographer Harold Cazneaux and an accompanying 'interview’ with the subject:
.she has such an amazing flair for and love of colour in dress. Often she might have just stepped from a Leon Bakst canvas. So it is no wonder the incomparable Pavlova, when she first saw Miss Roberts, exclaimed, “Ah! You are artiste, yes?”
This stylishness is evident as early as 1919 when Roberts was photographed by Monte Luke theatrically posed in fencing costume at the Sydney Swords’ Club for Triad , which described her as 'one of the finest woman fencers in the Southern Hemisphere’. She also did designs for the theatre, including the costume designs for a production of Carlo Goldini’s Mine Hostess at the Turret Theatre, Milsons Point (originals in the Mitchell Library). Roberts designed 'hats and frocks’ for 'June’, a millinery shop in Pitt Street she owned in partnership with Pauline Watt ( see plate 240) and Jocelyn Gaden. In 1927 she was photographed by Cazneaux for Home in 'one of their vagabond felts’. As a modern interior decorator she enjoyed a significant profile and her comments on design were reported in the press as authoritative.
Roberts disappeared from the Sydney art scene after Ure Smith died in late 1949, so completely that Robert Holden believed she had died. In fact, she lived on for 20 years, marrying a solicitor, A.M. (Gus) Glen, in 1953. Hera Christian Glen died on 17 January 1969 (all reports say she committed suicide).
Writers:
McNeil, PeterKerr, Joan
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1892
- Summary
- A flamboyantly stylish and well known designer working in the bold modernist style of the 1920s and 1930s. Very much part of the Sydney social scene, Roberts enjoyed a considerable amount of fame and artistic authority.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-Jan-69
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-34.44245935 Longitude137.5873932 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kilkerran, Yorke Peninsula, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, printmaker and potter, was born on 20 December 1890 at Kilkerran on the Yorke Peninsula, South Australia. She studied at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts with Leslie Wilkie and Gwen Barringer , and with James Ashton in the 1920s, then travelled to London to further her studies at the Royal Drawing Society, Regent Street Polytechnic in 1926 27, where she won gold and bronze medals for her work. On this first overseas trip she visited Ceylon and South Africa.
After returning to Sydney, Kohlhagen took the advice of Thea Proctor and studied linocut printmaking with Adelaide Perry in 1935 36; 'Model Resting’ (AGSA) is captioned the 'first print made by me in 1935’. She was a founding member of the NSW Contemporary Art Society (CAS) and exhibited with it. She also exhibited with the Society of Artists, Women Painters (1935), and NSW CAS at Macquarie Galleries in March 1937. In 1937 38 she studied painting with George Bell in Melbourne and exhibited with the Victorian CAS. A founding member of the Contemporary Art Society of South Australia (1942 68), she also belonged to the Royal South Australian Society of Arts [RSASA] from 1925 to 1968 and exhibited with it (including as an original member of Dorrit Black 's Group 9). She was RSASA secretary in 1943 62 and later, vice president; in 1943 she was made a Fellow. Her work was included in the Adelaide Group Exhibition at Myer Art Gallery, Melbourne, in 1946; she had a solo exhibition at the RSASA in 1947 and two at the Arts Council of South Australia in 1948 and 1949. She lectured at the National Gallery of South Australia, and in the 1940s and 1950s wrote art reviews for the Adelaide newspapers, the Express and the News . Travel in 1958 and 1968 included Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom, where she also exhibited her work.
Kohlhagen died in Adelaide on 2 February 1969. Her bequest to the Art Gallery of South Australia included a collection of her own paintings, prints and drawings and £5,000 for the acquistion of works in any medium by interstate and overseas artists. She herself worked in watercolour, tempera and oil on canvas/board and made linocut prints; her subject matter included landscapes, still-lifes and, especially, genre studies. In 1934-44 she also exhibited pottery at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 20 December 1890
- Summary
- Kohlhagen worked in watercolour, tempera and oil on canvas/board, linocut prints and pottery; her subject matter included landscapes, still-lifes and, especially, genre studies.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2-Feb-69
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tasmania
- Biography
- Painter, art teacher, occasional china painter, craft worker and co-owner with her mother Mary of the “Arts and Crafts” depot Studio of Arts and Crafts in 623 Hay Street, Perth above Book Lover’s Library “A centre for Buyers and Sellers”. She was born in Tasmania. Southern came to Western Australia in 1908 with her father, the science master at Guildford Grammar School and his English wife Mary. Southern studied at Midland Technical School in 1910 under Flora Landells. She exhibited an embroidered portiere with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1911. In 1912 Southern exhibited again with the West Australian Society of Arts. The unidentified reviewer wrote, “A promising young student is Miss Southern, who in a still-life study shows that already she has a good eye for correct drawing and colour blending.” Southern later studied with Elioth Gruner at Julian Ashton Art School Sydney where she met Portia Bennett. She taught art and design at Fremantle Technical School from about 1919 to about 1934 and at Guildford Grammar and St Mary’s in the 1920s. She painted wildflowers, easel paintings, china, drew posters and bookplates and engaged in leatherwork and Barbola work. Leather comb cases were painted with Sturt peas and leschenaultia. In 1920 the reviewer wrote “Miss Muriel Southern shows high artistic promise.” She had submitted oil paintings of Crawley, St George’s Terrace and paddlers and three watercolours. Southern’s 1927 paintings exhibited with the Society of Arts were described as “attractive pictures, harmoniously coloured and broadly treated.” She was the Honorary Secretary of the West Australian Society of Arts in 1927-28. The shop was closed in 1930 and Southern advertised classes from her studio in Matheson Road, Applecross. In1933-34 she shared a studio in Irwin Street (part of the old university buildings) with F.V. Hall and Portia Bennett and in 1935 with Hall in the Western Australian Chambers. In 1935-36 the studio was at 104 St George’s Terrace in the same building as the Perth Arts and Crafts. According to art historian Helen Shervington, Southern and her friends: associated craft with art. As well as easel painting, they worked on posters, bookplates, china, leather, and kitchen tiles: objects relevant to their domestic environment. Muriel Southern’s easel work was dominated by still-lifes depicting these handcrafted objects. ... in her soft impressionist style … Although constantly praised for her handling of paint and modelling of form, critics trivialised her work through constant reference to its limited subject matter. In 1933 Southern exhibited four watercolours and two oil paintings with the West Australian Society of Arts. All were of domestic subjects such as A Sunny Corner. In 1934 she showed with the Perth Society of Artists. The critic Charles Lemon wrote of her exhibits, “Muriel Southern deserves praise for a watercolor study of Daffodils, and her astute handling of the Town Hall Perth.” In 1935 Muriel Southern organised the Perth Arts and Crafts Exhibition after which the West Australian Women Painters and Applied Arts Society was formed. It is presumed that the former had some connection with promoting interior design opportunities for women and the latter was a statement of support and solidarity to women artists. A stated aim was also “to demonstrate how materials available in Western Australia can be adapted to arts and crafts.” In 1937 Southern exhibited tooled leatherwork as well as paintings in the Exhibition of Western Australian Painting from 1826-1937. Around 1938 Southern went to Adelaide to live and marry G. Meikle. She continued to exhibit in Perth. Charles Hamilton wrote of her exhibit in the Perth Society of Artists’ 1939 exhibition: “Muriel Southern shows a view of St Peter’s spires, done in her quiet style, and a nice little flower piece, which I think is one of the best she has done.”
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1890
- Summary
- Muriel Southern was born around 1890. She was a painter, art teacher, occasional china painter and craft worker who in 1935 organised the Perth Arts and Crafts Exhibition after which the West Australian Women Painters and Applied Arts Society was formed.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1969
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-36.840556 Longitude174.74 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Biography
- cartoonist, watercolourist, art teacher and heraldic engraver, was born in Auckland. After studying at Elam Art School and working in Auckland as a heraldic engraver he came to Sydney in 1910 [1911 acc. AGNSW records]. He continued his 'bread-and-butter’ job while studying art with Dattilo Rubbo in c.1912. He contributed to the Bulletin from 1911 as a result of being introduced to Percy Lindsay, who also influenced his style. In 1915 he enlisted in the AIF and spent three years on active service in France, sending back sketches from the front and contributing to Aussie . He continued to draw for Aussie , e.g. How She Got the Notion to Shorten Her Skirts , 15 May, 1929, p.35. Most of his Bulletin cartoons seem to be of the 1930s and wartime ’40s, done when he was a part-time teacher at ESTC. Examples include: “You’re still too far from the kerb, Henry” [couple parking a car on a very wide empty country street] 1940; '– “Where’d you get those decorations?” – “Anthony Horderns’, sir”’ 1940; “I want to see someone about changing my son’s number – 131313”, 1942; “Now, lads, I want you to feel as if you was in your own 'ome. Look on me as your mother” (officer to raw recruits) 1942; “Just for a start, Mabel, I’ll clear four or five acres for wheat” (newchum farmer in bush) 1943; “Mister, may I have tomorrow off? Me grandmother’s coming home on leave”, 8 November 1944: see file.
Townshend also painted watercolours. He was vice-president of both the RAS (NSW) and the Australian Watercolour Institute. According to the Bulletin , he spent 'a lot of time in rural parts getting subjects for his water-colour pictures’, although he lived in Dee Why ( Renniks ) and for many years was on the teaching staff of ESTC. McCulloch states that his landscapes were influenced by John Singer Sargent’s watercolours and by the work of Winslow Homer. He was married to Dorothy Reynolds, a potter. The Bulletin (22 February 1939, 18) stated that he was in his mid-forties and his father was heir-presumptive (after an elder brother) to the Marquess of Townshend, but since the latter was then a healthy twenty-two 'G.K. Townshend’s chances of succession are pretty remote’. He was an AGNSW trustee in 1959-61. He died at Dee Why on 14 September 1969.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1888
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Auckland and Sydney cartoonist, watercolourist, art teacher and heraldic engraver.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Sep-69
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- photographer and farmer, was born in Melbourne on 10 June 1887 and trained as a dressmaker. She met William Henry Jilbert while visiting Ultima and they married on 12 February 1919. They had four children: Lewis (b. 2 March 1920), Margaret (b. 17 September 1921), Ivy (b. 28 February 1924) and Kenneth (b. 11 October 1929).
Mrs Jilbert died on 6 August 1969. She is well remembered by her daughter, Margaret, as always taking photos of events on the farm, often when her sister, Ivy Stevens, was visiting. Margaret believes her mother used a Box Brownie for all her photography and still has this camera in her possession.
Writers:
Pryke, Christine
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 June 1887
- Summary
- A Photographer, Ethel Jilbert used a Box Brownie camera to capture many of the events that took place on the farm, often when her sister was visiting.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Aug-69
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-37.805278 Longitude145.035833 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kew, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, graphic artist and writer, was born at Kew, Melbourne on 30 January 1885, second son of the journalist Maurice Brodsky, founder and editor of Table Talk (1885-1902). Horace studied art at the National Gallery Schools, Melbourne, then at London’s Guild School where he became a friend of Gaudier Brzeska. He also worked in the USA. Known for his open line drawings of nudes influenced by Vorticism. He died in London on 11 February 1969.
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 30 January 1885
- Summary
- A painter, graphic artist and writer, Brodsky worked in Australia, the UK and USA. The son of the founder of 'Table Talk', he was known for his open line drawings of nudes influenced by Vorticism.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Feb-69
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude45.41952305 Longitude9.077114437 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Villa Nuova, Milan, Italy
- Biography
- painter, was born in a castle in Villa Nuova, near Milan, daughter of a successful rice farmer. She studied art at Milan’s Brera Academy in 1909-10, adopting a late impressionist style and painting portraits and nudes. She also studied under Giovanni Sottocornola in Milan 1906-10. In 1911 she travelled to Canada where she was employed as a display artist at Eaton’s Store, Vancouver. There she met and married Mario Vigano. In 1919 they returned to Italy, but fled during the Mussolini Fascist regime after an attempt was made on Mario’s life. They reached Melbourne in January 1928, stripped of their Italian properties and most possessions, and spent years establishing themselves in the catering/restaurant business – years when Teresa had no time or opportunity to paint. She began painting again once the restaurant they established, called Mario’s, was flourishing, in spare moments between helping run the business and bringing up the three children. She took lessons from Arnold Shore and had a studio under the restaurant roof. One of her most successful portraits was of the ballet master Edouard Borovansky, who lunched daily at Mario’s.
Mario’s prospered and the Viganos purchased a thirty-hectare farm at South Morang. This provided produce for the restaurant and a studio overlooking the Plenty River for Theresa, where she painted landscapes. Her favourite subjects now were landscapes, flowers and portraits painted in a semi-modernist, impressionist style that shares features with the work of William (Jock) Frater and her teacher and friend, Arnold Shore. In the 1950s Vigano joined Shore on a painting expedition to Alice Springs.
She held her first solo exhibition called 'Thirty Years of Painting in Australia’, comprising twenty-four canvases, at La Feluca Gallery, Rome in 1963. It received rave reviews; she sold about half the pictures and the Italian Government commissioned a series of Alice Springs landscapes (which time did not allow her to carry out) and invited her to exhibit in Italy again. In 1965 she held two solo exhibitions in Australia: at the Victorian Artists’ Society rooms, Albert Street, East Melbourne, where she had exhibited for many years, and at the Myer Emporium in Adelaide. A commemorative exhibition was held at the Victoria College of the Arts Gallery, Melbourne, in June 1981. McCulloch notes that her landscapes and portraits are painted 'with great sensitivity’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1884
- Summary
- Maria Teresa Vigano was a painter. She was born in Milan, Italy in 1884. With her husband she came to Melbourne in 1928. In Australia they established Mario's Restaurant. In 1936 she held her first solo exhibition 'Thirty Years of Painting in Australia' in Rome. Vigano also held a solo exhibition at the Victorian Artists' Society rooms, Albert Street, East Melbourne, in 1965.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Feb-69
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1883
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1969
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- modeller, was born of Welsh parents. In 1894 her family moved from Birmingham, where they were then living, to London.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1882
- Summary
- There is no evidence Gladys Blaiberg ever visited Australia, but her modelling work, which features caricatures of the Australian soldiers she met while volunteering at the Australian Forces canteen in London during WW1, is represented in Canberra and Hobart.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1969
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-37.063611 Longitude144.217222 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Gertrude Olga Louise Leviny was born in 1879. She took art and wood-carving classes at the Castlemaine School of Mines in the early 1900s. She was a highly skilled woodcarver. She also enjoyed needlework, and made raffia hats and jewellery.
Gertrude wished to train as a nurse and commenced studies that were cut short when she contracted typhoid fever in 1903. In 1906 she suffered from meningitis, and was to have poor health throughout her life. Whilst recovering in 1906, she became engaged to a man by the name of Edgar, but the wedding was cancelled two days before the planned date for the ceremony in 1907, most probably at Gertrude’s instigation. In the late 1920s Gertrude moved to South Yarra in Melbourne, but returned to Castlemaine after two years, continuing to live at Buda until her death in 1969 aged 89. (Source: Culture Victoria, Goldfield Stories, The Leviny Sisters)
Writers:
fulleg
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1879
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1969
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude51.3609227 Longitude1.0273041 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1969-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydenham, Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist and illustrator, was born on 17 January 1877 at Sydenham, Kent, England, only daughter of Cecilia, née Rogers, and Herbert William Gibbs , artist, cartoonist and public servant, who had married when both were art students. May arrived at Adelaide with her mother and brothers in the Hesperus on 31 October 1881, following her father who had come out in June. They moved to WA in 1885 and lived on a farm at Claremont until moving to Perth in 1889 where May attended Amy Best’s School for Young Ladies. Her watercolour, A Festival 1891 (ill. Walsh 33), survives with a teacher’s comments on the drawing. Her father had been producing satirical cartoons of the social and political scene in Perth and, influenced by him May had been drawing comical sketches of members of the household since the Claremont days (examples Walsh 30 & 43). Her first published illustration, Little Folks , appeared in the W.A. Bulletin in 1889 (ill. Walsh p.30) aged 12 as the result of winning a competition. May sketched portraits of her family, e.g. brother and mother drawings 1893 (ill Walsh 34), did still life and landscape paintings in watercolour and made Xmas cards (Australian Christmas greetings for 1890 of naked children in the bush, ill. Walsh 32) etc. – with increased enthusiasm after the Wilgie Club was founded in 1890 by her father, Bernard Woodward (Director WA Museum), G. Temple Poole and H.C. Prinsep , which encouraged young artists to submit their work for help and criticism.
In 1894 May attended an artists’ camp at Undercliff set up by Prinsep. That year she began painting in oils 'anything at all – trying to get beyond the sticky stage… painting plaques to hang on walls and earning enough to keep myself in all but chemist bills’ (quoted Walsh 38). She also painted scenery and made set designs for local amateur productions (Walsh, 35). In the mid-1890s she was attending classes at the infant AGWA. One of her first sequential cartoon drawings is a tale of a bicycle collision, How They Met or The ups and downs of life c.1900 (Walsh 44).
In 1900 May left Perth with her mother to continue her studies in London. She spent a year at the Cope & Nichol Art School in South Kensington and attended regular night classes at the Chelsea Polytechnic Institute, plus half-hours at the Albert and Victoria Studios, South Kensington where students could draw the nude for free. A large, undated surviving female nude study in pencil (Gibbs Paper, ML V*ART 90) looks like an early art-school work.
After returning to Perth May did a few fashion illustrations in the West Australian . Then, with Herbert’s help, she was commissioned to draw some cartoons in 1902-3 for the WA magazine Social Kodak (later incorporated into the Westralian Critic ), initially under the pseudonym 'Blob’, e.g. Social Kodak 14 (28 August), 18 (25 September) 1902 (microfilm in ABN). Cover illustrations include: If it’s not our own Knight. 14 August 1902, a stylish caricature of a politician sympathetic to women’s suffrage; Would he were fatter 21 August 1902; You supply the music, Kingey, and Georgie’ll dance 28 August 1902; A picture without words 4 September 1902; Shakespeare (modernised) 11 September 1902; Guardy fulfils his promise 18 September 1902; Paradise Lost 25 September 1902 (and see illustrations Walsh 55).
This made Gibbs Australia’s first woman cartoonist, according to Foyle, although at least one published Australian woman preceded her (Little/Scott) – probably with only a single example, however – and many unpublished amateur cartoonists (Campbell, Atkinson) and professional cartoonists with Australian connections who published in other countries (Claxton, Roth). But she was certainly Australia’s first resident professional woman cartoonist and caricaturist and the first Australian woman known to have drawn local political cartoons.
The years 1904-5 were again spent in London, studying at the Chelsea Polytechnic – briefly including classes under Augustus John. Disliking both this 'picture of Christ in a check suit’ and 'his nudes’ (see caricature Walsh p.68), she soon returned to Borough Johnson’s classes, her tutor from her earliest days at the Poly. She graduated in 1905 with first class passes in every category. At the same time, May attended Henry Blackburn’s School for Black and White Artists at 123 Victoria Street, Westminster for a term – a good if highly competitive place for magazine, newspaper and publishing house contacts. But when her mother and brother arrived in London in 1905, May returned to Perth.
Back at home she became a regular cartoonist on the Western Mail , WA’s leading newspaper, which was edited by Robert Robertson who was married to author and outspoken women’s rights leader Agnes Robertson, who arranged the interview with her husband after seeing May’s work. She took over doing the front-page cartoon from Ben Strange , according to Walsh, although his biography notes that he remained there until c.1930 without interruption except for the Boer War. Juliana Bayfield, librarian, and Jane Brummitt (a Gibbs relative) at the Children’s Library Research Collection, SLSA, have identified her cartoons, beginning with the cover of the 1905 Christmas number, a patriotic WA image of a toy-laden Father Christmas greeting a well-dressed woman leading two Black Swans on leashes. In 1906 she did: Some Impressions of the Ball (fancy dress), The Highest Culture (university extension lectures), Tennis Champion – and Some Others , The Tennis Carnival – Some Zoo Courts Impressions (of women), After the Tennis Carnival – “The March of the Victors” , A Memory of the Royal Agricultural Show – Jones’s Dream and the cover of the 1906 Western Mail Christmas number – a cupid leading a goanna and a crinolined lady with black swans, not a topical gag (ill. Walsh 69: checked SLSA by Samantha Littley: copies of all but last in file).
The Gibbs Papers in ML include several original early cartoons (unpublished and mostly undated), e.g. Sketches from a Perth Sketchbook 1906 (shown in 'People’ in 1999 SLNSW exhibition) and Perth Celebrities 1906 (shown in Artists and Cartoonists at SHE) – a gag about eminent people who are the opposite of our expectations, including a (male) cartoonist weeping as he works. They look like drawings for the Western Mail but were never published (according to the SLSA researchers) so perhaps were rejects – which explains why Gibbs had them since copyright and ownership of drawings was vested in the commissioning paper until the 1960s. A darker, more powerful realist drawing in the Gibbs Papers shows an old raddled woman beggar in the street being ignored by a pretty young thing. (Prostitutes? Present and future – a prefiguration of Norman Lindsay’s most famous b/w work?)
Cartoons published in the Western Mail in 1907 include Some Variations Of a Prominent Cricketer and a Few Other Brilliant Players (30 March), described in the 'Cricket Notes’ of the paper as
A page of sketches by Miss May Gibbs dealing with the test matches. The “prominent cricketer,” of course, is “Bobbie” Selk whose peculiarity in bowling with his sleeve down is made much use of by the artist. Eyers, the local wicket keeper is also conspicuous in the sketches. Others caricatured are McIntyre, the New South Wales wicket keeper, Parker, and Ernie Jones.
Some Memory Impressions of Professor Henderson caricatures an Adelaide professor of Modern History and English Language who was such a popular lecturer that audiences of 1,000 to 1,500 were reported at his Perth series on 'Hamlet and the Shakespearean Drama’. Gibbs’s page of seven caricatures was published in the Western Mail on 15 June 1907 (copy in file). The Secret of Perpetual Youth , caricaturing a speech given by visiting lecturer Miss Jessie Ackerman, shows the speaker as a rather grumpy old woman lecturing to an audience of other grumpy old women. Her cover of the 1907 Christmas number shows Father Christmas in a pith helmet and a young woman personifying Summer with fan and thermometer who rides through the clouds on a Christmas pudding being pulled along by white geese labelled 'Hope’, 'Love’, Luck’, 'Prospects’, 'Joy’, and 'Success’, guided by two cherubs, 'Luck’ and 'Love’. Another cherub rides a turkey and waves a pith helmet labelled '1908’. The group is surrounded by champagne bottles and bonbons with wings. In the same issue Gibbs decorated a page of photographs depicting Pearling in the Nor [sic] West and contributed a number of other drawings, including Christmas Carols (a couple in bed, the man asleep, the woman woken by a choir of cats). “Way down upon the Swanee River” is captioned, 'The above sketches are typical of holiday life around Perth’; it includes scenes such as 'Some swimmers at play’, 'On the Pier’, and 'At the rivers [sic] edge’). 'The one unwanted gift ', also in the 1907 Christmas number, shows Father Christmas on a stepladder holding out a cupid in a bird’s cage ignored by men, women and children absorbed in seemingly inappropriate gifts. A little girl pores over tomes by Aristotle, Darwin and Carlyle, grandparents play with a toy train, women admire cricket bats, cigars and rifles while men twirl parasols and hold boxes of sweets and cookery books. All are uninterested in love. (KEEN ON INVERSIONS)
What is a Hat of 25 January 1908 is made up of caricatures of women in hats accompanied by short, witty verse matching each style to a personality type. A Few Impressions of Some of the English Cricketers of 14 March 1908 is captioned:
The above is a topical contribution, in view of the return visit of the English cricketers, who commenced their match with Western Australia on Friday. Cricket enthusiasts will recognise the players whom Miss Gibbs has caricatured, all of them having appeared on the Association Ground, East Perth. The sketches of Barnes, Young, and Humphries are fine, while Jones and Blythe are also faithfully portrayed.
The series On the Beach at Cottesloe (25 April) includes 'If you like things gay/ Choose a public holiday’, with a dour looking couple sitting on a bench on the pier, and 'If happy kids delight you more/ Shoals there are upon the shore’, where an old man is being buried in the sand by a group of children. Another series image is Sketches at the Royal Agricultural Show . Her cartoons appeared in the Western Mail until October 1908.
With the financial security of regular work May could also develop her talents for the fine arts and try writing short stories and a play. In 1907 she exhibited five watercolours in the First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work at Melbourne, including one described as a 'clever study’ (Moore, 1907). Agnes Robertson interested her in the women’s rights movement and she illustrated 'Women’s Position in the State’ by 'One of Them’, a strong article in the Western Mail in 1907 deploring the status of women in WA. Walsh (71) claims:
She was never a dedicated feminist, even though on many occasions her work was commissioned by the women’s movement. As she said, many years later, “I never thought of myself other than as an individual and I was never anti-man.” (But see comments and verse about men and love at the time in Walsh 78-79 and her English suffrage work)
Sometime after October 1908 she was replaced on the Western Mail by Ida S. Rentoul ( Outhwaite ) who was given the 1908 Christmas page. May was furious. In November 1909 she embarked for England with her mother and cousin Evangeline on the steamer Persic . Back at London she continued to work as an illustrator while studying art. She found an agent, Charles H. Wood, who got her a commission with George Harrup and Company to illustrate a book, Georgian England , for forty pounds, followed by The Struggle for the Crown . She lived in an attic flat in London and again attended night classes at Chelsea Poly under Borough Johnson.
As always, she spent holidays with her mother’s family, especially Cecie’s sister Emily Hadfield, who had been an art teacher before her marriage. Her portrait of her pensive child cousin Alice Hadfield, drawn in profile with pencil and pastels in 1910, shows what a consummate draughtsman she was (SLSA?). Her humour is evident in the illustrated letters and comic postcards she sent throughout her life, often including self-derogatory caricatures, e.g. postcard caricature 1911 (ill. Walsh 83, also used in Heritage ). She finally found a publisher for her Mimie and Wog children’s fantasy story by transposing the original Australian setting to London and remaking the heroine, now called Mamie; it appeared as About Us in London and NY in 1912.
May promoted the cause of Women’s Suffrage through feminist cartoons, now signed with her own name in an oval (although Walsh states that this was paid work secured for her by her agent – which seems unlikely, certainly for Common Cause ). In 1911 for the Christian Commonwealth , subtitled 'The Organ of the Progressive Movement in Religion and Social Ethics’, she caricatured public debates, such as Hilaire Belloc and Ramsey MacDonald debating socialism (3 May, cover). Both are drawn in profile, with Belloc leaning forward with his hands on the table and MacDonald swiping his arm across his chest to make a point. Most notable was her caricature of the two protagonists in the famous debate on women’s suffrage between Miss Cicely Hamilton and G.K. Chesterton on 12 April 1911. Years later Gibbs recalled the occasion (quoted Walsh, p.86):
The small Queen’s Hall was filled and I had to stand leaning against the wall, one knee up to hold my book while I sketched. G.B. Shaw was sitting a few rows from me.
Cicely Hamilton was a novelist and writer of feminist plays and destined to become a representative of women’s rights at the League of Nations. Her manner was intensely nervous and she had a way of flinging down her soul as a gauntlet, that would have put her at the mercy of any debater keener on scoring points and less like Mr Chesterton, a happy philosopher revelling in his own philosophy.
Miss Hamilton introduced herself as thirty years of age and unmarried and when I looked about the crowd, I realised there were a lot of us in the same state.
Most of her English cartoons were drawn for The Common Cause, The Organ of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS 1909-12), the first and largest of the women’s suffrage societies, edited by Christobel Pankhurst (SU has microfilm of 1911 volume only; SLSA have located good cartoons c.1911: microfilm Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide. No others found in Sydney. Small caricature heads of Mr Cameron Corbett and Mr Lansbury appeared on 11 March 1911 (p.815) and more cover drawings signed 'May Gibbs’ (in oval) were also published that year. Statics and Dynamics , her cartoon of the debate between Miss Cicely Hamilton and Mr G.K. Chesterton, appeared there first on 13 April 1911. Youthful Errors (Master Winston Churchill opposing the bill to limit women or young persons working in a shop more than 60 hours a week) was published on 4 May, The House that George Built [John Bull and Mrs Bull with 'House Agent’ Lloyd George] on 6 July; Reversed Arms [man holding sandwich boards that state 'Women do NOT want votes’ upside down] on 13 July; Taxation and Representation ['Pit Brow Girl’ and 'Representative of the “People”’] on 17 August; and Two Johnnies [John Chinaman who is anti-suffrage, and John Bull who is pro-suffrage] on 31 August 1911 (all Fisher Research Library, Sydney University).
Health problems again brought Gibbs back to Australia in 1913. She returned with Rene Heames, a telephonist and socialist who was a close friend from the Women’s Suffrage movement, and they settled in Sydney. May re-established contact with the Western Mail when they stopped over in Perth for a few weeks en route to Sydney and began a series of satirical cartoons for them, e.g. three pairs of images on mixed bathing 'yesterday’ and 'today’, December 1913 (ill. Ryan, p.15). She lived with Heames in a boarding house in Ben Boyd Road, Neutral Bay, and worked in the city in her 'Little Studio’ high up at 4 Bridge Street while Heames got a job as a telephonist at the GPO. They travelled to town by ferry each day.
May was immediately commissioned to illustrate the cover of Eleanor Mack’s novel Scribbling Sue for Angus & Robertson and further work for the firm followed. Editor Frank Fox commissioned her to draw a black swan of WA for Lone Hand and editor W.R. Charlton gave her a trial cover of the Sydney Mail to complete, which led to the offer of a further 25 covers – the most substantial contract she had hitherto received. Covers for August 1913 ( The Mate of the Wakarool , a character study to illustrate a short story) and April 1914 (a kookaburra with gumnut babies) are illustrated in Walsh (p.92). She also did headpieces and story illustrations inside the paper.
Her first publications about anthropomorphised Australian bush creatures and wildflowers, Gum-Nut Babies and Gum Blossom Babies , appeared with Angus & Robertson in December 1916. Her gumnuts were an instant success and subsequently appeared in books, magazine illustrations, on magazine covers, as bookmarks and as postcards (the last especially during WWI). {Her 'Gumnut Family’ c.1923 (original ML PXD 738/89) was included in the 'Sex’ section of the 1999 SLNSW b/w exhibition.} The first edition of her Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (1918) rapidly sold 17,000 copies. In December 1914 the Sydney Morning Herald summed up their appeal (quote Walsh):
That she uses all Australian flower and leaf forms in her artistic work is one of the chief charms which Miss May Gibbs manages to infuse in all she does.
This kind of work is so womanly, in the best sense, that it is a fresh proof of the deep feeling for nature, which is nourished by living in such beautiful surroundings as we enjoy in Sydney.
It is in the loving and fanciful treatment, with its quaint turn of humour given to our Christmas flowers by Miss Gibbs, that she catches the fancy of her admirers. As a woman artist “with a way of her own”, Miss Gibbs has carefully made her mark.
On a visit to Perth in 1919 May met and later married Bertram James Ossoli Kelly (known as J.O.), a mining agent. They moved to Sydney and J.O. became May’s business manager. In 1925 they built a house, Nutcote, at Neutral Bay where May was to live and work for the rest of her life.
May drew Bib and Bub , a comic strip about her gumnuts, from 1924 [1925?] to getting five guineas a strip while Jimmy Bancks was getting £40-50 for Ginger Meggs . That may explain why her next comic strip, Tiggy Touchwood , appeared in the Sun {or Sunday News ?} under the pseudonym 'Stan Cottman’. Following the merger of the Sunday Sun and the Sunday Herald to become the Sun Herald in 1953, her payment was raised to about six guineas then never improved (in 1966 it was converted to $13.65 with the introduction of decimal currency). According to Walsh, in August 1925, after Sunday News editor Errol Knox had Gibbs and her proposal vetted by Syd Nicholls (see Walsh 146 – apparently quoting from Nicholls’s autobiography), the first Bib and Bub comic strip appeared. She produced one strip a week for over 40 years. Initially with a contract for 12 months, she was paid five pounds per half page strip, plus syndication. The Adelaide Mail took it within a month for four guineas, and by November 1925 it was appearing across the Tasman in the Auckland New Zealand Herald (four pounds). The Melbourne Star paid three guineas, Townsville residents read it in the Northern Queensland Register for £3, while the Courier Mail – then called the Daily Mail – paid £2.12s.6d for the delectation of Brisbane readers. In 1926 the Daily News in Perth secured the WA rights. After two years, the strip became full page and the Sunday News raised its payment to £10. From August 1925 her Gumnut Gossip – words with small illustration – also appeared in the paper at 30/- a column; 205 appeared between 1925 and 1930, then the column was transferred to Women’s Budget . Her next strip Tiggy Touchwood , appeared in the rival Sunday Sun from 5 September 1925 under the pseudonym 'Stan Cottman’; this was at the insistence of the editor of the Sunday News where Bib and Bub continued to run. In 1929 May earned £2068 in newspaper fees but in February 1930 the Guardian took over the Sunday Sun and by April May’s income and the Tiggy Touchwood strip was halved. Other places also cut their prices and in 1931, after the News and Sun merged with Ginger Meggs winning the cover, May took away both strips. The gumnuts continued only in Qld, NZ and SA. Bib and Bub reappeared in the Sydney Sun from 25 June 1933 replacing Syd Nicholls’s Us Fellers . By 1935 Bancks was Australia’s highest paid cartoonist, receiving £40 to £50 a week for Ginger Meggs while Gibbs got five guineas for Bib and Bub . Following the merger of the Sunday Sun and Sunday Herald in 1953, the fee was raised to six guineas, where it stayed – even in 1966 as its equivalent in decimal currency ($13.65). Amongst her notes is the jotting: 'The artist who died of drawing gumnuts while she wanted to draw clouds’.}
Gibbs contributed drawings elsewhere too, but the Australian market was small and publications ephemeral. For instance, the writers’ journal Ink published her drawing of bush creatures in a barber’s shop in its first issue (1932, 23) – which was also its last.
She aimed for a painting career, but was unsuccessful there too. She not very social and had little to do with other artists, but nevertheless exhibited with the Society of Women Painters in 1920 and 1921. The portrait of her husband in the first show received lukewarm reviews. In 1922 and 1923 she and J.O. attended the first two artists’ balls but found the second 'a disgusting affair’ and never attended again. She continued to paint portraits privately, but when she sent a favourite portrait of Dr Throsby, a North Shore medico, to a Society of Artists’ annual exhibition (c.1924?) it was rejected and she refused to submit work again.
J.O. Kelly died in August 1939. On 9 June 1955, Gibbs was awarded the MBE for her contribution to children’s literature. On 8 April 1967 she wrote 'No. 1968 last cartoon’ on a strip and some months later the gumnuts disappeared from the press; the final one being run in black and white in two parts on 9 and 10 September 1967 (ill. Walsh 207). In March 1969 the Commonwealth Literary Fund, chaired by Gough Whitlam, granted her a pension of $21 a week. She died on 27 November 1969, aged 92. Childless, she willed all her papers and copyright to the NSW Society for Crippled Children and the Spastic Centre of NSW. Her home Nutcote at Neutral Bay is now a (struggling) museum in her memory, chiefly supported by North Sydney Council.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 17 January 1877
- Summary
- Creator of the famous tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, the Gumnut babies, Gibbs began her career as a cartoonist and hoped to be recognised as an exhibiting painter. She travelled to London whenever she could to study and improve her technique. Not especially social with other artists (although she did exhibit regularly), she would become better known for enchanting the public with her charming illustrated works.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27-Nov-69
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Wilfred Hayward Veal, painter, was born at Eaglemont, Victoria, in 1913. Despite receiving formal training in his father’s trade as an apprentice printer, Veal turned to painting. He commenced art classes at the age of 17 with Archibald Colquhoun, followed by classes with Colquhoun’s own mentor, Max Meldrum. Veal joined the Max Meldrum School of Painting in 1932, where he later served as an Instructor. In 1937, Veal held his first solo exhibition at Hogan’s Gallery in Melbourne, subsequently travelling to Sydney in the same year. Upon arriving in his new hometown, Veal established an art school in Rowe Street, known as The Meldrum School.
Hayward Veal’s career in Sydney was varied, as he taught art, exhibited his own work, became an art critic for the Daily News and a frequent contributor to the ABC’s magazine Talk. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Veal served as an inspector in a Sydney aircraft factory, all the while maintaining his influence in and support of the arts. In 1940 he was made a Fellow and (later) Vice-President of the Royal Art Society NSW. During the following year, Veal became Vice-President of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, he was appointed to the War Art Council and he occupied the position of Southern Buyer for the Queensland Art Gallery.
Significantly, in 1944 Hayward Veal founded and became the first President of the Encouragement of Art Movement (Bernard Smith served as the Vice-President). This movement was a driving force in the artistic education of the Australian working public and later evolved into an organization that eventually became the Arts Council of Australia. As the above roles attest, Veal was an active member of the Sydney art scene, where he also gave talks at art schools and lectured at the National Gallery of New South Wales (later named the Art Gallery of New South Wales). In 1950 he briefly returned to Melbourne to serve a 3-month term as the Acting Head of the National Gallery Art School.
Earlier, in 1944, Hayward Veal had married Minka Wolman, a former journalist. Together they left Australia in 1951 for what was originally planned to be a short trip to Europe. They were to remain abroad for the next 17 years. After spending time in London they settled in Reigate, Surrey, and had two English born daughters.
Veal quickly gained a reputation on the international art scene, presenting his first London exhibition in 1952 in the Piccadilly Gallery (where he held annual exhibitions until 1959). He became a regular contributor to the international art magazine The Artist and he also worked as an occasional teacher, lecturer and art critic. As a prominent expatriate of Australia, Veal was elected President of the Australian Artists Association, London, in 1953. The following year saw the publication of English and American editions of his book ‘Impressionist Painting.’
Owing to his vast travels and international reputation, Veal exhibited in several cities around the world. As previously mentioned, his first solo exhibition was held in Melbourne in 1937, followed by exhibitions in Sydney, Brisbane, South Australia and London. Veal’s first of many solo shows in America was held in 1962 in New York. Three years later, in 1965, Rome was the city of his first solo show in Europe.
Veal described his work as “perceptual impressionism,” replacing conceptual knowledge about “things” with perceptual knowledge about the subject’s tones, colours and shapes. Veal worked mainly in the genres of landscapes and portraiture, with his last portrait depicting fellow artist Rolf Harris. Hayward Veal returned to Sydney in 1968 for his first major Australian exhibition. Tragically, he died in the same week as the exhibition opening.
The art of Hayward Veal is represented in several prominent collections in Australia and overseas, including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong; Museum and Art Gallery, Newport, Monmouthshire, UK; Oxford University, Oxford, UK; University of Kansas Museum of Art, Kansas, USA and Brownsville Museum, Brownsville, USA.
Writers:
ecwubben
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1913
- Summary
- Painter, art lecturer and critic who was associated with the Max Meldrum School of Painting in Melbourne and Sydney
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1968
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude64.6863136 Longitude97.7453061 Start Date1909-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Russia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1909
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1968
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born in Melbourne, studied at Swinburne Tech. in 1920-22, at NGV in 1923-26, at the Bell School (with George Bell and Arnold Shore) in 1930-32 and with George Bell as a private student in 1948-52. He worked as a cartoonist for the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial for many years, being best known for his Mr Melbourne strip in the Sun , which he drew for 25 years (1939-64). After he retired he devoted his time to painting; he was treasurer and exhibiting member of the Melbourne Contemporary Artists’ Society. He lived at Seaford, Victoria until his death. A son is still living.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1906
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Melbourne painter and cartoonist. Creator of Mr Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1968
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, Western Australia, Australia
- Biography
- painter and author, was born in Perth on 27 July 1901 into a cultured, Christian and socially-committed family. Her father, Martin Edward Jull, WA’s first public service commissioner, was an able administrator whose other interests included maintaining an orchard, cricket, swimming and boating. Her mother, Roberta Henrietta Margaritta Jull, née Stewart, was a Glasgow trained medical practitioner whose formidable presence and enduring dedication to social reform, science and women’s affairs (especially health, rights and education) gained her national and international recognition.
The family lived at Brookside orchard and vineyard near Armadale; in 1910-13 Henrietta was in Scotland with her mother. Afterwards she went to Frensham School at Mittagong (NSW) and later studied languages at the University of WA. She was sixteen in 1917 when her father died prematurely and her plans to study art in Paris were abandoned. On 2 August 1921 at Guildford, she married Geoffrey Drake-Brockman, engineer, soldier and twenty-four years her senior.
The couple settled at Broome and Drake-Brockman turned her creative talents to the written word. Already a short story had appeared in the Children’s Corner of the Western Mail ; now, as 'Henry Drake’, she wrote articles on the north west for the West Australian and in future years would contribute to Walkabout .
Drake-Brockman considered creative writing to be her real m étier . From Broome’s exotic environment, multicultural society and relaxed lifestyle she found inspiration for short stories, novels and plays, e.g. Blue North (1934), Sheba Lane (1936) and in 1938 her sesquicentenary prize-winning play, Men without Wives . All the time she continued to write short stories for the Bulletin , Smith’s Weekly , Southerly and Meanjin . The twenty stories she chose for Sydney or the Bush (1948) reflect the belief, born of her own observations of Aussie battlers on the land, that Australians 'are a nation of gamblers; and often our stakes are very high’.
Drake-Brockman worked from a wide palette, her artist’s eye transposing real images into vibrant word pictures. Characters, caught in nets of comedy or pathos, are inexorably pitted against a dominant environment. Yet her writing seldom lacks a social dimension, nor is it free of value judgment. As she told the WA Fellowship of Writers in her 1941 presidential address 'Education for Life’, the creative writer makes 'a conscious selection and nicely weighed consideration of values’. This intellectual dilemma is pertinent in novels such as The Fatal Day (1947), The Wicked and the Fair (1957) and Voyage to Disaster (1963). Voyage to Disaster was Drake-Brockman’s greatest challenge. It demanded extensive archival research at home and in Holland, work with translator E.K. Drok, and aerial and underwater (aged fifty-nine, in an aqua-lung!) reconnaissance of the Batavia wreck on the Abrohlos reef.
Tall, elegant, forthright, her seemingly imperious manner belying an innate shyness, Drake-Brockman was extolled by her peers. Much involved in Perth’s literary life, she was consistently generous to aspiring young writers. At times president of both the WA Women Writers’ Club and the Fellowship of Australian Writers (WA), Drake-Brockman was awarded the OBE in 1967; she also won numerous literary prizes and saw most of her plays performed. She died suddenly in Perth on 8 March 1968, survived by her husband, son and daughter.
Writers:
Birman, Wendy
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 27 July 1901
- Summary
- Painter and author of articles, short stories, novels and plays. President of WA Women Writers' Club and WA Fellowship of Australian Writers. She was awarded the OBE in 1967 and has won numerous literary prizes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 8-Mar-68
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-33.775698 Longitude151.1688652 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lindfield, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 12 June 1897
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 30-Jul-68
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-42.124933 Longitude148.0757326 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Swansea, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- potter, was born in Swansea, Tasmania. Taught pottery by her cousin Maude Poynter , Violet assisted Poynter in her Ratho studio at Bothwell in the 1920s. Both women exhibited pottery with the Arts and Crafts Society of Tasmania and in a joint exhibition at the Hobart Town Hall in 1924. Violet was also one of the few interstate members of the Arts and Crafts Society of NSW. From these exhibitions her work found its way into the collections of the Technological Museum (now Powerhouse Museum) and Art Gallery of NSW, institutions that regularly purchased works from the Society’s exhibitions in the 1920s and ’30s.
Mace’s early work was influenced by that of her cousin, teacher and, for twenty years or so, working partner Maude Poynter , although she seems always to have had a stronger grasp of form than Poynter and to have relied less on painted pictorial decoration. Nevertheless, Poynter’s high reputation in Tasmania, especially as a teacher, has tended to overshadow Mace’s achievements.
Mace left to study at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London at some time in the late 1920s. It is said that she also visited Bernard Leach in his pottery at St Ives, but Leach appears to have had little influence on her work. On the other hand, a fine, simple and strongly formed squat vase, which was probably made soon after her return to Tasmania, demonstrates that she learned a great deal at the Camberwell School of Arts. It is one of several similar small vases she made at this time which rely for their impact purely on form and colour. The colours are unusually strong for the period and the technical sophistication of the glazes belies the primitive nature of the equipment Mace was using at Ratho, Maude Poynter’s pottery at Bothwell, Tasmania, where she was again working.
It has to be remembered that potters in these early days had to rely entirely on their own resources. They had to teach themselves by a process of trial and error, dig their own clays, make their own glazes and build their own kilns. The technical difficulties involved in making work such as this were daunting. So the technical control evident in this vase is remarkable indeed. Although she appears not to have been especially prolific Violet Mace was certainly one of the most interesting Arts and Crafts exhibitors in the years before World War II. She made small domestic earthenware pots fired in the Ratho wood-burning kiln. Until about 1937 most had painted and incised underglaze decoration reminiscent of Poynter’s work, but her late work using plain and mottled glazes is simpler in form and includes stylised plant and insect motifs and geometric designs drawn from Aboriginal art.
When Poynter left to live in Hobart in 1935, Mace took over the studio and worked there until it burnt down in the early 1940s. Then she gave up pottery and moved to Hobart. Later she lived in Victoria and worked as a housekeeper, afterwards moving to Western Australia to care for her sister. Finally she retired to Hobart, where she died.
Mace exhibited annually with the Arts and Crafts Society of NSW from 1927 to 1942. The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences purchased her work from the exhibitions in 1928 and 1929 and the Art Gallery of NSW acquired examples in 1927 and 1929. At the Society’s 1931 exhibition she showed 20 bowls with Australian themes: Aboriginal, lyrebird, kangaroo, berries, lizard, mantis. In 1934 she visited Central Australia and collected Aboriginal drawings and artefacts, later presented to the South Australian Museum, which included a 1934 sketchbook by Albert Namatjira and children’s pencil drawings done in 1934, e.g. camels by Malarana, aged 13, a house and date palms at Hermannsburg by Ferdinand and men riding horses (one being thrown) by Gordon Abbott, aged 11. Her collection also includes a small carving of a human-headed dog by Kalboori Youngi , possibly acquired from a Queensland aunt.
In the NSW Society of Arts & Crafts section at the 1941 'Australian Aboriginal Art and Its Application’ exhibition at David Jones’s Castlereagh Street Auditorium, organised by the Australian Museum, Mace showed brown bowls and trays on which were painted black natives hunting, dancing and carrying out their domestic duties. She and Grace Seccombe seem to have provided a large number of the Society’s 55 exhibits. Other exhibitors included Anne Weinholt , who won second prize in the special student competition for fabric design; another competitor was Frances Burke of Melbourne.
Writers:
Timms, Peter
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- Known as a potter, Mace produced strong work throughout her career. Her later style shows more of a personal vision, as her early work was overshadowed by her association with Maude Poynter.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1968
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude50.8115402 Longitude-0.3699697 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Worthing, England, UK
- Biography
- Cartoonist, illustrator and artist, was born in Worthing, England. In 1902 he joined the Royal Navy, where he kept a personal daily journal, only one volume of which is known to have survived, i.e. the voyage of the Challenger to Australia and the Pacific 1909-10. It includes many maps, cartoons and illustrations as well as stamps and photographs of places he visited. He resigned from the Navy in 1911, returned to Australia and married Emily Prees in 1913. They went to Gisborne, New Zealand, where he was employed as a dredge master until c.1920. Paintings done in NZ are known.
After working for the Australian Navy in Perth, Norton came to Sydney and was employed by the Australian Shipping Line, possibly until it folded in 1929. Then he made blocks and did illustrations for various Sydney newspapers, including Smith’s Weekly , the Telegraph (c.1934), the Sunday Sun and Guardian (c.1933), the Sydney Mail (1936) and Pix magazine (1938-54); he also freelanced. Examples include continuing the Pix series 'It’s a Fact’ after 1954 (very straight illustrations).
Charles and Emily had four children, including marine painter Frank Norton .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1887
- Summary
- Cartoonist, illustrator and artist, was born in England. Norton did illustrations for various Sydney newspapers, including Smith's Weekly, the Telegraph, the Sunday Sun and Guardian, the Sydney Mail and Pix magazine.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1968
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-33.8945061 Longitude151.1554222 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Petersham, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Designer, was a member of the Arts & Crafts Society of NSW, along with Nance Mackenzie – apparently a relative since the Christmas card Joan designed and exhibited in the Society’s 1941 exhibition was available for purchase at Nance Mackenzie and Anne Outlaw’s newly opened 'Annan Fabrics’ shop. Joan had joined the Society in 1914 and apparently remained a member until her death; she was a committee member in the 1930s and possibly at other times.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1886
- Summary
- Female designer of Christmas cards who was an active member of the Arts and Craft Society in New South Wales, and associated with Nance Mackenzie's and Annie Outlaw's business, Annan Fabrics.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1968
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-33.9045849 Longitude151.1386091 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dulwich Hill, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Photographer and Baptist Minister, was born in Dulwich Hill, Sydney. As a young minister in the Baptist Church, he began taking photographs of churches of his own and other denominations in the suburbs of Concord and Epping. His ministry ended in late 1911 and he then worked as a professional photographer from 1911 to the mid-1930s and again in 1956-57. He had a series of government contracts, the first to record the construction of the Commonwealth Government’s first wireless station at Pennant Hills, then the State Brick Works and Timber-Yard, and later many other industrial sites in the Strathfield-Ryde district.
During WWI Rex served in the first AIF. He was appointed an official war photographer in 1918-19. After the War, he recommenced his professional career, setting up a studio at Epping. His subsequent work included over 2,000 colour photos taken on an extended trip to Europe and Britain. When he died in March 1968, his photographic collection passed to his family, who donated over 1,000 of these, mainly glass-plate, negatives to the Mitchell Library. In 1995 his son Laurance published a monograph on Hazelwood, inspired by the many researchers, especially local historians, using his photographs. As well as a biography and the reproduction of a selection of his early photographs, it includes an index to the photographs in the Mitchell Library.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1886
- Summary
- Rex Hazelwood was known as a photographer. He trained as a Baptist Minister but abandoned his ministry in 1911 to work as a professional photographer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Mar-68
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-27.8161679 Longitude153.2924022 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Pimpama, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Pimpama, Queensland, where her family had timber holdings. Her early art studies were under Godfrey Rivers at the Central Technical College, Brisbane, but her main training was at the National Gallery School, Victoria, where she was enrolled in 1905-6 and 1909 under Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin. While in Melbourne she also studied watercolour painting with Walter Withers. In 1915 she went to London and, at the end of the war, to Paris, where she studied at Colarossi’s. A very popular studio with Australians, Colarossi’s was where Vida’s Brisbane friend Bessie Gibson had studied under Frances Hodgkins. Vida lived in Montparnasse and must have known Kate O’Connor , Maude Sherwood and Anne Alison Greene , as well as Bessie Gibson, all of whom lived nearby. She also studied with Frances Hodgkins at St Ives, Cornwall, before returning to Australia in 1920. Her only other trip was in 1927 when she remained abroad for eighteen months.
In Australia Lahey regularly exhibited at the Moreton Galleries, Brisbane, and during the 1930s with the Society of Artists, Sydney. She became a member of the Royal Queensland Art Society and the Australian Academy of Art. In 1938 she was included in the British Empire Exhibition in London; in 1945 she received the Society of Artists’ Medal for her services to art.
Lahey’s painting is recognised for its traditional academic qualities and shows very little awareness of the avant-garde movements of her generation. She specialised in still-life, interior and occasional landscape views, all perfectly normal subjects for the 1930s and 1940s. Probably because her art was so acceptable, she was able to encourage much support for the visual arts, especially in Queensland. Her special interest was teaching art to children; she established and taught children’s art classes at the Queensland Art Gallery until 1952; her successor was Margaret Ellen (Madge) McNeil (1904-1995), who painted this portrait of the elderly Lahey.
Vida Lahey also taught adult art classes at the gallery, and much of the fund-raising and early impetus for the Queensland Art Gallery is credited to her and Daphne Mayo . Lahey served on the Art Advisory Committee for the Gallery in 1931-37 and often argued for a proper purchasing policy and a qualified full time director – which occurred only in 1949. The gallery commissioned her to write Art in Queensland 1859-1959 (Brisbane 1959), still a basic text for Queensland art history which includes much useful biographical information. She also began work on the catalogue of the University of Queensland Art Collection. However, probably her main contribution was to encourage excellence and public involvement in the visual arts, especially in Queensland, and to serve as a point of contact between Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne.
Writers:
Underhill, Nancy D. H.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1882
- Summary
- A traditional painter specializing in still life and landscape subjects, but is probably best known for Monday Morning, a painting of women's domestic labour. She was a great contributor to the art scene in Queensland and was very involved with art education at the fledgling Queensland Art Gallery.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1968
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-37.063611 Longitude144.217222 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Bertha Dorothy Leviny, known more commonly as Dorothy Leviny, was was one of the ten children of Ernest Leviny, a notable Victorian silversmith, and his wife, Bertha. All of the Leviny daughters were known for their creative endeavours but Dorothy was the most creative and prolific.
At the Bendigo Schools of Mines, she studied under Mr Arthur T Woodward, a great proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement and despite winning second prize in the Fine and Applied Arts and Photography section for Best Original Design for Wallpaper at the 1907 Australian Women’s Work exhibition, she is known primarily for her metal and enamel work.
Writers:
Staff Writer
fulleg
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- Enamel and metal worker,devoted a good part of her life to the various crafts that interested her. Lived in the Leviny home, Buda, outside Castlemaine, Victoria her entire life.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1968
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-36.816185 Longitude143.6552434 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Goldsborough, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Euphemia Eleanor Baker aka 'Effie’, was born in Goldsborough, Victoria in 1880, the daughter of miner John Baker (1855-1915)and wife Margaret nee Ball. John was a son of renowned former Sea Captain, Henry Evans Baker (1816-1890)turned multi-talented mining investor, inventor and later astronomer and telescope maker. From 1884-1890 Captain Baker was in charge of the Mount Pleasant private observatory he had founded with Ballarat businessman James Oddie. Both Effie Baker’s grandparents with whom she lived from 1886, and her father had died by 1915. John Baker was not wealthy but Effie received a good education including art and music training with family support. Her paternal aunts Euphemia and Elizabeth Ison Baker (q.v.) were particularly supportive. Ison Baker gifted Effie a camera in the 1890s. Effie was proficient enough by 1898 to send holiday albums to her parents.
When Aunt Elizabeth married in 1902 newspaper reports mentioned that her niece Effie who had been in training for sometime and was to take over. This aspect of Effie Baker’s career is little known but if correct, exposure to gazing at the heavens may have influenced her later spiritual interest in the Bahá'í faith. If Effie Baker managed the observatory it would only have been until 1909 when she moved to Black Rock where Aunt Euphemia had been appointed headmistress and had built a cottage.
Effie Baker had trained as an artist at Ballarat East art school and in Black Rock applied her skills to earn a living. She produced wooden relief and three dimensional children’s toys based on Australian animals,including Noah’s Ark with Aboriginal Aboriginal Moses. Some toy sets were arranged in racks which folded up to be easily posted. Effie made elaborate doll’s houses which received considerable attention in the press, greeting cards, flower paintings and photographs including a booklet Wildflowers of Australia using fine four reproductions of her own hand coloured boatnical photographs. The booklet went through several editions 1914,1915,1921 and 1922. Examples of teh booklet survive, but no examples of Baker’s toys or paintings in public collections.Effie Baker became involved with the Bahá'í faith in Australia in 1922 and helped in its establishment in this country. She travelled through Iran and Iraq taking the photographs of sites of significance to the faith to illustrate The Dawn-Breakers: Nabil’s Narrative of the Early Days of the Baha’i Revelation, Shoghi Effendi’s translation of _historical account of the early years of the Babi and Baha’i Faith. The original was written in the late 1800s by Nabil-i-Azam, a Persian follower of the Bab and Baha’u’llah, and translated by Shoghi Effendi in the early 1930s.
Effie Baker returned to Australia in 1936 living for awhile in Goldsborough and from 1963 in Sydney at the Bahai headquarters. Her photography had ceased by the late 1940s. The details of her life as a Bahai have been documented by Australian biographer Graham Hassall.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 5 March 1880
- Summary
- Photographer and member of the Bahá'í faith.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1968
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude53.55 Longitude10 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamburg, Germany
- Biography
- Hans Heysen was born on 8 October 1877 in Hamburg, Germany. In 1884, at the age of six, he emigrated with his family to Adelaide, South Australia. He left school at 14 and worked for two years in a sawmill cum hardware business before joining his father’s produce business selling butter and eggs until 1898. While working he studied under James Ashton at his Norwood Art School from mid-1893 to late 1894, and again from early 1896 to late 1897.
From mid 1893, he spent each Sunday sketching outdoors in the Adelaide Hills with his friend Reg Comley. In 1898-99 he attended the South Australian School of Design under H.P Gill . In October 1899 Heysen travelled to Europe where he stayed for almost four years studying at the Academie Julian, the Academie Colarossi and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He visited Holland, Scotland, England, and Italy. In January 1904, following his return to South Australia, Heysen opened a studio and art school in Adelaide. He spent three months painting in New Zealand in 1907.
In 1908 Heysen settled in Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills where he lived for the rest of his life. He made the first of several visits to the Flinders Ranges in 1926. In 1934 he travelled again to Europe. For twenty-eight years from 1940-68 he was a member of the Board of the Art Gallery of South Australia. For many years he depicted rural labour in the enclosed landscape in his beloved Adelaide Hills and the unpeopled spaces of the Flinders Ranges. He died from a stroke on 2 July 1968 at Mt Barker, South Australia.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne Note: Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 October 1877
- Summary
- German-born, Adelaide-based painter. Probably more than any other artist, Hans Heysen changed the way Australia saw the gum tree, as for many, many years his eye was closely trained on the landscape of his beloved Adelaide Hills and Flinders Ranges.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Jul-68
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-42.7178871 Longitude170.9646469 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hokitika, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 14 September 1876
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Aug-68
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-42.7178871 Longitude170.9646469 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hokitika, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter, was born on 14 September 1876 in Hokitika, New Zealand, daughter of Charles Yelverton O’Connor and Susan Letitia, née Ness. The family moved to Western Australia in 1891 where C.Y. O’Connor took up a post as government civil engineer. Kate studied at the Perth Technical School under J.W.E. Linton and, after receiving additional tuition and encouragement from Florence Fuller , went to England in 1906. After attending Hubert von Herkomer’s School at Bushey, Hertfordshire, she lived in Paris until 1909, then returned briefly to Perth.
The following year she was back in Paris and in 1911 was painting in Concarneau with a group of artists which included the New Zealander Frances Hodgkins and the Canadian Emily Carr. She was a regular exhibitor at the Salon d’Automne from 1911 to 1932. Her work from this period concentrates on small intimate studies of people in the Luxembourg Gardens.
During World War I, O’Connor stayed in London, then returned to Paris and in the early 1920s became involved in fashion and the decorative arts. During this decade she experimented with tempera in her paintings and received encouraging reviews in the French press. In late 1926 she revisited Australia and briefly worked for the Sydney department stores, Grace Brothers and David Jones, producing hand-painted plates, sun-shades and fabrics. She sailed for France after a solo exhibition in Perth in October 1927.
In the 1930s O’Connor worked mainly on still-life painting. She held her first solo exhibition in Paris in February 1937, at the Galerie J. Allard, then left for the comparative safety of England during World War II. In 1948 she again returned to Western Australia. Crates of her paintings and sketches were impounded at Fremantle, subject to 20% import tax. Despite protestations that she was an Australian citizen and therefore not liable, she was forced to destroy 150 works and pay duty on the remainder.
She continued to paint, mainly still lifes and portraits. However, she was not happy and longed to return to France, which she did in 1951. She held a solo exhibition at the Galerie Marseille, Paris, in June 1953. In 1955 she came back to Perth for the last time. She won the WA section of the Perth Prize for Contemporary Art in 1958. A 1965 solo exhibition at the Osborne Gallery in Adelaide and at the South Yarra Gallery, Melbourne, in 1966, resulted in some national prominence. In 1967 the WA Art Gallery organised a major retrospective of her work. She died in Perth on 24 August 1968, aged ninety-two. Her ashes were scattered at sea.
Writers:
Gooding, Janda
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 September 1876
- Summary
- A painter who spent much of her life in Paris, exhibiting regularly at the Salon d'Automne. She painted mainly still lifes and portraits but also intimate studies of people in the Luxembourg Gardens.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Aug-68
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-42.7178871 Longitude170.9646469 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hokitika, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 14 September 1876
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Aug-68
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-37.8334603 Longitude144.9570188 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1968-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Melbourne, Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- painter and china painter, was born on 2 September 1875 in South Melbourne, sixth child of Sidney Hake and his wife Charlotte, née Hemsley. Dora and her younger sister Elsie (Barlow) attended drawing classes given by Jane Sutherland at Fairelight girl’s school in about 1890. When Sutherland 'saw that we were keen about it and not just playing, she asked us to come to her class in town to draw and paint from life’. They went daily and two nights a week and were put 'on the right road from the beginning’.
Later in the 1890s, when Sutherland had to give up teaching, Dora travelled weekly 'to work at Heidelberg with Walter Withers’, who relinquished one of his school drawing classes at Malvern to his protégée. Between 1895 and 1902 she was a student at the National Gallery School under Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin, and an exhibiting member of the Victorian Artists’ Society from at least 1900. In 1899 she shared a studio at 187 Collins Street with Elsie.
Abroad in 1902, she was accepted for the summer term at the school run by Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes at Newlyn, on the cliffs at Land’s End, where whenever 'the weather allowed we worked outside’. In Paris she 'revelled in Manet and Monet and the other Impressionists’ and 'decided that was how I wanted to paint’. On her return home, with Withers’s help, she acquired the Geelong Art School in Little Malop Street. She lived in Geelong for most of the decade and scoured the district for subjects. Outdoor oils from this time include a view of Corio Bay, Geelong Morning (1904) and Fyans Ford , the latter one of eight works hung in the Women’s Work Exhibition in 1907. In 1908 she exhibited a 'Ceramic Specimen’ at the Arts and Crafts Society where she was later to show china painting. That year she won first and second prize and Mrs Herman Guttermann’s Gold Medal at the Ladies’ Art Association Exhibition in Ballarat, coming second to Charles Wheeler for landscape.
In 1910 she married Percival Serle. From 1915 they lived at Asolo, one of Hawthorn’s oldest houses, set in a large garden. 'Marking time’ while her three children were young, she still exhibited regularly with the 'Vics’ and in 1928 spent a year abroad visiting galleries, sketching, reaffirming her commitment to the Impressionists and reacting badly to some modern art. She exhibited with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters in 1929, was their President in 1933-34 and represented them on the National Council of Women.
In 1930 she showed watercolour and oil 'Sketches and Notes of Travel’ at the Lyceum Club, where for several years she convened the Art Circle. The Victoria Centenary retrospective exhibition in 1934 included her The Chinese Vase (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), and she showed work with the Australian Academy of Arts. In 1936 she held a solo exhibition at Margaret McLean’s Collins Street Gallery. She was a founder-member in 1939 of the Independent Group of Artists.
Except when travelling, Dora Serle largely abandoned watercolours. In 1942 she was represented in the second annual Exhibition of New Paintings (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne) by a still life and Al Fresco (University of Western Australia). The 1930s-40s was her peak period in terms of output and critical esteem, with George Bell, Basil Burdett and Arnold Shore among her admirers. She ceased to paint for a time after her husband died in 1951 but by 1954 felt equal to making her last trip abroad. Despite failing eyesight she continued to work well into her eighties – a period of over 70 years. She died on 10 September 1968.
Writers:
Serle, Jessie
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 September 1875
- Summary
- Painter and china painter, Serle was active for over 70 years in Geelong and Melbourne though she studied briefly in England. She received most critical acclaim during the 1930s and 1940s and counted George Bell, Basil Burdett and Arnold Shore as being among her admirers.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Sep-68
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- Information from the NSW AIA files [NSW ARCHITECTS BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION]states:
Hans Peter Oser(1913 – 1967) was born in Vienna, Austria on 17 June 1913. He attended Primary school in Vienna and the Technical High School in Vienna passing with Honours. He studied in the Faculty of Architecture, University of Vienna, graduating B.Arch in 1936. During the holiday periods in his time at University he worked in different offices, one of them being Professor Behrens of Vienna. After completing his University studies, he was employed first as a draughtsman and then as Chief Draughtsman in the office of Professor Joseph Hoffman & Oswald Haerdtl, Vienna. This firm sent him to several European capitals to supervise their work their including Budapest and Paris World Fair in 1937.
Oser arrived in Australia in December 1938 and was employed in by John D. Moore, Provost & Associates, Crane & Scott, Malleys Ltd and the Housing Commission of NSW. He also worked on his own, finally establishing his own firm in 1946.
H.P. Oser & Associates was formed March 1956, the associates were R.F.L. Mugdan ARAIA and J.G. Fombertaux A.R.A.I.A., at Scot Chambers Hosking Place [Forbertaux also had an association with interior designers and architects Lipson and Kaad].
Oser Fombertaux & Associates were established c. 1963. After Oser died on 27 April 1967 at 54 years of age and the firm continued to operate as Oser Fombertaux & Associates until Fombertaux’s death in 1975.
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 1 January 1913
- Summary
- Hans Peter Oser was a Vienna-educated architect who came to Australia in 1938 and practised after World War II as H.P. Oser, then in partnership with Jean Fombertaux from 1961, and later Kevin Rice. As well as several notable houses, he designed the Hotel Brookvale (1955) and numerous retail and theatre interiors, including the Gibb and Beeman showroom, Continental Bags, and the Odeon theatre, Singapore.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-67
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-33.8798136 Longitude151.078522 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Strathfield, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 2 May 1906
- Summary
- Bruce Furse was a Sydney Technical College student and articled with Wiltshire & Day, Sydney. He began an independent practice in in 1933 and began an association with Guy Crick two years later. Furse has been described as a lighting specialist and an experimenter in modernist interiors. The joint practice was noted for lighting effects.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1967
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-28.816667 Longitude153.283333 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lismore, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator, was born in Lismore, NSW, the second of the four children of James Whitmore, a tailor (and lifelong Mason) and his wife, Mary Brown (Zillah, Frank, Arthur – known as Bob – and Olga). Some time after Frank’s birth the family moved to Sydney and lived in South Kensington. Frank later attended Cleveland Boy’s High School (though not to matriculation level), where he designed the school badge. Aged about 15 (by 1920), he joined J.S. Watkins’ (Wattie’s) Art Academy in Jamison Street, Sydney, where he quickly became the top student, according to a fellow student, the 17-year-old John Baird . A self-portrait aged 17, painted in 1922, is illustrated by Lee Whitmore and presumably remained in the family.
Nicknamed the 'boy painter’ or 'boy artist’, Frank showed a 'remarkable painting, “The Blue Dress” [a portrait of a young woman], at the Royal Art Society’s Show’ before he was 21, said by a local newspaper reviewer to be 'a masterpiece of its kind’, while his black and white work was also considered to show great promise. The 1923 Royal Art Society show included 'excellent examples of fine pencil-drawing’ by 'Mr. F. Whitmore, Mr. Trindall and Mr. Balfour’, according to William Moore in Art in Australia , and his review was illustrated with Whitmore’s pencil portrait of an elderly man. The Sydney Mail (2 September 1925) illustrated his 'clever wash drawing’ of a girl lying on a sofa beside a grammaphone, Listening In , shown at that year’s Royal Art Society exhibition.
Whitmore is said to have won a scholarship to the USA, donated by A.T. Rofe of Sydney’s Millions Club c.1930, but although William Moore wrote that he stayed there and became a well-known illustrator, in fact he didn’t go. Having discovered he was colour blind, he withdrew from exhibiting and gave up his ambition to be a “fine” artist. Instead, he worked as a commercial artist in Sydney for the rest of his life. His wife, Valdar Shailer, a fellow student at “Wattie’s” whom he married in 1936, mixed his colours and checked them for him. At the time of their marriage Valdar was running a small business of her own called “Service Studios”, which did a variety of jobs such as colouring the slides used for cinema ads. There were two children: Lee (b.1947) and Kent (b.1950).
Frank Whitmore initially worked for a small studio, Griffin Shave, until it collapsed during the Depression. He then set up as a freelance commercial artist. He did numerous covers for the Sydney Mail in the 1930s (until it ceased publication with the issue of 28 December 1938) and covers of Home and Woman’s Day in the late 1940s-early 1950s. He rented rooms in the city with several other artists, including his brother Arthur – known as Bob – who worked in advertising, Brian Weakes, Dick Kentwall and Jimmy Dale. He and Bob were active in the Black and White Artists’ Association in the 1930s. Frank’s many friends in the group included Gordon Franklin, Jack Kilgour , John Santry, “WEP”, Will Mahoney , George Finey , John Baird, Margaret Coen and the Lindsay family. He was involved in running the Artists’ Balls held annually in the Town Hall or Trocadero (see description of one of the balls in Meg Stewart’s book on Margaret Coen, Autobiography of My Mother ).
In 1940-41 Frank designed a house and studio on Commodore Street, Waverton, and from then on always worked from home (photographs of home in Lee Whitmore’s biography). Excluded from military service because of his colour-blindness, he spent the war years illustrating children’s books, supplies from overseas being no longer available.
Frank always carried a sketchbook with him in the early days and made extensive studies of physical types and different nationalities. He was influenced by Frank Brangwyn and by American illustrators such as N.C. Wyeth. Like them, he was a keen researcher and historian who always took care to get details correct. Lee notes that he had assembled a huge picture file over 40 years, which filled 'four large wooden filing cabinets in the corner of his studio’.
Lee Whitmore’s manuscripts and biography includes 'oil painting studies’ (very commercial-art looking) and family portraits, e.g. 'Valdar and Baby Lee’ 1947 (ink drawing), 'Valdar and son Kent c.1955’ (painting) and daughter Lee looking into a mirror (painting), as well as straight commercial artwork, notably an advertisement for Actil that used Lee and Kent in pyjamas as models (published Australian Women’s Weekly 8 September 1954) with an accompanying photograph of them posing. Lee notes that her father 'seemed to do endless ads for Nestles, Milo and cough syrup for which my brother and I were often used as models… He had a long-term relationship as a freelance artist with the advertising firm Hansen Rubensohn (later taken over by McCann Erickson) where his brother Bob was now an Art Director.’ He continued to work until a couple of years before his death in 1967.
Little original work remains since all artwork became the property of the companies that commissioned it and was normally destroyed. Frank himself threw out much artwork, but Valder retrieved favourite pieces and hid them from him. In the 1990s Lee Whitmore is believed to have given a collection of original material to the Powerhouse Museum and the AGNSW.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- A talented artist and illustrator from an early age, upon discovering that he was colour blind, Whitmore gave up 'fine art' and took up commercial art.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1967
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Thomas Percy Eagles was born in England on 9 March 1900. There is no record of when he and his family migrated to Australia or of his early studies but apparently he took classes with Dattilo Rubbo at the Royal Art Society, Sydney and these classes were conducted by Rubbo for a period of 28 years. According to a report in 1949 by Professor C.G. Cooper, Eagles was banned from competing for the life drawing scholarship at the Royal Art Society after winning three years in a row. The report further confirmed his skill in life drawing:
'Percy Eagles is that comparatively rare phenomenon in Australian art a brilliant draftsman. . .
If one were to judge from the work of most Australian artists, one would conclude that Australia was a vast land of gum trees and blue skies, entirely uninhabited.
This picture by Percy Eagles of a naked woman is a fine piece of drawing. There is nothing saccharine about it. This is not a glamourised girl of incredible shapes and romanticised proportions, such as one sees in American magazines and films. There is nothing prurient about the drawing. It is a clean healthy recognition of what is the most obvious and, surely, not the least important beauty, the beauty of the human body.’
He produced lithographic posters for Warner Brothers film releases during his years in Sydney as well as contributing drawings to the Bulletin and Smith’s Weekly , according to former student Leonard Brown. Eagles came to Brisbane in 1934 when he joined the staff of the Sunday Truth and for many years provided a weekly pencil sketch of a prominent Brisbane identity for the paper’s 'Personality of the Week’ – presumably the sketches of Hubert Edward Brown and John Cooper in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection were included in the series.
Eagles worked for an advertising agency from 1960 and on 28 January 1964 was appointed to teach freehand drawing, light and shade drawing and hand lettering as part of the Diploma in Commercial Art program at the Central Technical College, Brisbane. According to one of his students, Mal Enright, he drew constantly and had a close connection with Eric Roberts who taught lettering at East Sydney Technical College. Further, according to Enright, Eagles “changed the whole paradigm of drawing for his students.” According to his students Eagles was a very private man but he was also a champion ballroom dancer.
He was a member of the Royal Queensland Art Society (1943-57) and of the Half Dozen Group of Artists (1947-55), exhibiting portraits and landscape paintings with these groups. During the years of World War II Eagles also produced portraits of service people. His landscape subjects were within easy reach of Brisbane and, according to contemporary reports, were colourful and competent. His work was included in the 1951 'Exhibition of Queensland Art’ at the Queensland Art Gallery and he exhibited occasionally in local prize competitions. He retired on 30 June 1966 and set up a small gallery, The Rumpus Room Art Gallery, in his Gaythorne home but, unfortunately, died early the following year. Subsequently a survey exhibition of his work, 'Autobiography of an artist’, was held at T.C. Beirne’s Gallery, Brisbane, 8-18 January 1968.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 9 March 1900
- Summary
- Percy Eagles was a graphic artist whose astonishing skill with the pencil is demonstrated in his numerous portrait studies. There would be few contemporary artists who could replicate the technical skill and intensity of expression demonstrated in these works.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Jan-67
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-18.1239696 Longitude179.0122737 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fiji
- Biography
- Peter Kaad (1898-1967) was born in Fiji and educated at Newington College, Sydney, then studied architecture at Sydney Technical College, then joined architects Ross and Rowe., where he assisted in the design of the NSW Government Savings Bank, the Rural Bank and the Town Hall. From 1934-36, he was with Sydney Warden and designed various large hotels, including the Mayfair at Kings Cross and the Port Macquarie Hotel. He also won competitions for the Temperance Hotel, Brisbane, and the Mosman War Memorial. He came third in the competition to design the Anzac War Memorial in Hyde Park and won an honorarium in the competition for the National War Memorial in Canberra. In 1928, he began lecturing at Sydney Technical College and in 1936, he became a partner with Samuel Lipson in Lipson and Kaad. (See Samuel Lipson listing for a summary of the firm’s key buildings).Source—Information from the NSW RAIA Heritage Committee, October 2004.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1 January 1898
- Summary
- Kaad was an architect and designer of furniture and interior design. He trained at Sydney Technical College and worked for Ross and Rowe on graduation. Working with Samuel Lipson after 1936, he was active in designing shops, automobile showrooms, hotels and cafes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1967
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- sculptor, was born and bred in New Zealand, where he trained as a sculptor. He had served in WWI and done a couple of NZ war memorials before he came to Australia with Unk White and his younger brother, Joe Lynch, in 1922. He received sculptural portrait commissions from Dame Nellie Melba et al. and gained a growing reputation. His 1924 “pagan” Faun (a.k.a. Satyr ) caused a press controversy when shown in the NSW Society of Artists’ Younger Group exhibition [a later, larger casting of this bronze is now in the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens overlooking the harbour where Joe Lynch, the model for the piece, drowned in 1927 (commemorated in Kenneth Slessor’s 'Five Bells’)]. According to Lindesay, Frank as well as Joe Lynch contributed cartoons to Smith’s and the Bulletin , but although many were just signed 'Lynch’ they are attributed to Joe.
Frank Lynch went to London to study at the Royal College of Art in the late 1920s-early 1930s and exhibited at the Royal Academy. He returned c.1941 but his work declined and he did nothing of consequence afterwards.
Works include Mitchell Library door panel; Amiens War group.
This record is a stub. You can help by adding more detail.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1895
- Summary
- Guy Lynch, known in Sydney as Frank Lynch, was a sculptor. He was born in New Zealand in 1895. Lynch came to Australia in 1922. In the late 1920s-early 1930s he went to London to study at the Royal College of Art and he also exhibited at the Royal Academy.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1967
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-33.8125405 Longitude151.1115717 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ryde, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator and painter, was born at Ryde, Sydney on 22 May 1888, son of Walter Neville Gye, from London, and his second wife, Priscilla Theodosia née Warr. His father had been a builder before he moved to Black Range (Lavington) near Albury to prospect for gold. Hal was educated in the local bush school until he was 12 and the family moved to Melbourne. He worked in a city architect’s office for about two years then became a law clerk. While in the latter job his first verse was published in the Bulletin and he joined Alek Sass 's art class, a Melbourne bohemian group that met at the Mitre Hotel and at Fassoli’s. He also drew cartoons for Melbourne Punch . His undated postcard, The Suffragette , published in Melbourne by 'S.H.J.’, shows a head of a woman with brooms illustrating the verse: 'Men work from morn to set of sun,/ BUT WOMAN’S WORK IS NEVER DONE’.
Gye left the law firm to make a living from drawing. As the cartoonist for C.J. Dennis’s Gadfly (Adelaide) in 1906-7 he shared a Melbourne studio with David Low [ ADB says he shared a Collins Street studio with Low during WWI]. Meeting Dennis in Melbourne led to Gye being commissioned to do decorations for The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915) – his best-known work. Similar cupid 'Push’ figures were employed for Dennis’s The Glugs of Gosh (1917), which was also published inSydney by A&R.
The cartoons Gye contributed to the Comic Australian (1911-13) are very art-nouveau and Souterish in style, acc. Lindesay ( WWW , 83), e.g. one re a trade union for the theatre, 6 January 1912, 11, and The Man for the Job 3 February 1912, 8. From 1910 he contributed political cartoons, illustrated jokes and pars for the Bulletin , e.g. Going to an Evening Party in Berlin 25 February 1915, 30. When Will Dyson went to London Gye inherited the theatrical caricatures too. 277 of his original caricatures dated 1913-34 are in the ML Bulletin collection, including portraits of artists Charles Web Gilbert (nos 112 and 190), Bernard Hall, Frederick McCubbin, J.S. Macdonald, Matthew James McNally, John Mather, Paul Montford, John D. Moore, H.S. Power and Blamire Young. On 15 November 1916, at Flemington, Gye married Alice Clara Gifford, one of the famous J.C. Williamson front-row chorus girls.
Gye contributed to Melbourne Punch in 1924-25 (1925 examples ill. Lindesay 1979). He also contributed cartoons to the Herald , Weekly Times , the Weekly Times Annual , the Sporting Globe and Table Talk (Melbourne), Arrow , Referee and Smith’s Weekly (Sydney) and did decorative pieces for Lone Hand . He worked on the Sydney Daily Telegraph and was the first cartoonist employed by the Adelaide News (ill. Stone 1973, 44). He also painted. In the 1920s Gye sold 'hundreds of oils’ and held exhibitions of his paintings and a show of monotypes. Mounted oil versions of his drawings for The Glugs of Gosh are in the SLSA.
From c.1937 Gye concentrated on writing short stories in the Bulletin as 'James Hackston’, including 'Father’ and 'Jules’. They were later collected and illustrated by 'Hal Gye’. A collection of purportedly autobiographical stories about 'James Hackston’s’ early years in the Australian outback was published as Father Clears Out (Sydney, 1966) 'illustrated Hal Gye’. He wrote verse as 'Hacko’ in the 1940s and 1950s and designed costumes for a ballet based on The Sentimental Bloke in 1952.
Gye died at Beaumaris [elsewhere Eltham] on 25 November 1967, survived by his son ( ADB ).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 May 1888
- Summary
- Prolific early 20th century Melbourne cartoonist, illustrator, postcard designer and painter. Illustrated C.J. Dennis's 'Songs of a Sentimental Bloke'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Nov-67
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and cricketer, was born in NSW and became a test cricketer. Later he worked at the Bulletin as a cartoonist. 'A. Bosey Mailey’ [sic] is represented in the ML Bulletin collection with one cartoon of 1919 and 52 caricatures 1916-23, including cricketers, according to the index. Rolfe (269) lists Mailey among the post-war cartoonists who left the Bulletin 'at the first flourish of a cheque book’. He joined the Sydney Sun in 1921, where he specialised in caricatures of cricketers. Many were published in anthologies. He was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists in 1924, along with 24 other male cartoonists (mainly from Sydney): Garnet Agnew, Jack Baird, Stan Cross, F.H. Cumberworth, W. Dowman, “Driff” (Lance Driffield), George Finey, Cecil Hartt, Joe Jonsson, Frank Jessop, Fred Knowles, George Little, Brodie Mack, Hugh Maclean, Arthur Mailey, Syd Miller, Syd Nicholls, Mick Paul, Jack Quayle, Reg Russom, Cyril Samuels, Jack Waring, Harry J. Weston, Unk White and John Wiseman. All 25 contributed to the Society’s first publication commemorating the visit of the US Fleet in 1925.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1886
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney cartoonist and test cricketer. He was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists in 1924, along with 24 other male cartoonists.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31-Dec-67
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-37.905 Longitude144.996 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brighton, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter and etcher, was born at Brighton, Victoria, daughter of a wealthy banker. Her sister Margaret became an accomplished carver. Jessie commenced her art studies at the National Gallery School (1901-5) and also studied under John Mather, who introduced her to etching. In 1907 her studies continued overseas: in Paris at the Académie Colarossi, followed by two years in London at the Stratford Studio with Frank Brangwyn. In 1909 she exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Old Salon, Paris. In 1914 she received the Gold Medal for etching at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, San Francisco, and a bronze for her decorative (mural) work.
Traill returned to Australia, but not permanently. Indeed, an outstanding feature of her life was her extensive travelling between France, England and Australia, which began with her first trip to Europe at the age of two and her later schooling in Switzerland. Her art recorded the impact of these voyages in images ranging from North Australia and Java in her solo exhibitions of 1911 and 1913 to an album of watercolour sketches done in 1946 while flying from England to Australia. She wrote numerous articles about her travels in Australia, Europe, North America and New Zealand which were frequently accompanied by photographs or sketches.
During World War I Traill worked for three and a half years as a nurse in the Military Hospital at Rouen, France; her portrait by Cumbrae Stewart was done at this time. In the 1920s she entered a very productive phase that included her Yallourn and Sydney Harbour Bridge etchings. She had been one of the first women in this country to work in this medium and, with Van Raalte, the first to produce colour etchings. In 1921 she exhibited with the Australian Painters-Etchers’ Society in their inaugural exhibition in Sydney, and she helped popularise etching throughout the decade.
In 1923 her work was selected for exhibition in London, where she held a solo exhibition in 1926. That year she exhibited again at the Old Salon and was the only woman (out of fourteen) included by Ure Smith in a presentation of Australian etchings to the New York State Library. In 1928 Traill visited Central Australia, the first white artist to depict the area and the first to mount an art exhibition in Alice Springs. Her work was subsequently shown at Wilpena Pound, Melbourne and Brisbane. Traill also undertook a number of murals, including one for the children’s ward at the Queen Victoria Hospital, Melbourne. In the 1930s, as interest in etching declined, her production in that medium came to a halt.
Traill participated in many group and solo shows. She was a member of the Society of Graphic Art, London, the Australian Painters-Etchers’ Society, Sydney, and the Victorian Artists’ Society. She exhibited with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, in most of the state capitals, in France and in London. She is represented in major state, regional and institutional galleries, in private collections and in the La Trobe and Mitchell libraries.
Writers:
Kirby, Sandy
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- Painter and etcher, an outstanding feature of her life was her extensive travelling between France, England and Australia. She received much praise for her etchings and helped popularise the form as an artistic medium in the 1920s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1967
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude45.4077172 Longitude11.8734455 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Padua, Italy
- Biography
- Artist, designer, metal smith, architect, farmer, research officer, lecturer in Italian and art critic. Francesco Cesare Luigi Stephano Vanzetti was born on April 29, 1878 in Padua, Italy to Domenico and Malvina, n_e Ricci, an old Verona family. He was orphaned at seventeen before he completed his architecture and drawing studies at the Academia di Belle Arti (School of Fine Arts) in Florence. Vanzetti arrived in Western Australia on the Ormuz on January 3, 1896 with his uncle Eugenio Vanzetti, a mining entrepreneur. The following year his younger brothers Carlo and Antonio joined them. About 1898, the West Australian Society of Arts was formed and Vanzetti became an active force in the artistic life of the community. He was described as “the live wire” of the society reputedly sleeping on the premises at times and using the studio as a fencing venue. He was the honorary secretary from 1901, treasurer 1903-6, and took art classes for the society. His bookplate design was selected for use by the society and his designs also featured on the covers of the 1901, 1904 and 1911 catalogues. In a professional capacity he designed buildings, fountains, catalogues, furnishings, furniture, embroidery worked by his sisters, silver, jewellery and trophies. He designed the “Certificate of Award” for the Coolgardie exhibition of 1899. He designed a leadlight panel for HMS Commonwealth, a battleship launched in Glasgow in May 1903. Various jewels were designed c1909 for Lady James and other Perth ladies. He taught technical drawing and blackboard drawing from 1898 at Fremantle Technical School. In 1900 he became engaged to singer Gertrude Dawson. When she left to pursue her singing career overseas he married her niece Evelyn Baxter. Two years later his sisters, seventeen year old Lisetta and fifteen year old Mathilde joined their brothers in Perth. Francesco purchased land in South Perth, near Society of Arts member and Perth Technical School art teacher J. W. R. Linton, and built his first cottage using it as an example of his interior design skills. His house was described in the FZ Review: “His own cottage at South Perth is a revelation of the high order of his capabilities: its charm being continually added to by some little gem in repouss_, beaten copper work, enamelling, or wood-carving. The scheme of wall decorations and draperies, the fingerplates, door handles and panels of quaint design make it one of the most interesting houses I have been in.” When his brother Carlo married Evelyn’s sister Florence Francesco built a new home “Albaredo” next door. Carlo purchased the older house. Francesco Vanzetti and Linton were rivals in expressing their aesthetic sensibility. Both had trained in art and architecture. They vied to produce door fittings and other accoutrements for the dwellings, which they built in the same street. In reviewing one exhibition, 'Pique’, writing for The Morning Herald, credits Vanzetti and Linton with improving the applied art section of the society, saying “the highest compliments must be bestowed on Mr Vanzetti”. Vanzetti also won the repouss_ prize over Linton in the 1906 Society of Arts’ exhibition. Vanzetti and Linton won a national competition in February 1909 to design and make the “Empire Rifle Match Shield”. The design was apparently by Vanzetti. They did not work together very well as both were of mercurial temperament and both wanted to be the major designer. They had a falling out c1910-11. In 1912, Vanzetti forsook city life to be a farmer. He made a complete break, and to fund the venture sold everything including all his art works and his wife’s jewellery. His farming efforts near Moora were dogged by poor seasons with drought, floods in 1914 and, in 1915, wheat rust. Bankrupted by these misfortunes, they were in danger of losing the farm when his wife borrowed the money to purchase the farm in her own right. She made this viable while he worked for the Department of Agriculture from 1919 and wrote weekly articles for the Western Mail until 1924 and until 1930 for the West Australian. About 1928 Vanzetti gave a lecture on Florentine art and met Walter Murdoch, Professor of English at the University of Western Australia. Murdoch established an Italian course and invited him to become the part-time lecturer. He also joined the University Art Club, exhibited his designs for jewellery and became an art critic for the West Australian. In 1952 Evelyn Vanzetti retired to Perth. At this time Francesco was President of the Dante Alighieri Society that in 1956 awarded him a Diploma and the Gold Medal of the society. Evelyn died in 1960. In 1962 the University of Western Australia bestowed an Honorary Master of Arts on Vanzetti who retired the following year. He died September 10, 1967. The Italian Department of the University of Western Australia honoured his memory by commencing the annual Vanzetti Memorial Lecture in 1987.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 April 1878
- Summary
- Artist, designer, metalsmith, architect, farmer, research officer and lecturer. He designed the "Certificate of Award" for the Coolgardie exhibition of 1899. Vanzetti also designed a leadlight panel for HMS Commonwealth (a battleship launched in Glasgow in May 1903).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1967
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-33.6055342 Longitude150.821953 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Windsor, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- student, Sydney. Exhibition of Woman’s Work, Sydney, 1892: Pupils’ Exhibits – Good Samaritan High School – no.35 Cleary, Emily – aged 14 – Drawing (for competition).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1877
- Summary
- Student in Sydney. Exhibited in the Exhibition of Woman's Work, Sydney in 1892.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1967
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-37.805278 Longitude145.035833 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kew, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1876
- Summary
- Howieson was a photographer, active in the Melbourne Camera Club as an exhibitor and an occasional member of the exhibition jury. Much of his work was directed toward landscape, cityscape and still life.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-67
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-33.6713629 Longitude138.9300733 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1967-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burra, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- embroiderer, craftworker and theosophic feminist, was born on 16 October 1874 at Burra, SA, elder daughter of William Earle and Jane Anna, née Carvoso. At an early age she went to Adelaide to live with her uncle, William Rounsevell, a prosperous wine merchant, politician and theosophist, who supported the Married Women’s Property Acts (1883-84) and universal franchise. She was educated at Miss Stanton’s School in Glenelg and the Advanced School for Girls, followed by private art training. On 22 October 1898 she married Henry Wills Rischbieth. The following year they moved to Perth, where her husband had established Henry Wills & Co.
In 1904 they built a Federation-style mansion, Unalla, in Peppermint Grove, a Perth suburb. Bessie was very much involved in designing and making a number of fittings for the house. In 1905 she enrolled at Perth Technical School under James W.R. Linton and passed Design. That year she exhibited two repoussé plaques with the WA Society of Arts, probably those for the entrance hall and table at Unalla which feature the geometric 'Glasgow Rose’ she favoured.
An expert needlewoman, Rischbieth was involved with the Women’s Service Guild, a reformist feminist group inspired by theosophical ideals which had been founded by (Lady) Gwenyfred James in 1905. This involved her in many social issues to do with women and children and she became one of Australia’s better-known feminists, particularly in her role as inaugural president of the Australian Federation of Women Voters (which as the Australian Federation of Women’s Societies she had helped form), a position she held for twenty-one years (1921-42). The Federation was affiliated with the International Alliance of Women, British Commonwealth League, on whose executive she also served.
Bessie Rischbieth appears to have given up metalwork by 1914 and converted her studio to a writing room. One of the first WA women to be appointed a Justice of the Peace, she was also on the board of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship and an alternate delegate for Australia at the League of Nations. She received her OBE at Buckingham Palace in 1935. A well known figure in Perth, she continued to be active for various causes until just before her death on 13 March 1967, publishing March of Australian Women in 1964.
Writers:
Erickson, Dorothy
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 16 October 1874
- Summary
- An early activist for womens' rights, a theosophist and life long feminist, Bessie Mabel Rischbieth was a well known figure in Perth. Her early training in the arts was later replaced with a passion for writing.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Mar-67
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-20 Longitude133 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Northern Territory
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1920
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1966
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude-33.8345097 Longitude151.0060111 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Granville, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Stuart Lowe (also Low, also Stuart-Low), Sydney, (d.1966)
Stuart Lowe’s Sydney ”salon” operated out of the St James Building, 109 Elizabeth Street. Although his practice is said to have begun after the 1914-18 War, Lowe’s practice is first listed as “Broker and Dealer” in 1930. He was exhibiting at the Stuart Lowe Studio, St James Building as early as 1931.
Lowe was married to Rita Glasson (m.1926), later in a relationship with Beryl (“Bobbi”) Bishop ca.1954.1
On Lowe’s death in 1966, his practice became known as Stuart Lowe Studios.
Lowe was an original participant in the first group of SIDA members. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald on the appearance of the new organisation states that the first SIDA headquarters were located in Lowe’s 109 Elizabeth Street Salon.2
Lowe was an active participant in the industry and seems to have exhibited in the SIDA “Rooms on View” programme. His 1962 “Library for Morris West” from The David Jones Art Gallery’s “Sydney’s Ten Best Dressed Rooms” survives in the Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection, Historic Houses Trust of NSW.
1 Information from Michael Lech, curator, Sydney Living Museums.
2 “New Society to Advise on Interior Design.” Sydney Morning Herald, 29 November 1951, p.12.
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1 January 1896
- Summary
- Low was an interior designer and founder member Society of Interior Designers of Australia, His career began in 1928. He worked out of a "Salon" in the St James Building, Elisabeth Street, Sydney and was the manager of Stuart Low Furniture Studio also in this building. The studio sold furnishings including furniture designed by Low and manufactured in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-66
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-27.3181585 Longitude153.063315 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sandgate, Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Olive Muriel May Dougherty was born in Sandgate on 20 November 1895, the second child and only daughter of Richard Dougherty and his wife Matilda née Dillworth. She trained as a nurse before she began to study pottery with L. J. Harvey at the Central Technical College, Brisbane from 1926. She lived at Sandgate and travelled to Brisbane on the train, accompanied by fellow potter Gloria Lovelock (qv), for lessons. In 1928 she married Arthur James Edward Moase, an architect who lectured at the Central Technical College. Olive accompanied him to the college and attended Harvey’s classes while he gave his own lectures and as a result she had a substantial output. When Harvey retired from the college and established a studio at Horsham House, she continued lessons there until 1946 when ill health forced her husband to retire from the college and there was no need to come to the city.
The diversity of her work is typical of Harvey School pottery. In an unidentified newspaper article in the late 1930s Harvey stated that she was one of his best potters. Harvey encouraged his students to participate in the annual exhibitions of the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association and she received numerous prizes when she exhibited there. A review in the Courier-Mail of the display in 1937 stated she and Frida Hein were the two outstanding exhibitors '[who] were represented in almost every class, sometimes by more than one fine piece of work’. She exhibited a group of pottery at the Annual Exhibitions of Work by Art Students of the Central Technical College in 1933, 1934 and 1937. (She probably exhibited in the 1935 and 1936 exhibitions too but the individual exhibitors are not cited in the catalogue.) In the 1941 exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland (the only catalogue of the group to be located) she showed a dragon vase, a scraffito fish vase, a coffee set and a small jug.
Carving and leatherwork were also among her craft skills which she taught at the Montrose Home for Crippled Children in 1941.
In all, Olive Moase produced pottery for some 25 years which is exceptionally long commitment for a Harvey School potter. She died in Brisbane on 4 October 1966.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 November 1895
- Summary
- Olive Moase was a distinguished and long-serving practitioner of Harvey School ceramics and produced some of its most outstanding pieces.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 4-Oct-66
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Designed stained-glass windows at Adelaide in the 1930s.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1895
- Summary
- Buxton was a painter, sculptor and designer of stained-glass windows. A versatile artist, she worked across a wide range of media.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1966
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-33.8772 Longitude151.1049 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burwood, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work 1907 (Sydney): NSW – Water Colours -Australian Landscape (Competitive) – no.282 Aldenhoven, Violet – 'After Glow in the Country’, 2 guineas.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1889
- Summary
- Federation-era female watercolourist from Sydney who competed in The Australian Exhibition of Women's Work in Melbourne in 1907 with a landscape painting of twilight.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1966
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-35.4388907 Longitude149.7955552 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Braidwood, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and needleworker, was born in Braidwood, eldest daughter of Chinese immigrants. Her father, Chee Dock Ng, came to NSW in 1872 to join his brother on the goldfields at Mongarlowe and in 1884 moved to Braidwood to open a general store. He visited China in 1887 and returned with his bride, Boo Jung (Mary). The locals, who had difficulty with the name 'Ng’, called the family by the name of the shop, 'Nomchong’, meaning 'southern prosperity’. Much of Maude’s youth was spent helping raise her thirteen brothers and sisters. Both parents had converted to Catholicism and the children were all baptised and educated at the local parish church and school, St Bede’s.
Maude was sent to St Scholastica’s Convent in Sydney to complete her secondary education. Having studied book-keeping, she returned to help run the family ventures, which included a carrier business, a garage and property investments. A talented needlewoman, the family recall her making copies of the latest Sydney fashions. She never married and died at the age of seventy-six.
Two younger sisters were also notable craftworkers. Lucy Florence (Dolly, 1894-1928) specialised in painted tin work as well as dressmaking and millinery, while Catherine Ellen (Nellie, 1901-1961) did fine needlework and ran a dressmaking business from the family home behind the sho
Writers:
Toy, Ann
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1889
- Summary
- A painter and needleworker. She spent most of her youth helping to raise her 13 brothers and sisters. She attended a local parish school St Bede's then went to St Scholastica's Convent in Sydney, NSW.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1966
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude53.55 Longitude10 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamburg, Germany
- Biography
- Sculptor born in Hamburg who arrived in 1894 aged nine years. He studied modelling at Perth Technical School under J. W. R. Linton. The syllabus he took required: – Drawing from the decorative casts, heads and figures, after this a short course of artistic anatomy; then painting from still life, drawing and painting from the life, and the study of composition. Modelling will be carried on in conjunction with these Art Classes. Students also studied Design which included: ... historic ornament and principles of ornament, the drawing of scale plans, elevations and sections of the work to be designed, and detailed drawings of the different parts. ... Where the student wishes to apply the knowledge and skill acquired to his or her daily occupation, special attention is given to encourage the development of original design for that purpose. The courses tried to cover the needs of designers for industry and other subjects were taught on demand. Ludwig Steitz took woodcarving courses in 1908. He exhibited a portrait bust with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1912. He also won Lady Hackett’s Prize for Figure Drawing that year. He later studied art in England. He held several solo exhibitions which were mainly portrait bust sculptures and portraits in oils. He enjoyed capturing Aboriginal heads. He was a bachelor, apparently of independent means, who in later life, lived a reclusive existance in Caledonian Avenue in Maylands surrounded by some 3000 of his artworks.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2010
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- Sculptor and painter who won Lady Hackett's Prize for Figure Drawing in 1912. Steitz was a bachelor, apparently of independent means, who in later life, lived a reclusive existance in Caledonian Avenue in Maylands surrounded by some 3000 of his artworks.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1966
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-28.8631616 Longitude153.048155 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Casino, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Herbert Clarke Simpson was born at Casino in New South Wales on 30 April 1879, one of the seven children of Herbert Rennie and Lucy Ellen née Foy. He died in Brisbane on 3 April 1966. Simpson was educated at the state school in Casino and worked for several years in the family grocery store before studying art under Godfrey Rivers at the Brisbane Technical College in the first decade of the 20th century. He exhibited with the Queensland Art Society (later named the Royal Queensland Art Society) 1899-1902 and 1920-34 (principally in the early 1920s). Simpson married Emily Chadwick at Kangaroo Point on 16 August 1924 and moved to reside in the Tweed area in about 1926 when their son was born.
His productive career began in 1906 and lasted for some 50 years. Some of his oil paintings are capably executed, such as his romantic vision of a jungle shrouded Dodds Island, Tweed River 1926 (Tweed River Regional Art Gallery collection) but he is most appreciated for his watercolours. His appealing watercolours of familiar subjects in South East Queensland (such as his innumerable studies of Currumbin Rocks) were very popular with locals as well as visitors who sought a more personal souvenir of their stay. Most are of beach settings but occasionally he ventured north to depict subjects such as Dayboro and the Glasshouse Mountains. Simpson made a comfortable living through his art even through the years of the depression and was, probably, the only artist in Queensland to do so. He stated:
'When I began to paint, I reasoned there were three groups of potential purchasers; one small group who can and will pay fancy prices, and intermediate group with a purchase limit of perhaps £10 and the infinitely larger group of the general public which would like to buy pictures, but cannot afford to pay very much. I determined to satisfy the artistic leanings of this larger group.’(1)
This he did successfully. He popularised images of what was to become the Gold Coast well before the development of the mass tourism market after World War II. Simpson sold his work through Brisbane department stores such as McDonnell & East, Finney Isles & Co., McWhirters and Trittons (and also his brother’s photographic studio in Casino) for prices as modest as half a guinea. In later years and in declining circumstances he sold his watercolours at local hostelries. The appeal of his watercolours remains constant in Queensland as evidenced by specialist collectors of his work.
1. 'Pursues water-colour best seller’. Unidentified press cutting, QAG Research Library.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 30 April 1879
- Summary
- H.C. Simpson could be described as a minor watercolourist yet his images of the Gold Coast appealed to contemporary purchasers as much as present day collectors.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Apr-66
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-30.5144881 Longitude151.6656564 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Armidale, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, designer and teacher, was born on 2 October 1879 at Armidale, NSW, elder child of William Consett Proctor, a solicitor, and Kathleen Janet Louisa, née Roberts. Her parents separated in 1892 and divorced in 1897. Thea, her mother and brother lived with her maternal grandparents at Bowral. From 1896 she attended Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School. Fellow students included Sydney Long , to whom she became briefly engaged in 1898. Romantic medieval paintings were shown with the Society of Artists and she made poster designs, bookplates and illustrations for the Australian Magazine (1899). In 1903 she went to London, studied briefly at St John’s Wood School then privately with George Lambert . Proctor’s friendship with George and Amy Lambert was lifelong and intimate. She believed he was Australia’s greatest contemporary artist and would have thought it a compliment when Lambert (not known for his modesty) called her 'the second finest draughtsman in Australia’.
Charles Conder inspired her to focus on fan painting in London. Other influences were Japanese prints, the drawings of Ingres, the Chelsea Arts Club balls and the Ballet Russe seen in 1911 ('it would be difficult to imagine anything more beautiful and inspiring’). A fan was shown in the preliminary London 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition and two (and a watercolour) at the final exhibition in Melbourne. Another was sent to the 1912 Venice International Exhibition. That year she came home to hold exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, returning to England in 1914 where she made a new name as a lithographer.
Proctor (following Lambert) came back to Australia in 1921. Failing to popularise lithography in Melbourne, she moved to Sydney and held exhibitions of her own work and of English lithographs in 1921-23. In 1924 she produced a tableau vivant at the Theatre Royal in which her cousin Hera Roberts , Jocelyn Gaden and Valerie Hughes posed as 1875 figures in one of the fans she was painting at the time (private collection).
Despite her name becoming a byword for taste and stylishness, Proctor was always financially strapped. She taught at Ashton’s, with Adelaide Perry and privately, introducing many artists to linocut and woodcut printing, e.g. Ruth Ainsworth , Gladys Gibbons , Ysobel Irvine , Amie Kingston and Ailsa Lee Brown . Grace Cossington Smith said, 'Thea Proctor was always up in arms for the women painters’ and when JS MacDonald wrote that there had never been a good woman artist she took up a petition for his immediate dismissal as a newspaper critic.
To encourage innovative art, she founded the Contemporary Group with Lambert in 1926. Her first woodcuts were shown in a joint exhibition with Margaret Preston in 1925, but she abandoned these after producing thirteen (and a few as advertisements). She made many elegant covers for Home , wrote on fashion, flower arrangement, colours for cars and interior decoration, organised artists’ balls in the 1920s and designed modern furniture. She carried out commissions for portrait sketches and had solo shows in 1932, 1935-38 and 1941 at the Macquarie Galleries. In 1932 Ure Smith devoted an issue of Art in Australia to her work. During the 1940s she was involved in theatrical design.
Drawing was always Proctor’s strength: 'line can have a beauty of its own independently of anything it represents’, she wrote. Even the despised JS McDonald called her 'one of those rarities – a woman who can draw’. In 1965, aged eighty-five, she held a solo show of 'nude studies of an astonishing brilliance’, wrote Barry Humphries , who also pleaded for a full retrospective at a state gallery after her death at Potts Point on 29 July 1966. We are still waiting.
NOTE: A retrospective, with catalogue essay by Barry Humphries, was eventually held at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, in 2005.
ADDITION UNFINISHED INFORMATION FROM JOAN KERR’S PAPERS:
painter, printmaker, designer and teacher, Sydney and London.
Fan painting, The Arrival n.d., watercolour and pencil (lady arriving at 18th century ball) sold Christie’s auction part 2, 27 November 1996, cat.264 (ill.)
Possible links with Theosophy suggested by her participation in the 'Crusade for a Beautiful Australia’ (in AM). Works in Australian Magazine 17 August 1899 (ex libris design), 18 September 1899 (two women, one with a scroll). The 1908 Australian Women Artists competition, held in the annex to the South Australian Court at the Franco-British Exhibition, London, had 38 entrants in the categories of oils, w/cs, etchings, miniatures, enamels, sculpture, leatherwork, jewellery and wood carving. Winners included Thea Proctor for Terrace Fan and 6 watercolours; Frances Hodgkins for Waterseat & 1 other w/c; Dora Ohlfsen, Dora Meeson Coates, Charlotte Davis, Mrs Tom Roberts (Lillie Williamson), Dorothy Roberts and Eva Gilchrist. Miss Helen Coghlan was President of the committee responsible for the exhibition (info. Daina Fletcher). According to Avenel Mitchell, Proctor exhibited her Susannah and the Elders fan with the Society of Artists, Sydney, in 1908. In 1911 she exhibited with the Society of Women Painters for the first time (acc. AM), then again the following year. Two fan designs of 1913 are Le Carnaval and Design for a Red Fan (Pierrot and Columbine motif) (AM). In 1922 she exhibited with the Sydney Society of Women Painters (for the third and last time, AM).
Artists Ball photos Home 1 September 1923 include Proctor in crinoline, said to be made by Proctor herself, Leon Gellert as George Lambert 's self portrait, Lambert as Persian Prince and Bertha Sloane in Casanova costume by George Barbier (AM).
1929: on committee of Colour Harmony Scheme for Ford Cars in Australia (AM).
Her woodcut Bonnets, Shawls, Gay Parasols 1930s (Mitchell Library has copy no.13 of Bonnets, Shawls and Elegant Parasols 1938 (SV/46) alludes to a poem in Facade by Edith Sitwell with whom she was acquainted in London:
Louise and Charlottine
(Boreas’s daughters)
And the nymphs of deep waters
The nymph Taglioni, Grisi the Ondine
Wear plaided Victoria and thin Clementine
Like the crinolined waterfalls;
Wood nymphs wear bonnets, shawls
Elegant parasols
Floating are seen. (AM)
Writers:
Kerr, JoanJudd, Craig
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 2 October 1879
- Summary
- A well known and well loved Australian artist, Thea Proctor was prolific both as an artist and designer. A prominent figure in the art scene she championed the ideas of 'taste' and 'style'.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29-Jul-66
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-37.805278 Longitude145.035833 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kew, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Australian painter, teacher and art critic, George Bell was born on 1 December 1878 at Kew, Melbourne, the son of a public servant. From 1896 to 1901 he studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, where fellow students included Rose McPherson ( Margaret Preston ), Max Meldrum , Ambrose Patterson , and Hugh Ramsay. He also attended painting classes at George Coates 's studio.
Bell travelled to Europe and studied at the Académie Julian, and various other Paris academies from 1904 until 1906, when he went to England. It was in England that he became associated with a group of painters, which included Stanhope Forbes, who worked outdoors and were based in St Ives. Bell left St Ives in 1908 to work in a studio in London and from 1908 to 1915 Philip Connard was an important influence, the two artists going on painting trips together around London, Suffolk and Norfolk. Bell was also a friend of Philip Wilson Steer. He was a member of the Modern Society of Portrait Painters together with Gerald Kelly and George W. Lambert , painting portraits and interiors in a realist manner. At the Chelsea Arts Club, Bell mixed with Australian artists such as Coates and Tom Roberts .
During the First World War, Bell worked as a schoolteacher and in munitions and from 1918 to 1919 he was an Australian official war artist. In 1920, he returned to Melbourne and, in 1923, became art critic for the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial , a post he held until 1951. Throughout the 1920s, his painting was conservative but, in the 1930s, his work began to reflect the influence of Cézanne. In 1932, together with Arnold Shore, he established the Bell-Shore school, which he continued to run on his own after 1937.
In 1934 and 1935 Bell revisited Europe where he studied drawing under Iain McNab at the Grosvenor School, London and became interested in the writings and theories of Clive Bell and Roger Fry, which formed the basis of his own teaching of modernist principles in Australia during the 1930s and 1940s. During these years, he played an active and influential role in promoting the modern art movement in Australia.
He died in Melbourne on 22 October 1966, aged 87.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne Note: Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Date written:
2004
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 December 1878
- Summary
- Painter, teacher and art critic, George Bell spent a number of years in Europe studying, painting and working as an official war artist from 1918 to 1919. Art critic for the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial for almost three decades, Bell played an active and influential role in promoting the modern art movement in Australia in the 1930s and 40s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Oct-66
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-37.3414775 Longitude144.1465866 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Daylesford, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Australian-born American painter, printmaker and teacher, Ambrose Patterson was born on 29 June 1877 at Daylesford, Victoria, the son of an English-born auctioneer and his Irish wife.
From 1895 to 1898 Patterson attended the National Gallery School, Melbourne, where fellow students included George Bell, Max Meldrum , Rose McPherson ( Margaret Preston ) and Hugh Ramsay. He also studied with E. Phillips Fox and Tudor St George Tucker at the Melbourne School of Art. On receiving an inheritance in 1898, he took Fox’s advice and travelled to Paris to study at the Académie Julian. As a result of financial difficulties, in 1899 he travelled to Montreal and to New York, where he worked as a cartoonist for newspapers. In 1901, his brother’s sister-in-law, Nellie Melba, financed his return to Paris. He studied at the Académies Colarossi and Délécluze, where George W. Lambert and Ramsay were also students. He became friends with English artist Alan Beeton, who introduced him to Gerald Kelly.
Initially a follower of Velasquez, around 1904 Patterson started to paint in a more impressionist manner, inspired by the work of Manet, Monet, Renoir and Pissarro. He suffered a breakdown in 1905, recuperating first in the south of England and subsequently Ireland. In 1909, while on a trip to Venice, he suffered a further breakdown. Returning to Australia in 1910, he received several significant portrait commissions, and also depicted Melbourne streetscapes and rural landscapes. He received support from Frederick McCubbin , with whom he was one of the founders of the Australian Art Association.
Patterson moved to Hawaii in 1916, where he mastered the art of woodblock printing. In 1918 he moved to Seattle, and was appointed Professor of Art at the University of Washington from 1919 to 1947. He became an American citizen in 1928. Between 1929 and 1930, he studied in France under André Lhote, adopting a moderate form of Cubism and, in 1934, he went to Mexico to study fresco painting. Ambrose Patterson died on 27 December 1966 in Seattle, aged 89.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne Note: Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 June 1877
- Summary
- Australian-born American painter, printmaker and teacher, Ambrose Patterson's reputation in Australia is based mainly on the work he produced in Paris between 1901 and 1910 while living and studying there.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Dec-66
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1966-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1869
- Summary
- Feminist and photographer based in Sydney in the early twentieth century
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Dec-66
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1914-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Further biographical details for Arthur John Nichol can be found, along with images of his work, on the webpages at https://www.nicholarts.com.au/arthur-j-nichol-biography
————————————————————————————
Nichol was a cartoonist, illustrator and designer: a freelance contributor to the Bulletin and Smith’s Weekly some time before WWII. He was staff artist on the Sydney Morning Herald in 1948-51 then became a freelance artist and designer. As a contributor to the 1960s Bulletin he signed himself 'Kurt Nodt’ because, he said, when he worked on the Sydney Morning Herald that was all you ever got from anyone (Rolfe, 271). National Library of Australia has a pen and ink drawing of Ben Chifley signed by Nichol (R8853) and a pen and ink cartoon, Alwuz did wonder why they done call him [dat] c.1970s (R11411).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Diana Nichol
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 16 February 1914
- Summary
- Nichol was an illustrator, graphic designer and cartoonist. As a Prisoner of War Europe 1941-1945, he produced posters and realist artworks of life in Stalag VIIIB POW Camp. Upon return to Australia he resumed work as Staff Artist/contributor for the Sydney Morning Herald; produced freelance illustration for the Sunday Telegraph; Smith's Weekly; Man Magazine; Man Junior; The Bulletin; and animation for ABC television.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Dec-65
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude52.2434979 Longitude5.6343227 Start Date1907-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Netherlands
- Biography
- At 17 Kick started work in a print shop and completed school by attending evening classes. He lived with a friend’s family in Bloemendaal and drew political cartoons for De Notenkraker and Het Volk.
He began work at Philips in September 1929 in the 'Artistieke Propaganda’ department. He drew at least four covers for Phillips Bulletin and designed posters, advertising brochures and advertisements. At this time, he met his future wife Betty Huismans.
Around April 1932, Kick was fired for communist sympathies. He moved to Amsterdam and worked for De la Mar advertising agency. Following a holiday in Moscow, he decided communism was as dangerous as fascism. He married Betty and accepted a three year contract to work for De la Mar in Batavia. In December 1932, the couple left for the Dutch East Indies.
In Batavia, Kick illustrated covers for De la Mar’s magazine Meer Baet. He bought out the last year of his contract and traveled to Japan and China. Drawings from the trip were later published by Het Volk in Amsterdam.
Around 1935, Kick became a partner in an advertising agency that closed and then worked for Bataviaasch Nieuwsblad doing political drawings under the pseudonym Hofer. Two books were published with this work.
Following the 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour, Kick enlisted. He drew propaganda for the Allies in Bandung and was imprisoned when the Japanese invaded. After the war in 1945, he was reunited with his wife and daughter in Ambarawa where they had also been interned. He drew images of life in the men’s and women’s camps and later of a Denpasar (Bali) peace conference.
In 1948, Kick moved to Sydney. He worked for Associated Newspapers as an illustrator for The Sun, providing illustrations for The Bulletin and World’s News. In 1955 he joined Australian Consolidated Press, also drawing for Chuckler’s Weekly. He drew for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Telegraph.
In the mid-1950s, Kick illustrated books for Angus and Robertson about the war in the Pacific, drawing on his experience.
He continued to illustrate advertisements and stories for the Australian Women’s Weekly. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1960 and progressively lost his ability to draw.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
James Zanotto
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 29 March 1907
- Summary
- Dutch commercial artist who worked for Philips (NL) before moving to the Dutch East Indies in 1932. He was imprisoned in Japanese internment camps during WWII and drew the conditions of prisoners in men's and women's camps. After migrating to Australia in 1948, he worked as an illustrator and political cartoonist for Associated Newspapers and Australian Consolidated Press.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Aug-65
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-41.288889 Longitude174.777222 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wellington, New Zealand
- Biography
- cartoonist and theatrical entrepreneur, was born in Wellington and grew up in New Zealand. He contributed cartoons to the New Zealand Freelance in 1915-16 before becoming a theatrical executive in NZ and Australia. From 1919 he sent cartoons to the Bulletin , e.g. She Had A Soft Spot For Him 30 March 1929 and (minister to little girl) “So your mother goes to church regularly. And what religion is your father, dear?”/ “Daddy’s? Oh, daddy is a wireless” 8 November 1933 (original ML PX*D489/15). He also contributed to the Sunday Mail , e.g. Fiftyfifty (artist to model): “Y’know, you’re not a bad looking sort of a girl.”/ “Oh, but you’d say so even if you didn’t think so.”/ “Well, we’re square – you’d think so even if I didn’t say so”, 17 June 1920, 18.
Brodie Mack’s cartoons in Smith’s Weekly include: '“I cannot keep up this constant theatre-going, Kathleen! I have to think of my expenses.”/ “Well, what’s to prevent your thinking in the theatre?”’ 5 May 1923, 20, and The power of concentration 5 July 1930, 27. The original drunk gag: 'Proprietor: Wot’ll y’ave?”/ Newcomer [regarding man flat on floor]: “Wot did 'E 'ave?”’ (undated) is held in private collection. He drew cartoons for Aussie , was a political and sporting cartoonist on Sydney Truth , a relieving political cartoonist for the Sun and sporting cartoonist for the Sunday Sun .
With 24 other male cartoonists mainly from Sydney (see Harry J. Weston ), Mack was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists in 1924. All 25 contributed to the first publication, which commemorated the visit of the US Fleet in 1925. He did drawings for The Budget , e.g. flappers on the cover of 28 March 1930 issue. In the 1930s he established the Brodie Mack Correspondence Art School.
Mack was appointed the paper’s sporting cartoonist when the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph were first published by ACP (in 1936 and 1939 respectively) and he lasted an unbroken 26 years. He made Australia’s first rotogravure cartoons when working on the Telegraph (acc. Fifty Years ). His original cartoon of Sir Eric ('Neck to Knee’) Spooner as Nelson looking through a telescope towards a beach of scantily clad people is in the Spooner Papers (ML PIC ACC 4899), along with several other cartoons by various cartoonists featuring and collected by Spooner (see W.F. Mahony). His was published in the Daily Telegraph on 9 February 1937. At the ACP Brodie Mack also drew comics for the NSW Bookstall Publishing Company. He contributed to Gigglywinks and to the series of Kazanda comics whose story lines were written by Archie E. Martin under the pseudonym 'Peter Amos’, e.g. Kazanda: The Wild Girl of the Lost Continent (c.1940s). Mack’s style in the comic books he illustrated for the NSW Bookstall Publishing Company et al. (listed by Shiell & Unger) was inspired by the American Flash Gordon artist, Alex Raymond.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Wellington (NZ) and Sydney cartoonist and theatrical entrepreneur, Mack was a founding member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists and The Daily Telegraph's sporting cartoonists for a record 26 years.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1965
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Enfield, London, England, UK
- Biography
- Editor and cartoonist(?), edited Tocsin during the 1930s Depression and reputedly drew his own cartoons then too, according to Issy Wyner on ABC 'Hindsight’ program, heard by James Semple Kerr in 2001.
[Apparently repeat of 'Forever Striking Trouble’, originally broadcast as a radio program on Hindsight on Radio National in March 1999]
[Joan Kerr notes: From memory, there weren’t many published then, anyway.]
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 27 July 1894
- Summary
- Mid 20th century English-born Sydney political activist, editor and cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Aug-65
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-32.9475708 Longitude151.7454773 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Merewether, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Merewether (NSW) on 16 August 1894 and died in Sydney on 21 October 1965, according to the aviation collector Ernest A. Crome, who had Norton paint a portrait of his mother, Lottie Henrietta Crome (NLA), just before she died.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 August 1894
- Summary
- Painter, was born in Merewether (NSW). Norton died in Sydney on 21 October 1965.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Oct-65
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-37.425 Longitude143.891667 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Creswick, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was the youngest of the ten children of Dr Robert Charles Lindsay and Jane Elizabeth, nèe Williams, of Creswick, Victoria. By the time she was born, her brother Lionel had left home to be a cartoonist in Melbourne, Percy was learning painting and playing cricket, Robert was working in a bank, Norman was producing the Boomerang for Creswick Grammar School, her sister Mary had been drafted into household duties and her other siblings were all at school.
The first reference to Isabel is in a letter from Norman to Lionel written about 1896, accompanied by a drawing with the information: 'This is a sketch of “Goo” who is at present shrieking herself into a blue fit’. The baby name stayed with Isabel well into her childhood. From the start her presence was resented by Mary and Robert, neither of whom liked to think of their parents enjoying conjugal relations. Years later Mary described her as 'this unfortunate failure of our mother’, while Robert described her as 'that damnable last result got between waking and sleeping … the most damnably malicious bitch ever come across’. By the time Isabel was in adolescence the family was in financial crisis, the only regular income being contributions from Lionel, Norman, Daryl and, until his death, Reg. Mary aided Ruby Lindsay 's escape to Melbourne, where she became an artist, but there was no help for Isabel who remained close to her mother.
After the death of Dr Lindsay in 1915, followed swiftly by the death of Reg Lindsay at the Somme in 1916 and the suicide of Pearl Lindsay’s husband, Colin McPhee, the situation deteriorated further. Isabel had few supporters either within or outside the family, although she was later befriended by Daryl’s wife, the writer Joan Lindsay, who respected her difference and her eccentricity. In later years she was crippled by arthritis; she spent her last years in the Queen Elizabeth Nursing Home, Ballarat.
Writers:
Mendelssohn, Joanna
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1894
- Summary
- A sketcher and the youngest of the Lindsay children. Known as an eccentric and quite different to her siblings, Isabel was unable to establish a strong career as an artist.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1965
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude50.110556 Longitude8.682222 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. After a voluntary and brief period of military service in 1912, he studied art at the Wilhelm Debschitz Art School in Munich and art history under Heinrich Woefflin at Munich University (1912-14). Conscripted during WWI, he was awarded the Iron Cross after four and a half years’ service. Then he returned to his art studies, studying with Prof. Holzel at Stuttgart Academy (1918-19) where he concentrated on colour theory. He met Oskar Schlemmer there; when the Bauhaus opened at Weimar he and Schlemmer joined it as students under Johannes Itten. He experimented with colour theory as related to music and worked in the print shop. His work was included in 'Bauhaus 1919-1925’ at MOMA (NY) in 1938.
Hirschfeld-Mack left the Bauhaus when it moved to Dessau, joining the Free School Community in Thuringia in 1926. Later he was professor of Art and Craft at the State Teaching Training Academy until it was closed by the Nazis in 1932. Being both Jewish and a modernist, he moved to London. There he became involved in art education and in stage and display lighting. When war broke out he was interned as an alien, then deported. He finally arrived in Australia in 1940 as a Dunera internee and was sent to a camp at Hay, then to Orange and later to Tatura. At the last, a small art community was formed and Mack began to make prints, including Internment Camp . In March 1942 he was released on appeal from the head of Geelong Grammar School, who appointed him art master. He taught at Geelong until 1957; Gropius visited him there after WWII.
Did small Klee like paintings and monotypes as well as graphics (TMAG has set of late monotypes). He lived in Melbourne after he retired, where he was involved with the European community and with teaching Bauhaus ideals at MU and in Adult Education courses. He died in 1965. Nicholas Draffin exhibited his work with Lyonel Feininger’s in 1974 and a solo memorial exhibition was held at Melbourne University Gallery in 1981.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1893
- Summary
- German Bauhaus artist whose diverse modernist practice reflects the upheaval of the second World War, when he was deported to Australia, but continued to practice and teach after his release in Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1965
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-33.8945061 Longitude151.1554222 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Petersham, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Sydney in 1891, the first child of Arthur and Carrie Fry. She studied art (c.1910-12) and worked for a time as a commercial artist, drawing newspaper advertisements as well as cartoons and illustrations for the Bulletin , Sydney Mail and Lone Hand e.g. Young Australia 1 December 1914, 30 (little kids playing). Her Bulletin cartoons during WWI include: One point in their favour (little girl’s legs) 12 December 1914, 21; Women’s Clothes Again 12 March 1914, 10; Circumstantial Evidence 15 June 1916, 11. A reasonably good Bulletin original (ML Px*D463/53), The Economist [re teacher and four pupils, three girls and a boy, captioned – after elaborations of the joke had been editorially removed]: 'Willie (detected in the act of extracting piece of chewing gum), “Please miss, need I throw it away. It’s only a new piece”’. It was published on 2 January 1919, when Fry was living in Lindfield.
After further study, Fry worked as a typist/stenographer. In 1919 she took up a position in Batavia (Jakarta, Indonesia) in the office of a British firm. She returned to Australia in 1923 and worked for various organisations in the private and public sectors before retiring in 1953. She died at Sydney in 1965. The Fry family papers in ML (1898-1953, mss) were presented by Mrs Wilga Morgan in 1978 and Mrs Jean Fry in 1989. They include family letters and papers, a 2-part newspaper article 'The Australian Girl in Java’ September 1921 and (1937 and undated) printed material containing illustrations by Dorothy Fry including 'Sulks Grizzlegrumps by Aldea Wane, Sydney, W.C. Penfold n.d. ML MSS 1159, ADD ON 2076/ Box 5; 'Dorothy’s Art Work and Printed Specimens c.1910-22: sketches, mainly of people, commercial illustrations, magazine covers and illustrations, cartoons and postcards (ML MSS 1159, ADD ON 2076/ Box 6).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1891
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney illustrator and cartoonist, Fry worked for a time as a commercial artist, drawing newspaper advertisements as well as cartoons and illustrations for the Bulletin, Sydney Mail and Lone Hand.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1965
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Painter, was born in Melbourne on 18 April 1886 and died in Sydney Hospital on 17 August 1965, according to the businessman, amateur painter and National Library of Australia aviation history collector Ernest C. Crome, whose portrait Trindall painted in 1944 and entered in the Archibald Prize. At the same time Trindall did a portrait of Crome’s wife Virtie Ivery [sic apparently]. Many of Trindall’s oil paintings depict his daughter (later the 1st Mrs Peter Evatt), often nude; Manly AG holds an example, along with other works.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 April 1886
- Summary
- Painter, his portrait of National Library of Australia aviation history collector Ernest C. Crome painted in 1944 was entered in the Archibald Prize that same year.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Aug-65
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-32.256944 Longitude148.601111 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dubbo, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and weaver, exhibited Royal Art Society of NSW, 1905 (Miss J. Booth). A member of the NSW Society of Arts & Crafts for 41 years from 1914, Jessica Booth was one of the leading weavers in NSW. In the late 1920s she opened a Hand Loom School in Sydney, where she was joined by Miss Joan Mackenzie, another long-term Society member. At the suggestion of Myrtle Innes, a 'Jessica Booth Loan Memorial’ exhibition was held in conjunction with the Society’s annual exhibition at Grace Bros Chatswood in 1965.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- A painter and acclaimed weaver, Jessica Booth was a member of the NSW Society of Arts and Crafts for over four decades. In the late 1920s she opened a Hand Loom School in Sydney with fellow Arts and Craft society member Joan Mackenzie, at which time Booth was regarded as one of the state's leading weavers.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1965
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude55.5230806 Longitude-1.7101739 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Preston, Northumberland, England, UK
- Biography
- Cartoonist, poster designer and etcher, was born at Preston, Northumberland on 21 April 1882, son of Joseph Scorfield, insurance agent, and Rebecca Jane, née Taylor. Educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he became a marine architect. He played lock forward for England against France in 1910. He spent the whole of WWI with the 66th Field Company of Royal Engineers, serving at Gallipoli (in the landing at Suvla Bay), Salonika (Thessaloniki), Greece and Palestine. Promoted sergeant, he was twice mentioned in despatches and appointed to the Russian Order of St George (acc. Stone).
After the war he worked as a draughtsman with a firm of Tyneside shipbuilders and began to draw cartoons for the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle . On the advice of his agent Percy Bradshaw, he came to Sydney in 1925 ( Fifty years… says in 1923, so does Roger Butler’s National Gallery of Australia [NGA] website, but Australian Dictionary of Biography confirms 1925) and joined the Bulletin as a cartoonist and illustrator replacing Norman Lindsay . He remained until 1961, resigning soon after Sir Frank Packer’s ACP purchased the magazine.
Scorfield married Helen Cecilia Olga Louise Pillinger, a 24-year-old Englishwoman, on 4 October 1928 at St James’s Church of England, Sydney. They had no children. He died on 11 December 1965 in hospital at Mosman and was cremated; his wife survived him.
As well as being the Bulletin 's political cartoonist, Scorfield drew illustrations and joke blocks for the magazine about slums, outback farms and animals, especially dogs. He drew with a pen and dry brush that gave an effect like crayon. A large number of his original drawings are in the Mitchell Library’s [ML] Bulletin collection. John Webb (editor 1933-48) thought he was 'more humorous, more humane and more tolerant than Lindsay or Lowe’ (quoted Rolfe 270, who disagrees). Douglas Stewart (27-28) commented:
“A big, solid, slow-thinking Yorkshireman, with a gift for drawing dogs with remarkably big feet, like his own, Ted was always to be seen, when anybody had made a joke or suggested an idea, glancing inquiringly around with a puzzled sort of grin, as if he thought he might have missed something; which invariably he had. But still, he was always good-humoured.”
Stewart’s lasting image of him was in a pub 'thumping the bar for service with a fist like a pile driver’ (p.36).
His cartoons for the Bulletin included: a page with six 'then and now’ drawings of trees in the suburbs, showing none in 1910, saplings in 191[5?], fully grown in 1920, digging up road for pipelines in 1922, removing trees to widen road in 1924, and street with lamp-posts and once again with no trees at all in 1925, published 1 October 1925 (original ML PxD458/11). The Duchess Writes Home 19 May 1927 (original PxD458/39), is a good-natured royal letter home “hand-written” under pictorial vignettes of tour highlights. It begins, 'Dear Elizabeth,/ Daddy and mother have been seeing Australia…’, and includes 'King Billy’ (with breast-plate and battered stove-pipe hat) – 'One day we saw the king, but he hasn’t got such a nice crown as Grandpapa’.
Other Bulletin cartoons are: Recruiting the Migrant (vignettes paralleling migration with war recruitment) 11 March 1926 (large original ML); The Greatest of All Illusions showing E.G. Theodore with 'Professor Inflationski’ as a magician reducing the audience’s savings to nil, published 1931 (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 40); Alice in Wonderland 25 February 1931, on the Lang government’s printing of banknotes (National Library of Australia, neg., plate #PL 654/*); Protest Dismissed (William McKell, former Labor Premier of NSW, becomes G-G) n.d. (ill. Coleman & Tanner); Spare that Tree! with a noble bronzed Aussie standing with thumbs up in front of a tree labelled 'White Australia’, defending it against two men (Asians?) with axes (large original ML PXD 469/37 used in State Library of New South Wales black and white exhibition, 1999).
His Bulletin gag cartoons include: '“In another three months, I’ll be darning your socks, Dave darling.”/ “Don’t want to worry about that. I c’n knock 'em off once we’re married”’ 1933 (ill. Rolfe, 167); A Day in the Life of a Press Photographer 14 November 1934 (male photographer snapping women’s legs as they play tennis, jump hurdles and get their dresses caught in the wind, then berating his wife for wearing a revealing backless evening dress); Be kind to animals but not too kind , published 16 March 1938 (original in private collection); WWII drawing [terribly old-fashioned – looks like WWI] of a soldier saying to a bag lady, “'Oppit, Mata Hari!” 5 November 1941, 14 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 267 – original unlocated); WWII bush cartoon '“Lend me some of your kids, Joe – the manpower bloke’s coming to see me today”’ 1942 (ill. Rolfe, 292); “'Evven 'elp 'Itler now, Spike” (sailor observing two servicewomen) 1942; pro-conscription Battle Dresses 1941; “It’s things like 'er wot tears the veil of mystery from us girls” (two old bag ladies about a smart young thing wearing trousers) 1942; two soldiers in the jungle watching another being carried off by a giant mosquito, “Don’t shoot, Rod – it’s the sarge” 1943 (ill. Rolfe, 294); “How’s that for size?” (land army girls shoeing a horse as if it were being fitted in a shoe shop) 1943.
1947 political cartoons by Scorfield are illustrated in Coleman & Tanner, 72, and Rolfe. A 1948 migration joke shows a couple with pram and luggage in the empty bush with the caption, “All right. Maybe we shouldn’t have got off at Darwin” (ill. Rolfe, 288). Anti-Communist and Korean War cartoons are illustrated in King (162-69). Others include Logical Consequence (Aboriginal couple claim Australia) 1945; '“There’s modern education for y’! Diploma in domestic science and doesn’t even know how to hold an axe”’ (two men sitting on fence watching woman chopping wood) 1950 (ill. Rolfe, 195); anti-ALP cartoon 1953 (ill Rolfe, 293); political parody of Laocoon with Evatt, Caldwell and {Santamaria?} struggling with a snake labelled 'The Movement’ annotated: '(Based partly on reports by Homer and Virgil, and partly on conflicting accounts by Dougherty, Santamaria, Colbourne, Mullens, Jack Lang, and the victims themselves)’ 1955 (ill. Rolfe, 288). Among his numerous cartoons featuring dogs is Kindness in Another’s Trouble (about enemy aliens – all dogs), Bulletin 1939 (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 129). In the 1940s he also made etchings and posters, according to Roger Butler’s NGA website.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 21 April 1882
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney Bulletin cartoonist, poster designer and etcher. Before migrating to Australia in 1925 Scorfield played rugby for England and served in the First World War, seeing action at Gallipoli. Joining the Bulletin in Sydney, Scorfield replaced Norman Lindsay as cartoonist and illustrator.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Dec-65
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude51.6108282 Longitude-0.0610083 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Middlesborough, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, decorative painter and etcher, was born in Middlesborough, North England, younger brother of Abbey Alston . He came to Australia in 1888. Having been awarded a scholarship at the age of 16, he studied at NGV Schools (Design 1894-98, Painting 1898-1902). In 1902 he followed his brother in winning the NGV Travelling Scholarship and going to Paris. He studied at l’Ecole des Beaux Arts and at Colarossi’s. By 1925 he had settled in London where he spent the rest of his life and where he died.
Alston exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Paris Salon and in the English provinces.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- Younger brother of painter Abbey Alston, Daniel Alston was an etcher and painter who studied design and painting at the National Gallery of Victoria Schools. In 1902 he won the annual NGV Travelling Scholarship and left for Paris where he undertook further study at l'Ecole des Beaux Arts and Colarossi's. Alston never returned to Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1965
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.816667 Longitude151 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parramatta, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- woodcarver, was born on 18 June 1880 at Parramatta, eighth of the nine children of native-born parents Frederick Weston, draftsman, and Mary Ann, née Elliott, great-granddaughter of Lieutenant George Johnston. By 1902 she was living in Alexandra House, a residence for colonial students in London and studying at the School of Wood-Carving, South Kensington. There she formed a lifelong friendship with Eirene Mort. When they returned to Sydney, they rented a studio in the city. Weston, known as 'Chips’, described herself as a cabinet-maker and taught woodcarving, carpentry and leatherwork. The pair set up as interior decorators, creating ornaments and furnishings with an Australian flavour, Weston executing Mort’s designs for objects such as a chair made of silky oak and Australian leather, and copper boxes.
In 1906 they founded the Guild of Handicrafts for women, which aimed to produce articles for 'household use and decoration’. It held an exhibition in December, but was superseded by the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW, also founded in 1906. Weston joined the Society in March 1908 and was briefly custodian of its rooms. At its 1910 annual exhibition she and Mort showed cushions, blotters and leatherwork as well as larger pieces and panels. She was Hon Sec of the Society before leaving for England in 1911. She resumed the association on her return, serving on the Society’s selection committee (1917-19) and general committee (1918, 1929-32) and teaching at its Rowe Street studios in the 1920s. She attended and helped provide scenery and costumes for Artists’ Balls from 1922. Like other Society members, she taught handicrafts to convalescent soldiers in repatriation hospitals during and after both World Wars.
Dependent on the sale of her wood, leather and metal work for an income, Weston mostly made small gift items. From about 1920 she and Mort lived together at Vaucluse, until 1937 when they moved to Greenhayes, Mittagong, then to Bowral in 1960. She died on 16 August 1965 at Berrima and was cremated with Anglican rites. A memorial exhibition was held in their Bowral home.
Writers:
Staff Writer
stokel
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 June 1880
- Summary
- Whilst studying woodcarving in London 'Chips' formed a lifelong friendship and working relationship with fellow student Eirene Mort. Upon return she taught woodcarving, carpentry and leatherwork from a Sydney studio.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Aug-65
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Adelaide on 22 May 1879, daughter of David and Ellen Davidson, née Johnson. She was educated in Adelaide and first studied art there in 1899 under Rose McPherson ( Margaret Preston ). After exhibiting with the SA Society of Arts in 1901-03 in both the annual and federal exhibitions, she left Adelaide for Europe on 2 July 1904 with Margaret Preston, travelling first to Munich where she enrolled briefly at the Künstlerinner Verein. She left Munich in November 1904, travelling to Paris with Preston.
In Paris Davidson attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére, studying under René Prinet, and became influenced by his classical style. She was also taught by other French painters, Raphael Collin and Gustave Courtois, and by the American Richard Miller. Miller’s paintings of light-filled domestic scenes particularly appear to have influenced her work of the 1910s and early 1920s. She became close friends with the Australian artist Rupert Bunny , with whom she is also said to have studied, exhibited at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and became a founding member of, and exhibited with, the Salon des Tuileries (Independents).
In December 1906 Davidson returned to Adelaide and leased a studio with Preston, with whom she held a joint exhibition in March 1907. During this time she exhibited regularly at the Society of Arts, her work including still-lifes, portraits and landscapes. In 1908 the Art Gallery of South Australia purchased her portrait of fellow artist Gladys Reynell , titled Portrait of Miss G.R. It is typical of her early formal, tonal works.
Davidson returned to Paris in 1910. Before the outbreak of World War I she travelled as widely as possible in Europe, including a visit to Russia. In 1914 she returned to Adelaide to see her family. During this brief visit she completed her delightful, light-filled domestic scene, Mother and Child . At the outbreak of World War I she returned immediately to Paris, joined the Red Cross and worked throughout the war as a nurse, eventually running a hospital for cholera patients.
From 1918 Davidson exhibited frequently in Paris (and possibly also regularly in London). In 1922 she was the first Australian woman to be elected an Associate, then Member of the New Salon. In the same year she became secretary of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and in 1930 was elected Vice-President of La Société Nationale de Femmes Artistes Modernes; she was also a founding member of the Société Nationale des Indépendants. In 1931 Davidson was appointed Chevalier de la L é gion d’Honneur for Art and Humanity by the French government. She contributed work to L’Exposition du Groupe Feminin at the Petit Palais in 1938. Later she participated in the Exhibition of French Art shown in Pittsburg, St Louis, New York and Edinburgh, and exhibited with the International Society in London and Venice.
During World War II Davidson lived first in Normandy and then in Grenoble in the French Alps, where she continued to paint daily. In 1945, at the cessation of the war, she returned to her Montparnasse studio in Paris, where she continued to live and paint for the rest of her life. She travelled regularly throughout France and stayed frequently at Buchy, near Rouen; she also painted at Guéthary, a small French coastal town near the border of Spain, and at Villeneuve. She visited relatives in Scotland regularly, but made only one more trip back to her home in Adelaide, in the 1950s.
Bessie Davidson died at the age of 85, on 22 February 1965. She was buried at Saint-Saens, Seine-Maritime, near Rouen, Normandy.
Writers:
Hylton, Jane
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1879
- Summary
- Originally from Adelaide and a student and friend of Margaret Preston, Bessie Davidson was a very successful artist. She spent the majority of her life in France where she received much recognition for her work, most notably the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur for Art and Humanity in 1931.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 22-Feb-65
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.42 Longitude149.577778 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bathurst, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work 1907, NSW Display: Oil Paintings – Flower Painting, Competitive – no.145 Brownlow, Emily [specific work not listed].
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1878
- Summary
- A flower painter in oils, early twentieth century.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1965
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-37.063611 Longitude144.217222 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Kate Leviny, a member of the Leviny family of Castlemaine, was an artist and photographer. Some of her images were published in The Australasian Photo-Review magazine between 1914 and 1922. She also did embroidery and appliqué needlework and made rag rugs from scraps of fabric which are kept at the former family home Buda. Two of her embroideries were included in the landmark First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work 1907.
Kate was a keen and knowledgeable collector of art. Among her purchases retained at Buda Historic House and Garden, once the Leviny family home, are works by Margaret Preston, Mildred Lovett, Norbertine Bresslern Roth and other women printmakers of the era. Kate, like her sister Mary, was involved in the establishment of the Castlemaine Art Gallery in 1913, and in the late 1920s was involved in developing the gallery’s collection of prints. .
Writers:
fulleg
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1877
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1965
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude53.7975 Longitude-1.543611 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leeds, Yorkshire, England
- Biography
- B.J. Waterhouse was born in Leeds, England in 1876. He later moved to Australia with his mother and two sisters in 1885. He was educated in Burwood, Sydney and later studied architecture at the Sydney Technical College. From 1908 he built up a successful architectural practice on Sydney’s lower north shore, which at the time was experiencing a building boom. His early architectural work was in the Arts and Crafts style but after the Great War he designed Mediterranean influenced buildings such as May Gibbs 's well known (extant) house, Nutcote . Active in public life he was a leading member of the Institute of Architects and the Royal Australian Institute of Architects where he served in several leadership positions.
Waterhouse was also a skilled draftsman and occasionally exhibited his pencil drawings and watercolours with the Royal Art Society between 1902 and 1941. He had a solo exhibition of his drawings at the Macquarie Gallery, Sydney in 1932. The Sydney Morning Herald, reviewing the exhibition in June 1932 noted:
“The interest of Mr. B.J. Waterhouse’s pencil drawings, which he has placed on view at the Macquarie galleries, lies as much in their subjects as in the manner of treatment. Mr. Waterhouse’s is an objective style. He sees the quaint houses, the massive buildings, of the Old World through the eye of an architect, and sets them down on paper clearly and coolly, without much attempt at composition, except what rises accidentally from the arrangement of the subjects as they meet his eye. His style is always fresh and crisp and definite. He reveals planes deftly and smoothly, never clouding his effects with over-elaboration.”
Waterhouse exhibited eight pencil works at the November 1938 'Painter-Etchers’ and Graphic Art Society of Australia’ exhibition at David Jones, Sydney. He was also a foundation member of the Sydney based `XV Independent Group’ (active 1938-1945) and exhibited at several of their exhibitions at Farmers department store. Most of his exhibited works from this period seem to be architectural drawings of British and Continental themes.
Waterhouse was appointed a Trustee of the National Gallery of NSW [now Art Gallery of New South Wales] in 1922 and became the President of the Trustees in 1939, a position he held up to 1958. Perhaps reflecting the period interest in childrens’ art education, Waterhouse became a vocal advocate for the distribution of Art Gallery paintings to schools, as can be seen in this March 1941 report in the Sydney Morning Herald :
“Art should be talked [sic] to schoolchildren from the earliest years, and in art I include architecture and garden planning,” said Mr. B.J. Waterhouse the president of the National Art Gallery, at the Mosman Children’s Library yesterday afternoon… Mr. Waterhouse suggested that the Art Gallery should become the central depot from which the best pictures should be sent to all schools in the State for exhibition. “There should be a small annexe attached to all schools to house the pictures sent to them from the gallery,” he said, “thus making the schools satellite art galleries.”
Waterhouse served as a trustee of the National Gallery of NSW under four gallery directors – G.V.P. Mann, James S. MacDonald, William Ashton and Hal Missingham. Although a conservative, Waterhouse’s term as president of the trustees coincided with the period when the NSW gallery finally embraced the collecting of modernist art works.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 February 1876
- Summary
- B.J. Waterhouse was a Sydney architect who was actively involved in the NSW art world during the first half of the twentieth century, both as a prominent gallery trustee and as an artist. Waterhouse also designed a suite of chairs for the Art Gallery of NSW boardroom which were fabricated by F.E. de Groot.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Dec-65
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-36.8590029 Longitude143.7337931 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1965-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunolly, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Clewin Harcourt was born at Dunnolly, Victoria on 13 December 1870. His lawyer father, Durrant Harcourt, contributed literary pieces to the Melbourne press while his mother was a well-known amateur messo-soprano. His love of music stayed with him all his life and in his later years he made flutes, recorders and piccolos.His initial art studies at the National Gallery School under Fredrick McCubbin and George Folingsby were truncated on his father’s death in 1888 as he was obliged to work to support his family. He travelled to work at Broken Hill, Coolgardie, and finally Perth where he was a draughtsman in the Mines Department. In 1896 he became a foundation member of the West Australian Society of Arts and Crafts.In 1901 he left Australia to study art in Europe, where he first spent six months at the Westminster School under Mouat Loudan, but soon left London for Antwerp where he studies at the Academie des Beaux Arts under M.de Vriendt. In 1902 he was awarded a silver medal for life drawing. After spending time in Paris he returned to London. Here he received commissions for portraits as well as making black and white illustrations for magazines such as Pearsons, The Lady’s Realm and The Ladies’ Sphere. In 1912 he returned to Melbourne where he became a foundation member of the Australian Art Association and participated in many group exhibitions. He moved to Sydney for a short time in the early 1920s, but in 1922 left again for Europe.On his return in 1928 he built a studio at Heidelberg in Victoria, where he lived for the rest of his life. His last exhibition was in 1938, and in his later years he became increasingly reclusive.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 13 December 1870
- Summary
- Clewin Harcourt had a successful early career as an artist, both in Australia and in Europe. In his later years he lived a life of relative obscurity and was remembered more for his musical instruments than his elegant academic paintings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1965
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-36.0737304 Longitude146.9135396 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Albury, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was a 'cheerful, hard-drinking Bohemian who had started his career at the piano of a Melbourne silent picture show’, according to George Farwell in Rejoice in Freedom . He studied art in Melbourne and drew caricatures for Table Talk before going to London in 1938, where he contributed to various papers and periodicals, including being the political cartoonist on the Sunday Pictorial . He returned to Australia in 1940, having been appointed staff cartoonist on Sydney’s Daily Mirror , edited by Ezra Norton, where he signed all his cartoons 'TAC’. In 1941, aged thirty, Challen’s 'How to Save Honourable Face?’ from the Daily Mirror was shown at the National Gallery of Canada in the exhibition War Cartoons and Caricatures of the British Commonwealth (cat.122).
In November 1940 Challen was one of a small group of leftwing journalists who produced the four-page, wartime Progress from a room in Sydney’s Trades Hall. It became the official organ of the NSW Labor Party, chiefly because it held a wartime newsprint license. Initially edited by Paul Moline, Progress was soon produced mainly by editor Bill (W.A.) Wood, son of the SU historian Professor Arnold Wood, George Farwell, Tom Challen (sole cartoonist) and Len Fox. Dedicated to ending fascism, its prime targets were PM Bob Menzies, leader of the United Australia Party, and 'Artie’ Fadden, leader of the Country Party, along with general topics such as capitalist war profiteers, food monopolies, political censorship of the Left imposed by Menzies’s colleague Archie Cameron, and the failure of politicians to provide adequate air-raid precautions. Challen’s cartoons on these topics, signed 'C.’ in a square box, were often accompanied by verses signed 'L.N.’, the pen-name Len Fox was then using. The original pen and ink cartoon 'Don’t bomb Rome!’ (published Progress 4 April 1944) was lent to the S.H. Ervin b/w exhibition by Len Fox. Progress continued to exist alongside the Communist newspaper Tribune after the Communist Party was legalised and amalgamated with the State Labor Party (in January 1944) until 28 April 1945. Then it announced it would henceforth appear in a new form as 'a weekly radio-news magazine’. In November it became a monthly cultural journal under new editorship but expired in July 1946. By then Challen had gone overseas (according to Fox), while Len Fox had found work on Tribune .
The Mitchell Library (PX*D62 1-2) has a number of Challen’s scrapbooks of Daily Mirror “TAC” cartoons 1942-c.56. Challen married artist Amy (Amie) Kingston in 1942. Challen died at St. Leonards, NSW, in 1964. In 1966 Mrs S.M. Challen had four volumes of cuttings of her late son’s work, including art cartoons for the Sunday Pictorial and the Tribune , copied for ML (neg FM4/2442). Challen was also a gifted pianist and violinist, according to Len Fox.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1911
- Summary
- Mid 20th century political cartoonist, a "cheerful, hard-drinking Bohemian who had started his career at the piano of a Melbourne silent picture show" - George Farwell, 1976.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1964
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- watercolour painter, interior decorator, textile and fashion designer, ceramicist and teacher, pursued her career in London and Australia. She and other Sydney women artists in the 1940s worked across these disciplines, despite the curtailments to their art which characterised their working lives—and despite the tendency of critics to typecast their work as feminine, decorative and intuitive, hence inferior to the perceived rationality of masculine discourse.
At fourteen, Muriel’s drawing skills gained her entry to the Camberwell College of Art in London where she proved a talented student. Her subsequent employment with Green & Abbott, a London-based interior decoration company, included designing textiles and painting Chinoiserie panels for grand houses. During her Sydney years (1939-54) Muriel pursued an active career in an artistic milieu that included many expatriate, immigrant and visiting artists, teachers and designers escaping war-torn London and Europe. Broader perspectives on European modernism, including those brought to Australia by Muriel and her husband Frank Medworth , who had married at the Hammersmith register office on 5 July 1929, contributed to the erosion of a dominant anti-modernist conservatism which promoted academic genres over a modernism then categorised as frivolously 'feminine’ through the focus on colour, fashion and interior design by its major Sydney proponents.
In the few located examples of Muriel Medworth’s watercolour paintings such as Ranunculi with Bananas verso (private collection) there is a designer’s restraint of line, colour and interpretative values that distance her work from the merely decorative on the one hand and more evident modernist values on the other. She exhibited with the Contemporary Art Society (which claimed dedication to modernist values) and with the Australian Watercolour Institute. In 1949 she was included in the 'Design and Colour’ exhibition at David Jones Art Gallery mounted by the Double Bay studio of the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW where she taught drawing. In her teaching, Medworth aimed to 'give a fuller understanding of design through a study of form and composition’, Dora Sweetapple .
Muriel Medworth worked with Sweetapple’s interior designer sister, Marion Hall Best . In 1947 she was a contributing designer to Claudio Alcorso’s Modernage Fabric range of textile designs by thirty-two important Australian artists ( see Alice Danciger ). She exhibited paintings and pottery independently and with her husband until his death in 1947. Muriel remained in Sydney until 1954 participating in various exhibitions, then left Australia. Henceforth she divided her time between London and Mallorca, painting land and seascapes.
Writers:
Giacco, Louise
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- Watercolour painter, interior decorator, textile and fashion designer, ceramicist and teacher, pursued her career in London and Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1964
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-35.0885559 Longitude144.0379924 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Moulamein, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, jeweller, embroiderer and commercial designer, was born at Mellool Station Moulamein, NSW. Her mother died when she was a child and she was placed in the care of relatives in England. After she returned to Australia in about 1914 her father remarried and she was again placed with relatives. She frequently escaped from an unhappy home life to perform minor roles in the theatre, with the Alan Wilkie Shakespearian Company and later in melodramas. She adopted a new name taken from her great-grandmother, Loma Lomax, and her great-great-grandfather, General Peter Latour, which she commonly also spelt 'Lautour’.
On 28 December 1928, Loma entered into a brief marriage with Ray Lindsay, Norman and Rose Lindsay 's son. She apparently studied sculpture at East Sydney Technical College under Rayner Hoff in about 1930 then applied her modelling skills to many commercial and industrial arts, including producing a range of aggressively modernistic chrome-plated lamps, bookends and table-tops in 1935. She achieved a steady living in sculpture by producing modelled figures in a great variety of forms. In 1938 alone, as well as The Boxer , she modelled figures for floats in Sydney’s sesquicentenary celebrations ( see Thelma Afford), made models of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for Sewell & Co., some of which were included in Nock & Kirby’s Christmas window display, and executed plaster decorations for the Minerva Cinema at Kings Cross. Holly Farram, Loma’s proclaimed favourite model, posed for the lightly clad Art Deco figure in the last.
Loma began exhibiting in 1935, at the Combined Hobbies Exhibition and the Women’s Industrial Arts Society (with former Hoff students Barbara Tribe , Jean Broome-Norton and Marjorie Fletcher ). Her first solo exhibition, held in the Women’s Industrial Arts Society’s rooms in July 1936, was mainly of pottery and small models, the fruit of her six-month sojourn with Mashman Brothers Pottery where her design for a garden urn was evidently put into production. Her second solo show, in July-August 1938 at the Castlereagh Fine Art Gallery, included figures inspired by neoclassical, pagan and modernistic sources. Titles such as Virility , Action , Dancer and Flight suggest a 'Hoff School’ interest in the vitality of the human figure in motion, while the exotic – evidenced in works like The Aztec and Nirvana – held a special appeal. She was commended for a portrait of the Bulletin artist Les Such, for Tamil Woman and for Balinese Dancer (p.c.). (The last has obvious parallels with Norman Lindsay’s Seated Nymph in his garden at Springwood.) From the exhibition the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW purchased The Egoist , a ceramic faun-like head. She exhibited with the Society of Artists in 1936-37 and with the Royal Art Society in 1936-40. In 1937 she assisted John Harvey with his relief mural for the Atlantic Oil Company’s exhibit at the Royal Easter Show. She was also an accomplished embroiderer, favouring paisley-like designs, but it is highly unlikely that any examples survive.
Lautour remarried Victor Jamieson, a former Japanese POW, in 1941. He died in 1946 (thereby gaining her a war widow’s pension). After the war she began making jewellery, and it was as a jeweller that she became known in Brisbane. She also worked briefly as a modeller for Stone’s Pottery at Coorparoo. She exhibited bronze masks and jewellery at the 62nd Royal Queensland Art Society Exhibition, with the Half Dozen Group and, later, at Brisbane’s Moreton Gallery (from 1950). Much of her jewellery was sold through her friends Cecilia McNally, an antique dealer, and Agnes Barker who ran the Bronte Gift Sho
Although Lautour did little sculptural work in Brisbane, the Queensland Art Gallery purchased a lead Negro Head from her studio in 1953. Finally she left Brisbane and lived with a cousin Roy Needrie at Stradbroke Island. After a vicious sexual assault in 1962, she died at the Repatriation General Hospital, Greenslopes, Brisbane in 1964.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1902
- Summary
- Lautour was a sculptor, jeweller, embroiderer and commercial designer. After World War II she began making jewellery, and it was as a jeweller that she became known in Brisbane.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1964
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-37.4292674 Longitude143.3832189 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Beaufort, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Percy Trompf studied at the Ballarat Technical Art School, a division of the Ballarat School of Mines.
Designer, did many colour lithographic posters, e.g. Still Building Australia: Constructing the World’s Longest Single-Arch Bridge, Sydney Harbour 1930 (National Archives), Australia [Beach Scene] c.1930 (National Archives), Get Out to Australia for the Test Matches: Sept. 1932- Mar. 1933 1932 (National Archives), St Paul’s, Melbourne, Australia. Victorian & Melbourne Centenary, 1934-35 1934 (National Archives), World’s Greatest Air Race for Macrobertson Trophy, England to Australia. Victorian & Melbourne Centenary, 1934-35 (National Archives) 1934, Australia: The Tallest Trees in the British Empire-Marysville, Victoria (NLA) c.1930s, Australia. Adelaide, South Australia-A City in a Garden c.1930s (NGA), Kangaroo Paws: Western Australian Wildflowers, Australia 1930s (NGA) and Tropical North Queensland, Australia c.1930s (NGA) for the Australian National Travel Association [ANTA]; Winter Tours to Central Australia (NGA) 1930s for Australian Railways; The Marine Wonders of the Great Barrier Coral Reef (NLA) and North Queensland Calls You to a Winter Holiday in the Tropics (NLA) 1933, Off to the North for Warmth (NGA) 1938, Visit Colourful Queensland (NLA) and A Winter Holiday in the Sun! Brisbane, River City of the North (NLA) c.1950s for Queensland Government Tourist Bureau; Queenscliff & Point Lonsdale: Freedom in the Sun & Surf (NGA) c.1930s for the Victoria Railways Commissioner in conjunction with the Borough of Queensliff (poster no. 84) and The Seaside Calls, “Take a Kodak” c.1930s (NGA) for Victorian Railways (poster no. 99); Western Australia c.1940s (NLA) for WA Govt Tourist Bureau with ANTA; Canberra c.1930 (NGA) and Parliament House, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory c.1930s (NLA).
Writers:
Staff Writer
gervac
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1902
- Summary
- Designer of many colour lithographic posters between the 1930s and the 1950s, commissioned by the Australian National Travel Association, Victorian Railways, Queensland Government Tourist Bureau, etc.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1964
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- Guy Crick was born in Hobart in 1901 abd attended the Melbourne Church of England Grammar School and was later articled to Melbourne architect Mr E.J. Ruck. From 1923 to 1926, Crick was an instructor of architecture and building construction at the Hobart Technical School. He began his own architectural practice in 1932, specialising in theatre design. He served in the AIF from 1942 to 1944. In 1949 he and his then partner, S.C. van Breda, were featured in Decoration and Glass, which said that their partnership had designed or completely remodelled about 120 theatres from Queensland to southern Tasmania: the most notable example mentioned by Crick was West’s Theatre in Adelaide. The practice also was said to have produced many residences, schools, industrial and commercial projects.
SourcePersonalities: Mr Guy Crick,in Decoration and Glass, May-June 1949, p. 34.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2016
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1901
- Summary
- Guy Crick was an architect who designed some commercial interiors and buildings in Sydney during the late 1940s and early 1950s. From 1946 to at least 1949, he was in parnership with S.C. van Breda and later he worked with Bruce W. Furse.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Jul-64
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-34.6715718 Longitude150.8556251 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kiama, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1897
- Summary
- Kelly was a fashion designer born into a tailor's family. He was active in theatre in Australia, moving to NYC where he worked as a muralist. By 1931, he was working in Los Angeles designing sets and costume. He became the principal costume designer at Warner Bros., later moving to 20th Century Fox and finally freelance work. His costume work won multiple awards. His memoir in manuscript was found in 2013.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-64
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-37.6188812 Longitude148.9038897 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bemm River, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1964
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator and cartoonist, was born in Sydney. He attended Dattilo Rubbo 's evening art classes at the Royal Art Society of NSW for five years and also received help and criticism from Norman Lindsay . He contributed to the Bulletin where, Douglas Stewart wrote, 'his flair with the pen seemed almost as if it would rival Norman Lindsay’s [like Percy Leason ]. He too went to America and became that country’s highest-paid magazine illustrator’ (Stewart, 21). Bulletin cartoon published 6 May 1915, 40, signed 'Jack. F.’, The Strike 'CHARON: “Hey! You go slower, or I chuck it. D’ye think I can ferry women and children across as well as armies?” (re WWI).
Flanagan left Australia in 1916 and never returned to live, though he revisited Sydney in 1927 to hold a successful exhibition of his work. He became famous in the US for his scraper-board illustrations in Cosmopolitan , Colliers , etc.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1895
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney born painter printmaker, magazine illustrator and Bulletin cartoonist. Spent some time working in the United States.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1964
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-41.288889 Longitude174.777222 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wellington, New Zealand
- Biography
- Godfrey Clive Miller was born at Wellington New Zealand on 20 August 1893, the second son of a Scots-born bank accountant, Thomas Tripney Miller and his wife, Isabella Duthie. In 1896, just after the birth of his sister Mera, his mother died of tuberculosis. Two years later his father married his mother’s older sister, Eliza, and four more children followed. As his father was a manager of the Bank of Australasia, the family spent some years based at different towns throughout New Zealand. In 1908 they finally settled in Dunedin in the South Island, where Miller completed his high school education at Otago Boys High. In 1910 he began day classes at Dunedin Technical School and evening classes at Otago School of Art and Design so that he could train as an architect. In about 1911 he was apprenticed as a draughtsman with Salmond and Vanes, Dunedin, at at the same time also worked as a carpenter on city buildings. In 1914 he was admitted as an Associate Member of the New Zealand Institute of Architects, and the same year took extra painting classes with Alfred Henry O’Keefe. On 20 October 1914 Miller enlisted as an Army private in the Divisional Signal Co. New Zealand Engineers. He was promoted to Sergeant by the time the First New Zealand Expeditionary Force sailed for Egypt on 14 December.The promotion did not last. After training at Egypt, he landed at Gallipoli where he served as a flag signaller and was promoted again to Lance-Corporal. He was wounded on 7 August 1915 and evacuated to Egypt with a wound to his arm that left him with musculospinal nerve palsy and severe shell-shock. On September 25 he joined the hospital ship Willochra to recuperate at Rotorua in New Zealand. He was discharged from the Army with a pension as medically unfit on 30 May 1916.Back in Dunedin he broke off a pre-war engagement to be married and returned to learning painting. He also began his long friendship with the English civil engineer Arthur Fenwick.In 1918, after winning second prize for a head study in a student competition, he moved to Melbourne and enrolled in W.B. McInnes’ antique drawing class at the National Gallery School. The following year he travelled to the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan and China, and landed again in Sydney on 13 September. He returned to Melbourne, and started to read widely into symbolist and romantic literature. He later re-enrolled in the National Gallery School.Miller’s father’s failing health concerned him and he returned to New Zealand, and later visited him in an asylum in Sydney. From between 1926 and 1928 he was helping to nurse his father, most likely in Sydney. He may have attended some classes at the Sydney Art School.On 30 August 1939 he left Australia on the Oronsay, and visited Paris on his way to London where he enrolled in the Slade School. He befriended the head of the school, Sir Henry Tonks, who arranged for him to study in the London University of Tropical Medicine during the school break.Miller was in Melbourne from 1932 to 1933, but then returned to London, after visiting New Zealand again. Over the following years he was based in London, but undertook extensive travel in Switzerland (with Arthur Fenwick), Italy, Paris, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Sweden, Denmark and Scotland, where he met relatives. His interest in philosophical questions was changing the shape of his art, as he attended John MacMurray’s philosophy seminars at the London University College as well as public lectures by Albert Schweizer. In 1936 he saw the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, and the International Surrealist Exhibition, both of which had a significant impact on him. The same year he travelled three times to Paris to see the Cézanne retrospective.On 22 October 1938 Miller left Europe for New Zealand and Australia, and by August 1939 he was living in Sydney. The following year brother Lewis introduced him to the Sydney St John Group – Anthroposophical Society and became involved in all their activities, including weekend festivals at Castlecrag. He also began to make excursions to Central Australia, as well as visits to New Zealand.Miller made friends with Sydney artists and by the mid 1940s he was involved in the loose grouping of artists who were teaching at East Sydney Technical College. He may have begun teaching there in 1945, but is not formally listed as being a part-time teacher until 1948. He taught still life and life painting, and life drawing; and remained on the staff for the rest of his life. Miller was an inspirational and gentle teacher, able to show how the most complex figure could be reduced to tough definitive lines.At the end of the War he travelled to Europe to study a three month colour course at the Anthroposophy centre, the Goetheanum, in Switzerland – and also visited other European cities.In January 1951, on a visit to New Zealand, he befriended the young New Zealand artist John Henshaw, a friendship that would last for life. By now Miller was becoming more confident about his work and was persuaded to exhibit with the Sydney Group at Macquarie Galleries in 1952, the first public showing of his mature style. Paul Haefliger, the influential art critic of the Sydney Morning Herald became a staunch supporter, and in 1953 his work was included in Twelve Australian Artists, a touring exhibition organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain at the New Burlington Galleries, London.In March 1954 he bought a house in Sutherland Street Paddington, which he named El-Kahs-Mar (Well built, good idea). In other changes he resigned from the Anthroposophical Society and became involved with the Krishnamurti movement. As international travel increased his teaching load reduced. In 1961 Miller’s Triptych with Flowers was included in the Whitechapel Exhibition of Recent Australian Painting, and it was purchased by the Tate Gallery. However his increasing reputation as an artist coincided with his development of congestive heart disease. He was found dead in his home on 10 May 1964.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
James McArdle
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2023
- Born
- b. 20 August 1893
- Summary
- The New Zealand born Godfrey Miller became one of Australia's most admired artists of the mid-twentieth century. His shyness, combined with the way he continued to work and rework his paintings meant that the full extent of his theosophically inspired oeuvre was not revealed until after his death.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-May-64
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-36.75 Longitude144.266667 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bendigo, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, was born in Bendigo on 25 April 1892, one of five children of Julius Cohn, a brewer, and Sarah Helen, née Snowball. She studied drawing, then modelling at the Bendigo School of Mines (1904 and 1910-19). Following her father’s death, the family moved to Melbourne and Ola continued her modelling studies at Swinburne Technical College (1920-25) under J.R. Tranthim-Fryer. She was a member of the Victorian Artists’ Society from 1921 and began a lifetime association with the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors (MSWPS) in 1922, being its president from 1950 until she died.
With her sister Franziska, Ola went to London in 1926 and enrolled at the Royal College of Art; her teachers included Ernest Cole and Henry Moore. She received her diploma in 1929 and was awarded a scholarship. She also studied at the London School of Arts and Crafts and travelled extensively in Europe. During this period she produced sculptures in a wide range of mediums: wood, stone, plaster, bronze and clay.
Cohn returned to Melbourne in 1930 and opened a studio in Collins Street. An exhibition of her overseas work at Melbourne in March 1931 established her as one of the most important modernist sculptors in Australia. Predictably, her simple massive forms attracted as much condemnation as praise, but she maintained a pragmatic attitude to conservative critics: 'Having spent my life studying sculpture, it seems ludicrous to be upset by the opinions of those who have not’.
Stone-carving, learnt at the Royal College of Art, became increasingly important to her. Her first public commissions (1938) were for a memorial fountain in Bendigo and two (controversial) six-foot sandstone figures representing Science and Humanity for the porch of the Royal Hobart Hospital (Tas.). Her most important public sculpture was a monumental figure commemorating the pioneer women of South Australia (1940-41). The simplified organic forms of these early works have the vitality, directness and architectural simplicity of the most significant European figurative-modernist work.
Undoubtedly Cohn’s most popular work is The Fairies’ Tree she carved in Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne (1931-34). She also published three children books: The Fairies’ Tree (1932), More about the Fairies’ Tree (1932) and Castles in the Air (1936). Later she wrote Mostly Cats (1964) and an unpublished autobiography, 'Me in the Making’ (c.1950, SLV).
Cohn was committed to making sculpture accessible. She gave lectures, demonstrations and private instruction and was a part-time lecturer at the Melbourne Kindergarten Training College (1940-54). During World War II she conducted recreational sculpture lessons for soldiers. After moving to East Melbourne in 1937, she made her studio a centre for artists. She encouraged younger women artists and provided a permanent home for MSWPS at her studio, which she bequeathed to the Council of Adult Education (now the Ola Cohn Memorial Centre).
Cohn travelled through Europe and Iceland in 1949-51. She continued to work until she died, her last public commission being for St Paul’s Anglican Church, Bendigo. In 1952 she won the acquisitive Crouch Prize at Ballarat for her woodcarving, Abraham – the first time that this had been awarded to a sculpture. In 1953 she married John Green, a retired government printer and longstanding friend. In 1964 Cohn was awarded the OBE; she died on 23 December.
Writers:
Edwards, Deborah
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 April 1892
- Summary
- Sculptor born in Bendigo, Victoria. Cohn was committed to making sculpture accessible.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Dec-64
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-36.840556 Longitude174.74 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter, died in Sydney in 1964-04-1. Cremated Northern Suburbs Crematorium, North Ryde, Sydney. Ashes scattered.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- Mid 20th century New Zealand and Sydney painter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Apr-64
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter, known as 'Howard Ashton’, was born in England on 9 August 1877, eldest son of Julian Rossi Ashton and his wife, Eliza . Howard came to Melbourne with his parents in 1878. At a Society of Artists’ Musical Afternoon, where the art students showed drawings: “Mr J. Howard Ashton showed a taste both for figures and landscape” ( Sydney Morning Herald , 31 May 1897, p.3). Exhibited with the Society of Artists in 1897: “Mr J. Howard shows an advance and his no.71 'The Point’ is painted with feeling” ( Sydney Morning Herald , 2 October 1897, p.7).
'Australian Art in London… One has not space to mention all the good things but I would direct the visitor’s attention to work by Messrs …Howard Ashton’ ( Pall Mall Gazette , quoted in Sydney Morning Herald 12 May 1898, 7). Re Society of Artists Exhibition in 1898: 'Among the younger artists whose style is still immature, Mr Howard Ashton and Mr Garlick [ Daniel Garlick ] have both made an advance… The trustees of the National Art Gallery have purchased four pictures, namely…Mr F. Howard Ashton’s “Through Sunny Meadows” (no.57) for £52.10…, thoroughly Australian in its character, [it] has value for the effect of brilliant sunlight suffused throughout, and there is feeling for colour in the harmonious gradations of tone from sky to water and to purple hills in the background. All this, and the clump of trees in the middle distance, is very good, but the foreground is not quite equal to the rest of the picture. The general style may be described as strongly “Streetonesque”. Amongst the young painter’s minor contributions, “An Old Love Story” (no.65) with its gorgeous colouring and quaint effect, has a certain cleverness; whilst an extraordinary little canvas, numbered 7? has the words “A Fantaisie” painted on it, in order, perhaps, that it may not be mistaken for a nightmare’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 27 August 1898, 7).
Exhibited Society of Artists 1899, 1901, 1907, 1917; committee member 1907 (caricature of him by Will Dyson in catalogue). Also included in Society of Artists’ Commonwealth Exhibition 1901. Exhibited Royal Agricultural Society 1902. See also catalogue of paintings at Atheneum Hall, 19 February-4 March 1913. His son Julian Richard Ashton was born in 1913. Howard Ashton’s work was included in the Sydney Art School retrospective in 1933. See also catalogue of exhibition of paintings in oils, Farmer’s Exhibition Hall, 16-21 June 19??.
In May 2001 Bridget McDonnell Gallery was showing his oil on board Yass Plains 1937 for sale from the estate of Jane Glad, Norman Lindsay 's daughter.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 August 1877
- Summary
- Also known as Howard Ashton, Julian was a painter who exhibited with the Society of Artists and the Royal Agricultural Society, as well as in London.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1964
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Kilda, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in 'Rosedale’, Inkerman Street St Kilda on 18 October 1874 . With her elder sister Ada she studied drawing in her teens, and by the 1890s was studying under Emanuel Phillips Fox and Tudor St George Tucker at the National Gallery School and at the artists camps at 'Charterisville’. She appears as one of the students in Fox’s painting _The Art Students _(1895). She is in school records as receiving prizes for life drawing. In 1898 she first exhibited at the Victorian Artists Society. Early in the 20th century she exhibited portraits, landscape and genre paintings with the Society. In 1905 she produced a book of illustrations with her friend and fellow student Violet Teague. Other friends of this time include Ethel Carrick Fox and Jane Price. In 1907 she contributed work to the First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work. She became a Rosecrucian and member of the Theosophical Society, and is understood to have believed in fairies.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 18 October 1874
- Summary
- Ina Gregory and her sister Ada both studied at the National Gallery School and were also associated with the artists' colony at Charterisville. She was described by contemporaries as a 'colourist' in the manner of Streeton. Leter she became associated with the Theosophical society.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1964
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-27.5997795 Longitude151.9014817 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Drayton, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Mona Isabella Lawton was born at Drayton, near Toowoomba, Queensland, on 18 September 1872 and educated at Toowoomba. She married Robert Anderson Elliott on 2 January 1901 and had two sons, Keith Lawton and Robert Neville. In October 1917 as a young widow, Mona took over the Stevens Photographic Studio at 466 Ruthven Street, Toowoomba, to support her family. The studio continued until 1922. She also worked as a photographer when she came to live in Brisbane circa 1927. She probably learned pottery from a student of L.J. Harvey’s (qv), as her early works do not conform to Harvey’s series of exercises. She also studied art with the prominent artist Vida Lahey .
Elliott exhibited mainly pottery at the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland in the years 1927-40 but also included embroidery, watercolour and oil painting. Her pottery received brief but positive mentions in the reviews of the displays while one in 1937 described 'a tall vase decorated with koalas.’ which is most likely the vase illustrated in Fahy. She exhibited collections of pottery with the Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS) 1930-32 and also included woodcarving and leatherwork amongst her skills.
She was a dedicated worker in her promotion of art: a council member of the RQAS 1938-41 (where she also exhibited oils and watercolours 1930-48), convenor of the art coterie of the Brisbane Women’s Club 1938-39, President of the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland 1939-41, a foundation member and first President of the Half Dozen Group of Artists in 1941 (life member from 1957) and a life member of the Toowoomba Art Society. She returned to live in Toowoomba in 1942, largely devoting herself to painting floral still lives which she exhibited with the latter two societies. She died in Toowoomba on 26 March 1964.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
newtog
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 18 September 1872
- Summary
- Although Mona Elliott developed her interest in pottery and painting late in life, she made a significant contribution to art in both Brisbane and Toowoomba, largely through her involvement in the Royal Queensland Art Society, the Brisbane Women's Club, the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland, the Half Dozen Group of Artists and the Toowoomba Art Society.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Mar-64
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1964-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- watercolour painter, Sydney. Exhibition of Woman’s Work, Sydney, 1892: Water Colours -no.60 Aitken, Louisa S., Sydney – Flowers (for competition).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1872
- Summary
- Colonial female watercolourist whose painting of flowers was exhibited competitively at the 1892 Exhibition of Woman's Work in Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1964
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Mary Darling was born in Brisbane c.1913 and left home at the age of 15 years to be a companion to Max Ramsay (brother of the former Queensland Governor Sir Alan Ramsay). She led a quiet though artistically oriented life. She drew with the Brisbane Sketching Club but did little further after she developed an interest in pottery. She probably began to study pottery and china painting with L. J. Harvey at Horsham House about 1947. After Harvey’s death in 1949 she also attended the classes of another Brisbane pottery teacher, Arthur Hustwit, at Buranda until his own death in 1960. With the exception of her carved and pierced works (such as a elaborate triple gourd lamp base), the work she produced under Hustwit’s instruction are much less complex than that produced under Harvey. She became a skilled practitioner. She exhibited at the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association in the years 1950-52. She died in 1963.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1913
- Summary
- The ceramics of Mary Darling mark the transition from the teaching of L.J. Harvey to Arthur Hustwit the next prominent private pottery teacher in Brisbane.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1963
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude-33.8819328 Longitude151.155867 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leichhardt, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1906
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1963
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-37.856129 Longitude145.019139 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Armadale, Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1905
- Summary
- Melbourne based gallery and café manager who was also active in anti-censorship and other civil liberty campaigns during the 1930s
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1963
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-37.8557913 Longitude144.9915847 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Windsor, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Arnold Shore never travelled further than Sydney from his native Melbourne, but he had an enduring influence on those Melbourne artists who looked towards modern Europe for inspiration. He was born 5 May 1897, the youngest of seven children of a Windsor coachsmith, and on leaving Prahran West State School he was apprenticed to Brooks, Robinson & Co. Ltd where he designed and made stained glass for over 20 years. He also worked as a freelance illustrator. One of his fellow employees at Brooks, Robinson & Co was William Frater, who was also interested in art. The two became close friends. He attended evening classes with Frederick McCubbin at the National Gallery School, but in 1917 he joined many of his fellow students in switching to the new Max Meldrum school. After Meldrum’s school closed in 1923, Shore began to exhibit with the group, Twenty Melbourne Painters. His work began to show the influence of European Post-Impressionism, which was a minority taste in Melbourne at the time. In August 1929 he held a solo exhibition at the Athenaeum Gallery, in what was probably the first exhibition of modernist art in Melbourne. As he never travelled outside Australia, his knowledge came from reproductions in books and magazines which he read in the public library. In 1932 Shore joined with George Bell to start the Bell-Shore School on the corner of Queen and Bourke Streets. The partnership ended in 1936. In 1937 he held his second solo exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney, which received significant critical and commercial success. After his mother died in 1938, he sold the family home in Windsor and moved to rural Mount Macedon which became the subject of some of his most lyrically beautiful landscapes. Eight years later, in 1947 he moved to Sydney, but the following year he returned to Melbourne where he was employed as Guide Lecturer, introducing visitors to the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. He married Agnes Vivien Scott in 1950 and they moved to Hawthorn.He also began to write art criticism for The Argus, and after that paper closed in 1958, he was appointed art critic to The Age and left the National Gallery of Victoria so that he could concentrate on his painting. He died at home in Hawthorne on 22 May 1963.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 May 1897
- Summary
- Influential mid 20th century Melbourne modernist painter, teacher, critic and cartoonist. Shore began his career designing stained glass. In the 1920s he consistently supported Post-Impressionist works. With George Bell he founded the Bell-Shore school.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-May-63
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1893
- Summary
- New Zealand-born, Sydney-based portrait painter and scarf painter, working from the 1920s until the 1950s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1963
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-34.3411271 Longitude150.9068766 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Woonona, Bulli, Wollongong, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator and painter, was born at Bulli on the south coast of NSW on 25 March 1891, son of Rev. G.C. Percival. Educated at public schools and at Sydney High, he became a high school teacher with the NSW Education Department. (There is some speculation he may have been the 'Mr Percival’ who studied with Julian Ashton and Sydney Long at Ashton’s Sydney Art School in 1908 and won first prize at the school’s first student exhibition in December. Viola Quaife came second and Ruby Winckler third.)
Percival enlisted with the AIF in October 1915 and served with the Motor Transport Corps until 1918 when he was transferred to the Education Service and thence to War Records. He contributed cartoons to the wartime Aussie while on active service and had a cartoon published in London Punch while working as an artist in the Australian War Records Section in London under Major Treloar (subsequently director of the Australian War Memorial). Warrant Officer Percival’s colleagues in the London office included Captain Will Longstaff and Lieutenants Frank Crozier and G.C. Benson (see William Moore vol.2, p.48).
Percival took over from Norman Lindsay as principal cartoonist on the Bulletin in August 1924 (according to Who’s Who 1927-28). 119 of his original Bulletin cartoons dated 1920-31, 118 cartoons, one political cartoon and 12 caricatures of 1923-24 (including sporting figures) are in ML, e.g. Readers of the Bulletin c.1926-28, and Another Geological Wonder . Sculptor (exhibiting one of his pieces): “She was cut out of a solid piece of marble.”/ Woop: “Cripes! How did she come to get there?” published 5 April 1933. David Harris lent his “The Spring Exhibition” from the picture’s point of view (1920s) to the 1999 exhibition Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White at the National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery.
In 1927 Percival was living at 40 Cheltenham Road, Croydon. He gave his recreations in Who’s Who in Australia as tennis and motoring. Rolfe (p.269) considers him something of a Lindsay copyist, which seems true for political cartoons like Not All Lost (9 April 1930). Other drawings are in the 'Dad and Dave or Jacky Jacky’ mould, e.g. Throwing the Responsibility on the Pudding ('Could you find a corner for another helping of pudding, Jacky?’/ 'Mine tinkit this fpeller put down 'im neck and let it take it chance, boss’ – which is more like a naturalistic Minns – published in the 'Aboriginalities’ column, 29 February 1928, 19. Most of his cartoons, however, were quite different and much more original. As Fifty years… far more aptly notes, he 'specialised in natural art with almost photographic finish; skilled in full pages of groups’. Making a virtue of necessity, chiarascuro is often intrinsic to his images, notably in his cartoon of a movie audience, Popular Education: A Picture Show Study , published in the Bulletin on 12 September 1928 (original Mitchell Library Px*D501/42).
Percival’s contemporary (predecessor?) Percy Leason was a similarly gifted draughtsman. Percival’s success depended on the audience’s recognition of the accuracy and meticulous detailing in his portraits of everyday Australian suburban types. The State Library of New South Wales holds several Bulletin originals of 'almost photographic finish’ and folksy subjects, including All cobbers at five o’clock (a bus queue), published 25 July 1928, 22; a Christmas toyshop window ( At a Window in Paradise’ ), 1926; the Devil chatting up a feminised Death in a hospital corridor with a nurse scurrying off in the background with a caption claiming that death has lost its punch since the use of morphia; and a businessman – a war profiteer not the stereotypical 'Fat’ capitalist of the Left (naturally) – toasting a skewered ANZAC digger over his lounge-room fire.
In line with the post-1920 Bulletin 's editorial stance, Percival’s political cartoons were extremely conservative and often distasteful – pro-Royal but anti-Communist, anti-semitic, anti-feminist, anti-Labor and anti-Lang, e.g. Mr Lang in his new Part of Cromwell 1929 (ill. King, 124). Some are witty, e.g. his late Depression cartoon Time somebody got to work , published 27 January 1932, with Prime Minister Lyons as a waiter repeatedly reading out the menu to an 'average’ Australian family but never bringing any food. In retrospect, Percival’s artistic eclecticism perhaps supports W.E. Pidgeon 's argument (made in the 1940s) that a cartoonist must be independent of editorial intervention in order to achieve anything yet increasingly lacked this freedom in Australia.
In the 1940s Percival illustrated children’s books with rather crude drawings mainly for the Currawong Publishing Company in Sydney, e.g. Animal Life: Pictures for Little Children/ An OPC/ Untearable Book (Sydney: Offset Printing Coy, n.d. [194?] acc Muir vol.1, no.195); The Digger Hat by Tip Kellaher (Sydney: Currawong Publishing, 1942); The Comical Adventures of Osca and Olga: A Tale of Mice in Mouseland (Sydney: Currawaong Publishing Coy, n.d. [1943]), and The Remarkable Ramblings of Rupert and Rita (Sydney: Currawong Publishing Coy, n.d. [1944]) by Paul Buddee; Queer Animals 1943, Queer Birds n.d. [1943], Queer Australian Fishes 1944 and Queer Australian Insects 1944, all by J. W. Heming (Sydney: Currawong), acc. Muir; The Ducks Who Didn’t by Jill Meillon (Sydney, Currawong, n.d [1946]; Happy Holidays: Stories and Pictures for Children (Sydney: Offsett Press, 1947) according to Muir.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 25 March 1891
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney cartoonist, illustrator and painter. Percival took over from Norman Lindsay as principal cartoonist on the Bulletin in August 1924 but in the 1940s was better known for his children's book illustrations.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1963
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, New Zealand
- Biography
- cartoonist and caricaturist, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 7 April 1891 [not 1892 as commonly stated;. see NZ Dictionary of Biography entry by Susan E. Foster], third son in the family of four children of David Brown Low, a pharmacist from Scotland, and New-Zealand-born Jane Caroline, née Flanagan. Soon after his birth the family moved to Christchurch where David was educated. According to the Kent (UK) and NZ cartoon centres (Colin Seymour-Ure) and the NZDB, his first published cartoon appeared in the British comic Big Budget in 1902, when he was aged 11. It was followed by him winning (and continuing to win) a monthly children’s drawing competition held by Melbourne’s New Idea and also publishing his first cartoon on public affairs, a comment on a local council controversy, in the Christchurch satirical weekly Spectator (co-founded by cartoonist William Blomfield ) that same year. In 1903 Low left school (still aged 11) and joined the Spectator , where he was paid five shillings a week for two gag drawings.
In 1905 he attended a business college for a couple of years, but his study suffered due to his continuing work as a cartoonist and he failed his final examination. He also enrolled at the Canterbury School of Art but disliked its emphasis on conventional technique. He drew anti-smoking and anti-gambling cartoons for the Salvation Army’s War Cry in 1906 and was an occasional police-court sketcher on New Zealand Truth 1906-10. In 1907 he joined the new, short-lived, weekly Sketcher owned by caricaturist Fred Rayner, where he was paid two pounds a week. When it folded, he re-joined the Spectator (in 1908) as the full-time political cartoonist for this 'circumspect voice of liberalism’, drawing two full-page and four smaller cartoons and caricatures a week, although the Spectator 's co-owner, the politician G.W. Russell, finally objected to him simultaneously drawing political cartoons for the radical new Labor Party weekly, the Weekly Herald (Wellington).
In 1910 Low left Wellington to work in Christchurch on the technically superior (Liberal) Canterbury Times which had been using process engraving since 1895, hired for five pounds a week to do larger (full-page) cartoons (1911 examples ill. Grant 83, 84, 86). According to Grant (following Low’s Autobiography ), paper and man parted company when Low refused to draw cartoons approving compulsory military training (conscription) in 1911 – although in Sydney he followed the Bulletin line and was pro-conscription. A far more compelling reason was the prospect of a job in Sydney. After posting copies of his work to 20 Australian editors each week marked 'URGENT PERSONAL’, he was invited to join the Melbourne office of the Sydney Bulletin on a six-month contract in 1911. Aged 21 (acc. Caban) or 22 (acc. Lindesay, Moore et al) he moved to Melbourne.
After his contract expired, he travelled around Australia doing caricatures of local notables for the Bulletin – leading to a book of 400 caricatures published in 1915 and 'A useful prelude to a career as a full-blown political cartoonist for the Bulletin ', he noted in Low’s Autobiography (quoted Caban, 34-35). He worked in Sydney as a general cartoonist in 1913 then in 1914 was appointed the official Melbourne staff cartoonist, complementing Norman Lindsay who had become the Sydney political cartoonist in 1913 after Hop retired. Melbourne being the de-facto capital, Low concentrated on the federal political scene. He drew numerous caricatures for the Bulletin , including many non-political ones, e.g. Bob Croll of the A.A.A. Vic published 7 February 1916 (original Josef Lebovic 1997 cat.34, $790). Low was a Melbourne Savage, as was Croll and Bernard O’Dowd, Poet (Low print published 20 February 1919, Lebovic cat.35, $790). His excellent caricature of 'Prof’ Frederick McCubbin is in the Melbourne Savage Club collection. The ML Bulletin collection has 13 original cartoons and 174 caricatures of 1912-39, all of men; 10 date from 1914-30 while three politicians are undated (acc. index).
Low also contributed to the Lone Hand . Examples include the caricature series, Writers and Artists of Australia (1 June 1914, 30; 1 April 1914, 318), and the cover for February 1914 showing an Aboriginal woman leering at a swimming child at the beach captioned The sea hath its pearls , a racist parody of Margetson’s painting of the same title which was one of the most popular works in the AGNSW at the time.
Low claimed he learned to draw by copying cartoons from London Punch . He said he was also influenced by the 'cheerful vulgarity’ of the English children’s paper Comic Cuts . His Bulletin predecessor Phil May certainly influenced him greatly (though that influence was not mentioned in his autobiography). Initially, he drew with a pen, but later used a brush over a pencil sketch; indeed, he more or less pioneered brush drawing in Australia. He drew the Bulletin 's main weekly cartoon from Melbourne while Norman Lindsay drew Sydney’s. 'I could hardly speak to him for reverence’, Low recalled, yet he nevertheless drew a cartoon featuring an artist looking very like Lindsay entitled Justification for his extinction , published 9 May 1918, 24. 'Like all ruthless gogetters, Low was not a likable man’, was Lindsay’s verdict (quoted Caban, 37; Rolfe, 231).
Low’s second published cartoon anthology The Billy Book (Sydney, 1918) on Prime Minister Billy Hughes made him famous; some 60,000 copies were sold. It includes Billiwog, London’s latest craze ('No war is complete without one’). Originals are held in the NLA, the Melbourne Savage Club and elsewhere. Hughes is said to have torn up the book and thrown it into a corner of the room when given a copy by one of his ministers (Caban, 36). Low wrote that the dislike was mutual. Nevertheless, Hughes made his Australian reputation. Later examples include Hughes’s vision of the Peace Conference (published Bulletin 12 December 1918, 10) and The Circus leaves for Home (published 10 July 1919). The pen and ink and brush and ink, pencil and white original of the latter is in the AGNSW, purchased from the Geoff K. Gray auction on 18/12/1970 when lots of Low’s cartoons of Hughes were sold.
He shared a studio in Melbourne with Hal Gye , whom he caricatured in Some Writers and Artists along with Alf Vincent , George Dancey , David Souter , Hugh McCrae et al. (there is some speculation that Max Meldrum is also among the caricatures in this publication, original SLV). They also appeared in Low’s Caricatures (Sydney, Tyrell, 1915), the book of 400 caricatures covering his Australian/ Bulletin years. Gye returned the compliment and drew Low as a wild savage en route to London for a Melbourne Savage Club Smoke Concert in 1919 (see Joan Kerr 'Savages and Blackfellows’ lecture). Low drew the club’s bookplate and several concert programmes, e.g. 124th Smoke Night Programme cover of a dancing Aboriginal woman and an Aboriginal man playing an accordion in honour of Marshall Hall’s Australian opera (see Savages lecture). The originals are still in the Club.
Unlike May, Hop and Lindsay, Low was renowned for supplying his own ideas for political cartoons. Rolfe (p.263) claims he was the only Bulletin cartoonist entirely confident of expressing political views until Tanner was appointed in the 1960s. Even so, like Hughes and the Bulletin , he became pro-conscription in Australia, e.g. At Berlin If Australia Voted No (poster ML PAM. Q355.22/C). When drafted, it is said, he – or the Bulletin on his behalf – filed a successful claim for exemption. (There is some speculation that he was drafted to the New Zealand army as the conscription referendum in Australia was lost and nobody was 'drafted’, but everyone repeats it, even Seymour-Ure.)
Like his employers, Low was virulently anti-communist, e.g. Could You Oblige Me With A Match? [to light the wick of a bomb], Bulletin 1 May 1919 (ill. King, 116; original in Melbourne Savage Club), and Splicing the main-brace 1919, with the Seaman’s Union as a priest marrying virginal Labor to the evil Communist Movement (ill. King, 116). It inspired a very similar cartoon, Harry’s Fond Dream (with murderous Bolshevism, i.e. Labour, being married to a weeping 'The Churches’ by the Communist (?) Harry Holland) by John H. Gee. Gee’s cartoon appeared in the NZ Free Lance in 1924 (ill. Grant, 116) – evidence of Low’s continuing influence back home and the continuing import of cartoonists and export of cartoons across the Tasman.
Having just as assiduously sent examples of his work to London from Melbourne as he had from New Zealand to Australia (and London), Low moved there after nine years – in 1919 when aged 28 – the success of the Billy Book having led to a contract from the London Star . A cartoon self-portrait, Off to London ( Bulletin August (?) 1919, ill. Seymour-Ure frontispiece), shows a jaunty Low pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with trunk, swag, lay figure, sketchbook and an easel with a pot labelled 'gall’ hanging from it. The last was particularly evident in his farewell letter to the Bulletin (quoted Rolfe, 267) in which he bitterly denounced Australian self-complacency and meanness of spirit.
Low worked in England for the rest of his life. Early on he used Lloyd George as another Hughes; his Lloyd George and Co was published in 1921. Many cartoon books followed and he also contributed to Punch . In 1926 he joined the Daily Express , but the following year he was engaged by Lord Beaverbrook for the Tory Evening Standard at a salary larger than that paid to any other cartoonist in London. (He was 35.) In 1933 his cartoons satirising Hitler and the Nazi regime, which date from 1927, were banned in Germany; in 1935 he was banned in Italy for satirising Mussolini.
Low stayed with the Evening Standard until 1949, earning up to £3,000 p.a., making a major international reputation and eventually seeing his cartoons syndicated in about 40 newspapers. His best-known character was Colonel Blimp, created in 1934 – a household name during WWII. A.J.P. Taylor ( Beaverbrook 1972, 594-95) described Low’s resignation as the 'gravest event’ for Beaverbrook newspapers in 1949. Early in 1950 he joined the Daily Herald , a Labour newspaper with a readership of two million (three times larger than that of the Evening Standard ) citing 'restlessness’ as his motive. In 1952 he was enticed to the Manchester Guardian , where he remained for the rest of his life, being paid more than either the editor or the managing director (Seymour-Ure 1975, 13).
In 1962 Low accepted the knighthood he had declined in the 1930s (Seymour-Ure 1995, p.12). When he died on 19 September 1963, aged 72, the British press called him 'the dominant cartoonist of the Western world’. It was a reputation he had enjoyed for more than 30 years (Lindesay 1979, 24 & 1994, 92). In 1920 he had cabled a marriage proposal to Madeline Grieve Kenning, a New Zealander from Auckland whom he had met during a three-day stopover en route to London from Australia. They married in London and had two daughters (Mrs Prudence Rowe-Evans and Dr Rachael Whear), all of whom survived him {according to NZDB: 1995 Seymour-Ure mentions only two daughters surviving him}
Images include Imperial Conference. 'Asquith: “David, talk to him in Welsh and pacify him!”’ Bulletin 28 September 1916 (ill. Caban, 33; Harris, 232; King, 108; Rolfe, 264, 266). The day after it appeared masses of telegrams and letters, even flowers, arrived at the Bulletin office. The Governor-General sent an aide to Low’s office to ask for the original for the Commonwealth Parliament; Hughes had to sign 20 copies for members of the British Cabinet and Lloyd George had to have two. 'Too full of lines’ was Low’s own public verdict. NLA apparently has the original 1916 Federal Parliament pen and ink drawing [NK 660/3A] (which has three figures only), titled Imperial Conference: The Firebrand and the Fossils. 'Asquith: “David, talk to him in Welsh and pacify him!” The complementary A Labour Conference 1916 shows Hughes cowering against trade unionists: 'Pearce: “Sing them 'The Red Flag’, Billy, and pacify them.”’(ill. Caban, 33; Rolfe, 265).
David Low, Editorial meeting at the Bulletin c.1913, which shows William Macleod, the managing editor and chief shareholder seated on a throne, Hop, S.H. Prior (looking meek) and editor James Edmond talking to J.F. Archibald, the founder and guiding spirit, seated at the opposite end of the table to Macleod (original ML, republished Edmond obituary, Bulletin 29 March 1933, 28 and in J. Kerr, Artists and Cartoonists 1999).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 7 April 1891
- Summary
- Significant mid 20th century New Zealand born cartoonist and caricaturist who worked in Australia during the 1910s before embarking on a career as an influential political cartoonist in London. Creator of the character Colonel Blimp.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Sep-63
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude56.6739826 Longitude12.8574827 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Halmstad, Sweden
- Biography
- cartoonist and illustrator, was born on a farm in Halmstad, Sweden, on 13 December 1890. Aged 18, he became a sailor, painting pictures of ships for his mates in his spare time. After nine years at sea, he jumped ship at New Zealand in 1915, worked in cold stores for a while then came to Australia in March 1917. He went timbercutting in Queensland in 1918. While working as a high rigger on the White Bay wheat silos in Sydney he decided to become an art student, studied full-time with J.S. Watkins in 1918-20 and was employed as an assistant instructor after a year. Then he worked as a commercial artist and freelance cartoonist. Some of his earliest drawings were published in Aussie in the early 1920s.
Jonsson joined Smith’s Weekly in 1924, where he did most of the horse gags and shipwrecked sailor sequences (see Caban, 42 for horse comic-strip illustration). Other topics are: 'Mum: “There certainly are some people with queer tastes in Sydney, but I don’t know what she could see in him” (black man carrying a white women’s baby), Smith’s 8 March 1924; construction worker jokes, eg two falling off tall building, “We’ll be stiff if we don’t get compensation out of this” 22 May 1926; 'Labourer: “Who strung the foreman up?”/ Dogman: “'E was demonstrating the 'ang-man’s knot when I accidentally coughed in me whistle” 22 March 1930. An original cartoon collected by Thomas Finch Roy Ottaway (ML PXD 619) – 'Shopkeeper: “Swear! Oh no I can assure you he doesn’t.” Lady: “That’s good, me and me old man will 'ave no end of fun teachin’ im to”’ n.d. [1930s?] – was probably done for Smith’s . Another cartoon in the Ottaway collection signed 'J.J.’ of a man and woman, burglar and policeman, boss and office boy may also be by Jonsson. At Smith’s the Dorothy Dix type character Bertha Blitter was created by Kenneth Slessor and drawn by Jonsson (Dutton, p.126). His original Smith’s cartoon, 'New hand – Get back to bed, sir, you’re walking in your sleep’, was presented to ML (PXD 840) in 1999 by the wife of a former reporter, along with 20+ other originals by Smith’s artists and a copy of the final issue (28 October 1950) signed by all the cartoonists (see PICMAN). A prisoner and warder gag, evidently done for Smith’s , is held in private collection.
Jonsson was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists in 1924, along with 24 other male cartoonists, mainly from Sydney. All 25 contributed to the Society’s first publication commemorating the visit of the US Fleet in 1925 (see Harry J. Weston ). On 14 February 1927, he married the Sydney-born art student Agnes Mary McIntyre at Bondi Presbyterian manse. They lived at Wahroonga with a dog, horse and numerous cats. Joe liked gardening and woodcarving. During the 1930s Depression he donated ten pounds a week from his pay to the coalminers.
According to Smith’s (20 April 1935, 26) Jonsson was the most popular of its cartoonists 'on the Continent’ (its jokes were being increasingly syndicated overseas), 'judged by the frequency with which his work is reprinted and flatteringly acknowledged… [I]n his leisure [time] he loves to paint delicate water colors of Sydney scenes… But he has a passion for the grotesque, which he expresses hilariously in pen and ink.’ Standardisation in Smith’s (1933) depicts a large family sharing similar features and the same style of hat.
Beattie said Jonsson was enormously powerful and reckless, with a humped back. When Smith’s expired in 1950 he was the only early artist still on the staff. He moved to the Sydney production unit of the Courier Mail (Brisbane), while also doing comic strips for Sir Keith Murdoch’s Herald and Weekly Times (February 1951 to March 1963). In 1951 he created the most successful horse comic strip in Australian newspaper history for the Courier Mail , 'Uncle Joe’s Horse Radish’ (an original strip is in AGWA, acq. From Sun-Herald newspapers). The strip was carried on by the Courier Mail 's political cartoonist Ian Gall after Joe died at Sydney on 19 March 1963. His wife, son and daughter survived him.
Lindesay (1979, 45) notes that Jonsson’s drawings look as if they had been done with a toothbrush yet have tremendous dash and zest. He was famous for his jokes about drunks ('blottos’). Sir John Longstaff called Jonsson the finest black-and-white artist Australia has produced, to which Joe commented: 'Fancy that! And me a bletty Swede too!’ (Blaikie, 78).
Jonsson’s cartoons include 'The man who beat Lang to the tape’, Smith’s Weekly , published 19 March 1932, 14, headed 'Forecast of the unrehearsed bridge incident’ and accompanied by a story that reports the New Guard leader Colonel Eric Campbell said the week before that Lang would not open the bridge (original drawing in de Groot Papers ML *D143).
Jonsson’s portrait is included in line-up by Frank Dunne captioned 'Seeing’s Believing – “Smith’s” Artists On Parade’ 30 July 1932, 7, with description: 'JOE JONSSON draws horses that never were on sea or land or racecourse. Joe comes from the north of Europe. Where he is going is not certain. On paper, Joe has two children, Oigle and Goigle, not that that matters.’ Self-portrait with watering-can, Smith’s Weekly 15 April 1933, 3 (with joke biography by Kenneth Slessor captioned 'Jonsson, Joe, at work on his Warramurra ranch’).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 13 December 1890
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney newspaper cartoonist and illustrator. Jonsson was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists and a cartoonist at Smith's Weekly for over 25 years.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Mar-63
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-37.8377695 Longitude144.9918537 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Yarra, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Aug-63
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude45.4077172 Longitude11.8734455 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Padua, Italy
- Biography
- Sketcher born at Padua, in Italy to Domenico and Malvina, n_e Ricci. This was an old Albaredo d’Adige (Verona) family. He was orphaned in 1895 and arrived in Western Australia in 1897 with his older brother Carlo to join his older brother Francesco and uncle Eugenio, a mining entrepreneur. He exhibited pen and ink and lino-cut sketches with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1899.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1883
- Summary
- Sketcher who migrated from Italy and exhibited pen and ink and lino-cut sketches with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1899.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1963
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, was the third daughter of William Cockburn Mercer, a pioneer settler of Springwood, Wannon, in the Western District of Victoria. She was born in Scotland while her Australian mother was on a visit 'home’. She spent her childhood in Victoria until her mother took her to Italy to complete her education in her teens. Aged 17, Mary ran away to Paris, where she lived a Bohemian artist’s life in Montparnasse, mixing with Pablo Picasso and School of Paris artists Marc Chagall, Marie Laurencin, Jules Pascin and Kees van Dongen. In 1922 she worked as a studio assistant at L’Académie Lhôte, translating André Lhôte’s teachings for his English-speaking students and being influenced by his Synthetic Cubist ideas of dynamic symmetry.
In 1920-22, with her partner American artist Alexander Robinson, Mercer built a large house at Cassis in the south of France, where they moved in 1922. She painted oil and watercolour landscapes of the scenery around her influenced by Lhôte’s teaching, and collected works by artist friends including Chagall, van Dongen, Louis Marcoussis, Jean-Francis Laglenne, Valentine Prax, Roger Du Fresne and Gino Severini, according to McDonald. (St John Moore writes in Heritage : 'Mercer knew and collected School of Paris artists such as Lhote, Van Dongen, Chagall, Pascin and Laurencin; she also had works by Du Fresne, Severini, Marcoussis, Lurcat and Bissiere.’) Many remained in her collection until her death and formed part of a group of works retrieved in 1999 by Rollin Schlicht from behind a wardrobe in his parents’ home in Wimbledon, London. His father, the London art dealer Theo Schlicht, had been a friend of Mercer’s since childhood, when they had grown up together in the Western District of Victoria. Included was a folio of oil and watercolour paintings and sketches by Mercer herself, acquired by the NGA in 2001. Included is the small oil painting House and olive trees 1920s thought to be of her Cassis home.
Mercer became intimate with Janet Cumbrae Stewart in France in the 1920s, a friendship renewed at Melbourne in 1939. For a while, Mary rented a villa on Capri next door to Compton Mackenzie (who refers to her in his 1927 novel satirising the lesbian social set of Capri, Extraordinary Women ). In the Canaries she met and fell in love with a German photographer son of a wealthy industrialist. Together they went to Spain – and got caught up in the Spanish Civil War. He was forced to return to Germany for military service, while Mercer managed to escape in a ship that eventually arrived at Tahiti where she lived for some years. Then she moved to an island off Guam where she met the painter Ian Fairweather . Returning to Melbourne in 1938, she rented a studio apartment at 539 Bourke Street (the old St James Buildings) where she also held art classes. Two students who studied with her briefly in 1951 were Lina Bryans , who met her at a Fairweather exhibition at the Stanley Coe Gallery that year, and the NZ painter Colin McCahon.
Mercer attended George Bell 's School for two months in 1938 and remained close to Bell throughout the 1940s. During the war years she exhibited with the Contemporary Art Society (CAS), though her 'decadent’ nudes were often hung behind the gallery doors. McDonald states: 'Their overt sexuality shows the influence of Laurencin and Man Ray’s photographs of the famous model Kiki of Montparnasse. It was not until Mercer was in Melbourne that she concentrated fully on these figure studies, possibly influenced by Janet Cumbrae Stewart…. [who] had returned to Melbourne in 1939 and the two women again became lovers.’ One of her few positive reviewers was the painter and critic Adrian Lawlor , who in the Sun News Pictorial of 9 August 1942 praised the 'glowing reds of Rubens’ in her controversial Bacchante (quoted Eagle & Minchin) and in November praised the 'lyrical distortion’ of her portrait of Kathleen Schlicht, shown in the annual CAS exhibition at the Athenaeum Gallery. A painting of nude woman/Venus and a young boy clutching a penguin being swept on shore on icy Antarctic waves and surrounded by icebergs, rocks and penguins, Birth of Venus (Study in Diagonals) 1941, oil on board 69 × 72 cm, was first shown in Forty Seven Painters , Velasquez Gallery, Melbourne, in December 1941 (cat.56), and later (inter alia) in Classical Modernism: The George Bell Circle , National Gallery of Victoria, 1992, cat. 79, and Great Australian Artists of the Twentieth Century , Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, July 1992, before being offered at Sotheby’s Melbourne on 5 May 2003 (lot 258, est. $4,000-6,000; sold for c.$7,000).
As well as Cumbrae Stewart and Fairweather, Mercer’s special friends in Melbourne were her [gay] neighbours in the St James Buildings, David Strachan and Wolfgang Cardamatis – who had spent time in Europe – and the modernist artists William Frater , Arnold Shore and Lina Bryans. When Mercer returned to Cassis in about 1952, she left some of her Australian works with Bryans. Bryans visited her in France in 1953, and it was Bryans who donated Mercer’s major painting, The Virgin of the Rocks 1943, to the Art Gallery of SA in 1984. Felicity St John Moore wrote about this painting in Heritage :
Mary Cockburn Mercer’s strange allegory was painted in her studio in the St James Buildings, Melbourne, during the darkest period of World War II-a war which separated this mainly expatriate artist from her beloved Europe. Both theme and title were borrowed from the novel, read in the original Italian, Le Vergini delle Rocce , by her favourite decadent author, Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863-1938). One can perhaps assume that Mercer identified with the passage in d’Annunzio’s prologue: ' I was about to enter an enclosed garden. There the three virgin princesses were awaiting the friend who had been absent so long… the return of an equal, of a sojourner in great cities, one who should bring them a breath of that larger life which they had renounced. And each one of them perhaps in her secret heart was awaiting the bridegroom. '
With the 'bridegroom’ doubling as the Crucified Christ (the feet at the top) and the three virgins (or Maries) trebling as 'the Graces or Gorgons’, Mercer’s picture is layered with classical references, memories of her villa at Capri and personal meanings, symbols and fantasies. The affected virgins-one blonde, one brunette and one redhead-are carefully posed at the foot of an elaborate stone fountain, d’Annunzio’s 'pompous composition of Neptune’s horses, tritons, dolphins’, in a grotto strewn with roses. Below the fountain stands a grotesque coil and claw foot, while at the top of the picture, as if to balance the composition, are the disembodied feet. (They may belong to her German lover, a photographer she met in the Canaries who was forced to return to Germany for military service, or to her American painter friend in Cassis, Alexander Robinson, who was interned during the Occupation.) Like the 'sacrificial lamb’ next to the seated virgin (Mary had a little lamb?), these splayed feet are symbols of Death and Christ’s Passion, while the rampant sea horses whose stamping hoofs ripple the waters of the fountain, signal a more normal or animal passion to evoke d’Annunzio’s line, 'Here did Pleasure and Death admire their united reflection’.
Mercer’s picture is linked through her literary source with the avant-garde currents of Symbolism and Decadence, except that Symbolist flatness and linearity have been replaced by the 'reality’ of her models and blocky cubist-derived forms. Reflecting her espousal of the New Classicism of Leger, Lhote, Gleizes, Du Fresne and others, these blocky forms are constructed on a geometric scaffolding according to the system of dynamic symmetry. This scaffolding, which is barely disguised by the abundance of tilted arms and legs, turned wrists and elongated necks, helps to explain the fragmented and disturbing effect of her complex composition.
Given that Mercer was familiar with Leonardo da Vinci’s magical Virgin of the Rocks (quotations from Leonardo’s Notebooks are sprinkled through d’Annunzio’s text), her contrastingly unnatural and mannered treatment of the same theme-shallow airless space, distorted figures and enlarged feet-is deliberately perverse. But so too are the romances of Gabriele d’Annunzio, which struck a chord with this well-read, independent and pro tempore frustrated artist who lived her life with such gusto. Drawing on her understanding of European art and literature, Mary Cockburn Mercer translated the boredom of daily life into the vocabulary of high art. She gave The Virgins of the Rocks to Lina Bryans when she left Australia after the war.
A sparkling hostess, Mercer travelled widely, spoke fluent French and Italian and began to learn Russian in her seventies when forced to give up painting because of severe arthritis. She spent the last ten years of her life in France, selling the Cassis villa and building a small house in the grounds of a convalescent home in Aubagne [she swapped her villa for an apartment in Aubagne, according to McDonald]. She died there on 14 August 1963, aged eighty-one. Her work was largely forgotten until 1975 when the Victorian art dealer Russell Davis held an exhibition of her work, having come across six or seven of her paintings in 1972 then spent three years discovering her romantic life story.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 19 April 1882
- Summary
- Figurative painter in the Modernist style who lived a Bohemian artist's life in Montparnasse, Paris, before residing and painting in Melbourne 1938-1954.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 14-Aug-63
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude52.5138661 Longitude1.7222986 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gorleston, Suffolk, England, UK
- Biography
- Painter, printmaker and teacher, was born in South Town, Gorleston, Suffolk, England, on 21 September 1882. She came to Australia about 1914 and worked in NSW and Queensland. Her linocut, Queensland Landscape c.1932 (NGA), was made in Brisbane, where she died in 1963.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 21 September 1882
- Summary
- Painter, printmaker and teacher, born in England who came to Australia about 1914 and worked in New South Wales and Queensland. She died in Brisbane in 1963.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1963
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude53.9590555 Longitude-1.0815361 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- York, England
- Biography
- Landscape painter, printmaker and art gallery director. The son of James Ashton and Mary Elizabeth Rawling, John William Ashton was born in York, England, on 20 September 1881. Ashton’s father was an artist who taught at the York School of Art, but, dissatisfied with his future prospects in England, he travelled to Adelaide in 1884 in search of opportunities while his wife and son remained in England. The following year Ashton (senior) established the Norwood Art School in Adelaide and later founded the Academy of Arts. Mary Ashton and her three-year-old son were reunited with James Ashton in 1884 and the family set up home in Norwood. In 1887 Ashton (senior) became the drawing master at Prince Alfred College, a position he held for forty years. In 1889, the eight-year-old Will Ashton entered Prince Alfred College where he remained until 1897. Neither academic nor sporty (his school nickname was 'fatty’), Ashton passed his first grade art examinations in 1896, obtaining the grade of 'excellent’. After leaving school he started working in his father’s studio doing odd jobs such as stretching canvas and putting out the work for the students. He also painted still life and at weekends sketched in watercolour. One of his early watercolours was awarded a bronze star by the Royal Drawing Society, London. While working with his father, Ashton became friends with fellow students Hans Heysen, Hayley Lever and Gustave A. Barnes. In 1898 Ashton and Heysen studied with the English émigré artist Archibald Collins in Adelaide. Later, Ashton departed Australia and travelled to England where he joined Julius Olsson’s School of Landscape and Sea Painting at St. Ives, Cornwall. Julius Olsson and his assistant Algernon Talmage instructed Ashton to paint boats, old buildings and the pretty St. Ives harbour; fellow Australian students at the school were A.J.W. Burgess and Charles Bryant. In 1902 Ashton moved to France and enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris, where his teachers were François Schoomar and Marcel André Baschet; fellow students included E. Phillips Fox, David Davies, James Quinn, Ambrose Paterson and Heysen. Apart from his formal studies Ashton sketched at weekends in Paris streets or on the banks of the River Seine. His first great success was in 1904 when two works, The Wreck and Reed Waters, were exhibited at the Royal Academy. From that time onwards 'J. William Ashton’ dropped his first name and signed his work 'Will Ashton’ to avoid confusion with his father and Julian Ashton. In early 1905 Ashton returned to Australia and took over his father’s outdoor sketching class. Late that year he exhibited work at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales annual show in Sydney, and the [National] Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) purchased A Winter’s Eve, Paris. During one of his sketching classes, Ashton met student May Millman and the couple married on 31 January 1906 in North Adelaide. In 1908, Ashton’s reputation was on the rise, especially after being awarded the Wynne Prize (the first of three wins) for Noontide, Burnside. In 1914 Ashton travelled again to Europe, and his former teacher Julius Olsson asked him to take over his painting school in St Ives, with himself and Talmage as visiting professors, but World War I prevented the plan from going ahead. Before returning to Australia, Ashton bought works to the value of £2,000 for the Art Gallery of South Australia, and after returning home in 1918 was appointed to the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board (CAAB), a position once held by his father. Ashton remained on the CAAB for the rest of his life, and was appointed its chairman in 1953. During the 1920s and early ’30s, Ashton was a regular visitor to continental Europe as well as Britain. In 1924 he travelled to Spain and visited the Prado where he saw the work of Velasquez and El Greco. While at the Prado, Ashton viewed the Goya etchings and after returning to Australia produced several European themed etchings and exhibited them with the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society during the mid-1920s. A change of subject matter occurred in 1927 when the artist travelled to the Australian Alps to paint. Although not the first Australian artist to paint the snowy peaks, Ashton was attracted by the chance of painting a difficult subject. He later wrote in his autobiography that snow was not easy to paint, “There is something crisp and precise about its character which always fascinates me” (Ashton, 1961, pg. 42). Ashton became a repeat visitor to the Mt. Kosciusko area and one of these mountain works, Kosciusko, won the Wynne Prize for 1930. During 1930 Ashton spent several months painting in Concarneau in Brittany with the New Zealand born painter Sydney Thompson. The 1920s and early ’30s was the most successful period in Ashton’s career and saw many successful shows, the last being his 1936 exhibition at David Jones’ Art Gallery, Sydney. The following decade saw Ashton step back from full-time painting for a career in art administration. While painting became a part-time activity he won the inaugural Godfrey Rivers Prize for 1938, and the Wynne Prize, for the third and final time, in 1939. After the resignation of J.S. MacDonald from the directorship of the AGNSW in 1936, Ashton was appointed his successor after narrowly defeating rival candidate Basil Burdett, seven votes to six, in the trustee’s election. While Ashton was less reactionary than his predecessor he was still conservative and suspicious of many new artistic trends. Bernard Smith, himself an AGNSW employee in the mid 1940s, later described Ashton in Australian Painting (pg. 163) as, “a sturdy and influential opponent of the post-Cézanne developments in contemporary painting.” During his directorship (1937-44), Ashton oversaw several high profile exhibitions, including a large loan exhibition of 150 years of Australian art (1938), a loan exhibition of British and continental art (1939), and a memorial exhibition for Elioth Gruner (1940). Arguably, Ashton’s most important project was the Australian art exhibition that toured North America during 1941-45, this was the first comprehensive exhibition of Australian art ever shown in the USA and included works by Aboriginal artists. Ashton believed that his time spent in North America was very important work, and he later described the tour in his autobiography as one of the most important missions of his life. While in North America, Ashton visited many museums and galleries and observed the latest trends in display, hanging and curatorship. He seems to have applied some of these new methods after his return to the AGNSW. Friend and trustee Lionel Lindsay later wrote that “the Gallery was never so well hung as during [Ashton’s] term of office.” (Comedy of Life, 1967, pg. 240) Due to poor health, Ashton resigned from the directorship of the AGNSW in November 1943 but stayed on as acting director until mid-1944. This 1944 period saw the heated debate that occurred within the local art world after the awarding of the 1943 Archibald Prize to William Dobell for his portrait of Joshua Smith. In a final public comment on his time at the Gallery, Ashton complained of the 'serious overcrowding’ at the AGNSW and the urgent need to build the proposed eastern wing of the building and increase the State Government grant to the Gallery (Sydney Morning Herald, 29th April 1944, page 3). After writing a report on the Queensland National Art Gallery in Brisbane, Ashton was recruited to the role of director of the new David Jones’ Art Gallery in June 1944. Dobell’s first exhibition at the Elizabeth Street building was an exhibition by the controversial portrait painter William Dobell, a personal favourite of the managing director of David Jones Ltd, Charles Lloyd Jones. During his three-year directorship, Ashton managed a broad range of art shows including solo exhibitions and art society events. Ashton resigned from the position of director of the David Jones’ Art Gallery in October 1947 so he could return to painting. Ashton received many awards during his career, highlights included his election to membership of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the award of the OBE in 1941, the presentation of the Society of Artists medal for 1944, and a knighthood in 1960. After the death of his wife in 1958, Ashton married Winfreda Luxmoore in 1961. That same year Legend Press published a short illustrated memoir, The Life and Work of Artist Sir Will Ashton. The preface for this limited edition book was written by the Australian Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, and included a 'tribute’ article by artist William Dargie. Ashton died of cancer on 1 September 1963. He was survived by his second wife and three sons from his first marriage.
Writers:
Silas Clifford-Smith
Note:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- Sir William Ashton was a sucessful landscape painter during the first half of the 20th century, winning the Wynne prize three times. During the late 1930s and 40s he worked as a gallery director in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Sep-63
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1963-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Port Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and teacher, was born on 29 April 1875 at Port Adelaide, elder daughter of David McPherson (also spelt Macpherson), a marine engineer, and Prudence Cleverdon, née Lyle. In Sydney from 1884 Rose attended Fort Street Girls’ School and had private art classes with W. Lister Lister . At Melbourne in 1893 she enrolled at the National Gallery School, possibly after lessons from Berthe Mouchette [although the Miss Macpherson listed in a catalogue of Mouchette’s students’ work has been identified by Mary Eagle as another Miss Macpherson; nevertheless, Rose McPherson and Mouchette would later have studios in the same Adelaide building]. In 1894 her father was admitted to the Parkside Lunatic Asylum and Rose joined her sister and mother in Adelaide. She completed her Melbourne studies in 1896-98 then returned home, studied at the Adelaide School of Design, leased a studio and began teaching. In 1904 she left for Europe with a former student, Bessie Davidson , took classes at the Munich Government Art School for Women then moved to Paris. She had an academic still-life painting hung in the Old Salon in 1905.
Back at Adelaide in 1907, Rose and Bessie rented a studio, held a combined exhibition and taught. Rose’s pupils included Gladys Reynell , with whom she returned to London in 1912. They lived in Paris and Brittany in 1913-14, moving back to London when war was imminent. Rose exhibited her first woodcuts with the Society of Women Artists and studied pottery at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. She had two paintings hung in the New Salon and the Royal Academy, admired the Bloomsbury Group and exhibited with the New English Art Club. In 1918-19 she and Gladys taught pottery, basketry and printmaking to soldiers at the Seale Hayne Neurological Hospital, Devon.
On the voyage home she met William George Preston, returning from serving with the AIF. They married on 31 December 1919. Rose McPherson became Margaret Preston and settled in Mosman, Sydney. The financial security Bill offered allowed her to travel; she visited New Caledonia and the New Hebrides (1923), South East Asia and China (1927) and Ceylon, Africa and India (1956-58). Exhibiting with the Society of Artists of NSW led to the patronage of Sydney Ure Smith , publisher of Art in Australia , to which she contributed many articles including her autobiographical 'From eggs to Electrolux’ published in an issue devoted to her work (December 1927). Ure Smith also published a portfolio of her work (1929) and Margaret Preston’s Monotypes (1949). In 1925 she exhibited prints with Thea Proctor . Three solo shows followed, in 1929, 1936 and 1953. From 1926 she exhibited with the Contemporary Group. In 1929 the trustees of the NSW National Gallery (now Art Gallery of New South Wales) commissioned a self-portrait – the first by a woman artist in a series of artists’ self-portraits commissioned by the gallery’s trustees. In 1937 she won a silver medal at the Exposition Internationale, Paris.
The most popular of Preston’s works are probably her hand-coloured woodcuts of flowers, which gave a dramatic modern look to a traditional women’s subject; the most critically admired, modernist oils like Flying over the Shoalhaven River (1942); the most original – if least appreciated – her late naïve 'Aboriginal’ images that rejected both academic and modernist styles for an indigenous Australian modernism. In works like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (1950), Expulsion (1955) and The Superimposed Feet (1959) the biblical founders of the human race are Australian Aborigines (and the angel who expels them from Eden is white).
Preston had begun to advocate a national style based on Aboriginal art in 1923, initially for craft items, then for colour, technique and finally for subjects in painting. From 1927 she made several trips with Bill to study Aboriginal art, collecting carvings by Kalboori Youngi , Nora Nathan and Linda Craigie in Far West Queensland in the early 1940s and much other material. She was interested in other non-western art sources too; on 2 April 1935 she gave a talk on 'The Primitive Craftwork of China, Japan and New Guinea, etc.’ to the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW. It was one of many talks she gave to the Society, of which she was an early associate member (elected a vice-president in 1955).
Preston died at Mosman on 28 May 1963. Her reputation was high in her lifetime and has remained so. She is still the only woman artist most Australians know.
In 1928 Margaret Preston painted Aboriginal Flowers and exhibited it in the annual exhibition of the Society of Artists of NSW. The following year it was purchased by a leading Sydney patron of the arts, Charles Lloyd Jones, for £52.10.0 – a record price for her work at the time. At a moment when she was experimenting with a machine aesthetic, what intrigued Preston about a bunch of artificial 'feather flowers’ made by an unknown Aboriginal woman? Her title declares 'Aboriginality’, yet what forms of indigenous culture did she have access to in 1928?
Preston’s interest in Aboriginal art had been aroused in the mid-1920s by contact with both the 'primitive’ elements in international modernism and Aboriginal art from the communities she had visited in northern Australia (where at some stage she collected carvings by Kalboori Youngi , Nora Nathan and Linda Craigie ). Her fervent advocacy of Aboriginal design as a source of inspiration for white Australian artists is now regarded as redolent of the neo-colonialism of a time that valued objects for being 'authentic’, 'tribal’ and uncorrupted by contact. Can we therefore assume that Preston was unaware of the hybrid character of these 'feathery flowers’ in which Aboriginal materials and skills had shaped a form specifically addressing European taste? (Another object created for the European market, an Aboriginal shell-worked box from La Perouse, appears in her painting, New South Wales Everlastings of 1929.) Rather, it would appear that the visual ambiguities that the 'feather flowers’ represented extended the terms of her work to such an extent that she overlooked the question of their 'authenticity’.
Margaret Preston’s painting career began with the conventional feminine accomplishments of china and flower painting. Later, when studying professionally at Melbourne’s National Gallery School in the 1890s, she concentrated on still life rather than figure study, even though the latter was considered the basis of serious painting. Native botanical studies had absorbed the interests of many 19th century women artists and in the late 1920s – as a local modernist – Preston sought to reinvent the genre. Hers was a modernity fixated on objects. The red, black and white feathers produce a bouquet that is reductivist and unnatural, replacing the pastel flowers of earlier work. Formally, the bunch inscribes a semi-circle and, to emphasise the geometry, she suppresses detail. It is painted flatly, with no modelling, although the surroundings have a shallow pictorial space indicated by shadows and the yellow ellipse of the bowl glimpsed through the 'flowers’. As in her Still-Life (1927), she employs a Leger-like composition: the two overlapping discs made by the concave bowl and the convex bouquet generate a spatial tension between flat colour and volumetric shapes. This late cubist composition holds the circular forms together through a series of black and grey broken verticals and diagonals.
The formal elements, however, are of less interest than the subject. The original Aboriginal feather-work that inspired her displays a highly developed capacity to mimic the taste of the colonising culture. We cannot 'see’ the feathers separate from the 'flowers’. This is no botanical specimen but a 'cultured’ object suggestive of an Aboriginal strategy of engagement with European culture. Such feather-work did not fall within a European 'fine art’ category and therefore did not enter art museums but was left marooned as curio kitsch in anthropological collections. Retrieved in Preston’s painting, the otherness of the bloom declares her work as 'modernist’ with a particular local and feminine accent. The strangeness of this hybrid object, its doubling as 'European-like’ and also 'Aboriginal’, transfers into the painting an ontological instability. It opens up to question what 'Aboriginal’ meant to Preston and, more significantly, the terms on which such translations can occur between cultures.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanStephen, Ann
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 29 April 1875
- Summary
- Margaret Preston specialised in still life subjects, seeking to reinvent the genre, with inspiration from Aboriginal art and Australian native flowers, but she also made landscapes, and painted an introspective self-portrait. Her hand-coloured woodcuts and linocuts are a modernist interpretation of what is often thought of as traditional women's subject matter.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 28-May-63
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- caricaturist and journalist, was born in NZ. With no formal art training, he became an itinerant caricaturist and journalist working and exhibiting in Australia in 1934-36. His work also appeared in American magazines, including Fortune , Town and Country and Vogue . He wrote and illustrated Africa , I Presume? (Macmillan, NY 1948).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1910
- Summary
- New Zealand-born Australian and American cartoonist and illustrator.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1962
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude-33.8583992 Longitude151.1807353 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Balmain, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, caricaturist, painter and advertising agent, was born in Balmain on 7 May 1904. He worked as an illustrator and artist for a number of publications and was staff artist on the Evening News in 1923 and an illustrator and cartoonist for the Australian Woman’s Mirror in 1927. Known as 'Aub’ (which he sometimes used on his cartoons), he contributed to the daily and Sunday Sun (Sydney) and was a Bulletin regular from the 1930s. Also worked freelance.
Aria’s war cartoons for Smith’s Weekly include 'Design for Living’ 1938 showing Chamberlain (British PM) as a swastika (ill. King, 128); 'Trinity’ 1938 about war profiteers (ill. King, 130); and 'Service with a Smile’ re: appeasement 11 March 1939, 12. 'Coffee for one’ 1950, published in the Sydney Morning Herald , is on Menzies’ anti-communist stance (ill. King, 164). His Sun-Herald cartoons include two originals dated 1950 in the Art Gallery of WA: 'Abo’s (sic) fingers caught in a deck chair or Deck chair collapsing’ (957/D311) and 'A Going Concern, 1,500 pounds sterling’ (957/D313). His caricatures include one of Syd Nicholls as 'Fatty Finn’ in 1932. He also painted watercolours and portraits.
Aria originated several comic strips, including 'The Aria Kids’ in 1927, which appeared for several years in the Australian Woman’s Mirror , an Evening News (Sydney) publication subsequently owned by the Bulletin Newspaper Company. Two original cartoons of 1931 and 1932 are at ML PXD 764. His original Bulletin cartoons, signed 'Aria’, include an Indigenous Australian squatting on the steps of a bank (paid 19 August 1959): “Sorry, sir, he won’t go away – says this land is his tribe’s hunting ground!” (ML Px*D445 – used in SLNSW b/w exhibition 1999). Others in the collection are the Finey realist-style ' Food Relief. Official (to dole applicant): “Do you keep a dog?”. Dole Applicant: “We did – but we ate him!”’(ML Px*D445), published 16 November 1932; “Sputnecks!” – a line drawing of crowd with heads stuck in air (Px*D445) published 16 October 1957; a critic in beret and duffle coat to artist facing a blank canvas, “Don’t touch it, Paul – there you have the perfect abstract!” (Px*D445), published 18 November 1959. The NLA owns the original of “What’s a pedestrian, Dad?” 1930s, ink (R4912), probably done for the Bulletin . At the Bulletin Aria was the 'inseparable cobber’ of Bill Mahony , according to Douglas Stewart (1977, 36).
In June 1999 the SLNSW acquired 49 original ink drawings for Aria’s comic strip 'Mr Tutt’ 1941-46, published in the ABC Weekly in the 1940s. (PICMAN notes 1-44 comprise Mr Tutt comic strip, generally sight gags with little texts – subjects include Christmas, sleeplessness, art, pavement photographers. Nos 45-49 are editorial cartoons, including no.46 General Macarthur, and no 47 on the inaccuracy of weather forecasting. Some are inscribed with publication dates or ABC Weekly volume numbers. The dated drawings are from 1941, 1944 and 1946. Presented June 1999, PXD 786).
Lindesay states that Aria was director of a well‑known (art?) correspondence school in Sydney, while Stone claims he was a highly successful advertising agent. He died at Woollahra on 8 August 1962 (SLNSW). He and his wife, Iris Dexter, had no children.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 7 May 1904
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney cartoonist, caricaturist, painter and advertising agent. Aria drew war cartoons for Smith's Weekly and created the comic strips 'The Aria Kids' and 'Mr Tutt', both of which ran for several years. In 1936, he was engaged by Emil Sodersteen to assist in the design of the Vitrolite glass murals for the Martin Place extensions to the Hotel Australia. The hotel was demolished in 1972.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Aug-62
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-35.295938 Longitude139.0364451 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Langhorne Creek, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 19 July 1893
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Jun-62
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, writer and lecturer, was born in Melbourne on 2 September 1893, second daughter of Professor (Sir) Harry Brookes Allen and his wife Ada, née Mason.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 September 1893
- Summary
- An accomplished artist and writer, Allen was also a prolific lecturer, she was the first lecturer to be employed by the National Gallery of Victoria and while living in New York she organised the city's first exhibition of Australian art which she also lectured about.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Apr-62
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-27.5610193 Longitude151.953351 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 2 February 1887
- Summary
- Rosenstengel is the principal of Rosenstengel Brisbane, a designer and maker of domestic furniture. He began his career at Rosenstengel & Kleimeyer, Toowoomba QLD, later establishing his own firm until his retirement in 1958.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Oct-62
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-18.1415884 Longitude178.4421662 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Suva, Fiji
- Biography
- John Lionel Berry, (1885-1962) was born in Suva, Fiji. Berry’s father, the Hon. John Berry had been posted to Fiji as Commissioner of Lands and Survey. Around 1900 the Berry family left Fiji and returned to Australia, settling in Sydney. After school, John Berry went on to study architecture and with fellow student William Hardy Wilson, exhibited at the first exhibition of the Students Association of the Institute of Architects of New South Wales in December 1904. Berry received first prize in the architectural sketches category.
In 1906, aged 21, Berry left Sydney and travelled to the United Kingdom, enrolling as an architecture student at the Royal Academy College in London. Berry travelled throughout Europe between 1907 and 1910, meeting up with fellow Australian architects William Hardy Wilson and Stacey Neave, in various cities. During his travels he completed hundreds of sketches and watercolours of architectural sites in England, France and Italy. In 1909 and 1910 Berry participated in several of the Royal Academy School’s architectural drawing competitions. Returning to Sydney aboard the passenger ship The Marathon in 1911, Berry married Hazel Jean Sinclair (of Brisbane) in 1913.
Berry was involved in the establishment of the Architects Association in 1919 and elected as a member of its first council. In the following year, 1920, he joined the architectural firm established by his friends and colleagues William Hardy Wilson and Stacey Neave, Wilson & Neave, which became Wilson, Neave & Berry. The firm attracted mainly residential and small commercial commissions. Of the latter their most important were the Peapes & Co. Ltd menswear store on George Street, Sydney, the four-storey building for Larke, Hoskins & Co. Ltd motor car importers in William Street, Sydney, the Strathfield War Memorial, and the Foster Clark factory in Redfern. In 1923 Wilson, Neave & Berry entered the competition for Gordon Pleasure Grounds, which they won, and were subsequently granted the design rights for the Council Chambers for the Kuringai Municipal Council.
Wilson, Neave & Berry’s most noteworthy residential commission was Eryldene house, in Sydney’s North Shore, designed for Professor Eben Gowrie Waterhouse, a lecturer at Sydney Teacher’s College. Hardy had completed most of the plans for the house himself by 1914, but he and his firm continued designing additional structures for Eryldene until 1936, by which time Hardy had retired from architecture and moved to Tasmania. Berry was himself responsible for the design of the house’s interior study. Eryldene has become one of Australia’s most famous and well-known houses and today the house and gardens are a museum.
In 1921 Berry was appointed as lecturer of Medieval Architecture at the University of Sydney. Becoming a significant figure in the architectural industry, Berry was elected as a member of the Council of Architects in 1926.
After Wilson left the firm in 1927, Neave and Berry continued the practice, now Neave & Berry, designing a number of ‘magnificently detailed’ small residences including Barford for Warwick Fairfax and 12 Ginnahgulla Road for Dr Flynn, both in Bellevue Hill Sydney.
Like his better known associate, Wilson, Berry was an advocate for change in Australian architecture. Berry was particularly influenced by the Australian Georgian Revival style that Wilson had pioneered, as well as designs of early colonial Australian architecture. Berry contributed articles on architecture and design to The Home, Art in Australia and Architecture. In an article published in The Home in October 1930 Berry despaired at what he saw as a proliferation of ‘dark … badly designed, sombre houses.’ Berry’s own architectural practice promoted the use of natural light, colour and a correspondence between design and the specific conditions of the Australian climate.
Berry left architectural practice in 1932, when he retired to Deloraine, Tasmania to establish a sheep farm, ‘Bowerbank’. There he embraced farming and became an active participant in the industry, and was elected a member of the Meat Board in 1937. Berry maintained an interest in architecture and drawing in his retirement. In 1950 he gave a lecture at the monthly meeting of the Workers Educational Association in Deloraine on architecture, illustrated by drawings he had made during his European travels earlier in the century. In 1953, at the age of 68, Berry gave another lecture, this time on the parish churches of England at St Marks Church, Deloraine, and in the same year he travelled to Launceston to attend a private opening of William Hardy Wilson’s exhibition of crayon drawings.
Berry remained in Deloraine until his death in 1962, aged 77.
The Print Collection in the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne is a major repository of Berry’s drawings, watercolours, prints and architectural plans.
Writers:
Mahoney, JadeSacco, StephanieSgro, RominaClayton-Greene, KimPrint Collection, Baillieu Library, The University of Melbourne
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 5 April 1885
- Summary
- John Lionel Berry, (1885-1962) was born in Suva, Fiji. Berry was a practicing architect and he was involved in the establishment of the Architects Association in 1919 and elected as a member of its first council.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1962
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Photographer
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- James Francis (Frank) Hurley, photographer who lived 1885-1962.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1962
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Feb-62
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude47 Longitude2 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- France
- Biography
- James Chesterfield was born in France c.1884. He was supposedly, according to family sources, the illegitimate son of prominent British artist Sir Frank Brangwyn. This assumption tallies with other accounts of Sir Brangwyn apparently having an illegitimate son at about the same time, though the relationship has not been verified. He was taken to England as a baby and raised by his mother’s sister Edith on the Cornwall coast and later at Abergavenny. He studied at the Truro Art School, Cornwall (founded 1902), where he was awarded a twelve-month scholarship to study in France.
Chesterfield migrated to Australia in the company of Albert Sherman (1882-1971) who also studied at Truro. By 1913 Chesterfield was working with an uncle who had a farm in Tully. When his uncle died he departed the area and worked his way down the coast to Brisbane, painting signs for butchers shops and the like. While in Brisbane he was employed by Victor Day’s sign writing shop. He married Minnie Hope Ainsworth in South Brisbane. His portrait in a family collection by the German-born Brisbane artist L.W.K. Wirth was probably painted at this time.
Chesterfield joined the Australian Army in 1915 (as James Chesterfield Brangwyn) and served in Europe with the 15th Battalion. His wife sent him materials and he painted in the trenches. He was demobbed in 1919 and returned first to England to collect his wife. A daughter, Berniece, was born in 1919, followed by another daughter, Hope (who also became an artist), and a son, Howel in 1924. James was shell-shocked during the war so did not paint for many years. He established the sign writing shop 'J. Chesterfield & Company’ in George Street, Brisbane, which he later relocated to Petrie Terrace.
He resumed his contributions to the annual exhibitions of the Royal Queensland Art Society in 1928, which included watercolours with titles such as On the Marne , Near my dugout and Snow, Sutton’s, Vimy, painted during the war. He served on the Committee of the Society from 1931-32 and became good friends with the prominent Brisbane artist W.G. Grant, who used to visit frequently.
His work was predominantly in the still life genre but he also produced landscapes. He did not exhibit after 1943. James Chesterfield died in Brisbane on 26 May 1962, aged seventy-eight years.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R
Aaron Howel Chesterfield-Brangwyn
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. c.1884
- Summary
- James Chesterfield was a Brisbane-based artist who had been born in France and raised in England. He worked as a sign-writer for a time and served on the committee of the Royal Queensland Art Society from 1931-32.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-May-62
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-34.598056 Longitude138.745 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gawler, SA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1884
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1962
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Miniature portrait painter F. Stoddard was born in Sydney in 1882. She was the granddaughter of Scottish miniaturist Peter Devine. This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
DAAO staff writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 October 1882
- Summary
- Miniature portrait painter F. Stoddard was born in Sydney in 1882. She was the granddaughter of Scottish miniaturist Peter Devine.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 22-May-62
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-34.0005536 Longitude138.8174677 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manoora, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- teacher, inspector, unionist and organiser, was born on 8 June 1881 in Manoora, South Australia, sixth daughter of the ten children of Rudolph Alexander Miethke, a schoolmaster, and Emma Caroline (called Louisa), née Schultze. In 1899 Adelaide became a pupil teacher and in 1903-4 attended the University Training College to qualify as a teacher. When the former Women Assistants’ Association (SA) became the Women Teachers’ Association in 1906 Miethke, then teaching at Le Fevre Peninsula Primary School, was elected secretary. She organised letters, petitions and delegations arguing for equal pay for women teachers, then being paid less than three-quarters of the male wage.
In August 1914 Miethke, now teaching at Woodville High School, inaugurated a campaign to improve conditions for female high school teachers, not only financially but through the appointment of head mistresses to the large high schools then being planned. She also mobilised schools for war work. Among other activities, her team completed 50,000 horse fly-veils made from old binder twine for the Light Horse in Egypt in 1918.
Re-named the Women Teachers Progressive League, the Women Teachers Association held its first congress in May 1915. In her presidential address, Miethke identified with the 'rank and file’ of disillusioned women teachers sick of trying to maintain their ideals while coping with class numbers of ’60, 70, even 80 and 90, active little beings’. One solution, she argued, was to employ more women in the Education Department’s administration, notably as inspectors of schools. She became the first female vice-president of the SA Public School Teachers’ Union the following year. After graduating BA in 1924 she became an inspector of schools, the first woman to be appointed in the state since 1902.
For South Australia’s Centenary year (1936), sixty-two women’s societies affiliated to form the Women’s Centenary Council of SA. Miethke, inevitably, was president. She was also one of two women members on the State Centenary Executive Committee. During the year she organised her 'Pageant of Empire’ starring 14,000 school-children. As well, her council raised £5000 to establish the Alice Springs base of the Australian Aerial Medical Service as a memorial to pioneer women, built the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden in Adelaide, funded its statue by Ola Cohn and published A Book of South Australia: Women in the First Hundred Years .
'Addie’ Miethke retired as an inspector of schools in 1941 and devoted all her unflagging energy to charitable, professional and patriotic causes, several of which continued to mobilise large numbers of school children. She edited the school magazine, Children’s Hour , in 1941-46. As president of the state Flying Doctor Service, she devised and single-handedly established the world’s first School of the Air; it began operations from the Alice Springs Higher Primary School in 1950. Her multitudinous official positions included being both state and national president of the National Council of Women. She died at her Woodville home on 4 November 1962, her name, as Edgar and Jones note, 'a byword for organisation’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 June 1881
- Summary
- Teacher, inspector, unionist and organiser, in South Australia. When the former Women Assistants' Association (SA) became the Women Teachers' Association in 1906 she was elected secretary.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 4-Nov-62
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude51.4020243 Longitude-1.3242212 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newbury, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, miniaturist, monotype printer, leatherworker and pyrographer, was born in Newbury, England on 11 May 1880, legitimate daughter of Henry Edwell (and half-sister of Mary Edwards ). She came to Sydney with her family as a child. On a trip to Tasmania she joined an inspiring sketching class held by Louisa Swan (1860-1955), then studied in Sydney with Henry Fullwood and at night classes with Frank Mahony at the Royal Art Society c.1899-1900. From 1899, when sharing a flat with Madge Darby, she exhibited with the Art Society. Later she spent 16 months in Paris studying at Colarossi’s and with Delécluse, sharing a flat with Bertha Merfield and another friend. She began to produce miniature portrait paintings; two were shown at the Old Salon.
Back at Sydney in 1904, Edwell established a reputation as a miniaturist, craftworker and painter of small landscapes. In 1907 she won first prize for her miniatures – ones previously shown in Paris – at the Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne. One was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the other by Lady Northcote (the exhibition’s patron). Two oil landscapes, A Bit of Bowral (5 gns) and At Long Bay (6 gns), were also shown in the 1907 preliminary Sydney show. In 1908 she was included with four other women painters in an exhibition at Bradley’s Rooms, Sydney. D.H. Souter’s review, 'Some Women Artists – Mainly of New South Wales’, is illustrated with Edwell’s rather stilted portrait sketches of Sydney colleagues in the show: Emily Meston , Ethel Stephens and Alice Norton (the portraits of the Victorian Violet Teague and of Edwell herself are unsigned). She was a founding Council member and on the exhibition committee of the NSW Society of Women Painters and in 1910 showed oil landscapes and miniatures at its first exhibition, her address being Percival Road, Stanmore. The inaugural meeting of the Sydney Society of Women Painters (1910) elected as office bearers: Lady Chelmsford, president; Aline Cusack , vice-president; Emily Meston , Hon Treasurer; Lilian Chauvel , Hon Sec.; Bernice Edwell, Mrs R. W. Parsons , Jane Price , Florence Rodway and Gertrude Williams , council; Edith Cusack , Miss Charlie Davis, Miss Bernice Edwell, Emily Meston, Alice Norton , Jane Price and Florence Rodway, exhibition committee; Miss Plummer and Miss Dorothy Stephen auditors. The first exhibition was held from 20 July to 13 August 1910 and the catalogue lists 57 women (Philp), including Bernice Edwell of Percival Road, Stanmore, who showed 'Views (oils) and Miniatures’.
Edwell exhibited with the Society of Arts & Crafts of NSW in 1908-12. The trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW purchased her Blotter with Flamingo Design and her Block Cover with Landscape Design in hand-tooled leather from the Society’s 1910 exhibition and her unusual Japanese-influenced Twine Box with Prawn Design , also in leather, from the 1912 show. In 1914 and 1920 she exhibited miniatures in Adelaide. She held many solo exhibitions in Melbourne between 1915 and 1934, mostly at the Athenaeum Gallery although in 1918 she held an exhibition in her studio at South Yarra. In 1921 she exhibited at Miss McLean’s rooms in Melbourne and at Gayfield Shaw 's Gallery in Sydney, at the latter with Thea Proctor and Blamire Young . By 1923, when she shared an exhibition at the Athenaeum Gallery with A.M.E. Bale and Jo Sweatman , she was living in Melbourne permanently. The National Gallery of Victoria purchased two of her miniatures, which had been shown at the Salon in 1921 and at the Royal Academy in 1923.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 11 May 1880
- Summary
- Miniaturist, craftworker and painter of small landscapes. She was a founding Council member of the New South Wales Society of Women Painters.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1962
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-37.063611 Longitude144.217222 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Castlemaine, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- printmaker, art teacher and commercial artist, ran away from his home in Castlemaine, Vic. at the age of fifteen (ie in 1896 or 1897) and did odd jobs throughout Australia and New Zealand for four years. He had been impressed by the 'distinctly Australian approach’ of Streeton’s paintings in the 'Sydney Sunshine’ exhibition at Melbourne in 1896 and took a few art classes at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School; he also had two drawings published in the Bulletin (see McCarron). Aged 19-20, he left for the USA, working his way as a merchant seaman. After stopping in San Francisco and Chicago, he settled in New York where he found work as a commercial artist and illustrator. While working as a commercial artist he also visited London.
Apparently entirely self-taught as a printmaker (although he may have been introduced to the medium at Ashton’s), he seriously began making fine art prints c.1912, producing about148 etchings and drypoints in his lifetime, normally in editions of 100 or less. In 1915 he taught his friend Edward Hopper to etch; both used similar urban images in their work. In the 1920s, disillusioned with commercial art, he lived in Japan for 2 years and renewed his interest in printmaking through study of the Ukiyo-e masters especially Ando Hiroshige. In 1925 he presented two early etchings to Castlemaine Museum and Art Gallery: The Holocaust 1918 (on the carnage of WWI) and On the Rooftops, New York 1918. Sold through his dealer, the Kennedy Gallery in New York, the most sought-after of his meticulously detailed naturalistic copper-plate etchings (drypoints, some with sandpaper ground) are those that depict life in New York in the 1920s and early ’30s, e.g. Glow of the City 1929, drypoint (Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY: ill. Imprint 5), Shadow Dance 1930, drypoint and sandpaper ground, and Little Penthouse 1931, drypoint (ill. McCrohon).
Lewis’s prints sold moderately well in his lifetime and he was able to move out of commercial art. After the Wall Street Crash, he and his family retreated to a farm in Connecticut. This resulted in prints of rural snow scenes and misty highways, which were initially denigrated in comparison to his urban prints but are now also sought after. He disliked rural life and returned to New York in the late 1930s, but the print market was still in the doldrums. Shadow Magic 1939 is one of his most abstract works, acc. to McKay. He made a series of portraits for the movie Mourning Becomes Electra for which he received $10,000, but he didn’t like Hollywood either. He returned to New York, where realist art had become increasingly unfashionable.
Lewis became a teacher of graphics at the Art Students’ League on 57th Street and taught there until a few years before his death, on 22 February 1962, aged 82. In the US there has been a massive resurgence of interest in his work in recent years, with prices skyrocketing (his best prints have reached $A75,000) since the publication of art historian McCarron’s The Prints of Martin Lewis . His daughter-in-law, Patricia Lewis, lives in Quebec.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1880
- Summary
- A self-taught printmaker, Lewis worked as a commercial artist and later in his life was able to devote himself to making fine art prints. His genre includes images from WWI, urban New York landscapes and some rural scenes from Connecticut.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Feb-62
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude53.6917422 Longitude-1.3105722 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Pontefract, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1879
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1962
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Solicitor, arts administrator and painter. The son of Robert Maund and Nina née Williams, John Williams Maund was born in Paddington, Sydney, in 1876. An accomplished rugby player in his youth, he played for the New South Wales squad and played one match for the national team. He studied law at the University of Sydney, and after his training became a Sydney based solicitor, later establishing the legal firm Maund & Kelynack.It is not known when his interest in art began, but by the early 1920s, when he was in his mid forties, he was painting watercolours and was known as a collector of Australian art. According to Jean Campbell, Maund was a major patron of the Macquarie Galleries (established in 1925) and never missed an exhibition. In 1928 he purchased Tom Roberts’ masterpiece Bailed Up (1895/1927) from the Macquarie Galleries for 450 guineas, and it was promptly lent in his wife’s name to the National Art Gallery of New South Wales (now the Art Gallery of New South Wales – AGNSW). Five years later the family sold Bailed Up to the AGNSW for £350.During the early 1930s, the NSW State Government appointed Maund as Honorary Commissioner to investigate 'certain complaints that had been made in regard to the conduct of the fine art classes at the [East] Sydney Technical College’. Maund’s report was delivered to the Minister of Education, Mr D.H. Drummond, in 1933, and the Sydney Morning Herald recorded Minister Drummond’s comments to Maund’s findings:'I am more than pleased to find that generally speaking, the Commissioner, who is himself an art collector of considerable standing, and more than qualified by legal training and art research to report competently upon the work of the college, has effectively discounted in his report the continuous criticism on “wasteful expenditures, over-staffing, and ineffective control” and at the same time has said a well-deserved tribute to the class of work being produced at the college’ (4 September 1933, p 8).Perhaps in recognition of his services as a government commissioner, Maund was appointed trustee of the AGNSW in March 1933. According to Bernard Smith, Maund was one of the most conservative members on the board of trustees during the 1940s and 50s. Despite this, the family ownership of the 'mild modernist’ works of Roland Wakelin and Elioth Gruner in the late 1930s suggest that Maund may have been more open minded to modern tendencies than previously thought.Maund served on the board of trustees during the most unsettling period in Australian art history, a period of generational change that saw artists and supporters of modernism challenge the aging trustees’ antagonism to new forms of artistic expression. This period came to a symbolic climax with the awarding of the 1943 Archibald Prize to the modernist painter William Dobell (January 1944) for his portrait of artist Joshua Smith. At the deliberation of the Archibald Prize vote on 21 January 1944, Maund, according to the trustees’ minute book, was the first person to question the legitimacy of Dobell’s portrait:'Mr. J.W. Maund who also spoke said he did not agree with Sir Lionel [Lindsay] and considered the work in question was not a portrait, but a caricature and therefore not eligible for the prize.’As a trustee, Maund worked with three directors of the AGNSW: J.S. MacDonald, Will Ashton and Hal Missingham. According to Smith, Maund loathed Missingham as well as the director’s mentor, fellow trustee, Sydney Ure Smith. After Maund’s death, Missingham wrote about the frosty relationship he experienced with Maund:'[Maund] took an instant dislike to me on my appointment. Maund would have none of what he considered the infiltration of modernism into the traditional, or rather academic art, of which he was so strong a supporter.’ (Missingham 1973, p 30). Although appointed a life trustee, Maund was publicly critical of such extended periods of office. In a Sydney Morning Herald report during Ashton’s directorship, Maund was reported as saying that 'The appointment of trustees for life was an anomaly which should be rectified’ (5 October 1942, p 3). Despite this, Maund was a member of the trustees for twenty-two years. According to Missingham, from 1945 up to 1954 Maund fiercely opposed the granting of powers to the [modernist] director to buy works without the collective approval of the trustees. Maund formally retired from the board of trustees in January 1956 due to ill health.The first known record of Maund’s painting appears in August 1921 when he had three works shown at the spring exhibition of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales (RAS). While Maund’s involvement with the RAS was brief, he is best known for his long association with the Australian Watercolour Institute (AWI). In February 1938 the founding President of the AWI, B.E. Minns, died. Later the same year Maund joined the AWI and was elected its second President. Maund was a regular exhibitor with the AWI from 1938 to the late 1950s. His first critical mention, in the Sydney Morning Herald commented on his works on view at the AWI’s 1939 annual exhibition:'J.W. Maund’s pictures have a pleasant crispness. Their weakness is that they seem too large for the significance of their subject matter.’ (9 June 1939).Despite stepping down from the AWI presidency in 1945, Maund continued his membership of the organisation until 1961. After the brief term of Hal Missingham as President of the AWI, Maund was granted life membership of the Institute in 1956, the first member to be honoured in this way.There are five Maund watercolours in the collection of the AGNSW. Three images: She Oaks, Black Wattle Bay, and From Tomali, were donated to the gallery by the artist during his time as a member of the board of trustees. Two further works, End of the Day (1949), and Near Spencer, Hawkesbury (1950), were purchased by the Marshall Bequest Fund in the early 1950s. Despite Maund’s personal dislike towards him, Missingham, himself a notable watercolourist, reservedly praised Maund’s painting ability:'I thought he was the most callous and insensitive man I had ever had the misfortune to meet, but curiously his watercolour paintings were strongly romantic, moody and given to sudden tonal contrast, redolent of what he considered the best of the traditional English school of Cotman and Turner.’ (Missingham 1973, p 31).According to Meg Stewart in her biography of Margaret Coen (Autobiography of My Mother), Maund only painted on the weekends and 'deeply regretted in his later years that he hadn’t devoted his life to art rather than to the law, and he was trying to catch up’. Stewart tells that Maund had a large car and would drive artist friends to scenic spots on the northern environs of Sydney, such as Narrabeen Lakes, Ku-ring-gai Chase and Frenchs Forest. Artists that benefited from these excursions included, among others, Isabel MacKenzie, Percy Lindsay, John Young (from the Macquarie Galleries) and Margaret Coen. After World War II, Maund bought a motor boat and often toured the Hawkesbury River with Percy Lindsay and other art-loving friends. His documented friendship with several artists certainly offers balance to the unflattering comments made of Maund by Missingham.For much of his career, Maund can be justly described as a true amateur artist as he rarely attempted to sell his work at exhibitions. His amateur status changed, however, in late life when he began to sell his work at art society exhibitions. During the 1950s Maund had two solo shows at the Grosvenor Galleries, Sydney. The first exhibition, in May 1952, was a display of thirty-six works, with prices from five to thirty guineas, and was opened by the President of the AGNSW trustees, B.J. Waterhouse. The surrealist artist and critic James Gleeson, writing in the [Sydney] Sun, reviewed the exhibition:'John Maund’s watercolours at the Grosvenor Galleries present no problems to even the most casual gallery-goer. They are quiet, modest works, keeping within the narrow limits of an orthodox technique and expressing a conventional opinion on what constitutes the proper substance of art’ (5 May 1952).A second Grosvenor Galleries exhibition, in March 1956, had thirty-seven works on view with prices in roughly the same range as the 1952 show. The Bulletin (14 March 1956, p 19) commented on the improvements in the artist’s technique:'J. W. Maund’s watercolours at Sydney Grosvenor Galleries are considerably more finished than those he exhibited a year or two ago; less sketchy, warmer and clearer in color, more firmly transposed into patterns, smoother in tonal effect. In fact, though still light on drawing, he has made an admirable compromise between the smooth washes of the earlier style and the later tenuous 'impressionism’. 'An annotated copy of the two Grosvenor Galleries exhibition catalogues in the AGNSW library show that the influential trustee James McGregor purchased works at both exhibitions. John Maund died in Sydney on 16 October 1962; his marital status in late life remains unclear.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 1876
- Summary
- John Maund (1876-1962) was a Sydney based watercolourist, arts administrator, solicitor and art collector.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16-Oct-62
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude53.8 Longitude-2.6 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lancashire, England, UK
- Biography
- carver and metal-worker, was born Winifred Davies in Lancashire. She came to Sydney with her family and later graduated in nursing from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. She married the Methodist minister Michael Scott Fletcher (1868-1947) on 4 June 1896. After completing his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Sydney University, her husband studied at Oxford in 1909-11. Mrs Fletcher’s interest in craftwork began at this time.
The Fletcher’s returned to Sydney in 1912. On 30 November Michael was appointed the first master of King’s College at the University of Queensland; Winifred assisted in the domestic arrangements of the college. She was one of the foundation members of the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland and exhibited with it in 1915, when she showed a carved prie dieu (made for the College chapel). She was involved with the Queensland Branch of the Red Cross from the beginning of World War I until moving to Sydney with her husband in 1916 when he was appointed foundation master of Wesley College at the University of Sydney. When Michael Fletcher returned to Brisbane in 1923 to take up the Chair of Philosophy at Queensland University, his wife resumed her activities with the Arts and Crafts Society. She was Honorary Secretary in 1925-26, Deputy President in 1929, President in 1930 and 1936 and, later, Honorary Life Member. In 1934 she arranged a series of talks on craft on Radio 4QR.
Fletcher exhibited copper and brass work in 1924-27 but thereafter, because of the greater ease of manufacture, exhibited pewter ware almost exclusively until 1938 (and again in 1946). In 1932 she exhibited metalwork with the Royal Queensland Art Society and the New South Wales Society of Arts and Crafts; a blotter with a pewter cover decorated with strapwork adapted from the great Celtic Book of Kells was purchased from the latter exhibition by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She again showed with the Sydney Society in 1933-35. By 1940 she had largely given up her craft and in 1943 resigned from the Red Cross because of ill health. She lived on, however, for a further 19 years.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. c.1871
- Summary
- A carver and metalworker Fletcher worked almost exclusively with pewter thanks to improvements in manufacturing. A founding member of the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland she was twice its president.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1962
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-41.5281494 Longitude146.8325214 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1962-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Westbury, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- painter and wood-carver, was born at Westbury, Tasmania, second youngest of the nine daughters of Thomas and Elizabeth Field of Westfield, a grazing property west of the town. After spending her childhood there, Ellen Field married Charles Alexander Payne, a medical practitioner of New Town near Hobart, on 6 January 1887. The wedding was held in St Andrew’s Anglican Church, Westbury, a church which now contains some of the finest examples of Payne’s work, her first major donation being a pulpit she had carved in England in 1905. She had become interested in wood carving when she moved from Hobart to Melbourne in 1891 and studied under the Art Nouveau carver, Robert Prenzel .
A trip to England with her husband and children in 1899 to meet Charles’ family resulted in a stay abroad lasting until 1908, with return trips to Tasmania in 1900 and 1906-7. For Ellen it was a period of great creativity and improvement of her skills. She studied woodcarving and design at the University of London and at the South Kensington School of Art took courses in clay modelling, leatherwork, beaten copper work and classical embroidery. She also improved the oil and watercolour painting skills practised from youth.
At the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition in Melbourne, Payne won three prizes and a medal for her woodcarvings. Returning to Australia permanently in 1908, she lived the rest of her long life in Hobart, first in a house in upper Elizabeth Street, then in Antill Street. Her most productive years as a woodcarver were in Hobart and she developed a wide reputation as one of Tasmania’s leading practitioners. She worked on well into her late eighties, her last work being some carving for the restoration of All Hallows-by-the-Tower, London, in her eighty-ninth year. Her husband had died at Hobart in 1925 and she lost a son in a drowning accident the same year. Outliving all her sisters, Ellen Nora Payne died in Hobart in her ninety-eighth year, on 31 January 1962.
Ellen Payne was a speedy worker. Her output was prodigious, but not commercially orientated. She did crests for Royalty, decorative work for various Anglican churches and public schools throughout Tasmania, numerous honour rolls – particularly after both World Wars – and various other requests and commissions. These included the decorating of no less than thirty-four dower chests, many as gifts for relatives and friends. A sister, Ethelwyn Field, was also a wood-carver but had nowhere near Ellen’s output.
Writers:
Mercer, Peter
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1865
- Summary
- Ellen Nora Payne was a painter and wood-carver. In 1891 she moved to Melbourne and studied under the Art Nouveau carver, Robert Prenzel. Payne also studied woodcarving and design at the University of London and at the South Kensington School of Art.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 31-Jan-62
- Age at death
- 97
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- cartoonist, came from New Zealand and freelanced in Australia for two years, then returned to work for the New Zealand Observer . He was there in 1941 when his work was included in War Cartoons and Caricatures of the British Commonwealth at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, 1941).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1913
- Summary
- Mid 20th century New Zealand cartoonist, sketcher, children's book illustrator and bookplate designer who worked in Australia before the Second World War.
- Gender
- Unspecified
- Died
- 1961
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1912-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1912
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1961
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude-33.8645002 Longitude151.1743543 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rozelle, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- Emil Sodersten (1899-1961) studied architecture at Sydney Technical College and attended Professor Leslie Wilkinson’s first design atelier at the University of Sydney. In the 1920s, he worked for Tate and Young on the Manchester Unity Building, then established a private practice in 1925 (age 24). His first buildings included the Tudor and Wall houses in Sydney, St Bedes Church of England in Drummoyne, the Werrington flats at Potts Point and remodelling of cinemas around inner-city suburbs. He and C. Bruce Dellit became known as Sydney’s leading Art Déco architects through their designs for the Anzac War Memorial (1934-Dellit) and the City Mutual Building (1936-Sodersten). In 1927 at age 26, Sodersten won a design competition for the National War Memorial in Canberra. After an outcry among architects, he was required to work jointly with an older architect, John Crust. In 1935, as the popularity of Art Deco began to wane, he travelled overseas and became inspired by the International Modern styling of Dutch architect Willem Dudok (1884-1974). However, his career did not regain traction after the Second World War.Source—Jahn, Graham. 1997. A Guide to Sydney Architecture. Sydney: Watermark Press.
Writers:
Davina Jackson
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 30 August 1899
- Summary
- Emil Sodersten was one of Sydney's two leading architects of Art Deco buildings during the 1930s – noted especially for apartment buildings around Elizabeth Bay. He also designed interiors and furniture for some of his commissions, including the Australia Hotel and the City Mutual Life Assurance building.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Dec-61
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-23.3782137 Longitude150.5134227 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- painter, photographer and craftworker, was born at Rockhampton, Queensland, on 9 May 1893, only daughter of William Henry Rudd, who had come to Brisbane in 1876 as a twenty-one year old assisted migrant from the north of England. After a stint droving on the Georgina in Western Queensland, he became an outback traveller with the Rockhampton firm of Walter Reid; by the turn of the century he was managing director. In 1887 Rudd had married Christina Amelia, daughter of Robert Ross of Taranganba near Yeppoon whom contemporaries described as 'a mesmeristic salesman’ and 'the owner of the best blood [stock] and worst country in Queensland’. Iris was brought up with the traditional artistic accomplishments of middle-class Australian girls. She produced watercolour and oil copies and more or less original black-and-white sketches, as well as relief wood-carvings and a range of needlework. She was sent to school at the fashionable New England Girls Grammar School, Armidale (NSW) and 'finished’ with a trip 'home’ to England with her parents in 1914, recorded in watercolour views.
As well as inheriting a strong Protestant work ethic and sense of duty, Iris had initiative and curiosity. In the argot of the time she was a 'goer’. More than any of her six brothers she took after her father, and she both admired and fought with him. In 1921 she married an AIF soldier lately returned from France, a grandson of old JS 'Bully’ Kerr, headmaster of the Brisbane Normal School. Before the marriage Iris’s father gave her a compact 25.20 calibre Colt automatic to 'shoot the bastard with should he step out of line’. She never did and died in his arms forty years later.
The year before her marriage Iris made a trip through western Queensland and into the Territory with her brother Bill and his Brabazon in-laws. She took a folding Kodak camera that produced postcard-size negatives. The surviving photographs of that trip are the earliest of a series which left an unplanned record of her life in western and central Queensland over the next quarter century.
Following her marriage, she settled with her husband on Hampden Downs, a property 120 miles north west of Winton. Her life during the 1920s and 1930s was the common lot of most western women: home-making, rearing children, nursing them in sickness and death, surviving through drought and depression, and always offering visitors that hospitality for which the west was famous. Artistic activities were subsumed in making clothes and furnishings, but she continued to fill the ubiquitous autograph books with lively beings inspired by Norman Lindsay’s bears, Louis Wain’s cats, and Aboriginal corroboree groups in the manner of Tommy McRae.
Iris continued to use her Kodak, but formal family portraits were taken by professionals. This one of Iris herself by the Brisbane society photographer Trissie Deazeley can be dated to about 1928, after Deazeley had moved from Toowoomba (where her studio is recorded in 1924) and after she dropped her 1927 Brisbane partner, her sister Elsie Deazeley. She is said to have been still working in the 1930s.
In 1940 Iris settled on the coast, where it rained each year and the grass was green. The Colt re-emerged in 1942 when a Japanese invasion seemed imminent. As her home was on a spur of the Blackall Range overlooking the northern approaches to Brisbane, she became a Volunteer Air Observer reporting on aircraft movements. Following a car accident in 1950 she moved to Brisbane, where she died on 31 January 1961.
Writers:
Kerr, James Semple
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 May 1893
- Summary
- Early 20th century Regional Queensland painter, photographer and craftworker. As well as inheriting a strong Protestant work ethic and sense of duty, Iris had initiative and curiosity.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 31-Jan-61
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-30.0914494 Longitude145.9429902 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bourke, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- China painter who was born in Bourke, New South Wales and arrived in Western Australia in 1904. She married H. H. Escourt in 1916 and they went on to have three children. She studied at Perth Technical School under J. W. R. Linton, winning a scholarship, and after World War II studied pottery at Fremantle Technical School. Her teacher was Grace Nicholls who also taught china painting. Escourt exhibited both pottery and china painting. This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1891
- Summary
- Escourt studied at the Perth Technical School and at Fremantle Technical School. She exhibited both pottery and china painting.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1961
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- Mathew Charles Meere, painter and illustrator, was born in England on 6 December 1890. He was educated at St Bonaventure’s Grammar School and the West Ham Technical Institute in London. He served with the London Regiment in World War I, on the Western Front. Hospitalised in France, he met Denise Moreau, a nurse, and they married in 1919, spending their honeymoon visiting the war graves of friends. After the war Meere obtained a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London where from 1919-22 he studied design and mural painting. A son, Desmond, was born in 1920. The family settled in the old city of Dinan in Brittany, where Denise and her mother ran a tea shop. Some of Meere’s paintings of the environs of Dinan are in the Musée du Chateau de Dinan. He also spent some time in Paris, where he attended Colarossi’s, one of several Paris ateliers that provided studio space, models, and tuition for foreign as well as local artists. In 1927 Meere left his family and travelled to Australia, where he worked as a commercial artist for the Catts Patterson advertising agency, and for Smith and Julius at 24 Bond Street, Sydney, a hub of artistic life in Sydney. He exhibited a painting, Spring, Adelaide Park, with the Society of Artists in 1930, visited Western Australia, and returned to London, where he worked as a commercial artist with Berlei. In 1933 he moved permanently to Australia with Anne Carter, who became his second wife. He set up a commercial art and painting studio at 24 Bond Street. His fine art painting practice encompassed landscape, still life, and portraiture. He exhibited with the Society of Artists. Douglas Dundas records that he and Meere worked well together in hanging the Society of Artists exhibitions. Meere taught figure drawing at East Sydney Technical College in the late 1930s, where, instead of the existing practice of using partially clad models, he insisted on fully nude models in accord with European practice. His commitment to traditional methods, not only in art training but also in his own art practice, appears to have insulated his work from the main stream of the modernist movements then gaining strength in Sydney, although certain of his paintings in this period are outstanding examples of Art Deco style. His East Sydney Technical College student Freda Robertshaw joined his studio in 1938 and continued to work with him until 1944, her paintings being heavily influenced by his version of Art Deco during this period. Having submitted an entry for the 1937 Sulman Prize competition for mural painting, he publicly challenged the competence of the judges, who had stated that they had found no entry worthy of the award. He challenged on the basis of his qualifications in this field, having studied mural painting under Anning Bell, Rothenstein and others at the Royal College of Art. He went on to win the 1938 Sulman Prize, then worth £75, for Atalanta’s Eclipse, an Art Deco play on Guido Reni’s Atalanta and Hippomenes (c.1618-19). In 1939 he began his best-known work, the highly complex Australian Beach Pattern of 1940. That he exhibited the cartoon for this painting at the Society of Artists 1939 Annual Exhibition indicates the importance the work had for him. The painting itself was exhibited in the Sulman Prize competition and with the Society of Artists in 1940. His infant son Michael, born 4 December 1938, died in August 1939, on the eve of World War II, and his first son, Desmond, is thought to have died in Paris in 1942. Wartime shortages of staff and paper led him to give up his commercial art studio. He worked as an illustrator with the Daily Telegraph from 1942, and for the Sydney Morning Herald from late 1945 to 1949. His pen-and-ink portrait of Prime Minister Ben Chifley was commissioned by the Australian Labor Party for use in the 1949 election campaign – it was published in newspapers and in the Women’s Weekly in December 1949. It became the subject of a court case when the Brisbane Courier Mail of 8 December 1949 incorporated the image, complete with Meere’s signature, into a cartoon attacking Chifley. Meere sued for damages to his reputation as an artist, and in 1951 won the case, receiving £800 from the newspaper, a sizable sum at the time. He was one of seven artists in various media invited to submit a work for the Jubilee Art Competition announced by Prime Minister Menzies in December 1950 as part of celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Federation in 1951. He won the 1951 Wynne Prize with Never Never Creek, Gleniffer. Meere’s exhibition at David Jones’s Gallery in August 1952 attracted damning commentary from critics in the press, his cool, formal style at the nadir of fashion at that time. Through the 1950s his landscape subjects indicate travel in the Bellingen area, Lismore, and Tumut, and in 1960 a visit to Tasmania. He died in Sydney on 17 October 1961. His artistic reputation survived the scorn of the critics in the 1950s, and the indifferent response to a retrospective exhibition of his work held at Art Lovers’ Gallery Artarmon in March 1966. His painting Australian Beach Pattern 1940 was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1965. The National Trust purchased Triptych in the early 1970s. It is now held in the S.H. Ervin Gallery collection, along with Atalanta’s Eclipse, which was acquired by the Gallery as part of the Alan Renshaw Bequest in 1978. In 1987 a major retrospective curated by Linda Slutzkin and Dinah Dysart was exhibited at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney and at the Nolan Gallery at Lanyon in Canberra. While the greater part of his oeuvre comprises traditional still life, landscape, and portraiture, his reputation largely rests on a few works of the late 1930s and early 1940s, when Meere came into his own as an impressive exponent of Art Deco style. Edward Lucie-Smith has described Atalanta’s Eclipse as “surely one of the most elegant and accomplished of all the high-style classical compositions produced by Deco artists”. Meere’s Australian Beach Pattern has become one of the best known and most often reproduced of all paintings in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Rich in allusion, peopled with an intricate array of monumental, idealised bodies, this compelling, enigmatic work has achieved iconic status as a representation of Australian beach life. Further notable instances of his Art Deco style are Meere’s two mural designs, Triptych c.1939 and Nymphs, Hermes and Pan c.1938, and views of Dinan painted in 1941 and 1944.
Writers:
Joy Eadie
Note:
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 6 December 1890
- Summary
- Charles Meere's art practice encompassed landscape, still life and portraiture, mural design, and black and white illustration. He is best known for his Art Deco style works of the 1930s and 1940s, in particular his iconic painting, Australian Beach Pattern, of 1940. Posters by Meere are also known.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Oct-61
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Thames Ditton, Surrey, England, UK, Thames Ditton, Surrey (Greater London), England, UK
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born on 26 October 1888 at Thames Ditton, Surrey, England, daughter of Joseph Cowen Syme, newspaper proprietor, and Laura, née Blair, and grand-daughter of Ebenezer Syme, editor of the Melbourne Age . Raised in the family mansion at St Kilda, Melbourne, she attended the Church of England Girls’ Grammar School then returned to England to study Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1907-10. Degrees were not then awarded to women and she applied to Melbourne University for accreditation but was only granted admission to third year classics. Instead, she took out a Dip. Ed. From the university in 1914; her BA, MA from Cambridge was awarded in 1930.
Always more interested in art than academia, she went to Paris in 1922-23 and attended La Grande Chaumiére, 'under criticism’ from Maurice Denis. The following year she was back at Melbourne exhibiting with the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS). In 1925 she held a solo exhibition, mainly of watercolours, at Queen’s Hall and produced her first woodcut, The Farmyard , a rather heavy linear work. By 1927 she was producing colour linocuts, presumably having learnt the technique from Ethel Spowers , her lifelong inseparable friend. Her solo exhibition at the Melbourne Athenaeum in March 1928 consisted largely of watercolours but two colour linocuts and four woodcuts were also included.
Inspired by Claude Flight’s 1927 textbook Lino-Cuts , Syme enrolled at Iain MacNab’s Grosvenor School of Modern Art at London in January 1929, where she (and Spowers) studied under Flight, the most influential linocut artist of his generation. From then on Syme’s linocuts reflected Flight’s brand of Art Deco motifs and techniques, his theory of 'Dynamic Symmetry’ and his passion for the Golden Section in composition. (Peers says she lectured on these at Melbourne in the late 1940s.) Later in 1929 she attended some of André Lhôte’s classes in Paris.
Back at Melbourne in 1930, Syme was included in an exhibition of prints at Everyman’s Library in December, along with Spowers and Dorrit Black . She also produced posters, including one advertising the 'Warrandyte Women’s Auxiliary Association Back to Warrandyte Christmas Carnival Exhibition of Pictures’ (c.1930). She was an active, exhibiting member of the VAS, the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria, the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors and the Lyceum Club. Her essay 'Women and Art’ (1934) is still a useful pioneering survey of the history of women artists of Victoria. She was a founding member of the University Women’s College (now University College) at the Melbourne University.
An inveterate traveller, Syme visited Europe regularly (with Spowers) and travelled to Japan to study print techniques. One of the twelve founding members of the Contemporary Group in 1932 – with Spowers, Edith Alsop , Ada May Plante , Isabel Hunter Tweddle et al. – Syme was also a regular member of George Bell’s Thursday Group. Barbara Brash 's portrait of Syme was drawn at one of these Thursday evening meetings, when the 'real’ model failed to turn up and Syme stood in. As secretary of the associated Independent Group, Syme reputedly ran the annual exhibition virtually single-handed. She organised the Red Cross Picture Library (a lending service) and in 1951 became its first chairwoman.
She also continued to paint and produce occasional linocuts until her death at Richmond on 6 June 1961. She was buried in the Presbyterian section of Brighton cemetery. In her will she left her books and £5,000 to University Women’s College.
Her prints are widely represented in Australian public collections, but her oils and watercolours are less popular. Even when held, they are rarely exhibited. Her oil on board The Snowy Mountains Highway , inscribed verso ’20 gns’ and ’202 Orrong Road, Toorak SE2, per Youngs, Melbourne’ is illustrated in Bridget McDonnell, Early Australian Paintings (exhibition catalogue May-June 2001, Carlton Vic), no.44.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 October 1888
- Summary
- A contemporary of many well known female Australian artists, Syme was an active member of a number of artistic associations. She was widely travelled and produced many linocuts and watercolours.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Jun-61
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Sydney on 25 October 1888, only child of Thomas John Francis Chapman, a merchant, and Grace Egerton, née Cornish, formerly of New Zealand. She had lessons with Dattilo Rubbo for four years (c.1906-11) and from him learnt to explore colour and light as well as to see the subject as a whole. She did well, and in 1909 she was awarded first prize in the Royal Art Society’s student drawing competition. In 1911 she painted a portrait of her teacher later purchased by the Art Gallery of NSW. She also exhibited with the Art Society. Her early work consisted mainly of portraits and figure subjects, which were praised by contemporaries for their harmonious colour sense.
In Europe with her parents in about 1911, Chapman broadened her training. She studied at the Académie Julian in Paris under Lucien Simon. In 1914 she returned briefly to Sydney and sold her painting of two girls with a bowl of goldfish, Blue and Gold , to the Art Gallery of NSW. During World War I Evelyn lived in Britain and continued her studies, this time under Lucy Kemp-Welch at the Bushey School of Art in Hertfordshire. She also painted landscapes at St Ives in Cornwall. Between 1919 and 1920 she was in the area near Villers-Bretonneux with her father, Francis Chapman, who was attached to the NZ War Graves Commission. Evelyn spent her time painting a series of works depicting battlefield ruins. In 1920 she visited Bruges and sketched scenic views. That year three of her works were hung in the Salon des Beaux Arts, Paris; a further three were included the following year.
At the end of 1920 Chapman revisited Australia. She returned to London and in 1925 married Dr George Thalben-Ball and gave up painting. She revisited Australia in 1960 and died in 1961 following her return to London.
Writers:
Gray, Anna
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 October 1888
- Summary
- Painter born in Sydney, NSW. Resident of Australia and Europe her early work consisted mainly of portraits and figure subjects, which were praised by contemporaries for their harmonious colour sense.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1961
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Gerrard Gayfield Shaw was born in the Adelaide suburb of Parkside on 27 August 1885. He came from a long established art family involved with painting and printmaking. His grandfather was James Shaw (1815-1881), an artist who made a noteworthy reputation in Australia after moving to Adelaide from his native Scotland. Before emigrating, James Shaw’s family lived at 28 Gayfield Square in Edinburgh, an address that helps explain the choice of 'Gayfield’ as the artist’s second and preferred forename. Perhaps reflecting the long established status of printmaking as a profession in his family, Gayfield Shaw was encouraged to study art by his father and attended the South Australian School of Design. After moving to Sydney in 1908 Shaw studied art at the J.S. Watkins School of Art. The first sign of his involvement with the arts dates from 1910 when he designed decorative floral borders for a small publication called Life’s Wallaby by Sydney Partrige. By 1914 Shaw was working at J.R. Tyrrell’s Bookshop in Sydney, where he also had a financial stake in the company. Shaw’s relationship with James Tyrrell is unclear, but by 1916 Shaw had opened his own Sydney gallery on the ground floor of 48 Elizabeth Street and by 1917 was presenting regular solo shows. During 1918 Shaw relocated his gallery to the 4th floor of Penzance Chambers at 29 Elizabeth Street, where he remained until early 1922. During this time he presented exhibitions by many leading Australian artists, including, among others: Sydney Ure Smith, Charles Wheeler, W.B. McInnes, Percy Leason, Dora Wilson, James R. Jackson, Norman Lindsay, Blamire Young, M.J. MacNally, Harold Herbert and H. Van Raalte. Shaw’s best remembered exhibition during this time was his 1919 exhibition of the early abstract works of Roland Wakelin and Roy de Maistre. Although open to debate, this show was, argubly, Australia’s first organised avant-garde art exhibition. Shaw seems to have developed a reputation for being parsimonious and this led to grumblings from some of his exhibiting artists. Norman Lindsay complained about Shaw’s business practises in a May 1923 letter to his older brother Lionel: '[Gayfield Shaw] is a fool, on his own account, for I send a lot of work elsewhere that would go to him, but for the fact that he never lets us know when a work is sold, and delays payment till one is forced to drag it out of him by threats which makes it impossible to allow him to carry too much money, for if he cracked up suddenly, as he well might, the loss is inevitable. I recall [Hugh] McCrae’s description of him as perfect, by the way. “A kind but crafty young man, who held my hand tight, as if it had sovereigns in it”’. Despite this negative description, Norman Lindsay described Shaw (in the same letter) as “the most capable dealer here”. Early in the twentieth century there was a western revival in etching and by the end of the Great War artistic etching had also become popular in Australia. Shaw seems to have been instrumental in establishing, in August 1920, the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society. The importance of his role as the group’s founder can be seen in his appointment as the Honorary Secretary and Treasurer, while Lionel Lindsay was appointed President. At the first Society exhibition, at the Education Department’s gallery in Sydney in 1921, Shaw exhibited 12 of his own etchings, which were mainly landscapes and architectural studies. At the second Sydney annual show Shaw exhibited four works and was listed on the catalogue as Exhibition Manager. The third annual exhibition saw a dispute develop between Shaw and Lionel Lindsay over whether it was ethical for Shaw to sell his works while he was working as the exhibition manager. This dispute led to Lindsay resigning from the Society. Not long after, Shaw himself stepped down as Honorary Secretary and Treasurer. By the mid 1920s the growing popularity of Australian art saw several new commercial galleries open their doors in Sydney. Perhaps in response to increased competition, Shaw promoted a novel plan to sell Australian art works to country towns. By late 1923 Shaw was advertising a planned tour of 12 NSW country towns. While it is unknown whether the country tour was a financial success it certainly led to Shaw’s decision to close down his Sydney gallery and become a farmer. The Gayfield Shaw gallery had closed its doors by late 1924 and much of his stock was sold at a high profile sale at James R. Lawson’s auction rooms in March 1925. The Sydney auction included a large amount of work by the leading Australian artists of the period as well as some foreign works, including three Rembrandt etchings. Cashed up, Shaw became a grazier on a New England sheep property named “Tangalola” near Inverell. Despite his high hopes of making a success on the land, the inexperienced farmer was unfortunate to suffer from the harsh effects of the Depression and a lingering drought. Despondent, Shaw sold up and returned to Sydney with his family in 1931. Shaw settled in the attractive harbour side suburb of Rose Bay. He quickly resumed his art career and concentrated his creative efforts on the production of book plates, which at the time were at the peek of their popularity in Australia. While many respected bookplate artists (such as Lionel Lindsay and Adrian Feint) were attracted to woodblock printing in the 1930s, Shaw specialised in fine detail etched images. One Shaw bookplate won the 1932 International Award for Best Etched Bookplate of the Year in Los Angeles and in 1939 the American Society of Bookplate Artists devoted a major part of their Annual Yearbook to Shaw’s work. While he had been instrumental in the founding of the Australian Painter-Etchers Society in the early 1920s, Shaw became involved with the newly established NSW Bookplate Club in the early 1930s. In 1932 Shaw was one of three artists chosen to feature in the Club’s first limited edition publication. The Club also held an international exhibition of bookplates in 1933, at the David Jones Gallery, Sydney, and Shaw won two prizes for historical themed images. Shaw produced many fine bookplates for people, such as: Frances Zabel, C.H. Bertie, W.W. Ingram, Francis Clune, James R. Tyrrell and Dame Mary Gilmore. His reputation as a highly skilled etcher was mentioned by P. Neville Barnett in his 1950 book-plate survey: 'Shaw is an artist who has produced a large number of remarkable fine etched and engraved plates, which have enriched the Australian series enormously. He sprang into full world-stature so quickly once he began and so noble is his series that regret can be felt that he did not start with book-plates earlier in life.’ While Shaw had sold his pioneer gallery business in the mid 1920s, there is evidence that he briefly relaunched his gallery after returning to Sydney. In November 1933 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Society of Women Painters was holding an exhibition at the Gayfield Shaw Gallery at 104 Hunter Street, Sydney. This was the only mention of this art enterprise, so possibly, the revived Shaw gallery was only operating for a short period of time. In the mid 1930s Shaw’s reputation as an expert printmaker was noticed by the Melbourne Mint’s note issue department, who recruited him to supervise the engraving of banknotes. For this skilled work he relocated to Melbourne for several years while his wife and family continued to live in Rose Bay. By 1944 Shaw was back in Sydney and took up a position with the Commonwealth Bank. Despite his bank duties, Shaw continued to produce bookplates throughout the 1930s, 40s and early 50s. One of his last bookplates was for Sir Winston Churchill (1955). He retired from etching in 1956, aged 71. The artist died in Sydney in 1961. Significant examples of his work can be found in public collections including: the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Australia and the State Library of New South Wales. Two decades after his death, Sydney auction house James R. Lawson Pty Ltd held a sale, in March 1981, of a large family owned collection of art created by, or once owned by, Gayfield Shaw. The highlight of this auction was the sale of the etching press (lot 255) used by Shaw and many of his Scottish forebears. As well as being the creator of many images, Shaw was also the subject for several artists. These include two celebrated photographs by Harold Cazneaux, an oil likeness by W.B. McInnes (1918) and a woodblock bookplate portrait by George Aria.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, SilasNote:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 27 August 1885
- Summary
- Commercial gallery director, Gayfield Shaw was one of the most prominent members of the Sydney art scene during the early boom period in Australian visual art following the end of the First World War. He was also a skilled printmaker who took a leading role in establishing the nation's first etching society.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1961
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-34.016087 Longitude150.7198849 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Camden, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Camden, NSW. A freelance contributor to the Bulletin , Smith’s Weekly and The Comic Australian (eg Golf in Queensland 28 October 1911, 4), he also worked for the newspaper Grit and published a free weekly newspaper, the Brighton [NSW] Echo , which he illustrated. Two original WWI cartoons of 1918 are in a collection of works collected by Miss Aileen Small for a book on 5th Division which includes other cartoons, many by amateur servicemen (ML PXD 508, purchased 1921). Jessup contributed to Beckett’s Budget , eg a political cartoon about primary producers, The Incubus , 16 August 1927, 7. He was a member of the St George Art Society, the Royal Art Society and the Sydney Art Society.
Bulletin originals ML include eight drawings 1921-46 and 21 caricatures 1927-32, eg of Judge Adrian Curlewis, Charles Lloyd Jones and 'Mo’ (Roy Rene). Other cartoons are 'The Cat and the Canary’, showing a large drooling cat labelled 'unfair British & USA competion (dumped publications, leftover magazines etc.)’ stalking a caged canary labelled 'The Australian Publisher (including the Australian writer and artist)’, c.1945 (original, Frank Johnson Papers Px*D69/no.953); slick 'Land Army Girl [to farmer]: “Can’t find the old grey mare? Did you look in the mare’s nest?” paid 5 January 1945, Frank Johnson papers (ML Px*D69/no.945); and 'Tinlid celebrates its 23rd annual pumpkin show’ (with queue of men to see 'Linda the Tattooed Lady’ and queue of women to see 'Hercules the Tatooed Man’), paid 21 June 1945, Frank Johnson papers, ML Px*D69/no.951.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1884
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney freelance cartoonist and publisher who contributed to publications including the Bulletin, Smith's Weekly and The Comic Australian.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1961
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Ballarat on 1 September 1884, second daughter of Elizabeth and Henry Finch Rix. Her mother was a competent painter who studied at the National Gallery School; her father, a well-respected teacher, later became Inspector of Schools in the Beechworth district where the family lived until 1894. When they returned to Melbourne, Elizabeth Rix became an active member of the Austral Salon. Hilda later attended Merton Hall and, together with her sister Elsie, had painting lessons from Mr Mather ( John Mather ).
In 1902-5 Hilda studied at the National Gallery School with Frederick McCubbin . In 1906 Henry Rix died unexpectedly; the following year, after a joint exhibition, Elizabeth, Elsie and Hilda left Australia bound for Europe. Soon after her arrival in London, Hilda Rix enrolled at the New Art School in Kensington, where she studied with the well-known poster artist John Hassall. Moving to Paris at the end of October 1907, she enrolled at the Académie Delécluse for a short time. She also studied with the fashionable and successful American painter Richard Miller, and with Claudio Castelucho and Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére. In 1911 her painting Retour de la Chasse was accepted by the Old Salon and hung 'on the line’.
Before World War I she painted for a part of each year at Etaples, the well-known artists’ colony in northern France. She travelled to Morocco in 1912 and 1914. When war broke out the family was evacuated from Etaples; Elizabeth and Elsie Rix both contracted enteric fever during the crossing to England. Elsie died soon after their arrival and Elizabeth in 1916. Later that year Hilda Rix met Major George Matson Nicholas, whom she married on 7 October 1916. He returned to the Front three days later and was killed in action in November.
Returning to Australia in 1918, Rix Nicholas exhibited her European pictures in Melbourne and in Sydney in 1919. Australian critics were amazed by the range and versatility of her work. Almost immediately after her return, however, she re-defined her artistic practice, transforming her European imagery into nationalistic pictures of Australian country life. She returned to France in 1924 intending to show Europe 'what is possessed in a land of beauty… which sent so many gallant men to the struggle for liberty’. Her new Australian work was exhibited in Paris and London in 1925, and in 1926 she was elected an associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts (New Salon).
In September 1926 Rix Nicholas returned to Australia. She married Edgar Wright in June 1928 and moved to his property, Knockalong, at Delegate in southern NSW. Their only child was born in 1930. She continued to exhibit her work throughout the 1930s and ’40s, although by then her imagery was out of step with contemporary developments. Failing eyesight and ill health made it difficult for her to paint during the 1950s. She died on 3 August 1961.
Writers:
Pigot, John
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 September 1884
- Summary
- Painter born in Ballarat in 1884 who studied in Melbourne London and Paris. Her European and Moroccan works were met with critical acclaim in Australia, while her subsequent Australian subjects earned her the position of associate of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts (New Salon).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Aug-61
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude46.01144655 Longitude13.33885653 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toppo, Udine, Friuli, Italy
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1883
- Summary
- Pietro and one of his brothers (Antonio) were the principals of Melocco Brothers, Sydney. Pietro trained as a mason's apprentice and later at the Cooper Union, New York City. After arriving in Australia in 1908, he established a workshop in Redfern, Sydney and with his brother, received numerous private and commercial commissions for mosaic works as murals and flooring.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-61
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Constance Jenkins, painter and teacher, was born in Melbourne on 29 June 1883, youngest of the children of the civil engineer and architect John S. Jenkins (son of an English professor in the Scottish Elgin Academy) and Emma, née Wright, who particularly encouraged her daughter’s artistic interests.
Constance Jenkins studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School. She enrolled in the School of Design in 1901 and two years later was admitted to the School of Painting (1903-08). During her student years, Jenkins exhibited at the NGV Art School exhibitions and with the Victorian Artists’ Society. She also won several awards at the First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work held in Melbourne in 1907.
In 1908 Jenkins became the first woman to win the NGV Travelling Scholarship, which supported two years of overseas studies. Jenkins travelled to Paris where she studied at the Académie Julian in 1909 and then completed further studies in London and Italy. She exhibited at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français, Paris (Old Salon) in 1910 and the Royal Academy in 1911. It is likely that 'My lady pincushion (daylight)’ was completed during Jenkins’ scholarship years abroad.
In 1912 Constance Jenkins returned to Melbourne where she held her first solo exhibition at the Athenaeum Hall. Amongst the ninety-six exhibited works were two versions of My lady pincushion: one by daylight and the other by candlelight. Later that year, Jenkins departed Melbourne for the United States where she married Spencer Macky, a fellow student from the NGV Art School. The Mackys settled in San Francisco where Jenkins taught at the San Francisco Institute of Fine Arts. She continued to exhibit and was a founding member of the San Francisco Society of Women Artists (1925). Constance Jenkins died in San Francisco in 1961.
Writers:
Staff WriterSullivan, LisaThe Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 29 June 1883
- Summary
- Figurative painter and teacher born in Melbourne, one of a number of female artists who enjoyed a considerable degree of public recognition in the inter-war period. Jenkins moved to the USA in 1912 with her husband where they both became involved in the art scene in San Francisco and Jenkins became a founding member of the San Francisco Women Artists' Society.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-Nov-61
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.8857968 Longitude151.2440867 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Woollahra, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Potter, studied china painting in the Art Department of Sydney Technical College c.1911. She joined the Society of Arts & Crafts of NSW in 1920 and exhibited with it in 1927-43. In 1943 she had a studio in Burwood, Sydney.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- A potter and china painter, Lesslie joined the Society of Arts & Crafts of NSW. In 1943 she had a studio in Burwood, Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1961
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-37.425 Longitude143.891667 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Creswick, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, etcher, printmaker, cartoonist, illustrator and writer, Lionel Arthur Lindsay was born at Creswick, near Ballarat, the third of the ten children of Dr Robert Charles Lindsay and his wife Jane Elizabeth Williams. Dr Lindsay kept bound copies of London Punch , and the illustrations of Charles Keene became the first works of art that he admired. All the Lindsay children drew, encouraged by their mother and their grandfather, the Methodist missionary Rev Thomas Williams, who was himself an amateur artist.
Lionel was the most academically brilliant of the Lindsay children and was awarded a full scholarship to Creswick Grammar where he edited the school newspaper, the Boomerang , which had previously been edited by his brother Percy . His grandfather encouraged him to read Rabelais in French, and also to appreciate scientific knowledge. An early passion for astronomy led his grandfather to arrange for the15 year old Lindsay to move to Melbourne where he was employed as a pupil assistant to Pietro Baracchi, the Government Astronomer. In the South Melbourne public library he discovered art through looking at bound volumes of reproductions of black and white art. Astronomy did not survive this new discovery and Lionel returned to Creswick where he studied for matriculation with a private tutor, and kept a diary in which he drew studies of his family, friends and scenes of Creswick life. This diary became a source for his younger brother Norman 's novel Redheap . When some visiting actors came to Creswick he drew them, and as a result the 16 year old boy was offered work as an illustrator for the Hawk , later renamed the Hawklet at 35/- a week. Members of the Lindsay family were to be staff artists on the Hawklet for the next 15 years. In 1896 with his friends, Ted Dyson, Randolph Bedford, J. B. Castieau and P.E. Castilla he founded the Free Lance , a publication loosely based on Sydney’s Bulletin . Because of the demands of this publication he yielded to his younger brother Norman’s plea to be able to join him in Melbourne. At first Norman was Lionel’s ghost, covering for his work on the Hawklet , but when the Free lance folded only after a few months, the two survived a precarious existence with odd freelance jobs. In 1897 he made some illustrations for the Labor publication, the Tocsin , but stopped drawing when he was not paid. They lived for a while at Charterisville with their friends Ernest Moffitt and Will Dyson , but Lionel then travelled to the Western Australian goldfields for Randolph Bedford’s Clarion . His artistic model at this time was Dick Heldar, the journalist illustrator in Rudyard Kipling’s The Light that Failed (1891). In 1898 there was a new venture when Lionel, Norman and a journalist friend Ray Parkinson signed an oath in blood to write a pirate novel, loosely based on Treasure Island . They dressed like pirates and Lionel made his first etchings of pirates, using archaic technology (the press was an old mangle ) to capture the mood. The subject matter did not last, but the medium continued to intrigue him.
In 1900 Lionel saw his first production of Bizet’s Carmen , and fell in love with Spain, a love that endured for the rest of his life. He learnt Spanish from a local Sevillian cork cutter and in 1902 sailed via Marseilles to Seville. After a short stay in London, where he admired a major survey exhibition of Charles Meryon’s etchings of old Paris. he travelled to Italy where he became engaged to Jean Dyson, the sister of the artist Will Dyson. Lionel moved to Sydney he became the cartoonist of the Evening News , edited by A.B. (Banjo) Paterson. He also contributed to the Bulletin and the Lone Hand . Increasingly though he was interested in etching. Inspired by Meryon he made etchings of Old Sydney as well as romantic aquatints of arcadian landscapes featuring Sydney harbour. His first etchings were published in 1907, printed on Penfold’s letter press, but later he imported his own press. Will Dyson’s caricature of Lionel, published in the Society of Artists’ exhibition of 1907, shows an untidy man, with books flying behind him. Dyson also commented on his unhealthy obsession with his younger brother, Norman, who Lionel regarded as a visual genius. “An artist should not have a brother. He should divorce him,” Dyson wrote.
Other artists were influenced by Lionel’s passion for etching. Sydney Ure Smith , the founder of Art in Australia , joined him on expeditions drawing and painting colonial architecture. Smith also commissioned to write many articles on Australian artists, including Arthur Streeton , Hans Heysen , and Elioth Gruner .
As well as cartooning Lionel wrote and illustrated the Chunderloo series of comic advertisements, published in the Bulletin and was an illustrator for Steele Rudd’s comic novels.
When Norman was in London in 1910 Lionel asked him to obtain mezzotint rockers. These were used to make a series of mezzotints of old Sydney, influenced by the work of Constable. After 1917 he developed a major rift in his friendship with Norman, which eventually led to a severing of relations between the two. This was caused in part by tensions over their brother Reg’s death in World War I, and also because of Norman’s appropriation of Lionel’s teenage diary in his literary fiction. Norman was also less appreciative of Lionel writing on the work of Conrad Martens and other Australian artists. Lionel turned to wood engraving in the tradition of Thomas Bewick , and it was this work that led to his art coming to the attention of Harold Wright of Colnaghi, the London art dealer.
In 1926 Lionel returned to Spain where he made etchings and drypoints of his beloved Spanish landscape. He also travelled through France, Italy and Germany. His subsequent London exhibition in 1927 ensured his British reputation and his financial security. He used his new wealth to buy master prints by Rembrandt, Goya, Durer, and drawings by Charles Keene. There were frequent journeys between Europe and Australia until 1936 when he returned home, depressed at the rise of Franco.
Lionel’s other objection to Europe was the rise of modern art. In 1942 he wrote Addled Art , an attack on modernism and one of the most hated books published in this country. It therefore surprised many to discover that he was one of the Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales who voted to award the 1943 Archibald Prize to William Dobell 's portrait of Joshua Smith. He was also the informant who supplied vital information to the Trustees’ lawyers before the court case that arose from this decision.
Lionel was a great friend to many; he loved books, fine food and fine conversation. His friend Robert Menzies admired his “divine and disordered conversation”. Menzies caused him to be knighted for his services to art in 1941.
Lionel continued to make etchings and woodcuts long after they ceased to be fashionable. His last printed work was made in 1958 and died of pneumonia on the 21st of May in 1961, welcoming death as a friend.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanMendelssohn, Joanna
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 17 October 1874
- Summary
- The first member of the prolific Lindsay family to become a professional illustrator. A constant experimenter with photography and etching, Lionel Lindsay became a dominant figure in Australian art in the first half of the 20th century, but in the popular mind he was eclipsed by his younger brother Norman.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-May-61
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude53.2141028 Longitude-2.471770086 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cheshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Wrought-iron craftsman and engineer Wilfred Priestner was born in Cheshire, England, son of Phillip Priestner and Sarah Okel n_e Barne. His father, a former mariner, owned hardware and drapery businesses in Helsby. According to architect Rodney Alsop he was “A member of Caslake ironworking family who trained in his grandfather’s workshop, the same that trained Starkie-Gardner who wrote the handbook on ironwork published by the Victoria and Albert Museum.” Priestner was musical and served in the choir of Chester Cathedral and in Australia as organist for a number of churches. In 1900 he married a teacher, Edith Tatterstall, and in 1901 a son, Sidney, was born. Priestner worked in South Africa in 1903 installing piping. When he returned to his family he sought other opportunities overseas and the family arrived at Albany, WA in 1908. He purchased land near Denmark but was not successful as a vegetable grower. Edith supported their endeavours by teaching at the nearby Young’s Siding. In 1919 they moved to Perth and bought a cottage in Nedlands where he established a workshop. Here Priestner employed a blacksmith, Jack Thomas and an apprentice, Albert Rogers. They made hand wrought ironwork for churches, particularly for Father Hawes who was noted for his church buildings and sent detailed sketches and notes of his requirements. Objects made in the workshop included screens, altar rails, tabernacle doors, grilles, finial crosses, standard and wall lamps, bell towers and bell pulls, umbrella stands, fire dogs, firegrates, weather vanes, security doors, gates, fencing panels, footscrapers, candelabras, balustrades, balconies and railings to surround graves. In 1932 his premises were at 58 Stirling Highway, Nedlands. During the 1930s he worked with the architectural firms Eales and Cohen, Bennett and Associates and others on city buildings and private houses, primarily in South Perth, Claremont, Dalkeith and Mt Lawley. The projects included the railings of the State War Memorial, Kings Park in the 1930s and entrance lamps for St George’s College, Crawley in 1932. Other projects were the electric light fittings for the foyer and ornamental ironwork on the stairway leading to Winthrop Hall as well as other door fittings at University of Western Australia in 1931-2, Chancel Screen (1929) and Baptismal Screen (1947) for St John’s Church Fremantle and pieces for the Karrakatta Club, which were moved to Sherwood Court when the club changed premises. Caslake, the firm he may have worked for in England, won the contract at the University of Western Australia for the wrought iron screens at the entrance to Winthrop Hall. Priestner was employed to fit them. During World War II ornamental work was restricted and he worked on framed metal windows for military buildings. Priestner’s wife died in 1950. He died in 1961. The family gave his old workshop as a museum to the City of Nedlands. Nedlands City Council catalogued the collection in 1984 and tried to decide where to place it. A precinct was proposed near Gallop House on the Nedlands foreshore but never eventuated. Meanwhile the Royal Agricultural Society expressed a desire to set up the workshop as a working display at the Claremont Showgrounds with the Blacksmiths Association members working along side. It has been set up with the tools and photographs of examples of his work up to 1959 on display.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1871
- Summary
- Wrought-iron craftsman and engineer. After he died in 1961, his family gave his old workshop as a museum to the City of Nedlands.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1961
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude41.8755616 Longitude-87.6244212 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Chicago, IL, USA
- Biography
- architect, was born on 14 February 1871 in Chicago (USA), daughter of a school-teacher named Mahony. After obtaining a BSc from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1894, she became the first woman licensed to practice architecture in the state of Illinois. She became, as Susan Berkon notes, 'a design collaborator with three male architects (Frank Lloyd Wright, Hermann von Holst, and Walter Burley Griffin)’—a necessity for any woman architect at the turn of the century. Despite the interior designs she did for Wright’s houses from 1895 and the 'virtuoso drawings’ she executed for a monograph on Wright to be published in Berlin—thus promoting his international reputation—she remained his 'collaborator’ only. When she took over Wright’s unfinished projects after he absconded to Europe in 1909, most of her architectural drawings were signed by Hermann von Holst (the head of the firm) with Marion merely the 'associate’ architect.
Marion Mahony married Walter Burley Griffin in Chicago on 29 June 1911. She was forty, he five years her junior; they had no children. Historians have tended to treat the Griffin-Mahony marriage as a repetition of the Wright-Mahony relationship: 'her hero-worship of Wright was transferred to Griffin’, according to Peter Harrison. Marion herself described the marriage as an 'equitable partnership together’ with 'each individual independent and responsible’. Yet although they worked together in a valuable symbiotic association, it was Walter who had the public profile. The winning design for the proposed Australian federal capital, Canberra, in 1912 has always been known as Walter’s alone, even though Marion drew the elegant perspective watercolours (Australian Archives) that were said to have influenced the judges in its favour.
While Walter acted as part-time director of design and construction for the new capital for seven years, the Griffins also undertook many private architectural commissions. Walter’s brother-in-law Roy Lippincott – who worked as draughtsman for the Griffins – claimed that it was Marion who was responsible for the success of the Café Australia and the Melbourne Capitol Theatre (1922-24) projects. As well as the stunning ceiling of the Capitol Theatre, she is also attributed with the design of the symbolic tiles on the Pyrmont Incinerator (demolished 1992).
In 1920 the Griffins set up a company to develop a residential estate, Castlecrag, on the shores of Sydney Harbour; they settled there in 1925. This was to be a self-contained community, with all houses designed by Walter to complement the natural landscape. Marion ran the Castlecrag office, supervised or prepared all drawings and led local cultural activities. Both were interested in Theosophy by this time; later they became interested in the theories of Rudolph Steiner. In retrospect, the Castlecrag estate seems a bold, if flawed, venture; at the time, their interest in preserving the natural environment, holding Anthroposophical Society festivals and producing Greek plays in their open-air New Scenic Haven Theatre, even the unusual architecture and its siting seemed capricious.
[A collection of archival material on the Griffins in the 1920s and 1930s from the estate of architect Eric Nicholls who was W.B. Griffin’s business partner in the Sydney and Melbourne offices was offered at auction in Sydney by Phillips on 31 July 2001. It included a drawing attributed to Marion of GSDA Dwellings no 1 and 2 Castlecrag 1922, ink & watercolour on silk, and a leadlight window designed by Walter and Marion c.1925, both ill. World of Antiques and Art 61st edn (July-December 2001), prelims, p.8]
After Walter went to India in 1935, Marion maintained the Sydney office with Walter’s young partner Eric Nicholls, until joining her husband in May 1936. After Walter died in Lucknow on 11 February 1937, she returned briefly to Castlecrag, but left for Chicago in 1938. She undertook two major community projects in New Hampshire and Texas and produced a design for South Chicago, none of which was ever completed. She also wrote a history of her professional life with her husband, 'The Magic of America’, which was never published. She died on 10 August 1961.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 14 February 1871
- Summary
- Working in the same league as Frank Lloyd Wright and Hermann von Holst, Marion eventually married and worked with Walter Burley Griffin on public and private architecture in Sydney and Melbourne.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Aug-61
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude41.8755616 Longitude-87.6244212 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Chicago, IL, USA
- Biography
- Marion Lucy Mahony was born in Chicago, Illinois. When she was a baby her family fled from the Great Fire that precipitated the architectural revolution in that city.After the fire the family settled in Evanstop, a semi-rural enclave north of the city that had been founded by Unitarians. When she was eleven her schoolteacher father died of a self administered dose of laudanum. Shortly afterwards their house caught on fire. Her mother, Clara subsequently took her five children to the west side of the city and qualified to become an elementary school principal. In 1890, Anna Wilmarth, the daughter of one her mother’s friends paid for Marion’s fees so she could study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She graduated in 1894, only the second woman to do so.On returning to Chicago she worked for two years for her cousin, Dwight Heald Perkins, before moving to the office of Frank Lloyd Wright.In 1898 she was formally licensed as an architect, probably first woman in the USA to achieve that qualification. While in Wright’s office she became known for the quality of her architectural renderings, exquisite drawings that encouraged clients to adopt Wright’s plans.After Wright abandoned his practice in 1909, Hermann von Holst, who took over his practice, appointed Mahony as principal designer. In 1911 she married fellow architect, Walter Burley Grffin, who saw had met when they both worked for Frank Lloyd Wright. After they established their own office, they entered the international competition to design Australia’s capital city, a result of Federation. Walter Burley Griffin’s design, rendered in exquisite autumnal tones by Marion Mahony Griffin, was awarded the prize.The Griffins relocated to Sydney and then Melbourne, but found the Australian bureaucracy increasingly difficult to work with.In 1921 the Griffins began to develop a Castlecrag, aa “a model residential suburb”, conceived in line with their Theosophical beliefs. They were so committed to the project that they moved there in 1925. In 1935 Walter moved to Lucknow to design the university library. She joined him as he designed other projects in India. After Walter Burley Griffin died suddenly of peritonitis in 1937, Marion returned to Australia, to Castlecrag. The following year she relocated to Chicago, where she lived for the rest of her life. Here she wrote The Magic of America, an unpublished account of her life and work with Walter Burley Griffin. She continued to lecture, write and design, but was no longer in the public eye.She died in poverty at the Cook County hospital.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 14 February 1871
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Aug-61
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-27.6234673 Longitude152.7594638 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1961-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ipswich, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Ipswich, Queensland, one of six children in an established family of Scottish origin which made major contributions to medicine and to the pastoral industry in Queensland. Her early artistic training was in Brisbane under Godfrey Rivers at the Central Technical College, where she seems to have specialised in miniature painting. At Rivers’s urging, she successfully submitted a miniature of her father to the 1905 Royal Academy Exhibition.
In 1905, aged thirty-two, Bessie Gibson left Australia to further her artistic studies in Paris, having previously travelled to England and Europe with her family (1901-02). Her family always favoured her painting career and promised to support her for three years. Bessie settled in Paris, found herself a flat in Montparnasse, and did not return to Australia until 1947.
When she arrived at Paris she enrolled with three studios: Colarossi’s, Castelucho’s and that of the miniature painter Mlle Debillemont-Chardon. At Colarossi’s she was taught watercolour painting by Frances Hodgkins, the New Zealand expatriate painter. This was to remain her natural art form and the one in which she excelled. Pictures like Reflections (NGV) and Woman in a Mirror (QU & Manly AG) are proof that she could handle the medium as well as other painters of her day. They also show her predilection for prevailing academic compositions and styles. In this respect her art has close parallels to other painters then in Paris: Kate O’Connor, Maude Sherwood, Bessie Davidson and the American Charles Hawthorne.
At Castelucho’s Bessie Gibson studied oil painting and was indirectly but strongly affected by the art of James McNeill Whistler, an influence seen in her small oil on wood panels of Honfleur, Venice and Paris which adapt Whistler’s interest in leaving part of the panel exposed, his narrow range of tonal values, the grid system in which he composed his works and his rather detached approach to traditional subject matter. She was closely associated with a follower of Whistler, the American Edwin Scott, who also taught her and in whose studio she in turn probably taught. Although Scott’s work parallels hers, it can be even more closely related to another Brisbane painter in Paris, Anne Alison Greene, Bessie Gibson’s close friend.
Why Bessie Gibson chose to further her studies in miniature painting in Paris is curious; she had already gained distinction at the Royal Academy (1906, with a miniature of her father), and in 1907 she won first prize in this section at the Women’s Work Exhibition in Melbourne. She exhibited at the Royal Academy until 1923, at the Salon d’Automne (New Salon) between 1922 and 1934 and at the Salon des Artistes Français (Old Salon) between 1912 and 1939. Her submissions continued to be mainly portraits, one of which won an honourable mention at the Old Salon in 1926. She was included in the 1924 London exhibition, 'Australian Artists in Europe’, and showed her work with both the London Society of Women Artists (1924) and the Sydney Society of Women Painters (1926).
In 1939 she left Paris for England and remained there for the war’s duration when she seems to have stopped painting. In 1947 she returned to Brisbane. Although she exhibited her Parisian work regularly in Brisbane and had a solo show in Sydney in 1949, she was not really recognised in the southern states until International Women’s Year (1975) when her work was included in 'Australian Women Artists, 100 Years: 1840-1940’. Then people realised that her artistic qualities in watercolour and her small landscapes in oil compared favourably with those of other artists of her generation.
Writers:
Underhill, Nancy D. H.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1868
- Summary
- Painter of miniatures, Bessie studied and exhibited mainly in Paris and then London for most of her life, returning to Australia in 1947 when she was in her 70's.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1961
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-37.88499375 Longitude145.0010231 Start Date1920-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Elsternwick, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Elsternwick, Victoria. She attended St Michael’s Church of England Girls’ Grammar School in 1933-35 before commencing one year of a commercial art course at Brighton Technical School. She started in the Drawing School of the National Gallery School in 1937 and completed one and a half years, leaving in mid-1938 despite winning a prize for drawing the head from life at the annual students’ exhibition. In 1937 she met the painter Albert Tucker whom she was to marry in 1941; in 1945 they had a son, Sweeney.
During the period 1937-42 she met and became friendly with several artists who are now recognised as the most significant of their generation: Sidney Nolan, Danila Vassilieff, Josl Bergner , Noel Counihan , Arthur Boyd and John Perceval . She was also associated with John Reid and his wife, Sunday, whose home at Heidelberg, Heide, became a centre for many of these artists (c.1940-47).
In 1947 Joy Hester was diagnosed as having Hodgkins’s disease, a malignant cancer of the lymph glands. She moved to Sydney with Gray Smith, leaving Tucker and her son in Melbourne. She married Gray Smith in 1959; there were two children, Peregrine and Fern, from her second marriage.
In her lifetime, Hester had three solo exhibitions: in 1950, 1953 and 1956. She was a foundation member of the Contemporary Art Society and exhibited many times in its annual shows. After returning to Melbourne in 1948, she lived in the semi-rural countryside around Melbourne, at Hurstbridge, Avonsleigh and Upwey, before moving to Box Hill in 1956 where she had her own studio for the first time.
Joy Hester produced a large body of drawings in the period 1939-58. She rarely used oils; instead, from early in her career, she devoted herself to using ink and Chinese brushwork to create her expressionistic, personal images. Her subjects were those of personality and intimacy; faces, lovers and relationships between people were the basis and inspiration of her art. Joy Hester died in 1960 after fighting the disease for 13 years.
Writers:
Burke, Janine
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1920
- Summary
- Painter known for her ink works. She was married to painter Albert Tucker and associated with many significant Australian modernist artists during the 1940s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1960
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude-43.53 Longitude172.620278 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Christchurch, NZ
- Biography
- William Edward James Cook was a painter, illustrator, teacher, art critic and gallery curator. Known as James (or Jimmy) Cook, he was born in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1904. His brother Alfred Cook was also an artist; he was married to the painter Rita Angus.
James Cook studied at Canterbury College of School of Art in 1920-24 (Canterbury University School of Art in the 1950s). In 1925, Cook won the Sawtell Travelling Scholarship and for two years, studied and travelled in London (where he shared rooms with William Dobell) and Edinburgh, Paris and Rome.
Cook returned to New Zealand in 1929, where he taught at his alma mater. He was a member of 'The Group’ in the early 1930s, exhibiting at shows in 1931 and 1932. The Group was an informal association formed in Christchurch in 1927 by former students of Canterbury College of School of Art.
In around 1933, he returned to Europe with his wife Ruth, painting in England, France and Spain. Shortly after the start of World War 2, Cook ‘joined the British Ministry of Information as a war artist’. He returned to Australia in circa 1940-41, teaching at East Sydney Technical College (ESTC) in 1940. For two years at the start of the war, he 'was engaged on camouflage work for the Department of the Interior’. In March 1944, he was appointed the official war artist for the Australian Comforts Fund, in Papua New Guinea.
Cook was appointed 'Curator of the Perth Art Gallery’ in 1949, taking up the role in March 1950. He was art critic Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 1952-59.
James Cook died of pneumonia while travelling in Italy in 1960. A meticulous painter and fine draughtsman, his work includes Two Tramps 1932, pencil, NERAM (ill. McCulloch, 178); Coffee Stall, London , WWII wash drawing, AGNSW, purchased 1942.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Lalla_Maus
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 1904
- Summary
- A painter and illustrator, after winning the Sawtell Travelling Scholarship, Cook worked as an art teacher, curator at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and critic for the Daily Telegraph, Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1960
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-33.8945061 Longitude151.1554222 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Petersham, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- portrait painter, commercial, advertising and comic-strip artist, poet, writer and salesman, was born in Sydney, son of an advertising executive father and a surgeon and geologist mother. Educated at Sydney Boys’ High and the Julian Ashton Art School, he then worked as a sales rep, selling advertising space for newspapers, magazines and radio stations. He was a camouflage artist during WWII. During the 1940s he worked as comic artist and writer and sometimes self-publisher, signing his comics 'Hub’. He was particularly interested in science fiction, e.g. Desert-Dragon (on 'living fossils’ in Australia) and Raybot .
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1903
- Summary
- Mid 20th century cartoonist, portrait painter and commercial artist
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1960
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Raymond Lindsay was the second child born to artist Norman Lindsay and his first wife Katherine Parkinson. He was most likely named after his maternal uncle who was a close friend of his father around the time of his birth. Ray, as he was known by his family and friends, spent his infancy living in Melbourne with his mother and brothers Jack and Philip. With the ending of his parents unhappy marriage, Ray’s mother relocated to Brisbane with her three young children, and it was there that he and his brothers were raised and educated. While older brother Jack was academically gifted, Ray was apparently only interested in painting during his youth. He finished his schooling near the end of the Great War and thanks to family contacts was soon working as a cadet journalist on the Brisbane Courier. Ray worked on the paper for several years until being sacked for writing a report of a council meeting which never took place. While Ray and his brothers had been estranged from their father during most of their childhood they were reunited when they all relocated to Sydney in the early 1920s. Norman Lindsay was then at the peak of his artistic fame and Ray and his brothers were soon enchanted by his art and captivating personality. Norman encouraged his second son’s artistic ambitions and he soon enrolled at the Julian Ashton Art School (then located in the Queen Victoria Market building in Sydney). While studying at Ashton’s, Ray was inspired by the distinguished artist, George W. Lambert who briefly demonstrated figure painting at the school. Said Ray in an article for B.P. Magazine in June 1931: “Everything I know of painting I learnt from Lambert at a memorable demonstration given by the great artist on an occasion when he spent two days with the students at Ashton’s painting a portrait” Although he had a great respect for Ashton in late life, Ray fell out with the elderly master’s teaching methods and quit the school. During the 1920s Ray lived a boozy bohemian life and associated with many of the colourful members of the Sydney art and literary scene including George Finey, Mick Paul, Elioth Gruner, Tom Hubble, Hugh McKay, Kenneth Slessor, Herman Lloyd Jones, Jack Quayle, and his uncle Percy Lindsay. Many of the highlights of these times were recalled in Philip Lindsay’s autobiography, I’d live the same life over, and Ray’s own late life 'epistle’ to his brother Jack, which was later published after his death as, A letter from Sydney. As an artist, Lindsay first became known as a black and white artist and illustrator during the 1920s, when he worked as a contributing artist on Aussie: The Colourful Monthly and the Sydney Sunday Sun. An example of his fine drawing style was a joke block published in the December 1925 issue of Aussie. This pen line illustration shows a masked cat-burglar, at work in an occupied bedroom. While the owner sleeps, the irritated thief looks at an alarm clock – “Not a thing worth taking. I’ll get even with him; I’ll set his alarm for four o’clock!” Like his father, and artistic uncles Lionel and Percy, Ray had a natural aptitude for black and white humour but didn’t pursue it during his later career. Although Ray’s views on his black and white work are unknown, his father discussed it in a 1960 letter to Jack Lindsay, not long after Ray’s death: 'I tried to get Ray to tackle pen and ink seriously – he did some remarkably good pen drawings – really first class, but he disparaged them and never carried on with them… The truth is, Ray was damnably handicapped by having a parent who had already achieved some distinction in the art he also dedicated himself to.’ (Norman Lindsay, Letters of Norman Lindsay, p 551) Ray – like his father – was interested in Australian historical subjects and pirate imagery, and these conceptual themes dominated his painting career. During the mid 1920s he studied at the Royal Art Society art school, in Sydney, and while there he painted several works inspired by the 1808 Rum Rebellion. One such painting, Major Johnson announcing the arrest of Governor Bligh was purchased by Dame Nellie Melba in 1928. This work was reproduced in the December 1928 issue of Art in Australia, and was later presented to the Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria. In May 1929 the Sydney Sun newspaper, in conjunction with the newly opened State Theatre, organised Australia’s first lucrative art competition, known as the £1,000 Art Quest. Like many other Sydney artists Ray submitted several works to the competition and despite not winning the lucrative £300 first prize, he was awarded a runner up award of £50 for his oil, Woe to the Vanquished. In the publicity for the announcement of the Art Quest winners the Sun newspaper wrote a short feature on the artist. In this report (7 May 1929), Ray revealed that Norman had given him little art direction: 'Raymond Lindsay, aged 25, and placed amongst the four 50 guinea prize-winners, said to-day that out of such a distinguished collection of work he felt highly honoured that the judges had recognised his efforts. “It will certainly be a great encouragement to me” he said. Raymond Lindsay is the son of Mr. Norman Lindsay “but I received little tuition from my father” he said, “father always advised me to go my own way, and learn for myself.” ' Ray’s solo debut as an artist began at Rubery Bennett’s Australian Fine Art Gallery in July 1929. Although there was some criticism of the draftsmanship in some of Ray’s exhibits, most reviewers praised the young painter’s premier. Despite the advent of the Depression, Ray held another exhibition in Melbourne in late 1930. This show was mainly of pirate themed pictures and was poorly received by the local critics. One of Ray’s later history paintings, Captain Cook at Botany Bay, was used as the cover for the June 1931 issue of B.P. Magazine. In the same issue there was a feature on the artist, written by Dora Payter, which included photographs of the artist and his wife and pet dogs. Despite his early success as an artist, Ray’s painting career stalled in the early 1930s. John Arnold, in his forward to A Letter from Sydney, quotes from a 1960s letter written by Jack Lindsay on the reasons for Ray’s lack of success as an exhibiting artist: “Ray… was a very talented artist, but wanted to do big murals for which there was no market in Australia, and he enjoyed life too much to be ruthless in ambition.” In the late 1920s Ray married Lorma Kyle Turnbull (1902-64), a model, sculptor and potter, known professionally as Loma Latour. By 1932, Lorma was beginning to exhibit her work regularly with the Royal Art Society and as their relationship was difficult, Ray ceased exhibiting with the Society. By the mid 1930s his relationship with Lorma had ended and after their official divorce he married Joan Skinner in 1941. The couple lived in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, during most of their marriage and while never wealthy, they survived on Joan’s wages from the David Jones department store and Ray’s art activities. Despite not being a great success as a painter, Ray became a respected Sydney art journalist, writing well informed reviews for the Sydney Daily Telegraph, a newspaper edited during the war by his friend Brian Penton. Being a man of the twentieth century, Ray was far more sympathetic to modern trends than the previous generation of Lindsays, although his own painting was conservative in style. In late life Ray helped his older brother with information about his life in Sydney during the 1920s. This 13,000 word document, written in 1959, was later published in 1983 (regrettably in an edited form) as A Letter from Sydney and offers insights into Ray’s bohemian life style during this period. Historian Peter Spearritt later described Ray’s letter in a Sydney Morning Herald book review (16 July 1983) as 'one of the wittiest and bitchiest letters ever written from this city.’ While brothers Jack and Philip had both left Australia by the early 1930s, Ray remained in Sydney, being sole family carer for his depressed alcoholic mother until she died in 1949. During the 1940s and early 1950s Ray continued to paint, and in late life dabbled with landscape painting. As an (almost) life long pipe smoker he became a casualty of throat cancer in the mid 1950s. After several periods in hospital he died at his home in Elizabeth Bay on 12 June 1960. The 56 year old artist was childless and was survived by his wife.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Note:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. August 1903
- Summary
- As well as being a fine cartoonist and an adept art critic, Raymond Lindsay is best known as the creator of large scale history paintings. He was the second son of artist Norman Lindsay, and was active from the early 1920s to the mid 1950s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12-Jun-60
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-34.4816626 Longitude150.4177868 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bowral, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Tempe Manning was one of of the many students of Anthony Dattilo-Rubbo who were responsible for introducing modernism to Australia. However unlike her fellows, Grace Cossington Smith, Roy De Maistre and Roland Wakelin, she continued to exhibit with the conservative Royal Art Society.She first studied at Dattilo-Rubbo’s studio in about 1910 before travelling to Paris to study. On the outbreak of World War I she returned to Sydney and Dattilo-Rubbo’s Atelier. She temporarily abandoned the academic approach she had taken in Paris and enthusiastically joined with fellow students in experimenting with a more liberated use of colour. Portrait of a Boy, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is typical of her work from this period.She was always inclined to paint portraits and became a regular entrant in the Archibald Prize, exhibiting portraits in 1931,1933,1934,1936,1938,1939,1940,1943,1945,1950,1952,1953.
Her 1945 Archibald entry of Senator Dorothy Tangey was commissioned when she and Mary Edwards were approached to paint the portraits of the first two women members of Federal Parliament by the Historic Memorials Committee, 'for ultimate inclusion in a National Portrait Gallery’. However both her painting and Mary Edwards’s portrait of Dame Enid Lyons (TMAG) were rejected as 'unsatisfactory’ and replaced with portraits by A.D. Colquhoun and William Dargie.
Manning lived in Bowral for most of her life (12 Merigan Street?). Had a retrospective exhibition at Berrima.*
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 1897
- Summary
- Female painter of landscapes and portraits whose paintings of two of Australia's first members of parliament were rejected by the Historic Memorials Committee.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1960
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-33.9019365 Longitude151.2558816 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waverley, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- Deric (Frederick) Deane (d.1960)
Although Deane is best recalled as a decorator, he was a registered architect in NSW. The RAIA records note that he worked as an interior designer from the 1920s when his practice was located at 107 Pitt Street.
In the 1930s, he opened a shop in Rowe Street, a location later favoured by Marion Hall Best and other artists and designers, then moved to 155 King Street, Sydney. He was joined at this location by Don Hall and they practiced as Deane & Hall. In 1954, the practice moved to 173 New South Head Road, Edgecliff, then to Knox Street, Double Bay in the late 1960s. The Edgecliff suburb was favoured by a number of designers including Mary White, Décor Associates (Tom Harding and David Lorimer), Merle Du Boulay and others.
Deane also maintained workshops in various locations where he had furniture and fittings made to his designs (see the SIDA-commissioned interview with Malcolm Forbes). Like Reg Riddell in Toorak, he had a wide range of domestic clients drawn from the social pages including the Fairfax family (newspapers), the Albert family (sheet music) and others. His commercial works include the Australian Club, the Union Club and the Macquarie Club.
On Deane’s death, a Board of Directors including his wife, Mrs Deane, assumed his practice. The SIDA-commissioned interview with designer Malcolm Forbes discusses the Deane practice from 1957 when Forbes became an employee at their Edgecliff premises.
Deane also employed other soon-to-be prominent designers such as Merle du Boulay and Tom Gillies (Gillies also discusses the Deane practice in his interview). The NSW Australian Institute of Architects holds biographical files on Deane.
Writers:
Michael Bogle
Date written:
2018
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 1892
- Summary
- Deane worked as an interior designer as Deric Deane and as an architect as Frederick Deane. His initial practice was Deane and Hall, Sydney. In the 1950s, he merged his practice into a firm re-named as Tom Gillies, Edgecliff. Deane and Tom Gillies worked as a partnership until Deane's death in 1960.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1960
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-33.8125405 Longitude151.1115717 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ryde, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, embroiderer, radio presenter and programmer, social worker, public speaker and arts administrator, was born in Sydney on 1 July 1889 into a distinguished legal family descended from the colonial solicitor Robert Owen. Her father, (Sir) Langer Owen, and her brother, William Francis, both served as judges of the NSW Supreme Court. Gladys inherited a fluency in public speaking and a tenacity in advocacy and lobbying. Like her father, her mother (until her death in 1917) and, after 1925, her stepmother, Hilda, she played a major role in the work of the Australian Red Cross—a founder in 1913 and Hon. Secretary in 1914-27 of the NSW Branch; she was awarded the OBE for her work in 1918.
Owen received some art training from Dattilo Rubbo, Aline Cusack and Gerald Fitzgerald, and at the Technical College. She exhibited with the RAS in 1908. Three watercolours (a still life and two flower paintings) were shown in the Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne in 1907. In 1909, although the youngest of the six women participants, she originated the 'Exhibition of Pictures of Flowers and Flower Gardens’ in Sydney which led to the founding of the NSW Society of Women Painters the following year. Until 1935, when it became the Women’s Industrial Society, she was a member, serving on its council in 1912-22. She was also active in the Australian Watercolour Institute (1925-31).
Having studied relief printing under Thea Proctor , Owen worked briefly in the late 1920s-30s in copper engraving, a less popular medium than wood or linocuts for the many women printmakers in Sydney between the wars. In 1926-30 she studied printmaking under Iain MacNab at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London and travelled, particularly in Italy. After returning to Sydney in 1930, she joined the Painter-Etchers Society. Gladys had independent means to support both her art practice and her lifelong passion for travel. She remained single until 1932, then became the second wife of the architect and artist John D. Moore (widowed in 1931).
She continued to exhibit virtually annually until 1960. As well as solo exhibitions in 1938 and 1939, she held joint shows with Alice Norton in 1920 and Ethel Spowers in 1932. Late solo exhibitions included 'Vanishing Sydney’ at David Jones Art Gallery in 1954, followed by two more on the same theme at the Macquarie Galleries in 1957 and 1959. She occasionally exhibited her tapestry work but considered this a hobby.
Owen wrote articles for the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1930s and published a book with journalist Hilda Abbott on the rural crisis in the wheat industry. In 1933 she began her long association with ABC radio as a full-time presenter of the Women’s Session. The appointment was attacked in Parliament as political, given her active campaigning for the Nationalists, but nevertheless lasted until 1936. She then continued in various executive, administrative, research and broadcasting roles; just days before she died on 18 July 1960, she did a book review for ABC television.
After her death, Owen’s artistic reputation suffered something of an eclipse. The Garden Path , a view of Double Bay shown with the Women Painters in 1919, was transferred from the Art Gallery of NSW to the Mitchell Library in 1967. However, Scott Erickson organised a memorial exhibition for the Red Cross in 1976 (the catalogue remains the major source of information on Owen) and the Mitchell Library held an exhibition of her work in 1977.
Writers:
Newton, Gael
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1 July 1889
- Summary
- Painter and printmaker who led an active life exhibiting, travelling, writing, radio presenting and programming for the ABC ("Women's Session" Talks editor), public speaking and campaigning. Owen's art is widely represented in Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 18-Jul-60
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-37.8001 Longitude144.9671 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Carlton, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, was born on 9 June 1888 at Carlton, Melbourne, the second surviving daughter of Rev. John Laurence Rentoul and his wife Annie Isobel née Rattray. Her early life was spent in Ormond College at the University of Melbourne where her father was Professor of New Testament Greek. Ida showed artistic ability from an early age, but received no art training beyond help from her mother (who painted watercolours), her parents fearing that she would lose her individuality at art school. Her elder sister, Annie Rattray Rentoul (1882-1978), was the literary one of the family: she was awarded a first-class honours degree, a classics scholarship and shared the Higgins poetry prize in 1905. The sisters first collaborated on six fairy stories published in New Idea in 1903 (when Ida was just 16), a collaboration that was to continue for many years. Their first book, Mollie’s Bunyip , appeared the following year. Their Australian Songs for Young and Old was exhibited at the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition in Melbourne. In an article on the exhibition for New Idea , William Moore stated that 'in pen-and-ink drawings the works of Miss Ida Rentoul (V.) and Miss Courtney attracted most attention’. In the Native Companion Moore wrote: 'Some of the best examples of her work were exhibited at the Women’s Exhibition, particularly her imaginative rendering of the North Wind – a weird conception, cleverly worked out; and some of her coloured drawings, such as “The Sunset,” with its row of sombre trees in the background, give effective glimpses of the realms of fancy.’
Contributed to the Lone Hand , e.g. illustration to story by C.A. Jeffries, 'That portion of Heaven, where the soul of unborn babes await the day of birth’, May 1908, 95, and illustrated a poem by K.M. Beauchamp (New Zealand author Katherine Mansfield), A day in bed 1 October 1909, 626. She illustrated her own 'A teddy-bear story’ 5 (August 1909), 415, and did a black-and-white drawing, The Coming of Spring 5 (Sept 1909), 586. She also exhibited with the VAS in 1909: 'Miss Ida Rentoul’s pen drawings of dainty fancy and execution called for more than passing notice’, remarked the Lone Hand critic in 'The art of the year’ (1 April 1910, 672). She apparently replaced May Gibbs on the Western Mail in c.1909.
On 9 December 1909 Ida Rentoul married Arthur Grenbry Outhwaite, a lawyer turned successful businessman, and thereafter signed her work 'Ida Rentoul Outhwaite’. The newly-weds lived at South Yarra, with a separate studio for Ida in the grounds. Her husband encouraged her work, to the extent of subsidising her Elves and Fairies (1916) to the tune of £400. The book was a great success. Although Annie provided the text for this and some subsequent books, it was Ida who took top billing from then on.
Ida and her husband visited Europe in 1920. She exhibited in Paris and London and signed up with the British publishers A. & C. Black. They published several of her books: The Enchanted Forest (1921) with text by Grenbry; The Green Road to Fairyland (1922) with text by Annie; The Little Fairy Sister (1923) with text by Grenbry; Fairyland (1926) with text by both Grenbry and Annie; and Blossom (1928) with text by Ida herself. None matched the sumptuous production of the Australian Elves and Fairies , nor did they receive the public attention that A. & C. Black had hoped for. Taste for Outhwaite’s work and for fairies in general had also waned back in Australia. Angus & Robertson published two of her books in 1930 and 1933, and her last public exhibition was held in 1933.
Outhwaite also designed stained-glass windows in Victoria in the 1920s.
Grenbry died in 1938, and both their sons died in World War II, after which Ida shared a flat with Annie in Caulfield. She died on 25 June 1960, survived by her two daughters. Her life has been admirably documented in Muir & Holden’s biography.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Note: Heritage biography.Kerr, Joan
Note: Additional information regarding black and white art and stained glass.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 9 June 1888
- Summary
- Illustrated stories in magazines and in many books that were mainly written by her sister, Annie. 'Elves and Fairies' published in 1916 was Ida's and Annie's most successful collaboration.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Jun-60
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, muralist and cartoonist, was born in Melbourne and studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Schools from 1903. He contributed cartoons to the Sydney Bulletin and worked on Melbourne Punch . He may also be the ' G.B. ' in War Cry in 1900. During WWI he did drawings at Gallipoli and in France and as a result was made an official war artist in 1918. After the War he studied in London but returned to Melbourne in 1919 to complete work for the Australian War Memorial (AWM). He spent the next decade painting watercolour landscapes and working as a book illustrator.
A member of the Melbourne Savage Club from 1913 to 1936, Benson drew a program cover for a Smoke Concert held on 31 July 1920 when the Savages entertained the presidents of the other Melbourne clubs (ill. Johnson, 111). In it a black savage with a spear welcomes archetypal members of other clubs: the Melbourne (a fat capitalist), the Australian (a thin gentleman), the Naval and Military (both in full regimentals), the University (a stooped elderly man in cap and gown), the Athenaeum (a classical figure crowned with a laurel wreath), the Commercial Travellers (a fat man with a suitcase), the Yorick (a ghost), the Bohemian (a Push type) and the Old Scotch Collegians (a Scotsman peering at the door of a closed bar). The caption reads: 'They can never be like us, but they can be as like us as they are able to be’. With Will Dyson and Harold Herbert , he signed a caricature, Our genial “Cook” [Percy Peppin Cook, Vice-President of the Melbourne Savage Club 1904-30, president 1930-33] soupervises our 163rd bill of fare c.1930, in which a semi-naked white male cook stands over a cauldron that has an arm and a leg sticking out of it sipping or smelling grog (# ill. Dow, 35).
In 1931 Benson moved to Perth to execute a commission to decorate the beams of Winthrop Hall at the University of WA with formal designs based on Aboriginal motifs. He remained there painting, carrying out further commissions and working as art critic and cartoonist on the West Australian newspaper (example National Library of Australia). During WWII he was a camouflage artist. He died at Perth in 1960.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1886
- Summary
- Early 20th century Victorian and Western Australian painter, muralist and cartoonist. An official war artist during World War 1, Benson was a longstanding member of the Melbourne Savage Club before relocating to Perth where he worked as an art critic and undertook a commission to decorate the beams of Winthrop Hall at the University of WA with Indigenous motifs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1960
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-37.905 Longitude144.996 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brighton, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born on 23 December 1883 in Brighton, Victoria, youngest of the ten children of Francis Edward Stewart and Agnes, née Park. (Like her brother Francis, Janet adopted the surname Cumbrae-Stewart, except that she omitted the hyphen – unlike most auction houses and writers.) After sketching trips with John Mather , she studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne in 1901-7 under Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin . In 1905 she came second in the National Gallery’s Travelling Scholarship competition, the winner being Isaac Cohen . She was a member of the Council of the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1914-16 and exhibited regularly with it from 1909 to 1919. She also exhibited with the Queensland Art Society in 1912, 1914 and 1915. In 1914 she sent work to the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco, which won a silver medal. Between 1920 and 1937 she exhibited at the Athenaeum Gallery, Melbourne.
In 1922 Cumbrae Stewart travelled to London with her sister Beatrice and began exhibiting at the Beaux Arts Gallery (1924-31), the Royal Academy, the Regent Gallery (Glasgow) and at the Old Salon, Paris, where in 1923 she was awarded an honourable mention. She travelled throughout Europe and to Canada. During her seventeen-year stay in Europe she lived at Chelsea, London, Avignon, Caen (France) and Laiguelia on the Riviera de Pononte, Northern Italy. She returned to Australia to visit her family in 1939 and remained when World War II broke out. From 1947 until her death on 8 September 1960 she lived at Margaret Street, South Yarra with her lifelong companion, Miss Argemore ffarington ('Bill’) Bellairs.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 December 1883
- Summary
- Early 20th century Melbourne painter and pastellist.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 8-Sep-60
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Adelaide on 29 July 1882, daughter of Adam Adamson. She studied at the SA School of Design under H.P. Gill and Archibald Collins, then privately with Hans Heysen. She married fellow-artist Herbert Barringer (brother of Ethel Barringer ) in 1910. Her work at that time consisted mainly of landscapes – 'gum trees under various atmospheric conditions’, according to Society magazine – doubtless inspired by the country hikes and rambles that she and her husband went on together. The Barringers spent a lot of time out of doors. At first they camped overnight in tents but by 1916 they had a weekender set on 80 acres with Heysen as a neighbour. A booklet, The Mystery of the Bush (Adelaide: Hussey and Gillingham Ltd., 1916), written by her husband was illustrated by Barringer.
Associated with the [Royal] SA Society of Arts for over 30 years, Gwen was elected a Fellow in 1912. She held at least two solo exhibitions in Adelaide before World War I and, according to Muriel Farr in Lone Hand (1916), just missed out on a Melbourne exhibition because of the outbreak of war (she was a member of the Victorian Artists’ Society). Farr was impressed by Gwen’s output: 'Despite accepted tenets as to the impossibility – for a woman – of combining a career with matrimony, she has found the greatest development of her work since her marriage.’ Barringer continued to paint in watercolour; she became interested in painting the city rather than the bush when she visited Paris in 1926. Some of her most interesting cityscapes were painted during visits to Sydney in the early 1930s when she recorded the progress of the building of the Harbour Bridge. She also specialised in delicate and competent still lifes, especially flower studies. She taught at the School of Arts and Crafts (previously the School of Design) where she herself had studied. She was considered a thorough and competent teacher although often at odds with colleagues and students through her lifelong adherence to traditional subjects and techniques.
Gwen and Herbert Barringer were divorced in 1938. Gwen remained an active member of the art community, being elected vice president of the RSASA that same year – its first woman office bearer. She died in Adelaide on 26 August 1960 after a long illness, bequeathing funds to establish three prizes for flower painting in watercolour.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 July 1882
- Summary
- Gwen Barringer was a painter of traditional subjects, most notably flowers. An active member of the South Australian arts scene, as Vice President of the (Royal) SA Society of Arts in 1938 she was its first female office bearer and on her death she bequethed funds to establish several prizes for flower painting in watercolour.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Aug-60
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Painter, cartoonist and illustrator, was born in London on 25 May 1879, the son of Andrew Henderson, a commercial clerk, and Alice née Otley. The family emigrated to New Zealand c.1885 and Andrew worked as a bank clerk in Christchurch and Palmerston North after leaving school. In 1903 he illustrated, wrote, edited and published two issues of Fun , a magazine of cartoons and humour, and in 1904 he became a commercial and lithographic artist with the Weekly Press . He joined the Christchurch artistic and literary scene, including being a member of the Canterbury Society of Arts.
A socialist and conscientious objector, Henderson was court-martialled and imprisoned twice in NZ at the end of WWI. On the second occasion he was sentenced to two years and on his release in 1920 he worked for a while as a stonemason in Wellington. He and his wife Pauline Henrietta Gibson, who had married in Christchurch in 1906, later moved to Henderson Valley where they built a studio and small house with minimal amenities and Kennaway attempted to support them by drawing a regular cartoon for the newly-established weekly, the Critic , where his only cartoons published under the pseudonym 'Falcon’ appeared (1923-24). From then on he always used his middle name, 'Kennaway’. Pauline became ill and they abandoned the land. While she recouperated in Auckland, Andrew moved to Sydney in 1925 where he sold cartoons and caricatures to a number of Sydney newspapers. Pauline joined him later. In 1931 Henderson visited Frederick Sinclaire in Melbourne and was introduced to local socialist groups.
The Hendersons returned to Christchurch in 1931 to live with Pauline’s widowed mother. In the 1930s Henderson was editor-illustrator of Tomorrow , a sometimes notorious and always controversial NZ socialist weekly magazine launched in 1934, which survived for six years. Cartoons he (as Kennaway) did for it include: Strays (two dogs with politicians’ heads, very literal) 1934 (ill. Grant 123), The Wise Bird to the Hungry Ass [Labour] 1935 (ill. Grant 131) and The Democrat Party – A Flop of the Reactionaries ('Election Freak/ This is the stalking Democrat/ Wound up for for several weeks/ It’s really most remarkable,/ They say it even speaks’ – poncy man with straw in hair, 'beads for the natives’ and butterfly net to catch 'Votes’) 1935 (ill. 131), Highly Coloured (caricature) 1936 (ill, 154), The Thug [Fascism with double head of Hitler and Mussolini] has burnt its fingers badly in Spain 1937 (ill. 146), Say it with Flowers (Social Democracy offering flower to thug 'Fascism’ 1937 (ill. 158), The Only One Who Finds It Pays ('Press’ as prostitute Death – very effective simple drawing) 1937 (ill. 164) and The Runaway 1938 (ill. 146). In December 1939 Tomorrow published his Psycho-Pathology in Politics , which led to John A. Lee’s expulsion from the Labour Party. Shortly afterwards, in the name of wartime censorship, the police told the printer he would be prosecuted if he continued to print the magazine. He died in Christchurch on 17 January 1960; Pauline predeceased him, dying in April 1940.
Henderson’s cartoons are radical in subject and many are also meticulous in detail. Ghost of Ramsay : “So…you too, fail them”’, published in Fool’s Carnival in 1949 (as usual signed 'Kennaway’), is arguably more 'art’ than 'cartoon’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 25 May 1879
- Summary
- Early 20th century New Zealand painter, political cartoonist and illustrator who worked in Sydney and Melbourne during the 1920s. A socialist and conscientious objector who was court-martialled and imprisoned twice in New Zealand, Henderson was the editor-illustrator of Tomorrow for six years, a sometimes notorious and always controversial NZ socialist weekly magazine that was launched in 1934.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Jan-60
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-33.42 Longitude149.577778 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bathurst, NSW, Bathurst, NSW?
- Biography
- painter, Amateur Art Society, Bathurst, 1897: Original Section … Section D (painting in oils – amateurs under 20) ... still life , Miss Lurlie Bayliss, first ( Sydney Morning Herald , 5 November 1897, p.6).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1879
- Summary
- Miss Lurlie Bayliss won a first in her category for oil painting at the 1897 Amateur Art Society exhibition at Bathurst, New South Wales.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1960
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-37.7984 Longitude144.9785 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fitzroy, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1879
- Summary
- Fryer was a printer, book designer and writer. He was born in Australia and finished his career in California.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-60
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Islington, London, England, UK
- Biography
- photographer, was born in Islington, London, second daughter of Millice Culpin, medical doctor, and Hannah Louisa, née Muncey. She came to Brisbane with her family about 1891 and her father established a medical practice in the Taringa – Indooroopilly – Brookfield area. Rose attended the Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School and studied art at Brisbane Technical College with Godfrey Rivers . On 30 March 1900 she married John Howard Simmonds (d.1939), a 37 year-old monumental mason who recorded his tombstone commissions with a large plate camera and had a darkroom at home for developing and printing his negatives. They had two sons. Rose Simmonds apparently began photography by assisting her husband but was soon taking and processing her own photographs, mainly snapshots of her sons.
She was active professionally from about 1927 to the early 1940s. In 1941 she had a solo exhibition of her photographs in Brisbane. A number of her albums containing hundreds of small photographs survive with the family (Dr J. H. Simmonds collection). Her photos include Untitled (small girl climbing out of a billy-cart) c.1938, printed 1984, gelatin silver print from 70 mm transparency, sepia toned; The Three Witches [three bent trees] c.1937, Bromoil print (reproduced Smith); and Last Rays on the Sand Dunes c.1939-1940, Bromide print 23.7 × 29.5 cm, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Qld. (empty beach reproduced in Centre Gallery catalogue p.206 and in Smith p.14).
She died on 3 July 1960 at Auchenflower and was cremated. Her two sons survived her.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1877
- Summary
- Rose Simmonds apparently began photography by assisting her husband but was soon taking and processing her own photographs of her sons. She was active professionally in Brisbane from 1927 to the early 1940s. In 1941 she held a solo exhibition.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Jul-60
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-32.7261111 Longitude151.6316667 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Morpeth, Maitland, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter and art teacher, lived and worked in Sydney in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1933 she showed a watercolour, The Timber Ship , at the Sydney Art School retrospective, which suggests she was a former student at Ashton’s. She may have the Miss Hedley Nicholl who exhibited with the Society of Artists in 1898 and 1899 and with the Royal Art Society of NSW in 1902.
Mrs Hedley Parsons exhibited with the Society of Artists and the Royal Art Society of NSW (1923) and was an active member of the Society of Women Painters. The catalogue of the 45th annual exhibition of the RAS (1920) carried an advertisement for the 'Women Painters’ School of Fine and Applied Art’ run by the Society of Women Painters on the 3rd floor of the Queen Victoria building; the Principal was Miss Eirene Mort , the Life Teacher Miss Florence Fuller and 'Landscape’ was taught by Mrs. Hedley Parsons. In 1924 she was teaching at East Sydney Technical College; an annotated photograph of Mrs Hedley Parsons with her students Enid Busby and Barbara Cobham is in the Busby collection. In July 1934, at the Women Artists of Australia Exhibition in Sydney, Mrs Hedley Parsons showed three watercolours of beach scenes at Lami, Fiji, for sale at 3 guineas each, and a pen and wash landscape drawing.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- Painter and art teacher who lived and worked in Sydney in the 1920s and 1930s, Mrs Hedley Parsons was also an active member of the Society of Women Painters.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1960
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-31.4628374 Longitude151.12604 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nundle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- miniature portrait painter, was born in Nundle in the New England region of NSW in 1868, second of three daughters and third of the six children of Lee Kong Sing, from China, and Ellen, née Mann. Her father owned butchers’ shops and was a successful miner and the family lived at Tingha (NSW). Her father also had at various times a store in Tamworth NSW and a store and hotel near Nundle NSW. He was an insolvent in 1867 and again in 1881. Justine trained with Julian Ashton in Sydney and completed her studies at the National Gallery School, Melbourne. She exhibited with the Royal Art Society of NSW in 1905, 1909-10 and 1911. Later she went to London where she worked exclusively as a painter of portrait miniatures, with some success, showing work at the Royal Academy in 1915 and 1916, the Paris Salon of 1912 and the Walker & Grosvenor Galleries. She lived in Majorca, Spain, for twenty years until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, then returned to London, subsequently returning to Australia, where she continued to paint miniatures. She died at Kirribilli, Sydney.
The sole work of Justine Kong Sing held by the Art Gallery of NSW is her unusual self-portrait, Me . Her miniature, Madame Ze , is in the National Gallery of Victoria. Other works are held privately.__
Writers:
Torres, Alisa De
Nundle
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1868
- Summary
- A miniature portrait painter, Justine Kong Sing trained with Julian Ashton in Sydney and at the National Gallery School, Melbourne. She also worked and lived in both London and Majorca for a period of time.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1960
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-37.063611 Longitude144.217222 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1960-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Castlemaine, VIC, Castlemaine?, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Victoria, probably at Castlemaine, one of the two daughters of Joseph Anderson Panton (1831-1913), police magistrate and painter, and Eleanor Margaret, née Fulton.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1864
- Summary
- Alice Panton was a painter best known for her portraiture. In the early 1920s Panton drove from Adelaide to Perth by car, reputedly the first woman to perform this feat.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Sep-60
- Age at death
- 96
Details
Latitude-19.8516101 Longitude133.2303375 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hermannsburg Mission Station, NT, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 28 July 1902
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1959
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude39.3260685 Longitude-4.8379791 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Spain
- Biography
- Painter Miguel McKinlay (1895-1959) was born in Guardalajara province in Castille Spain to a Spanish mother Ramona Perez and Scottish father William Mackinlay (1839-19270. The town was probably Cabanillas del Campo. The family of seven children came to Perth, Western Australia with their father, a civil engineer, about 1905 after their mother died. The family lived on Highgate Hill. Miguel, the fifth child, attended Highgate School where a drawing of his was included in an album presented to Governor Bedford in 1909. He was apprenticed in 1910 to Meston & Walters as a signwriter and at the same time studied at Perth Technical School under J.W. R. Linton in 1910-1912. He exhibited a study of a head in charcoal with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1911 and posters in 1912. McKinlay won a number of scholarships and prizes and was well regarded as a promising young artist. Linton thought him “the most successful student of all those who passed through this school.” In 1912 he was described as “ ...this promising young artist shows considerable talent. His drawing is excellent, his colour values are gauged with remarkable judgement and the treatment is broad, daring yet eminently successful.” In 1914 he won a national poster competition, held an exhibition in St George’s Lesser Hall, Hay Street with Stan Cross and set off for London where he undertook commissions at Savoy House. The war intervened and he served until invalided out with a gunshot wound. McKinlay did not return to Australia instead he studied in London, Paris and Madrid. He went on to become a Royal Academician and exhibit in London, Glasgow, Paris, Vienna and New York. An illustrated article on him was published in the Studio Magazine in December 1926. From 1928 he was part of the artists’ colony who occupied the Meadow Studios at Bushey and made a good living exhibiting, illustrating books, and handling poster and advertising work. Clients included Nestl_s, Bovril and Bournville Cocoa. McKinlay offered his The Bath to the Art Gallery of Western Australia after it was hung and well received in London in 1931. The work was described as having the colours of Seurat. Curator Pitt Morison was critical and recommended against purchasing it. Art critic Leslie Rees wrote of another of his works: “His T_te -_-T_te was one of the most discussed and most outstanding pictures in the last Academy. Like Cezanne, whose method he follows, he is concerned with expression not surfaces, but of essential structures that is to say he paints not what he sees, or not only what he sees but what he knows to be there. He achieves par excellence the roundness of things that are round …”. The Art Gallery of Western Australia eventually accepted a work Fishing Boats as a gift.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
erickd
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1895
- Summary
- Painter Miguel Mackinlay was born in Spain to a Spanish mother and Scottish father. He studied at Perth Technical School in Western Australia under J.W. R. Linton in 1910-1912. Linton thought him "the most successful student of all those who passed through this school." He later studied in London at St Martin's
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Jan-59
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude-23.3782137 Longitude150.5134227 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rockhampton, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- World War I Major and amateur painter/cartoonist, has pictures painted c.1916 at ML PxD 508/16.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 7 June 1894
- Summary
- First World War painter and cartoonist
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1959
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-36.3795678 Longitude141.2418168 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kaniva, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Percy Alexander Leason, cartoonist, illustrator, printmaker, painter and teacher was born on 25 February 1889 on a wheat farm at Kaniva in northwestern Victoria. Leason was the second of six children born to James Leason and Mary Campbell. As a teenager he attended art school twice-weekly at the nearby town of Nhill. About 1906 he moved Melbourne where took up an apprenticeship as a lithographer with Sands & McDougall. Although trained as a commercial artist, Leason aspired to become a painter and he studied at the National Gallery School ( 1907-10) and Victorian Artists Society in Melbourne and shared a studio with artists McInnes, Crozier and Frater. In 1916 Leason married his cousin Isabel Chapman and the following year moved to Sydney where he joined the advertising firm of Smith and Julius. From 1919-1924 Leason worked on the Bulletin and as an illustrator. Leason left Sydney to work on Melbourne Punch – at the time he was Australia’s highest paid black and white illustrator. With its demise he transferred to Table Talk where he developed the popular Wiregrass series based on country town life. In 1927 Leason returned to Sydney as a political cartoonist for the Bulletin (see Kerr, Percy Leason, DAAO). Alongside his success as a cartoonist, Leason gained growing recognition as a painter (six paintings in AGNSW) affiliated to the NSW Society of Artists and from 1924 onwards Leason began studying with the Melbourne-based artist and teacher Max Meldrum. In 1929 Leason was involved in two projects associated with the seminal 1929 exhibition Australian Aboriginal Art at the National Museum of Victoria. Leason was commissioned to provide drawings of the Glen Isla rock art shelter at Gariwerd (the Grampians) in western Victoria (intended as a backdrop for Jack Noorywanka and Stanley Loycurrie, visiting Wangkangurru men from Central Australia) and he was commissioned to produce a cover design for the catalogue. Leason’s evolutionism came to the fore in the process (Signatures, Vol 5, no 3 1999, www.ucc.ac.uk). Believing Australian Aborigines to be 'true primitives’ incapable of such drawings (Table Talk, 18 July 1929; MS 8636 Percy Leason papers, LaTrobe Collection, State Library of Victoria), Leason questioned the authenticity of the rock art site claiming that the drawings were a hoax perpetrated by the Reverend John Mathew in 1897. Leason’s cover design (Australian Aboriginal Art, National Museum of Victoria, July 1929; Morphy, Aboriginal Art, 1998 illustrated) depicts an Aboriginal artist drawing the simple outline of a kangaroo using a tree as a makeshift easel – a fanciful image which bore little connection to the realities of Indigenous art production in northern Australia. Such was the interest generated by the Central Australian visitors, Jack Noorywanka and Stanley Loycurrie, that the painter and illustrator Dyson proposed an exhibition of their portraits for purchase as part of a national collection (Letter to the editor, Herald, 13 July 1929). Almost a dozen artists including Dyson, McCubbin, McInnes, Herbert, Wheeler and Leason participated in the exhibition at the Fine Art Society Galleries (Australasian, 10 August 1929; Argus, 1 August 1929). Stanley Loycurrie, the younger of the two men agreed to pose for the artists. In Leason’s portrait (Recognition, NPG Canberra, 2000, illustrated; sold Bonhams & Goodman, April 2007, Lot 614) his appearance suggests that he carefully prepared for the occasion: his hair is well brushed, even oiled, and he wears a suit with a long sleeved white shirt and tie. He appears sombre and reserved – perhaps an outcome of the formal relationship that prevailed between the artists and their Aboriginal subject and Leason’s adherence to the scientific objectivity advocated by Meldrum. These experiences contributed to Leason’s growing fascination with the representation of Aborigines. In 1934 he joined Professor Wood Jones, Donald Thomson and Dr Ford of Melbourne University in a scientific expedition to Lake Tyers Aboriginal Reserve in Victoria to measure and photographically document the remaining 'full blood’ Victorian Aborigines. Following the success of several trial portraits, Leason embarked on a major project to paint a group of life-size portraits of 'the last of the Victorian Aborigines.’ To complete his project Leason moved temporarily with his wife Isabella and his son Max to Toorloo, a guest house situated opposite Lake Tyers converting the ballroom into a temporary studio. For Leason the portraits were 'labours of love’ (MS8636 Percy Leason papers, LaTrobe Library of Victoria); privately funded from his income as a cartoonist, Leason viewed the project as an opportunity to refine his painting technique and a means of enhancing his artistic reputation. But the portrait series involved Leason in a complicated process of cross cultural exchange: in order to produce the portraits Leason found that he had to establish amicable relations with Kurnai at Lake Tyers, modifying his approach to accord with the wishes of his subjects (Herald, 11 September 1934; Recognition, 2000). As a result it is possible to read the scientific series as portraits of individuals. Leason depicted his subjects semi-nude – an assertion of pride for men but distasteful to women who desired to be seen from within European conventions of respectability. While the majority of women withdrew from the project, one older woman, Clara Hunt, participated on her own terms: wearing her everyday clothes she appears dignified and proud (Burn, National Life and Landscape, illustrated). Under the explicitly scientific title The Last of the Victorian Aborigines the portraits were exhibited at the Athaneum Gallery, Melbourne in September 1934 to coincide the Victorian Centenary. The accompanying catalogue included Leason’s observations on the Victorian Aborigines together with biographies of his subjects. Leason hoped that the portrait series would be purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria but the exhibition met with a mixed response. While Arthur Streeton (Argus, 11 September 1934, p.5) responded appreciatively, Blamire Young (Herald 10 September 1934 p. 8) questioned the 'suitability’ of the exhibition as an ethnographic record. Leason subsequently abandoned his commitment to Aboriginal portraiture and the portrait series drifted into obscurity (23 of the 28 completed in State Library of Victoria). The exhibition 'Recognition’ (2000) at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra went some way toward retrieving value and significance for the portraits both as an historical record and for their relevance to contemporary descendants for whom 'their faces live on in our families’ (Recognition 2000). In 1939 Leason moved with his family to the United States taking six of the portraits with him. Leason continued to work as an illustrator, he taught at several art schools and he opened the Staten Island School of Art. Leason died in New York at the age of 70 on 11 September 1959.
Writers:
Kleinert, Sylvia
Note:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 25 February 1889
- Summary
- Percy Leason is best known as a black and white illustrator but his portraits of Aboriginal subjects completed 1929-1934 make an important contribution to the history of Aboriginal representations.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Sep-59
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Kilda, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- William Merric Boyd (commonly called Merric) was born in St Kilda on 24 June 1888, the second son of the artists Arthur Merric Boyd and Emma Minnie à Beckett Boyd. His siblings were Gilbert, Martin (novelist), Penleigh (artist), and Helen (artist). Merric first attempted a career as a farmer, and then enrolled in theological studies to be an Anglican priest before studying at the National Gallery School. He turned to pottery after experimenting at Archibald McNair’s Burnley Pottery in about 1910. In 1911 he exhibited a modelled bust of his future wife, the painter Doris Gough, at the Victorian Society of Artists. They married in 1915 and their first child, Lucy, was born a year later. From 1912 to 1914 he worked at the Australian Porcelain Insulator works while he refined his pottery technique.In 1913 he established his pottery at Open Country, a house bought for him by his parents in rural Murrumbeena. He sourced his clay from a pit he dug in the garden. Doris painted decorations on his pots. In 1917 Merric Boyd enlisted as an air mechanic in the Australian Flying Corps, and after initial training was sent to England. At the end of the War he stayed in England under an Army Education Rehabilitation Scheme to study pottery. He gave pottery classes to returning soldiers on his way home.Once he was back in Victoria he exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria and the NSW Society of Arts and Crafts. A son, Arthur, was born in 1920, followed by Guy (1923), David (1924) and Mary (1926). Soon after his return to Australia he converted to Doris Boyd’s deeply held Christian Science faith. Stories from the Bible coloured the childhood of all the Boyd children.In 1926 the pottery at Open Country was destroyed by fire, and at the same time he was increasingly troubled by his epilepsy. He spent some months teaching pottery at the New England Girls’ Grammar School in Armidale, NSW, but returned as soon as he could to a new pottery at Murrumbeena. He was achieving significant success with his innovative design and in 1929 was commissioned to make a vase for the visiting ballerina, Anna Pavlova which he made in a neoclassical style, quoting Wedgewood.The Great Depression was not kind to studio pottery, but by 1934 he started a joint venture with John Crowe of the Australian Porcelain Company, making 'Cruffel Art Porcelain’. As Merric’s health declined his son Arthur and son-in-law John Perceval took over the day to day operation of the pottery and fired Merric’s pots. In his later years he drew and modelled small figures.He died at Murrumbeena on 19 September, 1959.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 24 June 1888
- Summary
- Merric Boyd's organic decorative ceramics led him to be credited as the father of studio pottery in Australia. He was also a dominant figure in the consciousness of the Boyd family, who dominated Australian visual culture in the 20th century.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Sep-59
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Charles Henry Lancaster was born in Melbourne in 1886 where he studied under Frederick McCubbin at the National Gallery School. He married Eve Clara Watson, the daughter of John Henry Watson and Sarah Ellen Trotter on 24 February 1914 at the Holy Trinity Church, Thornbury, Victoria. They then came to Queensland where two daughters, Ailsa and Claire, were born. Lancaster first exhibited with the Queensland Art Society in 1914. His early career was in stained glass and he exhibited designs for windows in the Society’s annual exhibition in 1916. Lancaster was manager of the stained glass department of R. S. Exton and Co. for many years when William Bustard was the chief designer and gave lectures on its production to the Queensland Art Society on several occasions. He was a key figure in the Queensland Art Society (Royal from 1927), serving almost continuously on the committee from 1915 to 1952, acting as President from 1925 to 1927 and again from 1934 to 1935 and was also Vice-President on many occasions. Lancaster was also a member of the Royal Art Society of NSW and is known to have exhibited there at the least in 1924 and 1926.
Lancaster was awarded the Royal Queensland Art Society Jubilee Medal and the King George VI Coronation Medal in 1937 and a British Empire Medal for his contribution to the British Empire Exhibition, Glasgow in 1938. Lancaster, William Bustard, Stanhope Hobday and Mel Haysom were each commissioned to paint a mural for the new development of Tattersall’s Club, Brisbane in 1939. He was appointed a Trustee of the Queensland National Art Gallery from 1939, serving until his death 20 years later.
As an exhibiting artist Lancaster was one of the Society’s stalwarts contributing to the annual exhibitions for more than 40 years. He shared an exhibition (organised by Jeanettie Sheldon) with fellow Society members Rubery Bennett, William Bustard and L. J. Harvey in April 1923, and held solo exhibitions at the Moreton Gallery, Brisbane in 1950 and at Allan & Stark’s department store in Brisbane in 1955 and at Chermside in 1957. Lancaster was also included in the 1951 'Exhibition of Queensland Art’ at the Queensland Art Gallery and the exhibitions of 'Queensland Artists of Fame and Promise’ in 1952 and from 1957 to 1959.
Lancaster’s work was traditionally based and focused on the landscape of Brisbane and its outer suburbs but occasionally travelled to the Southport area in his search for suitable subjects. The depictions of which, according to a contemporary opinion, manifested a “quiet toned mellow serenity”(“Higher standard achieved”, unidentified press cutting, Brisbane, c. 23 Sept 1935) but his paintings of the city had a quiet modernist edge. Lancaster painter with fellow artists, Harry Cotterell, Wilson Cooper, Herbert Carstens, James Wieneke and Ralph Weppner from the late 1940s as the Marburg Grou
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1886
- Summary
- Charles Lancaster was significant figure in Brisbane art through his service of the committee of the Royal/Queensland Art Society and the Queensland National Art Gallery. His art was regarded as traditional but held a modernist edge, especially in his images of Brisbane city.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1959
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-31.5021772 Longitude150.6804062 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Quirindi, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- A songwriter and ship's officer living at Bondi in 1930 who designed a string instrument dubbed the 'Australele'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1959
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-33.8125405 Longitude151.1115717 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ryde, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- teacher of drawing and painting, NSW, was a daughter of Arthur Collingridge who took over his classes at the Bathurst and Orange technical colleges after his death: see A Quarter Century of Technical Education in NSW .
Bathurst Amateur Art Society annual exhibition – Amateurs, Original – Black and white, Miss Annie Collingridge, 1 … Miss Annie Collingridge, 1; Black and White, Miss Annie Collingridge, 2 … Miss Annie Collingridge, 1 and 2 [presumably referring to prizes] ( Sydney Morning Herald 20 November 1896, p.6).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1880
- Summary
- Collingridge was a teacher of painting and drawing who exhibited with the Bathurst Amateur Art Society during the 1890s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1959
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-22.1646782 Longitude144.5844903 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Queensland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 3 March 1875
- Summary
- Musician and artist who engaged with a critical correspondence with Art Gallery of New South Wales Director Hal Missingham
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Oct-59
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- china painter, was born in Geelong, youngest of the seven children of Rev. James S.R. Royce, a Methodist minister, and only child of his second wife, Jane. The family moved frequently, accompanying her father on the ministerial circuit, until settling in Geelong on his retirement. In 1890 Florence matriculated at the Geelong Ladies’ College, by which time she had developed an interest in art; a prize was awarded to her entry in the Ballarat Juvenile and Industrial Exhibition the following year.
With the arrival of Rev. A.M. Thompson, who provided lessons, Royce commenced china painting, initially as a hobby, then as part of a long career teaching and producing works of art at Geelong. By 1910 she was not only offering private classes in china painting, watercolour painting and stencilling, but had commenced work as a 'teacher of ceramics’ at Gordon Technical College (which was to install a 'Revelation’ kiln for her use). She showed her work in exhibitions such as the Geelong Arts and Crafts in 1910, which included her floral wares as well as a vase depicting 'a jackass and wattle and an Australian landscape’.
Royce was dedicated to her art and remained highly aware of technical developments in china painting in both North America and Britain. In 1924 she embarked on an eighteen-month study trip through the two countries. Travelling through Vancouver, Chicago, New York and San Francisco, she was impressed by the 'colourful’ lustre and enamel wares made in the various studios she visited and produced a number of her own there. She visited several British manufactories, including those of Grimwade, Ruskin, Doulton and Wedgwood from which she collected a number of pieces. She was elected a member of the British Association of Ceramic Art and invited to exhibit 'two or three…vases of Australian design’ in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley.
Although she never became highly commercial in her activities Royce’s output of painted wares was enormous. Her work embodied the same concerns and same degree of professionalism as many of her more commercial compatriots in Melbourne, yet she received little recognition beyond the local level. She continued to teach and paint in Geelong until moving to Perth shortly before her death in 1959.
Writers:
Filmer, Veronica
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1874
- Summary
- Royce was elected a member of the British Association of Ceramic Art and invited to exhibit 'two or three... vases of Australian design' in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. Although she never became highly commercial in her activities Royce's output was enormous.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1959
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-30.5144881 Longitude151.6656564 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Armidale, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born on 26 October 1873 at Armidale (NSW), one of the three children of William Albert and Annie Mackenzie Greaves. When Florence was about seven the family moved to Braylesford, in Bondi Road, Bondi. Their neighbour Julian Ashton encouraged her to consider art lessons. At first her father objected, but relented after she raised money to pay for classes by breeding pups from her pug dog. It was most probably Ashton who introduced Tom Roberts into the family circle; in the 1890s he painted portraits of both Florence and her mother.
In 1891, fearing that the sea air was damaging Florence’s health, the family moved inland to Burwood. Florence continued with her art. She first exhibited with the Society of Artists in 1896 but not again until 1901, the year before her marriage to William Mofflin. After a European honeymoon, the couple lived in Strathfield, Point Piper, then Macquarie Street, Sydney. The marriage was not happy and no art was exhibited during these years. In 1914 Florence travelled to Europe alone, partly to clarify her feelings. On her return, she divorced her husband.
From 1915 – when she marked her return to exhibiting by showing work in aid of the Australian Artists’ War Fund – Florence Mofflin was a regular exhibitor with the Society of Artists, normally showing watercolours and fan designs. In 1925 her father’s death freed her to travel to London, where she studied at the Slade under Henry Tonks and became friendly with Lucien Pissarro, who gave her a painting. There in 1928 she changed her name by deed-poll to Florence Turner Blake, a reference both to her great-grandparents, Thomas Turner and Barbara Blake, and to the artists she greatly admired, J.M.W. Turner and William Blake. In about 1929 she returned to Sydney and B.J. Waterhouse designed her a house, Menlo, in Fairfax Road, Bellevue Hill. She exhibited three male portraits in the 1930 Archibald Prize exhibition, one being of G.V.F. Mann, recently returned director of the NSW National Gallery.
By the late 1930s Florence was blind in one eye and the sight in the other was deteriorating (although in 1942 she was still able to admire a painting by Hector Gilliland). In 1952 she moved to a nursing home where she remained until her death, on 8 April 1959. The bulk of her substantial estate (which in 1960 represented the income from £54,000) was left to the Art Gallery of NSW. Other than the art which entered the collection then, it was translated into the Florence Turner Blake Bequest for purchasing works of art. This and Tom Roberts’s Portrait of Florence are her most public memorials. Her 1925 sketchbook from the Slade, some loose pencil sketches and an 1894 pen-and-ink drawing are among her papers in the Mitchell Library, transferred there from the gallery. And, in storage at the gallery, two paintings on silk and their preliminary drawings, along with other work – none of which has been on view for decades – record her life as an artist.
Writers:
Mendelssohn, Joanna
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 26 October 1873
- Summary
- Encouraged to take up art lessons by her neighbour Julian Ashton, Blake raised money to pay for classes by breeding pups from her pug dog. It wasn't until after her divorce and the death of her father however that she really began to practice her art and in 1925 she studied painting under Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Art in London. It was at this time that she also became friendly with Lucie
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 8-Apr-59
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, etcher and political activist, was born on 24 December 1873 at 28 Swanston Street, Melbourne, fifth surviving child of Edwin Geach and Catherine, née Greenwood. She studied Design (1890-92) and Painting (1892-96) at Melbourne’s National Gallery School, winning second prize for painting from the nude in 1895. She then went to London where she became the first Australian to win a tuition scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools, studying under Lawrence Alma-Tadema, John Singer Sargent and other visiting masters (1896-1900). She also studied stained glass at the London School of Arts and Crafts and spent time in Paris where she reputedly studied with Whistler and at the Académie Julian. Like other artists of the period, notably Thea Proctor , her early works (especially) show the influence of the pale tints and languid ladies of Charles Conder’s fin de siecle aestheticism, particularly as expressed in fan paintings then enormously popular in London and Paris.
Back at Melbourne in January 1901 Portia Geach held an exhibition of her work in her studio at 245 Collins Street. She was a member of the Victorian Artists’ Society and exhibited with it regularly from 1901. The Geach family moved to Sydney in about 1904 and Portia divided her time between Sydney and Melbourne. She began exhibiting with the Royal Art Society of NSW in 1906, when she showed the Pre-Raphaelite Tales from Tennyson, “Queen Guinevere” (oil on board 29.8 × 39.8 cm, Elinor & Fred Wrobel collection, Sydney), which was reproduced in its associated publication The 100 Best Pictures of the Royal Art Society’s Exhibition, 1906 , and is possibly the 'scene of a medieval noblewoman with her attendants’ previously shown with the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1902. Undated paintings of mediaeval subjects such as Queen Rose in her Rosebud Garden of Girls (private collection, illustrated in Harris, p.115, courtesy Savill Galleries, Sydney and Melbourne) are in private collections. In the 1907 Women’s Work exhibition at Melbourne, Geach won the second prize for watercolour figure painting with A Procession of the Horses priced at fifty guineas (no first prize was awarded) and second prize for etching (after Dora Wilson ). The National Gallery of Australia holds three of her etchings made in England c.1915: The Sower , Homeward and a view of a sailing barge on the Thames.
From 1922 Portia lived in the family home at Cremorne Point, Sydney, until moving with her sister Florence Katherine to an apartment on the ninth floor of the fashionable Astor Flats in Macquarie Street. (The Cremorne house, decorated with her murals, was demolished in 1991.) She continued to travel a great deal, being described as 'a well-seasoned traveller, who divides her year by Continents’ when she returned from California in 1924. She painted murals in New York c.1917 – and lamented that Australian commerce had no time for such things – and she exhibited with the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts at Paris in 1926. She painted in New Guinea, New Zealand, Noumea and Tahiti.
Now known mainly for the portrait prize established in her memory by her sister Florence in 1962 rather than for her own art, Portia was an active feminist all her life. She had painted a suffrage banner for Vida Goldstein in 1905 and crusaded for many years against the 'closed front’ women artists encountered in Australia. In 1917 she attended a meeting of the Housewives Association in New York and immediately became convinced that a similar organisation was necessary in Australia; on her return she founded the Housewives Progressive Association of NSW, which she ran for forty years. She painted a portrait of Edith Cowan, the first woman to enter an Australian state parliament (c.1922, WA State Parliament House Art Collection, Perth). Although she still saw herself as a professional painter in the early 1930s, when she depicted the newly-built Sydney Harbour Bridge in some of her landscapes (private collections), she spent much of her life tirelessly campaigning on behalf of women’s rights, including equal pay and the right to hold public office, as well as quality and price control for everyday domestic life, launching The Housewives Magazine (1933) and The Progressive Journal (1935) as her mouthpieces.
Portia Geach died in Sydney on 5 October 1959. Her body was cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium.
Gem-like both in its dimensions and in the brilliancy of its colours, the painting represents Guinevere, attended by her maids of honour, in her bridal procession.- for good reason. As Jerome Buckley points out, Tennyson’s Arthurian cycle is 'not a single unified narrative but a group of chivalric tableaux’ which cry out for pictorial realisation. One of the best known depictions of the Arthurian legend, stylistically comparable to the Late Pre-Raphaelitism of this work, was undoubtedly the series of fifteen murals installed in the Boston (USA) Public Library in 1895 by the English Royal Academician Edwin Austin Abbey. Illustrating 'The Quest and Achievement of the Holy Grail’, these well-publicised murals told the story of Sir Galahad; Portia Geach, a lifelong feminist, chose the key woman of the legend for her painting. Geach may well have intended Tales from Tennyson: 'Queen Guinevere’ as a study for a mural, or even one of a series; the title suggests that it was part of a proposed cycle. It is painted in that flat, claustrophobic style associated with turn-of-the-century murals Rossetti’s medievalism, of Walter Withers’s Purrumbete murals or of Blamire Young’s historical paintings, yet rarely is.) … Just as Geach’s Queen Guinevere was a pictorial realisation of Tennyson’s poem, it in turn would have lent itself perfectly to dramatic realisation as a theatrical tableau. Such a transformation was not unusual, for theatrical productions as diverse as low melodrama and Shakespearian spectacle commonly appropriated literary and High Art imagery for dramatic advantage-as Portia would have known from her theatrical producer brother, Edwin Geach. During the nineteenth century literature had become more pictorial, and paintings more literal. … Geach’s painting highlights the way that this type of subject-in crossing the boundaries between the poetic and the visual, the narrative and the pictorial, and the temporal and the spatial-found its ultimate expression on the stage.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1873
- Summary
- An active feminist all her life, Portia Geach spent much of her life tirelessly campaigning on behalf of women's rights. Her art making also reflected this desire to show the world the feminine voice, producing artworks with powerful female figures.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Oct-59
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-36.9963144 Longitude144.0689457 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Maldon, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, painter and etcher, was born in Victoria. He studied art in Japan before settling in San Francisco where he published a fortnightly magazine, Chic . After working for the San Francisco Call , Examiner and Chronicle , Nankivell moved to New York in 1896 and made a name for himself as a staff artist on Puck . Later he turned to painting and etching.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1869
- Summary
- Australian-born American cartoonist and illustrator. Nankivell studied art in Japan before settling in San Francisco where he published a fortnightly magazine, 'Chic'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1959
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1861-01-01 End Date1959-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- wood-carver and needleworker, was born in Hobart Town, Tasmania, on 19 February 1861, daughter of William Mason and Mary Ann, née Squire. In 1881, aged twenty-six, she married the brewer Thomas Stannus Todd who by 1892 was head brewer and manager of the Cascade Brewery, South Hobart. By the early 1900s her children were growing up and Sarah Todd became interested in wood-carving. She studied at the Hobart Technical College, probably under W. Russell, and exhibited successfully in the 1907 Exhibition of Women’s Work at Melbourne. Thomas Todd and their three daughters shared Sarah’s interest in wood-carving.
They lived in the Brewery Manager’s house until Thomas died; Sarah spent her most productive years as a wood-carver there. After moving to Bellerive on the eastern shore, her advancing years forced her to give up wood-carving in favour of embroidery, needlework and rug-making. Her three daughters all became proficient in their mother’s skills, their needlework and carving being represented, along with their mother’s, in churches and private houses around Hobart.
Several good examples of Sarah Todd’s work are held by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Like other wood-carvers of the period, the inspiration for much of her work came from English Arts and Crafts illustrated journals.
Sarah Todd is remembered by her family and friends as being tall, gracious and upright, even in old age. Her manner was natural and entertaining. She was also an active and creative gardener. She died at the great age of ninety-eight, on 11 July 1959.
Writers:
Mercer, Peter
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 19 February 1861
- Summary
- Wood-carver and needleworker, her artworks were included in the 1907 Exhibition of Women's Work at Melbourne, after studying at the Hobart Technical College. The inspiration for much of her work came from English Arts and Crafts illustrated journals, she died age ninety-eight in 1959.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Jul-59
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1917-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Mary Webb began her professional career in Sydney, and later exhibited her expressionistic abstract works in London.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1917
- Summary
- Little is known of Webb's early years but she was an associate of the Sydney e abstract artists working in the 1940s. She had a successful exhibiting career in Paris, holding her last solo exhibition at Galerie R Creuze, shortly before her untimely death in December 1958
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Dec-58
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude-26.1838889 Longitude28.0641667 Start Date1906-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yeoville, Johannesburg, South Africa
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born on 1 August 1906 in Yeoville, Johannesburg – well beyond Australia’s shores, despite her adult delight in this country’s landscape and flora and fauna. She lived in South Africa, France and England before coming to Sydney in 1921 with her mother and sister. In 1924-27 she studied art at East Sydney Technical College under Rayner Hoff and Phyllis Shillito; she also took architectural drawing classes under Myles Dunphy at Sydney Technical College.
After an unsatisfying two years working as a commercial artist with the firm of Stott & Underwood, illness forced a long period of recuperation (1929-33) and Palmer began to experiment with relief printing techniques. The period coincided with an emerging interest in modernist design concepts in Sydney and – notably – with the production and exhibition of relief prints by a number of local women, including Margaret Preston , Thea Proctor and Dorrit Black . Palmer was particularly influenced by the work of the Austrian artist Norbertine von Bresslern-Roth, shown at Sydney’s Grosvenor Galleries in 1926-28. She would also have been well acquainted with the English artist Claude Flight’s influential Lino-cuts (London 1927) and the work of the Melbourne artists Eveline Syme and Ethel Spowers , former students of Flight.
Although exhibiting watercolour landscapes in 1929 (with the Society of Women Painters and the Australian Art Society) and pyrography in 1932 (Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW), it was not until 1933 that Palmer showed her first linocuts, at the Society of Arts and Crafts. Throughout the remainder of the ’30s she continued to experiment with various printing mediums, developing a complex linocut printing technique which allowed for the subtle gradation and overlay of colour. While the inspiration of Japanese prints is evident in this, and in her pictorial composition and choice of subject matter, Palmer always stressed her individual interpretation of Japanese art. Palmer exhibited widely throughout the 1930s, holding solo shows at the Margaret MacLean Gallery, Melbourne (1936), Bayly’s Gallery, Adelaide (1938), and Sydney’s Macquarie Galleries (1939). This marked the pinnacle of her artistic career, both in terms of recognition – by 1939 she was represented in all major state gallery collections – and in technical and aesthetic accomplishment.
During the war Palmer became involved in teaching remedial craftwork to repatriated soldiers, being in charge of 10 members of the Society of Arts & Crafts who visited Concord. She also founded a craft school, the Double Bay Studio (1945-51). This occasioned a complete break with linocut printing. In the late 1940s she concentrated on the production of screen-printed (serigraph) works – one of the first local artists to use the technique in a wholly artistic context. Exhibiting regularly with the Society of Arts and Crafts up to 1954, she produced a range of screen-printed fabrics, cards and domestic items which were sold through various outlets. After a short illness, Ethleen Palmer died on 8 April 1958.
Writers:
Watson, Anne
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1 August 1906
- Summary
- During WW2, Ethleen Palmer taught remedial art practice to returned soldiers. She then founded an art school, the Double Bay Studio, that ran from 1945-1951. Palmer's work was always evolving and she developed a technique in linocut printing which allowed for subtle tonal gradation, a breakthrough that certainly boosted the profile of her art.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 8-Apr-58
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude40.712778 Longitude-74.006111 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New York, NY, USA
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1904
- Summary
- Manne is identified as a furniture maker, H. Manne Co., 605 Lygon Street, North Carlton, Victoria. He was active as a furniture maker in New York, later Vienna, South Africa and Australia after 1939.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-58
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-37.5998611 Longitude141.6895453 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Coleraine, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, commercial artist, gallery manager, art writer and curator, was born on 4 February 1893 in Coleraine, Victoria, only child of Bertram Peel and Louise, née Campbell. Following her father’s death, her mother married Mr Cope who lived in Kew. Clarice attended an art school in Prahran then obtained a well-paid job doing fashion drawings for the Melbourne department store, Buckley & Nunn. On 10 October 1915 Clarice Peel married Charles Noble Leonard Zander, who enlisted at the outbreak of war and was severely wounded at Fromalles. A distraught Clarice boarded the last ship permitted to carry women and joined her husband in England for his convalescence. After the war they returned to Victoria and took up a soldier settlement block at Red Cliffs near Mildura in the mallee belt, built a house of saplings and hessian, then spent the next two years digging out mallee roots ('emu bobbing’) in order to plant vines. On 29 November 1921 their daughter, Jocelyn, was born.
Later they returned to Melbourne, to live in Murphy Street, South Yarra. Charles suffered personality problems after the war and in 1925 he decided to go abroad. He died in Montreal, Canada in 1929. Left to support herself and a young daughter, Zander returned to fashion drawing. She also managed the New Gallery in Elizabeth Street established by James MacDonald and his wife, Maud. In 1930 she and Jocelyn travelled to London, where she worked as a freelance journalist, then as secretary and manager of the Redfern Galleries in Bond Street, introducing artists such as Sidney Nolan, Loudon Sainthill and Donald Friend to the gallery.
Zander organised the 'Exhibition of British Contemporary Art’ and accompanied it to Australia in 1933. Enormous press coverage opened a debate -which became known as 'the Zandrian War’ – as conservative audiences voiced their displeasure. On returning to England, she was appointed Press Relations Officer to the Royal Academy. She had become very friendly with cartoonist Will (Bill) Dyson in Melbourne, cared for him when he was ill in 1931-32 and remained close to him all his life, although they never married, partly because of Betty Dyson 's opposition to anyone supplanting her saintly mother. Bill gave Clarice a cottage in Hampshire, which she transformed into an attractive retreat and left her a bequest in a new will. It was still unsigned when he died in January 1938 and daughter Betty Dyson refused to honour his wishes. Clarice was left with a posthumous portrait of Bill by Tom Dugdale (Jocelyn Plate collection), which she always treasured.
In the late 1930s Clarice Zander travelled to Germany and gained access to Hitler’s banned art; later, in London, she promoted the 'Degenerate Art’ exhibition, largely by refugee artists. In 1940 she and Jocelyn returned to Sydney. There Clarice lectured on Cultural Propaganda for the British Council and, in 1941, organised 'An Englishman’s Home’ at David Jones Art Gallery. In 1942 she studied Anthropology, Oriental History and Greek Archaeology at Sydney University and commenced art classes with Desiderius Orban. In 1943 she gave an ABC talk, 'The New Art of Planning’, in which she urged artists to form some sort of policy for the post-war years. Living next door to the boarding house Merioola, which housed a variety of dancers, musicians and artists such as Mitty Lee Brown and Anne Wienholt , she and Jocelyn were involved in the activities of the grou
In 1946 Zander returned to London and worked with Margaret Bean on the broadsheet Tomorrow’s News . She attended painting classes at the Chelsea Poly and frequently visited France, to study at la Grande Chaumière and go on painting expeditions with Margaret Olley , Moya Dyring and David Strachan. Some competent landscape and still life works survive from this period (Lewers Bequest and Penrith Regional Art Gallery). In 1956 she returned to Australia in ill health. She lived in Paddington and with her daughter and son-in-law, Jocelyn and Carl Plate, at Woronora until her death.
.
Writers:
France, Christine
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 February 1893
- Summary
- Zander was manager of the Redfern Galleries in London and organised the 'Exhibition of British Contemporary Art' and accompanied it to Australia in 1933. She studied at 'la Grande Chaumière' and went on painting trips with Margaret Olley. Zander also played a role in design and participated in the 1941 ABC radio talk series, "Design in Everyday Things" with Frank Medworth and George Farwell.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1958
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, designer and photographer, was born in Adelaide.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1892
- Summary
- Female artist who painted, drew, photographed and printed. She illustrated children's books and designed board games. She was well connected to artists in Melbourne during the first half of the twentieth century.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 15-Jun-58
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-37.2843443 Longitude142.930621 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ararat, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 15 July 1891
- Summary
- Painter and commercial artist who performed 'lightning sketches' on stage under the name 'Harry Royall'. Served in both World Wars and made sketches during each conflict.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Jan-58
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-34.7831232 Longitude149.2659887 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gunning, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, showed Gerringong , oil on board, in Herbert R. Gallop, Landscapes in Oils, Watercolours and Etchings , Blaxland Galleries, Sydney, 1935. The painting was offered for sale in May 2001 by Bridget McDonnell Gallery.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- Painter of landscapes using oil, watercolour and etching techniques.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1958
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Adelaide?, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born on 7 April 1886, elder daughter of Henry Church, mayor of Payneham (SA) in 1885-88.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 April 1886
- Summary
- Painter and resident of Adelaide, South Australia. In the early 1940s she skillfully harmonised, in an expressionist manner, paintings of garden flowers and vegetables in vibrant colours.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Jun-58
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, designer and author, was born Ethel Mason, in Sydney. She was educated privately and at Church of England Grammar School for Girls where she was taught by Miss E.A. Badham and excelled in Greek and Latin. She married A.T. Anderson (1886-1949), later Brigadier General and secretary to Sir Dudley de Chair and four other governors; they lived in India and England. Returning to Sydney in 1924, the Andersons settled at Ball Green, Turramurra, where Ethel lived until her death.
Ethel Anderson had no formal training in art but while in England in 1914-24 joined the Cambridge Group and became acquainted with artists such as Sir William Rothenstein. She painted murals for English churches, including the church at White Ladies, Aston, and founded the Young Worcestershire Arts and Crafts Club. In Sydney she became the most important supporter of modern art and the modernist painters, Grace Cossington Smith , Dorrit Black , Roland Wakelin and Roy de Maistre , by writing about their work, holding exhibitions in her home, organising exhibitions in other venues and opening exhibitions. She published articles on modern art and artists in Art in Australia , Home , Sydney Morning Herald , Australian Quarterly and Undergrowth .
In 1927 Ethel Anderson started the Turramurra Wall Painters Group and designed murals painted by the group in the Turramurra Grammar School, the Children’s Chapel in St James’s Church, Sydney, and for four other churches in Perth (WA), Armidale (NSW), New Guinea and Melanesia (designs for some of these works are included in the Anderson Papers, Mitchell Library). She exhibited paintings with the Contemporary Group, and in the Lodestar Gallery, Sydney, run by her cousin Stella Scroggie.
After 1930 Ethel Anderson concentrated on writing fiction and poetry. She published seven books, including At Parramatta , Squatter’s Luck and an oratorio set to music by John Antill. She also published widely in magazines such as Home , Bulletin , Manuscripts and Southerly in Australia, Punch , Spectator and Cornhill in England, and Atlantic Monthly in America.
Writers:
Johnson, Heather
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1883
- Summary
- A well-travelled mural painter and writer, Ethel Anderson was considered one the most important supporters of modern art and its painters in the early part of the 20th century, thanks largely to the exhibitions she organised and the writing she did about it for numerous publications including Art in Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1958
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-33.8333914 Longitude138.6120042 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Clare, SA, Australia
- Biography
- George Marchant was born at Clare on 6 November 1882 and was the son of photographer Edwin Marchant (q.v.). His parents moved to Petersburg (Peterborough) in 1896, by which time he was probably assisting his father in the studio. The family moved to Kadina in 1904 where Edwin Marchant had a studio in Taylor Street and, although the studio was operated under the name of E.W. Marchant & Son, there are photographs in existence inscribed G.L. Marchant, Kadina.
In February 1906 George Marchant left for England on a wheat ship but was back in Kadina by July 1907 when he was involved in a motor accident. He was one of a party of men who had just left Kadina for Bute in an open chauffeur-driven car when they met a teamster with a load of long posts. The teamster’s horse took fright and turned the load into the path of the vehicle, which struck the poles and overturned. George Marchant was thrown clear and was able to raise the car and release the driver who then helped the other two passengers crawl from underneath the vehicle. Although George Marchant’s camera had been thrown about 20 years, it was intact, so he quickly set it up and took a photograph of the damaged car, which was reproduced in the Chronicle.
On 11 September 1908 George Marchant married Martha Jane Chellew and moved to the city where he was listed as a photographer at 65 Tynte Street, North Adelaide, in the directory for 1910, then at 164 Hanson Street, Adelaide, from 1911 to 1913. From 1914 his address was ‘Francis Street, off Rundle Street’ with a ‘private residence’ at 164 Hanson Street.
In 1923 George Marchant and his family moved to Melbourne where he ran a very successful photographic business. He had retired by 1954 and died on 2 March 1958. An item in the Adelaide press which recorded his death described him as ‘one of Australia’s most versatile photographers’ and a ‘master of magic’. It said, ‘Many South Australians will remember him as a cheery fun- loving fellow who could produce pennies from your ear or entertain you with his Auto harp which was always carried as part of his photographic equipment. George was a competent photographer and some of his clients included the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, Lord and Lady Jellico, Sir Archibald Weigall and Admiral Field.’
A few years before George Marchant died Jack Cato included a paragraph about him in his Story of the Camera in Australia. ‘George Marchant, price of entertainers, who played fourteen different musical instruments, photographed the Picnic Races, the prize stock, the agricultural shows; and once spent two months as the guest of the Admiral of the Fleet recording the trials of HMS Hood under cyclonic conditions in the Pacific Ocean. George was the only photographer–musician who could make the camera disappear before the eyes of the sitter.’
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, pp.196-97.
Writers:
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 6 November 1882
- Summary
- Son of photographer Edwin Walter Marchant, George Marchant was also a photographer. He had his own studio in Clare and later in Adelaide, before he moved with his family to Melbourne where he operated a successful photographic business.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Mar-58
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher and painter, was one of the three daughters of Harry Prinsep and his wife Josephine , née Bussell. Both she and her eldest sister Carlotta sketched and painted.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1880
- Summary
- Virginia Mary Prinsep was known as a sketcher and painter. She was one of the three daughters of Harry Prinsep and his wife Josephine.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1958
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude51.5460558 Longitude-0.253779139 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Middlesex, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 16 December 1879
- Summary
- Tod was a woodcarver executing a range of secular and sacred commissions from his workshops in Sydney's Surry Hills, Annandale and Kingford. He undertook work for many Anglican churches designing and carving furniture, altars and honour rolls for churches in Bega, Marrickville, Tumut, Roseville and many others. A partial record of his work was published in 1958 and his archives are held by the Powerhouse Museum.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Jun-58
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.8772 Longitude151.1049 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burwood, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Charles Lloyd Jones was born in Burwood, New South Wales, on 28 May 1878. The son of Edward Lloyd Jones and Helen Ann, née Jones, he was a third generation member of the Sydney based David Jones retailing family. Jones was educated in England and Sydney but showed little academic ability, though he did have an interest in art. After leaving school, he approached D.H. Souter in order to apprentice himself as a commercial artist, and with Souter he designed posters for the NSW Government Railway. During the late 1890s Jones also studied at Julian Ashton’s art school where fellow students included Sydney Ure Smith, Howard Ashton, George Lambert and Thea Proctor. Ashton later described Jones in his autobiography as a “hard and conscientious worker” (Ashton, 1941, pg. 115). Jones’ art debut was at the Society of Artists (SOA) 1897 annual show where he exhibited three oils and two poster designs. He continued to exhibit with the SOA in 1898, 1899, 1900 and also at the Commonwealth Art Exhibition in early 1901. After studying with Ashton for five years, he spent two years in London studying art at the Slade School. While in England he also learnt a trade by qualifying as a tailor. According to his Daily Mirror obituary Jones “intended to have one of his pictures hung at the Academy, be elected an R.A. and settle down as a career artist” (30 July 1958, pg. 23). He was unnoticed in London, and returned to Australia via the USA. Back in Sydney, Jones was persuaded by his elder brother to join the family business. He initially worked as a cutter in the firm’s clothing factory, but by 1905 he had transferred to the David Jones advertising department where he used his artistic training to commercial advantage. In 1906 David Jones became a public company and the artist was appointed director, later becoming chairman in 1920, a management role he maintained until his death. Jones had an interest in poster design and he collected interesting examples while on overseas business trips. In 1918 he organised the first Australian exhibition of posters from Europe and North America at the NSW Education Department’s gallery to, “show how they could be used as an art gallery for the masses if they were displayed properly on hoardings” (Jones quoted in Artists in Posterland, 1940, pg. 54). As well as his interest in commercial art, Jones maintained his love of painting after ending his formal art studies. In 1907 he became a foundation member of the (then recently revived) Society of Artists and exhibited eight oils at their first Sydney exhibition. A caricature of Jones by fellow member Harry Julius was illustrated in the catalogue. Julius’s jocular drawing shows the young artist earnestly painting at his easel while sitting on a large bag of money. While never a prolific painter, Jones maintained friendships with many of the SOA artists, and he exhibited intermittently with the Society throughout the rest of his adult life. Jones was a friend of Sydney Ure Smith and they maintained a close business relationship up to the time of Smith’s death in 1949. When Sydney Ure Smith, Bertram Stevens and Harry Julius established Art in Australia magazine in 1916, Jones became an important financial backer of the project, and he also paid for the publication of Leon Gellert’s Isle of San (1919), which was illustrated by Norman Lindsay. In 1921 Art in Australia Ltd was formally established, its directors being Sydney Ure Smith, Bertram Stevens and Charles Lloyd Jones. In 1939, Jones became chairman and director of Ure Smith Pty Ltd, but he ended his relationship with the firm after Smith’s death in 1952. While Jones took a back seat role in the management of Art in Australia, he did occasionally contribute to the magazine. He wrote several short articles; the first issue contained articles by Jones on friends Arthur Streeton and Julian Ashton and he later wrote about war memorials. Three examples of Jones’ own work were reproduced in the magazine; considering his role of director on the publication, the small amount of his art being published suggests that Jones may have been modest about his own work. During the interwar years Jones became a leading member of the Sydney business community and participated on many commercial boards and charity committees. He was also a director of the Sydney commercial radio station 2BL, and after the formation of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in May 1932, he was appointed the ABC’s first chairman, a role he held until 1934. In 1934 Jones was appointed to the board of trustees of the National Art Gallery of NSW (later AGNSW) by the NSW State Government. The director of the Gallery at the time of his appointment was James S. MacDonald, and Jones later worked with directors Will Ashton and Hal Missingham. While his own painting was dominated by impressionistic landscape, Jones was seemingly open-minded to modern influences in art. While modernism was becoming increasingly popular in Sydney, the majority of the Gallery trustees in the 1930s and early 40s were antagonistic or suspicious of modern artistic trends and did all in their power to prevent the purchase of modernist works into the state collection. Jones would therefore have been regarded as a progressive member of the board of trustees, although by the late 1940s his taste would have been more representative of the general consensus on the board of trustees. The shift in opinion on the board was reflected in Jones’ election to vice-president of the board of trustees, a position he held up to the time of his death. As chairman of David Jones Ltd, Jones helped establish the David Jones’ Art Gallery at the Market Street department store. The art side of the business probably grew out of displays of decorative arts within the store as well as the need to compete with business rivals, Anthony Horderns and Farmers, who had also established in-store galleries. One of the first major exhibitions at David Jones was a large exhibition of 'Contemporary British Art’ in early 1928. Another important exhibition at the department store was the 'Rayner Hoff Memorial Exhibition’ in 1938. This show honoured the British born, art deco, sculptor who made his name in Sydney during the 1930s. Perhaps the most controversial exhibition at the David Jones’ Art Gallery was the 1939 (Melbourne) 'Herald Exhibition of French and British Contemporary Art’. This exhibition included works by Picasso, Mattise, Rouault and Dali.David Jones opened a new purpose built art gallery at their Elizabeth Street store. For the new enterprise, Jones recruited landscape artist Will Ashton to become first director. Ashton had just retired from the directorship of the AGNSW and his appointment would certainly have given prestige to the new art gallery. The debut show, by portrait painter William Dobell, occurred only months after the awarding of the 1943 Archibald Prize to Dobell for his Portrait of Joshua Smith. During the remaining years of Jones’ life the store gallery became one of the leading commercial galleries in Sydney and held a diverse range of regular exhibitions, which included displays of decorative arts, solo shows and art society shows. Jones was a major collector of Australian and international art. A magazine feature on his collection written by Douglas Dundas was published in the September 1971 issue of Art & Australia. While the work of Sir William Dobell featured highly in his late life collection, his Woollahra home, 'Rosemont’, also housed paintings by William Beckwith Gould, Conrad Martens, Charles Conder, Arthur Streeton, Rubert Bunny and Roy de Maistre. European works included paintings by Jan van Os, Stanley Spencer, Maurice Utrillo, and sculpture by Jacob Epstein and Henry Moore. Jones was knighted in 1951, and in 1954 he was appointed Officer of the Légion d’Honneur for his help with the organisation of a major French art exhibition that toured Australia. Sir Charles Lloyd Jones died at 'Rosemont’ on 30 July 1958. His funeral was one of the largest ever held in Sydney, and Prime Minister Robert Menzies gave the oration at the service in St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney. A wealthy man, Jones left £10,000 to the AGNSW in his will (Missingham, 1973). Following his death solo exhibitions of his work were held at Hawthorn City Art Gallery (1972), David Jones’ Art Gallery (1978), and at the Painters’ Gallery, Sydney (1987). The Royal Agricultural Society of NSW award an annual memorial prize for art in Jones’ honour. Jones was married three times, firstly to Winifred Ethelwyn Quaife in 1900, that marriage ended when she died in 1916; they had no children. Jones later married Louise Violet Multras in 1917 and the couple had a daughter. After divorcing Louise in 1929, Jones married Hannah Benyon Jones with whom he had two sons.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 28 May 1878
- Summary
- After early art training from Julian Ashton and D.H. Souter in the late 1890s, Charles Lloyd Jones joined the family retailing business, David Jones, later becoming the firm's managing director. Despite his dedication to his retail career, Jones continued to paint landscape throughout his life, often exhibiting his work with the Society of Artists. Open minded to modern trends in art he was an influential trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW during the mid twentieth century, an important financial backer of 'Art in Australia', and established the David Jones' Art Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Jul-58
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-37.8001 Longitude144.9671 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Carlton, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1877
- Summary
- Zelman was a Victorian landscape painter who often painted in the open air. After training at the National Gallery School, his first solo exhibition is described in 1923 in Tunnack's Buildings, Collins Street, Melbourne. There are also references to work in watercolour. He later built a picturesque cottage, Hepburn Springs, Ballarat with internal mural paintings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1958
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-37.8244246 Longitude145.0317207 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hawthorn, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator, poet, author and editor, was born at Anchorfield, Hawthorn, Melbourne, on 4 October 1876, second son of writer and artist George Gordon McCrae [ ADB 5] and his Tasmanian-born wife, Augusta Helen née Brown, and a grandson of artist Georgiana McCrae . His early life is portrayed in My father and my father’s friends (1935). He was articled to an architect in youth but abandoned architecture for writing and illustrating, his first poem being published in the Bulletin in 1896.
Although best known as a poet and writer Hugh McCrae was also an actor, writer of articles, editor of magazines and illustrator and cartoonist. He sent cartoons from Moir Street [or possibly Muir Street], Hawthorn to the Rambler in 1899, and he is also represented in the Norman Lilley collection (ML PXD 771, f.166-171). He was a regular contributor of cartoons to the Bulletin at least from 1898 (see ’100 years ago’, Bulletin column, December 1998, cartoon signed 'Splash’), e.g. Different Symptons 1899, signed 'Hugh McCrae’ (ill. Lindesay WWW , 32); An Ovation 1900 [couple in evening dress]: 'He: “Well, what did you think of that last song?”/ She: “Oh, it was very good. But I think they might have handed up the eggs more carefully to him” (a stylish drawing signed 'Splash’, ill. Lindesay 1979, 119); 'Splash’ Boer War cartoon in art nouveau style of a little girl wanting the autograph of 'Heart-breaker Davey’ 1900, sent from Muir Street [or Moir Street?], Hawthorn, Victoria, captioned: “Please sir, are you Mister Private Davey? – 'cos if you are, I’d like your photograph [sic]’ (original ML Px*D514/112); High Art as at present in Melbourne (tiny figures painting visiting Royals, signed 'Splash’, 27 April 1901; Shortly to be Erected, “Statue to commemorate NSW Lands Administration” (man with hand out for bribe), signed “McCrae”, 20 July 1905.
The ML Bulletin collection has 36 original drawings 1903-54, plus one caricature. An untitled set of coloured postcards after 'Splash’ cartoons, published by the Bulletin in January 1907, includes She begged him to keep her grave plot green . Later cartoons and caricatures for the Bulletin include George Reid , published 20 January 1910 (NLA neg. NL 3043); Women’s Fashions 1921 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 164); The Cat and the Mouse 1930 [husband joke made by society woman with her young man] signed 'McCrae’ (ill. Rolfe, 278).
In 1907 McCrae won 'The Bookfellow’s Decorative Drawing Competition – Headpieces and Tailpieces’ with an ink drawing of a satyr and Pan flanking three kangaroos in the verdant bush (ill. Bookfellow 18 April 1907, 9). He drew illustrations and wrote articles, stories and verse for the Lone Hand and drew lots of cartoons for the Comic Australian (1911-13), e.g. the comic strip, Jim and Jam , of 1911 about a kangaroo that Lindesay claims was the first Australian comic strip to be printed in colour. Others are: a cover cartoon on compulsory military training, March 1912 (ill. Lindesay, WWW , 84, 82), Kill that Fly! Kill that Mosquito! and The Mawson Antarctic Expedition , both 7 October 1911.
He was a staff artist on Arena (Melbourne) and later on Melbourne Punch . A member of the Yorick Club in Melbourne (of which his father was a founding member), he drew a cartoon of members using bundles of newspapers as chairs (ill. Johnson, 21) and another of Adam Lindsay Gordon pretending to throw Marcus Clarke out of a window (Johnson, 33).
Hugh McCrae spent 1914-c.1915 in the USA working as an actor in New York, where he also drew for Puck magazine. In 1916 he was the Australian lead in a film on the life of Adam Lindsay Gordon. During WWI he was a decoder in the Censor’s Office. He returned to Sydney in 1922 and lived there for the rest of his life, except for some years in Camden in the 1930s. In the 1920s he wrote and illustrated a story 'The House of Pain’ for Home (1 December 1922, 19) and edited a literary magazine, the New Triad . Mitchell Library has his cute, coloured original book-cover and illustrations for The Mimshi Maiden (Sydney: A&R, 1938), ML Z SSV*ART 44.
For some years Hugh McCrae and his wife, Annie Geraldine (Nancy) née Adams, who had married at Christ Church, Hawthorn on 4 May 1901, shared a house at Lavender Bay, Sydney, with Hugh’s lifelong friend, Norman Lindsay , and Norman’s first wife. Later the McCrae’s lived up the North Shore where Hugh produced most of his Satyrs and Sunlight poems (1909). Some were first published in the Lone Hand in 1907 with Norman Lindsay illustrations; an edition de luxe of 100 copies, also illustrated by NL, was sold at a guinea. McCrae rarely illustrated his own writings, e.g. his verse 'The New Year’, published in the Lone Hand of 1 February 1908, 454, was illustrated by Alice Muskett , although Norman Lindsay was his lifelong collaborator. McCrae’s Idyllia poems were illustrated by Norman and printed by Rose Lindsay at Springwood.
Norman Lindsay drew a fairly straight portrait of Hugh McCrae surrounded by nymphs and satyrs (reproduced in NL’s Bohemians , 117). McCrae reciprocated with caricatures of Norman (one DL). A collection of his illustrated letters to Norman was edited by Robert D. FitzGerald and published by Angus & Robertson in 1970. From 1926 he received a Commonwealth Literary Fund pension of 52 pounds p.a., apart from 1928 when he earned 7 pounds a week as joint editor of the New Triad with Ernest Watt (see ADB 10). In 1941 his pension was increased to two pounds a week. Nancy died in 1943 and on 4 July 1946, at Mosman, Hugh McCrae married Janet Le Brun, née Brown, widow of the composer Horan Keats ( ADB 9). The marriage was dissolved on 22 July 1948. Awarded the OBE in 1953, Hugh died on 17 February 1958. There were three daughters of his first marriage: Dorothea Huntley Cowper (Honey), Marjorie Francesca McWilliam ( Mahdi McCrae) and Georgiana Rose Morris (’ Smee’ McCrae) .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 4 October 1876
- Summary
- Significant early 20th century Melbourne and Sydney poet, author, cartoonist, illustrator and editor, McCrae was a close friend of Norman Lindsay, with whom he collaborated on a number of projects.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Feb-58
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-37.8244246 Longitude145.0317207 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hawthorn, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and printmaker, was born in Melbourne, daughter of John Alsop, a banker, and Anne, née Howard. She had travelled to Europe before studying at the National Gallery of Victoria School (1900-05) where she won second prize for anatomical drawing in the student exhibition of 1904. She exhibited fairly regularly with the Victorian Artists’ Society between 1903 and 1926 as well as revisiting Europe in 1913. In 1907 she submitted several designs in the competition for a poster for the Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne, without success. Helen Atkinson was the winner, but at the exhibition itself Edith won first prize for the best design for a frieze (Fine Art Category, class 30a).
In 1910 Edith Alsop was one of four artists – the others being Ida Rentoul Outhwaite , Janet Cumbrae Stewart and Jessie Traill – who painted wall decorations for the children’s wards in Melbourne’s Homeopathic Hospital. Both Alsop and Outhwaite painted their panels in a flat decorative style that incorporated nursery rhyme texts like children’s book illustrations, whereas Traill and Cumbrae Stewart collaborated on panels more closely resembling conventional perspective paintings. This was also the year in which Some Children’s Songs was published, with illustrations by Edith, music by her sister Marion and lyrics by Dorothy MacCrae. (Edith’s younger brother, the architect Rodney Howard Alsop, had executed a series of nursery-rhyme postcards for the Willsmere Certified Milk Company about five years earlier.)
In 1916 Edith Alsop illustrated Joice Nankivell’s The Cobweb Ladder with seven black-and-white illustrations. These very beautiful pictures, with white figures and tracery set against a black night sky sprinkled with stars, by rights should have led to a brilliant career in children’s book illustration. However, Outhwaite’s lavish Elves and Fairies appeared the very next month completely overwhelming Cobweb Ladder . According to Holden, Edith’s only other foray into children’s book illustration was a small volume, The Tale of the Fairies , published by Whitcombe & Tombs in the 1920s.
Many women artists such as May Gibbs or Outhwaite, who became specialist children’s book illustrators either by design or happenstance, have had their work dismissed as trivial or mere decoration. Alsop, who went in the opposite direction, moving away from 'mere decoration’ to the High Art more valued by critics, demonstrated that this strategy didn’t necessarily work wonders for women artists either.
After studying wood engraving at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and painting in Paris under André Lhôte (1928-29) Alsop exhibited her European work back at Melbourne in the 1930s, e.g. Gondolas, Venice 1931 (National Gallery of Australia). She became known for her close association with women’s groups: from the 1930s she regularly lectured and exhibited at the Lyceum Club, Melbourne, and she was connected with the University Women’s College (now University College) and Janet Clarke Hall at the University of Melbourne, both of which own drawings. She also studied with George Bell and was one of the 12 original members of the Contemporary Art Group in 1932 though rarely mentioned in this context.
In 1934 Edith contributed wood engravings to Manuscripts (no.9) and her beach scene, St Kilda 1934 , was reproduced in the Victorian Centenary Gift Book . She was apparently involved with the Women Artists’ National Service Group during World War II; Juliet Peers notes that in 1941 she donated a picture to be raffled titled The Three Little Pigs – apparently a temporary reversion to children’s illustration.
The sisters Edith and Marion Alsop collaborated with Dorothy McCrae to produce pictures, music and verse for five original children’s songs: 'Paddling Days’, 'The Jackass’ (the laughing jackass, or kookaburra), 'Bubbles’, 'The Song of the Water Babies’ and 'The Rebel’. These were published by George Robertson in 1910 as a folio-size children’s song-book titled Some Children’s Songs ; Marion wrote the music, Dorothy the words, and Edith 'designed’ the book. Her designs consisted of five full-page colour illustrations introducing each song on the left-hand page and five black-and-white vignettes above the title of each song opposite. Edith and Marion’s artistic alliance mirrored that of their contemporaries, the better known Rentoul sisters , Ida ( Outhwaite ) and Annie, who collaborated on illustrated fairy stories for over 20 years. The first of the Rentouls’ three children’s song-books, Australian Songs for Young and Old , had appeared in 1907 'in connection with’ the opening of the Women’s Work Exhibition. Edith – who had unsuccessfully submitted a design for the poster competition and won a prize for her design for a frieze – could not have failed to be aware of Ida’s highly admired exhibits, Annie’s ode performed at the opening ceremony and the praise for the 'twin gifts’ that had produced their song-book.
The Alsops’ book was published in 1910, the same year that the Rentouls’ second song-book ( Bush Songs of Australia ) appeared. There seems to have been no sense of competition between the two sets of sisters; indeed, both books were produced by the same publisher and the families were friendly, even to the point of Rodney Alsop (Edith and Marion’s brother) acting as groomsman at Ida’s marriage to Grenbry Outhwaite in 1909. Yet comparisons are (and were) inevitable. The Rentoul/Outhwaite book was very popular and was reprinted several times (until 1924). Although less popular, the Alsop book seems the more visually attractive, being double the size and with text and image well integrated, as shown in Edith’s title vignette The Rebel . The Rebel , imprisoned in her cot and desperately fighting against the narcotic effects of the decorative poppies that surround her, howls her refusal to sleep from the yawning black O of her mouth:
I will not go to sleep For all the pains they take, I will wide open keep My eyes and stay awake; 'Tis all in vain they try and try, I will not go to sleep-not I!
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1871
- Summary
- Painter, illustrator and printmaker who studied at the Central School of Arts in London and under André Lhôte in Paris. Despite her formal fine art training, which also included a period at the National Gallery School in Melbourne, Alsop is best known for her children's book illustrations.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1958
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-18.5118191 Longitude144.0974258 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Copperfield, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- Miniature painter and art instructor working in Sydney in the early decades of the twentieth century. Rose Blakemore was born in Copperfield, Queensland on 31 January 1870, daughter of smelter and mining engineer William Blakemore (1840?-1916) and Elizabeth Blakemore née Casey(1844?-1896). Blakemore had two brothers George Henry, born in 1868 (d.1941); and William Charles, born in 1878 (d.1946). Little is known of Blakemore’s early life aside that the family moved to Nymagee, New South Wales in the 1880s.(1)
By 1890 Blakemore was receiving instruction at Miss McMinn’s School in Adelaide, where she studied First and Second Grade Freehand Drawing under Rosa Fiveash.(2) By 1892 she had relocated to Sydney, where she commenced studies at the Sydney Technical College. Between 1892 and 1897 she undertook several subjects including Perspective, Practical Geometry, Plant Drawing and Antique Modelling, and by 1896 she was listed as an Assistant Teacher in the Technical College’s art department.(3) Around the same time, Blakemore became engaged with the College’s Minerva Art Club, assuming the role of Honorary Secretary in 1897 and later serving as President.(4) Blakemore was promoted to the position of Art Teacher at the Technical College in 1898, which she held until her retirement in 1926.(5)
Blakemore displayed two portrait miniatures at the 1900 Art Society of New South Wales Spring Exhibition and another work, titled 'The Water Carrier’ at the 1901 Society of Artists Exhibition.(6) Around 1906 Blakemore travelled to London and Paris to further her studies. She returned to Australia in early 1908, and was reported to have received a gold medal for miniature painting at an exhibition in Paris.(7) Upon her return to her duties as an art instructor at the Sydney Technical College, Blakemore taught antique modelling and life drawing classes.(8) In 1926 Blakemore travelled to London, staying near Piccadilly and St James’s Square, and returned to Australia in early 1928.(9)
Blakemore died at the Balmoral Hill Private Hospital in Sydney on 16 January 1958 from a coronary occlusion; she had previously been residing at the Bundarra Convalescent Home in Mosman. Her funeral was held at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium on 18 January 1958.(10) In 1947 Miss Bertha Pearshouse (1870?-1966) donated four portrait miniatures on ivory of unidentified female subjects by Blakemore to the Queensland Art Gallery.(11)
footnotes:(1) Queensland Births Deaths & Marriages birth certificates 1870/C2320; 1868/C2072; 1878/C627. William Blakemore and Elizabeth Casey were married in 1864, Queensland Births Deaths & Marriages marriage certificate 1864/B1025.(2) The Express & Telegraph Tues 20 May 1890 p 4; The Evening Journal Fri 5 December 1890 p 3, Thurs 11 December 1890 p 2.(3) The Sydney Morning Herald Sat 14 January 1893 p 7, Sat 15 January 1898 p 7; Evening News Sat 18 January 1896 p 3. New South Wales Government Gazette, No 434 1896, Thursday 4 June 1896, p 3863.(4) The Australian Technical Journal, 29 April 1897, p 95.(5) New South Wales Government Gazette, No 340 1898, Friday 22 April 1898, p 3183; Supplement to the Government Gazette of New South Wales, No 135 1926, Friday 15 October 1926, p 4423.(6) The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser Sat 1 September 1900 p 28, Sat 9 November 1901, p 35.(7) The Register Tues 28 January 1908 p 4; Evening News Saturday 28 March 1908 p 14.(8) A Quarter century of Technical Education in New South Wales: a monograph published on the occasion of the exhibition of students’ work held at the Sydney Technical College, Sydney: Government Printer, 1909, p 145.(9) Blakemore travelled aboard the SS Vedic from Sydney, arriving in London on 2 April 1926. She returned to Sydney via the RMS Maloja, arriving on 10 February 1928.(10) New South Wales Births Deaths & Marriages death certificate 2058/1958; The Sydney Morning Herald, Fri 17 January 1958, p 18.(11) QAGOMA Acc. 1:0419-0422.
Writers:
Timothy Roberts
Date written:
2016
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 31 January 1870
- Summary
- Queensland-born, Sydney-based miniature portrait artist and art teacher active in the early decades of the twentieth century.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Jan-58
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-34.0636914 Longitude150.8206159 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Campbelltown, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, signed an oil (Farm at Campbelltown) , 49.5 × 74.9 cm, 'Mary S. Bocking’, which is dated from between the year the artist was 20 years old (1890) and the year of her marriage (1903). May was the daughter of James Bocking, Mayor of Campbelltown in 1890.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- 'Farm at Campbelltown' is the only known signed work by painter Mary S. Bocking, the daughter of James Bocking who was Mayor of Campbelltown in 1890. Unsurprisingly Bocking's painting dates from this time.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1958
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1867
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1958
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-35.0965682 Longitude138.5216167 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1958-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Reynella, SA, Australia
- Biography
- lacemaker and needlewoman, were all native South Australians eminent in their art. Jessie Rebecca Cowley was born on 2 March 1862 at Reynella, south of Adelaide. As a young girl she was accomplished at the keyboard and had a talent for design and a seemingly natural skill with a needle, being particularly noted for her fine embroidery and needlepoint lace. In the nineteenth century, these were considered desirable accomplishments for young women of marriageable age.
In 1885, in her 23rd year, Jessie Rebecca married Frederick I’Anson, a farmer 10 years her senior. They first farmed at Wonna, district of Burra, in the mid-north, then moved south to Kadina where Frederick farmed with his wife’s father, Thomas Cowley. Frederick and Jessie had three children: Rebecca Maria, born at Wonna on 28 October 1887; Jessie Cowley, born 13 May 1889 at Wonna, and Thomas Leonard, born in 1891. Jessie taught her two daughters needlework and lacemaking from a very early age: they received their first instruction at the tender ages of three and four. The girls were first taught to work needlepoint lace borders on muslin handkerchiefs, then progressed through the full range of whitework embroidery, needlework and needlepoint lace.
Needlework skills were often taught to girls in the hope that they could be advantageously used in unexpectedly straitened circumstances but few ever had to test the rationality of this notion. The I’Anson women, however, were among the few to test the principle, when in 1898 Frederick I’Anson’s over-strained heart caused his death at the age of 45. Their only son died a few months later, aged seven. The 36 year old widow was considered 'frail in health’, but her needlework talents and the skills she had imparted to her daughters were put to practical use, providing a means of financial support for herself and her two young daughters, then aged nine and 11.
The diminished family continued to live in Kadina, Mrs I’Anson giving Saturday afternoon needlework classes, charging pupils two shillings a lesson, and mother and daughters making and selling fine needlework. In about 1920 they moved to a small row cottage in North Adelaide, where they remained for decades, continuing to support themselves by giving classes in needlework and from commissions for and sales of needlework items ranging from d’oyleys and handkerchiefs to tablecloths and bedspreads.
Mrs I’Anson continued to execute fine needlework; even in her 88th year, when confined to bed, she still managed to use her needle to make gifts for friends. She died in 1958, aged 96. Her daughters continued teaching and producing commissioned needlework and special pieces for sale. Their lives had been dedicated to their mother and to the craft at which she excelled, one which had provided a means of support for them for most of their lives.
The discipline and patience required for fine needlework had been instilled in them from early childhood. Later in life they saw these as 'a form of character building which could help equip a girl for life’. In their terms this meant supporting themselves by dedication to fine, traditional whitework in an era when most young women saw needlework as a leisure pursuit. Jessie Cowley died in 1976, aged 87; Rebecca Maria in 1985, aged 97.
Writers:
Heaven, Judith
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 March 1862
- Summary
- Accomplished South Australian lacemaker and needlewoman. I'Anson was widowed at 36, and used her skills to support herself and her family for the remainder of her life.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1958
- Age at death
- 96
Details
Latitude-37.905 Longitude144.996 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brighton, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- etcher, born Brighton, Vic. Studied art in Melbourne with Charles Nuttall, then at RA Schools, London under Walter Sickert after moving there in 1924. He worked in London in comparative obscurity until making his name with a drypoint etching of King George VI purchased by Queen Mary in 1939.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- Australian-born British printmaker. Rayner worked in London in comparative obscurity until making his name with a drypoint etching of King George VI purchased by Queen Mary in 1939.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1957
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-34.1693445 Longitude150.6114983 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Picton, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, cartoonist and novelist, was the daughter of Ida Wilkinson, née Fletcher, who separated from her husband soon after Dorothy’s birth. When Dorothy contracted polio in 1908 her mother was unable to look after her, so 'Dossie’ (her family nickname) lived in Sydney with her aunt Lavinia Fletcher and her grandmother Mary Ann Fletcher. Despite extensive medical treatment she spent all her life in a wheelchair. In her teens she joined her mother and her Uncle Ernest on the Fletcher brothers’ properties at Elmina, near Wyandra, and at Ularunda, near Morven, in southwest Queensland.
Dossie returned to Sydney in 1917-18 in order to attend art classes at the Royal Art Society of NSW [RAS] under Dattilo Rubbo and James R. Jackson . In 1918 she won the RAS scholarship; the male nude drawings with which she won the competition are in the National Library of Australia [NLA] (Pictorial collection). Her unpublished novel 'Wheel-Rhyme’ contains a description of 'Signor’ Rubbo’s nude life class attended by students of both sexes. A drawing of Lavinia Fletcher, done when Dossie was attending the RAS classes, is also in the NLA. The classes ended and Dorothy Wilkinson returned to Elmina in 1919. In 1922, still under age, she secretly married the young station bookeeper, Walter Mackenzie Cottrell. Eight months later, their marriage still unconfessed, they 'eloped’ to Dunk Island. Dorothy had been obsessed with the place ever since reading The Confessions of a Beachcomber by naturalist E.H. Banfield at the age of ten and had corresponded with its author for years. Initially Banfield refused them a home on his island, but he finally relented and invited them to come and stay with him and his wife for six months. They arrived with 'all their goods and chattels’ at the beginning of February 1923. Banfield died 4 months later, on 2 June, and the Cottrells moved to Sydney. They lived in the Salvation Army People’s Palace until Walter eventually found a job selling real estate.
After her elopement Dorothy earned a little money drawing cartoons. Her only known extant original (Mitchell Library *D457, #32) is a coarse, unfunny 'bushie’ gag, Prime Bacon , sent from Dunk Island, published in the Bulletin on 19 July 1923: [two farmers talking] '“That old sick cow o’ mine got down last night and the damn Pigs ate 'er.”/ “Well. You’ll be able to sell some real dairy fed Pork for once in your life”.’
In mid-1924 'all was forgiven’ and the Cottrells returned to Ularunda. Dorothy turned from selling her drawings to writing novels but continued to draw for pleasure. Her c.1925 pencil portrait of W. Pallett, the stock overseer at Ularunda, is in the library of the University of Florida at Gainesville. Her 1924 novel The Singing Gold , based on her stay on Dunk Island, was immediately accepted by the American Ladies Home Journal then published in book form by Houghton & Mifflin in the US and by Hodder & Stoughton in England. Between 1924 and 1927 she produced four novels. Because of taxation problems for an Australian writing for the American market the Cottrells decided to move to the USA; they reached Los Angeles at the end of 1928. In 1939 Dorothy became an American citizen. She and Walter revisited Australia in 1954 to see her elderly and fragile mother, but Dorothy was in continuous pain and soon returned to Florida for treatment. She died there on 29 June 1957. After her death Walter Cottrell returned to Bowen; he remained in Queensland until his death on 27 July 1991.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Note: Working from Ross, Barbara, articles in 'Voices' [Canberra, ACT], 1991-2.
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1902
- Summary
- Mid 20th century sketcher, cartoonist and novelist.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29-Jun-57
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude-37.8244246 Longitude145.0317207 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hawthorn, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Henry Rayner, 1902-1957 Born in Hawthorn, near Melbourne, Victoria, on 19 September 1902, Henry Rayner was an only child. He grew up in the nearby coastal town of Brighton, and developed an early interest in drawing, painting and writing. In his late teens, while living & working at various times as a jeweller, farmworker and motor mechanic in New Zealand, he discovered the work of the Impressionists. This inspired him to go to Britain for formal art training. Before his 1923 departure he took lessons in Melbourne with noted black-and-white artist and illustrator Charles Nuttall. Apart from a very brief return visit to Australia in 1931 to see his mother, he lived in England for the rest of his life. In 1925 he won a place at London’s Royal Academy Schools. One of the visiting teachers was Walter Richard Sickert. Rayner never completed the five-year course, and in 1926, with Sickert’s encouragement, set out to earn his living as an artist. Against Sickert’s advice, he chose drypoint printmaking as his principal medium. Sickert continued to tutor him, and the two became friends, meeting regularly until 1934, occasionally working together. Rayner struggled to make ends meet through the hungry years of the 1930s, yet continued making his Impressionist-inspired drypoints. His subjects included topographical scenes (especially in Chelsea and other Thames riverside locations), portraits, animals, circus, theatre and ballet, and to a lesser degree works with social, political, religious and surrealist themes. Typical print runs were 12-15 proofs. Like Sickert, he saw artistic possibilities in everyday people and places, rather than the rich and famous. He was also a passionate believer in affordable art for ordinary people, and his commitment to printmaking was in part driven by this belief. Ironically perhaps, he came to public attention in 1939 with a portrait of someone out of the ordinary, when his drypoint of King George VI attracted the interest of Queen Mary (the then King’s mother), and she acquired a proof. Rayner described this work, showing the King in informal clothes, as his 'democratic portrait of the King’. After that he did a number of drypoints of public figures from the worlds of politics, art, literature and the stage. Rayner had married in 1926, and had two children, both girls. He stayed in central London through the 1939-45 war, rejected for military service on medical grounds, and was separated from his family for long periods when they were evacuated away from London because of the bombing. He was a lifelong asthma sufferer, and the blast from a bomb that fell near his home/studio in 1940 caused permanent lung damage. He smashed the elbow of his drawing arm in a fall in 1941, and was injured by bomb blast again during volunteer work with stretcher parties. He carried on sketching and etching London blitz scenes. In 1945 he was given a one-man exhibition at London’s prestigious Brook Street Art Gallery. In January 1953 there was an exhibition of his work at the Australian Embassy, London. A major exhibition of his work was held posthumously in 1960 at the Richmond Hill Gallery. The family lived mostly in the Gospel Oak area of north London, near Hampstead Heath, until 1955 when they moved to Ramsgate on the Kent coast. In 1957, depressed and in poor health, Rayner took his own life. He is buried, alongside his wife and both daughters (who all passed away in the 1990s), in London’s Highgate Cemetery. His tombstone carries the wording 'Made the famous drypoints during the blitz of 1940’ and 'protege of W R Sickert.’ Rayner produced more than 500 original drypoint plates between 1926 and 1945. He continued with his single-minded concentration on drypoint etching even though by the 1930s the 'etching revival’ had ended, and black-and-white prints were out of fashion. Several British art collections have examples of his prints, including the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Royal Collection at Windsor. The 2008 'Australian Surrealism’ exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra included four Rayner drypoints from the mid 1930s – part of the Agapitos Wilson collection. The New Zealand National Collection of War Art includes three of his drypoints of wartime London scenes. Rayner decided to adopt his middle name for professional purposes, so all his prints, drawings and paintings were signed 'Henry Rayner’ from 1926 on; he had actually been christened Hewitt Henry Rayner. To family and friends he continued to be known as Hewitt, or Hewie until the end of his life.
Writers:
Staton, RogerNote:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 19 September 1902
- Summary
- Australian-born Hewitt Henry Rayner (1902-1957), went to England in 1923 and trained under Walter Richard Sickert at London's Royal Academy Schools. He produced more than 500 original drypoint plates.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Apr-57
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude53.8341726 Longitude-1.9502259 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Greenfield, Yorkshire, UK
- Biography
- Painter and teacher was born in Greenfield, Yorkshire and educated at the Coalbrookdale Centre, Coalbrookdale, England, United Kingdom. In 1918 he went to work for ICI before moving to a nursery for health reasons in 1924. In 1927 Mills migrated to Perth to work for the Wesley Home Mission. He decided he preferred teaching and enrolled at Teachers College Claremont, Western Australia. In 1934 he exhibited two watercolours Southern Cross and Paperbarks with the West Australian Society of Arts. After teaching at Albany, Katanning and York Mills was appointed art master at Perth Modern School in 1941 remaining until his death in 1957. Linocuts and watercolours were his preferred mediums and he also taught these at adult education classes at the University of Western Australia. His watercolours were described in 1944 as: “Highly pitched watercolours, which produce a rather lithographic effect, though they often seem to cry out for more tone variation.” He conducted a weekly art segment for local radio and exhibited Thompson’s Bay, Rottnest in the Claude Hotchin Art Prize in 1949. Mills was still exhibiting in 1956 when he submitted Hillside, Bridgetown for the West Australian Society of Arts exhibition the year before he died.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1901
- Summary
- Painter and teacher was born in Greenfield, Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom. Mills exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts. Linocuts and watercolours were his preferred mediums and he also taught these at adult education classes at the University of Western Australia. Mills died in 1957.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1957
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- art teacher and lithographer, was born and raised in London, where he studied at the Central School of Arts and Craft while working as a guide for American tourists visiting art galleries. He moved to Adelaide to work as a teacher at the South Australian School of Art, becoming Director in 1946 56. An exhibiting member of the Australian Painter Etchers and a member of the American Bookplate Society and the Designers and Collectors’ Society, Washington D.C., his lithographs include An Old Romance c.1935 (edn 30) and The Balloon Seller n.d. (edn 30). In the 1930s he did colour lithographic posters for the SA Govt Publicity and Tourist Bureau, Set Your Course for Pt. Lincoln and a Perfect Holiday and South Australia. Morialta, 8 Miles from Adelaide (NLA)
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1899
- Summary
- An art teacher and lithographer who designed posters for the South Australian tourist bureau in the 1930s and was Director of the South Australian School of Art (1946-1956).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1957
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-32.916667 Longitude151.75 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1888
- Summary
- Landscape architect responsible for animal enclosures and picnic shelters at Taronga Zoo in Sydney as well as picnic shelters, grottoes and fountains in Sydney, the Blue Mountains and Western New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1957
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-36.8391699 Longitude139.8471033 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kingston SE, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- woodcarver, was born in Kingston in south-east South Australia, one of the seven children, including six daughters (three of whom died in infancy), of Benjamin Franklin Rushton and Susannah, née Atton. Her father’s work with the railways necessitated several moves between Port Pirie and Peterborough until he was appointed Chief Mechanical Engineer for Railways in 1906, when the family settled in Adelaide. Nothing is known of Gertrude’s training, but because her known work can be dated between 1910 and 1915 it is tempting to speculate that she studied wood-carving under L.H. Howie (1876-1963) and Robert Craig (1871-1933) at the School of Design, Adelaide. Their espousal of Arts and Crafts philosophies, encouragement of the adoption of Australian floral and faunal motifs for decorative purposes, and active promotion and practice of woodcraft, influenced a generation of Adelaide students in the first two decades of this century. Surviving photographs of the school’s annual exhibitions show much woodwork in a style similar to Rushton’s; if she did not actually participate, she would at least have been exposed to the work through attending these regular shows.
Like many of her contemporaries, Rushton’s activity as a wood-carver was largely restricted to the execution of carved decoration on manufactured pieces. Of her life and personality we know little. She did not marry, but was apparently engaged to a Church of England minister killed in World War I; and she cared for her parents rather than establishing a career outside the home. A family friend recalled her as a good dressmaker but 'generally frail’, although her robust woodcarving style suggests that this was not a condition of her younger years.
Gertrude Rushton died on 11 January 1957 at Dulwich, Adelaide, leaving a small collection of carved work with family members and friends. The sketchy picture we have of her indicates little of her interests or her motivation in taking up woodcarving. We can only infer that without the demands of husband and children she, like many other women of her generation, was drawn to the potentially satisfying and challenging possibilities of creative endeavour, perhaps as a temporary diversion from an otherwise routine middle-class existence.
Writers:
Watson, Anne
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1884
- Summary
- We can only infer that without the demands of husband and children she, like many other women of her generation, was drawn to the potentially satisfying and challenging possibilities of creative endeavour, perhaps as a temporary diversion from an otherwise routine middle-class existence.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Jan-57
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1882
- Summary
- Auctioneer and gallery director, partner in Decoration Co., Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Aug-57
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-41.2471036 Longitude174.9215055 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wainui, New Zealand
- Biography
- professional photographer, born at Wainui, New Zealand on 6 October 1882, the second daughter of the seven children of Robert Walter Moore, a sawyer and farmer, and Sarah Jane, née Hellyer. Mina married a poet and company executive, William Alexander Tainsh, on 20 December 1916 in Melbourne. They lived at Warrandyte, Victoria, where Mina established close friendships with a number of women artists including Clara Southern and Jo Sweatman . She sold the Melbourne studio to Ruth Hollick in about 1918, after the birth of the first of her three children. A late commission, in 1927, was a presentation book of photographs for the Shell Oil Company, where her husband worked. Mina died at Croydon on 30 January 1957. See entry for Moore, Annie May (May) for full biographical details.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 October 1882
- Summary
- New Zealand born photographer. Sister of Annie May Moore.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 30-Jan-57
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-33.8225666 Longitude151.1923402 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Leonards, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was catalogued in the preliminary Sydney exhibition for Melbourne’s First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work held later in 1907: 'NSW – Oil Painting – Portrait (competitive) – no.69 Adams, Henrietta M.; Flower Painting (competitive) – no.137 Adams, Henrietta M., “Jonquils”.’
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1876
- Summary
- Female oil painter of portraits and flowers who was catalogued in the preliminary Sydney exhibition for the First Australian Exhibition of Women's Work in 1907.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1957
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-29.5409092 Longitude150.5772371 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Warialda, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, lived with her mother, Mrs E.J. Hoy, in the Sydney suburb of Newtown for the whole of her artistic life.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1875
- Summary
- Painter and printmaker, lived in the Sydney suburb of Newtown for the whole of her artistic life. She produced and exhibited monotypes and between 1922 and 1940 was hung in both the Archibald and Sulman prize exhibitions.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1957
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude50.833333 Longitude4 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Belgium
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1869
- Summary
- Dechaineaux was a protégé of Lucien Henry, studying with Henry at the Sydney Technical College (STC), later becoming a lecturer in design at the STC. In 1895, he moved to Launceston for teaching, then became principal and lecturer at Hobart Technical School.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-57
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude50.6190962 Longitude-3.4146801 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1957-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Exmouth, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- Eales was an architect and amateur artist, born in Exmouth, Devon and educated at Totnes Grammar School. He was articled to E. H. Harbottle and undertook work specializing in restoration of churches. Eales spent time sketching on the continent before he emigrated to Australia and joined the Victorian civil service in 1887. He had his own practice in Ballarat in the 1890s. In 1897, in conjunction with C. L. Oldham, he won a competition to build the Fremantle Markets and opened a practice in Fremantle. His residence was the Fremantle Club and then the Albion Hotel. In 1908 Eales married Mabel Lilley. He was an amateur musician and was organist for a number of churches and designed the organ in the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Perth. He opened a practice in St Georges Terrace in 1912 and in 1913 joined Cohen in partnership as Eales & Cohen. He specialized in designs for hotels and homesteads. He exhibited a pen and ink sketch with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1913 and architectural drawings in 1922. Among the buildings he designed were the Anglican Church in Collie, the Fremantle Powerhouse, the Katanning Hotel and Newmarracarra Homestead near Geraldton.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1864
- Summary
- Architect who designed a number of important buildings in Western Australia and who, in conjunction with C. L. Oldham, won a competition in 1897 to build the Fremantle Markets.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1957
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-33.8961132 Longitude151.1801893 Start Date1913-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newtown, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Newtown, Sydney, NSW. On leaving school he was apprenticed to a Sydney sign-writing firm and studied at J.S. Watkins’s Sydney art school. He worked as a freelance on the Bulletin , Smith’s Weekly , Rydge’s and other Sydney publications, and drew adventure strips for Frank Johnson publications, including Powerman , Steele Carewe and Nick Carver of the Circus . At the beginning of WWII he joined an army camouflage unit, later transferring to a survey unit when he served in New Guinea. During the war he contributed to service annuals. Elena Taylor in Bluey and Curley: Portraits from an Era 1939-55 (Ipswich: Global Arts Link 2000, p.12, ill. p.13) mentions his cartoon, Don’t be carried away, Bert! from Stand Easy , published by the AWM in 1945 (original AWM). It depicts a soldier beginning to replicate a scene in a movie being watched in the jungle in which the hero is about to kiss the heroine and being dissuaded by his mate.
Rice’s WWII cartoons for the Bulletin include: “ – What’s the name of that ship, Major?”/ “ – WHAT ship?” 1941 (Craig Judd notes that Ted Scorfield had a cartoon with a similar gag in the same issue, p.17); “Natural-born Australian?” 1942 (officer to Aboriginal recruit); “I know you’re proud of your promotion, Lance-corporal, but don’t overdo it!” 1944; “Never mind what you did in New Guinea. Put your shirt on and get under the umbrella!” 1944 (wife to bare-chested husband); “O.K., no bully beef for three days and light duties!” 1944. His original Bulletin cartoon about art, “Top Button Undone!” (ML), published 22 September 1944, was included in Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White in 1999. Rice and Shine , an anthology of his wartime cartoons for the Bulletin , was published by Allied Authors and Artists.
In 1946 Rice joined Smith’s Weekly under art editor Les Dixon. His undated original cartoons, 'You should consider yourself lucky – Mr Hallstrom would have given me 75 (pounds) for it’ and 'Oh no! We couldn’t give you four years to pay – Why the furniture won’t last that long’, were donated to ML (PXD 840) in 1999 by the wife of a former reporter, along with over 20 other originals and a copy of the final issue signed by all the cartoonists. When Smith’s ceased publication on 28 October 1950, he went back to freelancing and worked on promotional material for Universal Films. At the end of 1955 he took over Bluey and Curley after Alec Gurney died (on 4 December 1955). Rice died in a car accident on New Year’s Eve 1956 and the strip was taken over by Les Dixon (from February 1957).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1913
- Summary
- Cartoonist, war artist. Rice died in a car accident on New Year's Eve 1956.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31-Dec-56
- Age at death
- 43
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1911-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in London, only child of the Australian black-and-white artists Will Dyson and Ruby Lind (Lindsay) . Her mother died in London in 1919 and Betty came to Australia with her father in 1925 when he was employed on Melbourne Punch , partly to meet her relatives. It was the only time she visited Australia and she contributed to the family Australian cartooning tradition in a small way. A precocious teenager, she illustrated an article on marriage in Home (2 September 1929, 40) and did several cartoons about flappers for Adam and Eve (January-July 1929), e.g. 'The Reporter – What shall I say that you are wearing at Portsea?/ The Damsel. – Oh, nothing worth mentioning’, 1 January 1929, and '“They say the boss sacked that young ledger keeper just because he found him with his arms folded.”/ “Yes, dear, but I was in them -”’ 1 April 1929, 6. She had a weak drawing in the New Triad then being edited by Hugh McCrae , a great friend of the Lindsay family. She contributed to the Bulletin , e.g. Psychology and Psoap . 'The Mere Maid, “I’m sorry, but I could only marry a strong man – one who would master me.”/ The Almost-Male: “Oh, I see – still keeping your schoolgirl complexes!”’ 29 September 1928, 12.
Betty evidently returned to England with Will in 1930. Back there she continued with a variety of artistic activities – cartooning, writing, etching, fashion analysis and designing theatrical and period costumes – though she 'never attained the creative heights presaged by her precocious talent and expected by her father’ (McMullin, 293). She designed sets and costumes for the Shilling Theatre, Fulham, and the Festival Theatre, Cambridge, inter alia, and also did ballet designs, notably for Sadler’s Wells. Perhaps her major achievement was to design 4,000 costumes with Australian Edgar Ritchard (brother of actor Cyril Ritchard), for The Pageant of Parliament held in the Albert Hall in 1934; on 2 July 1934 Home reported that it was 'to record the history of the Parliament of England’. Some of her original designs survive in the private Chanteau collection, London.
In 1934 Betty Dyson held an exhibition of her drypoint etchings of the Indian dancer Uday Shan-Kar at the Comedy Theatre, Manchester, subsequently shown at various venues throughout the USA (Chanteau col., ill. Jensen). She also wrote a rather vacuous article for Home (2 January 1935, 21, 83) about a visit to Russia illustrated with four sympathetic portrait sketches that in no way caricature their subjects.
In 1939 Betty married a French cavalry officer, Baron Yves Chanteau, in Guadalupe. They spent World War II in France where the Baron, a Breton separatist, was both tortured by the Gestapo and interrogated by the French Resistance. Betty too was suspected of collaboration with the Germans, so that her cousin Jack Lindsay ( Norman Lindsay’s son) was 'involved in War Office manoeuvres to clarify her credentials with the suspicious French Resistance’ (McMullin). The couple separated in 1951 and Betty married Hebry “Othello” Smith, a Jamaican clerk. In 1956, aged 45, after a tempestuous life and before she could obtain a divorce from a marriage that was even more turbulent and unhappy than her first, Betty died at Mona St Andrew in Jamaica of cirrhosis of the liver.
Betty had treasured her parents’ artwork throughout her life. She bequeathed a collection of some 300 originals by her father, plus a small collection by her mother and herself to Baron Chanteau. The baron migrated to Britain, remarried (Marjorie), settled in Kensington and had two daughters, Diane and Cara, before dying in 1972 survived by his wife and their two daughters. Cara re-discovered the collection for John Jensen in 1995. It was offered for sale as a single collection in 1999.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1911
- Summary
- Mid 20th century cartoonist. Daughter of Will Dyson and Ruby Lind.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1956
- Age at death
- 45
Details
Latitude-33.8772 Longitude151.1049 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burwood, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- architect and architectural historian, Sydney. Designed some massive churches as chief designer for architect Clement Glancey.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1900
- Summary
- An architect and architectural historian, Rosette Edmunds worked as chief designer on a number of important churches.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1956
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-34.9803673 Longitude138.5143342 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glenelg, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Teacher, potter trained at the Royal Academy in London and worked at Poole Potteries in Dorset before arriving in Australia in 1947 to commence pottery classes at Fremantle Technical School, Fremantle, Western Australia. Manners was meticulous in supervising the drawing and preparing designs and making of the work, which drove her recreational students, up the wall. The students learnt to hand build, pinching the clay that was supplied by Brisbane & Wunderlich. Accustomed to a large works Manners was not particularly adept at firing in the make-do kilns. She contributed to the community by editing a magazine Western Australian Art that ran for some fifteen issues. Manners was ill at the time and died soon after returning to England in 1951. Her students included Meg Brent-White (Sheen) and Jean Ewers.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 January 1899
- Summary
- Teacher and potter who was trained at the Royal Academy in London. Manners contributed to the community by editing a magazine 'Western Australian Art' that ran for some fifteen issues.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 8-Jan-56
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1882
- Summary
- Perugini arrived in Australia ca.1906 with training at the South Kensington School of Art. He worked in advertising in Victoria and was active in design education for the graphic arts (commercial art) as well as professional associations for the advertising industry, notably the Advertising Association of Australia. Illuminations and calligraphy by him are also known.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-56
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Violet Davies was a Sydney based oil painter with an art career that lasted over thirty years. The daughter of Sarah and Wyndham Davies, Violet Ethel Davies was born in Paddington, New South Wales, in 1881. For most of her adult life she lived with her family at 123 Trafalgar Street, Stanmore, Sydney.
Violet Davies’ occupation, during most of her adult life, was listed on electoral rolls as 'home duties’ as were other female members of the household. Despite this she had an interest in art and was listed in an advertisement in a Royal Art Society exhibition catalogue as the Honorary Secretary of A. Dattilo Rubbo’s and J. Barclay Godson’s art school in Sydney in 1922 and 1923, an institution that was popular with women and commercial art students. It is not known whether she was a student of either of the artists.
Davies made her artistic debut with the Royal Art Society of New South Wales (RAS) in 1918 with a black and white portrait study. This work was not listed for sale. The following year she exhibited three works at the RAS Spring show: Study of a head (10 guineas); Marjorie (10 guineas); and Still Life (5 guineas). Titles of works in subsequent exhibition catalogues show that the artist worked mostly in oil, and mainly painted still life and portraits. Several of her still life works were flower studies; typical subjects were images of peonies, and persimmons.
While working as Honorary Secretary of Dattilo Rubbo’s art school, one of her works, The Musician (25 guineas), was illustrated in the 1923 RAS annual exhibition catalogue. The black and white reproduction shows a realist portrait of a violinist tuning his instrument.
In 1929 the RAS published a book titled Fifty Years of Australian Art . This in-house publication celebrated the first fifty years of the RAS. While most of the profiles were on the male artists in the Society there was a brief biography of Davies (p 85), accompanied by a photograph of the artist:
'A native of New South Wales, she has exhibited at the Royal Art Society for several years, and in Victoria and South Australia. She is one of the younger painters of promise.’
While the 1929 RAS biography mentions Davies exhibiting interstate, a search of catalogues of the Victorian Artists’ Society and the South Australian Society of Arts found no mention of the artist. As these were only two of many art groups active in South Australia and Victoria more research is warranted.
Fifty Years of Australian Art also included a colour reproduction of Davies’ work The Squatter’s Son (1928), (p 47). The portrait shows a young seated man putting on his riding boots. This work was on sale at the 1929 RAS show for 30 guineas.
While Davies worked for Dattilo Rubbo in the early 1920s, she was connected to a short lived art school in the late 1930s. An advertisement in the 1938 RAS annual exhibition catalogue lists 'Miss Violet Davies’ as the contact person for the Wynyard School of Art, Hopetoun House, 313 George Street, Sydney. It is not known what role she had at the school. At the time the electoral roll still listed her as occupied in 'home duties’.
Up to the early years of World War II, Davies exhibited one or two works at most of the RAS annual exhibitions. She received little mention in reviews of the RAS exhibitions, although the respected critic William Moore positively, yet briefly, noted two of her works in the 1923 and 1925 RAS Spring show ( Daily Telegraph , 10 August 1923 and 7 August 1925). The artist’s last contribution to the RAS was at the 1942 annual show where she exhibited four oils. It is not known why she ended her connection with the RAS.
No longer living with her family, Davies was listed in the 1943 electoral roll as an 'artist’ living at 39 Bent Street, Sydney. By 1949 she was still listed as an artist in electoral rolls but was now living in Warrimoo in the lower Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. The last record of her as an artist was in the 1954 electoral roll. Violet Davies died in 1956. There are no known solo exhibitions of her work.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- Oil painter, active in the Royal Arts Society of NSW during the interwar period.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1956
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- painter and potter, was born in Adelaide on 4 September 1881 into a prosperous pioneer family. Initially she studied medicine at the University of Adelaide (c.1907-10) but left this for painting classes in the Adelaide studio of Rose McPherson ( Margaret Preston ). Gladys was then in her mid-twenties, her teacher only six years her senior. They became firm friends and when Margaret decided to travel to Europe she invited Gladys to accompany her. They left early in 1912 and first visited Gladys’s relatives in France. Gladys then studied painting at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris. In 1914 they moved to London where they exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy (1914-16) and joined the recently established pottery course at Camberwell School of Crafts. It included all facets of pottery making, which was put to practical use late in World War I when the two taught craft to shell-shocked soldiers at the Seale Hayne Neurological Military Hospital (Gladys’s brother, Rupert, was on the medical staff). The hospital became the first to include pottery in rehabilitation therapy and they set up complete pottery-making facilities, including building kilns.
When peace was declared, they returned to Adelaide and held a successful exhibition of their overseas paintings and pottery in 1919. Before the end of the year, however, Margaret Rose McPherson had married William Preston and moved to Sydney. Gladys set up a studio-workshop at the family winery, Reynella, about twenty kilometres south of Adelaide. The first products of 'Reynella Pottery’ were made from a local commercial white clay turned on a hand-driven wheel (she later acquired an engine-driven wheel) and fired in a small up-draught kiln she had built. In London, she and Margaret had been sent a sample of white Kangaroo Island clay, and it was then that Gladys had decided 'that it would be the most delightful thing on earth to make pots in Australia from virgin clay’. When informed of local, buff-coloured clay deposits, she tested its suitability, just as she had envisaged in London, and was pleased with the results. The task of making trips into the nearby countryside to dig and bring back clay fell to George Osborne, a young returned soldier whom Gladys had selected as a Reynella gardener in 1920. Although without previous pottery experience, George was soon turning the pottery wheel for her and, after being taught throwing by Gladys, spent much of his time in the studio making pots, which Gladys decorated. The Reynella Pottery wares proved popular; commissions were received from and sales made to many of her family’s well-to-do friends and relatives.
In August 1922 Gladys and George, twelve years her junior, were married. They moved to Ballarat, Victoria, where they established the Osrey Pottery in their home in Havilstock Street. Their sgraffito-decorated or slip-painted blue or green pottery (always decorated by Gladys) was sold at country shows, where they gave pottery demonstrations, as well as through fashionable outlets in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. In 1924 they exhibited with the Victorian Arts and Crafts Society. Osrey Pottery provided an income for them until 1926 when George contracted lead poisoning in his fingers from the white lead in glazes and both abandoned pottery. They moved farther into the country, to Curdie Vale, and derived an income from the sale of firewood. Gladys resumed block printmaking and painting e.g. Feeding the Calves 1936, linocut 13.8 × 12 cm, Art Gallery of South Australia (ill. The Forerunner vii, May 1937), but rarely exhibited, then apparently only at the instigation of artist friends. Although continuing to paint, she did not exhibit at all after 1936. From about 1939 until her death on 16 November 1956, Gladys and George lived in Melbourne.
At a Phillips Sydney auction in August 2001 a Melbourne dealer, John Playford, paid $16,100 for a collection of 55 art deco drawings by Reynell that had been estimated to fetch only $400-800 (Ingram, 'Saleroom’, AFR 9 August 2001, 40, who dates them c.1920).
Writers:
Heaven, Judith
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 4 September 1881
- Summary
- After studying painting under Margaret Preston, who she travelled with to Paris and London, she taught craft to shell-shocked soldiers. On returning to Australia she concentrated on pottery, which she later gave up when her husband contracted lead poisoning from the glazes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Nov-56
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- potter, was born in England and was employed in a pottery in Burslem, Staffordshire, before coming to Australia with her architect husband. She became a member of the Sydney Society of Arts and Crafts in 1930 and exhibited with the society until 1951. By 1937 she and her husband were living at Eastwood, a suburb of Sydney, where she had a studio equipped with a kiln.
During the 1940s Seccombe became known for her small hand-modelled, brightly painted pottery birds and animals. Her early kookaburras and other birds and animals of the 1920s are marked 'Australia’ and 'S’. The range of Australiana fauna she modelled in the 1930s and 1940s for the Sydney jewellers Prouds Ltd are either initialled 'GS’ or signed 'Grace Seccombe Australia’ on the base.
She also designed plates, dishes and bowls decorated with Aboriginal motifs in the 1930s and 1940s, her designs being hyperbolically stated in 1937 to have captured:
the essential spirit of the native design so completely that her pottery might be the work of a native artist. Mrs Seccombe has reproduced the native designs with remarkable fidelity of line and colour, from paddles and other native implements in the Australian Museum … She has decided to use the various designs only in their proper associations, so that this graceful and lovely, though decidedly primitive, art will remain essentially aboriginal.
Grace Seccombe died on 25 February 1956.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1880
- Summary
- Potter, was born in England and employed in a pottery in Burslem, Staffordshire, before coming to Australia. Seccombe designed plates, dishes and bowls decorated with Aboriginal motifs in the 1930s and 1940s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Feb-56
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 22 December 1880, daughter of Alfred and Elizabeth Kimbell. She is just one of a number of promising artists from New Zealand who, after furthering their training in Europe, returned only as far as Australia, settled and established careers. Initially Maud Kimbell studied under the Scotsman James Nairn, a devotee of Impressionism, at Wellington Technical College, where she was also taught by Mabel Hill and Mary Elizabeth Tripe. After Nairn’s death in 1904, Maud took over his still life and sketching classes at the college for some nine years.
She left for Europe on a scholarship in 1911, a year after her first solo exhibition at Wellington’s McGregor Wright Gallery. After London, she headed for the Studio Colarossi where fellow New Zealander Frances Hodgkins was teaching watercolour painting, then moved to the studio of Tudor Hart. As a participant in Hart’s sketching group, she toured picturesque parts of England, France and Holland, developing a fluid and broad treatment of the figure and landscape.
Maud Kimbell left Europe for Australia in 1913 and established herself in Sydney, where she entered into a short-lived marriage (1917-20) with businessman Alfred Sherwood; they divorced in 1926. It is believed that she studied for a time with Julian Ashton at the Sydney Art School. In Australia she was especially appreciated for her watercolours and in 1924 was elected to the committee of the Watercolour Institute in Sydney, the only woman member of a group which included such luminaries of the Australian art establishment as Arthur Streeton , Sydney Long and Blamire Young .
She began exhibiting with the Society of Artists in 1914 ( Peasant Sewing was purchased from the exhibition by the AGNSW) and continued to show with them intermittently for years. From the 1942 exhibition the Art Gallery of NSW purchased another watercolour, At the Show . She also exhibited with the Society of Women Painters and was appointed to its Council. Her contact with New Zealand was not entirely broken and she held a comprehensive exhibition of her work in Wellington at the NZ Academy of Fine Arts in 1925. The most acclaimed of her Australian subjects shown was the watercolour, The Beach, Dee Why, Sydney (1923, MNZ), reproduced on the cover of the catalogue and featured in the mid-1925 issue of the National Art Association’s Bulletin .
The years 1926-33 were spent abroad with Gladys Owen – in Italy, France, Spain and North Africa. One of her charcoal drawings of an Italian village was hung at the Royal Academy in 1932, and she was represented at (among others) the Salon des Indépendents, Paris (1928) and the Prima Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Coloniale, Rome (1931). She held solo exhibitions in Sydney from the year she returned (1933, Macquarie Galleries) until the 1940s, expanding her repertoire to include colour linocuts such as Venetian Fishing Boats and Petunias , which bear comparison with the bold graphic designs of Thea Proctor and Margaret Preston . She continued to paint and travel with no decline in her abilities virtually until she died in 1956, at 'The Neuk’, Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. Late in life she travelled around Australia in a caravan.
Writers:
Kirker, Anne
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 December 1880
- Summary
- Early 20th century painter and printmaker, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1956
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.8225666 Longitude151.1923402 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Leonards, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- professional photographer, worked in Sydney c.1910. The Macleay Museum (University of Sydney) has a good collection of his photographs and in 2000 a relative, Hattie Harnett, donated four of Harnett’s cameras.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1879
- Summary
- A professional photographer who worked in Sydney circa 1910 and many of whose photographs are held at the Macleay Museum, University of Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1956
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude51 Longitude9 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1878
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Jul-56
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.6912924 Longitude150.9265166 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St George district, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Potter and craftworker, was a member of the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW for 46 years until her death in 1956.
Possibly a cousin of Wynne Prize winning sculptor G. W. L. Hirst (1868-1965).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1878
- Summary
- Miss H. G. Hirst was a potter and craftworker. She was a member of the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW for 46 years until her death in 1956.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1956
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude53.76908 Longitude-2.7105501 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bolton, Lancashire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, craftworker, photographer and commercial artist, was born in Bolton, Lancashire, on 6 February 1874, daughter of James Heap, a wine merchant, and Amy Elizabeth, née Bamber. She was educated in Bolton and possibly in York, and later at art schools in Manchester and London. In London she received her 'Art Class Teacher’s Certificate’ (1895) and her 'Certificate for Art Instruction’ in drawing (1897). Little is known of her English life. Sketching tours in England took up some of her time and she probably taught, although support from her family meant that this was not essential.
In 1909 Amy migrated to WA with her brother Frederick and younger sister, Ethel. They arrived in 1910 and joined family members at a group settlement in Busselton, then lived in Claremont and, later, Darlington. Amy and Ethel joined in the artistic life in Perth, becoming members of the WA Society of Arts. Amy exhibited drawings, paintings, stained pokerwork pictures, metalwork, embroidery and gesso work in five exhibitions between 1912 and 1925. Some of the embroidery was a joint effort, designed by Amy and worked by Ethel. In 1912 a local art critic wrote:
Miss Heap … has a greater number and variety of exhibits in the various sections than any other artist, her work showing an artistic versatility that is remarkable.
Between 1933 and 1944 she was an exhibiting member of the Perth Society of Artists (PSA), by which time she was described as 'indefatigable’. Her watercolour, The Inlet, Augusta , exhibited with the PSA in 1936 for sale at ten guineas, is now in the Art Gallery of WA.
During World War I Amy Heap joined the staff of WA Newspapers, which published the West Australian , Western Mail and Daily News , as a photographer and artist. The 1918 Christmas edition of the Western Mail published her photographs. Afterwards, as a 'specialist in embellishment’, she contributed drawings to the same weekly journal. Heap’s attractive drawings bordered photographs, poems, articles and short stories. In an article in the West Australian , Daisy Rossi mentioned Heap’s 'arresting and decorative covers … her sensitive pen and ink drawings’ and her watercolours of 'a delicate refined style’. The first were particularly evident in the popular and colourful Christmas editions of the paper. Her cover of Nuytsia floribunda for the 1929 Christmas issue is particularly striking, as is that of black swans for 1932. With her elegant sense of design, she came to dominate the pages, with the photographer Fred Flood.
Amy Heap retired from the newspaper in about 1934 and went to live with her sister and brother at Albany. A member of the Anglican church, she died there on 17 April 1956. During her lifetime she had been an inveterate traveller, visiting New Zealand, Tasmania and England—where she exhibited in 1938. Labelled a 'brilliant observer of land and people in her adopted country’, she is represented by original work in the Albany Town Council collection, the gift of Sir Claude Hotchin, in Woodbridge House and in the WA Art Gallery.
Writers:
Erickson, DorothyNote: PrimaryKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 February 1874
- Summary
- Painter, illustrator, craftworker, photographer and commercial artist. During WWI and into the mid 1930's, Heap worked as a photographer and illustrator for Western Australian Newspapers.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-Apr-56
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude53.9825271 Longitude-1.385249993 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1867
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1956
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, was born on 14 July 1863 in Birmingham, England, youngest of the six surviving daughters of George Haynes, a master gun-barrel manufacturer, and his wife, Emma. She studied at the newly formed Birmingham School of Art and at the Midland Institute, then taught at the former; her sister Martha was a musician at the latter. Louisa painted a view of Snowdon from the side of Llyn Llydan, which she took with her to Australia (family collection), but she strained her heart climbing Snowdon with one of Mr Twigg’s Midland Institute societies and was never again perfectly healthy. There was much ill health in the family, the Haynes manufacturing works and home being in a slum area. In about 1890 the family came in contact with an early naturopath, Don Le Friemann, as a result of which four of the sisters became vegetarians. George Haynes, who never recovered from being declared bankrupt (the culmination of the firm’s losses which began after the French defeat in 1870), died in 1887. His wife died in 1890 and the family broke up; Louisa and Martha migrated to South Australia in 1892.
Dissatisfied with the orthodoxy of her Baptist childhood Louisa had become an agnostic, but either en route or soon after arriving in Australia came under the influence of 'a prominent Theosophical personality’ who brought her the outlook on life she had been seeking. For the rest of her long life she was an enthusiastic theosophist. The sisters lived at Glenelg until Martha died as a result of a second stroke. Driven out of England by the medical profession, Le Friemann, his wife and daughter joined Louisa. They lived together in South Australia until further trouble with the medical profession led to a move to Sydney, where they settled at 38 Croydon Road, Croydon. Years later, again in trouble, Le Friemann disappeared into the bush leaving Gladys, his daughter by Louisa, as well as his wife and their daughter in Louisa’s care.
According to her nephew, Louisa was a very charming and generous person and many friends received her artistic gifts. She also sold her paintings. She died on 29 June 1956 in the Franklin Haynes-Le Friemann home in Sydney, aged 92, survived by her daughter.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 July 1863
- Summary
- Painter, art teacher and theosophist, she had a daughter with naturopath Don Le Friemann and lived with his wife and daughter in an un-orthodox relationship. Lived and worked in South Australia and Sydney, NSW.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29-Jun-56
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-33.644499 Longitude115.3488754 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Busselton, WA, Australia
- Biography
- photographer, carver and horse breeder Amelia Bunbury is believed to have been born at Busselton, WA, in 1863.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
DAAO staff writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- photographer, carver and horse breeder Amelia Bunbury is believed to have been born at Busselton, WA, in 1863.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1956
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1856-01-01 End Date1956-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Sydney on 24 November 1856, second child of Robert George Massie, Crown Lands commissioner and pastoralist, and Annette, née Brown.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 November 1856
- Summary
- Colonial female artist who painted landscapes and wildflowers. She was part of a large and prominent Sydney merchant family.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Apr-56
- Age at death
- 100
Details
Latitude-31.3470231 Longitude150.6487609 Start Date1904-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Werris Creek, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- doll maker, was born Rita Howie at Werris Creek near Tamworth, then a major NSW railway junction. She met William Williams when he was posted to Werris Creek on railway maintenance. They married there in 1924, then moved to the house William built in Merrylands, Sydney. They had three children, all girls: Ruth, Heather and Barbara. Rita Williams died in 1955 and was buried at Werris Creek.
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
Writers:
Jones, Glynis
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1904
- Summary
- Doll maker. She met William Williams when he was posted to Werris Creek on railway maintenance and they married there in 1924.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1955
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude50.8036831 Longitude-1.075614 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Portsmouth, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Portsmouth, England but came to Tasmania when only a few months old. He lived in Hobart in his teens, served a 7-year apprenticeship with the Hydro-Electric Commission and trained in art at night classes at the Hobart Technical School. He had cartoons published in the Tasmanian Mail then in Melbourne Punch , followed by the Bulletin and Smith’s Weekly . After publishing Tasmanians Today: Caricatures and Cartoons – mainly caricatures – in 1926 (publisher unnamed) he went to Melbourne and worked on the Morning Post until it (rapidly) folded. He then moved to Sydney, where he drew for Beckett’s Budget (1927-31), a controversial magazine that reported courtroom tales and had been labelled obscene. For it Gurney created Stiffy and Mo in 1927, a comic strip based on the Roy Rene and Nat Phillips’ vaudeville stage characters. It is sometimes said to be the first Australian comic strip, though other competitors for the title are Frank Dunne’s untitled soldier comic strip in Smith’s Weekly in the 1930s (Lindesay 1979, 30) and Norman Lindsay’s strip of animal characters in Lone Hand from 1907 (see Blaikie and Lindesay 1994).
Gunn’s Gully was another strip Gurney created for Smith’s , while his gag cartoons include 'Waiting for the last ferry – seat occupants and their thoughts’ (8 June 1928, 14); 'DAVE: “You orta marry me; you know I’m a good, steady cove.”/ BLASE CITY DAME: “Steady’s right, Dave. If you were any steadier you’d be motionless” (16 May 1930, 13). He worked on the Sunday Times (1928-29), the Daily Guardian and World (1931 examples in Joan Kerr Archives, National Library of Australia) and was political cartoonist on Sydney’s Labor Daily . He spent a year in Adelaide on the News in 1932 then joined the Melbourne Herald in 1933, where he was leader-page cartoonist. His original Billy Hughes cartoon c.1935 (NLA) was possibly published there.
A meticulous draughtsman, Gurney would spend six to eight hours drawing a single strip of three frames despite drawing six of them every week for over 14 years (Lindesay 1979, 30; David Gurney in James). He created the popular Bluey and Curley strip for the magazine Picture-News in 1940. After being transferred to the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial it became the best known of all WWII soldier cartoons and was syndicated all over Australia, Canada, NZ and in the servicemen’s paper Guinea Gold (New Guinea). Norman Rice then Les Dixon inherited the strip after Gurney died suddenly on 4 December 1955. One of his last cartoons featured Bluey and Curley preparing for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. Johnson (p.157) claims he was the last great black-and-white artist member of the Melbourne Savage Club.
The AWM has a good original 1945 art cartoon, More palette-able , with Bluey and Curley as WWII soldiers in the jungle coming across “one of them official war-artist-coots, paintin’ the stoush for the Aussie War Museum!” (Gurney unsuccessfully yearned to join Australia’s official war artists but was kept out by General Blamey, according to Gurney’s family, who supposedly said “You can’t call Bluey and Curley art !”) Unlike Australia’s actual official war artists, however, in his cartoon the artist is a modernist. Predictably, when Bluey asks Curley “What d’yer think of that painting Curl?” his mate replies, “I think I like th’ one he’s got his thumb stuck through better!”
Other Bluey and Curley strips relate to Aboriginal rock art, e.g. the 'plurry Namatjirist’ gag (original unlocated – see Kerr, Artists and Cartoonists ). Another 3-part original strip, (p.c.) and illustrated in the “ Golden Years of Cartooning” 1920 to 1940 catalogue (p.33), shows the two crossing the desert on camels with a bearded man: (1) “The professor says he is seeking a cave that contains primitive Aboriginal rock-carvings which will startle the scientific world!” “Gosh!” (2) [climbing rocks with Aboriginal guide]“At last! Now our names will go down in history.” (3) [Uncaptioned drawing of the three Caucasian men gazing with astonishment at crude drawings labelled 'Ned Kelly’, 'Phar Lap’, 'Sydney Bridge’ and 'Billy Hughes’, with part of a boomerang showing to indicate they are Aboriginal but contemporary.]
A series of letters (p.c.) from the editor of the Sun News-Pictorial suggest changes to figures and wording in the cartoons, i.e. censoring them. Two are reproduced in the Bluey and Curley catalogue, p.21.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1902
- Summary
- Popular and prolific mid 20th century newspaper cartoonist. Worked in Hobart, Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide and widely published elsewhere. Creator of 'Bluey and Curley'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Dec-55
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- painter and advertising artist; studied National Gallery of Victoria Schools. During WWI (in which he was awarded the Military Cross), he contributed drawings to the Anzac Book . He conducted an art school in Melbourne c.1925-35.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
stokel
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1891
- Summary
- Early 20th century Melbourne painter and advertising artist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1955
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude-37.9670081 Longitude145.0546951 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cheltenham, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter and newspaper engraver, was born in Cheltenham, Vic. He studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Schools in about 1910. A member of the Victorian Artists’ Society, he earned a living from painting throughout the first years of his marriage in the early 1900s, specialising in small decorative fan designs on silk inspired by Chinese art. He exhibited them and other artworks with the Fine Art Society in 1926-27 and Melba purchased two fan designs. As a result of the exhibition, he was commissioned to decorate the foyer of Melbourne’s Regent Theatre (which was later badly damged by a fire). He worked as an etcher (sic) on the Argus from 1940s until his death.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1889
- Summary
- Painter and newspaper engraver, resident of Cheltenham, Victoria. Specialised in small decorative fan designs on silk inspired by Chinese art. Worked as a engraver at The Argus newspaper from 1940s until his death.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1955
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-34.0636914 Longitude150.8206159 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Campbelltown, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- As well as being an important interwar period architect, Hardy Wilson was an artist who produced many paintings and drawings which often featured buildings and imagined landscapes. His first architectural commission was Meryon, a Sydney house built for artist and critic Lionel Lindsay. His best known commission was Eryldene a house built for Professor E.G. Waterhouse, a linguist and trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW, in Gordon, Sydney.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 February 1881
- Summary
- Wilson was a Sydney-based interwar architect, artist, author, cartographer, orientalist and futurist. Furniture and furnishings by Wilson are known. He documents many historic houses and landscapes. Travelling in China in 1921, he also drew and printed a number of notable architectural sites and settings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Dec-55
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North Finchley, London, England, UK
- Biography
- natural history painter and illustrator, was born in North Finchley, London. The daughter of a wealthy naturalist and big game hunter, she showed from an early age a love for animals and a talent for sketching birds and animals in their natural habitat. While studying to be a nurse she met the surgeon and ornithologist Charles Stonham, and between 1906 and 1911 completed 318 monochrome plates to illustrate his five-volume The Birds of the British Islands . In 1911 she was invited to illustrate a revised edition of William Yarrell’s A History of British Birds . This new edition was never completed, but in 1972 the 248 paintings she did for it were discovered in London in perfect condition. Unfortunately, the collection was broken up and sold at auction.
In 1913, while working at the British Museum, Medland met the conchologist and ornithologist, Tom Iredale, then working as secretary to the ornithologist and collector Gregory Mathews and substantially contributing to his twelve-volume Birds of Australia (1910-27). In 1921 Mathews and Iredale published the first and only volume of the Manual of the Birds of Australia; it was illustrated by Medland. After Iredale’s divorce in 1923, he and Medland were married. They migrated to Australia and settled in Sydney.
Writers:
Collins, Corinne
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1880
- Summary
- Natural history painter and illustrator,London and Sydney. She showed from an early age a love for animals and a talent for sketching birds and animals in their natural habitat.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1955
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Battery Point, Hobart, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- painter, pastellist, lithographer, sculptor and china painter, was born at Battery Point, Hobart, on 13 September 1880, eldest child of Edward Lovett, a railway clerk, and Alice Edith, née Gibson. Her first recorded job was as a photographic retoucher in Richard McGuffie’s studio, but in October 1896 she began art classes at the Hobart Technical School where she was taught by J.R. Trantham-Fryer and/or Ethel Nichols. By 1902 she was sufficiently confident of her painting to be taking commissions.
In 1903 Lovett moved to Sydney in order to attend Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School, but by the next year she had returned to Hobart where she taught modelling and then drawing at the Technical School. By 1908 she had added china painting to the subjects taught. In 1909 she went to Sydney and exhibited in that year’s Society of Artists’ exhibition, including a china painting on a vase based on Sydney Long’s missing painting Pastorale (AGNSW). A reviewer stated that Miss Lovett painted vases 'most charmingly, and is a skilful miniaturist; and the clay sketch she exhibits of Mr. Sid Long shows that she possesses the first essential of the sculptor’s art, a knowledge of character, and the significance of the “masses”’ ('The Art of the Year’, Lone Hand 1 April 1910, p.665 [by the magazine’s 'art correspondents’]). Sid Long 's Pastoral and Lovett’s vase 'designed by Sid Long’ (AGNSW) were illustrated in the same article (pp.666 & 669). The Art Gallery of NSW also has her terracotta bust of Long donated by Julian Ashton in 1920.
When Long left for Europe in 1910, Lovett succeeded him as Ashton’s assistant teacher. An influential teacher, her students included Grace Crowley , Jean Bellette and Amie Kingston . She left Ashton’s after marrying Stanley Livingstone Paterson in 1913 but continued to work as an artist. By 1914 the couple were living in Brisbane, where Mildred became friendly with Vida Lahey . In 1916 they returned to Sydney where Mildred exhibited with the Society of Artists. In 1919 she and her husband travelled to Europe, where she took some classes at the Westminster School in London and with André Lhôte in Paris. The following year she returned to Hobart, resumed teaching at the Hobart Technical School for the next decade and became active in the Art Society of Tasmania. This was her most productive time as a teacher and she influenced many younger Tasmanian artists. One of her subjects during this period was baby Tim Bowden, later the ABC journalist. In 1940 Lovett moved back to Sydney and remained there until her husband’s death in 1952. Later she returned to Hobart, where she continued giving private lessons and painting, until her death on 23 March 1955.
Writers:
Mendelssohn, Joanna
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 September 1880
- Summary
- Painter, pastellist, lithographer, sculptor and china painter, born in Hobart Lovett succeeded Sydney Long as Julian Ashton's assistant teacher in Sydney. An influential teacher, her students included Grace Crowley, Jean Bellette and Amie Kingston.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Mar-55
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- Max Meldrum was born on 3 December 1875 in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a chemist. In 1889, aged 14, he emigrated to Australia with his family. He studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, from 1892-1899.In 1900 Meldrum travelled to Europe with the assistance of a National Gallery Travelling Scholarship, and in 1900-1901 he studied at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi in Paris. Finding he was out of sympathy with the academic theories being taught, he soon abandoned formal study. Like others at this time, he was influenced by Velasquez’s paintings and approach to art. After visiting his family in Edinburgh, he returned to Paris in 1902, and subsequently moved to Pacé, a village in Brittany, to study in 'the school of nature’. Among his best known work is Pitcherit’s Farm c.1910 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne).Meldrum returned to Melbourne in 1911, and from 1916-1926 he ran the Meldrum School of Painting. Here he advanced his theory of painting as a pure science, a science of optical analysis, and his belief that tone was the most important component of the art of painting, to the exclusion of all but the barest elements of drawing and colour. From 1926-1931 he lived in France, apart from six months in the United States of America in 1928 lecturing on his theory and methods of painting. He returned to Australia in 1931, and in 1937 opened a new school in Collins Street, Melbourne. He became, and remained a figure of controversy, as he was uncompromising in the advocacy of his views. He died on 6 June 1955 at Kew, Melbourne.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 December 1875
- Summary
- After winning a National Gallery School Travelling Scholarship and moving to Paris to study, Scottish-born painter Max Meldrum found himself out of sympathy with the academic theories being taught and soon abandoned formal study. He nevertheless made a name for himself as a most influential artist and teacher with his controversial theory of painting as a pure science, a science of optical analysis.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Jun-55
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-22.1646782 Longitude144.5844903 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, known as Althea, was the third daughter of Rupert Atherton of Howard Park, North Queensland. She was married to Albert Alfred Cook of Balnagowan from her parental home, Howard Park, on 11 April 1908, her sister Ina and her future sister-in-law, Ethel Cook (who exhibited [Royal] Art Society of NSW in 1885), being the bridesmaids, with Althea’s brother Rupert, best man. Althea drew numerous pencil sketches on display at her former married home, Greenmount Homestead, Nebo Road, near Mackay, North Queensland, built by her husband in 1915. The Cook’s son Tom left Greenmount to the Pioneer Shire Council in 1981. The Mackay Historical Society and Museum Inc. holds the current lease for the property, which is open to the public, being furnished as it was when the Cooks lived there.
Most of Althea’s drawings date from before her marriage and many are copies. Watercolours of typical Grand Tour subjects and style in the bedroom were evidently done on her honeymoon; all are signed 'V.A. Cook 1909’. A copy of an English farm-house signed 'Althea Atherton’, drawn on 2 September 1882 when she was seven, seems to be the earliest. A typical young lady’s pencil drawing of a ruined castle is dated March 1885; a view of a sluice gate and trees 25 April 1890. Others include a view of cattle and a boy beside a creek (presumably another copy) dated 28 October 1890; a copy of a traditional Scottish picture of sheep and dogs signed 'V.A. Atherton, 1892’; The Late Duchess of Leicester (obviously another copy) of 21 January 1897 and another European view, Morning , dated 1899. Pioneer River from under the Bridge , also of 1899, appears to be an original as does her view of moonlight on water of 1907. There is also a very conventional sea view dated 1908. She also painted flowers in gouache and views on leaves.
A cartoon inscribed 'V.A. Cook 1909’ (i.e. honeymoon period) is a surprising addition in this gallery, although a good indication of her class and sympathies – and of the Australia-wide impact of the Broken Hill miners’ strike that year. Evidently a copy, possibly from the Bulletin or Figaro , it is annotated: 'The Policeman’s son: “Them Broken Hill blokes are goin’ ter cop out. Me old man’s gone up there, an’ he’s took his belt.”’
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1875
- Summary
- Late colonial/Federation era Queensland sketcher. Atherton began drawing at a young age and was still sketching some years later while on her honeymoon. Most of Atherton's drawings are copies and include traditional views of English farm houses and ruined castles.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1955
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-37.823 Longitude144.998 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Richmond, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born on 11 November 1875 at Richmond, Victoria, the only child of William Mountier Bale and Marion, née Adams. She attended the Methodist Ladies College in 1885-92 where she became interested in the arts. Having decided to become a painter, she took private lessons from May Vale and a few from Hugh Ramsay . She was elected a member of the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS) in 1894 before being enrolled at the Melbourne National Gallery Schools in 1895. She won nine student prizes during the course of her studies, including a special prize of £3 for a still-life subject in the 1889 [sic] student exhibition ( Illustrated Sydney News , 28 November 1889, 24).
From 1905 Bale was a consistent exhibitor with the Women’s Art Club (renamed the Melbourne Society of Women Painters in 1930) and she also showed work with the Victorian Artists’ Society. She edited the V.A.S. Journal of the Arts from March 1918 until publication ceased in February 1919 and played an important part in the Society’s development. During the stormy years of Max Meldrum 's presidency (1916-18), a group of his supporters formed the Twenty Melbourne Painters group; Bale was their first secretary. Under her leadership it flourished for thirty-six years.
Landscape, portrait and still life subjects were her main interest and she became noted for her flower studies. She never left Victoria; most of her landscapes and interiors were painted at Castlemaine and Kew where she spent much of her life. Membership of the Australian Art Association gave her the opportunity to exhibit regularly with the major artists of the period from all states. In 1923 she shared an exhibition with Bernice Edwell and Jo Sweatman at the Athenaeum Gallery in Melbourne. {She may have also exhibited with just Sweatman in 1922. See Woman’s World 1/7 (1922).} She had a solo exhibition of her paintings at Melbourne’s Fine Art Society’s Gallery from 2 to15 April 1930. She also exhibited with Brisbane’s Half Dozen Group of Artists in 1943-48. Two of her paintings were included in the exhibition of Australian Art in London in 1923 and she exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1933 and at the Paris Salon in 1939. In 1946 she was commissioned to paint a portrait of General Vasy for the Australian War Memorial.
She was a vigorous fighter for her beliefs and wrote numerous letters to newspapers on subjects such as purchases for the National Gallery of Victoria, the demolition of historic buildings, and the axing of trees in Castlemaine. She sent a letter of protest to the Governor-General concerning the formation of the Australian Academy of Art.
Miss Bale died at Royal Melbourne Hospital on 14 February 1955. Her will directed her trustees to see that a Trust Fund was set up for the purpose of establishing an Art Scholarship bearing her name to encourage painting in representational or traditional art. The scholarship, first awarded in 1969, allowed the holder to live in the estate’s property in Walpole Street, Kew. In 1981 the Trust changed the terms of the scholarship, making it primarily a travelling one to enable Australian artists to study the works of Old Masters.
Writers:
Perry, Peter
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 11 November 1875
- Summary
- Alice Bale never lived elsewhere but her native Victoria. She became a well-known painter in her time and was a great supporter of women in the arts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 14-Feb-55
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart , Tasmania, Hobart ?, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, painter, commercial artist and architect, was born in Hobart (Backhouse says Launceston), Tasmania. He was originally articled to an architectural firm in Launceston but later became a staff artist on the Launceston Examiner (1896-98). He exhibited with the Launceston Art Society in 1898. That year he left Launceston for health reasons and made his way to Melbourne, where he designed posters for Dunlop Rubber and Boomerang Brandy with Lionel Lindsay and Blamire Young . He exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1902-4 and was a member of the Prehistoric Order of Cannibals, a Melbourne Bohemian sketch club of the 1890s that included the Lindsay brothers, the Dyson brothers, Hugh McCrae, Max Meldrum and other young men. According to D.H. Souter , he had a series of adventures in a tin mine on the Klondyke and held extraordinary jobs during his early years (see David Cook).
Weston moved to Sydney c.1905 where he remained for the rest of his life. He exhibited with the NSW Society of Artists in 1907. He established his own advertising agency in 1901 [sic 1910?] – the Weston Company – and he illustrated covers (n.d. ill. Caban 51, 53), story and verse illustrations for Lone Hand 1909-10, e.g. cover for 'War Number’ October 1914. He also illustrated numerous books published by the NSW Bookstall Company (see Mills), including Steele Rudd’s Dad in Politics and Other Stories , and he wrote his own books, e.g. All’s Well with the Fleet (Sydney, Bloxham, 1915).
According to Vane Lindesay (1994, 92), he is best remembered for the cartoons of old salts and waterfront characters he contributed to the Bulletin , though he drew a variety of cartoon subjects for it. He also drew numerous advertisements, e.g. a good ad. for Cameo cigarettes, Bulletin 16 November 1905 – a 'before’ and 'after’ view of an old lady, 'CAMEOS Always Make Me “Buck-up.”’ The ads he did for W.D. & H.O. Wills Tobacco Co. were also in the form of cartoons, e.g. 'Old Lady: “Don’t cry little boy! Are you hurt?”/ Little Boy: “No, but I will be. I’ve dropped father’s CAPSTAN TOBACCO down the grating!”’ and 'The Girl: “What’s th’ worst thing 'appened to yer on yer last voyage, Bill?”/ Bill: “Well, we struck a rock, lost our rudder, th’ cap’n died o’ cholera, th’ best mate was lost overboard; but worst of all, I ran out of VICE-REGAL SMOKING MIXTURE!”’ (ill. Caban, 51). His NSW and Queensland Railway Department ad. for 'Halcyon Holidays in North Queensland’ appeared in Lone Hand on 1 November 1909, liv.
Weston drew the cover of 'the first publication issued under the auspices of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists’, The U.S.A. Fleet Souvenir , published in July 1925 to commemorate a visit of the American Fleet to Sydney (ill. Lindesay 1994, 7), which shows a big tall Yank sailor shaking hands with, and lighting a cigar for, a small young Australian sailor. This 48-page book, which cost 1/-, included cartoons and comic strips by all 25 (male) foundation members of the Club: Garnet Agnew , Jack Baird , Stan Cross , F.H. Cumberworth , W. Dowman , “Driff”( Lance Driffield ), George Finey , Cecil Hartt , Joe Jonsson , Frank Jessop , Fred Knowles , George Little , Brodie Mack , Hugh Maclean , Arthur Mailey , Syd Miller , Syd Nicholls , Mick Paul , Jack Quayle , Reg Russom , Cyril Samuels , Jack Waring , Harry J. Weston, Unk White and John Wiseman ; the writer and poet Will Lawson contributed verse.
Weston belonged to various art societies, including the Launceston Art Society, the Victorian Artists’ Society (1902-04), the NSW Society of Artists (1907-17), the Yarra Sculptors’ Society (1902-3) and the Australian Art Society (Sydney 1927-32). He exhibited with them all, mainly designs for postcards. In 1912 he established the 'Practical School of Art’. In 1915 he was in partnership with Eirene Mort and in the 1920s set up a correspondence course in drawing. His strong posterish style (possibly USA influenced) is evident in all his work, even his postcards (probably all coloured: see Cook).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1874
- Summary
- Cartoonist, painter, commercial artist and architect. Weston was a member of many clubs and societies, and associated with many of Australia's now famous cartoonists and illustrators. He is known for drawing the cover of 'the first publication issued under the auspices of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists'
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Oct-55
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 8 March 1871
- Summary
- Upholsterer, retailer who ran three furniture stores in Vienna's 7th district. Son Michael worked with him at Mobel Haus Josef Gerstl as a furniture designer in the 1930s. Worked as an upholsterer in Shanghai in early 1940s but was not accepted as an immigrant to Australia. Antecedents included a cabinetmaker, making Josef an important link between Viennese design heritage and the Gerstl furniture company in Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Jun-55
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-34.7523871 Longitude149.7198009 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Goulburn, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Sydney Long was born on 20 August 1871 at Goulburn, New South Wales, the fifth child and posthumous son of James Long, an Irish Commission Agent and his Australian born wife, Susan Fletcher. As a young man he moved to Sydney and worked for some years with a wine and spirit merchant. From about 1890 to 1894 he studied under A.J. Daplyn and Julian Ashton at the Art Society of NSW School.
Long participated in painting camps along the Nepean River near Richmond, but also made other explorations. In 1894 the National Art Gallery of NSW purchased Long’s first major painting, By tranquil waters, a plein air study of boys bathing at Cook’s River, near Tempe railway station. The following year Long’s style started to move towards the flat surfaces and decorative art nouveau style as expounded by the English Studio magazine, which was widely circulated in Australia. His works, such as Pan 1898 (Art Gallery New South Wales, Sydney) and Spirit of the Plains 1897 (Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane), were reproduced in The Studio, and pay homage to the English Aesthetic movement. However he remained passionate about Australian subject matter and his eucalypt, ti-trees and open plains are sometimes inhabited by distinctly Australian fauna such as magpies, as well as nymphs and fauns. The Valley, 1898 (Art Gallery of South Australia) is essentially the same landscape as Arthur Streeton’s The Purple Noon’s Transparent Might, 1896 (National Gallery of Victoria), but rendered in a decorative mode. He was at this time sharing a studio with the young George Lambert, but they later ceased to be friends. When the Society of Artists split from the Art Society of NSW in 1895, Long moved with the rebels who included his mentor, Julian Ashton, and Tom Roberts. Later he became President of the Society of Artists and was involved with the Governor, Earl Beauchamp’s efforts to amalgamate the two warring societies. He was known to attend Government House in his top hat, which had the advantage of making him as tall as his companion, the artist Thea Proctor. His painting, Flamingoes 1902 (Art Gallery of NSW) was in part a gesture of reconciliation as it combined the decorative elements of the Society of Artists with the dark tonality of the Art Society. In 1907 the societies split again, and again Long moved with the radicals.From 1895-1910 Long taught at the Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School, and in 1907 this became a full-time appointment. He had long wanted to travel, and in he finally managed to leave Australia. He arrived in London in October 1910. Later he visited France, Belgium and Holland. World War I disrupted his relationship with his dealer, Adolf Albers, and finances were uncertain. He was also troubled by his youthful appearance that made him vulnerable to possible conscription. In 1918 Lionel Lindsay sent him a copy of Pastoral a softground and aquatint he had made to show how a Sydney Long painting could be rendered as an etching. Long began to study printmaking at the London Central School and rapidly became an accomplished printmaker, converting many of his images into etchings and aquatints. However when Dorothy Paul published her early catalogue of his work, he claimed to have begun etching long before Lindsay’s print. Long was appointed an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers in 1921, and returned to Australia with a reconfigured career. He stayed for 18 months but returned to England, where he married Catherine Brennan, a dancer (although they later claimed to have married in 1911, they did not in fact marry until 1 December 1924). In 1925 the couple moved back to Sydney where they settled at Lane Cove, although Long spent much of his time with students, either in his city studio or his caravan which was permanently based at the Narrabeen Lakes. Mrs Long became committed to caring for Sydney’s stray cats. In his later years he denounced modern art, even in its modest Australian incarnation, and became active in the Royal Art Society of NSW. After the Great Depression precipitated the end of the market in printmaking, he turned increasingly to painting. He was also active on the Trustees of the National Art Gallery of NSW. He was awarded the Wynne Prize for landscape in 1938 and 1941 while he was a trustee of the Gallery. The prize was judged by the trustees. In 1952, after realising that he was suffering from senile dementia, Long and his wife returned to London where he died in London on 23 January 1955.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne Note: Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 August 1871
- Summary
- Sydney Long established an early reputation in the 1890s as a painter of decorative Art Nouveau landscape and mythological subjects. Later, in London, some of these paintings became the basis for his first etchings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Jan-55
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude40.8358846 Longitude14.2487679 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Naples, Italy
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1955
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude40.8358846 Longitude14.2487679 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Naples, Italy
- Biography
- Painter and art teacher, trained in Rome and Naples, taught art in Sydney. As well as holding art classes at the Royal Art Society for 28 years, he held private classes from 1898 to 1941 at his studio in the Australian Chambers building, Rowe Street and was an immensely influential teacher of post-impressionist ideas and techniques, an admirer of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse et al. He often gave his students affectionate nicknames, especially the women in his 'Cours pour Dames’. They included Earl Backen, Janna Bruce ('Brucie’), Margaret Coen ('Gunner’), Roy de Maistre, George Duncan , Dora Jarret ('Sweetheart’), Tempe Manning, Arthur Murch , Alison Rehfisch ('Gorgeous’), Grace Cossington Smith ('Mrs Van Gogh’) and Roland Wakelin .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 June 1870
- Summary
- Rubbo held art classes at the Royal Art Society for 28 years, and private classes from 1898 to 1941. He often gave his students affectionate nicknames, especially the women in his 'Cours pour Dames'. Amongst these was Grace Cossington Smith, nicknamed 'Mrs Van Gogh'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jun-55
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Photographer and historian, took photographs of tombstones when the Devonshire Street Cemetery was being closed c.1901. Royal Australian Historical Society, Sydney: a good image, which includes her at work, is on the back of a Public History Review .
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- A photographer and historian who took photographs of tombstones when the Devonshire Street Cemetery in Sydney was being closed circa 1901.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1955
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and craftworker, was born in London but came to Australia in youth and studied art at the National Gallery School, Melbourne under Fred McCubbin. Later she studied in Paris, exhibited at the Paris Salon and at the Royal Academy, London. Portrait and figure painter, mainly oils. Art Gallery of South Australia [AGSA] originally held her copy of Portrait of Rembrandt (Louvre), gift of the artist 1944 (in 1946 AGSA catalogue but not listed in 1960 edition).
Member of Victorian Artists’ Society c.1896.
At 86 years of age she held exhibition at the Peter Bray Gallery Melbourne, “showing mainly romantic landscapes and noctures reminiscent of the work of David Davies”; see Herald (Melbourne) 17 November 1952; 31 August 1955.
National Gallery of Australia holds a rug n.d., illustrated in Ambrus.
Exhibited Alexandra Chambers April-May 1911; Athenaeum Hall, Melbourne, July 1920; Athenaeum Art Gallery June 1933; Athenaeum Art Gallery March 1935.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1869
- Summary
- Portrait and figure painter who studied in Paris and in Melbourne at the National Gallery School under Frederick McCubbin. Baker was still exhibiting at the age of 86, showing romantic landscapes at the Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne. Earlier in her career she had exhibited in both the Paris Salon and the Royal Academy in London.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1955
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist, illustrator and craftworker, was born in Melbourne on 7 August 1869, the eldest surviving daughter of John Thomas Meeson, headmaster of Hawthorn Grammar School, and Amelia née Kipling. The Meeson family was constantly on the move between 1876 and 1896, living in London, New Zealand and Melbourne, and Dora was mainly educated at home. In the late 1880s she drew four crude watercolours over two pages of Australian Aborigines (NLA). One page shows three Aborigines wearing cloaks in their wirly (top) and two Aboorigines fishing from a bark canoe (bottom); the other depicts a large group of Aborigines in the bush (top) and three portrait busts (bottom). All seem to have been copied from photographs.
Dora studied at the Christchurch School of Art (NZ), then at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, where an unconfirmed story states that she was outright or equal first in the 1896 National Gallery Travelling Scholarship competition but withdrew in favour of George Coates , her future husband. She studied intermittently at London’s Slade School of Art in 1896-98 then in Paris at the Académie Julian in 1898-99. In 1898 her Portrait of M’selle M… was hung at the Old Salon and she became secretly engaged to Coates. In 1900 the Meeson family returned to London. Dora married George there three years later.
In their early struggling London years, Meeson and Coates did numerous illustrations for the Encyclopaedia Britannica and for Dr Henry Smith’s Historian’s History of the World . A move to Chelsea in 1906 led to Meeson adopting the Suffrage cause. She became a founding member of the Women’s Freedom League (Kensington Branch), a member of the Women’s Council of the Conservative and Unionist Women’s Franchise Association, and a member of the Artists’ Suffrage League. For the last she illustrated booklets, designed political posters and postcards and painted the Commonwealth of Australia’s Suffrage Banner, “Trust the Women Mother As I Have Done” (oil paint on green hessian), which was made for and carried at the head of the ANZWVC Contingent in the Women’s Suffrage Coronation Procession on 17 June 1911 – the biggest procession of all. (Myra Scott noted in 2002 that it had not been carried in two earlier processions as generally believed.) Held by the Fawcett League until 1988, the banner was sent to Australia by the National Women’s Consultative Council for the Australian Bicentennial. It was on loan to Parliament House, Canberra until 12 June 2002 – the Centenary of the Enactment of the Commonwealth Franchise Act – when the National Women’s Consultative Council officially handed it over to Australia.
Dora Meeson Coates’s design won the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS)/ Artists’ Suffrage League poster competition in 1907 and was published by the NUWSS in 1908. In it 'Mrs John Bull’ holds an empty dish labelled 'Votes for Women’ while six boys – 'Primrose League’, Trade Unions’, 'Liberal Federation’, 'Women’s Liberal Association’, 'S.D.F’ and 'I.L.P’ – clamour for more soup from a large bowl labelled 'Political Help’. She says: “Now you greedy boys I shall not give you any more until I have helped myself” (ill. Tickner, p.17: the only copies known to Tickner were in the Communist Party Archives, London, and the Library of Congress, Washington – none is known in Australia). She also helped illustrate two (rare) booklets published by the Artists’ Suffrage League: The A.B.C. of Politics for Women [Politicians] (c.1909) comprising verse by Mary Lowndes and line drawings by Lowndes, C. Hedley Charlton and Meeson (e.g. 'S then stands for Suffrage/ The question of the hour;/ Its suffering at present/ But by and by its power’, illustrated in Completing the Picture ), and Beware! A Warning to Suffragists (1909) with words by Cecily Hamilton illustrated by Meeson and Lowndes. It is unknown if copies of these booklets are held in Australia.
In September 1909 Meeson’s cartoon 'Miss Wales: “Do justice to the women, David”’ was the first cartoon to appear in Common Cause , the organ of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (published 1909-20). Signed 'D. Meeson Coates’, it depicts a woman in traditional Welsh costume with hand outstretched towards David Lloyd George who holds papers titled 'BILL/ FOR THE/ ENFRANCHISEMENT/ – OF – / WOMEN’. A paragraph headed our 'Our Cartoon’ inside explains:
This week, for the first time, we include a cartoon in the number. Wales has been so consistently Liberal for many years that we trust the Welsh to back the Chancellor in supporting women’s claims, when once they understand that the interruption of meetings from whence he has suffered is not the policy of any but a very small section of Suffragists ( Common Cause 1/25, 30 September 1909, 310).
The image was repeated as the cover of Common Cause on 3 November 1910 with a new caption. 'Miss Wales’ now says: “I am ready, David. I have helped you. When are you going to help me?”
Companions in Disgrace , a favourite pro-suffrage image of a woman graduate with a male convict (more unexpected as a suitable British topic) initialed 'D.M.’, was published on 29 December 1910. The Artists’ Suffrage League was acknowledged as printer and publisher and the image with accompanying verse by 'C.H.'had evidently first appeared as a 'comic’ postcard:
“Convicts and Women kindly note,
Are not allowed to have the vote;
The difference between the two
I will now indicate to you.
When once the harmful man of crime,
In Wormwood Scrubs has done his time,
He at the poll can have his say,
The harmless woman never may.”
Meeson’s cartoons predate May Gibbs ' contributions to Common Cause . In 1912 she was a member of the London-based Australia and NZ Women Voters’ Committee and during the war was Australian representative in London of the British Dominions Women Suffrage Union. While George served in the Royal Army Medical Corps at Wandsworth Hospital, Dora helped found the Women’s Police Service. (She appears left front in an Imperial War Museum photograph, 'Women Police Volunteers Drilling in Hyde Park, London, 8 December 1914’.)
Meeson Coates was a founding member of the Society of Mural Decorators and Painters in Tempera. In 1920, with other former members of the Artists Suffrage League, she painted a frieze showing women’s work in wartime in the hall of Danecourt at Danehill, near Brighton, home of Mrs William Corbett. In 1919 she became the first Australian woman member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters. Her war paintings include Leaving for the Front (BFAG), Members of the QMAAC in the Cookhouse at the RFA Camp, Charlton Park (Imperial War Museum) and Embarkation of the Last W.A.A.C.s’ Transport of the A.I.F. Wounded Leaving Southampton (AWM). She exhibited her paintings in Australia in 1913 and 1928 and had a major touring exhibition with her husband in 1921. Meeson was awarded a Honourable Mention at the 1923 Paris Salon.
An ardent feminist who sought financial independence, Meeson became the principal breadwinner by painting a broad range of popular subjects for the market, including sentimental topics, studies of children, tourist souvenirs and rural scenes. In her Thames River paintings, e.g. The Thames at Chelsea (1916, GAG), she attempted to break down the social barriers that limited women artists to domestic subjects by appropriating subject matter usually the preserve of male artists – marine painting – and her pictures show scenes of the smog-laden industrial waterfront where women’s presence was normally considered unacceptable. Mindful of East End poverty, she also recorded the vulnerability of working men to storms and accident. A group of 'social conscience’ paintings aimed to draw attention to official discrimination against underprivileged women, women war-workers and women artists. Dora Meeson died on 25 March 1955.
Writers:
Scott, MyraNote: Heritage biographyKerr, JoanNote: additional material
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 7 August 1869
- Summary
- Federation era painter, craftworker and illustrator, Meeson Coates was married to fellow painter George Coates and was an active participant in the Suffrage movement in London.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Mar-55
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-23.814114 Longitude150.7494878 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Raglan, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Mary Ann Macdonald was born in Raglan, Queensland on 7 December 1868, one of the seven daughters (six of whom established themselves in the nursing profession as matrons of hospitals or nursing homes) and one boy born to Donald Macdonald and his wife Ann née Frazer. She trained as a nurse and in later years became matron of the St George’s Nursing Home, Milton Heights as well as secretary of the Bush Nurses Association. She began pottery classes with L. J. Harvey at the Central Technical College from about 1924 and became one of Harvey’s most dedicated students attending classes for 25 years in all. The living room in her home became filled with examples of her pottery and china painting. Her cousin Annie Fraser Mitchell stayed with her and also studied with Harvey, transferring his teaching methods to her home town of Adelaide. Macdonald, following Harvey’s instruction, also carved substantial pieces, such as wardrobes. She exhibited pottery at the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association 1925-29 and received several prizes and highly commended awards and exhibited extensively at the Royal Queensland Art Society with collections of pottery and china painting between 1932 and 1942 and pottery only in 1945 and 1947.
She was included in the Third Annual Exhibition of Work by Art Students of the Central Technical College in November-December 1934 and the Sixth Annual Exhibition in November 1937. Her work may have been included in the 1935 and 1936 exhibitions but the exhibitors are not individually cited. She also exhibited pottery in the Technical Colleges competitive section of the Society of Arts and Crafts of New South Wales in 1935, and a brown and cream vase at a student’s exhibition at Horsham House during the 1940s. Most of her work is typical of the Harvey School but she occasionally favoured a Chinese inspiration in her work. Mary Macdonald was described as Harvey’s longest serving student in 1950 when she handed over a bust of 'The critic’ (carved by L. J. Harvey) to the University of Queensland to commemorate his death in 1949. She died in Brisbane on 20 March 1955.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 December 1868
- Summary
- Mary MacDonald possibly had the most extensive production for a Harvey School potter as she attended Harvey's classes for some 25 years. As well as being a capable potter she was also a china painter.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 20-Mar-55
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Craft supplier was born in England but arrived from Tasmania in 1908 with her husband science master at Guildford Grammar School. Southern was the sister of the sculptor Benjamin Sheppard and came to Tasmania as a bride. They lived in Bismark [Newtown]. Her husband died in 1919. In Perth from around 1919-34 Mrs Southern and her daughter Muriel had the “Arts and Crafts” depot Studio of Arts and Crafts above Booklover’s Library in Royal / McNess Arcade, 623 Hay Street. This was described in an advertisement as “A centre for Buyers and Sellers. Please make enquiries.” Mrs Southern and her daughter held 'at homes’ here after exhibitions of Muriel’s work in the Book Lover’s Library.This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1867
- Summary
- Mary Elizabeth Southern was born in 1867. She was the sister of the sculptor Benjamin Sheppard. In Perth Mrs Southern and her daughter Muriel had the "Arts and Crafts" depot Studio of Arts and Crafts from around 1919 to 1934.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1955
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1955-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist and illustrator, drew cartoons for Boomerang , eg Appearances were against him 22 March 1890, 5, and illustration of Visiting Day at the Brisbane Children’s Hospital 15 September 1888, 18.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
RJClayton
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 30 August 1866
- Summary
- Late colonial period cartoonist and illustrator. Painter of Birds of Paradise and native life in Papua.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Jan-55
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1954-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- painter and writer, was born Nancy May Davidson in Melbourne in May 1908. In about 1917 the family moved to Sydney where Nancy worked as a secretary while attending evening classes at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School. In 1933 her painting, Devon Farmyard , was exhibited in the Sydney Art School retrospective, by which time she was in London. She had married a fellow student, Jack (J.N.) Kilgour , in 1931 and the couple travelled to England. They became close to fellow artist William Dobell there; Nancy’s diaries are an important source of information on Dobell’s London years. Nancy studied at St Martin-in-the-Field School. From about 1935, however, she concentrated more on her writing. In 1936 she suffered a near fatal attack of eclampsia from which she never fully recovered.
In 1939 the Kilgours returned to Australia and Nancy began painting again, while continuing to write short stories and a novel (never published). Jack had painted her portrait in 1932 and soon after she resumed painting she produced Portrait of Jack Kilgour Sketching a Model (both Mitchell Library). She exhibited at Sydney’s Macquarie Galleries in 1941, held joint exhibitions with her husband there in 1943, 1946 and 1950 – as well as in Adelaide and Brisbane – and was a regular exhibitor with the NSW Society of Artists. In the Garden , exhibited in 1943, features the large posterior of a female gardener with a wit and simplicity comparable to Anne Graham 's work. In 1954, the year of her death, Nancy briefly worked as a secretary at East Sydney Technical College.
Until 1994 (when she appeared in her husband’s entry), Nancy Kilgour was mentioned in none of the standard references on Australian art. If it were not for Jack, who encouraged the Newcastle Region Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of NSW and private dealers to see her work and gave transcripts of some of her diary notes to the Newcastle Region Art Gallery, she would have faded into complete obscurity.
Writers:
Mendelssohn, Joanna
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. May 1908
- Summary
- Despite being a talented painter in her own right, for many years Nancy Kilgour was best known as the wife of fellow painter Jack Kilgour, with whom she exhibited a number of times at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1954
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1954-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, musician and teacher who was born in Melbourne, Victoria. She worked as a commercial artist and later had further training in Italy where she also exhibited. Carter returned to Australia and exhibited in New South Wales, Melbourne and Perth being included in the 'Exhibition of Western Australian Painting from 1826-1937’ held at Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1937. Her 1939 exhibit with the Perth Society of Artists was described by the critic Charles Hamilton as, “Irene Carter’s sparkling Grand Canal is a very large water-colour, containing strong lighting and clear atmosphere, and some very sound drawing.” After World War II Carter returned to Italy where she studied watercolour painting. On her return to Perth she exhibited with the Perth Society of Artists in 1952 and the Western Australian Women’s Society of Fine Arts and Crafts. Carter was President of the latter organization in 1952-53. Quite a number of her subjects were Perth buildings though she did paint the Houses of Parliament in Westminster during her overseas sojourn and exhibited that painting in 1952 with the Perth Society of Artists. She won the watercolour section of the Art Competition in 1951. Carter died in 1954.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1900
- Summary
- Irene Carter was born in 1900. She was a painter, musician and teacher who won the watercolour section of the Art Competition in 1951. Carter exhibited with the Perth Society of Artists in 1952 and the Western Australian Women's Society of Fine Arts and Crafts. She was President of the latter organization in 1952-53.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1954
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-37.905 Longitude144.996 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1954-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brighton, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 21 July 1897
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Feb-54
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-37.063611 Longitude144.217222 Start Date1894-01-01 End Date1954-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and stained-glass designer and maker, was born on 2 August 1894 in Castlemaine, Victoria, youngest of the seven children of a plasterer, William Edward Yandell (who died in 1899), and Emily St Clair, née James. From 1905 she studied painting at the local School of Mines under Carl Steiner. In 1909, the year after she moved to Bendigo with her family, the fourteen year old prodigy had her oil painting, A Petition (a Greek scene in the manner of Alma Tadema featuring her sister Florence), hung in the Bendigo Art Gallery and shown at the Masonic Hall (with her A Lay of Thermopylae ). In 1910 some of her paintings were raffled to help her study at the Melbourne National Gallery Schools and the family moved to Parkville. Christian spent 1910-14 at the School, fellow students including Esther Paterson , Mary Cecil Allen , Marion Jones , Ethel Spowers – and Napier Waller , whom she married on 21 October 1915. She exhibited fantasy works with the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1913-22.
Napier left for France in 1916 and returned in 1917 with his right arm amputated. While he learned to draw with his left hand, Christian supported them with commercial art. In 1922-23 they built a house at 9 Crown Road, Fairy Hills, Ivanhoe. Designed by Harold Desbrowe Annear, its late English Arts and Crafts style was decorated and furnished by the owners in complementary style, including a dining room suite designed by Napier and painted with figures from the Arthurian Legend by Christian. It remained her home for the rest of her life.
Christian illustrated books from 1921, including several published by Edward Vidler ( see Sara Levi ). One illustrated in colour and b/w is Australian Fairy Tales (Melbourne: J. Howlett-Ross, 1925) by Hume Cook, then a federal politician (intro. by Billy Hughes PM), with a plot about the battle of the good Prince Waratah, Princess Wattleblossom and fairies against the evil Desert Fairies of the Australian bush (see Muir). She also began to make woodcuts and linocuts and excellent bookplates followed from about 1925 – the first being a linocut for her husband’s books – and theatrical poster designs from about 1928. She began to design stained-glass windows and in 1929 travelled with Napier to England to study their manufacture at Whall & Whall’s, London. They also visited Ireland, home of the Celtic revival, to meet the mystic writers Lord Edward Dunsany and 'A.E.’ (George William Russell).
Back home in 1930 Waller’s art became far more Art Deco in style and theosophist in content. Her finest printed work, The Great Breath (Melbourne 1932) – seven linocuts (a favourite mystical number) printed on the Wallers’ own hand press and bound in a green folder bearing the theosophical symbol of a dot within a circle – was entirely made by her. She also produced The Gates of Dawn that year. She contributed to Manuscripts , eg no.3 (November 1932), 52, 'The Woman of Faery’ (pen drawing).
During the 1930s Christian made stained-glass windows in Melbourne, Geelong and at Canowindra and Gilgandra (NSW), often for Anglican churches designed by Louis R. Williams. She travelled to the USA in 1939 to study at the temple of Father Divine and painted murals in New York before returning in April 1940. A mural for Christ Church, Geelong, followed in 1942; but from then on she worked at home on stained-glass windows. In 1948 she was reported to have completed over fifty and have orders for years to come. Her last window was made in 1952, by which time she is said to have designed and made over 65 windows in Victoria. She died on 25 May 1954 and was cremated at the Fawkner Crematorium where in 1937 she had painted a mural, The Robe of Glory .
Imahes include 7 art deco linocuts from The Great Breath , Golden Arrow Press, Melbourne, 1932 (Bendigo Art Gallery has a set); one of Gates of Dawn originals (book not published until 1978) formerly in the National Trust (NSW) Childhood Collection, now Mitchell Library.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 August 1894
- Summary
- 20th century painter, illustrator and stained-glass designer and maker. Early fantasy and mystic themes followed by Art Deco style.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-May-54
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1954-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- child artist, had work included in the 1887 Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition among the NSW exhibits: Kindergarten Public School, Riley-street, Surry Hills – no.1 Hippolyte Aurousseau – 5 years old – Gate.
This record is a stub. You can help by adding more detail.
Writers:
Staff Writer
aa001
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- Late 19th century child artist, member of the artistic and scientific Aurousseau family. At five years of age Hippolyte exhibited work in the 1887 Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Feb-54
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude50.733785 Longitude-2.7589005 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1954-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bridport, Dorset, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Bridport, Dorset, one of the eight daughters of the 11 children of John Iley Greene and his wife. After migrating to Brisbane with her family, she helped her sisters set up a Ladies’ High School in Tenterfield (c.1894) where they prepared students for the local entrance examinations to music, science and art colleges in London and to the University of Sydney. In 1901 she helped her elder sister, Alice, found the Moreton Bay Girls’ High School at Wynnum (now Moreton Bay College); several of the sisters, only two of whom married, taught there. There was a special emphasis on art and music. As Alice stated in 1951: 'I feel with my sisters that the importance of cultural subjects in character formation cannot be over-emphasised’.
Anne Alison Greene gave up teaching in 1911 in order to go to London to study at the South Kensington School of Art. She was awarded a prize for a still life and a diploma and medal by the Royal Art Society. She moved to Paris in 1912 where she studied the work of Emile Jacques-Dalcrose, the founder of eurhythmics – an interest subsequently reflected in the curriculum of the Greene sisters’ school, to which she paid a return visit during World War I. While in Brisbane, she took lessons in modelling from James Laurence Watts . After returning to France, Anne Alison Greene sent an extensive collection of replicas of statuary and lantern slides of European art works to her school. The school also kept all the postcards she sent from Paris and stuck them into albums. Having been drawn back to Paris by her love of French Impressionism, she studied with Edwin Scott at Castelucho’s. She also established her own studio on Rue Campagne Première, the same street where another Queensland expatriate, Anne’s great friend Bessie Gibson , lived.
Anne had exhibited at the Old Salon before World War I. Afterwards she showed with the New Salon, from 1921 until 1939. In 1924 she was elected an associate and in 1928 a full member of the Société des Beaux Arts. During World War II she was marooned at Southampton, England, then illness forced her to return to Queensland in 1946. Four years later she held a solo exhibition of her French paintings in the art gallery of Finney’s department store, Brisbane from which the Queensland National Art Gallery (QAG) purchased three paintings. In 1951 her work was included in the Commonwealth Jubilee Exhibition of Queensland Art at QAG. She died at Brisbane in 1954.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1878
- Summary
- Greene helped her sisters set up a Ladies' High School in Tenterfield and the Moreton Bay Girls' High School at Wynnum before pursuing her own artistic interests. She travelled to Europe and studied in London before setting up a studio and continuing to study in Paris. A member of the Société des Beaux Arts from 1928, illness forced Greene to return to Brisbane in 1946.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1954
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.8961132 Longitude151.1801893 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1954-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newtown, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- bookbinder, was born in Sydney and raised in the family home, Duncraggan, Raglan Street, Mosman. She was educated at Fort Street Girls High School, Sydney. On 9 August 1906 Dorothy invited six decorative artists to Duncraggan to discuss their crafts and provide a forum of friendly criticism for their work. At the meeting it was decided to form the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW and office bearers and rules were chosen. Miss Wilson was elected Honorary Secretary (with Mrs Danvers Power President). A week later, the first discussion of members’ work occurred at Duncraggan and meetings of this kind have been regularly held ever since. By 1907 the Society was meeting in the (more central) studio of Suzanne Gether in King Street, Sydney, where the first display of members’ work was held in March. By July it was decided that in order to maintain a high standard of work, a selection committee was needed; Dorothy Wilson was elected an inaugural member.
At the First Annual Exhibition, held on 30 August 1907, Dorothy was awarded first and second prizes for her bookbinding. Most of the exhibits had been prepared for the Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne, to open in the Exhibition Building in October. At this major event Dorothy Wilson won nine prizes in the artistic bookbinding categories. Prior to the opening in Melbourne, the NSW work was exhibited at the Royal Agricultural Society’s Grounds in Moore Park, Sydney. Dorothy was the only book-binder to have a range of her decorative bindings illustrated in the special section of the Sydney Mail on 11 September 1907, although five women were listed in the article as having shown 'hand-bound books, which, as volumes de luxe, would be welcomed in any artistic home’. Three were members of the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW.
At the first annual meeting in March 1908, Dorothy Wilson was re-elected Honorary Secretary. Then the minutes of July 1908 record that, due to her approaching marriage, she had tendered her resignation from the Society. The minutes later record an informal meeting at the Women’s Patriotic Club on 8 December to farewell Dorothy, now Mrs Richard Wardill, prior to her departure for Melbourne. Fortunately, marriage did not prevent her from participating in the annual exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria in December 1908. She submitted a volume of Rossetti’s poems with a vellum binding she had designed with Ethel A. Stephens , first Vice-President of the NSW Arts and Crafts Society, and Stephens executed the painted finish on the book. The catalogue of the exhibition notes that the volume was for sale at the considerable sum of four guineas.
One year after her triumph at the First Australian Women’s Work Exhibition in Melbourne, Dorothy Wilson produced a beautiful en relief leather binding for an album presented to the visiting Canadian-American actress Margaret Anglin (Hordern House Rare Books). In crafting this memento Wilson demonstrated her mastery of the art nouveau style. The sinuous organic lines flowing over the cover are combined with the freshness of the native flannel flower to produce a strongly nationalistic Australian arts and crafts design. Every element in the work contributes to the overall design concept: the decorative handmade endpapers, the gilt edges, the maker’s signature in blind on the back endpapers, and the initials 'DEW’ subtly worked in amongst the stems on the front cover. Her skill and artistry as a bookbinder are not only evident the high quality relief work but also in the finely tooled dedication, decorated edges, and raised bands on the spine.
It was not Wilson’s first experiment with free-style relief. This example resembles one of her pieces in the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition, which also used the flannel flower motif to great effect. Indeed, perhaps it was the recognition she received for her work in 1907 that led to this commission. The album was presented to Margaret Anglin in Sydney as 'an affectionate remembrance’ by one 'A.T.’ during her six-month season with J.C. Williamson in 1908. Anglin was raised in Canada and had trained as a dramatic actress in New York. By the time of her visit to Australia, aged thirty-two, she had starred in a great number and variety of major productions, including Mrs Dane’s Defence , Diplomacy , The Importance of Being Earnest , The Devil’s Disciple and Camille . Internationally acclaimed as one of the finest dramatic actresses of her day, her arrival in Sydney aboard the Acrangi was reported with fawning excitement in the press, the smitten Sydney Morning Herald reporter rhapsodising about her 'fine dark eyes, aquiline nose, [and] masses of nut-brown hair’. Her presence caused quite a stir in Sydney’s social circles too; a welcoming party held for her by the Williamsons at their home, Tudor, on the harbour at Elizabeth Bay, was one of the occasions of the year.
Anglin starred in a number of Williamson productions, appearing as Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew , Viola in Twelfth Night and Marise Voysin in Bernstein’s The Thief . By all accounts local audiences were rapturous in their response to this substantial visit by an international star. The night before she sailed for Europe in the Mongolia on 19 December, the Herald reported that she 'thrilled and fascinated her audience’ at the Theatre Royal and, after countless recalls, gave a warm and rousing farewell speech to a packed house of adoring fans. The Wilson bound scrapbook, never used, remained in her possession until she died in 1958.
After her marriage to Richard Wardill, Captain of the Melbourne Football Team, Dorothy continued her bookbinding activities in a very limited way from 'the bindery’, i.e. the attic of her home in Dudley Street, Brighton. Often, however, as a mother of three, her considerable talents were lent to more prosaic tasks such as making the children’s school bags.
Writers:
Carlson, Adrienne
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1878
- Summary
- Dorothy Elspeth Wilson (Mrs Richard Wardill) was a very talented bookbinder. In 1906 she invited a group of six decorative artists and together they decided to form the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW. Wilson was elected its Honorary Secretary.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1954
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.8857968 Longitude151.2440867 Start Date1903-01-01 End Date1953-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Woollahra, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Architect, Canberra, worked as a partner in the architectural firm of her husband, Malcolm Moir.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1903
- Summary
- Heather Sutherland worked as an architect in Canberra.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1953
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude-38.1050358 Longitude147.0647902 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1953-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sale, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Sale, Victoria. He studied art at the Technical College, Perth, and began his cartooning career on the Western Mail , also sending gags to the Bulletin . He was working as a draughtsman in the Board of Works when he enlisted, serving with the AIF in France during WWI. He was art editor of the AIF paper Aussie (1918-19), published in France.
After the war Mattinson worked in London as a professional cartoonist, drawing the sporting cartoons for the Daily Herald (1919-31) and contributing to London Opinion , Passing Show and Punch . In February 1936 William Moore stated (in 'At Home and Abroad’, Art in Australia 15 February 1936, 44) that he had just returned to Australia after some years abroad where he had
…contributed more drawings to “Punch” than any other Australian artist, and also drew for “The Sketch”, “The Tatler”, “The Bystander”, “The Passing Show” and other journals. As sporting cartoonist on the “Daily Herald’ he remained on that paper from 1919 to 1931. Some of his drawings were reproduced in American and German journals, and in a book on cartoons published in Japan.
Back in Sydney he made a name for himself on Smith’s Weekly , which he joined in 1936 succeeding Frank Dunne . Like Dunne (emulating Cec Hartt ), Mattinson also specialised in Digger images. He also contributed to the Bulletin ; a 1937 original in Mitchell Library is a good gag about a mate buried under rocks.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1892
- Summary
- Early 20th century Perth, London and Sydney cartoonist. Mattinson was art editor of the AIF paper 'Aussie' (1918-19), published in France.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1953
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-41.288889 Longitude174.777222 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1953-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wellington, New Zealand
- Biography
- photographer, Sydney, son of photographers Pierce Mott Cazneau and Emily Cazneau née Bentley .
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 30 March 1878
- Summary
- Cazneaux was the leader of Australian Pictorialist photography in the first half of the 20th century. The soft focussed beauty of his images helped a wider understanding that photography was more of an art form and not simple reproductive technology.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Jun-53
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1953-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- jeweller, operated a successful jewellery business in Sydney from 1916 until her retirement in 1946. During this time she made over 12,000 items, each drawn, dated and numbered in sketchbooks. Her work is characterised by the use of semi-precious stones set in foliage decoration hand-wrought in silver or, less frequently, platinum, palladium or white gold. Many pieces were made for specific clients who built up treasured collections over the years; others were made for stock or for exhibition. Regardless of its destination, each piece exemplified her technical expertise and design integrity.
Wager was born in London on 10 March 1875. She studied at the Art School in Bristol, the Glasgow School of Art (1897-1903) and at Bernard Cuzner’s School of Metalwork at Bourneville. This training provided her with principles fundamental to metalwork and jewellery derived from the Arts and Crafts movement: dedication, respect for materials and the importance of design. Her first jewellery pieces date from her time with Cuzner (who, with Jessie M. King and Rex Silver, designed the first range of Cymric jewellery for Liberty’s of London in 1899). She set up her first workshop in Glasgow after finishing her training, also taking private students for jewellery tuition.
In 1913 she moved to her brother’s sugar plantation in Fiji and set up a workshop. It captivated her niece, Dorothy M. Wager (later Judge; b.1912), who was to carry on the Wager jewellery tradition. Interviewed in 1924, Rhoda Wager said she was 'not an Australian, and her residence [in Sydney] is an accident of the late war’; she was visiting her brother and couldn’t get home.
She joined the NSW Society of Arts and Crafts, showed her work in their 1914 exhibition, and it immediately caught on. She settled permanently in Sydney in 1916, opened her first trading premises in Rowe Street in 1917 and remained in the central business district for twenty-eight years, surviving the Depression by a move to smaller premises. In 1920 she married Percival George (Percy) Ashton, the sea captain son of Julian Ashton.
Wager employed assistants during her years in business, including Violet Dupré and Victoria Blashke. In 1925 Dora Sweetapple , who had trained privately with Wager, joined the firm. Niece Dorothy became an assistant in 1928 and remained with Rhoda until opening her own studio in 1939. Walter Clapham, whom she employed in 1919, remained with her until she retired in 1946.
Wager promoted her work through journals such as Art in Australia and Home and displayed it at various Arts and Crafts Society and Society of Artists’ exhibitions. She was a member of the NSW Arts and Crafts Society in 1913-51 and subsequently joined the Victorian and Queensland groups. Wager built up her business on artistic integrity, good customer relations and sound business practices. She cultivated a market, then was able to supply it with hand-wrought jewellery items that maintained a high standard of design and execution for more than thirty years.
Writers:
Cocks, Deborah
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 March 1875
- Summary
- jeweller, operated a successful jewellery business in Sydney from 1916 until her retirement in 1946.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1953
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1953-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Architect and designer William Henry Ford was born in Melbourne, the son of Frederick and Charlotte. He was educated at Scotch College and University of Victoria. He was listed in practice at Coolgardie, Western Australia in 1897. Then in 1898 he formed a partnership with Edwin Summerhayes. He resided in Claremont while he worked with Summerhayes on the Coolgardie Exhibition Building and designed other goldfields buildings. He went to South Africa after the Boer War where he built many churches. He claimed to be the designer of the Coolgardie Safe.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1868
- Summary
- Architect and designer who was educated at Scotch College and University of Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1953
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-37.8246698 Longitude140.7820068 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1953-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mount Gambier, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Henriette Jane Wehl was born at Mt Gambier, South Australia on 18 October 1868, the sixth daughter in a family of six boys and nine girls born (two of whom died at a young age) to Dr Yohanne Deitrich Eduad Wehl and his wife Clara Christiane née von Müller, a sister of the famous botanist Sir Ferdinand von Mueller (1825-96). (The variation in spellings was provided by the family members.)
Henriette (known as Ettie) was educated at Miss Jacob’s School for Girls at Mt Gambier. She married a sheep farmer Donald Mack Sinclair in Millicent, South Australia on 16 June 1891 and had four children (the eldest died in Rockhampton at age nine). In 1894, when her youngest child was 8 months old, she arranged for the care of her family and trained as an obstetric nurse at the Royal Hospital for Women, Paddington, Sydney. After a years nursing in the slums of Newtown she went to Toowoomba and with the sponsorship of Dr Elliott set up the obstetric nursing home 'Kimora Private Hospital’ in Mort Street about 1908.
She returned to Sydney but made frequent trips back to Queensland. She began experimenting with clay in 1928. Two years later, while she was staying with her nursing associate Miss Mary Macdonald (qv) at Milton, Brisbane, she formally enrolled in L. J. Harvey 's course at the Central Technical College. When she returned to Sydney in 1931 she exhibited 13 items with the Society of Arts and Crafts of New South Wales. Photographs of these works demonstrate the full range of L. J. Harvey’s teaching methods. One of these works, a slab built vase dated 1930, was acquired by the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Ultimo from this exhibition [now known as the Powerhouse Museum]. She exhibited 37 items at this venue in the years 1932-39.
The descriptions of these items in the various newspaper reports suggest she was still working in Queensland techniques and shapes but her pieces were now being glazed at the Fowler’s Pottery, Marrickville (by Mr Fowler himself). It appears she returned to Queensland on other occasions as one double scraffito vase is dated 1938 and marked with a 'Q’. During the war years she visited her son and daughter who had neighbouring properties 'Barngo’ and 'The Glen’ (outside Capella). Her last pieces were made with the clay she found when a bore was excavated at 'Barngo’.
She died in Rockhampton on 19 August 1953 after a two year illness.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 October 1868
- Summary
- Henriette Sinclair is an example of the pottery students who transferred L.J. Harvey's teaching methods from Brisbane's Central Technical College interstate. She continued to produce works typical of the Harvey School in Sydney but they were fired at Fowler's Pottery, Marrickville.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 19-Aug-53
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-32.5873173 Longitude151.7800571 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1953-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Clarence Town, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- artist and teacher, studied drawing and modelling at the Technical College, Sydney, under Lucien Henry : 'The first prize has fallen to Mr Aurousseau, a jeweller’s apprentice, who works with vigour and lightness of touch, and graceful finish, which should be invaluable to him in his trade’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 20 December 1882, 8)
At the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London, 1886, NSW Exhibits: Technical College, Sydney – art class – students’ work transferred from South Kensington – no.14 G. Aurousseau – aged 20 – occupation, jeweller – 1 drawing, Art Department.
At the Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition in 1887: NSW exhibitors – Technical College, Sydney – modelling class – No.22 G. Aurousseau – aged 20 – jeweller by occupation – Panel Renaissance (Third Grade Prize, Science and Art Dept., 1884, classified); art class – freehand drawing – No.13 G. Aurousseau – aged 20 – occupation, student – Mediaeval capital.
This record is a stub. You can help by adding more detail.
Writers:
Staff Writer
aa001
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 14 November 1864
- Summary
- Artist, teacher and jeweller who, in addition to exhibiting at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London in 1886 and at the Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition the following year, also wrote a number of articles on freehand drawing.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Dec-53
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude50.94451385 Longitude-0.062267328 Start Date1861-01-01 End Date1953-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sussex, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, natural history illustrator, commercial artist and art teacher, was born in Sussex on 29 September 1861. She studied at the South Kensington Art School, London, where she learned lithography, and at Miss Gann’s Life School in London. In 1881 she came to Australia with her sister, Mrs Boulton, their parents joining them later. For seven years Margaret worked as a commercial artist for the Sydney printers and publishers Gibbs Shallard & Co. and S.T. Leigh. Then she opened a studio in Victoria Chambers, Castlereagh Street; her biographer, Annette Maclellan, studied painting with her there. She exhibited with the (Royal) Art Society from 1894 until 1901, showing wildflower studies and still-life painting in the Society’s exhibitions. Both were much admired. In 1895 the Art Gallery of New South Wales purchased her watercolour, Australian Wild Flowers: Waratahs (no.3 in a series), for four guineas; in 1897 the Herald critic noted that 'Miss Margaret Flockton’s still-life studies and flower paintings are better than anything of the same kind exhibited’.
Flockton was 'discovered’ by J.H. Maiden, Director of the Botanic Gardens and Government Botanist, who invited her to illustrate the book he was then writing, The Critical Revision of the Genus Eucalyptus . Maclellan notes that Maiden kept her 'hard at work’ at the Botanic Museum for five years beyond the official age for retirement; she also illustrated his Forest Flora of New South Wales . Among much other work, she provided the decorative wildflower borders for the butterfly studies in a booklet by Dr Riches, Scenic Gems of Australia .
Scientific natural history illustration was Flockton’s forte but she also succeeded in a more commercial market. In 1908 her Australian Wildflowers , a booklet of 12 pictures, was published by the New South Wales Bookstall Company. For about 10 years (1909-19) illustrations from it were reproduced both as large lithographs and as postcards in an 'Art Series’ that appeared in at least five different formats at 1s 5d a set of 12 (with an additional card depicting a New Zealand variety of ti-tree, possibly for distribution in that country).
Late in life, when living at Tennyson, near Gladesville, she wrote and illustrated 'Children’s Stories. Little Stories of Little People by Margaret L. Flockton’, which turned 'the life-history of plants and insects into a fascinating collection of children’s stories’. It seems to have remained unpublished.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 September 1861
- Summary
- A highly regarded natural history illustrator, as well as a painter and successful commercial artist, Sydney-based Flockton worked for a number of years illustrating the works of government botanist and Botanic Gardens director J.H Maiden.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1953
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-36.1259905 Longitude146.8932696 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1953-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wodonga, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, sculptor, jeweller, metalworker and art teacher, was born in Wodonga, Victoria, on 24 September 1860. In her twenties and early thirties, she was enrolled at the National Gallery School (1883-85, 1887-88 and 1891-93). Between 1901 and 1904 she exhibited oils, pastel portraits and sculpture with the Yarra Sculptors’ Society and during the same period conducted drawing and painting classes at her studio in Stalbridge Chambers, Chancery Lane, Melbourne. Later, she visited England, arriving in 1907.
By 1914 she had a studio in London at Edith Road, West Kensington. She is said to have studied in Paris, Holland and at the Brangwyn School of Painting. At some point she became highly skilled in metalwork, enamelwork and jewellery and, although she always continued to paint—predominantly landscapes and portraits—received greatest recognition for her craftwork. In 1914 she won a silver medal in a national competition in jewellery design held under the auspices of the Board of Education. That year she exhibited an enamel panel at the Royal Academy.
Francis revisited Melbourne in 1920 but soon returned to England. She regularly exhibited enamel work, silver and jewellery in the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition between 1927 and 1935 and is said to have also exhibited at the Royal Colonial Institute and at the Paris Salon where it is claimed she won first prize for a portrait in painted enamel. Documented and surviving examples of her craftwork are, in the main, stylistically typical of the English Arts and Crafts movement.
Francis returned to Australia in 1942. She spent her last years in Melbourne, where she died on 24 January 1953, aged 92. While an extensive collection of her work was sold in Melbourne shortly after her death, very little is now known. The only work located in a public collection is the silver and enamel triptych (NGV) discussed herein.
Writers:
O'Callaghan, Judith
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 September 1860
- Summary
- Despite spending a number of years studying painting at the National Gallery School in Melbourne in the late 1880s and early 1890s, Francis was to receive greater recognition for her craftwork, which she developed while studying and travelling overseas, winning prizes in Europe for her enamel work and jewellery design.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Jan-53
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1953-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- oil and watercolour painter and miniaturist, was born in Hobart, Tasmania, eldest daughter of the five children of George Cherry , a professional photographer, and Matilda, née James. In 1877 after their parents had died the children moved to Geelong in Victoria and Ada found work with Johnstone & O’Shannessy as a photographic retoucher and colourist. She also began to work privately as a miniature painter. In 1900 one of her first miniatures, that of Nan Cherry {her sister or mother?}, was hung at the Royal Academy, London.
Ada Cherry married Saville Whiting and they had two children, Saville and Molly. While the children were still young, she divorced her husband, an alcoholic, and returned to work as a miniature painter in order to support the family. She worked quickly, painting up to three miniatures a week and never required more than three sittings. She worked only on ivory for her miniatures, for which she was renowned, and she also painted larger oil and watercolour portraits, landscapes, flower and still life studies. Two miniatures were shown at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1917, two at the Royal Hibernian Academy and two at the Paris Salon in 1934.
Ada Whiting lived and worked mainly in Melbourne, where she had a studio, although she spent the winters in Sydney. She exhibited portraits and flower paintings with the Victorian Artists Society from 1898 to 1916. Her 1922 oil on canvas board painting of mushrooms and dandelions (25 × 35 cm) offered Sotheby’s Sydney 25 August 2002, lot 223 (not illustrated in catalogue) was probably shown in the Spring Exhibition of the Victorian Artists’ Society, Melbourne 1922, either cat. 87 or else Mushrooms cat. 91. In 1901 she showed work at the Society of Artists Commonwealth Exhibition and with the Royal Art Society.
Exhibited at Victorian Academy of Arts in 1884, when her address was given as 33 Hoddle Street, North Richmond.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1858
- Summary
- Oil and watercolour painter and miniaturist, was born in Hobart, Tasmania. She was a rapid worker, painting up to three miniatures a week, landscapes, flowers and still life studies. Works have been shown at the Paris Salon and other and artists' society exhibitions.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1953
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-37.8334603 Longitude144.9570188 Start Date1908-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and etcher, was born in South Melbourne, 15 December 1908, son of cartoonist Ambrose Dyson , who died insane in 1913 leaving Mrs Dyson, the former Mabel Frazer, and the five-year-old Amby penniless. Frank Hardy states that Mrs Dyson was forced to take in boarders in the tenement houses around Richmond and Collingwood, where they lived. Amby attended Yarra Park State School for a few years until 1922 then worked as an unskilled labourer for the next 14 years. In 1936, aged nearly twenty-eight, he had some art training. His uncles were cartoonist Will Dyson (who lived in England until 1925) and the Bulletin writer, journalist and balladist Edward George (Ted) Dyson, who supplied all the cartoon and joke-block gags for Melbourne Punch c.1880-90, according to his brother-in-law Norman Lindsay ( Bohemians of the Bulletin , p.155), but who died in August 1931 after suffering a nervous breakdown in 1923 ( Man July 1938).
Ambrose Dyson junior – Amby to his friends – drew many cartoons for Salt during WWII (Lindesay, WWW ). Frank Hardy, who wrote Amby’s biography to introduce a memorial volume of his cartoons, joined Salt in 1944 and met him then. In 1945 Amby won first prize in the graphics section and second prize in the Civil Construction Corps section of the 'Australia at War’ exhibition at Melbourne. He joined the Communist Party the same year and remained an active member until his death.
After the war he worked on Labor Call (Melbourne), e.g. Remember The Dole 1929-1935! published 2 May 1946 (ill. Senyard, 77), and was later on the staff of the Melbourne Guardian c.1950-51 (ill. Senyard, 81, 82). A free one-page pamphlet, Liberty: Vote No Special Referendum Issue , dated 28 August 1951, is signed 'amb Dyson’ (T.J. O’Sullivan, Australian Political Pamphlets, 1949-63, SLNSW ML). The subjects of his 8 vignettes between a short polemical article and the heading 'Australia’s Tradition: Say “No” To Tyranny’, were:
1850 No Convicts [convicts in chains] 1854 No Licences [Eureka] 1916-17 No Conscription [protest march] 1938 No Jap Rearmament [worker with 'no pig-iron for Japan’ sign] 1939-45 No Fascism [soldiers] 1951 No Political Bans ['red bill’ being thrown out of 'High Court’] 1951 No Thought Control [judge reading Power Without Glory by Frank Hardy, illustrated by Dyson] Sept. 22 1951 No Dictatorship Powers! [strong male working arms holding iron stamped 'NO’ about to brand Menzies].
Hardy claims that during the [bank] referendum campaign a million [ sic ] copies of Dyson’s withering comic The Calamitous Career of Dictator Bob [Menzies] were printed. He did the art and storylines for the aggressively Australian comic book series, The Capricornia’s Crew and their Adventures (Main Publishing Company, c.1949, 6d), which was set in places like the Great Barrier Reef and Central Australia: Episode 1: The Great Barrier Reef Mystery ; Episode 2, The Lost Tribe (cover ill. Shiell p.31); Episode 3, Secret of the Lost Land (cover ill. Shiell p.147); and Episode 4 (advertised as The Lost Tribe’s Revenge – unseen by Mick Stone but p.152 in Shiell 1998).
Dyson was also a painter and illustrator. In the 1980s Stephen Scheding owned his oil painting of a mother and child alighting from a bus (39.5 × 26.5 cm), inscribed verso: 'Amby Dyson 1949 (another unfinished sketch)’. In Frank Hardy’s view, his two finest paintings were done less than a year before his death: Mayday March and Peace Festival (reproduced Hardy). A few months later, in Melbourne on 26 November 1952, he died of thrombosis, survived by his wife, Phyl, and their daughter Janie (who 'bids fair to be another Dyson artist’, said Hardy in 1953). His second child died young, a few days before Amby.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 15 December 1908
- Summary
- Mid 20th century political cartoonist and artist. Son of Ambrose "Amb" Dyson.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Nov-52
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude-33.829075 Longitude151.24409 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mosman, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- caricaturist, drew a caricature of Jimmy Bancks c.1930s.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1890s
- Summary
- Early 20th century caricaturist. Harry worked for The Sun Newspaper as an illustrator until 1952. Contributed to the Reveille front cover page issue December 1934 drawing of the first conference in Australia of the British Empire Service League held in Melbourne attended by all parts of the British Empire. 1935 Archibald Prize finalist Painting of - Miss Spicer illustrated books
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Mar-52
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude52.2319581 Longitude21.0067249 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Warsaw, Poland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 9 June 1889
- Summary
- Proprietor of the Germaine Rocher dress salon in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Jun-52
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-33.8996968 Longitude151.170986 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Enmore, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and illustrator, was born on 26 May 1889 at Enmore, Sydney, son of a cleaner on the railways. He grew up at Hornsby, then part of Sydney’s rural fringe, leaving school at 14 to work as a part-time lift driver, wool clerk and office boy but practising drawing in his spare time. His first published drawings were art nouveau (Souterish) cartoons in the Comic Australia (1911-12), e.g. 'Under Government./ PARSON: “And your husband-what has he been doing the last six months?”/ PARISHIONER: “Six Months!”’ 28 October 1911, 15. From 1913 he drew for the Lone Hand , e.g. 'Women at the Front’ 1 April 1915, 307 (women as soldiers), and from 20 August 1914 for his long-admired Bulletin . When it guaranteed him £8 a week he left his office job and worked there full time, taking drawing lessons from Dattilo Rubbo (Royal Art Society) and Julian Ashton in the evenings. He remained at the Bulletin for eight years (included in c.1930s list of Bulletin artists, ML Px*D557 pt 5, '2’, as 'J. Banks’ – who could also be the painter and illustrator John Banks ) specialising in caricatures of sporting personalities and other Sydney notables, e.g. 42 original caricatures 1918 to 1930s of sportsmen, politicians etc. ML Bulletin collection; original caricature of Samuel Hordern 1918 (AGWA 957/0D62); original “Bogle” and “Frank Darcy” 1919 (AGWA, 957/0D49 & 957/0D57); joke about caricaturists during the influenza epidemic (when everyone covered their faces): 'Queered./ “Nice time for a blinkin’ caricaturist!”’ 6 February 1919, 8 (no original); (two men discussing an election poster) “What do you think of the candidates?”/ “Well, the more I think of them, the more pleased I am that only one of 'em can get in!” 1920.
Then he had a period freelancing, living at St Kilda with a studio in Swanston Street, Melbourne. He drew illustrations in Home , e.g. Jazz 1 December 1920, 35. In 1921 D.H. Souter initiated and drew 'Weary Willie and the Count de Main’ for Australia’s first comic strip supplement, 'Sunbeams’, four pages in the Sydney Sunday Sun that began in November 1921, but his strip about 'domain dossers’ so offended 'Sunbeams’ editor Ethel Turner (she later claimed) she demanded it be replaced. Five weeks later Bancks was given half the back page of 'Sunbeams’ for the strip 'Us Fellers’ (see Poole pp.332-33). One character was Ginger Meggs, who was to become the most famous Australian comic strip character of all time. Ginger did not lack rivals; within a year other Australian newspapers had set up comic supplements in competition. In 1924, however, 'Us Fellers’ was a full page in Melbourne’s Sun News-Pictorial and it subsequently appeared in newspapers in all the Australian states. The first major Australian strip to occupy a full newspaper page printed in colour (acc. Vane Lindesay in Inkspot ), it was syndicated in 1929 to the New York Mirror , the Boston Post , the St Louis Democrat and the Dallas News , and translated for French (Montreal) and Spanish (Buenos Aires) newspapers. In 1924 the first Ginger Meggs anthology was published and Bancks continued the series every Christmas until he died in 1952, with the sole exception of 1951. His successor, Ron Vivian , continued the tradition until 1959.
For a time Bancks was Australia’s highest paid black-and-white artist, receiving £80 a week in the 1920s. He also wrote a play. For the Evening Sun he drew the daily political cartoon in 1924 and created the comic strip 'The Blimps’ (1923-5). He drew for Keith Murdoch’s Melbourne Punch in 1924-25 and created the single panel feature 'Mr Melbourne Day by Day’ for Murdoch’s Sun News-Pictorial (1925). After the demise of Melbourne Punch , he worked on Table Talk (1928 [sic] doctor joke ill. Lindesay 1979, 185). In 1925 he moved himself and 'Us Fellas’ back to Sydney and to the Sunday Sun ; 'Ginger Meggs’ became the strip’s official title from November 1939. Bancks took it to Frank Packer’s Sunday Telegraph in 1951 after Associated Newspapers failed to fulfil a contractual obligation to put it on the front page of the comic supplement.
Bancks’s died from a sudden heart attack at his Point Piper home on 1 July 1952. Then Ronald Vivian drew the strip until he too died (in 1974) when it was taken over by Lloyd Piper . In August 1978, amid much fanfare, 'Ginger Meggs’ returned to the Sun-Herald where it vigorously continues its weekly slot, as well as a daily Sydney Morning Herald strip to mid 2005, the Daily Telegraph since then, having been drawn by James Kelmsley since November 1983 (full story Ryan pp.77-78 and Lindesay 1979, 38-41). In 1995 Kemsley’s fourth Ginger Meggs anthology (no.39 in the series) was published by Allen and Kemsley of Mosman NSW.
Bancks married Jessie, daughter of E.J. Tate, manager of J.C. Williamson’s. She died in childbirth in the 1930s – and the child also died. In 1938 Patricia Quinn became his second wife. They had a daughter, Sheena, whose husband Michael Latimer wrote the screenplay for the 1982 film of Ginger Meggs. Another movie with Kelmsley involved was filming in 1998.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 May 1889
- Summary
- Popular and influential mid 20th century Sydney and Melbourne cartoonist and illustrator. Bancks is best known as the creator of Ginger Meggs and for a time he was Australia's highest paid black-and-white artist, receiving £80 a week in the 1920s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jul-52
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Sydney, NSW?
- Biography
- cartoonist and illustrator, was for many years a staff artist on the New York Times . On 1 January 1914, the Lone Hand stated: that Russom was “better known in America than in his own country, for he left Australia for San Francisco at the age of nineteen. After spending five years in the west, where he contributed to illustrated daily and Sunday papers, he came to New York, where, in addition to his journalistic work, he has drawn for most of the leading magazines. He made his first hit with a series of drawings in Life , in which he pictured the transit problems of the future. In these, the aerial railways and the air-ship specials dwarf the motor age to insignificance.”
A cartoon from Life – 'A leading experimenter believes that our lower animals can be grown to enormous sizes if fed on a scientific diet’ – was reproduced on p.145 of the article.
In Sydney, Russom had studied under Julian Ashton and exhibited with the Royal Art Society. His cartoon parodying the RAS, Many a True Word etc. (original ML), is illustrated and discussed in Joan Kerr, Artists and Cartoonists in Black and White (Sydney: National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery, 1999). Even as a youth he was considered something of a prodigy:
Syd Long had a painting bought for the Sydney Gallery when he was eighteen, but Russom was (apparently) a year younger when the trustees bought his pencil sketch which hangs in the black and white section in the Gallery ('Reginald B. Russom’, Lone Hand 1914).
Russom ultimately returned to Australia. He died at Newcastle, NSW, in 1952. A memorial exhibition of his work was held there later that year.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1887
- Summary
- Australian cartoonist who worked in New York. In Sydney, he had studied under Julian Ashton and exhibited with the Royal Art Society.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1952
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, caricaturist and journalist, was born Frederick Collis in Melbourne on 2 February 1887. He worked as a cartoonist and comic writer and illustrator from about 1908 to the early 1930s using the name 'Ted Colles’ and other pseudonyms, including 'Dunno’, 'Det Selloc’ (Ted Colles spelt backwards), 'Kolles’ and 'Gussie Gumboil’. He was living in Sydney when he drew a Ted Colles cartoon, Drought Striken , a pun on two dry swaggies ('empties’) at a railway station purchasing a ticket (original Norman Lilley col. Mitchell Library [ML]). It was published as a single column gag in Norman Lilley’s comic magazine Vumps (Sydney, 1908).
In the 1910s Ted Colles was contributing to the Bulletin , the Sunday Times and other Sydney magazines. He drew the cover of the Comic Australian of 13 January 1912: 'Police Protection Wanted; [Miss Nellie Stewart proudly boasts that in her recent charity campaign she did not – even once – experience defeat at the hands of a business man]; Mr Glitter, the Cash King, once completely routed three armed robbers. Here we see him wavering before the mere fire-flashes of deep-blue eyes!’ Another cartoon for the Comic Australian was 'The Passing of the Principal “Boy”’ illustrating a story of a pantomime 'boy’ to be played by a man, published 6 January 1912.
Some of Colles’s political cartoons for the Bulletin were full-page. He also collaborated with the permanent editorial cartoonists, Norman Lindsay and 'Hop’ , in the preparation of others. Most supported tariff protection for Australian industries and attacked all political parties. A cartoon that attracted particular attention just after the outbreak of war depicted a woman labelled 'Germania’ (representing the common people of Germany) bearing on her shoulders, with great difficulty, a huge cross labelled 'Militarism’. Captioned 'The Iron Cross. (A well-known decoration in Germany.)’; it was published in the Bulletin on 1 October 1914. A far more naturalistic Bulletin cartoon signed 'Kolles’ (his other cartoons are signed 'Ted Colles’), published 29 January 1914 (ML Px*D272/22), is very different in style: Not Dressed for Company (title changed from 'Unpreparedrest’)/ Rev. G. Green: “Ah well, no doubt it’s for the best, my dead woman…doubtless your poor dear husband was prepared to meet his Maker?”/ Widow: “Nun-no. He wasn’t Mr Green. He wuz in his dungarees.” Another 'Kolles’ original of 1914 is also in ML.
Colles enlisted in the 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance at Melbourne in November 1914 and served on Gallipoli and in Egypt and France. He was one of three combatant artists at Gallipoli (the others were David Barker and Frank Crozier) who were organised by C. W. Bean into helping produce The Anzac Book from the Front. All three provided artwork, along with W.O. Hewitt, C. Leyshon-White and many non-professional artists who served at Gallipoli. The book, published by Cassell’s London in 1916, was immensely successful. Colles’s contributions were a short story, a black and white drawing and several coloured drawings, two of which became very well known: Abdul , a portrait of a typical Turkish soldier illustrating a poem by Bean, and Something to Remember Us By , a Turk’s face with a black eye and sticking plaster (originals Australian War Memorial). The Sydney Mail of 22 June 1917 noted: 'Some of the illustrations, especially those by Ted Colles, are well worth the price of the book’. From the Australian Front , published in 1917, contained sketches by Colles as well as by Will Dyson, Frank Crozier, Vernon Lorimer, et al. (Moore ii, 54).
As well as drawing cartoons, Colles wrote numerous articles about the war for the Bulletin . Its 'Red Page’ of 18 January 1917 noted: 'One of the surprises of the war has been the development of Ted Colles, a contributing Bulletin artist, into a brilliant unofficial war correspondent.’ He also illustrated a small book of comic verse about the thoughts of a mentally afflicted young man by the New Zealand and Sydney poet Boyce Bowden, Sand in the Head (Melbourne: Alexander McCubbin, 1920). Some critics condemned the book as being in bad taste, though the Bulletin praised Colles’s drawings as being 'full of skill and humor’.
After the war Colles continued to work as a freelance journalist and artist for Sydney and Melbourne newspapers, including Smith’s Weekly , Lone Hand , the Melbourne Herald and a Melbourne weekly The Midnight Sun , e.g. Fashions as seen in the A.I.F. by Ted Colles , 1920. He also contributed articles and drawings to young people’s magazines like Pals and Prize Packets Weekly , as well as to the aviation, nautical and radio journal Sea, Land and Air . His cartoons include: 'HE: “Gee! There’s one of them cubist pictures!”/ SHE: “Strewth! What a terrible place Cuba must be!” ' Beckett’s Budget , 21 June 1927, 35. He continued to draw for the Bulletin and also contributed several short stories. One was published in a special issue of 10 December 1921 'containing work by the 100 best artists and writers of Australia’. The ML Bulletin collection has 11 drawings by Colles dated 1925-27 and three caricatures dated 1921 and 1923 (including one of Samuel Garnet Wells, artist).
Colles was appointed a staff journalist on the Sydney Sun in 1922. As editor of the newspaper’s children’s supplement Sunbeams , he encouraged children to write and draw and gave artist Jim Bancks much assistance in the creation of his full-page comic 'Ginger Meggs’. Colles died in Sydney on 6 January 1952, three weeks after his wife, and was survived by their son Peter F. Collis, a Sydney journalist.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 2 February 1887
- Summary
- Prolific early 20th century cartoonist, caricaturist and journalist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Jan-52
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat East, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1886
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Mar-52
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-34.1559488 Longitude138.7473775 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Riverton, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Edwin Scholz, known as ‘Ted’, was born in 1881 at Riverton in South Australia’s mid-north. He was an experienced wheelwright, though he pursued a career in photography. Scholz participated regularly in various local shows, where he successfully exhibited his work in the photographic sections. He tended to enter scenic photographs in different categories, including ‘under half-plate’, over half-plate’ and ‘postcard’, and in some instances he won prizes for these. During the period spanning 1905 and 1920, he won approximately seven prizes at shows in Auburn, Saddleworth and Clare.
A collection of Scholz’s glass negatives survive, some of which form part of the Noye Collection held in the Art Gallery of South Australia. These depict various South Australian scenes from around the first decade of the twentieth century, including the Burra copper mine and its surrounding buildings in 1906.
Writers:
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- Edwin Scholz was a South Australian amateur photographer, who won several prizes for his photographs at local shows during the early twentieth century. He practiced scenic photography and is noted for a collection of glass negatives depicting various regions of South Australia, taken between c.1900-1910.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1952
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Alice Bott was born in Brisbane on 23 March 1879, the youngest child of the five boys and two girls born to William Bott (an English engineer) and his wife Sara née Bragg. Nell Bott (qv) was her older sister. Even less is known of Alice’s early career although she received a first prize for wood carving at the Royal Agricultural Society of Queensland, Toowoomba in 1900 and exhibited oil paintings of flowers at the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association in 1915.
Alice and her sister Nell advertised under 'The Birtle Art Work Coy’ in 1923 when they offered hand made pottery, babies woollen goods and “dainty novelties” for sale as well as teaching oil and pastel painting, art needlework and sweet making. In 1924 she first exhibited china painting with the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland with Miss Amy Young, and continued to exhibit (often with extensive quantities) until 1946. Where she received her instruction is not known as china-painting was not a popular craft in Brisbane. She also exhibited pottery at the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland in the years 1932-40 together with other craftwork. She exhibited collections of pottery and china painting at the Royal Queensland Art Society 1932-36 as well as at the annual exhibitions of the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association 1924 and 1930-32 where she was awarded several prizes for her work.
She exhibited a collection of pottery or china painting at the second Annual Exhibition of Work by art students of the Central Technical College in December 1933 and also at the third Exhibition in November-December 1934. She may also have exhibited in 1935 and 1936 but the individual exhibitors are not cited. Miss Bott gave a talk on pottery to the Queensland Country Women’s Association Metropolitan Branch in 1930 while her sister and Mrs Julian demonstrated. In 1936 she taught crafts to the Queensland Country Women’s Association Younger Group and the Young Women’s Christian Association.
She was a well-known teacher of pottery and china painting and gave lessons from the studio the sisters built on their home at Kennigo Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. Her methods followed that of L. J. Harvey but were more simplified. Florence Archer, Mrs E. L. Harris, Ailsa Lancaster, Dinah McIntyre, Margaret McLean, Pat Prentice, Mary Prosser, Mrs Bruce Shearer and Doris Williams are numbered among her students. She was not as accomplished a potter as her sister Nell and her pieces are usually undated. She died in Brisbane on 22 March 1952.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 March 1879
- Summary
- Alice Bott was a prominent member of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Queensland, a student of L.J. Harvey and a pottery instructor.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 22-Mar-52
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1876
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1952
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Uxbridge, Middlesex (Greater London), England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born at Uxbridge, Middlesex, England, on 7 February 1872, second eldest daughter of the ten children of a successful draper and haberdasher and his wife. Ethel Carrick was educated at home; she also attended drawing lessons with Francis Bate at the Brook Green Studio, London. Between 1898-99 and 1902-03 she was a student at the Slade School, London, where she studied under Fred Brown and Henry Tonks. In 1903 she began exhibiting; she also won the Melville Nettleship Prize for figure composition that year.
Ethel Carrick became involved with a plein air artists’ camp at St Ives, Cornwall, where she met her future husband, Emanuel Phillips Fox. They married in 1905 and moved to Paris, setting up residence at 64 Boulevard Arago, Montparnasse. She often painted in the gardens and her work from this period is replete with images of the bourgeois leisure scene. The Foxes were keen travellers, making painting trips to the south of France, Spain, the north of Africa and Italy which yielded a large body of beachside, waterfront and marketplace images. In 1908, and again in 1912, they visited Australia. On the second visit Ethel declined to join Emanuel’s family in Melbourne, remaining in Sydney at the theosophical retreat, the Manor, at Mosman.
Together the Foxes travelled to Tahiti and were there at the outbreak of World War I. They returned to Australia where they found themselves virtually trapped for the duration of the war. Shelving their personal problems, they worked to organise an exhibition and art union at the Athenaeum Gallery, Melbourne, to raise money for the purchase of a lorry for the French Red Cross. Emanuel fell ill and died in 1915, aged fifty. Ethel returned to Paris during the 1920s; by 1925 she was planning to tour Emanuel’s work in Australia where it was still little known. While always maintaining her own practice, she worked tirelessly throughout her life to promote his reputation in this country.
Travelling and painting continuously, she availed herself of the worldwide network of theosophical retreats. For a time she lived on a houseboat in Kashmir, but generally was based in Paris or Sydney. (An undated oil painting of the Glass House Mountains in Queensland was offered by Christie’s Australia at Melbourne on 7 May 2003, lot 368) During the 1940s she maintained a studio near Circular Quay in George Street, Sydney, where she also held classes. Her forte was outdoor figure compositions and she preferred to work directly from life, although in 1928 she was awarded the Diploma of Honour at the Bordeaux International Exhibition for her painting Summer Is Here, Manly Beach (1913), one of the few studio pictures she made.
There have been problems with attributing some works to either Ethel or her husband as she used a repertoire of signatures, including 'Carrick’, 'Ethel Carrick’, 'E. Carrick Fox’ and 'E. Phillips Fox’. The last, predictably, is the site of confusion; she probably adopted it deliberately as a strategy for survival.
Ethel Carrick Fox was a complex, independent, hard-working, resourceful woman whose chief interests, apart from securing recognition for her late husband’s work, were travel and work – or travel in order to work. She died in Melbourne on 17 June 1952 at the age of eighty, having just arrived there from Paris.
Writers:
Howe, Elin
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 7 February 1872
- Summary
- Painter born in England. She was a complex, independent, hard-working, resourceful woman whose chief interests, apart from securing recognition for her late husband's work, were travel and work - or travel in order to work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-Jun-52
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Potter Charles Richard Courtland was born in Sydney in 1872 and at the age of fourteen commenced an apprenticeship at Mashman’s Pottery in Sydney. Gold fever brought him to Western Australia in the 1890s but he soon became disillusioned with the amount of gold easily won and opened a store in Northam supplying the railway workers engaged in constructing the Kalgoorlie pipeline. Nearby was the Millington Brickworks where he made pottery as an artist potter. Stoneware clay was brought from Victoria, and coal to fire the stoneware was brought from Newcastle, as the local coal did not generate enough heat to vitrify the clay. Courtland’s partner in the store gambled it away one night and Courtland and his young wife Kathleen Riley, daughter of the editor of the Northam Advertiser, left Northam to work in a pottery in the south west near Bunbury, Western Australia, possibly Capel Potteries. A piece made at this time is still in the collection of the family. This is large footed bowl with applied motifs depicting Shakespeare, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The motifs had been slip cast into carved cuttlefish moulds, a technique commonly used by jewellers. In 1900 Courtland bought the property in Belmont where the pottery stands today. In 1902 he teamed up with a builder Samuel Pedersen to form the Courtland and Pedersen Sydney Pottery Works. The premises were only a shed. As they prospered the front of the building was extended and improved. Pedersen left after about seven years. The work was thrown on kick wheels converted to electricity in 1906. The same wheels continued to be used. The original wares were garden pottery, domestic bread crocks and hotel bread crocks (to take ten loaves at a time), acid jars – covered with wicker work by the nearby Blind Institute in Maylands, pickling pots and ten gallon vessels for ginger beer. The majority of the production was salt-glazed stoneware similar to that produced at the Eastern States potteries – Bendigo, Fowlers and others. The clay was imported from Campbellfield in Victoria. The salt glazed pottery was fired in a large, round downdraft kiln fuelled with coal and finished with wood. These practical general-purpose lines were stamped Pedersen/Sydney Pottery Works/Belmont Western Australia or SPW. These wares were undertaken until 1942. Courtland kept up an allegiance to Sydney, which he visited every second year. Courtland considered himself an artist potter. In 1906 he won a medal at the 'Chamber of Manufactures Exhibition’ in Perth with a moulded head of King Edward. He produced an extensive range of 'artwares’ such as vases and birdbaths with moulded decorations. These were made of earthenware, fired in a double-chamber, up-draught bottle-shaped kiln and glazed with a clear lead-based majolica, coloured with various oxides to produce browns, bright greens and greys. The clear glaze designed to melt between 950 and 1050 enhanced the rich terracotta of the local earth. This type of work was produced until at least 1925-26. Marks used on the pottery include: “G. R. Courtland” (inscribed) from 1895-11, “Courtland and Pedersen Sydney Pottery Works Belmont, W.” (impressed stamp) from 1903-11, “SPW” from 1903-11, “Sydney Pottery Works” and “Courts Astral Ware” 1913-40s.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1872
- Summary
- Charles Richard Courtland was born in 1872. He was a potter who won a medal at the 'Chamber of Manufactures Exhibition' in Perth in 1906.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1952
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 8 July 1872
- Summary
- Norman Macgeorge, artist, teacher and art patron, was born in Adelaide in 1872. He studied at the Adelaide School of Design and the National Gallery School, Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1952
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-34.9050605 Longitude138.8764755 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lobethal, Adelaide Hills, SA, Australia
- Biography
- craftworker and teacher, was born at Lobethal in the Adelaide Hills (SA) on 10 February 1866, the eldest daughter of Rev. Dr Carl H.C. Loessel and his second wife, Hermine, née Piper. She was baptised at St Paul’s Church, Lobethal, where her father was pastor and at St Peter’s Church, Woodside. Alma Loessel became a teacher and taught at various schools around Adelaide, including Thebarton and East Adelaide. After retiring she settled at Beulah Road, Kensington, where she died, aged eighty-six, on 26 September 1952.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Menz, Christopher
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 February 1866
- Summary
- Alma Loessel, craftworker born in Adelaide Hills in 1866 became a teacher. She taught at various schools around Adelaide, including Thebarton and East Adelaide and died in 1952.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Sep-52
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tasmania
- Biography
- wood-carvers, were mother and daughter who worked in central Queensland from the turn of the century. As well as being an accomplished wood-carver, Daisy (as she was known) was prominent in the social life of the area. Born Alice Manon Marwedel in Tasmania in 1862, Daisy and her twin sister Jessie Marie Martha later moved to Toowoomba, Queensland, with their family. Jessie married George Allan, a schoolmaster at Rockhampton, and when Daisy came to stay she met, and in 1889 married, the pastoralist Robert Archer (1858-1926). They lived at the Archer family property, Gracemere, outside Rockhampton, which Robert had inherited.
Daisy Archer’s interest in carving was sparked off by the work of the station bookkeeper Henry James King-Church (c.1869-1905). She appears to have had no formal training in art, although she may have had lessons in carving from her eldest sister, Emma, who cared for the twins after their mother died. Daisy also produced her own embroidery designs.
Robert Archer was extensively involved with the Rockhampton Agricultural Society, and Daisy acted as judge and steward of the Women’s Industries’ section at the Rockhampton Annual Show on several occasions. She was instrumental in setting up the local branch of the Queensland Country Women’s Association and during the 1930s became increasingly involved in this organisation. From the early part of this century until her husband died, she produced an extensive body of carving.
Daisy and Robert Archer’s daughter Joan was born in Rockhampton. She studied art in England in 1905-09 at the Croamhurst School in Croydon, where her best subject was watercolour painting. Her initial interest in woodcarving was also fostered by King-Church. Unlike her mother, Joan exhibited her work. In 1910 she was awarded a prize for woodcarving from the Rockhampton Agricultural Society, and in 1939 from Toowoomba.
While engaged to her cousin Alister Archer, Joan completed a carved chair after an original in an Oslo museum while he was on active service during World War I. They married in 1919. She continued carving after her marriage and produced many items for the Comforts Funds during World War II, until a stroke put an end to these activities.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1862
- Summary
- Alice Manon Archer, known as Daisy Archer, was a wood-carver working in central Queensland from the turn of the century. Her daughter, Joan, became quite a successful artist.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1952
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1856-01-01 End Date1952-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, TAS, Australia
- Biography
- Portrait painter, was born in Hobart on 2 December 1856. She studied with Mme Berthe Mouchette at Melbourne and later with Signor Loureiro. After returning to Hobart, she was sent to England by her family to study at the Herkomer School, Bushey c.1890. She also studied at the Slade School in London and at Colarossi’s in Paris. She spent some time in Brittany and had a studio in Paris in 1891. She returned to Tasmania in 1892 with a collection of work painted in England and France. Back in Hobart she taught drawing and Spanish at her sister Sarah’s school, the Hobart Ladies College and the Governor of Tasmania, Lord Gormanston commissioned her to paint portraits of his two daughters (c.1892). Other commissions included a portrait of Bishop Montgomery and a plaster cast of him now in the Cathedral Museum, Hobart. She presented a sketch of her brother, James Backhouse Walker, done in 1899 to the Tasmanian Royal Society in 1946 (now on loan to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery). Her studio was in Barrack Street, opposite the Anglesea Barracks. Later she moved to Geilston Bay to live with her sister Isabella. She died there on 21 April 1952.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Gward
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 2 December 1856
- Summary
- As a portrait painter, Walker trained in Europe at institutions such as the Slade School in London and Colarossi's in Paris. She received commissions from the Governor of Tasmania and Bishop Montgomery.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Apr-52
- Age at death
- 96
Details
Latitude48.3059078 Longitude14.286198 Start Date1900-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Linz, Austria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1900
- Summary
- Trained in Germany, Prague & Vienna in "civil architecture" and interior design. He arrived in Australia ca.1938 and worked with the architect Leighton Irwin's firm. 1947, began teaching at Melbourne Technical College in architecture, furniture design, interior design, design & construction. By 1948 he was a full-time senior lecture and initiated the 4-year Interior Design Diploma.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Aug-51
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1891-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Burnside, Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, art teacher and gallery director, was born in Burnside, Adelaide, on 23 December 1891. She was a student, then instructor, at the Sydney Art School in 1915-23, studied linocut with Claude Flight at Iain MacNab’s Grosvenor School of Modern Art, London, from September to December 1927, then painting at André Lhôte’s academy in Paris between 1927 and 1929, in the latter year taking two lessons (accompanied by Grace Crowley ) with Albert Gleizes. She returned to Sydney late in 1929. During the 1920s she converted from Anglicanism to Christian Science.
Principally a painter and linocut artist, Dorrit Black inaugurated and ran the Modern Art Centre in Margaret Street, Sydney, in 1923-33, holding solo exhibitions by Grace Crowley, Ralph Balson , Enid Cambridge , Roland Wakelin and Frank Weitzel there, as well as an exhibition of her own work and several group exhibitions. She produced linocuts from about 1927 to about 1951, but most intensively during the late 1920s and early 1930s, giving lessons in the medium at the Modern Art Centre and helping Claude Flight promote linocuts in England.
Returning to Adelaide in 1935, Black became vice-chairman of the Contemporary Art Society in 1942. In 1944 she formed Group 9; the initial members included Marjorie Gwynne and Horace Trenerry; later, artists such as Francis Roy Thomson and Jeffrey Smart joined. Periodically, she wrote letters to newspaper editors defending modern art or addressing political matters from a socialist perspective. She worked from a modest home-studio designed to her specifications on land acquired in 1939 at Romalo Avenue, Magill, in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs, not far from her birthplace. She died on 13 September 1951 as the result of a car crash.
IMAGES: Linocuts include W oman mowing lawn in Heritage and The Leg Action Conductor in Manuscripts 12 (20 February 1935), 51 (separate linocut on Japanese paper 15.2 × 9.3 cm in Bendigo Art Gallery. Black also did linocut views e.g. Nocturne, Wynyard Square , AGNSW acq. 1976, and plants Blackboys (c.1939 45) AGNSW, gift 1968 (AGNSW holds the six lino blocks used for this print).
PORTRAIT: Dorrit Black , oil on card by Jacqueline Hick (coll. Artist, ill Heritage ); Doris Hope Weston (evidently a British artist), Claude Flight’s Painting Lesson , oil on canvas with Parkin Gallery provenance and said to include artists Daphne Mayo [sic] and Dorrit Black, was auctioned at Christie’s Sydney 14-15 August 1994, lot 194A (ill).
Writers:
North, Ian
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1891
- Summary
- A contemporary of Grace Crowley and Ralph Balson, Dorrit Black was both a painter and printmaker, particularly of linocuts. An active member of both the Sydney and Adelaide arts communities, Black, who founded Group 9, was also involved in Sydney's Modern Art Centre and the Contemporary Art Society in Adelaide.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Sep-51
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-31.0818 Longitude152.8512 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- East Kempsey, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter and potter, was born in East Kempsey (New South Wales) on 1 December 1885 to parents of Irish origin; she was known in the family as Nancy. After initial lessons in Kempsey, probably with a Miss Gabrielle, and in Sydney with Horace Moore Jones, Dangar studied then taught at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School, at the same time as Grace Crowley . The two friends went to France together in January 1926. After a pilgrimage to Cézanne’s house at Aix-en-Provence, Dangar and Crowley studied painting in Paris, joining Colarossi’s and working briefly under the Beaux-Arts painter Louis Roger, then at the cubist André Lhôte’s Parisian academy and summer school at Mirmande (1927-28). Anne also took lessons in design from Mme Né and attended M. Henri Bernier’s pottery classes at Viroflay, near Sévres. Bernier considered that her hands 'were made for holding pots’.
After touring Italy with Crowley, Dangar returned to Sydney. An advertisement in Undergrowth announced:
Miss Anne Dangar, who will arrive in Sydney in November [1928], after a three years’ study abroad, will take a class of students to the country for one month in January. She proposes a series of vivid and interesting lectures, illustrated with reproductions of the works of European masters as part of this adventure.
The group was to be limited to twenty-five students paying three guineas each. They sketched at Wamberal on the coast north of Sydney, and the classes were a great success. Dangar opened a studio in Bridge Street and taught at Ashton’s again for a short time, but Sydney and Ashton were not ready for modern art. She returned to France in 1930 and settled at Albert Gleizes’s art colony, Moly-Sabata, near Ardêche in southern France, where she became immersed in pottery. Her mark 'MSD’, painted on early pots produced at the local pottery of St Dézirat, stands for 'Moly-Sabata Dangar’. Later pots were fired at Roussillion.
Her pottery was well received in France. She had two exhibitions at the end of 1932, the first at the Musée d’Annonay, which purchased ten pots. Several French collections hold examples of her work, including the Museum of Modern Art in Paris and the Fondation Albert Gleizes, Paris. She sent a batch of her pottery back to Crowley in 1932, which to her distress was sold ( see Margaret Jaye ). More followed in 1935 and 1937, but the high rate of breakages discouraged further exports. Her pots and her rich and abundant correspondence with Crowley (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney), as well as with Dorrit Black and others, were a tangible connection with European modernism for Sydney artists at the Crowley-Fizelle School. She often sent copies of articles and lectures by Gleizes and others, as well as her own design and colour exercises.
Dangar remained at Moly-Sabata and eventually (in 1947) had a pottery built for her there, but illness increasingly limited her output. In her work Dangar both taught and learned from the villagers around her. She became friendly with the Benedictine monks at St Marie de la Pierre Qui Vivre, converting to Roman Catholicism just before she died of cancer on 4 September 1951.
Writers:
Maxwell, Helen
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1 December 1885
- Summary
- A talented and well recognised modernist ceramic artist, Anne Dangar spent most of her artistic life at the Moly-Sabata artists' colony, near Ardêche in southern France. With hands made for holding pots, her work is held in multiple French collections.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 4-Sep-51
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Oil and pastel portrait painter, born Ballarat 1884; studied at Ballarat Technical School of Art (under control of the School of Mines), then at the National Gallery of Victoria [NGV] Schools: Design 1898-1900 (first prize for hand/foot from cast 1898), then Painting 1900-1904. Won NGV Travelling Scholarship in 1905. After studying in Paris (medal at Old Salon, i.e. Société des Artistes Françaises), he settled in London.
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1884
- Summary
- Oil and pastel portrait painter, born Ballarat, Vic.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1951
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- Painter, teacher and designer, was born in New Zealand. He was an art director at Smith and Julius studios. He became a director with Harry Julius when Sydney Ure Smith pursued publishing Art in Australia. From 1917 he was secretary of Commercial Artists’ Association of NSW. He taught painting, applied arts and design at a number of schools and colleges in Sydney and was art master at SCEGGS Redlands when Alison Rehfisch was a student there. He designed a poster for ANTA, The World’s Loveliest Harbour, Sydney, Australia 1930 (NGA). He also painted landscapes; Bridget McDonnell offered his oil painting, The Old Dairy, Kangaroo Valley, N.S.W. inscribed 'To Will Ashton [q.v.] with regards, Jan. 30, 1928’ for sale in May 2001. Rachel Power remarks that 'his performances on the ABC’s Children’s Hour made his character 'Uncle Joe’ a household name.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
John H Martin
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 1883
- Summary
- Perhaps best known as 'Uncle Joe' from the ABC's 'Children's Hour', Collins was a painter, designer and teacher who worked at SCEGGS Redlands when Alison Rehfisch was a student there. Posters by Collins are also known for S & J Australia (Smith and Julius).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1951
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Percy Stanhope Hobday was born in Brisbane on 17 December 1879 the only son of three children of James Mayall Hobday and his wife Henrietta Isabella née Arrall. His initial lessons in art were from his father who had received his training in England and who exhibited with the Queensland Art Society (QAS) 1899-1909. He enrolled at the Brisbane Technical College from 1896 where he studied under Richard Godfrey Rivers. Hobday worked in the photographic studio of fellow QAS member L.W.K. Wirth.
He exhibited with the QAS for 50 years from 1901, was joint President of the Society in 1918 and served continuously on the committee from 1922 to 1947, acting as Treasurer from 1923 to 1925, Vice President from 1926 to 1927, 1939 to 1944 and 1946 to 1947. Hobday also served as President of the Society in the years from 1928 to 1931. He was awarded the Coronation Medal and the RQAS Jubilee Medal in 1937 for his services to the Society and was also made a life member. He also served as President of the New Society of Artists, Brisbane in 1912, President of the Queensland Authors and Artists Association from 1931 (and later was made a life member) and was also involved with the Queensland Wattle League.
Hobday’s sisters, Augusta (1884-1961) and Gladys (later Powell, 1891-1938), were also involved with the QAS over many years. Percy and Augusta conducted a commercial art studio in Brisbane, the Hobday Art Studio, which was housed in the Celtic Buildings, George Street, and later at the Reserve Bank Chambers, 115 Queen Street. They also gave art lessons – Peter Abraham and Laurence Collinson were numbered among their students. The Hobdays also conducted art classes at the Brisbane Polytechnic School for many years. Hobday was visiting art master at the Brisbane Grammar School 1936-38. He also designed the first cover for the quarterly literary magazine Meanjin in 1940.
Hobday married Emily Florence Hingston, the only daughter of Thomas Hodnett Hingston and his wife Emily Sara Barrett, in 1935 (her brother was the artist Arthur James Hingston (1875-1912). Hobday died in Brisbane on 7 August 1951, and 16 years later, in 1967, the bequest of his wife Emily Florence Hobday provided for the establishment of 'The Hobday and Hingston Bursary’ at the Queensland Art Gallery.
The landscape was Hobday’s primary focus throughout his career. During the early 1930s Hobday experimented extensively with monotypes and included 27 in an exhibition of his monotypes and watercolours at the Academy Salon Gallery, Sydney in 1934. Hobday was represented in the 'Exhibition of Queensland art’ held at QAG in 1951 by a watercolour, Seaside symphony , and a monotype, Regatta (the latter was included in the Australian Collection of Art, Coronation Exhibition, London in 1937). Two years before his death he donated 49 monotypes to the Darnell Collection (now University Art Museum), University of Queensland.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2004
Last updated:
2008
- Born
- b. 17 December 1879
- Summary
- Federation period Brisbane painter, caricaturist and graphic designer. Stanhope Hobday had an extensive career through the annual exhibitions of the Royal Queensland Art Society over 50 years and produced the expected range of works from crepuscular landscapes to caricatures but also produced a significant number of monotypes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Aug-51
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude53.2606635 Longitude-2.1255158 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Macclesfield, England, UK
- Biography
- Painter and teacher who was born in Macclesfield, England May 28, 1878. He studied on a Government Local Scholarship c1893-8 under James Ward at the School of Art and obtained his Art Teachers Certificate. He then studied textile design at Hope Mills Macclesfield and worked for a time as a textile designer and teacher at Halifax Secondary School and Ashton-on-Lyne School of Art. In 1901 he won the first “Royal College of Art Scholarship”, tenable for three more years at _50 per annum, and worked in the Stained Glass Atelier of the Design School under W. R. Lethaby. He studied woodcarving, tapestry weaving, writing and illumination. As well as being top student he also won the upper school prize money for Design and Craftwork. Lethaby wrote in a reference in 1913, “He gave special attention to Designing for Textiles and to practical work in Stained Glass, in both with excellent results. For Design he has, I consider, a distinct gift, his pattern work being fresh and strong and of good colour. In Stained Glass he has worked out some admirable pieces from his own cartoons.” He also won the Royal College of Art Travelling Scholarship, which he used to visit Paris and study in Rome, Naples, Florence, Venice, Bologna, Pistoia, and spent time in the Rome Academy of Arts. He became a “Full Associate of the Royal College of Art ARCA (London) Holder of First Class in Architecture, Design, Painting and Modelling.” While in London he carried out a number of windows for that City, together with tapestry, weaving and illumination work. In 1907 he ventured out to India to become Vice Principal, then Acting Principal, of the Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhai School of Art Bombay, where he stayed until December 1912. During this time he made many studies mainly in oils of the many facets of Indian life, including several of the primitive hill tribes, which gained him recognition in art circles in France. In the years he spent in India he followed a style of figure studies and portraiture, reminiscent of Frank Bragwyn, which style was to colour his figure compositions for many years to come. He came to Perth in 1913 but in 1915 moved on to Victoria. On migrating to Victoria he was Art Master at Bendigo School of Mines, Ballarat Technical Art School, Caufield Technical Art School, Head of the Art Department of the Gordon Insitute of Technology, Geelong, followed by a period as Senior Master in Art training at the Working Men’s’ College Melbourne (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology). According to a family biographical typescript he was able to pass on his knowledge of various crafts “increasing Craft Work in Australia, particularly in the Technical Schools and at the Gordon Institute.” During these years he continued painting in both oil and watercolours and held several exhibitions of his work in the main centres in Victoria. He married Evelyn and had five children. His wife was a spinner and he made her a box spinning wheel during World War I, which is now in the collection of the Western Australian Museum. One of their daughters was the art teacher and painter Marjory Rowbothom. Leaving Victoria in 1927 the family moved to Albany, Western Australia. He immediately exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts. His entries in 1927 were oil paintings of Napier Bridge; Oyster Harbour; Showery Weather, and Abandoned. In 1928 he exhibited several oils. One entitled Wise Men was priced at _105, the others were 4 guineas each. Six oils paintings were exhibited in 1930 – all landscapes. He loved the bush, the golden flashes of Wattle and Sunlight in the sombre greens of the Eucalypts and he loved depicting the knarled giant Paperbarks backed by the misty blues of the rugged hills. George Benson describing his entry in the West Australian Society of Arts exhibition in 1931 remarked that his work was “Corotesque.” He became Art Master at Perth Technical College in 1935 retaining this position until 1946, having been asked to continue in charge for some years beyond the age of retirement. During these years he exhibited regularly in Perth, in the mediums of oil and watercolour, and contributed works of sculpture to various institutions, notably that at Clontarf Boy’s Town. For many years he was on the Board of Directors of the Perth Art Gallery and examples of his work are to be seen, both in the City and at several country Galleries. Walter Rowbotham died while on holiday in England on April 24, 1951.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 28 May 1878
- Summary
- Painter and teacher, won the Royal College of Art Scholarship and the Royal College of Art Travelling Scholarship. Rowbotham exhibited with West Australian Society of Arts and Perth Society of Arts.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Apr-51
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, New Zealand
- Biography
- Harold Septimus Power, painter and illustrator, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand on 31 December 1877, one of eight children of Peter Power, an English emigrant to Australia, and his Scottish-born wife Jane, nee Amers. Both had originally come to Victoria, where they married, but moved to New Zealand where they had their family. They returned to Victoria when Septimus was young, settling first in Brunswick and then in Hampton, just outside Melbourne. Power’s minimal formal schooling was distinguished by an unstoppable desire to illustrate his schoolbooks. Power’s father, a hatter by trade, had turned to painting, teaching it in Brunswick. This possibly sparked his son’s interest in painting, something encouraged by his mother but positively discouraged by his father. At the age of fourteen he ran away from home, going into the bush where he painted the country and its animals. Returning to Melbourne, he found work with a carriage painter and painted animal heads on butchers’ delivery vans, getting his models from abattoirs. Later, he worked as an assistant to a veterinary surgeon who advised him to stick to drawing animals. This advice settled for Power the career he should pursue: he would become an artist. After spending eight months in the Gippsland bush sketching and painting, Power returned to Melbourne and achieved early success when he first exhibited his work. In about 1896 Power won a silver medal at the 'Collingwood Junior Exhibition’, another silver medal in 1899, and a gold medal at the 'Melbourne Art Club Exhibition’ that year. Power had been befriended by Walter Withers, whose influence can be seen in Afternoon Heat (1896). He now received his father’s approval when Withers spoke to him about his son’s talent. In 1900, Power moved to Adelaide where he worked as a political cartoonist with the Register and an illustrator for the Observer, Saturday Journal and Evening Journal, among other papers, contributing witty and sympathetic sketches of politicians, local identities and street scenes. He met Hans Heysen and they painted together in the Adelaide Hills, selling their work through a local dealer. In 1903, Power became the first Australian artist to receive a commission from the Art Gallery of South Australia; he was commissioned to paint an animal picture for 100 guineas, and the resulting work, After the Day’s Toil (1904), showcased his emerging specialty as an animal painter, especially of equine subjects, depicting two farm lads mounted on draught horses and leading other horses. In September 1904, Power married Isabel Laura Butterworth of Adelaide. In 1905, Power and his wife left for Europe. With this departure began a long period in the artist’s life during which he divided his time between Australia and England, only returning permanently to Australia in the late 1930s. The couple settled in Paris where the largely self-taught Power enrolled in the Academie Julian (1905-07) studying under Jean-Paul Laurens. Moving to London, Power established a successful practice and acquired a reputation as an animal painter par excellence, something of an Antipodean George Stubbs, the foremost English animal painter (1724-1806). He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy of Arts and was later elected a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours and the Society of Animal Painters. In 1913, the Powers returned to Australia, the artist bringing with him a large collection of paintings made during his eight years abroad. In Melbourne, Power held two successful solo exhibitions, his first, at the Guild Hall in June 1913, and later that year at the Athenaeum Gallery. He exhibited Stag Hunt Exmoor, hung at the Royal Academy’s exhibition in 1911, and this was purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria. Following a successful exhibition in Adelaide in March 1914, Power returned to England. During the interwar years he made several return visits to Australia of relatively short duration (two to three years or less); these would be marked by the holding of at least one solo exhibition showcasing work recently exhibited at the Royal Academy, and often ended with a 'farewell exhibition’ announcing his impending departure from Australia. The outbreak of the First World War found Power in England. At the age of thirty-seven he was an established artist who specialised in, but was not limited to, animal subjects, principally horses. He could manage the human figure and landscape, and his best pictures combined human and animal figures with the landscape. Portraiture, too, was not beyond him. He was a competent draughtsman; and though best known for his oil paintings, he could work successfully in watercolour. Executed in the academic tradition with frequent romantic overtones, his work eschewed any modern influences and intellectual qualities. Technically proficient, he could be relied upon to make a picture both pleasing and effecting a “satisfactory realism” (J S MacDonald 1958), well-qualified to enter upon arguably the most significant phase of his career. From London, Power followed the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) from the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of 1915 to the battlefields of the Western Front during 1916-17. In the early years of the war he completed Anzacs (1915, National Gallery of Victoria) and The enemy in sight (1916, Art Gallery of New South Wales). On 3 September 1917, he was appointed an official war artist by the Australian High Commissioner and attached to the AIF with the honorary rank of lieutenant. He crossed to France, making a second trip in August 1918, in the company of another appointee, Fred Leist, and C.E.W. Bean, Australia’s official war correspondent, and spent his first evening in Hazebrouck huddled with them in the cellar of a house as the Germans bombed the town. The terms of Power’s appointment obliged him to make at least twenty-five sketches for the Commonwealth; he delivered roughly seven more, a gift to the “Australian Nation”, as he explained to the Australian High Commission (letter, 20 November 1918). These sketches are mostly drawings and watercolours and contain only a few small oil pictures. According to Jean Campbell (1983, pg 113), Power’s “vigour and strength” are seen at their best in his war watercolours, for example, Going into action (1917). Commencing in July 1918, Power was commissioned first by the Commonwealth and later by the Australian War Memorial to paint a number of battle pictures and military scenes depicting significant events in which the AIF and the Australian Light Horse had been involved. This work occupied him throughout the 1920s and late into the 1930s and includes First Australian Division Artillery going into the 3rd Battle of Ypres (1919) and Saving the guns at Robecq (1920), both action paintings focusing on horses and artillery. The battle pictures and scenes are imaginative reconstructions which Power meticulously researched with guidance from Bean to ensure, so far as possible, their historical accuracy. Power’s several visits to Australia during the 1920s were long enough for him to carry out other official commissions. In 1922, he was commissioned to make a large mural for the Melbourne Public Library, depicting the Eastern and Western Fronts and the finished work, War, comprising three panels with an overall length of 15.2 metres, was installed in 1924. In 1927, the Commonwealth commissioned him to paint a picture of the outside ceremony for the opening of Parliament House, Opening of Federal Parliament at Canberra, 9 May 1927 (1928). Power was also active in art circles, becoming a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute (1926-28) and exhibiting in its first exhibition at Horden’s Gallery in 1924. He was associated with the establishment of the new Melbourne Art Club in 1933; and was a foundation member of the deeply conservative Australian Academy of Art (1937-46). Following the death of his wife in March 1935, Power returned to Australia, arriving in January 1936. In September that year he married Margery Desmazures of Adelaide and the couple settled in Melbourne. Throughout the 1930s Power painted steadily and exhibited regularly, sticking closely to his chosen idiom, and this continued during the 1940s. He enjoyed enormous popularity and his work commanded consistently high prices, even during the Depression. Equine and other animal subjects dominate the canvases of these decades with occasional portraits and numerous flower pieces. If there were any changes, perhaps a loosening of brushwork and a more colourful palette can be detected, but in Power’s hands these produced frankly sentimental pictures such as Summertime (1935, Art Gallery of South Australia) and The Toilers (1940, National Gallery of Victoria). He held his final exhibition in Melbourne in 1949. From 1940 Power taught painting privately; one of his students, Max Middleton, primarily a landscape painter working in a traditional style, contributed a useful biographical essay to The Art of H Septimus Power (Rigby, 1974). A peculiar form of deafness had afflicted Power from an early age, creating an impediment in his social life. To C.E.W. Bean, the artist presented as shy and intensely nervous, and his heart went out to “this lovable man”. In spite of his disability, Middleton claims that Power was a cheerful man who enjoyed entertaining friends at home, and revelled in telling stories about the experiences in his life. Power died of cancer in Melbourne on 3 January 1951, aged seventy-three, and was buried in Brighton Cemetery. He was survived by his second wife and two sons, one from each marriage. On his death, Louis McCubbin, a long-time director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, himself an official war artist of the First World War, perhaps accurately summed up Power’s achievement: “His abilities particularly fitted him to be a painter of war subjects such as charging horses… He was outstanding as an animal painter – the most important Australia has produced in this field” (Argus, 4 January 1951). A small retrospective exhibition was held in 1985 at Trevor Bussell Fine Art Gallery, a Sydney suburban gallery. The Australian War Memorial holds by far the largest collection of Power’s works (roughly fifty-four); otherwise he is thinly if widely represented in Australia’s public collections.
Writers:
Scheib, MichaelNote:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 31 December 1877
- Summary
- Harold Septimus Power: a New Zealand-born early to mid-twentieth century Australian artist who specialised in animal painting, especially equine subjects. Appointed an official war artist during WWI, he executed several battle pictures featuring horses and artillery in action now in the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Jan-51
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was described by Lloyd Rees as the 'most dynamic painter’ in Brisbane in the 1910s. William married the painter Gwendolyn Grant on 22 November 1915.
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1876
- Summary
- Artist, described by Lloyd Rees as the 'most dynamic painter' in Brisbane in the 1910s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1951
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-41.2586865 Longitude174.7853376 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kaiwarra, Wellington, New Zealand
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Kaiwarra, Wellington (NZ), of a Scottish father and an Irish mother. He came to Australia as a boy. After various casual jobs he was engaged by
“old King Cole, the famous bookseller, in whose employ he perpetrated his first work of art. Seizing a green plaque and a sample box of colors, he manufactured a blue-haired lady with a yellow ochre complexion and the brightest of rose-madderning lips. This he displayed in the window, with an intimation on the lady’s chest that such a plaque, without the lady, would cost Only One Shilling. George Dancey, Melbourne Punch cartoonist, wandering down Collins-street, was struck with the colour, and induced Maclean to join the Melbourne National Gallery Art School. The rest was a struggle to “get accepted” by various papers that pay something for illustrations; and Maclean went into the field as a free-lance, and remains there. ( Bookfellow 1 December 1912, 317)”
Maclean believed that line should be prominent in pen drawings and tried to express character in small simple line sketches said to be sometimes 'worthy of Forain’, e.g. joke about doctor asking nurse about patient “Has he got any money?” ( Bookfellow 317) and 'The Man of Property’ (crying about land tax; ibid 318). He also worked in pen and charcoal, e.g. A Monument is But a Melancholy Pleasure (ibid, 317). By 1912 he had drawn many compositions featuring street children and his anonymous Bookfellow biographer (probably the editor A.G. Stephens) thought his style would suit London Punch . In any case, he added, editorial indifference to black and white art meant that Maclean would 'have to leave Australia to achieve himself; already he has wasted ten years’.
Maclean was living in Melbourne’s Sun Buildings with Norman and Lionel Lindsay in the late 1890s; he drew gags for the Melbourne Rambler in 1899. He was in Sydney c.1904 when Ted Dyson was worried about his brother Bill ( Will Dyson ) being led astray by him, since 'despite the masquerade he made of being an artist, [Maclean] was really one of those faithful beings created by a beneficent Providence to be the drunkard’s friend’ (quoted McMullin 34). He was still in Sydney when his cartoons were published in the weekly Comic Australian in 1911-13. He also contributed to the Bulletin , e.g. The Idolized and the Ideal. 'Cynthia [reading Society newspaper with female street friends]: “Yah! 'nother one of these 'ere dead crook societies fer admiring pot-bellied earls and knock-kneed dukes, and other sich things. They kin 'ave them on their own. But fer a real 'andsome, proper sort of man, gimme our butcher” 1900 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 124); and Dry Gin! [Aboriginal woman drinking from a bucket] 1929 (ill. Rolfe 197). He did cartoons on Aboriginal subjects for Smith’s Weekly 1922 and gag cartoons for Aussie .
By 1917 Maclean was living in Brisbane, where he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force. He served time overseas and in 1919 spent a short period at the Slade School of Art. Maclean returned to Australia in 1920.
Maclean was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists in 1924 along with 24 other male cartoonists, mainly from Sydney (see Harry J. Weston ). All 25 contributed to the Society’s first publication commemorating the visit of the US Fleet in 1925.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
krypt
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1875
- Summary
- Early 20th century New Zealand born, Melbourne and Sydney based cartoonist. Maclean was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists in 1924 along with 24 other male cartoonists.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Aug-51
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-32.3628305 Longitude149.5338212 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gulgong, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1873
- Summary
- Newspaper proprietor and photographer who ran Garling's Royal Studio in Mudgee in the early twentieth century
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1951
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in Melbourne on 21 February 1872, only daughter of Dr James Pascoe Teague, a homoeopath from Cornwall, and his Canadian wife Eliza Jane, née Miller, who died when Violet was an infant.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 21 February 1872
- Summary
- A painter and printmaker, spent many of her informative years in Europe. While receiving numerous accolades and awards for her artistic practice, she was the recipient of a medal for humanitarian efforts in WW1.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 30-Sep-51
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude173 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Zealand
- Biography
- Born in 1872 in New Zealand Leonard Whithair Appleby earned several certificates in painting, c.1885 – c.1887 at the Christchurch School of Art, before taking up photography. He was prominent in Christchurch as a footballer. He was well known as Captain of the Newcastle Football Club in Newcastle in 1890-93 before returning to New Zealand and later equally prominent in Brisbane as a footballer swimmer and referee from c. 1897-1900 when working there for P.C. Poulsen studio. He was reported to be going to Sydney to pursue a career on stage having had previous association with Bland Holt’s Dramatic Company.
It is unclear if Appleby worked for Christchurch photographer C.H. Manning before for five years or after his Australian experiences. From October 1895 he was managing partner of C H Manning & Co run by Manning’s Australian born widow Emma Louisa nee Noble(1857-1905 – sister of the Melbourne photographer Timothy Stoessiger Noble). Appleby stayed until early 1898 when the firm of Standish and Preece purchased all the negatives of Charles Henry Manning, C.H. Manning & Co and L.W.Apppleby.
Despite any thespian ambitions by March 1897 Appleby was was working for Falk Studios in The Strand in Sydney before starting his own studio in the Pitt street end of the arcade in 1903 which ran until 1920. Appleby catered to theatrical and society sitters and was active in local art photography salons from 1904 when his one person show at the Society of Arts was reviewed on 4 July Daily Telegraph_ under the heading 'ARTISTIC PHOTOGRAPHY’, 'this collection is the nearest approach to art in photography we have yet seen in this part of the world’. Appleby’s theatrical and social portraits appeared in the press until 1920. Appleby’s studio was taken over by Monte Luke.
In his report on Pictorial photography in Australia for the British _Photograms of the Year _annual for 1904, A. H. Hill Griffiths, Editor of the _Australian Photographic Journal _noted Appleby was 'a courageous and versatile photographer, who but recently opened for himself in Sydney, has at this moment sprung upon us an Exhibition of some thirty or more portraits, mostly heads of well known local artists and musicians, treated in a broad and artist-like manner, which is simply a revelation to the photographic cult here.’ Appleby’s moody portrait of artist D.H. Souter was reproduced on p.195.
The following year critic A.G. Stephens devoted an long article to him in _Art and Architecture _journal making the claim that Appleby 'seems to be first and chief among those who have attempted the new photography. Certainly no series of gum-portraits has been shown in Sydney to equal the set recently exhibited by him at the Art Society’s rooms.’ Stephens cited Alfred Stieglitz and Clarence White as American models for Appleby’s gum bichromate work. Appleby and A.H. Adams exhibited bi-chromate prints with the Society of Artists in 1907.
Appleby has a significant role as an early exponent of art photography in Australia seemingly holding the first one person show in 1904 five years before that of Harold Cazneaux at the New South Wales Photographic Society rooms. Cazneaux was aware of Appleby and may have been more influenced by him than previously acknowledged.Why Appleby closed his seemingly successful Strand Arcade studio c 1919 is not known. He was briefly established in Albury from 1922-23 and Newcastle in 1930-31. Appleby was still active in 1938 as a judge of the portrait class for the 150th Australian Commemorative Salon in Sydney.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. May 1872
- Summary
- Appleby was a New Zealand photographer who trained with Falk Studios in Sydney and in Newcastle before partnering with Emma Manning in the Christchurch studio of her late husband CH Manning. He exhibited bi-chromate prints with the NSW Society of Artists in 1907. Appleby's work is now in the collection of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Jun-51
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Painter and caricaturist, was born in Adelaide on 28 June 1871, son of William Pole, a tailor, and Clara, née Key (who changed her first name to Sarah when she adopted Judaism). Leon, known as Sonny, had three sisters, Florence, Esther and Rebecca (1877-92). The family moved to Melbourne in 1879; his father died the following year. By 1888 Mrs Sarah Pole was living at 98 La Trobe Street East, Melbourne. Pole enrolled at the National Gallery of Victoria Schools in 1888, where he studied until at least 1892. However, William Moore, in Story of Australian Art, vol.1, p.227, shows photo of the School, reputedly taken in 1896. It shows: Amy Mann, Agnes Kirkwood, George Coates, Isabel Hunter, Albert Enes (b.1876), Hugh Ramsay, James Stuart MacDonald (1878-1952), Dora Meeson, Jo Sweatman, Ada Coutle, Leon Pole, Portia Geach, George Pontin. Pole’s best-known painting, The Village Laundress (1891), was first shown in the annual student exhibition in 1891 when he won second prize of ten pounds for it. Since then, it has been widely reproduced.
While still a student Pole joined Streeton , Conder and Roberts at Eaglemont, where he played the whistle and drank 'a little too much Golden Summer, as he calls wine, which was not improving him’, said Streeton (see Croll, Smike to Bulldog and Astbury, Sunlight and Shadow ). In September 1890 Charterisville was let to Walter Withers and lodges in the garden let at half a crown a week. Among the first tenants were Hal Waugh , Arthur Bassett (1869-c.1960) and Leon Pole who remained there for two or three years. Sands & MacDougall’s Melbourne directory for 1893 includes 'L. Pole’, signwriter of 21 Elizabeth Chambers, Elizabeth Street, West Melbourne; that for 1894 notes the partnership of Leon Pole and Harry Recknell in a signwriting and decorating business at 163 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne (with Leon Pole also listed at Yarra Street, Heidelberg). In 1893 Pole was renting the entire top floor of the North Melbourne Town Hall with George Coates , James Quinn and Louis Kny for 10/6 a week, according to Lionel Lindsay . (Coates taught and the others slept there.)
Coates also had a studio with Lionel Lindsay and Hugh McLean over Peppas’s fruit shop in Swanston Street, and the three slept in 2 attic bedrooms above. In 1893 they founded the Cannibals Club there, subsequent meetings being held in studios in the St James Building, William Street. The original members were Coates, Pole, Lionel Lindsay (who had moved to Melbourne that year), Percy Lindsay , Hugh McLean, Alex Sass , George Regan, Miles Evergood and Herman Kuhr. They were later joined by Norman Lindsay , Max Meldrum , Will Dyson , Hugh McCrae, Ernest Moffitt , Carl Archibald, Harry Weston , Jack Kilgour and others. A few of the same artists (presumably the Jews) also belonged to the Ishmael Club. Sonny and his piccolo were the life and soul of any party, especially as he also did lightning caricatures, the best, said Percy Lindsay, that he had ever seen (see Lionel Lindsay, Comedy of Life , for further references to Pole’s bohemian existence).
At a Smoke Night for the Art Society of NSW in September 1897, it was reported ( Sydney Morning Herald 13 September 1897, 3; info. Ingrid Anderson):
But to draw lightning sketches, with all the disadvantages of brown paper, in front of a gallery of critics, and gain not only a favourable verdict but a storm of cheers – that is something of which to be proud; and so Messrs A.R. Coffey, Perry, Spence, Leon Pole, G. Taylor, and Salvana are to be complimented on that often mentioned but seldom realised event – an artistic success.
Pole also painted murals, e.g. in the Palace Theatre, Sydney (built 1896, closed 1969, demolished 1970). He moved to Sydney permanently in August 1898 and by 1899 was living at 2 Grantham Street, North Sydney (west side, off Willoughby Road). In 1900 his studio was listed as being at 155 Elizabeth Street, Sydney. In 1901-2 he was in London, where he may have been a member of the Chelsea Club. Later he moved to Canada with his wife, Esther (died aged 58, buried St John’s Norway Cemetery, Toronto on 16 December 1927). He is said to have worked in Toronto primarily as a muralist (Wm Moore), although in a postcard to his sister posted from Toronto on 1 August 1912 he noted that he was 'pretty busy at present getting ready for the annual Exhibition. I am doing some decorative panels.’ He died in Toronto on 31 December 1951, aged 80 and was also buried in St John’s Norway, Cemetery and Crematorium, 256 Kingston Road, Toronto, on 3 January 1952.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 21 June 1871
- Summary
- Federation era painter, muralist and caricaturist. He died in Toronto on 31 December 1951.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31-Dec-51
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-32.716667 Longitude151.55 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Maitland, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, exhibited Royal Art Society of NSW, 1907.
Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work 1907, Sydney: NSW Display – Oil Paintings – Flower Painting, Competitive – no.150 Colman, Lily M., The Queen of Flowers , 5 gns; Water Colours – Australian Landscape, Competitive – no.283 Colman, Lily M., Deserted , 2gns, no.284 Colman, Lily M., Northwood, Lane Cove River , 4 gns.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1869
- Summary
- As a landscape and flower painter, Colman exhibited with the Royal Art Society during the 1900s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1951
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Australian painter James Quinn was born on 4 December 1869 in Melbourne, the son of a restaurateur. He studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, from 1886 to 1893, where fellow students included George Coates , Charles Conder and Arthur Streeton . In 1894, Quinn went to Europe with the assistance of the National Gallery Travelling Scholarship and, while in Paris, he studied at the Académie Julian, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Académie Colarossi and the Académie Delécluze.
In 1902 Quinn moved to London where he married fellow art student Blanche Guernier and established a reputation as a portrait painter. He painted many studies of his family, such as Mother and sons 1910 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney), as well as portraits of fellow Australian artists Tom Roberts and George Bell . His portraits of notable people include the Queen Mother when she was Duchess of York. A lover of good food, wine and conversation, Quinn frequented the Chelsea Arts Club and the Café Royal, where he mixed with Australians including Streeton, Roberts and George W. Lambert .
During the First World War, Quinn was an Australian official war artist in France, responsible for portraits of distinguished Australian servicemen and, in 1919, he was an artist for the Canadian War Records. After the war, he continued to paint portraits in London but in 1935, on the death of his artist son René, he returned to Melbourne. He lived a bohemian life of genteel poverty, teaching for a short while in the mid-1940s at the National Gallery School. Though no modernist himself, Quinn publicly opposed Sir Robert Menzies when, in 1941, Menzies opened an exhibition with derogatory remarks about modern art. James Quinn died of cancer on 18 February 1951 in Melbourne, aged 81.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne Note: Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Date written:
2004
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 December 1869
- Summary
- Painter and contemporary of George Coates, Charles Conder, Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts, James Quinn spent a number of years studying in Paris as the recipient of the National Gallery Travelling Scholarship in 1894. Though no modernist himself, Quinn publicly opposed Sir Robert Menzies when, in 1941, Menzies opened an exhibition with derogatory remarks about modern art.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Feb-51
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude38.7316375 Longitude-82.9965441 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Portsmouth, Ohio, USA
- Biography
- woodcarver and embroiderer, was born in Portsmouth, Ohio (United States of America), eldest of the four daughters of Dr Isaac Fenton King, a pastor in the Methodist Church and keen educationalist, and Ella, née Bowen. Soon after her birth the family moved to Columbus, Ohio; Mary was educated at the Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, and at a private school run by a Miss Anabelle in Philadelphia. She learned woodcarving at school and was probably taught embroidery by her mother, a fine needlewoman.
In 1890 Isaac King took his family on a tour of Europe. There Mary met her future husband, the young New Zealand born and Brisbane educated architect Robin Smith Dods who had been sent to Scotland to train as an architect. On a study tour of Italy in 1891, he met Mary King in Florence.
Mary returned to Columbus. With two visits from Dods in 1894 and 1896, she was to wait seven years before her marriage. It was not until Robin accepted a partnership with the architect Francis Hall in Brisbane that he finally sent for Mary. Accompanied by Dods’s youngest brother, Espie, Mary travelled to Sydney; she and Robin were married at the Presbyterian church of St Columba, Woollahra on 21 March 1899. A piano stool she carved, now in the possession of her grand-daughter, incorporated a design of gumleaves and gum nuts into its standard acanthus leaf design, in anticipation of her future in Australia – a use of Australian flora that predates her husband’s capitals on the ionic columns for the Sun Insurance Building at Brisbane in 1907.
The couple lived with Dods’s mother in Brisbane until their own house, Harelvyn, at New Farm was completed in 1900. Robin designed it and Mary contributed an elaborate carving of their initials, which she made into moulds for the plaster ceilings. Later she extended this skill to commercial buildings, executing the moulds for the plaster ceiling of the NZ Insurance Building in Queen Street, Brisbane, which Robin designed in 1908.
Glenn Cooke has established that Mary refreshed her woodcarving skills with L.J. Harvey at the Brisbane Technical College. As well as carving the ceilings at Harelvyn, she carved the motto 'In Copia Caveas’ above a built-in sideboard, a practice repeated in several Brisbane houses designed by her husband. She also carved other pieces of furniture, including three beds made of Queensland blackbean.
Mary and Robin Dods had two children: Lorimer Fenton (b.1900) and Elisabeth Hosmer (b.1904). Elisabeth recalls that her mother often executed embroidery to patterns designed by her father – an arrangement typical of the English Arts and Crafts movement. (In 1896 Robin had exhibited a bedspread in the Fifth Arts and Crafts Exhibition in London designed by him and executed by Marie Cox.) In particular, Elisabeth remembers a dress made by her mother with a sweeping design of Australian parrots.
Mary Dods was on the committee of the Brisbane Arts and Crafts Society in 1912. At its first exhibition in 1913 she showed an embroidered tablecloth, a carved book rack inscribed to her daughter and a mahogany tray. Shortly afterwards, the family moved to Sydney and Robin became a partner in the firm Spain, Cosh & Dods. Mary was active in the New South Wales Arts and Crafts Society in 1914-16). In 1918, Fenton, the house Robin Dods had designed for his family, was complete; again the ceilings bore Mary’s distinctive 'R’ and 'M’ initials.
Mary continued to live at Fenton after Robin died in 1920 until moving to Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, in 1930. She later moved to Wickham Terrace, where she died in 1951.
Writers:
France, Christine
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1867
- Summary
- A woodcarver and embroiderer, Mary Dods actively contributed to the interior designs of her husbands architectural projects. An American by birth she used Australian motifs as inspiration for her textiles and carvings.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1951
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.456659 Longitude-0.9696512 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Reading, England, UK
- Biography
- portrait, landscape and religious painter, postcard artist and theatrical lightning sketch artist and lecturer, was born in England. He migrated to Sydney in 1905. His postcards include Australian Characters , six types of Australian women, published in the NSW Bookstall Company’s 'Art Series’.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 15 December 1864
- Summary
- Widely printed early 20th century Sydney painter, miniaturist, postcard artist and theatrical lightning sketch artist and lecturer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-May-51
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1951-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- The son of James and Jean Tindall, Charles Ephraim Smith Tindall was born in the Scottish county of Aberdeenshire in 1863. Little is known of his early life, but in early adulthood he undertook training as a lithographer in Glasgow. Tindall migrated to New South Wales in 1887 and seems to have initially settled in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. In a short profile of the artist published in Fifty years of Australian Art 1879-1929 (Royal Art Society Press, p93), Tindall claimed to have had his first lessons in colour from Charles Conder, an artist who was active in Sydney (at the same time as Tindall) during 1887-88. Conder was not known as a teacher at this time so this early career tuition may have been more of an informal nature. According to William Moore (Story of Australian Art, Volume I, p165), Tindall along with George W. Lambert, Sydney Long, J.S. Watkins and H.S. Hopwood were members of the Art Society of NSW Brush Club. Moore continued his historical account of the Brush Club by mentioning that its members met once a month at the Cambridge Hotel, Sydney, where their sketches were criticized by Julian R. Ashton, Henry Fullwood and others. The English watercolour painter H.S. Hopwood, who lived in Australia for eighteen months during 1889 and 1890, was, according to the profile in Fifty years of Australian Art 1879-1929, an important early influence on Tindall. By 1893 Tindall was working from a studio at 268 George Street, Sydney. That same year he began to exhibit his work at the annual exhibition of the Art Society of NSW with four Sydney Harbour paintings. Over the following half century he continued to exhibit his watercolours at many of the Society’s exhibitions. By 1894 he was residing in the Sydney harbour-side district of Balmain. 1896 saw Tindall appointed to the executive council of the Art Society of NSW, and in the following year he was advertising his outdoor watercolour class in the Art Society’s exhibition catalogue. One notable career achievement for Tindall occurred in 1898 when his A Westerly – Circular Quay, Sydney was exhibited at the 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’ at the Grafton Galleries, London. That same year he and his family moved from working class Balmain to a house located in the affluent North Shore suburb of Lindfield. Despite the move he continued to paint ships on Sydney Harbour. While Tindall received little mention in his early career, his reputation became established during the early years of the twentieth century. In 1902 he found his first career success when the (then National) Art Gallery of NSW purchased his watercolour Gone are the days. The following year, Tindall travelled to Japan via Shanghai, and in 1904 he exhibited seven works created during this trip. One work, Timber laden junks, Shanghai, was purchased from the (now Royal) Art Society annual show. Almost all of Tindall’s output during his long Australian period was in watercolour, a medium which was regarded as a slight or amateur technique by many. Despite this, his well observed realist marine images of Sydney Harbour and the NSW coast found a market, and by 1907 the notable Sydney art dealer Adolf Albers was advertising that Tindall (along with several other artists) was one of his represented artists, a connection that continued until at least the start of the First World War. While best known as a marine painter, Tindall also painted landscape. This was especially so in 1911 when he entered eleven works in that years RAS exhibition. A review in the July/August 1911 issue of Art & Architecture (p306) commented on his landscape at that year’s RAS show: Mr. Chas. Tindall though not abandoning the wharves and the ships, gives us more landscape than we look for from him, and very good landscape it is. “The Waning Day,” “Mount Dromedary,” and “At the Shipbreakers,” are excellent; but the finest of all is “Wintle’s Rocks, Tilba Tilba.” The tall rocky pinnacles, golden in the sunshine, with a sea of beryl and amethyst plashing idly about their base, is a brilliant piece of colour that one would never tire of looking at, and it marks a distinct advance in delicacy and imaginative conception often sought for in vain in Mr. Tindall’s work.’ At the 1914 RAS annual show, the artist exhibited, arguably, his most well received image. From Berry’s Bay Heights (also known as From Berry’s Bay), an elevated view of a picturesque cove in Sydney Harbour, was purchased for fifty guineas by the National Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW). According to The Triad(10 January 1919), this work was one of the six most popular paintings in the AGNSW collection, and was later exhibited at the 1923 exhibition of Australian art at the Royal Academy in London. While Tindall had advertised his outdoor watercolour painting before, in 1921 he began to advertise his services in the RAS annual exhibition catalogue as giving instruction in painting shipping subjects. While watercolour painting had been poorly regarded up to the war, following the death of J.J. Hilder in 1916 there were a series of Hilder tribute exhibitions that led to an increasing male respect for the watercolour technique during the interwar period. At an August 1923 meeting in Sydney, Tindall, along with prominent Sydney based watercolourists B.E. Minns, A.J. Daplyn, Martin Stainforth, J.H. Bennett and A.H. Fullwood, established the Australian Watercolour Institute (AWI). At the AWI’s first exhibition in 1924 Tindall exhibited fifteen works, mainly of Sydney Harbour and the Snowy Mountains. Tindall continued to exhibit with the Institute up to 1945. Following the 1922 RAS annual exhibition there was a minor leadership purge within the Society which saw several members, including Tindall, removed from the executive council. Tindall seems to have taken great offence at this snub and for several years did not exhibit with the RAS. During this time he briefly exhibited his work with the rival Society of Artists. Tindall exhibited two works at the 1923 SOA annual exhibition and one work at their 1924 show. But by 1925 he was exhibiting again with the RAS, though he never served again on their council. At the second AWI exhibition in 1925, Tindall exhibited a work titled The way for the bridge, and at the 1926 RAS exhibition he exhibited a watercolour depicting the ceremony of laying the foundation-stone for the Sydney Harbour Bridge. These works were therefore among the first artistic representations of this important construction project, something unrecognized by subsequent historians of the world famous Bridge. While Tindall’s association with Albers has been recorded, there are no known solo exhibitions by the artist apart from a show at Rubery Bennett’s Australian Fine Art Gallery, King Street, Sydney, in December 1927. The exhibition was well received by the Sydney critics, including William Moore, writing in the Daily Telegraph (12 December 1927, p14):'While C.E.S. Tindall is one of our best-known painters in watercolour, the exhibition of his work at the Australian Fine Arts Galleries will greatly enhance his reputation. He not only knows how to use his medium, but the sincerity and freshness of his outlook give considerable charm to his work. It is the mood of nature, that he gives in a composition; and as he has a strong sense of color, his free direct method makes a ready appeal to the spectator.’ Following the exhibition Tindall, in 1928, was appointed Associate of the Royal Art Society (ARAS), and in 1935 he was promoted to Fellow of the Royal Art Society (FRAS). In June 1936 he made a visit to his homeland of Scotland, and at the 1937 AWI exhibition he exhibited six works, including three images of Aberdeen, one of the Loch of Aboyne, and a view of North Devon. Tindall repeated the trip in June 1939 when he travelled first class by ship to Scotland via Liverpool. Works from that tour, undertaken on the eve of war, were exhibited at the AWI and RAS exhibitions in 1940. There is little evidence of his painting during the Second World War apart from several works exhibited at the RAS and AWI shows. His last recorded work, The Coming Storm, was exhibited at the 1945 AWI show. Despite being the end of his exhibiting career, the AWI honoured their foundation member with an honorary membership, the first time that tribute had been bestowed by the Institute. C.E.S. Tindall died aged eighty-nine on Monday 9 July 1951, and his Presbyterian funeral was held the following day at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium, Sydney. There are no major published profiles of the artist and little is known of his personality and artistic philosophy. Tindall and his wife, Mary, had three children, Conrad Lindsay Tindall (lifespan unknown) was badly wounded during the First World War and later lived with his parents as an 'incapacitated soldier’. Two of Tindall’s other children, Murdoch Charles Tindall (b.1889 in Waverley, Sydney) and Phyllis Tindall (1898-1950) became artists, Phyllis being known professionally as Nessie Tindall.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- C.E.S. Tindall (1863-1951) was a Scottish born watercolourist best known for his marine images of Sydney Harbour. He was a notable member of the Royal Art Society of NSW and a founding member of the Australian Watercolour Institute.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Jul-51
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude51.8333313 Longitude-2.1666674 Start Date1929-01-01 End Date1950-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gloucestershire, England, UK
- Biography
- illustrator, born England. Studied East Sydney Technical College, 1944-48. Died Sydney. Brother of dancer Moira Claux.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 8 January 1929
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Sydney painter, etcher and illustrator.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12-Feb-50
- Age at death
- 21
Details
Latitude53.3806626 Longitude-1.4702278 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1950-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sheffield, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, was art editor and cover designer for the WWI trench magazine Aussie (January 1918-April 1919, according to McCulloch, 'officially detached for duty to “Aussie Magazine” ' on 3 August 1918 according to military personnel record).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 20 July 1881
- Summary
- Early 20th century wartime cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1950
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-44.2439593 Longitude171.2797349 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1950-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Temuka, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1875
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1950
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-44.2439593 Longitude171.2797349 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1950-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Temuka, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter, was born on 4 October 1875 at Temuka, New Zealand.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 October 1875
- Summary
- Plante studied at the Académie Julian, Paris, where she lived off little more than biscuits. She later emerged as Modernist, and in 1932 was a founding exhibitor with the Melbourne Contemporary Group of Post-Impressionist painters.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Jul-50
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1950-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 25 September 1874
- Summary
- Melburnian watercolourist and sometime treasurer of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29-Nov-50
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1950-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Samuel Bowering Marchant was the oldest surviving son of photographer Philip Marchant (q.v.). He was born in Adelaide on 26 June 1870 and in 1882 the family moved to Gawler where his father opened a portrait studio. In addition to his normal schooling Samuel Marchant received special training from Mr Levy, the head draftsman at James Martin’s heavy engineering works at Gawler, and from F.W. Heaps, an architect. He worked as a painter and decorator at Balaklava where some of his relatives were living. In 1887 he went to Latrobe in Tasmania where his father opened a photographic studio.
On 3 June 1887 the Gawler Bunyip reported:
News from an Old Friend. – We have been shown a letter from Mr P.J. Marchant, who left here for Tasmania. He, with his son Sam, have taken up their residence in La Trobe, Tasmania, where Mr Marchant intends to start his old line as a photographer. These is no other photographer there, although the place is as large as Gawler. His son, Sam, has taken to signwriting and is achieving success, earning nine shillings a day. What is thought of his work may be understood from the following clipping from a Launceston paper: ‘A young man, not quite a new chum in Latrobe, is literally beautifying certain stores with an ornamental and improved style of letter writing’.
While in Tasmania he won three first prizes for painting and graining at the Ulverstone Exhibition.
Samuel Marchant married a Latrobe girl, Ethel Piper, on 25 December 1894 and on the following day left for Balaklava in South Australia where he established a painting and decorating business. He also opened a portrait studio and was listed as a photographer and signwriter at Balaklava in directories from 1900 to 1913. By 1905 he was also well established as a coach painter, and a feature article in the illustrated supplement of the Kapunda Herald for 2 June 1905 said that eleven vehicles in his workshop were in various stages of ‘decorative renovation’, and that he had done work for some of the most influential men in the district. He also kept a spare vehicle on hand to be used by customers while their own was being painted.When referring to his photography the Herald said:
One wonders how Mr Marchant finds the time to attend to the photographic branch of his business. Mr Marchant explained that he had to be very methodical. He has reserved one day per week for finishing all photographic work. Of course, he takes photos at any time that patrons choose to appoint, but that part of the business only takes a few minutes. Customers may have their portraits taken, enlarged, painted in oils, and framed on the premises. He keeps a horse and vehicle to attend wedding parties, and for photographing family groups.
His wife Ethel died in June 1904, and on 6 April 1907 he married Audrey Blanche Sumner at Mallala. He had two daughters from his first marriage and another three after he re-married.
Samuel Marchant also wrote illuminated addresses, prepared plans and specifications for builders, and supervised the erection of buildings. By 1910 he had become interested in the use of concrete as a building material for walls as well as floors and had begun submitting applications for a variety of designs from race starters and indicators to concrete mixers and elevators, some of which were granted. By 1913 most of his time was being spent on building construction, both in Adelaide and at Balaklava, and his photographic studio had been leased by J. Wooler. He eventually moved to Adelaide where he worked as a painter, signwriter and building contractor and died there on 1 August 1850.
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, p.200.
Writers:
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 26 June 1870
- Summary
- A signwriter by trade, Samuel Marchant was also a portrait photographer based in Balaklava in South Australia's Mid-North. He was the oldest surviving son of Philip James Marchant, a well-known nineteenth century photographer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Aug-50
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude52.661252 Longitude-8.6301239 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1950-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Limerick, Ireland
- Biography
- painter and etcher, was born in Limerick, Ireland. He came to Australia with his parents at the age of four; he was educated at St Aloysiius College. He studied art at the Art Society of NSW; in 1888 he was awarded the second Art Society of NSW Prize for Drawing from the Antique offered to students attending Art Society of NSW classes. The following year, as a student of A.J. Daplyn at the Art Society of NSW, “Mr Coffey has been awarded the first prize for the antique”. “Mr Coffey shows considerable industry and ability in his drawing from life and in his painting, but only his work in the antique claims especial attention. It has merit. He handles his lines with fullness and grace, and the shading is well done”.
Coffey exhibited at the RAS in 1889. In a competition for art students held by the trustees of the NGNSW, in the studies from the antique section, A.R. Coffey “takes the first prize for a torso, which is very well executed; and his head of a Roman warrior (no.113) is also deserving of praise”. He also won second prize in the landscape section. “The first prize in drawing from the antique is secured by Mr A.R. Coffey for a torso, ... and [in the sea or landscape done in the open air section] Mr Coffey, who takes the first prize for drawings from the antique, has the second one here for a sea and landscape in oil”. More re 1890 Art Society of NSW prizes: “It is well, in these hurried days when drawing is apt to be neglected for the sake of mere effect, to find such excellent drawing as that displayed in the studies from life by Messrs W.E. Chambers [q.v.] and A.R. Coffey, the winners of the first and second prizes in this class. In both cases the drawing shows careful attention to anatomy, skill in treatment, and sound, firm handling. Both gentlemen are students of promise… Mr Coffey carries off the first prize in the drawings from the antique, and the same young artist has some heads, studied from life, which do him credit”.
1891 Art Society of NSW student prizes: Antique Class – First Prize £3.3s A.R. Coffey; Life Class – Second Prize £1.1s A.R. Coffey; Painting Class – First Prize £3.3s. A.R. Coffey; President’s Prize – £5 A.R. Coffey ( Sydney Morning Herald 30 July 1891, 3; info. Ingrid Anderson). 1892 Art Society of NSW annual exhibition: “Alfred R. Coffey has good work, full of promise, in both oils and watercolours”. 1893 14th annual exhibition Art Society of NSW: “No.246 'Cliffs at Bondi’ [oil]: A very original conception, well painted and one of the cleverest Mr Coffey exhibits this year”; “Mr Coffey, in no.88 'Sketch near Randwick’ [watercolour], is also seen to advantage”. “Among the younger exhibitors who show that they will make their mark in the world before long are A.R. Coffey, whose 'Bend of the River’ exhibits decided strength and appreciation of the beauties of nature”.
“Mr Alfred R. Coffey, whose name in the past has sometimes been crowded out by the stern exigencies of space, has made an advance, and is a force that must be reckoned with this year. 'Hard Times’ (no.16) is a strong work, full of open-air feeling – the foreground of road a little careless and unfinished, but the whole wins acceptance. 'In a thoughtful Mood’ (no.26) is a portrait of a child, the face partly in shadow, the light cleverly handled; and there are other promising contributions from Mr Coffey’s brush”. “'In a Thoughtful Mood’ (26), by Mr A.R. Coffey, a curly head and shoulders peering, nude, from out a mass of furs, displays some excellent drawing and good flesh tints. Other works of Mr Coffey’s are well deserving of attention, especially the upper portion of 'Hard Times’ (16) with its excellence of color”.
At a meeting in June 1896 between the Art Society of NSW and the Society of Artists in an (unsuccessful) attempt to patch up differences, it was noted: “Mr A.R. Coffey proposed, as an amendment, – 'That the members of the selection committee be artists, and be elected by exhibiting members from the council of the Art Society, or if there should not be a sufficient number of artists on the council, the deficiency to be made up from artists outside the council’. The amendment on being put was negatived, but the motion was only carried by a majority of one”. “Sir, – It is much to be regretted that Mr Coffey’s motion to amend the Art Society’s rules so as to provide for the election by exhibitors only of a selection and hanging committee failed to secure the requisite three fourth majority, since the absence of this provision is the only bar to the reunion of the two societies”.
Art Society Exhibition 1896: “Mr A.R. Coffey achieves a large measure of success in his 'Le Papillon voudrait – sa gorge pour prison’ (no.83)”.
Art Society Exhibition 1897: “Mr Alfred R. Caffey [sic] has confined himself to figure subjects and portraits this year, amongst which will be noted a likeness of Miss Carrie Chisholm, and one of Miss Eva Bryan as 'Queen of the Revels’”. “Mr Alfred R. Coffey sends in a number of figure-paintings of unequal merit. 'Pets’ (no.17) a young girl bearing paroquets upon a pole, may be especially commended for the clearness of the flesh-tones; 'Queen of the Revels’ (no.45) is a pleasing portrait of Miss Eva Bryan, a noted belle of North Sydney, in fancy dress, well treated except as to the chest, in which the effect is hard and the shadow too regularly defined. His portrait of Miss Carrie Chisholm has good points, but a falling-off is shown in Nos.120 and 109”.
At a Smoke Concert for the Art Society’s Sketch Club in July 1897, “The comfort and enjoyment of those present were carefully looked after by Mr Alfred R. Coffey, hon. secretary of the club … lightning sketches given by Messrs … Coffey …The result of the judging of sketches was Mr Alfred R. Coffey came first”. At a Smoke Night for the Art Society of NSW in September 1897: “But to draw lightning sketches, with all the disadvantages of brown paper, in front of a gallery of critics, and gain not only a favourable verdict but a storm of cheers – that is something of which to be proud; and so Messrs A.R. Coffey, Perry, Spence, Leon Pole, G. Taylor, and Salvana [qq.v.] are to be complimented on that often mentioned but seldom realised event – an artistic success”.
In 1895 Alfred Coffey was elected a Council Member of the Art Society of NSW and in 1898, 1899, 1900 (resigned December 1900), 1902 and 1903. He began making etchings in 1898 with Berowra Point on the Hawkesbury .
Garside notes that he taught for a time at Abbotsleigh Girls School on the North Shore where Grace Cossington Smith was among his pupils. (She also states that he had studied under Julian Ashton as well as the RAS but this has not been confirmed.)
At the 1898 Exhibition of Australian Art in London: “One has not the space to mention all the good things but I would direct the visitor’s attention to work by Messrs… A.R. Coffey”.
From Sydney, he exhibited with the Art Society of Tasmania in 1900.
A Chat on the Beach [identified as Ulladulla] 1919, oil on composition board (SU, bequest of Nell W. Buckingham, 1974) reproduced on invitation to Coffey exhibition SU 2001. Landscape 1921, a watercolour, was offered at Sotheby’s Fine Australian and European Paintings Melbourne, 24 November 1998, lot.334.
In March 1919 Coffey was appointed the first teacher of drawing in the newly created Faculty of Architecture, SU, lecturing one day a week for £200 p.a. In a letter to a painting colleague, Ashley Cooper, dated 5 January 1919, he wrote:
The whole thing resolved itself into a go between Carter nd myself and the University Senate appointed me by 7 votes to 4. I sent but one head that of a little Jewish girl. She looked alive and caught the eye of the Senate, several members of which expressed their admiration and liked it better than the serious portraits Norman Carter sent in.
And:
On qualifications there was no one in Sydney to come near me, as for years I was examiner in Geometrical and Perspective Drawing at the Technical College. The Pen and Ink Drawings and Etching of Buildings is one of my strongest points and while in England and America I had specially inspected the Art work in the Great Architectural Schools.
Coffey lived in Sydney for most of his life, exhibiting with the RAS and sometimes selling work privately from his house Ferndale in Trelawney Street, Woollahra. By 1921 he was able to give up teaching and pursue painting at his weekender at Tacoma on the Wyong River, eg The Entrance 1922 (Cooper family). He travelled several times to Europe, Ceylon and throughout the Pacific, eg Ceylon Beach n.d. (Cooper family). In May 1923 he probably became the first Australian artist to visit and paint in the Dutch East Indies (according to Garside), travelling to Borneo, Java, Balli and the Celebes where he was interested in the local cultures and religious ceremonies. He wrote about his experiences in a catalogue for an exhibition of 70 of his paintings of exotic places shown at Farmers Gallery, Sydney, in October 1923. Priced from ten to 75 guineas, they sold reasonably well. Two paintings, Reflections in the canal and The moss grown tiles , were purchased by the AGNSW, which already had 2 of his pastels and 10 of his etchings.
Coffey died in 1950. An exhibition of 55 of his paintings, etchings and drawings was held at SU in 2001, the first survey since he died.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1869
- Summary
- Painter and etcher, born in Limerick, Ireland. Resident of Sydney, NSW, in May 1923 he probably became the first Australian artist to visit and paint in the Dutch East Indies (according to Garside), travelling to Borneo, Java, Bali and the Celebes where he was interested in the local cultures.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1950
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1950-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Edward Colclough (pronounced Coke-ly) was born in Brisbane in 1866 and was a student at the Brisbane Grammar School when he began employment with the Queensland Lands Department on 1 April 1882. He retired from the Records and Correspondence Section 52 years later. His only training in art appeared to be with J.A Clarke at the Brisbane Technical College during his teenage years. He was a keen sportsman with rowing amongst his special interests, maintaining this connection with his old school for years. He married Ellen McPherson Clunies Ross in Brisbane and had four children; Jack (later custodian at the Queensland Art Gallery for many years), Kevin, Grace and Ellen.
Colclough exhibited watercolours with the Queensland Art Society from 1898 to 1902 and was Secretary from 1899 to1903. As he was awarded the prize for the best painting at the Toowoomba Eisteddfod it is apparent that he was one of the group of artists who expressed their dissatisfaction with the Society by forming a breakaway group, the New Society of Artists. Colclough then became Honorary Secretary and Treasurer 1904-16 when the Societies rejoined. Although he exhibited with the Queensland Art Society in the years 1915-16, 1920-21 and 1935 and was included in the Society’s Jubilee Exhibition in 1938 he largely devoted his energies to the Authors and Artists Association (1921-31) and the Queensland National Art Gallery (1922-50). He served first on the Board of Advice, acting as its Chairman from 1923 until it was abolished in 1930, whereupon he was appointed a Trustee, serving until his death in 1950. He was buried in the South Brisbane Cemetery on 22 July 1950.
The watercolour landscapes in south-eastern Queensland have the typical brownish tint and crepuscular ambience typical of the period. He travelled further afield in his search for subjects with his brother Michael, a preparator for the Queensland Museum. Colclough was also a photographer and bushwalker and kept records of this aspect of his life in press-cutting albums and sketchbooks. Apparently, he won the competition open to Queensland artists for the best painting illustrating the discovery of the Brisbane River at the Brisbane Centenary in 1923. During the 1920s he produced an extensive series of drawings of Brisbane and its environs which were exhibited at the Phillip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, in 1997.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1866
- Summary
- Colclough's work focused on Brisbane and its environs and has a significance in documenting the development of the city. His most important contribution was his role as an organiser for The Queensland Art Society, the New Society of Artists, the Authors and Artists Association and, lastly, the Queensland National Art Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Jul-50
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1950-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, England, UK
- Biography
- Painter, was born in Liverpool and arrived in Australia in 1885. He was a prominent figure in the Adelaide art scene of the late 1800s and Foundation President of the Adelaide Easel Club in 1895. As described in a newspaper review in 1897, Wadham and his brother Alfred (Wadham) Sinclair, had originally 'travelled to the colonies in search of the picturesque’ ( Register 5 April 1897). Gold discoveries took Wadham and Sinclair to Kalgoorlie in 1896; on returning to Adelaide they held an exhibition of their WA paintings, which was opened by Governor Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. Three watercolour on gouache paintings in the Sotheby’s Australia 2000 auction date from that period: Lake View and Boulder East Battery n.d. (47 × 73.5 cm), The Great Boulder 1896 (43.5 × 70 cm, title and date lhs) and Evening Camp Scene n.d. (48 × 73 cm). All three were purchased, probably in 1897, by Charles de Rose and remained in the family until sold at auction in 1976 (then private collection and Sotheby’s 'Australia 2000’ sale). While the camp scene is a characteristically picturesque grey and white scene with a glowing red setting sun and various camp and bush fires, the mining scenes were primarily informative. The Register noted:
Mr. Wadham’s big picture “The Great Boulder” taken from the Lake View mine works showing the sheds and shafts, will one day become historic – nay, it is that now to a certain extent. A mining town in its pinafore, so to speak, is not particularly picturesque, but practical rather; however the artist has made the most of his subject, and his work will find favour as a reminisence in pigments
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- William Wadham was a prominent figure in the Adelaide art scene of the late 1880s. He and his brother held an exhibition of works done on a visit to Kalgoorlie in 1896 that was opened by Governor Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1950
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-35.4388907 Longitude149.7955552 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1950-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Braidwood, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was a pupil of Lister Lister . In 1895 she had a studio at 49 Roslyn Gardens (advertisement in 1895 Art Society of NSW exhibition catalogue). She appears to have first exhibited with the Art Society of NSW in 1892, when the Illustrated Sydney News (3 September 1892, p.4) noted: 'Miss Jessie E. Scarvell is another of the new exhibitors and shows great promise’. She was elected an ordinary member of the Society’s Council in 1894-96 and 1898-99 [possibly continuously]. The Art Gallery of New South Wales [AGNSW] holds her The Lonely Margin of the Sea 1894, oil on canvas, presented by H. Bush in 1894. It was shown in the Art Society of NSW’s annual exhibition in 1894 (cat.332) then was included in the Grafton Gallery’s Exhibition of Australian Art in London in April 1898. A review in the Pall Mall Gazette mentioned it among 'all the good things’ that there was no space to mention (reprinted Sydney Morning Herald [ SMH ], 12 May 1898, p.7). Scarvell is said to have exhibited at least 67 landscapes, yet the only one identified to be in a public collection is that in the AGNSW. Several oil landscapes by Scarvell in the National Library of Australia’s Rex Nan Kivell collection are apparently dated c.1875-1879 and so are thus thought to be by another artist.
Scarvell’s Still Waters , exhibited with the Art Society of NSW in October 1892, was reproduced in the Building and Engineering Journal (29 October 1892, p.178). On 2 September 1893, p.3, the Illustrated Sydney News noted of her oils in the 14th annual exhibition: 'No.253. “At the Foot of They Crags or Sea” by Miss J.E.S: A seascape well composed and showing strength and confidence in the treatment – a good bright out of door effect and harmonious colouring. No.146. “Sand Dunes”, Miss Scarvell: A very clever bright painting of the sand dunes and a distant sea. This lady through all her work this year shows promise of still better work to come.’ The Bulletin (9 September 1893, p.14) commented that she showed talent in rendering shipping scenes.
SMH 29 September 1894, p.7 noted re the Society’s exhibition that year: “Miss Jessie E. Scarvell, who first made her mark last year with a similar subject, scores again with “The Lonely Margin of the Sea” (332). Here the sand-dune glistening in the strong light is treated with commanding skill, and in spite of the seeming bareness of the subject, the artist has contrived to achieve the picturesque. Various other oils also merit attention.’ Bernard Smith (cat. AGNSW, p.186) says that Scarvell exhibited 12 paintings, including seven oils, at the 1894 Exhibition of the Society and 12 oil paintings the following year. Her 'sea study (no.8) with a cloudy sky and a good distance’ was included in the 1895 University of Sydney Women’s College Exhibition ( SMH 28 May 1895, p.6).
In its review of the Art Society’s 1895 exhibition, the SMH noted (28 September 1895, p.7):
Miss J.E. Scarvell is probably at her best in “Mountain, Mead, and Stream” (No.68), for this view of the Liverpool Range, with its purple tints, green fields, and winding stream, is sympathetically wrought. “Shade” (No.57) shows a pretty forest glade, and there is a more noticeable contribution entitled “Harben Vale” (No.11). The amplitude of the foreground herein is a source of weakness, but the grey tones are harmonious, and the left-hand background of field and bush is so painted as to give artistic interest and value to the ensemble.
At the Art Society’s 1896 exhibition, the SMH critic stated (10 October 1896, p.7):
Miss J.E. Scarvell in “Wyangarie, the Northern Borderland of New South Wales” (No.31), successfully treats an expansive foreground of rich pasture covered with high grass, divided only by a belt of distant scrub from the chain of purple cloud-capped hills which bound the horizon. This is one of the best works Miss Scarvell has ever exhibited. In her “Sunlit Fields” (no.105) the stretch of gold-green glass is too wanting in detail even allowing for the effect of distance, but the clever handling of the stream and tufted grass hard by redeems the picture.
Scarvell married a Mr Bundock and moved to the Canberra region, where she is thought to have given up painting. Despite marrying late in life, she had a daughter.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1862
- Summary
- A painter, Scarvell exhibited frequently with the Art Society of New South Wales in the late 1800s and was included in the 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London' in April 1898.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1950
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1902-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Vera Mabel Cottew was born in Brisbane 1902, the eldest child and only daughter in a family of four children born to Arthur Cottew, a foreman fitter, and his wife Harriet neé Simpson. She was educated at the Milton State School but her interest in art as a career was discouraged by her father. She worked in an office and studied at the Central Technical College at night from 1919 (when she received a credit for Design I) and received 2nd prize for a design for an art poster at the Royal National Association in 1921. She built a house adjoining that of her parents in 1924.
She taught art at the Brisbane Girl’s Grammar School from 1925 to 1947 becoming the first full-time Art Mistress at the School from 1931. Betty Quelhurst was one of her students. She also taught at Somerville House, Brisbane from 1925 to 1927.
Cottew exhibited oils and watercolours with the Royal Queensland Art Society 1930-42 as well as various items of leatherwork from 1930 to 1939. She shared an exhibition with Muriel Foot and Ella Robinson in the Old Courier Building, Queen Street in 1940. Her output ceased in the 1940s suggesting increasing poor health. Her death in 1949 was the result of cancer.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1902
- Summary
- Vera Cottew's career as an art teacher in Brisbane spanned more than 20 years, during which time she influenced many of her female students and, like many of her generation, produced attractive floral still lifes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1949
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- exhibited with the Royal Art Society in 1903.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1879
- Summary
- F.I. Bloomfield exhibited with the Royal Art Society in Sydney in 1903.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1949
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-34.598056 Longitude138.745 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gawler, SA, Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, was born on 23 March 1875 in Gawler, South Australia. After moving to Perth in 1906, she won a scholarship to study art under James Linton at the Perth Technical College where she was awarded the Lady Hackett prize for drawing from the antique from the WA Society of Arts. She taught at the College in 1908-11, then left to study in London.
In 1914 Benson won a bronze medal for her work, Age , in a national competition among art schools of the British Empire. The following year she was awarded a scholarship to study at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London. There she won many distinctions, including the highest award in still-life painting. In 1915 her life-size marble bust of Sir Winthrop Hackett (SLWA) and two other works were shown at the Royal Academy.
In 1915-20 Benson studied at the City and Guilds of London Institute under the sculptor R.B.S. Stephenson. His instruction, plus the favourable comments she received when her bronze relief of Dr H.A. Ellis was shown at the Royal Academy in 1917, led her to concentrate exclusively on sculpture. In 1918 Persephone and two life size reliefs were shown at the Royal Academy, the former – which reportedly 'caused something of a sensation’ – being purchased by Colonel Hugh Reid, President of the Royal Glasgow Institute. Casts of Persephone and other works were shown in the British and Colonial Artists Exhibition in London, at the Royal West of England Academy and at the Royal Glasgow Institute that year. Benson’s studio was in St Anne’s Villa, Holland Park Avenue.
Her stay in London was extended due to the war, but Benson returned to Australia in 1920 to mount a comprehensive exhibition of her work at the Gayfield Shaw Studios, Sydney. She is known to have exhibited again only twice; in 1922 her Psyche and her Bacchante (1918) were shown with the Society of Artists in Sydney and in 1926 Persephone was shown at the Old Salon, Paris.
In Australia Benson redirected her sculptural practice towards architectural commissions. Between 1921 and 1925 she received three major Sydney commissions from G.H. Godsell, a building contractor from the architectural firm of Robertson & Marks: a Roman frieze for the W.T. Waters & Co. Building, a relief carving known as Cinderella for the entrance of the Ambassador’s Cafe and the spandrels above the proscenium arch in the Prince Edward Theatre. She was mentioned in 'The Revival of Sculpture’ ( Art in Australia 1927) as a sculptor who would have been doing more work if the advent of the Depression – which resulted in a building freeze – had not had such a marked affect on sculptural commissions generally. It is believed she was dismissed from the Shrine of Remembrance project in Melbourne only to be offered the design of cakes of soap!
Little is known of Benson between 1927 and 1949 when she died of Parkinson’s disease. She did not marry and may have had to sacrifice an artistic career for a regular wage.
Writers:
Larkin, Annette
duggim
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 23 March 1875
- Summary
- Eva Ellenor Benson was a talented sculptor who trained in Perth and London where she received regular recognition through awards and commissions. Returning to Australia in 1920, Benson's high profile continued as she redirected her sculptural practice towards major architectural commissions. Despite this, little is known of Benson after 1927.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Mar-49
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St. Kilda, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, etcher, designer and inventor, was born on 26 December 1873 in St Kilda, Melbourne. Her parents, both aged 31 at the time of her birth and both from County Galway, Ireland, had married in Melbourne in 1871. Her mother, Emily Florence Kate O’Shaughnessy , was a partner in the leading Melbourne photographic firm of Johnstone & O’Shannessy (sic), where her father, George Henry Massey Hasler , was manager. Both retired from photography before Muriel was born. She spent her childhood in and around St Kilda where the family lived in comfortable circumstances. She and her younger sister, Letitia, were probably instructed in art, at least from their parents and tutor; it is also possible that Muriel learnt etching from John Mather . She played the cello, Letitia played the harp and both played the piano.
Muriel Hasler was living with her family in Collins Street, Melbourne, in 1898 when she married 29 year-old Edward Harold Binney, a medical practitioner of Brighton. They had two sons. By 1907 the family was living at St Clair in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, and Edward had a private medical practice in Macquarie Street. Although Muriel practised art as a genteel activity from youth – a small oil painting of the Hasler family home in Melbourne dated 1894 is extant (family collection) – the frieze, copperplate etchings and craft works she showed in the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition were her first recorded public exhibits.
In Sydney she may have had drawing lessons from Dattilo Rubbo ; her charcoal sketch of him also remains in the family. She made Christmas and greeting cards, drew cartoons and sketches for her children and may have designed theatrical costumes (a family collection of unsigned ink drawings of these is probably her work). Her papers, letters and drawings reveal a strong, confident, creative woman with an independent, inquiring spirit.
From 1912 the family spent some time in England while the boys were at school. Back at Sydney, they lived at Vaucluse. Edward, a specialist in children’s diseases, died on 19 November 1927 of longstanding multiple sclerosis. Then, her granddaughter’s recollect, Muriel frequently travelled overseas, presumably in connection with her inventions. Edward reportedly had disapproved of his wife’s passion for inventing things, which did not find full expression until 1929 when she presented her inventions to the British Society of Inventors and showed some at the International Exhibition of Inventions. Her leg prosthesis was awarded a silver medal. Other exhibits were a portable shoe-stand and travelling case, awarded a certificate of merit, and a cigarette smoker’s combined case and stand. She showed the shoe-stand and medical appliance again the following year and it was reported in Sydney that both were about to be put into commercial production in England.
Muriel Binney lived at Watsons Bay in the 1930s but continued to travel while her sons looked after her affairs. In 1934 she went to Russia. She became more eccentric in the 1940s, decking herself in bizarre outfits bought in Paris many years earlier and apparently developing a drinking problem. Committed to the Parramatta Mental Asylum, she died there of heart disease and chronic bronchitis on 11 May 1949, aged 74. Her body was cremated at Rookwood Crematorium.
Sydney Harbour Foreshores at Sunset August 1907 (detail), watercolour on paper with cotton border in four sections 45 × 1939 cm overall. Australian National Maritime Museum. This 360 degree panorama, nearly 20 metres long, was intended as an architectural frieze for Mrs Binney’s Elizabeth Bay home. Viewed from a position in the middle of Sydney Harbour, the four (linked) sections depict: Woolloomooloo Bay, Farm Cove, North Sydney, Neutral Bay and Fort Denison (427 cm); Mosman Bay, Athol Bight, Taylor Bay, Clifton Gardens, Obelisk Bay and Middle Head (544 cm); Manly, North and South Heads and Watsons Bay (427 cm); Vaucluse Bay, Rose Bay, Double Bay, Rushcutters Bay, Garden Island and Potts Point (541 cm). While the buildings on the horizon are depicted in blocky outline, the boats, foreshores and navigational markers are quite clearly shown, including HMS Powerful , the flagship of the Australia Station, in Farm Cove. Capturing the stillness of the city diffused with the gentle yellow light of dusk, with vessels silhouetted against the setting sun and the boats on the southern side of the Harbour highlighted, an almost melancholy mood is established.
At the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition this ambitious panorama was entered with 23 other designs in the Fine Art Category class 30a, 'Best original design for a frieze’, for a prize of a guinea. As was the case with half the work in the exhibition, it was not for sale. Being married to a doctor, Mrs Binney was quite wealthy and did not need to sell her work. However, evidently aware of the potential of her frieze for reproduction as a wallpaper she applied for and was granted copyright on it in September 1907, shortly after the Sydney preliminary Women’s Work exhibition opened.
Binney showed a diverse collection of work at the Melbourne exhibition along with the frieze: copper-plate etchings, an 'ingenious invention’ (probably the child’s cot and playground later shown in London) for which she won a second prize, a poster design 'for Biscuits’, and a painted fire-screen, silk opera bag, silk d’oyleys and chair upholstery, plus 'Ormolu occasional chair upholstery, in watercolours on white silk’. Her frieze was not awarded a prize, the first prize going to Edith Alsop and the second to Ethel Crooke. It was one of the strongest sections, as the Sydney Morning Herald of 24 October 1907 noted.
Binney’s frieze was nevertheless chosen to be sent on to London for display in the NSW Court of the Australian Pavilion at the Franco-British Exhibition, held at Shepherd’s Bush from 14 May to 31 October 1908. The Australian Agent-General in London had requested some examples from the Women’s Work exhibition and Binney’s contemporary panorama of Sydney Harbour fitted in perfectly with the aims of the London show: to encourage trade, commerce, tourism and immigration to New South Wales. Mrs Binney’s frieze and her child’s cot and playground invention, along with a set of six carved dining-room chairs made of Australian timbers and leather by Suzanne Gether and her Sydney pupils, were shown at London in the category 'Decoration and Furnishing’. The three women’s exhibits were placed in the New South Wales Court amid massive arches of wools and cereals, mounds of coal, photographs of the state’s commercial, industrial and social life and models and replica cabins of liners on the Australian route. According to the exhibition commissioners, 'the fine hand-painted frieze of Sydney Harbour by Mrs. Binney, which stretched half way round the Annex’ was a factor 'in impressing upon the public the artistic side of Sydney’. Mrs Binney was awarded a silver medal for it; she received another for her cot and playground.
Some time after Binney had patented her frieze it was cut into six pieces, possibly for installation in the Franco-British Exhibition. Afterwards it remained with the family, although descendants have no memory of ever seeing it on the walls of any family home. It has now been restored to its original four sections and displayed in the Australian National Maritime Museum. It was included in the Museum of Sydney exhibition Sydney by Ferry in 2002.
Writers:
Fletcher, Daina
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 26 December 1873
- Summary
- A painter, etcher and designer who exhibited both in Australia and abroad and who is thought to have lessons from Dattilo Rubbo. Binney was also an award-winning inventor whose creations included a leg prosthesis and a portable shoe-stand. A regular international traveller, she spent time in London, Paris and Russia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-May-49
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude51.5243806 Longitude-1.423879 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wantage, Berkshire, England
- Biography
- Lewis Jarvis Harvey was born at Wantage, Berkshire, England on 16 June 1871, the second son of the six children born to Enos James Harvey (an iron moulder and engineer) and his wife Elizabeth née Jarvis. The family migrated to Australia in 1874 and settled in Brisbane. After attending the Kangaroo Point School Harvey worked as a telegram boy until he was given lessons in woodcarving by Edward G. Madley and Cuthbert Vickers and subsequently enrolled at the Brisbane Technical College. During this time he studied drawing with J. A. Clarke and later R. Godfrey Rivers. Harvey opened his own business as a wood and stone carver in North Quay in 1892 and transferred the business to George Street c.1898. Harvey became a part-time teacher of woodcarving at the Brisbane Technical College in 1902 and when amalgamated with the South Brisbane Technical College and West End Technical College to form the Central Technical College in 1909 he taught modelling. In 1916 Harvey closed his business to take up full-time teaching at the Central Technical College from 1 August and at the same time began giving evening classes in pottery.
On 5 January 1898 Harvey married Fanny Ellen Keal and children Elsie, Thelma, George and Elvin were born in 1900, 1902, 1903 and 1913 respectively.
A ceramic in a family collection in the United States is dated 1914, two years prior to the introduction of his pottery classes at the Central Technical College. It seems his involvement with teaching pottery was at the suggestion of Mrs Lucy Pearson of the Arts and Crafts Society of Brisbane. Apart from the individual quality of his own work, Harvey’s major contribution to the development of ceramics in Australia is the series of 20 exercises with which he taught his students and subsequently in his school of ceramics that became the largest in Australia. While his strict method of training ensured his students produced ceramics of a high level of competence, he did not encourage experimentation. Harvey, however, was a gentle instructor and his engaging personality and sense of humour was fondly recalled by many of his former students. He taught remedial arts and crafts to returned serviceman during both world wars.
Harvey was intimately involved in the Brisbane art scene throughout his life. He was appointed to the Selection Committee of the Queensland Art Society in 1926 and made a life member in 1933. L. J. Harvey exhibited wood carving and sculpture at the annual exhibitions of the Queensland Art Society, later the Royal Queensland Art Society (RQAS), between 1907 and 1948 and pottery for the first time with a group of his students in 1917. He exhibited pottery subsequently in 1919, 1920 and collections of pottery in 1925-41 together with some sculptural ceramic works. Harvey was appointed to the Queensland Art Gallery’s art advisory committee in 1938 and served until 1945.
He exhibited woodcarvings at the Arts and Crafts Society of Brisbane from 1914 and pottery 1919 to 1941 when he transferred his interest to the newly established Half Dozen Group of Artists. The Society, which ceased to function during World War I, was reformed at a meeting at Harvey’s studio in 1922. He served on the committee for many years, largely as a selector. His works at the Arts and Crafts Society in Brisbane (and indeed the RQAS) were always favourably commended but in terms such as '. . . too well known to require comment’ so specific mention of his pottery is rare. Exceptions to this occur in 1928 when a reviewer from the Courier-Mail described 'The colouring and modelling on the kookaburras on certain pieces . . . merit special attention, and another admirable specimen is a purple and deep blue vase with an Australian design in high relief.’ In 1929 another, Brisbane’s The Telegraph, comments 'Among the several pieces of pottery displayed, pride of place must be given to two delightful little potpourri jars and an interesting china head set on a coloured stand.’ Harvey was essentially the only ceramist in Brisbane to produce figurative or sculptural pieces. A reviewer in 1930, in an unidentified press cutting, specifically mentions 'a float bowl in rich mulberry brown and rose showing crabs and other sea creatures in high relief while the central figure is a mermaid.’
Harvey introduced examples of his pottery to the Sydney public in 1922 through the New Art Salon and in May that year the Sydney Telegraph reported: '. . . the students who are instructed by Mr L. J. Harvey have the advantage of getting near Brisbane clays in natural colours, from which they are able to get rich effects of tone. In some of these there is a variety of colours, and, when they are baked and glazed they have the effect of coloured marble or the texture of agate.’ This was designated 'Harvian Ware’ and so marked but it is now rarely found. The clear greenish glaze of this group of work was made of ground optical glass. The use of natural coloured Queensland clays in formalised designs became a distinct aspect of the School.
Harvey himself was aware of the significance of his pottery classes within an Australian context as he insisted his students inscribe all their works with a 'Q’ or 'QLD”. He offered the Board of Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales a selection of the work of his and his students in 1923 but the offer, unfortunately, was not accepted. Harvey presented a group of his small miniature pieces to the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney [now Powerhoue Museum]. It was not until 1938 that the Queensland Art Gallery accepted a small double scraffito vase (together with a bronze bust of his daughter Elsie) presented by friends and students of the potter to commemorate his retirement for the Central Technical College at the end of the previous year. Harvey then set up a private craft school at Horsham House, 331 Adelaide Street, Brisbane where he taught until his death. Harvey died while attending a meeting of the Royal Queensland Art Society on 19 July 1949. The L. J. Harvey Memorial prize for Drawing, established in his honour, was awarded at the Queensland Art Gallery 1950-83.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 June 1871
- Summary
- L. J. Harvey was a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement in Australia - an exceptional woodcarver and an accomplished sculptor, potter and teacher. He was also the inspiration of the largest school of art pottery to develop in Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Jul-49
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- China painter who was born in Adelaide, South Australia. Ethel studied art, learning oil painting from James Ashton. She married Charles A. Munt in 1897 and moved to Boulder, Western Australia during the height of the gold rushes. Boulder was the company town as opposed to Kalgoorlie, which was the home of the individual miner. Her husband worked for the Public Works Department in 1905 and became undersecretary for Public Works. They lived in Dean Street, Claremont, Devon Road, Swanbourne and later in Dalkeith, Perth, Western Australia. Ethel took up china painting. She was the mother of china painter Bobbie Sanders who learnt from Flora Landells. It is probable that Ethel learnt from the Misses Creeth when she moved to Perth or from Flora Landells when her daughter was attending classes. Ethel was active in the 1930s and 1940s and possibly earlier.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- China painter who was born in Adelaide, South Australia. She studied art, learning oil painting from James Ashton. Ethel was active in the 1930s and 1940s and possibly earlier.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1949
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-35.3015747 Longitude148.2226744 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tumut, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter, china painter and potter, was born in Tumut, New South Wales, where her father ran the local store. The family lived at The Lawns, a property Robert Newman had inherited. In 1893 Ada enrolled at the Sydney Technical College and three years later was touring England and Europe painting watercolour scenes of the places visited. After she returned home, the family moved to Sydney. By 1906 Ada was studying china-painting at the Tech. with J.A. Peach. Her china-painting was included in the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition, both at Melbourne and in the preliminary Sydney show.
With Dorothy Wilson and about half a dozen others, Ada Newman was a founding member of the Arts and Crafts Society of NSW in August 1906, and she exhibited regularly with it until 1941. She also exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria in 1919 and with the Women’s Industrial Arts Society (formerly the Society of Women Painters) at Sydney in the 1930s. Until 1910 she had 'a little studio in Pitt-street where she worked and taught’. By 1914, mainly through private commissions, she was able to set up a studio in Hunter Street where she taught china painting. Ethel Atkinson joined her there about 1916 in what was to be a lifelong partnership. Fervent believers in national design and materials, they began making their own pottery in the 1920s, nearly all decorated with Australian motifs. At the Society’s 1929 annual exhibition, for instance, Ada’s china painting exhibits included a coffee set in rich browns with a native flower design in rich blue ( Sun 24 October 1929) and a 'tall straight brown vase with a design of seed pods of Australian shrubs’ (anon cuttings file). In the 1920s she also painted medallions, which Rhoda Wager (another member of the Society) made into silver framed brooches.
As well as taking students in pottery at their 'Ceramic Art Studio’, Newman and Atkinson fired work for other potters in their gas and electric kilns. A photograph of Ada with her students was published in Woman’s World in May 1931. After Ada’s father died at the age of ninety-six (c.1940) she and Atkinson moved into the Newman home in Muston Street, Mosman, and installed kilns for both china painting and pottery. Newman died in 1949, whereupon Atkinson abandoned both pottery and china painting.
Vase with Epacris Design was purchased by the Trustees of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales from the 1925 exhibition of the NSW Society of Arts & Crafts. It was the ninth and final example of Ada Newman’s china painting to enter the collection. Over twenty years earlier the trustees had made their first purchase of a jug and a vase, both painted with native flowers, either from the 1910 Arts & Crafts Society exhibition or from the 1912 Girls’ Realm Guild Exhibition (the records are unclear). The other Newman acquisitions were all from previous Arts & Crafts Society exhibitions too: a beautiful art nouveau lustre vase with a landscape design, which cost the gallery five guineas in 1913; a jardiniere with a butterfly design and two vases-one with a grape and the other with a poplar design-acquired 1914; a blue vase with a seed-pod design and a six-piece morning glory (Convolvulus) tea set purchased 1920. All were painted on imported blanks, either of French or English china, French being preferred because the harder glaze was better able to withstand Newman’s multiple firings.
Newman was not particularly impressed by the gallery’s exceptional patronage of her work, commenting in an interview in 1924 that when working on her tea set The Morning Glory she had always pictured 'a beautifully set tray and someone enjoying tea from the lovely cups; but “they will be forever cold”’. Nor were the examples it acquired particularly outstanding. Her blue-painted china, nicknamed 'The Newman Blue’ in local Arts & Crafts circles, was highly praised in the Connoisseur when she showed a blue coffee set decorated with wattle in London, but the only gallery piece with a blue ground is her seed-pod vase – a paler example. As early as 1907, at the First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work in Melbourne, Newman had shown a set of dessert plates in which both her blues and her love of native flowers were evident. The Sydney Mail commented:
In the competitive china painting there is a fine display, a set of dessert plates by Miss A. Newman being actual works of high art. A starlike border of pale blue has a small interlacing of a deeper shade, whilst on each plate is a wreath of native blossoms, exquisitely painted, the wonga, dillwynia, wattle, ti-tree flower, hardenbergia, and epacris (Christmas bush) forming the series.
Such special pieces were apparently snapped up by private collectors as soon as they left the kiln or were done on commission. They were, of course, also more expensive than her simpler china paintings. 'Craft’ was an area in which the National Art Gallery of NSW was equivocal about collecting at all and under Director J.S. McDonald in 1934, it was happily abandoned to the Technological (now Powerhouse) Museum – the year the Powerhouse acquired its first Newman piece.
The last Newman acquisition by the AGNSW, acquired 1925, was a vase decorated with an Australian flower, the Epacris or native heath, painted on a French blank. Yet by 1925 Newman and her partner Ethel Atkinson were making their own pottery. This piece, however, only seems atypical because it was made about twenty years earlier, probably in 1895. A label on the back states it was in the 'Art Loan Exhibition 1897’, an exhibition of Sydney Technical College students’ work at the Art Gallery, but Newman went on her Grand Tour in 1896 and must have made it before she left. As an example of her student work, it is an excellent if unsophisticated piece prefiguring the passionate nationalism she brought to her pottery designs when working with Atkinson in later years. As reported in 1924, Ada Newman 'instituted a distinctly Australian school, and one that has awakened interest and admiration abroad’- abroad being the magical word that may well have inspired the gallery to make this conservative yet 'distinctly Australian’ purchase from the following year’s exhibition.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1869
- Summary
- Painter, china painter and potter. With Dorothy Wilson and about half a dozen others, Ada Newman was a founding member of the Arts and Crafts Society of NSW in August 1906.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1949
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-41.2710849 Longitude173.2836756 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nelson, New Zealand
- Biography
- Painter, was the sister of Edith Cusack . At the 1896 Art Society of NSW exhibition, 'Aline Cusack and Wm. Birkenhead work in the way of Piguinet [sic], and catch a good deal of his result’ ( Bulletin , 17 October 1896, 12; info. Ingrid Anderson).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 March 1867
- Summary
- Painter
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Jul-49
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK, England, UK?
- Biography
- Painter, elder brother of Daniel Altson , was a Jewish artist presumably born in England. He was in Melbourne by 1883 when he became a member of the Buonarotti Club, evidently while a student at the NGV School. At the distribution of prizes for the work of students at the Melbourne National Gallery School in 1889, Alston was awarded first prize for the best portrait or figure painting … 'but having gained it the previous year, he was disqualified’ ( Illustrated Sydney News , 28 November 1889). Referring to the successful sale of works exhibited in the annual [student] exhibition, the article claimed 'the highest price given being £120 to Mr Alston, for his gold medal picture entitled “Flood Suffering”’ ( Illustrated Sydney News , 6 December 1890). In 1890 he was awarded the NGV Travelling Scholarship. He went to Paris the following year and spent the rest of his life overseas.
In 1895, in an article headed 'National Art Gallery – The Interchange Question’, the SMH stated: 'Messrs Du Faur and Ashton hope that the inclusion of one or more of the diploma pictures in the Sydney loan collection may stimulate the NSW Governors to similar munificence … The works of Mr Longstaff and Mr Alston (ex-prizemen) [are] at the Sydney Art Gallery’ ( Sydney Morning Herald 15 October 1895). Writing about the Third Loan Interchange from the NGV to the NAGNSW in 1896, the SMH again mentioned the inclusion of '...the extra two painted under the terms of the travelling scholarship of £150 a year for three years, awarded to the best student of the year at the Victorian Art Gallery schools … the two works referred to have been forwarded here to stimulate interest in the scheme … The other Scholarship painting is a copy by Aby Allston [sic] of Van Dyck’s “Portrait of a Lady and Her Daughter”, the original of which hangs in the Louvre’ ( Sydney Morning Herald 24 April 1896).
The present holder of the Melbourne [Travelling] Scholarship – Mr. Alston, a Colarossi student and a pupil of Courtois – sends to the salon a picture entitled “Echoes” and a clever portrait of Mr Mackennal’s little daughter in a yellow gauze dress and necklace of ambers ( Illustrated Sydney News , 4 June 1892).
Mr Alston’s “Echoes” is “skied” in the Paris Salon and hangs next to Mr Bunny 's “Dorothea” – it is described as “wanting in originality; the drawing of the semi-nude figure is also bad”’ ( Illustrated Sydney News , 18 June 1892).
We learn by cable that several Victorian artists are represented at this year’s exhibitions in London and Paris. Mr J. Longstaff ... and Mr Robinson ... Mr A. Alston, of Melbourne, sent a picture, “The Golden Age” ( Sydney Morning Herald 12 May 1894).
See also R.J. Slade, 'An Australian Quartette’, Magazine of Art 1895, 389. A small symbolist painting dated 1897, Fantasy – Angel Drawing the Cloth of Night (Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth: ill. Catalogue 2000, no. 62, p.75), was done when he was living in Kensington, London.
'Abe Alston, the artist, who won the Victorian travelling some years ago, is making a name in London for his black and white work, which adorns the page of Pearson’s Magazine and the Pall Mall Magazine ', noted the Bulletin on 11 April 1896. On 19 February 1898 it reiterated that:
Abbey Alston … had scored a solid success with high toned colour work in Pearson’s Magazine [for December] illustrating Lewis Morris’s song “To Venus, the Evening Star”. There are 4 illustrations very “decorative”, yet artistically sane in sentiment, the faces being evidently drawn from models of the Morris-Alston persuasion. The pictures so impressed one of the proprietors of Pearson’s that he promptly gave the artist an £800 order to paint frescoes at his townhouse, and when a talented Hebrew gets fairly into a golden swim, he remains there evermore, as a rule. If Abbey Alston wants to draw a big income, he can get the finest possible models from among the chosen’ ( Bulletin 19 February 1898).
…The history of Abbey Alston’s “The Golden Age” (which he painted for the Victorian Art Gallery in fulfillment of the Travelling Scholarship obligation) is given in Pearson’s Magazine . Young Alston, like Longstaff before him, was terribly anxious to do justice to the Scholarship. No subject seemed big enough to him. Finally he decided upon the creation of Arcadia, a beautifully yellow and impossible place where girls are happy all day long and wear no clothes. Alston being in France at this time, thought that the Isle de Noirmontier was the best place he could strike for Arcadian atmosphere and sentiment. So he took some girl models with him and himself with the spirit of the Island, and put such a lot of time and expense into the picture that when it was finished he was a “dead broker” ( Bulletin 8 October 1898). Alston’s undated oil 'marble painting’ Clarisse (a typical and mediocre Roman female portrait though a rare example of the genre by an Australian) was in Christie’s sale of the estate of Frederick D. Bladin at Melbourne, 2 April 2003 (lot 50, est. $7,000-$12,000). Bladin acquired it from Willis, Hudson & Co. of Sheffield, England.
Alston’s portraits of Mr & Mrs S. Solomon in black and white crayon were auctioned at Sotheby’s on 25 October 1985, lot 142.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1866
- Summary
- Winner of 1890 NGV Travelling Scholarship, painter of portraits and landscapes, Alston also worked in London doing illustrations for Pearson's Magazine and the Pall Mall Magazine.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1949
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude50.4083546 Longitude-3.6198639 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paignton, Devon, England
- Biography
- Frederick James 'Fred’ Elliott was born in 1864 in Paignton near Brixham, Devon, UK, son of Alfred Elliott. Fred Elliott immigrated to Queensland in 1876 when his father was appointed teacher at Humpybong School near Redcliffe, Queensland. He died on 1 March 1949 in Paddington, NSW.
Elliott worked as a lithographic artist in the Queensland Government Printing Office from July 1896 to about 1903. He was a prolific artist, painting almost invariably in watercolours, occasionally in oils. He specialised in marine watercolour studies, travelling up and down the coast by ship and sketching scenes that he later turned into paintings. Elliott was active in Sydney from the 1890s to the 1920s, mainly painting Sydney Harbour (more correctly known as Port Jackson, NSW), including views and individual ships. His watercolours are characterised by a high key and strong atmospheric effects. He showed his paintings infrequently in the Queensland National Association’s exhibitions and with the Queensland Art Society and the NSW Society of Artists. He signed his paintings “F. Elliott”.
Writers:
Rost, Fred
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1864
- Summary
- Frederick James 'Fred' Elliott, 1864-1949, was a prolific watercolour painter and lithographer, active in Sydney from the 1890s to the 1920s, specialising in marine subjects.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Mar-49
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.8931044 Longitude151.2040292 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Redfern, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- art student, was included in the official list of awards at the 1879-80 Sydney International Exhibition: Schools – Barton, Alice, Fort Street – [aged] 15 – Illuminated – 2nd award.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1864
- Summary
- An art student, Barton was included in the official list of awards at the 1879-80 Sydney International Exhibition.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1949
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1862
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Nov-49
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-37.247494 Longitude144.4552171 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kyneton, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- painter, is something of a maverick in Australian art. The eldest of ten children, she was born on 30 March 1862 at Barfold, near Kyneton, into an extended family which migrated to Victoria from Northern Ireland in the 1850s.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography .
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 30 March 1862
- Summary
- Painter, residing in Melbourne, she diverged from standard patterns of taste in her use of a sombre palette and free, expressive brushwork. She exhibited internationally, being consistently acclaimed since 1896, but ended her career in relative obscurity.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1949
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tasmania
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born on 18 July 1860 in Tasmania, second daughter of Morton Allport , a Hobart solicitor and well-known amateur photographer, and Elizabeth, née Ritchie. Her grandmother Mary Morton Allport gave Lily her first art lessons. No comprehensive biography of Lily or any other Allport artist has been published, but she lived in England and travelled in Europe in 1888-1922 and 1927-31, at other times residing in Hobart until her death on 29 April 1949. Known as 'Lily’ within the family, she signed most of her work 'C.L. Allport’.
In 1888, the year Lily embarked for England with her mother and sister Mary, her brother Cecil wrote to her other brother, Gordon, with anything but wholehearted support for her artistic ambitions. Since her mother was unable to assist Lily’s aim to be employed 'as she thinks fit, and to be devoted to some talent’, Cecil asked Gordon to consider providing some financial help even though, in Cecil’s opinion, there was not 'the slightest probability…she would become sufficiently accomplished’ for this to 'bear good fruit’. Nevertheless, financial help was given that enabled her to prove Cecil wrong. She studied with Herbert Voss in London, then in Paris and Rome and in a relatively short time was successfully exhibiting, selling, teaching and publishing her art. Her early endeavours are described in a diary begun in Normandy in 1890. The continuing relationship of this determined artist – who never married – with her supportive family is exemplified by Cecil’s concern for her safety and his sending 'a draft in her favour’ when she obstinately continued to paint mosques and markets in Constantinople on the eve of World War I.
On 12 February 1894, the Mercury stated that Miss Allport had become 'the first Tasmanian to gain the distinction of having works hung in the Royal Academy’. (Her work was hung there in 1893, 1894 and 1906.) The Hobart Mercury of 16 May 1894 commented: 'Miss Allport is a native of Tasmania, but has been for some years a resident of London, where she has been studying under some of the leading artists in Great Britain. Her work is chiefly street scenes, and views of old churches have been very highly spoken of.’ When the Tasmanian National Gallery requested a painting she donated Study in Blue and Green , which had been 'hung on the Imperial walls last May’, noted the Mercury (12 February 1895) when it arrived: 'Miss Allport went to England some nine years ago, to pursue her studies in art, and has been very successful, some of her work having been highly referred to’.
Allport also exhibited at the British Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. In London, she showed oil and watercolour paintings, lithographs, colour linocuts and woodcuts at the Goupil Gallery, the London Salon, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Ridley Art Club. She exhibited the watercolour fan painting, Souvenir of Isadora Duncan’s Troupe of Children 1908, at the Goupil Gallery and at the Salon. In January-February 1914 her work, including the fan painting A Spring Song (c.1913, watercolour, Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts [ALMFA]), was included in a group exhibition of fan paintings at London’s Ryder Gallery. Allport’s standing as an artist in this decorative art form is confirmed by the fact that her fans were shown alongside examples by Charles Conder, 'the natural leader’ of this 'revival of a very delicate art’, according to the Westminster Gazette . Lily’s fans were praised by reviewers too, and A Spring Song was reproduced in the 'Ladies’ Supplement’ of the Illustrated London News .
Her subjects were often theatrical or ballet scenes. They include A Souvenir of the Russian Dancers Anna Pavlova and Michael Mordkin, at the Palace Theatre, London, 1910 and Les Sylphides (1913), as well as Pinkie and the Fairies , a fan painting believed to have been shown at Goupil in 1909 after the pantomime Pinkie and the Fairies had played at London’s Her Majesty’s Theatre from December 1908 to February 1909. Allport’s fans and prints form a great contrast to Thea Proctor’s, despite both artists working in the same media, often choosing similar subjects and showing at the same London galleries (Allport’s were slightly earlier). In her fan paintings, as in the various other art forms she explored, Allport built upon the academic teaching and practice of her English teachers, Hubert Voss, S.G. Boxsine and Charles Wellington Furse.
Other 'good fruit’ Lily was to bear included being an instructor at the London School of Photo Engraving and Lithography for almost twenty years. She was an exhibiting member of the British Society of Graver-Printers and her watercolour series, A Year in Tasmania , was exhibited at London’s Gieves Art Gallery in 1927 and favourably reviewed in the Sydney Bulletin later that year.
After returning to Hobart she ran her own studio and at the age of sixty-five set up a printing press, the Bolt Press, with Elizabeth M. Hood, inserting a notice in the local newspaper that she was 'unable to see friends and visitors until further notice’ due to a studio move and the demands of work. She also continued to exhibit her paintings and for three years (1933-35) opened her studio at 53 Collins Street to the public on Friday afternoons. In 1935 she held an exhibition there of her 'watercolours, portrait sketches, woodcuts and colour prints’. She was a Council Member of the Art Society of Tasmania in 1937-41.
Allport’s linocuts, for which she was probably best known in her lifetime, contrast with the more delicate quality of her lithographs and her fan paintings on silk. Their simple graphic flatness is also very different to the machine-age aesthetic present in the linocut work of an artist like Dorrit Black, another Australian working in England between the wars (but under Claude Flight, the English 'champion of lino cut’).
The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, founded on the family collection, has by far the largest holdings of Allport’s work. Some 400 items, including sketchbook works and multiple copies of her prints, were accessioned from the Allport family home, Cedar Court, Hobart, after her death. (In ALMFA exhibition Images of Childhood , 1993 were: HA72 Richea dracophylla 21 September 1887, w/c on paper; HA74 Nerium odorum n.d. w/c; HA67 Eucalyptus from WA 7 May 1891 w/c.) Included are a substantial number of her fan designs, although a few have appeared on the art market in recent years. A Midsummer Night’s Dream was offered by Deutscher Fine Art in 1982 and another was auctioned at Sotheby’s (Sydney) in 1993. The National Gallery of Australia also has a substantial collection of prints, e.g. The Shrimpers 1908, colour lithograph.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 July 1860
- Summary
- Painter and printmaker in Tasmania. Second daughter of Morton Allport, a Hobart solicitor and well-known amateur photographer. On 12 February 1894, the Mercury stated that Miss Allport had become 'the first Tasmanian to gain the distinction of having works hung in the Royal Academy' - her work was hung there in 1893, 1894 and 1906.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29-Apr-49
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1949-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- Curzona Frances Louise (Lily) Allport the daughter of a prominent Tasmanian family, was born in Hobart in 1860, the daughter of Morton Allport, and the grand-daughter of Mary Morton Allport. She first began to paint and draw when she was a girl in Hobart, but soon left for Europe. By 1890 records have her studying in Paris, sharing a studio with her cousin, Charles Ritchie. She then moved to London, where she studied under Hubert Vos, taking classes at his Chelsea studio.On 17 June 1891 the Hobert Mercury recorded that she had been successful in having work hung at the Royal Academy in London.She returned to Tasmania in 1923, and the Hobart Mercury of 14 January 1924 notes that she had successfully exhibited 'on the line’ at the Royal Academy as well as the Paris Salon. She also held a solo exhibition at the Masonic Hall in Hobart in March 1924.By 1933 she was living in Hobart, and exhibiting at the annual Art Society exhibition, where her pastel portrait was praised as “an adornment of the exhibition”. This entry is a stub. Please help the DAAO by completing it
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1860
- Summary
- Tasmanian born printmaker Curzona Frances Louise (Lily) Allport found success in London, after studying in Paris.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1949
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-32.9023676 Longitude151.7312067 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waratah, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- printmaker, was born in Waratah, Newcastle, NSW, in 1901, niece of the well-known Judge, Sir George Stephenson Beeby. After her mother died and her father disappeared, she was brought up in Sydney by her aunts. She studied at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School and exhibited there. During the 1920s she contributed three linocuts to Undergrowth , the Sydney Art Students’ journal edited by Nancy Hall and Dore Hawthorne . Florence taught at the East Sydney Technical College and was a great friend of Ruth Ainsworth , the art mistress at Frensham Girls’ School, Mittagong. Taylor married Keith Dash in 1929 and did little work after this. She died of tuberculosis in Bathurst in 1948.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff writer
Note: Revised Heritage biography. (Previously attributed to Bronwyn Hanna. Updated 2010/06/07)
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1901
- Summary
- With the disappearance of her Father and death of her Mother, Florence Taylor was subsequently raised in Sydney by her aunts. After training at Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School in the 1920s, Taylor went on to teach at East Sydney Technical College.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1948
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- Watercolorist who was born in Victoria. She married Arthur Wakefield Bassett and accompanied him to Western Australia. She is known to have painted small panels of wildflowers, which were exhibited in Melbourne at the Women’s Work Exhibition organised by Lady Northcote in 1907. This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1888
- Summary
- She is known to have painted small panels of wildflowers, which were exhibited in Melbourne at the Women's Work Exhibition in 1907.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1948
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-37.802104 Longitude144.9881387 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Collingwood, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Alfred Benjamin Coleman is an interesting example of an artist who was able to turn a hobby into a profession in his mature years at a time when the local art scene was flourishing, professional bodies such as art societies were being formed and there was a market for paintings depicting local scenes. Son of Alfred Coleman and Henrietta Palmer, he was born in Collingwood, Melbourne, in 1885, and he worked in the family furniture-making business before devoting himself to art in the 1930s when he was aged in his late forties. At this time he not only painted prolifically, but also developed connections in the local art world. When he died aged sixty-two in 1948, he was eulogised in the Melbourne Argus (4 December 1948, p. 5) as a “well-known landscape and seascape artist” who “frequently exhibited his oils and water-colours in Melbourne galleries.” Furthermore, it was noted that he was “on the council of the Victorian Artists’ Society” and was “a member of the Twenty Painters’ Society, the South Australian Artists’ Society, and the Arts and Crafts Club.”Whether he undertook any professional artistic training in his youth is unknown. What is clear is that his main occupation listed in entries in Electoral Rolls between 1909 and 1942 was “furniture-maker”. This provided a comfortable income, enabling Coleman to marry Millicent Gagg in 1912 and have a family, a daughter and a son. Beginning in the early 1920s, he lived with his family at “The Wattles”, 259 Como Parade in Mordialloc, a Melbourne suburb on the eastern edge of Port Phillip Bay. In addition to his painting, he seems to have taken an artistic approach to his furniture making: in 1929 “Alfred Coleman (furniture)” was included “among exhibitors who have added fresh laurels to their records” at the annual exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria (Australasian, 5 October 1929, p. 15). And his public career as an artist began in 1930 when his “thoroughly Australian oil painting” (according to an advertisement in the Perth Sunday Times [21 December 1930, p. 26] and other papers), “Near Buchan, Gippsland, Victoria” was reproduced as a “full-page colored supplement” in the “twenty-sixth issue of ‘Australia To-day,’ the national annual produced by the United Commercial Travellers’ Association of Australia.”Overall, Coleman’s work drew on the example of artists such as Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton and he concentrated on landscape and coastal scenes, often situated close to his home on Port Phillip Bay. Conservative critics praised his colour and light along with his brushwork, although this could be criticised for being too facile. In the 1940s his approach was seen as old-fashioned by those who advocated a modernist style, but his work appealed to patrons who wished to own an affordable and decorative original painting depicting a recognisable local scene.Coleman began exhibiting with the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1932: reviewer Harold Herbert included his oil paintings among “works of merit” shown at the April exhibition of the society (Australasian, 30 April 1932, p. 15; see also “Victorian Artists’ Society. Autumn Exhibition”, Age, 23 April 1932, p. 20). From 23 April to 5 May 1934 he held the first of many solo exhibitions at the Athenaeum Gallery. Before he had seen the show, Herbert, writing in the Australasian newspaper (28 April 1934, p. 16), suggested:‘Artgoers’ will remember his work at exhibitions held by the Victorian Artists’ Society. It was always marked by a strong feeling for colour, and he succeeds in giving us a true version of Australian landscape. The show should be worth while [sic].Arthur Streeton reviewed the exhibition (Argus, 24 April 1934, p. 5), commenting:There is considerable diversity in the choice of subjects, and the artist appears at his best in sunny transcripts of the seaside and pictures of old cottages.But he goes on to suggest, As far as they go the canvasses are brilliant in light and general effect. Perhaps in some future exhibition we may look for interest in cloud forms. The wonderful form and colour that fill the skies are just as beautiful as anything on the earth: and in a show of landscape, one looks for some of the grandeur constantly moving overhead.When he reviewed the show (Australasian, 12 May 1934, p. 15), Herbert praised the work as “that of a happy man, untrammelled by the ‘isms’ that engulf others”, albeit somewhat technically deficient in some instances and overly bright in colour on occasion. It is interesting that Coleman included “examples of his carved furniture … all of it the work of a consummate craftsman”, prompting Herbert to conclude: “Two strings to a bow! He must surely be a happy man.”In September 1934, Coleman included his carved woodwork in the Annual Exhibition of the Victorian Arts and Crafts Society:stools ready for tapestry coverings, solid carved and polished book-ends, boxes, and a beautiful tray carved out of a solid piece of Queensland maple, copied from an antique (Australasian, 22 September 1934, p. 15).In April 1935, he again exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society at their autumn exhibition; Streeton wrote that Coleman, “in No. 50, ‘Idle Boats,’ and No. 53, ‘In the Hills, Corryong,’ shows expressions of Nature of great promise” (Argus, 25 April 1935, p. 5). Later that year, responding to a solo exhibition at the Athenaeum Galleries, Louis McCubbin concluded:Impressionistic in aim, Mr. Coleman exploits a wide field of subjects, ranging from the seaside and shipping on the Yarra, to the rivers and snow-capped mountains of Northern Victoria. Though his pictures do not give any sensation of weight or substance in the country and objects he portrays, his colour is pleasant and harmonious.
Mr. Coleman’s best work is to be seen in two panoramic views No. 11, ‘Neerim,’ and No. 12, ‘Murray Valley,’ No. 5, ‘The Fog,’ a charming atmospheric study; No. 30, ‘Idle Boats,’ No. 40, ‘At the Foot of the Ranges,’ fresh and sparkling in colour; and No. 48, ‘The Schnapper Fleet’ (Argus, 22 October 1935, p. 10; see also Harold Herbert, ‘Landscapes in Oils’, Australasian, 9 November 1935, p. 17).More furniture was included in this exhibition, described in the Age (22 October 1935, p. 9) as “a number of articles of furniture designed as replicas of Elizabethan and medieval models” whose “construction shows skill and adaptability.”After this time, Coleman seems to have concentrated on exhibiting his paintings. Herbert continued to champion his work, arguing in 1936 (Australasian, 9 May 1936, p. 18) that he “is a keen observer, and his work is improving every year” and assuring the public that “his work is good” in 1938 (Argus, 1 November 1938, p. 7; see also Age, 1 November 1938, p. 16). In the latter year, Coleman’s solo exhibition was at the Kozminsky Galleries in Collins Street, Melbourne. In 1941 Herbert considered that Coleman “has gone ahead by leaps and bounds in the last year or so” (Argus, 4 November 1941, p. 3) while in 1944 he had “made almost a meteoric episode of his art career”:It is not many years ago since he first exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society. I liked his work then. I like it now, and to me it symbolises a simple purity, both of colour and the painting of light. These sound and desirable principles were adhered to by Streeton, Longstaff, Roberts, and others. There is no bunkum about Mr Coleman’s work. He paints in a trained, workmanlike manner with a fine touch of able discretion, which lifts him completely above the ordinary. He possesses good taste in both subject matter and selection. His technique is brisk and sure (Argus, 25 July 1944, p. 6).The anonymous Age critic was more circumspect in the early 1940s, being concerned in 1941 about a slight “tendency to ‘slickness’ of brush work and the over-stressing of color [sic]” in some of Coleman’s work (4 November 1941, p. 7; see also Age, 13 October 1942, p. 4). However, Coleman’s 1944 exhibition at the Athenaeum received a glowing endorsement in the Age with the artist being described as “one of our deservedly notable painters” who “maintains his vim and his quality in 60 painted scenes, none like the rest, but each full of animation and radiant pictorial happiness” (25 July 1944, p. 3). It is interesting that some of the variety was made possible by the practice of touring the countryside with a caravan to seek out new subjects (Argus, 4 January 1947, p. 11).Alan McCulloch’s more critical voice is first heard in 1945, when he described Coleman as being “handicapped … by a penchant for picture making” (Argus, 11 September 1945, p. 12). Likewise in 1946, McCulloch accused Coleman’s work as being “well pleased with itself. The obvious result of much hard practice, it deals with the clever and efficient representation of subjects dear to the heart of most Australians” (Argus, 12 June 1946, p. 6). It was populist work designed for easy appeal. A friend of the artist, John S. Loxton, continued in the more laudatory vein, however, arguing in 1948:Mr Coleman has played his part by precept and example in the maintaining of those standards of sane, sound observation and trained craftsmanship which are the basis of expression in art (Argus, 20 April 1948, p. 5).Coleman also sought recognition in competitions. In 1940, his work received a mention from the judge, conservative art critic and gallery director James Stuart MacDonald, when it was entered for the Woodward Prize at the Bendigo Art Gallery (Age, 8 May 1940, p. 12). He was a finalist in the Wynn Art Prize in 1940 (Timber Bridge and Golden Point, Castlemaine) and again in 1942 (The Murray Valley). His work was also included in some collections: three of his paintings were in an Australian Academy of Art painting collection loaned to the Governor-General of Australia in 1946 (Telegraph [Brisbane], 9 February 1946, p. 5), and “the municipal collection at Shepparton” had some examples (Argus (Melbourne), 15 July 1950, p. 8). After his death, his oil painting entitled Autumn Charm was awarded the Albury Art Prize for 1952 by William Dargie. This is one of two works by Coleman now in the collection of the Murray Art Museum Albury.
Writers:
KerryHeckenberg
Date written:
2016
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- Alfred Benjamin Coleman (1885-1948) was a Victorian painter of landscapes and seascapes, active also in local art societies. He began his working life in the family furniture business, but pursued his painting career from the early 1930s up until his death, producing appealing depictions of the local landscape, albeit in a conservative style derived from artists such Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Dec-48
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-37.0481014 Longitude143.7362835 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Maryborough, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Melbourne painter and sketcher, who made official WWI drawings.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.July 1883
- Summary
- Frank R. Crozier was a painter, illustrator and also war records artist during World War I.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1948
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- painter and metal worker, was born Sarah Martha McCausland in Victoria to parents of Irish extraction. In about 1900 she married Samuel Furphy, son of the writer Joseph Furphy, at Shepparton. In 1902 they moved to WA to set up a Furphy foundry. They were joined in 1905 by her parents-in-law, Joseph and Leonie Furphy.
Strong-willed Mattie, who did not get on with her mother-in-law, spent most of her time in 1905-10 at the Perth Technical Art School, where she enrolled in freehand, cast and model drawing and undertook classes in repoussé work in metal. For a tiny, corsetted Edwardian belle this was some considerable physical feat. According to Joseph Furphy she was there five days a week, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. She was an outstanding student, winning scholarships which paid for her fees and being mentioned with Flora Le Cornu ( Landells ) in annual reports as energetic and persevering students who stimulated the others.
When the student work was shown at the Chamber of Manufactures’ exhibition in 1906 the applied arts, including repoussé, were singled out for praise. By this time Furphy was engaged in making an overmantel, door panels, finger plates, mirror and sconces for her home on the corner of Clement and Marmion Streets, Swanbourne. As one of the outstanding students, her work was included in the School’s exhibit for the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition in Perth which was sent on to the national exhibition in Melbourne as a non-competitive entry, a reduced selection then being forwarded to the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition in London, where it won a Grand Prix and a Diploma of Honour. It is not known what work of Furphy’s was exhibited, and none of her paintings or drawings are recorded.
Mattie Furphy died on 25 July 1948. Her metalwork is preserved in Tom Collins House at Swanbourne.
Writers:
Erickson, Dorothy
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1878
- Summary
- A painter and metalworker, Furphy was an outstanding student who won a Grand Prix at the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition in London while still a student. The metalwork of the 'tiny, corsetted Edwardian belle' is preserved in Tom Collins House at Swanbourne.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Jul-48
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born in Geelong (Vic.) on 10 May 1878. He moved to Queensland as a youth and studied at South Brisbane Technical College c.1896. He worked as a cartoonist on the Queenslander , the Brisbane Courier and the Observer and was a prolific exhibitor with the QAS in 1902-12, 1914-15. In 1908 he showed three cartoons from the Observer at the QAS, more the following two years, three again in 1911. He seems to have been the only person regularly showing cartoons in the black and white art section. ( Holger V. Lovf showed cartoons and 'local celebrities’ with the QAS in 1913-15.)
Harrison also showed watercolours with the QAS. Later he studied painting with Max Meldrum in Melbourne, although, according to Moore, never became a Meldrumite. He was a foundation member of the Australian Art Association, also a commercial artist and freelance art critic for the Argus and the Australian .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 10 May 1878
- Summary
- Early 20th century Brisbane and Melbourne painter and cartoonist. Harrison showed his work with Queensland Art Society, (Brisbane).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1948
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-27.5610193 Longitude151.953351 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
- Biography
- Painter and art collector, was a Toowoomba girl who married Fred Gould in 1905. 10 of her oil paintings dated 1899 ( Irises , oil on opal glass), 1904 and 1905 (many including The Rock of Ages , oil on cardboard), i.e. all done before her marriage, are in the Fred and Lucy Gould Art Collection, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1875
- Summary
- Toowoomba based painter who worked until her marriage, when she became an art collector.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1948
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude53.2141028 Longitude-2.471770086 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cheshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Bessie Eleanor Potter was born in Staffordshire on 4 September 1874, the youngest child of a family of three sons and three daughters born to a merchant, William Ero Potter and his wife Elizabeth Frances Warren. She was raised in England and probably had some training there but it has not proved possible to establish a record of her early life. She married Walter Page Devereux at Horncastle, Lincolnshire in 1897 and bore four children: Alan, Robert Brian, Harold and Joan.
The first evidence of her activity in Queensland was when she exhibited a carved firescreen and plaster casts at the second exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society of Brisbane in 1914. She probably learned these skills at the Central Technical College as modelling and woodcarving were taught by L. J. Harvey at that time. She enrolled in the formal course at the College and received an honours pass for Design II in 1915 and for Design III the following year. She was one of Harvey’s first students for pottery in 1916-17 and in the latter year was noted as one of the principal exhibitors. Mrs Devereux worked with the Red Cross Handicrafts Sub-Committee 1918-26 and from 1922-26 she taught pottery, including wheel throwing, at the Anzac Hostel, Kangaroo Point. She exhibited pottery at the Queensland Art Society in 1919 and also at the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association 1922-26 where she received numerous prizes.
When the Arts and Crafts Society of Brisbane was reformed in 1922 she rejoined and continued to exhibit items of her pottery until 1926. A reviewer in 1922 commented that her pottery showed the most 'advanced attainment’ among exhibitors and was praised in succeeding years.
She also sold her pottery through the Austral Book Club and an advertisement in Sydney’s Home magazine in December 1925 commented that her 'handicraft is agreed by expert judges to be amongst the best in the Commonwealth. Inlaid and underglaze work in original designs and beautiful colouring, show the fine finish for which the Queensland craftswoman is noted.’ Also in 1925 she exhibited four examples of her pottery with the Society of Artists, Sydney. In 1927 she applied for 12 months leave of absence from the Red Cross and moved to Sydney where she exhibited 15 items of pottery in that year’s exhibition of the Society of Arts and Crafts of New South Wales. (The Powerhouse Museum purchased their painted vase from this exhibition.) She subsequently moved to Melbourne where in 1929 she exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria and was described as a Victorian exhibitor when two ceramic items were included in the Art Society of Canberra’s exhibition. At the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria’s Garden Week Exhibition in 1929 she showed a fired garden jar and also sent a pottery jar to the 1929 Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland exhibition.
She subsequently returned to England in 1930 but it has not been possible to trace evidence of her activity there. The Devereux’s frequently returned to Australia to avoid English winters and were forced to spend the duration of the years of World War Two in Melbourne where her husband died. Bessie Devereux died in England in 1948.
Queensland Art Gallery: Researach Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2005
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 September 1874
- Summary
- Mrs W.P. (Bessie) Devereux was one of the most significant and original of L.J. Harvey's early students as she included wheel throwing among her skills.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1948
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-33.42 Longitude149.577778 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bathurst, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and photographer in NSW. Samuel Cocks was born in Bathurst in 1870 to William and Marguerita Cocks who moved to Kiama in the 1880s and ran a general store in Manning street. Samuel studied art in Sydney and won prizes in the Art Students Prizes at the National Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1890: “In the still-life group, Mr S. Cocks wins the first prize for a well-painted representation of a decanter and glasses on a table. The picture is particularly well-painted and well-deserving of its place” ( Sydney Morning Herald , 8 January 1890, p.8)commented “... among the still-life studies in oil, the first prize of £5 is awarded to no.35 by S. Cocks – a really admirable study of a decanter containing some wine, a wine glass, bronze candlestick, table-napkin and ring, standing on a polished table. The dark crimson curtain forming the background is well chosen for effect” ( Illustrated Sydney News , 22 January 1890, p.22). He went on to exhibit in the Society of Artists in 1895 and 1899. By that time he had already learned photography and was winning prizes and notice. A.J. Hill Griffith in his report on 'Pictorial Photography in Australia’ for the 1900 British annual _Photograms of the Year_p.45, noted that, 'Mr. Samuel Cocks, of the little coastal town of Kiama, has been occupying himself with sea and landscape work in platino. In production of the former he displays knowledge of the technical requirements necessary to give true perspective to distant ocean waves and bring in favorable contrast fine bold foregrounds. Storm and Gleam (p. 46), Stevenson’s Last Rest, and Nature’s Mirror, are three meritable subjects.’
Cocks joined the studio of Henry Holden’s in Kiama established in 1889, and took over the studio in 1898. He was winning prizes for his art photographs. Cocks continued sales and exhibitions of his impressionistic water colour paintings mostly sea and landscapes until late life.
Cocks was active in sports and social bodies and well known. He made extensive tours of the district building a large inventory. A fine album in the State Library of New South Wales of the Coolangatta Estate is extraordinary for its record of the indigenous servants and farm workers. An album of New Zealand views from 1904 exists but how long Cocks was there is not certain. Cocks made a trip overseas in 1903 returning via San Francisco. Elder brothers Robert Sidney and George Wesley also worked as artists and as photographers but after Samuel had begun his professional career.A large archive of Cock’s glass plates of landscape, architecture and people Kiama and the South coast, is held by the University of Woolongong.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 11 November 1870
- Summary
- Landscape painter in watercolour and professional photographer based in Kiama, New South Wales active from 1890-1930s. Cocks exhibited with the Society of Artists in 1895 and was winning prizes for his photography by 1896. He became one of the most active recorders of Kiama and surrounding districts. A large archive of negatives and prints survives.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Apr-48
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, painter and pianist, was born in Ballarat, Victoria, of an Australian mother, Kate Harison, and a Norwegian father, Christian Herm Ohlfsen-Bagge. She claimed that her great-grandfather was the Sydney convict printer, Robert Howe. Dora was educated at Sydney Girls High School and studied piano privately with Max Volgrich and Henri Kowalski. The story of her fascinating expatriate career is somewhat complicated by the different versions of it she gave the Australian press on visits to this county; but essentially it appears that, having shown great promise as a pianist, she travelled alone to Germany in about 1883 in order to continue piano studies under Moritz Moszkowski in Berlin, then was forced to abandon this with the onset of neuritis. She moved to Russia where, she stated, she lived in St Petersburg with a Madame Kerbitz and took up painting, the Czarina buying one of her works. She apparently worked as a music teacher and as 'a sort of secretary’ to the American Ambassador, wrote articles on Russian music, theatre and drama and travelled to various Baltic states. Later she left for Rome, where she took up sculpture, reputedly working in the studio of Alaphillipe at the French Academy and studying under the French metal engraver, Pierre Dautel.
Ohlfsen set up a studio/apartment on via San Nicola, close to the Spanish Steps, and Rome remained her home until her death. Although continuing to paint in watercolour and pastel, during the first two decades of the new century she executed many medallions, her subjects being both imaginative symbolist compositions and academic portraits. The latter were drawn from the wealthy and famous in Rome, England and Australia, and included Lord Chelmsford, Sir James Fairfax and General Peppino Garibaldi.
Visiting Sydney in 1912, Ohlfsen exhibited with the Royal Art Society then held an exhibition of her medallions at Melbourne in 1913. During World War I she remained in Italy and joined the Red Cross as a nurse. In 1916 she produced the Anzac medallion, one of her finest works, which was sold in London in an (unknown) edition to aid the Australian soldiers’ war effort. She again visited Australia in about 1920-21. Patronised by the Fascist regime, she produced a large medallion relief portrait of Mussolini and – her most important commission – a war memorial for Formia in 1924-26.
Ohlfsen’s works of the 1930s included portraits and imaginative sculptures demonstrating the conservative ideology of race and national progress which characterised Fascistic imaging. William Moore in the Brisbane Courier of 8 March 1930 referred to her as the artist who modelled a bust of Nellie Stewart; she also sculpted the head of W.A. Holman in plaster. Little is then known of her until 1948 when she and her companion, the Russian Baroness Heléne de Kuegelgen, were found dead in Ohlfsen’s gas-filled studio in Rome.
Writers:
Edwards, Deborah
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 22 August 1869
- Summary
- Sculptor and painter who lived and worked throughout Europe from 1880s. She re-visited Australia several times to exhibit her medallions but lived out her life in Italy where she was patronised by the Fascist regime. Among her works Ohlfsen-Bagge produced a large medallion relief portrait of Mussolini but her most important commission was probably a war memorial for Formia in 1924-26.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1948
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Artist, gallery director, architect and historian. The son of a prominent surveyor and explorer, Gother Victor Fyers Mann was born in Sydney on 8 October 1863 and grew up living in Neutral Bay, then a small community, on the northern shore of Sydney Harbour. Known to his friends as Victor, Mann was educated at Sydney Grammar School and later trained to be an architect at the University of Sydney. After his formal studies he trained as an architect with Thomas Rowe. He was elected an associate of the Institute of Architects of NSW in 1886 and in 1887 he was awarded a gold medal by the president of the Institute of Architects for his draftsmanship. Mann later practised as an architect in Brisbane from 1888 to 1891 before returning to work in Bridge Street, Sydney. Mann’s involvement with the art world began during his time as an architectural student in the mid 1880s. In 1885 Mann met the English artist Charles Conder, and the two young men painted the Hawkesbury River district and trained under Julian Ashton. After Mann’s return from Brisbane in 1891 he studied with Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts at their Commercial Union Chambers studio in Pitt Street, Sydney. With such a high pedigree of talented teachers it is no wonder that Mann persevered with his art, and in 1892 he exhibited his first work (a watercolour titled 'At Bulli, NSW’) at the Art Society of NSW’s annual show. From 1894 to 1896 Mann was appointed Secretary of the Art Society of NSW. Mann’s time in office was a turbulent period in the organisation’s early history and saw a breakaway group of 'professional’ artists leave the Art Society in 1895 to form the new Society of Artists. Mann began his association with the National Art Gallery of NSW in 1896 when he was temporarily employed in cataloguing the collection. Perhaps with ambitions for the role of managing the National Art Gallery of NSW, Mann diplomatically exhibited his work with both the Society of Artists and the Art Society of NSW. With a good knowledge of art and the NSW gallery collection, Mann was appointed to the position of Secretary and Superintendent of the National Art Gallery of NSW in 1905. By the following year Mann, in association with the president of the board of trustees Eccleston Du Faur, published an updated illustrated catalogue of the Gallery collection. The works in the gallery at the time of Mann’s appointment were dominated by nineteenth century images sourced from British and French collections. The Australian collection was smaller than the European and did not include any works created by indigenous artists; their works were then consigned to the ethnographic museums. The initial collection had been established in the 1880s and 90s and the Classical styled sandstone building designed by W.L. Vernon was completed in 1909. The role of manager of the gallery was upgraded in 1912 and Mann became the first Director and Secretary of the National Art Gallery of NSW. In 1912 Mann was also elected to the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board (CAAB), and from 1918 until his death in 1948 he was Chairman of the CAAB. This committee began to commission and collect works for the new national collection. Mann had two trips to Europe (1914 and 1926) where he purchased new pieces for the NSW collection. These purchases were mainly 'safe’ British and French works by established artists such as Camille Corot, Eugène Boudin, Alfred Munnings and W. Russell Flint. Other important works purchased during Mann’s time at the Gallery include the equestrian statues at the front of the gallery and Edgard Maxene’s 'The Book of Peace’ (1913). Despite lack of funds during his directorship, Mann increased the Australian art collection at the Gallery. Comparing the 1906 and 1928 Gallery catalogues the Australian collection of oils and watercolours increased from 183 paintings in 1906 to 314 works in 1928. Mann retired from the position of director of the National Art Gallery of NSW on his sixty-fifth birthday on 8 October 1928. Mann was awarded the Society of Artists Medal in 1928 and in the following year he was awarded the C.B.E. (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). While he certainly increased the Australian works in the NSW collection, the main criticism of his period in office was that despite the emergence of modernism in Sydney during the post First World War art boom, hardly any examples of modernist works were included in the NSW collection while under his control. While Mann can be partially blamed for this lack of foresight, most of the collecting decisions at the gallery during this time were determined by the board of trustees. While Mann had discontinued exhibiting with the Royal Art Society and Society of Artists after his appointment at the National Art Gallery of NSW in 1905, he was briefly involved with the short lived Australian Arts Club (AAC) at the end of the Great War. The AAC evolved out of the Sydney Sketch Club which was formed at the start of the war. By 1919 the original sketch club, now known as the Australian Arts Club, had a membership of about two dozen members and Mann was listed in catalogues as Vice-President. The club was restricted to professional male artists who were associated with the Club’s President, Sydney Ure Smith. At the first exhibition of the AAC in Melbourne, in April 1918, Mann exhibited ten paintings. Mann also exhibited nine works at the only AAC exhibition in Sydney in 1919. The Triad reviewer commented in July 1919 that Mann had 'several charming and intimate bits of adroitly appreciated beauty’. The artist did not submit works to the third and final 1920 AAC show in Melbourne although he was still listed as Vice-President on the catalogue. In early May 1930, Mann held the only solo show of his career at the Macquarie Galleries, Sydney. Being a former director of the state gallery, Mann’s exhibition of 45 oils and watercolours was keenly judged by several Sydney critics, including William Moore of the Daily Telegraph (7 May 1930, page 10): 'His collection of landscapes vary in quality, but in the best of his examples, Mr. Mann shows a sure, broad touch… The artist has a fine sense of colour, not of the flamboyant insistence of a Blamire Young, but a deep, rich quality of its own.’ The June 1930 issue of The Home magazine reported that Mann had sold seventeen works at the exhibition. Most of his pictures were Australian, English, Dutch and Venetian landscapes supplemented by harbour views, seascapes and flower studies. The European pictures must have been painted during Mann’s 1926 visit to Europe. Two works, 'The Passing of the “Gabo” and the “Manly”’ and 'Doorway to Banqueting Hall, Wardour Castle’ were purchased by the National Art Gallery of NSW. After the solo show Mann continued to paint during the 1930s, his later works being mainly views of old Sydney houses. With the planned move to new premises at 252 George Street, Sydney, the management of the Bulletin decided to open a large gallery on the top floor of their new headquarters. Being the artistic arm of the fiercely nationalistic Bulletin, the Macleod Gallery was appropriately dedicated to showing Australian art. Now retired from the NSW Public Service, Mann was appointed as the Director of the new gallery, which was named in honour of the recently deceased Bulletin editor, William Macleod. Mann’s debut exhibition was a mixed show of many of the leading artists in Australia and to help him with selection he was assisted by leading painters, Sir John Longstaff and Will Ashton. B.P. Magazine dedicated three pages of their September 1932 issue to the Macleod Gallery, the feature included images of the large gallery and several exhibited works. Mann continued in the role of Director until the Macleod Gallery closed in 1936. Mann seems to have had a long-term interest in history especially the architectural heritage of his home town. As early as 1902 he exhibited four views of The Rocks district to a special Society of Artists exhibition titled 'Pictures of Old Sydney’. Many of Mann’s later works had heritage themes, including an oil painting titled 'Milson’s Point, Fifty Years Ago’ which was reproduced in the 1932 B.P. Magazine feature. In late life Mann wrote an informative local history of North Sydney titled Municipality of North Sydney: History and Progress from the earliest Settlement 1788-1938, published by the North Sydney Council in 1938. Profusely illustrated with early photographs, the book also included three works painted by Mann. The artist continued to paint throughout the 1930s and exhibited some of his watercolours at several of the Australian Watercolour Institute (AWI) annual shows. His final public contribution was two works exhibited at the 1940 AWI exhibition. Little is known of Mann’s activities during his final years. He died, aged 85, on 12 November 1948 in Sydney. Mann was survived by his wife, Mabel Beatrice and a daughter.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, SilasNote:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 8 October 1863
- Summary
- Best known for being a long term director of the (then) National Art Gallery of NSW, Mann was also a talented artist and trained architect.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12-Nov-48
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- Painter and barrister, was born in Launceston. By profession a barrister, he gave up law in order to study art in Paris then lived in London where he shared a studio in the mid-1890s with his cousin, Lily Allport . He returned to Tasmania after WWI and lived in Launceston until 1938, then at Penguin. He died at Latrobe, Tasmania.
In September 2002 Masterpiece Fine Art Gallery was offering his pastel portrait of Evelyn for sale at $4,500.It had been shown in the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists Dominions and States Exhibition in 1918 (cat.5), when he was living at 9 Elm Tree Road, St John’s Wood. It is extremely close to Lily Allport’s portraits.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- Charles Edward Ritchie, painter and barrister, was born in Launceston. By profession a barrister, he gave up law in order to study art in Paris then lived in London where he shared a studio in the mid-1890s with his cousin, Lily Allport.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1948
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude51.2753365 Longitude-2.7766545 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cheddar, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and poet, was born on 18 February 1860 in Cheddar, England, one of the six children of Rev. W.T. Price, a Baptist minister.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 February 1860
- Summary
- Jane Price was known as a painter and poet. She was associated with the Heidelberg school.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1948
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-33.1285 Longitude149.2429 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ophir, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, painter and illustrator, was born in Ophir, NSW. He studied under Anivetti at the NSW Academy of Art from 1875 until 1879 (when Anivitti went home to Rome and the Academy folded). He won the only gold medal awarded to a student and, with Frank Mahony , a silver medal. Then he went overseas and studied at the Westminster School of Art in London and at l’Académie Julian and Colarossi’s in Paris. From 1883 he exhibited landscapes and figure studies with the Art Society of NSW (later Royal Art Society of New South Wales), of which he was a member. He contributed to the Illustrated Sydney News in the 1880s when it was controlled by Town and Country Journal . He also contributed to the latter, e.g. 24 December 1881 (p.1281), signed 'A.J.F.’, and Christmas in Queensland 13 December 1890, 35. With Monte Scott he was a staff artist on the Brisbane Boomerang in 1888-91, e.g. Mac’s Good To His Friends./ “We’ll Make Beer Cheap, Old Man. What Does Bread Matter?”’ 20 October 1888, 18; Women Aren’t Always Angels 2 February 1889, 18.
A.J. Fischer is best known for his 1890s Bulletin cartoons, e.g. A Weedy Growth 31 January 1891, 12; On Circuit. '“Know anyone about here likely to give a fellow a week or a month’s work?”/ “Well, I heard as the Judge was givin’ some blokes 'ard labour yesterday in the next township”’ 1894 (ill. Rolfe, 91); black devil illustration to a poem by Julian Sake, Masks 8 December 1894, 15; The Two Essentials. 'Reporter: “How will this do for a leader?”/ Editor: “Will it offend any advertisers?”/ R.: “No.”/ E.: “Is it libellous?”/ R.: “I don’t think so.”/ E.: “Then, run it in”’ 1895. Others include: A Sufficient Explanation. 'Lady passenger [at railway station with big bag] “Time is up, and I can’t find a porter. Will you kindly help me get this into the carriage?”/ He (with some indignation): “Excuse me, madame, but – er – I am a Member of Parliament.”’ 1896 (ill. Rolfe, 65); He Took “Bafe”’ (re English visitor at Sunday dinner at the bush hotel in Kurrumburragoobah) 1896 (Rolfe, 90 ) ; Island Experience. 'Little girl (to visitor who is relating his adventures in the South Seas): “Grandpa’s been on the islands, too.”/ Visitor (looking toward the old gentleman with the Botany Bay limp): “Where, my dear?”/ Little girl: “Cockatoo! ain’t you, Grandpa?”’ 1896 (ill. Rolfe, 75) cf Phil May and 1888 Bulletin convict book.
Fischer drew several anti-British jokes, e.g. Suspicious 1897, re son of a duke whose ancestry is in doubt because he actually pays his way (Rolfe, 92); Call It English and It’s Welcome 1897, re visitor to bush home (Rolfe, 93); 1897 English newchum tutor/beggar. Other cartoons include Going into a Decline 1898 (poet in editor’s office) signed 'A.J. Fischer del/ J.E. Elvin(?) inv.’ (Rolfe, 163) and The Beautiful in Art. 'Lady Artist (to Domain “dosser,” who has offered to sit as model): “You will do splendidly – come this day week. In the meantime, don’t wash yourself, and don’t get your hair cut!”’ 6 March 1897 (ill. Watkins).
The 1898 Grafton Gallery 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’ included: A.J. Fischer, The Bulletin Office, Sydney, cat. 274, 'Three Drawings’, lent by the 'Bulletin’ Newspaper Co., Sydney. He helped illustrate Steele Rudd’s On Our Selection , first published as a serial in the Bulletin then as a book in 1899; his 1899 drawing of a dead horse with crows hovering around was also used in some editions of On Our Selection and published in Steele Rudd’s Book . The original (ML Px*D463, f.12) is one of eight 1899-1900 originals by Fischer in the SLNSW Bulletin collection. Another (f.23), In the Never-Never – A Man with a stake in the Country , shows a tombstone inscribed: 'This coves dead his name wus Bill Maloney better knone as Boosey Bill and we his ersociates irect this ere monument as a token of respict to his sakrid memry may his sole rest in piece’, signed 'A.J.Fischer del./ Meteor [who presumably contributed the idea]’.
In c.1900 Fischer was apparently a member of the final Charterisville group in Melbourne (Moore p.80: says “Alf Fisher the pastellist”). Later he contributed to Rowlandson’s Success 1-2 (1907-8) and The Comic Australian , e.g. little comic illustrations to straight news items 7 October 1911. He illustrated several anthologies and books for the NSW Bookstall Company, including Charles de Boos’s Settler and Savage (6 full-page illustrations, 1906), a re-issue of Fifty Years Ago (1867), The Selector: A romance of an immigrant by James Green (12 full-page illus., 1907) and Rung In: A novel of the turf by Arthur Wright (eight full-page illus. by Fischer, cover by Percy Spence , 1912). He is said to have also drawn a number of Bookfellow covers including no.2 (18 February 1899) featuring a girl undergraduate (ill. Butler, Poster , 27).
Les Tanner ( CAB , p.45) wrote that Alf Fisher [sic] 'was hired by Farmer & Co.’, 'who advertised that the public should come to their store and see the man who was paid £40 a week in 1913’. (His name was often spelt 'Fisher’.)
Images: The Boomerang published Fischer’s signed 'If She Wants to Vote Why Shouldn’t She?’ on 16 March 1889, 10, a policeman with a baton labelled 'Law’ attacking a women with two kiddies and a baby, while a drunk and other repulsive males smugly enter a 'Polling Booth’ besides which is a notice: {caps} 'vote for the repeal of local option/ vote for the maintenance of the C.D. Act/ Vote for the tax on bread/ Vote for the Privileges of Man/ and/ Blank the Women’. But the paper was normally anti-suffrage. Nor was the artist was unreservedly feminist; a month earlier the Boomerang had published Fischer’s Women aren’t always angels. '“As fast as he shovelled up the gold she passed it through a sieve that turned it into gay dresses and bonnets and jewellery and other little attractions.” – Lucinda Sharpe’ (2 February 1889, 18).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- Federation era Sydney magazine and newspaper cartoonist, painter and book illustrator.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1948
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1948-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Exhibition of Woman’s Work, Sydney, 1892: Group VI – Class F – no.116 Belisario E.M., Hyde Park – Painted Satin Flower (competition).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- E.M. Belisario exhibited a painted satin flower in competition at the Exhibition of Woman's Work in 1892 in Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1948
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in North Adelaide on 16 May 1893 into a comfortable middle class family, daughter of Thomas Hopkins Bowen, a surveyor, who died when she was three. She particularly enjoyed drawing and convinced her mother, Esther Eliza, née Perry, to send her to the School of Design where she drew from the nude model under Rose McPherson ( Margaret Preston ) until her teacher left for Paris. Her desire to pursue her training at the National Gallery School in Melbourne was thwarted by her mother’s ill health.
Bowen was single-minded in her aim to become an artist and after her mother died in 1913, she persuaded her guardian to let her go to England for a year—with a return ticket and £10 per month. Frightened by her interview for the Slade, she enrolled at the Westminster School of Art where Walter Sickert encouraged her to trust her eye and discover beauty in the accidental and spontaneous. She found life in cosmopolitan London exhilarating and exciting. Ezra Pound came to a party and introduced her to his circle of poets, writers and artists including T.S. Eliot, Violet Hunt, Edward Wadsworth, Wyndham Lewis and W.B. Yeats.
In 1918, nine months before the Armistice, Bowen met the writer Ford Madox Ford, then still in the army after serving in France. She was 23 and he was 44. Fascinated by his self absorption and need for care, she went to live with him in a dilapidated cottage in Sussex where life and the climate were harsh. They eventually bought Cooper’s Cottage; their daughter, Esther Julia Madox (Julie), was born there in 1920. Fed up with the hardships of an impoverished rural existence, they escaped to the warmth of St Jean-Cap Ferrat in France in 1922.
Visiting Italy in 1923 with Ezra and Dorothy Pound, Bowen discovered the early Italian painters: Giotto, Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Simone Martini and Botticelli. On her return she painted small portraits where she tried to incorporate their sort of linear design; a few were hung in the Salon d’Automne. In Paris Ford started his Transatlantic Review , which absorbed all their finances. Bowen rented her first studio but found little time for painting in between ministering to the needs of Ford and their daughter and leading such a peripatetic life.
The break-up of the nine-year relationship with Ford in 1928 forced her to exist entirely on her painting. In 1932 she went to the USA at the invitation of friends, who helped her obtain portrait commissions. Returning to France, her impoverished circumstances led her back to England on her 40th birthday, where she supplemented her meagre finances by writing art reviews for the New Chronicle and painting portrait commissions. Bowen’s autobiography Drawn from Life was published in 1940. It chronicled her life in Adelaide, the years with Ford and the outbreak of World War II. Unfortunately, paper rationing meant that it only had one small print run.
In 1943 Bowen, then almost 50, was appointed an official war artist by the Australian War Memorial, primarily to depict the activities of the Royal Australian Air Force, then stationed in England and participating in the intensive bombing operations over Germany. She was employed for 20 months, completing her last commission in 1946. Her plans to return to Australia after the war in order to mount an exhibition were thwarted by lack of funds, official obstructions and, finally, ill health. She died of cancer in London on 30 October 1947. A memorial exhibition was held at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1953.
Writers:
Wilkins, Lola
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 May 1893
- Summary
- Single-minded in her desire to be an artist, Stella Bowen studied briefly under Margaret Preseon before leaving Adelaide at 20 to study art in London. A friendship with Ezra Pound introduced Bowen to a wide literary circle including W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot and Bowen would later famously go on to marry the writer Ford Madox Ford. As a painter Bowen is perhaps best remembered for the body of work
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 30-Oct-47
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, etcher, teacher and illustrator, was born in London on 22 August 1892. He did many wood etchings, comparable to those by Weaver Hawkins , a fellow student at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London in 1910-14, alone and with the English artist William Kermode. Wounded in WWI, he wore a metal plate in his head afterwards.
Medworth came to Australia in 1939 and was an influential painter and teacher at East Sydney Technical College, where he was senior lecturer in art from 1939 to his death. He suicided in Mexico City while on a visit as a member of an UNESCO delegation, apparently from the unbearable pain in his head at that altitude. [Information from newspaper obituaries, which also state he was suspected of being a Communist]. Husband of painter Muriel Medworth .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 22 August 1892
- Summary
- Mid 20th century English-born and trained Sydney painter, etcher, teacher and illustrator
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Nov-47
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude-37.8377695 Longitude144.9918537 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Yarra, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born on 11 July 1890 at South Yarra, Melbourne, second of the six children of William George Lucas Spowers, part-owner of the Argus newspaper, and Annie Christina, daughter of the Victorian historian William Westgarth. The family lived very comfortably at Toorak and Ethel was educated at the Church of England Girls’ Grammar School, Melboure, where she was a prefect in 1908. Ethel briefly studied at the Académie Delécluse while living in Paris with her family (c.1910), then did the full course in drawing and painting at Melbourne’s National Gallery School (1911-17); her contemporaries included Christian Waller (then Yandell), Mary Cecil Allen, Napier Waller and Mabel Pye. In 1920 she held a solo exhibition at the Decoration Galleries in Collins Street; chiefly pictures of fairies influenced by the art of Ida Rentoul Outhwaite.
Ethel went overseas with her family again in 1921 and studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic, London, and at the Académie Rauson, Paris. That year she held an exhibition with the Australian artist Mary Reynolds at the Macrae Gallery, London. When the rest of the family returned home, Ethel and her older sister, Elison, travelled throughout Europe.
After returning to Melbourne in 1924, she exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society and at the New Gallery, Elizabeth Street (in 1925). Two solo shows at the New Gallery, Melbourne (1925 and 1927) confirmed her reputation as an illustrator of fairy tales, although by then she was also producing woodcuts and linocuts inspired by Japanese art. The variety of work she produced before 1928 included illustrations for books like Furnley Maurice’s Arrows of Longing (Melbourne 1921). However, when she attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London, her style and medium were transformed by the principles and modernist linocut prints of Claude Flight, who taught printmaking at the school. Her close friend Eveline Syme joined her there. Ethel returned for further study at the Grosvenor School under Iain Macnab in 1931.
Spowers exhibited linocuts with Dorrit Black, Nutter Buzzacott, James Flett, Eric Thake and Frederick Ward in 1930 at Everyman’s Library, Melbourne. She had two more solo exhibitions at Sydney’s Grosvenor Galleries in 1932 and 1936. In 1936 she travelled to Colombo and Japan with Dorothy Noall, another founding member (1932) with Spowers and Syme of George Bell’s Contemporary Group, Melbourne. Spowers was a member of the Victorian Artists’ Society from 1916 and was actively involved in the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria from its inception. Her major linocuts were made between 1928 and 1935; due to increasing illness she stopped making prints towards the end of the decade. She died of cancer on 5 May 1947 in East Melbourne and was buried with Anglican rites in Fawkner Cemetery. Although she destroyed many of her paintings in a bonfire, a memorial exhibition of her watercolours and prints was held at Melbourne’s St George’s Gallery in 1948.
Roger Butler believes that the two nudes in one of Spowers’s best known colour linocuts, Resting Models (1934, NGA), are almost certainly her and Syme, as possibly are the figures in Thea Proctor’s woodcut Women with Fans (1930, NGA). With Syme, she was an enthusiastic worker for the Red Cross, for which she produced the linocut, The Junior Red Cross Works in Every Land (1941, ML), as the cover of the Australian Red Cross Society’s The Story of the Red Cross (n.d.). Her popular linocuts are held in most major Australian public collections.
[JOAN KERR ADDITION:] Spowers mostly did 'high art’ colour linocuts and woodcuts (NGA has 44 prints). Linocut bookplate for Everyman’s Lending Library, 332 Collins Street, Melbourne (n.d.) ill. The Age of Ex Libris: Bookplates from the Library’s Collection , Baillieu Library MU 1996, n.p. An exhibition of modern prints was held at the Library in 1930 in which Spowers showed some woodcuts. In May 2000 Deutscher-Menzies was auctioning two original watercolour, pencil and pen and ink illustrations for Cuthbert and the Dogs , one annotated (CAPS) 'And you need not tell me all those lies, for cats and dogs do not eat pies -/ your naughtiness just makes me sick” and she hit him with his little stick’ (ill. col. cat. 189). The other (not ill.) was said to be annotated (CAPS): 'Mother was scarecely [sic] out of sight, when in they rushed from left and right/ Cuthbert had only just begun to try one cake when he heard them come’ [but surely should rhyme]. A folio of 20 drawings for Silly Peggy was also offered (cat.190), along with 20 drawings including Careless Kate (cat.191) and 17 drawings for The Little Red Purse (cat.192). All look like straight children’s book illustrations, although the first pair have a comical element apparently lacking in the others (3 only illustrated).
Writers:
Kerr, JoanNote: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- Painter and printmaker. Received art training in Melbourne, London, and Paris. Best known as for her fairy tale illustrations and linocuts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1947
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Sarah Florence May Freeman was born in Ballarat in 1888, the eldest in a family of three children (she had two younger brothers) born to Edward Henry Biddles Freeman (1859-1932), a watchmaker and jeweller later of Bridge Road, Richmond and his wife Fanny Gascoyne née Anderson (1864-1939). She was educated locally, married an insurance agent, Charles Albert Archer, at Richmond, Melbourne c.1908 and had two children Thirlie May (known as Shirley) and Ronald Edward Luttrell born 1914 and 1920 respectively. The company transferred the family to Sydney in 1924 and they came to live in Queensland eight years later. Her daughter Shirley began pottery lessons almost immediately with Daisy Nosworthy and in 1934 transferred to the pottery classes conducted by Alice Bott (qv) at Kennigo Street, Fortitude Valley. Mrs Archer shortly joined her daughter at these classes and produced a considerable amount of pottery in the period to 1940. Florence Archer did not sell her work but gave them as gifts especially to her interstate friends. Shirley Archer has noted that most of the pottery that bears her signature (she was active only until 1935) was produced with the considerable assistance of her mother. Florence Archer died in Brisbane and was buried at the Toowoong Cemetery on 14 April 1947.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
fairyf777
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1888
- Summary
- Florence Archer was one of the most accomplished potters of the second generation of the Harvey School. She studied pottery under Alice Bott for a time, joining her daughter Shirley.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Apr-47
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- illustrator and engraver, was born in Victoria. He began his career in 1891 as a wood engraver for John Fairfax and worked as a staff artist on the Sydney Mail . The Grafton Galleries’ 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’ 1898 included 'J. Hall-Thorpe, The Society of Artists, Sydney, cat.257, Castlereagh Street, Sydney , cat.259. Centennial Park Gates , cat. 260, The Synagogue, Sydney , and others (all apparently paintings).’ He worked as a commercial and newspaper artist in England from 1902.
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1874
- Summary
- Illustrator and engraver, born in Victoria, began his career in 1891 as a wood engraver for John Fairfax and worked as a staff artist on the Sydney Mail. Was in the Grafton Galleries' 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London' 1898, and moved to England in 1902.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1947
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-22.1646782 Longitude144.5844903 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Queensland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 28 March 1873
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16-Aug-47
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-37.833333 Longitude147.616667 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bairnsdale, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Born in Bairnsdale, Victoria, in 1872, Pitts was a devout Methodist and music fanatic. She supported herself by teaching music, and later oil-painting. She also produced postcard photographs of friends and family.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
DAAO staff writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1872
- Summary
- Born in Bairnsdale, Victoria, in 1872, Pitts was a devout Methodist and music fanatic. She supported herself by teaching music, and later oil-painting. She also produced postcard photographs of friends and family.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1947
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bridge Street, Kensington, Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born on 2 October 1869, at Bridge Street, Kensington, South Australia, evidently in the house built by her father and grandfather John in 1850, a landmark in the district (now demolished).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 October 1869
- Summary
- South Australian painter, known especially for her watercolours and pastel portraits of public figures and children. Alice's watercolour miniatures on ivory were in great demand from about 1905 to 1913.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 20-Jan-47
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-41.5730227 Longitude147.1719755 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 9 June 1868
- Summary
- Tasmanian born architect and painter who worked in Melbourne, London, Cape Town and Launceston
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Aug-47
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-34.873801 Longitude138.9599686 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mount Torrens, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and teacher, one of the seven children of Edward Starkey Tuck, a school teacher, and Amy Harriet, née Taylor, was born at Mount Torrens (SA) on 5 September 1866 (though from 1904 onwards she gave her birth year as 1872). For 10 years (1886-96) she studied art part-time in the evenings with James Ashton at Norwood Art School and Adelaide, always with the resolve to study in Paris. To save the fare she worked in a Payneham nursery by day and assisted Ashton with his classes in the evenings. In 1896 she moved to Perth, where she taught art privately. [She was listed as a photographer at 345 St George’s Terrace in 1899 (Alan Davies & Peter Stanbury, The Mechanical Eye in Australia: Photography 1841-1900 , Melbourne 1985), although this seems unlikely]. It took 10 long years to save sufficient money to realise her dream. She finally left for France in 1906.
Tuck worked hard, producing many landscapes, portraits and scenes of daily life, including large-scale works such as Jour de Lessive (Washing Day) (1909, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT), The Gossips (c.1910, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW) and the huge La Poissonnerie (The Fish Market) . When the last was sent back to Adelaide for exhibition with the Society of Arts in 1908, having been shown at the French Salon, it was purchased for 100 guineas by the National Gallery of SA (Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, SA.). [Nevertheless, in 1910 an anonymous reviewer of the 9th Federal Exhibition in Adelaide – in 'The Art of the Year’, Lone Hand 1 April 1910, p. 677, by various 'art correspondents’ – noted: 'The work of Miss Marie Tuck is mainly conspicuous for its pretentiousness and faulty drawing’.]
During the winters Tuck studied in the Paris studio of the Australian expatriate painter Rupert Bunny , whom she greatly admired, paying for lessons by cleaning his studio. In Paris Tuck lived at 55 rue du Montparnasse, several buildings along from Bunny. On Bunny’s advice, Tuck left Paris during the summers. 1907 and 1908 she spent in Étaples in Picardy. In the summers of 1909 and 1910 she lived with a family in Brittany, where she travelled around the region painting at Trémalo, Concarneau, Pont-Aven, Quimper and Royan. Some of Tuck’s finest works were produced during these summers, including Dressing the Bride, a painting that was awarded an honourable mention at the 1911 Salon.
From 1910 to 1914 Tuck returned to Étaples to join the artists’ colony active between 1900 and the outbreak of the First World War. She resided at Le Boulevard Billiet. Thirty Australian artists joined the colony at some stage during this period. Étaples was a small fishing village in the north of France near Boulogne-sur-Mer and Le Touquet, on the estuary of the Canche, close to the Straits of Dover. For Tuck, this period was a particularly productive one, resulting in many fine étalois paintings. Between 1906 and 1912 the Société des Artistes Français (Old Salon) hung seven of her paintings.
Commissioned to paint a series of biblical pictures for Rheims Cathedral, these were completed on her return to Adelaide in 1919, then packed up and sent back to France. Unfortunately they were destroyed during the Second World War when the Cathedral was bombed. Completely absorbed in French culture, particularly that of Breton village life, Tuck had reluctantly returned home at the outbreak of World War I. In 1919-39 she taught life drawing and painting at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts, introducing the practice of using nude models. Her students included Dora Chapman , Shirley Keene , Jacqueline Hick , Ruth Tuck , David Dallwitz, Ivor Francis, Ivor Hele and Rex Wood.
In 1924 Tuck held her only solo exhibition in Adelaide, showing 83 paintings of both French and local subjects. Very few sold. The Adelaide public’s response was one of complete indifference. She was bitterly disappointed and from then on rarely showed her work. She missed the artistic stimulus of Europe and her Australian works lack the excitement and compositional boldness of her French paintings. Bunny’s influence remains evident in the later work, both in style and in the use of a soft palette. Her paintings continued to show impressionist influences and she followed Bunny’s anti-modern attitudes in her teaching.
When news was received that France had fallen to the Germans in 1940, Tuck suffered a stroke. She died in Ashford Hospital on 3 September 1947. Her life demonstrates a great sense of vocation and a prodigious talent, and her work deserves greater attention, particularly the French oeuvre . Unfortunately, original documentation is sparse. Her French correspondence was lost when the family home at Mount Torrens was burnt in the 1939 Adelaide bushfires. All other correspondence and personal files were collected from her home at Frewville after her death and are thought to have been destroyed.
Writers:
Snowden, Betty
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 September 1866
- Summary
- Marie Tuck was a South Australian painter and printmaker. Heavily Influenced by French culture and painting, Tuck travelled to France where she took lessons from the Paris-based Australian painter Rupert Bunny, cleaning his studio as payment. The outbreak of WW1 that brought Tuck back to Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Sep-47
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-31.8889034 Longitude116.7691483 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- York, Western Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Woodcarver, Susannah Edwards, born in Western Australia in 1860, was the daughter of Ann Maria Edwards née Griffiths (1830-1890), who in 1855 in Wales married a Wesleyan police constable Thomas Edwards. They arrived in Western Australia in 1857 and were sent to the farming district 'over the hills’ from the settlement on the Swan. Thomas Edwards accompanied explorers on their expeditions: – Hargreaves in 1862, Lefroy in 1863 and Hunt in 1864. He purchased 'Rockfield’ on his retirement and by the 1880s was a yeoman farmer. Anna Maria, originally illiterate, was the local postmistress in 1861. The Butter stamp , c.1877, used to imprint and identify butter for market was carved for Ann Maria Edwards of Rockfield Farm, Beverley near York. It is quite an interesting piece of Treen. The carved letters read AMERFBY – standing for Anna Maria Edwards Rockfield Farm Beverley by York. These surround naturalistically rendered carved strawberries. Anna Maria made sure her own daughter, Susannah, had an education at the York school. Susannah probably carved this butter stamp for her mother. This was a typical school exercise. Susannah later trained in York with Hardman to become a telegrapher, which she was in Beverley in 1879-1900s. She died in 1947.
Writers:
Erickson, Dorothy (Dr)
corinnefs
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. June 1860
- Summary
- Woodcarver, Susannah Edwards, born in Western Australia in 1860. She later trained in York with Hardman to become a telegrapher, which she was in Beverley in 1879-1900s. She never married but was part of a large family and was the favourite "Aunt Nanna" of many nieces and nephews.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Apr-47
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1856-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- The son of artist and photographer George Cherry and Mary Ann Matilda, née James, and brother of miniaturist Ada Whiting, G Rodney Cherry was born in Hobart on 9 August 1856.
Cherry worked as an insurance broker for most of his adult life but maintained his family and social connections to the arts. He exhibited at the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1884, when his address was given as 33 Hoddle Street, North Richmond. Cherry was a prominent member the the Buonarotti Club in Melbourne 1883-87, where he met and married artist Alice Jane Elinor Brotherton in Melbourne in 1887.
Dividing his time between Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney, Cherry took photographs of the artists’ camp at Sirius Cove at Sydney’s Mosman Bay in the 1890s.
Widowed in 1898, Cherry moved permanently to Sydney at the start of the twentieth century, married Minnie J Johnson in 1900 and settled in Wahroonga, where he died on 15 August 1947.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Eric Riddler
James McArdle
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2023
- Born
- b. 9 August 1856
- Summary
- Exhibited with the Victorian Academy of Arts, 1884. Took photographs of the artists' camp at Sirius Cove in the 1890s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Aug-47
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1947-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- Painter, china painter, teacher, photographer and pyrographer was the daughter of Margaret Grubb Beale from Mountmellick in county Laois, Ireland and her husband William James Creeth. Margaret was apparently skilled in china painting. William and Margaret migrated to Victoria in 1853 where her parents, Joseph and Margaret Beale, were by this time established. May, Helen and her brother Richard were born in Victoria where the family became successful merchants and mining entrepreneurs. The women had Beale cousins in New South Wales, New Zealand, South Australia and Tasmania as May’s paintings later depict as well as a Creeth cousin in Perth, Western Australia. May trained in art at the South Kensington Schools (now Royal College of Art) in London as did her younger sister Helen. This was at a time when many of the graduates became teachers of art setting up in opposition to their former lecturers. May advertised in Western Australia that she was a prize medallist. She may have come to Western Australia in mid-1898 to join her brother Richard who arrived about 1896. She opened a studio in St Georges Chambers but confusingly a month later advertised “Hillcrest Ladies College, Emerald Hill Terrace. Classes will reassemble as usual Monday September 12. M. E. Creeth.” So perhaps she had arrived earlier and taught there before. May was soon exhibiting work. She had a display at the 'Western Australian Wildflowers Seventh Annual Exhibition’ held in the Perth Town Hall in August 1898. An article in the West Australian (24 August 1898), stated: Miss Creeth must indeed have been industrious as well as much travelled to produce so much and so varied work. There are scenes from Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and New Zealand and Great Britain, France and Italy. Miss Creeth mentioned that she hoped soon to have some local views of the Swan, Guildford and other surrounding beauty spots which she much admires.The article goes on to discuss, “A new branch of art is the modelling and painting which must be seen to be admired. There are also figurines and animals which demand attention.” Suggesting that perhaps she had some painted 'slip-cast wares’, completed elsewhere, on display. A reviewer of the 1898 exhibition held by the West Australian Society of Arts stated that “Violets by Miss M. E. Creeth was a most natural looking group of violets, just plucked, seemingly, and thrown carelessly on to the panel they adorned. 'Wildflowers’ by the same author, was also very beautiful.” Creeth was one of a number of award winners at the 'Coolgardie Exhibition’ of 1899, exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts and with others in Bickfords Furniture Warehouse. By February 1899, advertisements in The West Australian read, “Drawing and Painting. Miss Creeth’s classes meet daily at the studio. West Australian Chambers, St George’s Terrace. Outdoor classes for Sketching. Terms at Wigg & Sons. Commissions for Painting executed.” And the local press recorded: I was very much struck with the beautifully painted panels of the wild flowers of the colony. Each flower is painted on a separate panel, and thus its beauties of flower and foliage are seen to a much better advantage than if a number of different sorts are grouped together. Over a hundred different specimens which Miss Creeth has collected, and of which she has made paintings so true to nature that it is very easy to imagine that the flower itself is flung carelessly on the canvas. Miss Creeth gives lessons in painting, not only of flowers but of landscapes, of which she has several cleverly executed ones in her studio. She is in her studio every day and all day, except Monday mornings and Saturday afternoons. Author Peter Cowan tells us she “painted a collection said to number some six hundred varieties of native flowers. She was assisted in naming them by the Government botanist Dr Morrison. In 1900 fourteen of her paintings were shown at the Paris exhibition, and later sent to the Glasgow Exhibition.” Cowan continues, “[t]he native flowers even got onto ceramics, when Miss Creeth imported what was said to be the first studio kiln. The china was popular and distributed widely. Perth did have considerable activity and enthusiasm in the arts in those years, perhaps more widespread than could be found later.” Miss Creeth met Dr Morrison at the Royal Society where she was a councillor at a later date. In 1902 she imported a kiln to be able to fire china painting and commenced decorating china with images of native flowers. In 1905 Creeth exhibited in the 'Chamber of Manufactures Exhibition’ in Adelaide as did William Howitt. By 1906 she had moved down the Terrace to the Colonial Mutual Chambers advertising that she taught oils, watercolours, china painting, pyrography and photography. Creeth exhibited china painting as well as oil paintings of wildflowers in the West Australian Society of Arts exhibition that year. Known china-painting students include Deborah Hackett, May Walker, Marion Holmes, Eugene Menz and almost certainly Flora Landells. Marion Holmes probably learnt her pyrography skills here too. In 1910 Creeth’s studio is listed as 897 Hay Street, Perth, Western Australia. About 1910 she was joined by her sister Helen from Sydney. They lived in Subiaco and then West Perth in what is now Parliament Place in 1924. May was a councillor of the Royal Society in 1920-22 and gave one of the speeches at the tribute to Edith Cowan when she lost her seat in Parliament in 1924 – which arena of Cowan’s she had been part of is not known possibly saving Kings Park from the hospital proposal but as they lived close by it could have been more of a friendship. She was a donor to charities such as the Perth Charity Fete in 1899. May rarely exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts, however she exhibited china painting as well as oil paintings of wildflowers in 1926. Their students included: Debra Brockman – later Lady Hackett then Dr Buller Murphy, a young lady married to a much older influential citizen who was the owner of the West Australian newspaper and patron of the West Australian Society of Arts, Marion Holmes wife of the Manager of the Western Australian Bank, Flora Le Cornu – Mrs Landells, Eugene M. Menz who came to Western Australia after her marriage and Rose Carey – Mrs Walker a prominent solicitor’s wife of Bunbury, Western Australia. Of these only Flora was a professional artist. By 1935 the Misses Creeth were semi retired in Outram Street, West Perth and the studio and artists’ supply shop was taken over by Helen Walker from Sydney to become the Haidi Studio. Helen and May moved to Churchhill Avenue, Subiaco, Western Australia where they owned other property. Helen died on 8 April 1940. May died in Subiaco on 22 September 1947 aged eighty-seven. They have been virtually forgotten as neither of the women or their brother married so there has been no one to promote their legacy.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1854
- Summary
- May Creeth was born in 1854. She was a painter, china painter, teacher, photographer and pyrographer. Creeth trained in art at the South Kensington Schools (now Royal College of Art) in London. In 1902 she imported a kiln to be able to fire china painting and commenced decorating china with images of native flowers. Creeth was one of a number of award winners at the 'Coolgardie Exhibition' of 1899.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 22-Sep-47
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1946-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator, painter and etcher, was born in Ballarat (Vic.). He studied art with Norman Carter at the Royal Art Society, Sydney, then worked his way to USA as a deckhand aboard the Makura and worked for Curtis Publishing Co. in Philadelphia. Barker served in Gallipoli, France and the Middle East during WWI, where he co-edited The Anzac Book and Kia Ora Coo-ee (set at Mitchell Library: Spencer 5702) and was art editor for Australia in Palestine (Angus & Robertson 1919). Charles Barrett, his co-editor on Kia Ora Coo-ee , donated a small collection of original material to State Library of New South Wales (Dixson Library uncatalogued Pix): a poster showing an air battle advertising the magazine’s August [1917?] issue signed A.R. Betteridge; a title page for 'Snakes’ by Charles Barrett with snakes forming the word, initialled 'D.H.I.’, used in the soldiers’ magazine The Stretcher ; a small comic ink title page by 'D.B.’ for Charles Barrett’s 'rare soldiers’ paper’ called 'Nature Studies in Palestine’, showing Barrett with a microscope inspecting a caterpillar among falling bombs; and a cartoon signed 'D.C. Barker '17’ showing an old bearded soldier on walking sticks looking at a 'special communique 1940’ proclaiming 'It is confidently predicted that the war will end in the early spring’, used in Kia Ora Coo-ee . After Gallipoli, Barker was lent to the British Army to work as cartographer in Mesopotamia under the orders of Col. T.E. Lawrence ('Lawrence of Arabia’).
A member of the first council of the Sydney Painter-Etchers Society, he exhibited with it and showed etchings and watercolours with NSW Society of Artists in the 1920s.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1888
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney and wartime cartoonist, illustrator, painter and etcher. Barker served in Gallipoli, France and the Middle East during WWI, where he co-edited 'The Anzac Book' and 'Kia Ora Coo-ee' and was art editor for 'Australia in Palestine'. After Gallipoli he was lent to the British Army to work as cartographer in Mesopotamia under the orders of Col. T.E. Lawrence, otherwise known a
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1946
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1946-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- brother of Ethel , husband of Gwen .
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 November 1886
- Summary
- Member of South Australia's artistic Barringer family, Herbert was the brother of printmaker Ethel and the husband of painter Gwen.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12-Aug-46
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude54.98 Longitude-1.61 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1946-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, UK
- Biography
- Altough she was born in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in England, Dora L Wilson spent most of her life in Australia, in Melbourne. She studied first at Somerset School and Methodist Ladies College before attending the National Gallery School where she was taught by Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin. After seeing Anders Zorn’s etchings in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria she enrolled in John Mather’s etching classes. The quality of her early etchings, as well as those by her fellow student Jessie Traill, led to their work being reproduced in The Lone Hand in 1907. The same year she was awarded n a silver medal for the best etching at the 1907 First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work, Melbourne.After 1910 her Melbourne studio, Temple Court, Collins Street West, became the meeting place for the “Waddy” a group of former gallery school students who exhibited together from 1912.Her work from this earlier period of pastels and (predominantly) child portraits was chosen for the 1923 exhibition of Australian art that travelled to Burlington House in London.In the 1920s she became more adventurous, painting the life of the Melbourne streets – the people, the buildings and above all, the accidental effects of light and shade.In 1927 Baldwin Spencer commissioned her and the photographer Pegg Clarke to travel to Europe and record its landmarks. They often travelled on foot, sometimes sleeping in barns as they recorded both the conventional landmarks and some less conventional.On her return to Australia she also painted a series of history paintings, a reflection of Australia’s belated interest in its own past. During World War II she exhibited with the Women Painters’ Service Group.In 1938 she entered the Archibald Prize with portraits of fellow artist Sybil Craig and the writer Alan Marshall.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
James McArdle
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 31 August 1883
- Summary
- Best known for her street scenes showing figures in dappled light, Dora Wilson was also a printmaker who was awarded a silver medal for the best etching at the 1907 First Australian Exhibition of Women's Work, Melbourne.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Nov-46
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-33.9618359 Longitude25.6186512 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1946-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Port Elizabeth, South Africa
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, was born at Port Elizabeth, South Africa, elder daughter of John Hobson Fuller. The family came to Melbourne when she was a child. In 1883 she spent a year at the National Gallery School and in 1888, a term. She also had lessons from Jane Sutherland , who perhaps inspired her interest in Theosophy, which greatly influenced her life and art. In 1884-86, while working part-time as a governess, she studied with her uncle, Robert Dowling . Florence was immensely industrious: 'Before breakfast she devoted herself to anatomy, and worked out perspective problems in spare minutes during the day’, a journalist stated in 1891. When Dowling returned to England in 1886, Fuller gave up governessing and opened her own studio in Melbourne. There she completed Dowling’s portrait of Lady Loch, the Governor’s wife, who became a patron. She adopted a broader style after a few months’ tuition from a French painter in a neighbouring studio, M. de la Crouée, who also allowed her to work from his models ('his wife often coming to sit with me’, she told an interviewer to prove her respectability).
Fuller’s pair of Melbourne street urchins painted in 1888, Weary and Desolate , were sold direct from the studio. At the first exhibition of the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS) in 1889, she won the prize for the best portrait painted by an artist under 25; at the second, her Gently Reproachful was purchased by Lady Clarke. All were basically portraits, for which she became renowned. Inseparables (c.1900, AGSA), for example, depicts a young girl and her book. In 1891 she moved her studio to her parents’ home in Pine Grove, Malvern, and in March held an exhibition there.
In November 1892 Fuller travelled to the Cape of Good Hope to convalesce, evidently with her married sister, Chrissie. She moved on to France and England in 1894 and remained there for ten years, apart from another trip to South Africa in 1899 when she painted a portrait of Cecil Rhodes, having painted a view of his home on her previous visit. She studied at Julian’s in 1894-1901 and exhibited at the Paris Salon (1896, 1897), the Royal Academy (1897, 1904), the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the Manchester City Art Gallery. Paintings sent to Australia were exhibited in Jane Sutherland’s studio in 1896 and regularly shown with the VAS and the NSW Society of Artists. The latter included her work in its album of watercolours presented to the Duke and Duchess of York in 1901 (ML), while the VAS sent six of her paintings to the 1902-3 Federal International Exhibition in Melbourne.
Fuller lived in Perth in 1904-9, painting portraits, exhibiting with the Society of Arts and teaching art; notable pupils were Kathleen O’Connor and Daisy Rossi . The WA Gallery acquired two oils: Sand Pies (1903) and Early Morning (c.1905). She sent ten paintings to the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne. Like Bessie Rischbieth she was an active member of the Perth Theosophical Society, being secretary, treasurer and librarian and making her studio available for meetings in 1906. In 1909-11 she stayed at the Theosophists’ Calcutta headquarters, Adyar, then revisited England with 'a little Indian girl – a Hindu of Brahmin caste’ – whom she sent to school so she could return and educate her sisters. Later that year Fuller returned to NSW and settled in Mosman where she mainly painted miniatures until the onset of mental illness. She died in the Gladesville Mental Asylum on 17 July 1946 and was buried in Rookwood Cemetery, NSW.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1867
- Summary
- Florence Fuller's artistic talents were such that she was able to give up her job as a governess and open her own studio before the age of 20. Indeed, she became renowned for her portraits, exhibiting widely over many years in Australia and Europe. She lived in a number of places in Australia, as well as in South Africa, France, England and India before finally settling in Mosman, NSW.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-Jul-46
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.8845123 Longitude151.2100301 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1946-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Sketcher, signed various pen and ink drawings at SLNSW: Old House at the corner of Bridge and Phillip Sts, Sydney (DG SSV1/13); Old Cottage in Elizabeth Street (DG SSV1/14); The Oldest House on the Rocks (DG SSV1/15). A watercolour by her is also in Rose Scott’s collection (ML PXB 190).
A drawing teacher, taught model drawing ('the most useful of all the elementary courses of drawing’) at day classes at the Dept of Art, Sydney Technical College, c.1909 [1894-1926 according to Mitchell Library records].
Also worked as a china painter, called 'Edith J [sic] Brown’, painted china etc. c.1913. She has exhibited with the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW in 1913 and 1914.
Presumably also the Miss E. Brown listed in Sands 1910-12.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1864
- Summary
- A sketcher of early buildings, drawing teacher, she taught model drawing in Sydney in the early twentieth century. Bell-Brown also painted on china and produced pottery work in the early 20th century. She is known to have exhibited twice with the Society of Arts and Craft of NSW 1913-14.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1946
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1861-01-01 End Date1946-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- George Pitt Morrison was a painter and curator. Born in Melbourne, he studied part time at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne from 1880 and worked in the photographic trade. He was a member of the Australian Artists’ Association in 1886. He joined Arthur Streeton and the other artists at the Heidelberg artists’ camps. He went to Paris in 1890 where he studied at the Academie Julian under Lef_bvre and Bouguereau. He shared a studio in Paris, visited Madrid and returned to Melbourne in 1893. Pit Morrison moved to Fremantle in 1894 and worked in Bunbury in a photographic studio. In 1895 a painting of his was the first locally produced work purchased for the new Art Gallery. In 1896 he prospected unsuccessfully. He became a draughtsman in the Lands and Surveys Department and married in 1899. In 1906 he was appointed as assistant in the art section of the Museum and Art Gallery. He remained there until 1942, having been appointed Assistant in charge of the Art Gallery in 1925 and later Curator. He was a founding member of the West Australian Society of Arts, exhibiting from 1902 and serving as President in 1906. He exhibited pastels, watercolours and oil paintings. He was a member of the Western Institute of Artists and exhibited with them in Art Gallery of Western Australia in 192. In 1933 he became a member and exhibited oil paintings with the Perth Society of Artists in their first exhibition. He continued to exhibit with the Society until 1945 when he moved to Melbourne. He died the following year. Charles Hamilton wrote of him in 1939: “has a fine eye for a picture. It is a pity this artist cannot devote more time to his studies, for one is always tantalized by the thought of what he could really do if he had the opportunity.”
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1861
- Summary
- Melbourne-born painter and curator who associated with Arthur Streeton. In 1890 he went to Paris where he studied at the Academie Julian under Lefébvre and Bouguereau.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1946
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1853-01-01 End Date1946-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia
- Biography
- Pyrographer who was born in Western Australia. She was the daughter of David Earnshaw, former soldier, farmer and publican and his wife Mary n_e Pomeroy. In February 1871 she married Francis Bird who had arrived in Western Australia in 1869 aboard the Bridgetown. They lived at Woodloes, Cannington where he was in partnership with Benjamin Mason as a timber miller. When he began practising as an architect they moved to Claremont where Maude took up pyrography and made a wooden fire screen now in Strawberry Hill Farm.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1853
- Summary
- Pyrographer who was born in Western Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1946
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1892-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born in Ballarat. He studied at the Ballarat School of Mines and later taught there (1915-19). He was elected to the Melbourne Savage Club in 1918 and became a very active artist member designing covers for Smoke Concert programmes etc. In 1922 he painted in Europe and Morocco, then returned to Melbourne to paint watercolours, teach and write art criticism. The morbid viewpoint of modern art filled him 'with disgust and despair’, he wrote as art critic of the Argus in 1943 (Dow, p.67).
Herbert also produced etchings, lithographs and cartoons in an economical, sketchy style. In 1941 he was the first war artist to be appointed, serving for 6 months with the AIF in Egypt and in the Middle East in 1942. Some 50 of his war paintings are in Canberra (Dow, 1947). Two original cartoons in Ballarat Fine Art Gallery are Very Old n.d. (ink, gift of Bill and Klytie Pate 1971) and Hey! Come on! n.d. (pencil, gift of Mr and Mrs W.R. Griffiths 1982). His programme cover for the Savage Club’s 170th corroborree to welcome Lord Somers (“Boss Excellency, you come alonga us”), dated 28 August 1936, shows an Aboriginal Dad, Mum with luggage and son carrying vice-regal hat, the 'Klub’ mia-mia is in the distance): ill. Dow p.70.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1892
- Summary
- Early 20th century Melbourne painter, cartoonist, art critic and art teacher. He was the first war artist to be appointed, serving for 6 months with the AIF in Egypt in 1941 and in the Middle East in 1942.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude-32.8966849 Longitude144.3006866 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ivanhoe, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator, painter and printmaker, was born Oswald E. Paul in Ivanhoe, near Bathurst NSW, son of Alfred Paul and the painter and socialist politician Emily Letitia Paul, née Mutton (1866-1917) – whose portrait Mick drew for the Bulletin c.1912. Mick, who had one good eye and one artificial one, was a renowned Kings Cross Bohemian and drunk, a good friend of Hugh McCrae according to Unk White ('My rendezvous with reminiscence’, Second Laugh Anthology 1940, 20) – evidently before his marriage.
Paul first contributed to the Bulletin in 1904 then regularly for 40 years, although he was never a staff artist. The ML Bulletin collection has 177 original cartoons dated 1917-33 and undated, one political cartoon and 13 caricatures of 1917-30. Examples of his black-and-white work include: Mr. Bruce Smith’s Features (face made out of a Chinese immigrant with a pair of baskets, a reference to Smith as 'the selected Fusion candidate’), published 31 March 1910, 20 (original unlocated); A Postcard from Egypt 25 February 1915, 11; Judging Day at the Royal Art Society (caricatures of the all-male jury of artists looking at a painting of a female nude) 30 September 1915, 24; A Severe Test (re: pacifism) 16 December 1915, 14; Not to be Tempted (re: a Caucasian tropical Australia) 23 September 1920, 9.
Mick Paul also contributed to Lone Hand , including a series of caricatures of artists, e.g. Norman Lindsay , D.H. Souter and Harry Weston , and to the weekly Comic Australian (Sydney, 1911-13), e.g. The Craze for Up-To-Dateness; Dad Hayseed takes the family for a day’s dip at Manly 3 February 1912 and All 'Ot . '“Ere, Porkey, 'ave a bit o’ manners. Blowin’ all over a lidy. If yer corfee’s too 'ot, why don’t yer pour it inter yer saucer an’ fan it with yer 'at like a gentleman”’ 9 April 1912, 10. With Harry Julius and Hugh Maclean he illustrated A.G. Stephens’s Bill’s Idees (Sydney: NSW Bookstall Company, 1913).
Preceded by Cec Hartt , succeeded by Will Donald (Gibbney) and sharing the position with Claude Marquet , he was cartoonist on the socialist Australian Worker from about 1907 until March 1921, e.g. The Uproar: 'Australia’s fourteen Parliaments will soon be all talking at once’ 11 July 1912 (ill. M. Anderson et al., When Australia Was A Woman , WAM 1998, cat.72). His cartoon The Labor Confidence Men , presumably reprinted from the Australian Worker , appeared in the International Socialist on 7 February 1914 and presumably other publications also.
In 1924 Mick Paul was a foundation member of the Society of Australian Black and White Artists along with 24 other male cartoonists mainly from Sydney. All contributed to the Society’s first publication commemorating the visit of the US Fleet in 1925 (see Harry Weston ). From c.1924 he contributed to Aussie , often racial gags e.g. 1924 woman with drunken female Aboriginal servant re: theft of bottle of cooking wine (ill. Lindesay 1979, 171) and Englishman and coy Aboriginal girl under tree, “Bai Jove, that – er – looks like – er – mistletoe!” Aussie, 14 November 1926, p. 27.
Bulletin cartoons of the 1930s include: The Modernist (modernist painting with male artist and silly female): 'The Devotee: “Of course I just love it; it’s perfectly adorable. So you’ll forgive me for thinking it might be even more delightfully expressed in verse, or musically perhaps” (A3 original ML Px*D504/117) published Bulletin 17 May 1933; (two men in art gallery) “That’s 'The Judgment of Paris.’”/ “Lumme! Are them flash dames on the jury?” (A3 original ML Px*D504/115) published Bulletin 19 July 1933. In the late 1930s he drew occasional cartoons for Man , e.g. (lady to vicar) “Oh, Mr. Smeet, don’t you think sin is getting better?” April 1937, 69.
Mick Paul was also a painter, a member of the Dee Why group of artists. He and his wife Dorothy Ellsmore Paul , another Bulletin cartoonist whom he married in 1925, had an exhibition of bookplates at David Jones Gallery in 1932 but it is unknown if this was a loan exhibition of their collection or an exhibition they organised for the bookplate society.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1888
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney cartoonist, illustrator, painter and printmaker. Mick Paul was married to fellow cartoonist Dorothy Ellsmore Paul.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-32.0468773 Longitude150.866996 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scone, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- artist, exhibited at the Royal Art Society of NSW [RAS], Sydney, in 1908, then was awarded a prize for a black and white head from the RAS in 1909.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- Miss Barling exhibited at the Royal Art Society in 1908 and 1909. There is some speculation that she might otherwise be known as the printmaker Mabel Barling.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, John Drummond Donald Banks was born in Millers Point, Sydney in 1883. He studied art under Harry Garlick , J.S. Watkins , Sydney Long and Lawson Balfour , Died Sydney. May have been married to Esther Paterson. He was married Phillip St, Sydney to Sydney photographer Elizabeth Mahony at St Stephens’s Presbyterian Church on 28 January 1928.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- A painter and illustrator, Banks studied art under Harry Garlick, J.S. Watkins, Sydney Long and Lawson Balfour.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, received her artistic training at the Sydney Art School under Julian Ashton and Sydney Long (c.1908-10) where she was awarded several student prizes, including a first for 'Figure Composition’ (with Nelle Rodd second). A watercolour flower study initialled 'V.A.Q.’ and dated 1925 is held in private collection.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1885
- Summary
- Quaife was a painter who received her artistic training at the Sydney Art School under Julian Ashton and Sydney Long. Fellow students included Nelle Rodd.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, NSW , Paddington, NSW ?
- Biography
- cartoonist, regularly drew for Aussie in 1930-31, along with Esther and Betty Paterson , Dorothy Ellsmore Paul and Doreen O’Neill . Healy specialised in working-class subjects and jokes, e.g. (good drawing of two men standing in a train with seated passengers outlined behind) “I’ve been travelling on this line for three years, and I’ve never given my seat to a lady.”/ “'Aven’t you got no manners?”/ “'Taint that; I’ve never 'ad a seat!” 15 January 1930; (two old working-class women taking tea) “Who broke yer winder, Mrs. 'Icks?”/ “Oh, me husbing did that last night. 'E come 'ome pretty full, y’know.”/ “Go on! 'An 'ow did 'e 'appen ter break it?”/ “'E ducked, dearie” 15 August 1930; (woman to man in bed) “Why don’t you get up an’ work, like me, you lazy loafer? “Ard work never killed no one!”/ “You’re making a mistake there, ole girl; I lost two of the best little wives I ever 'ad by overwork” 15 October 1930; (beach picnic with small boy) “Oh, Uncle!”/ “Well, my dear, what is it?”/ “Ain’t it funny, 'ow Aunty’s hair is all waves an’ yours is all beach!” 15 January 1931; “If you’ll let me marry your daughter, sir, I’ll take out a policy on my life large enough for her to be provided for.”/ “Yes, but suppose you don’t die!” 15 November 1931.
Included in c.1930s list of Bulletin artists (ML Px*D557 pt 5, 10).
There is some speculation that Healy is Phoebe Louise Healey (née Hodges), born Paddington, NSW, 1877 to parents John (or Joshua) and Mary A. Hodges and married George Healey, Sydney, 1903 and died Rockdale, NSW, 1945.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1877
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney [?] cartoonist. She specialised in working-class subjects and jokes and contributed regularly to "Aussie" in 1930-31.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1945
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-37.8 Longitude144.9 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Footscray, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Victor Ernest Cobb, printmaker, painter, illustrator, writer and lecturer, was born on 14 August 1876, in Footscray, Victoria. He was the eighth child and youngest son of the Englishman John Frederic Cobb, a surgeon who also practiced art and produced architectural drawings, and Mary Anne Elizabeth née King from New Zealand.
In 1891-93 Cobb attended the Melbourne Church of England Grammar School, where he received guidance in drawing from the Art Master, Jack Sommers, a member of the Victorian Artists’ Society. Continuing his artistic training, Cobb enrolled in classes at the NGV School of Design in 1896. He studied drawing under Bernard Hall and met Lionel Lindsay, John Shirlow and Ernest Moffitt, with whom he shared an interest in etching. As noted in a newspaper article from The Brisbane Courier in 1932, together these artists crafted hand-made tools and built their own etching presses. In 1987, Andrew Mackenzie published letters that Cobb had written to Lionel Lindsay, whom the artist addressed in a letter on 7 February 1918 as ‘Dear Bro. Lionel’, demonstrating the close relationship that developed between the artists.
Victor Cobb travelled to South Africa in 1901 and after arriving in Durban he enlisted in the Johannesburg Mounted Rifles. He fought in the Boer War with distinction and was awarded the Queen’s Medal with three clasps. His experience of the war is represented through works such as Reminiscences of the late Boer War – Boer Farm in Ruins, South Africa exhibited in the Society of Arts Gallery, Adelaide, 10th Federal Exhibition 1907. Following the war Cobb served with the Johannesburg Police Force as a police artist and worked as a clerk in the Central South African Railways.
Cobb returned to Melbourne in 1905 and was employed in several different occupations. One of his jobs was as a mail order clerk in Cole’s Book Arcade, where he met Alice Barrett, whom he later married in 1908. Cobb also carried out various commissions, such as designing the ball cards and menus for the 1920 visit of the Prince of Wales to Adelaide and a series of etchings of Coombe Cottage for Dame Nellie Melba along with the artist Cyril Dillon. Many of his etchings served as motifs for popular Christmas cards familiar to the public, and his etching of the State Parliament House, Victoria, was hung in Westminster Hall, London. In 1923 three of his works (St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Deserted Home, Eltham, and White Gums, Gippsland) were selected for the Exhibition of Australian Art shown in London at the Royal Academy of Arts. In November 1925 Victor Cobb began work under (Sir) Colin Mackenzie as science artist to the National Museum of Australian Zoology. During the next five years, Cobb made hundreds of detailed anatomical drawings of Australian marsupials and reptiles, and skulls and skeletons of Aboriginals and notorious criminals, including Ned Kelly.
Cobb is best known for his etchings (numbering approximately two hundred separate works) in which he depicted street scenes, rural vistas (with gum trees appearing as a recurring motif) and the architecture of Melbourne, particularly the campus buildings of Melbourne University. His other works include drypoints, mezzotints, watercolours, oils, pen and ink, pencil, charcoal, sculpture, silhouettes and wood engravings. It is also worth noting that fellow artists including John Shirlow and Norman Lindsay entrusted Cobb to print a number of their own etched plates.
Cobb exhibited his work regularly from 1900 to his death in 1945. Examples of such exhibitions include the Victorian Gold Jubilee Exhibition in Bendigo in 1901 and the ‘Exhibition of Etchings of Victor Cobb’ at the Guild Hall, Melbourne in 1912, which was reported as the first solo show of etchings held in Melbourne. Cobb also taught etching and lectured in country centres as well as art societies, schools and universities. Included among the venues where he presented lectures were the Ballarat Art Gallery (23 November 1927), Bread and Cheese Club, Melbourne (24 September 1941), Melbourne Writers’ Club (22 May 1942) and the FernTree Gully Art Exhibition, Shire Hall (7 October 1944). At a number of his lectures Cobb also gave practical demonstrations of etching techniques.
Victor Cobb died at his home in East Brunswick, Victoria on 2 December 1945. As a final tribute to his etching, drawing and writing skills, one of his pens was placed in his writing hand when buried (refer to page 18 of Andrew Mackenzie’s book The Etchings, Lecture Notes and Writings of Victor Cobb 1876-1945).
Cobb was a member of the Twenty Melbourne Painters’ Society for over 20 years and the Victorian Artists’ Society for over 40 years. He also served as a V.A.S. Council member for 11 years.
The art of Victor Ernest Cobb is represented in several Australian collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne and the Baillieu Library Print Collection, The University of Melbourne, Victoria.
A portrait of the artist by John Hennessy is in the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.
Writers:
Staff Writer
ecwubben
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 14 August 1876
- Summary
- Etcher and woodcut printmaker. Cobb worked as a professional printmaker in Victoria from the 1920s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Dec-45
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-35.5302183 Longitude144.9597178 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Deniliquin, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born at Deniliquin (NSW) on 26 November 1875, third daughter of Henry William Hunter, a builder, and Emma Louisa, née Peers.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography .
Writers:
Staff Writer
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1875
- Summary
- Dynamic and pragmatic modernist painter, she was very influential on young women artists in the 1930s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-35.5302183 Longitude144.9597178 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Deniliquin, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 26 November 1875
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Jul-45
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, art teacher, dress designer and textile artist, was born in Sydney. She studied art at both the Royal Art Society and the Julian Ashton Sydney School of Art. At the latter she met Charles Robert Dalgarno, son of the NSW Deputy Postmaster-General James Dalgarno, who painted seascapes. They married in 1900 and moved to Goulburn, where Charles was manager of the old Government Savings Bank until his death in 1912. His widow was left with four young children to support. Although Lucie’s first love was painting, she realised that she would need to use her artistic talents in other ways to make a living. She moved the family back to Sydney, where they lived first at Cremorne then at Coogee until finally settling at Northwood in 1921.
Disliking her first job – teaching art at a girls’ school at Bradley’s Point – Lucie did piecework for Ward & Co.'s wholesale business, designing, stencilling and embroidering evening dresses. She worked from home and was assisted by her younger son, who fetched the work to and from the warehouse. In the mid-1920s she responded to the fashion for handcrafted textiles by painting velvet and silk dress items, which she sold through David Jones department store. In the late 1920s she taught herself the technique of batik (hand-printing and dyeing textiles by the wax resist method), then enormously popular in Europe. She made batik scarves and shawls for David Jones, again assisted by her younger son who developed a special batik pen for her.
Like many others involved in the crafts, Lucie Dalgarno was interested in using Australian flora in her work. She had considerable commercial success with her kid leather and wool dress accessories of gumnut-blossoms and other Australian flowers, which she sold through the Arts and Crafts Society’s shop in Rowe Street, Sydney. In 1936 she took her first overseas trip, going to England and holding exhibitions of her dress accessories in London. In the late 1930s, with her children older and her financial commitments less onerous, Lucie Dalgarno was able to return to painting. She spent 1936-37 travelling and studying painting in Europe. In 1939 she travelled to the USA with her daughter and daughter’s family. She took a studio in New York in order to study and paint, but World War II cut her stay short. Returning to Australia, she gave travel talks illustrated with her paintings of America to share her experiences and raise money for wartime charities. Lucie Dalgarno died in Sydney in 1945.
Writers:
Mitchell, Louise
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1874
- Summary
- Lucie Dalgarno was a successful textile designer and trained painter. Her designs utilised Australian floral motifs which were popular at the time.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-36.75 Longitude144.266667 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1874
- Summary
- Glaze specialist who worked on the development of Bendigo Pottery's Langley ware in the 1910s before starting his own pottery in Castlemaine, later working for Bennett's Pottery in Magill, Adelaide.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Sep-45
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-33.8845123 Longitude151.2100301 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Surry Hills, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist and teacher, was born in Surry Hills, Sydney, on 21 August 1873 [sic ?], eighth surviving and fifteenth child of Edward Frederick Leist, builder, and Harriet Eliza, née Norris, both from London. He studied at Crown Street Public School, at Sydney Technical College and at the Art Society of NSW in classes held by Julian Ashton . From the 1890s he was illustrating for the Bulletin , e.g. Weight Will Tell 1898 by Fred Leist 'after A.P.M.’ (presumably a contributor); The man from town. '“Do you think cycling will affect the horse-trade much?”/ Cockie (as lady of quality goes by): “Well, there won’t be many of those hollow-back brutes bred now”’ n.d. (ill. Rolfe, 47).
Leist’s darkly serious An Ominous Start shows a young woman in classical dress labelled’Federated Australia’ hiding her face and weeping as ships depart for the Boer War: 'And so my first national act is to back up a wanton deed of blood and rapine!’ 1899 (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 120). Also in 1899 a Leist drawing of drunks was used to illustrate a verse by 'The Breaker’ (Morant), Too Much Light (ill. Rolfe, 107). I fear no foe depicts Lord Beauchamp, the new young Governor of NSW, wearing armour which has broken Cupid’s shaft, proving he 'has no intention whatever of getting married [despite the line-up of mothers and daughters behind him]’, Bulletin 20 May 1899 (ill. Rolfe, 41).
Leist was an inaugural council member of the Sydney Society of Artists in 1895 and – after the merger (1902-07) – of the Royal Art Society of NSW. Then, with 11 others, he helped re-establish the former as the NSW Society of Artists in 1907. He is best known for his drawings in Lone Hand where he made his reputation as an outstanding draughtsman. He also drew the frontispiece for The Commonwealth annual no.2 (1902-3). He was staff artist on the Sydney Mail before leaving to study in London. In England in 1908 he drew for the Graphic , having been its Sydney representative since 1900 (acc. ADB ). His painting, The Mirror , was hung at the RA in 1911 and the following year he had a painting accepted by the Paris Salon. In 1911-25 he exhibited regularly at the RA and was also included in the Venice Biennale. He was made a member of the Royal Society of British Painters in Oils.
During WWI Leist drew recruiting posters and in September 1917 was appointed an official war artist with the AIF (in France September-December 1917 and June-August 1918). A stylish pastel of a young woman, Aimee (offered Christies Melbourne 1-2 May 2000), is dated 1917. After the war he painted two large murals for the Australian Pavilion at the Wembley exhibition (1924-25) and made an action model of Sydney Harbour. The former led to a 1925-26 commission for murals in the church of St Augustine, Florida, from whence he toured Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. He returned to Australia in 1926 having been appointed head teacher of painting at ESTC. He then exhibited with the NSW Society of Artists, the RAS and the Australian Watercolour Institute. He died at Sydney on 18 February 1945.
Images include Important Zoological Discovery: The real old original Serpent i.e. head of serpent on a woman’s shoe, original Bulletin drawing 1904 (Px*D439/62), paid 5 July 1907, annotated 'Xmas’ with pasted note from Bulletin office verso: 'A great idea if original. The shoe has suggested the serpent to the man who clipped it out; he has added the forked tongue. Please draw it so that it will reproduce well’ (in B/W show SLNSW 1999).
Another amateur suggestion for Leist (ML PXA 2695) was a drawing of two newspaper boys (one smoking) by 'JEFF’ dated 1900: 'SNORKY: Well Stinker [crossed out and replaced with 'Stousher’] What Does Yer Tink of Alfred Dampier In Drink./ Stinker/ Stousher: 'Not Much. E’s Nuthin’ To My Ole Man When E’ Gits Booked. [following deleted] E’ Starts Chuckin’ Saucepans At The Ole Woman, An’ Wants To Break My Bloomin Jaw.’ Annotated 'Mr Leist next week’/ and (in another hand, presumably Leist’s) 'From Bulletin Sept 15/00’. Accompanied by Leist version ML PXA 2695 (on top of page 'E. O’Sullivan 21.7.47’).
Will Dyson included a caricature of Leist in 1907 Society of Artists catalogue, 32, annotated: 'FRED LEIST, born in Australia, has devoted his life and his killing glance to the study of the Australian girl. Leist paints other subjects, but no-one wants to see them while there is the Leist bit of girl to see. It’s the clothed girl – the noblest work of God, man, the triumph of Nature and Art – that Leist delights to paint. It is a subject full of complexities and strange fabrics, but he succeeds.’ Photograph Taylor, 39.
[Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection entry also notes that Leist “... was an Australian artist and illustrator. Early in his career he trained as a furniture designer under the guidance of Francis Dickin and was employed by department store and furniture manufacturer, David Jones & Co. A collection of Leist’s designs for drapery and furniture were found inserted into a David Jones & Co catalogue, c1895. Only three of the designs were reproduced in the David Jones catalogue though others may have appeared in alternate forms of advertising.”]
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 21 August 1873
- Summary
- Lleist was an early 20th century Sydney and London painter, cartoonist, war artist and teacher. He was an inaugural council member of the Sydney Society of Artists in 1895 and after the merger (1902-07), a member of the Royal Art Society of NSW. He also trained as a furniture designer working for David Jones and Co., Sydney and painted murals for the Martin Place nightclub Romano's.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Feb-45
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1872
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16-Sep-45
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-37.87731945 Longitude145.042234 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Caulfield, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Born in 1872.
Coulson was the winner of a design competition for the Australian Natives’ Association ex-president’s certificate in 1903.
According to Camera Craft magazine, October 1915, Coulson’s work was given “special prominence” in “Harrington’s Photographic Journal” in July of the same year.
Coulson enlisted in the AIF on 1/4/1916, listing his trade as “Litho Artist + Photographer” and joined the AFC as a photographer.
While enlisted, Coulson produced various pieces of mainly photographic work for the AFC, contributed photographs and cover illustrations to “Kia Ora Coo-ee” service magazine as well as producing illustrations for concerts and postcards.
In his autobiography, Sir Richard Williams said of Coulson: “When it came to cap badges I called on the photographic officer I had in No. 1 Squadron AFC, Lieutenant O. H. Coulson, who was quite an artist and he designed them. I wanted to introduce the wattle into these badges and it was quite successful in those for other ranks in brass.”
Two of Coulson’s colour paintings of an aerial dogfight feature in “Australia in Palestine,” published shortly after WWI.
After the war, Coulson worked as a photographer for “Coulson & McPherson (Late Official Photographers A.I.F in Egypt)” describing his line of work as “Photographic Experts” – his letterhead from 1922 notes “Commercial photographers, enlargements, copying, lantern slides and color photography.”
Writers:
Daniel McKeown
Date written:
2016
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. March 1872
- Summary
- Coulson's career began ca.1903. Following enlistment for the 1914-18 War he produced photographic work for the AFC and began painting ca.1916. After the war, Coulson worked as a photographer for "Coulson & McPherson (Late Official Photographers A.I.F in Egypt)" describing his line of work as "Photographic Experts".
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Jun-45
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, was an outstanding painting student at the Melbourne National Gallery School. He was at the design school in 1886-88, at the painting school in 1889-93. In 1889 he was awarded the prize of £5 for the best still-life picture in the exhibition of work by students of the Melbourne National Gallery School ( Illustrated Sydney News 28 November 1889, 24); he won first prize for a figure subject in 1891 and the Ramsay Prize (nude painting) in 1892 (Victorian Artists’ Society 1900). When he showed landscapes and still life at the student exhibition in 1890, the Australian Critic of December 1890 (p.75) commented: 'We have seldom seen better work in still life in Melbourne’.
Exhibited VAS 1893. Studied at Colarossi’s in 1896 and exhibited in Paris in 1895, at the RA in 1896. He returned to Melbourne and exhibited with the VAS until 1906 .
At the 1898 Society of Artists exhibition in Sydney Hansen showed Preparing for the Carnival (cat. No.62), which the Sydney Morning Herald (27 August 1898,7) commented: 'will be admired for its subject – a little green-robed girl who stands in a poppy-besprinkled meadow that extends to the edge of the sea, whilst she lights a Chinese lantern’. The Daily Telegraph (27 August 1898) noted that Mr Brooke Hansen, 'who has just returned from Paris, where he has been studying, is responsible for two large pictures – a Pierrot, cleverly treated as to drapery, but rather unsatisfactory as to the face, and “Preparing for the Carnival” about which one hardly knows what to say. It is decorative in design and colour but is not a great source of strength to the show.”
'Mr Hansen’ exhibited with the Royal Art Society in 1901 and 'P.’ [presumably 'B’] Hansen was included in the Society of Artists Commonwealth Exhibition in 1901.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- Talented young artist, showed early promise while at Melbourne National Gallery School 1886-93.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- potter and painter, was born in Geelong, Victoria, where her father was a bank manager. The family could be described as having artistic connections: Sir Edward Poynter, President of the Royal Academy in 1897, was a cousin and through him the family was distantly related to Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Her father and one of her sisters also painted.
Poynter was brought up in Geelong. In about 1910 she went to London and studied painting at the Slade School, followed by pottery at the Kingston-on-Thames School of Art in 1913. During World War I she worked as a VAD, but became ill and returned to Australia in 1918 to live with her father. After his death, she moved to Tasmania to stay with her married sister, Mrs Reid of Ratho, outside Bothwell. The Reids let Maude have a small plot of land on the Ratho estate where, using some of her small private income and with the help of a local carpenter, she built a cottage and a large wood-fired kiln. After experimenting with local clays and finding that the results did not justify the effort, Poynter bought her clays from Campbell’s Pottery in Launceston. Her glazes were imported from Wenzer’s at Stoke-on-Trent, England. The kiln took about twelve hours to fire and the pots were usually fired in saggars.
As early as 1919 Poynter exhibited large quantities of her pottery with the Arts and Crafts Society of Tasmania and attracted favourable notice, particularly as she was the first person to do so. During the 1920s she exhibited her pottery regularly with the Society and sold it through Sargison’s jewellery shop and Jean Spong’s Art Salon. At the same time she consistently showed paintings, usually landscapes, with the Art Society of Tasmania. At Ratho Poynter taught pottery to her cousin Violet Mace and to local women. In 1924 she and Violet held a joint exhibition of pottery at the Hobart Town Hall, which included demonstrations of throwing by Maude.
In 1928 Maude returned overseas in order to visit the art centres of Europe. In 1935, not long after this photograph was taken, she moved to Hobart where she continued working with a small electric kiln, taught at New Norfolk and took a few private pupils. One of them, Mylie Peppin, opened a pottery at Port Arthur in the 1990s named in memory of her teacher.
Maude Poynter’s pottery was distinguished by a sturdy utilitarian quality, relieved by a taste for the bizarre or a whimsical humour. Her interesting Bird Jug , dated 1932, is characteristic of her most imaginative work. It has been wheel-thrown from a buff earthenware body then modelled by hand. The large lip has been built out and curved downwards to resemble a bird’s beak, balanced by the large handle. The zoomorphic effect is enhanced by the eyes painted on each side with a modelled pupil in relief. The jug is decorated with dark tan glaze in the interior, while the exterior has been divided into geometric fields painted in dark or light tan or the thick blue glaze Poynter favoured, or in some cases left in the natural buff body and covered with a clear glaze. Each field is delineated with a black line, which also defines the eyes and emphasises the continuity of the beak, rim and curve of the handle.
The scheme of decoration was bold for the time in terms of its abstraction. It is also of particular interest as it was almost certainly intended to represent Aboriginal motifs. A contemporary article on the use of Aboriginal art had featured feather-like designs similar to that employed around the rim of the jug, while the colours used were probably meant to evoke those used in Aboriginal art or, possibly, in the landscape itself. The same article had also remarked that `in one or two instances aboriginal subjects have been drawn on jugs with excellent results’.
Although the use of Australian motifs was commonplace in craftwork of the period, this is an early example of looking to the art of the indigenous Australians rather than to flora or fauna for inspiration. It is certainly one of the earliest Tasmanian specimens of studio pottery to employ such motifs.
Writers:
Miley, Caroline
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1869
- Summary
- From an artistic family, Maude Poynter eventually made her way to England to study painting and pottery, returning to Australia at the end of the First World War, when she had worked as a volunteer. An imaginative potter, she was among the first to reference Aboriginal motifs in her work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- Craftworker, is listed as a member of the Society of Arts & Crafts of NSW with work in the National Gallery of Australia.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1868
- Summary
- Craftworker
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude51.5375786 Longitude-0.9050287 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Henley-on-Thames, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and bedding manufacturer, was born at Henley-on-Thames in 1867. He came to Australia in 1885 and moved to Brisbane in 1886, where he worked as a house painter, seaman, partner in Lloyd, Austin & Tait (bedding manufacturers), founder Friendly Society & Hospital; Labor alderman for South Brisbane City Council; won Brisbane exhibition art award (!). Austin married Mary Etchells in Brisbane c.1894, then Emily Short in Brisbane c.1928. He died in Brisbane on 5 August 1945.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1867
- Summary
- Painter and bedding manufacturer, Austin is said to have won a Brisbane exhibition art award but he is better known for founding the Friendly Society and Hospital and for his work as a Labor alderman with South Brisbane City Council.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Aug-45
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-34.8983219 Longitude138.5756758 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brompton, SA, Australia
- Biography
- potter, born in the working class village of Brompton, near Adelaide, Bosley was named after his father Thomas and his uncle George Bosley, with Dufty being his mother’s maiden name. Thomas and George had trained and worked as potters in the Staffordshire Potteries district of England before migrating to South Australia in 1866. After Thomas died, George married his brother’s widow. At the age of nine, Thomas joined his stepfather, now one of the chief potters, at the Hindmarsh Pottery, Adelaide as an apprentice. The firm produced a range of domestic salt-glazed stoneware vessels, drainpipes and terracotta wares. After George died in 1892, Thomas became a journeyman potter, travelling to WA to manage a brick-works. He returned to South Australia some 20 years later and managed a large brickyard.
When this closed with the onset of the 1929 Depression, along with other brickyards, Thomas and his son Alfred were left without work. In 1932 Thomas purchased 'a few shillings’ worth of clay’ from his former employers, the Hindmarsh Pottery, and made some ornamental bowls and vases with Alfred and another unemployed potter, selling their work at the newly-established Unemployed Sales Depot. Lady Bonython, Mayoress of Adelaide and a member of the committee suggested further designs based on 'simple lines, firm bases and plain, clear colours’.
Sales encouraged Bosley to establish a small pottery in the rear garden of his home in suburban Mitcham, producing bread crocks, vases and other wares. 'He was adept at the use of brightly-coloured lead-based glazes with a range of creamy to yellow shades and bright green and blue being favourites.’ By the end of 1937 the pottery workshops had been enlarged to employ six assistants, expanded to 12 in the next two years. The pottery became a popular place to visit, if only to see the 'Mitcham Band’ – a group of gnomes playing instruments in the front yard. Frogs, kookaburras and parrots were popular lines. Staff disappeared with the war and by 1941 Tom and Alfred were the only workers left. By 1944 Thomas Bosley, then 77, could only make a pot or two a day. He died in January 1945. Afred struggled to keep the business going with two assistants, but sold it in 1946 to ex-serviceman Ron Bissett, who formed Mitcham Potteries Ltd. It operated under various owners until 1964, though the production of ornamental wares had ceased by 1954.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1867
- Summary
- Thomas George Dufty Bosley was a talented and professional potter who began his career at the age of nine, when he became an apprentice at the Hindmarsh Pottery in Adelaide. Bosley spent most of his working career, which spanned nearly 70 years, in South Australia where he famously created and produced a variety of domestic wares and ornaments including brightly coloured frogs and gnomes playing i
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Jan-45
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- painter, enameller and art teacher, was born on 18 November 1862 at Ballarat, second of the twelve children of William Mountford Kinsey Vale, a stationer (later Minister of Customs for Victoria and a National Gallery of Victoria trustee), and his wife, Rachel, née Lennox.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 November 1862
- Summary
- A painter, enameller and art teacher, May Vale was acclaimed for her 'pioneering' work in enamels, which included Australian landscapes and large scale pieces such as vases in Egyptian and Greek styles.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1945-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Sculptor, born c.1858, son of better-known sculptor Charles Summers.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1858
- Summary
- The son of sculptor Charles Summers, Charles Francis Summers has several sculptural works held in the collection of the Rotorua Art Gallery and Museum in New Zealand.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1945
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-35.5309995 Longitude138.6806344 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1944-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Port Elliot, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Arthur d’Auvergne Boxall, painter, printmaker, architect and art teacher, was born on 19 June 1895 at Port Elliot, South Australia, son of George Albert Boxall, carpenter and builder, and his wife Ellen, née Pratt. D’Auvergne Boxall studied architecture on a scholarship at the South Australian School of Mines and Industries and received a diploma in architecture from the South Australian Institute of Architects. Whilst working as an architect with an Adelaide firm (Woods, (W.H.) Bagot, Jory & Laybourne-Smith), as Judith Thompson has documented, he pursued his interest in art, studying drawing at the Adelaide School of Art under Will Ashton and at the School of Fine Arts, North Adelaide.
Responding to the call of teacher, Boxall abandoned his career as an architect and accepted the post of art master at St Peter’s College, during which time he also worked as a practicing artist and shared a studio with Horace Trenerry. As a fellow of the South Australia Society of Arts, Boxall twice won the Society’s Melrose Prize for portraiture (1923 and 1925). He held his first solo exhibition in Adelaide in 1925 at the Society of Arts, where practically all of the 80 plus drawings, etchings and paintings on display were sold. An etching of St Peter’s College proved particularly popular, with 30 copies (half the edition) being ordered for purchase.
Boxall travelled to London in 1926 and, as an honorary commissioner, reported back to the South Australian government on art. He studied under Henry Tonks and Wilson Steer at the Slade School of Art, University of London. An Adelaide newspaper (The Mail) reported in May 1930 how Boxall had met Queen Mary during an unexpected visit by Her Majesty to the Slade School of Art. At the time, Boxall was painting a still-life composition of a pair of Greek vases, which captured the Queen’s interest. Boxall won several prizes for his work at the Slade School, received an honours diploma in fine arts and was awarded the Robert Ross travelling scholarship, which enabled him to travel extensively across Europe. In 1928-29 he exhibited with the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the Paris Salon, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the New English Art Club.
D’Auvergne Boxall returned to Australia in 1931 after painting in England, Egypt and Fiji. In 1932 he was appointed to the post of life-drawing teacher at the East Sydney Technical College. Suffering from tuberculosis (TB) he resigned from his teaching post in 1940 and later returned to South Australia. Tragically D’Auvergne Boxall died from tuberculosis at his father’s home on 7 January 1944.
His sister Ella Boxall and his father George Albert Boxall had both bequeathed their estates to the Art Gallery of South Australia, leading to the establishment of the d’Auvergne Boxall Bequest. This funding stream was set up for the purpose of purchasing new acquisitions and took effect from 1954, in the same year a memorial exhibition of Boxall’s work was held at the Royal SA Society of Arts Gallery. The exhibition included an array of paintings, prints and drawings, some of which presented landscapes scenes of Australia, Fiji, Britain, and Europe. A room in the Art Gallery of South Australia was also named in the artist’s honour.
One subject depicted by Boxall that holds particular historical interest is the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Building of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (1930) was painted shortly after Boxall’s return to Australia, with the detail of the subject matter reflecting the artist’s prior career as an architect. Boxall’s traditional compositions avoiding abstraction presented a range of interests and included landscapes, portraits and figurative works.
The art of Arthur d’Auvergne Boxall is represented in the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, the Baillieu Library Print Collection, University of Melbourne, and the Cbus Art Collection.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
ecwubben
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 19 June 1895
- Summary
- South Australian born painter and teacher, active during the interwar period. Studied at the Slade art school in London and later lived and worked in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Jan-44
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude51.148555 Longitude0.8722566 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1944-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ashford, Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, commercial artist and teacher, was born in Ashford, Kent, on 4 March 1887. He contributed illustrations to English magazines before coming to Perth in 1915. From 1921 he produced 15 coloured woodcuts and posters advertising Australia for the Empire Marketing Board.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
stokel
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 4 March 1887
- Summary
- Painter, commercial artist and teacher, was born in Ashford, Kent, on 4 March 1887. He contributed illustrations to English magazines before coming to Perth in 1915. From 1921 he produced 15 coloured woodcuts and posters advertising Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1944
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-34.2029671 Longitude150.7872441 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1944-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Appin, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1884
- Summary
- Painter active in Wollongong in the 1920s and 1930s. Submitted entries to the 1928 Wynne Prize (the last year that there was no exhibition of entries).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2-Aug-44
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1944-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia
- Biography
- painter, mainly of birds and flowers on silk, was born in South Australia. She exhibited with the South Australian Society of Arts in the1890s and at the Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work at Melbourne in 1907.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- Mable Frances Boothby exhibited her work, mainly bird and flower paintings on silk, in Adelaide and Melbourne throughout the 1890s and 1900s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1944
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.4820845 Longitude-0.0045417 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1944-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Greenwich, England, UK
- Biography
- Architect and amateur painter Edwin Summerhayes was born in Greenwich in 1868 son of George, a builder. He was educated at Christ College London and at sixteen accompanied his parents to Australia. He was articled to James Hill in Adelaide and completed his training under William Pitt in Melbourne. He arrived in Western Australia at the beginning of the gold boom in 1894 and ended up setting up practice in Coolgardie. He returned to Victoria to marry Florence May Camm in 1896 and they were in Western Australia in 1897 when their son Reginald was born. In Coolgardie he designed the Turkish Baths, the Jewish Synagogue, the Presbyterian Church, the Mechanics Institute and worked on the Exhibition Building. He was a foundation member of the West Australian Institute of Architects in 1896 and became known for his 'comfortable homesteads and villas’ that 'abound in all parts of Western Australia’. Summerhayes who was a Freemason became Member of Claremont Municipal Council by 1904. He was also a Major in the volunteer forces 11th Infantry Regiment in 1911. In 1912 he set up in partnership with Harold Boas (in later years senior Partner) in Oldham Boas Ednie Brown and Partners. Summerhayes was an amateur painter and exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts 1911. He served in France in 1916-7.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1868
- Summary
- In Coolgardie he designed the Turkish Baths, the Jewish Synagogue, the Presbyterian Church, the Mechanics Institute and worked on the Exhibition Building. He was a foundation member of the West Australian Institute of Architects in 1896.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1944
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1944-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker and decorative artist, was born in Sydney, the daughter of William Stephens, headmaster of Sydney Grammar School and later Professor of Natural History at Sydney University, and Anna Louise, née Daniell.Ethel began to exhibit with the [Royal] Art Society of NSW in 1883. As a student aged twenty, seven of her drawings were included among 'work of private classes held in Sydney Technical College Rooms’ at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London. The same year she became Julian Ashton’s first pupil.Working in both oils and watercolours, Stephens painted flowers and other still life subjects, portraits and landscapes. In 1888 she exhibited 'some watercolour flowers’ in the amateur section of the Fine Arts section at the Women’s Industries Exhibition in Sydney. In 1890 she won two student prizes (first and second) for her life-size studies of heads shown at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, again listed as 'amateur’. Two years later (1892) she was the first woman elected to the Council of the Art Society of NSW then was re-elected to the new Council in 1894. That year she became a founding member of the Society of Artists and exhibited with them too (her work was included in its 1901 Commonwealth Exhibition). Membership of this breakaway group from the Art Society was restricted to professional painters, so her status had clearly changed. Indeed, in 1897 she was the sole woman among the eight members of its committee. Between 1894 and 1913 she also exhibited regularly with the Queensland Art Society.Even so, her gender and subjects, particularly flower painting, tended to marginalise her in art society exhibitions and she began to promote all-women exhibitions, beginning with 'Five Lady Artists’ (which she instituted) at Bradley’s Art Gallery in Sydney in 1905. The other exhibitors were her cousin Alice Norton, Emily Meston and Aline and Edith Cusack – all to become inaugural members of the Sydney Society of Women Painters (founded 1910). Stephens’s portrait of Miss Rhoda Anderson was illustrated in D.H. Souter’s review of the show, 'Some women artists – mainly of New South Wales’, in Art and Architecture (September-October 1908, 179-80). She remained an active member of the Society of Women Painters (including being president and on its selection committees) until 1934, when it became the more commercial Women’s Industrial Arts Society and she resigned. She was an early (but not inaugural) member of the Society of Arts & Crafts of NSW (founded 1906) – but a bossy, pretentious and patronising one, convinced that handicrafts were for lesser women who 'dabble in watercolours and oils who haven’t the remotest idea of painting’ yet could become useful members of society since a trade 'is so much easier learned’ (interview, Australasian Star 8, 11 April 1908).After her father’s death in 1891 Stephens began to take pupils; she was holding painting classes in her studio from at least 1900. Her work sold well and in the 1920s she was able to build a home at Vaucluse complete with studio and make several trips abroad. Travelling to London and Paris in 1920-23, she studied at La Grande Chaumière and exhibited in the Old Salon (1920-21). She regularly gave talks on her own and others’ art, on exhibitions and on her experiences as an art student, usually stressing the importance of tradition as might be expected from her training and background. As a 1923 interview in Woman’s World revealed: 'she is against the unnatural school, the futurist, the forced idea … “only let us be sincere”, she pleads.’In contrast to the rapturous reception given her flower paintings, Stephens’s competent academic portraits were usually coolly received. Large official portrait commissions could hardly be ignored, but her flowers had an easy appeal as elegant and appropriate signifiers of 'women’s work’. Nevertheless, her earliest successes had been with portraits. Both her first and second prizewinners in the 1890 art students’ competition at the Art Gallery of NSW had been portraits, and her winning 'head of an old lady’ was grudgingly praised. However, when she painted Mary Gilmore’s portrait in 1891 (oil on canvas, Mitchell Library – included in the National Portrait Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Possibilities of Portraiture, March 1999), her more adventurous subject did not like it. She showed Capucine with the Art Society in 1892 – 'a female head and bust, [which] shows skilful treatment of the grey hair above the young-looking face, though the whole effect lacks grace’, reported the Herald. The NSW Governor, Lord Jersey, on the other hand, purchased her 'beautiful picture of yellow roses’. Her exhibits the following year included A Gleaming Ghost of Tears, her 'best work in portraiture’, stated the Herald: 'There is a great deal of sex in the expression, and incidentally the flowers at the breast are beautifully painted.’The NSW Fine Art section of the 1907 First Exhibition of Women’s Work at Melbourne, which Stephens directed, included her own portraits Fran Reinits and Miss Rhoda Anderson. They were enigmatically mentioned in a review of the preliminary Sydney show as 'noticeable as pictures of women living here’. At Melbourne, inevitably, she won the prize for best flower painting. For once the Sydney Mail conceded that there was more to her art than her 'very much admired’ roses: 'for some time she has been known as a vigorous and faithful painter of portraits, with a special talent for depicting those whom the “snows of age” have touched’. Her portrait of Mary, Lady Windeyer (1836-1912), c.1900 (oil on canvas 74.7 × 62.2 cm, ill. Heritage) – a sister of Emily Rose Twynam – shows her 'special talent’ at its best. Its informality means that it avoids the cold impersonality of many of her official portraits, even though the disjunction between the painting’s original and present location – a private commission now hanging in Women’s College, University of Sydney – makes it appear oddly insensitive.This elderly woman knitting is unrecognisable as the dedicated worker for women’s suffrage, education and welfare that history knows as Lady Windeyer. Stephens was an intimate friend of Women’s College and showed work in its 1895 art exhibition, but the portrait was a family commission – hence the motherly pose. Richard Windeyer QC, Mary and William Windeyer’s son, bequeathed it to the College in 1961, as much because his father was the first Chairman of Council (1891-95) as because his mother was a key figure in bringing the place into existence.In its new context the pose seems ironic. Mary Windeyer was known precisely for not knitting. As organiser of the NSW contribution to the Women’s Work Pavilion at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, she had rebuked the chairman (sic) when he queried the appropriateness of including sculpture, sharply stating that women’s work went 'beyond the product of the needle’ (quoted Heather Radi, 'Mary Windeyer’, in H. Radi (ed.), 200 Australian Women, Sydney 1988).
Writers:
Philp, AngelaKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1864
- Summary
- Painter, printmaker and decorative artist was born in Sydney. She was the first pupil of Julian Ashton's. Stephens painted flowers and other still life subjects, portraits and landscapes, and was a member of many art associations, promoting all women exhibitions, before teaching art.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1944
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-37.8377695 Longitude144.9918537 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1944-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Yarra, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1864
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1944
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1944-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Sketcher, did competent watercolour sketches of Sydney. Four undated views, including Sydney Harbour (ill.), Sydney and Rushcutter’s Bay (ill.), were auctioned by Sotheby’s London in 1989.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- Sketcher, did competent watercolour sketches of Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1944
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-36.614998 Longitude143.255393 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1944-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Arnaud, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 8-Apr-44
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-33.8857968 Longitude151.2440867 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Woollahra, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator, printmaker and writer, was born in Woollahra, Sydney, daughter of Edith, née Morrissey, and Sydney Parkes, the second child of the second marriage of former NSW Premier Henry Parkes (to Eleanor).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1910
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney cartoonist, illustrator, printmaker and writer Parkes, the grandaughter of politician Henry Parkes, was a founding member of the Workers' Art Club in Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1943
- Age at death
- 33
Details
Latitude-33.8961132 Longitude151.1801893 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newtown, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in Sydney, daughter of Maria Graeme Connon and Robert Gordon Craig, a Sydney surgeon. She gained an economics degree from Sydney University. Her first husband, Dr Lee Brown, a surgeon in partnership with her father and a keen aviator, died in 1934 when he crashed his plane; their daughter, Mitty Lee Brown , was born in 1921 in San Francisco. From 1927 to 1932 Ailsa studied with Thea Proctor and Adelaide Perry at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School and contributed to the student magazine, Undergrowth . She exhibited with the Society of Artists in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
In 1935 Ailsa married, for the second time, her flying teacher G.U. (Scotty) Allan, a flying ace, and thereafter signed her work 'Ailsa Allan’. They lived in Brisbane for two years (1935-36), then returned to NSW and set up house at Palm Beach. In 1938 Proctor praised her wood engravings, reproducing two of them to accompany her article 'Modern Art in Sydney’ (basically a justification of the Contempory Art Society). Ailsa Allan, she said, had begun wood engraving 'three years ago’ and by then had produced
hardly more than a dozen, so that her technique as yet shows some weakness. Wood engraving is a branch of art in which technique is of great importance, but still not as important as the idea expressed … she has an original vision. Engraved lines in the modern woodcut are not used merely to give tone, but … to assist the general rhythm of the design, and Mrs. Allan has this strong feeling of rhythm. “Open, Please”, is an example of the importance of the idea. Of what value is an assured technique if it is only camouflage for a barren mind?
Allan’s linocuts were reproduced in Manuscripts in the early 1930s, including Waiting 1933 (man at dance waiting for partner), issue 4 (February 1933, p.19: ill. Sydney by Design [ SBD ], 32) and The Mother 1934, published in issue 8 (1934), National Gallery of Australia (ill. Butler SBD , 14). She abandoned lino-block printing for wood engraving after 1936 and her later prints are based on everyday experiences rather than decorative images, eg Dressmakers 1937, woodcut 25.2 × 17.2 cm, Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Ailsa Allan was killed near her Palm Beach home on 9 February 1943 when hit by a bicycle (according to Butler).
Writers:
Johnson, Heather
Note: Primary biographerKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. c.1898
- Summary
- Australian born painter and printmaker, Allan studied with Thea Proctor and Adelaide Perry at Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School in the late 1920s. Proctor would later praise Allan's wood engravings in an article entitled 'Modern Art in Sydney' that was published in Art and Australia in 1938.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Feb-43
- Age at death
- 45
Details
Latitude-36.7077015 Longitude144.2632351 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Eaglehawk, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1882
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1943
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- John Joseph Wardell (JW) Power was the eldest of six children (two boys and four girls) born into the Irish Catholic family of Dr. John Joseph Power and Mary Lucy (nee Wardell). His father was one a director of M.L.C., and his mother the daughter of the architect William Wardell who had designed many of Sydney’s Catholic Churches, including St. Mary’s Cathedral. She encouraged him to paint and draw as a child, and he even though he followed in his father’s footsteps and studied medicine, he was always inclined to art. Despite his parents’ devout faith he was educated at Sydney Grammar School before studying medicine at the University of Sydney, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine in 1905. He then sailed for London to further his studies working his tenure on the Miltiades as the ship’s surgeon. Upon the death of his father in 1906, Power became independently wealthy, enabling him in later years not to have to rely on the sale of his art for support. Granted licence in 1908 to practise as a Surgeon in London, he established himself in a private practice and as a medical researcher, developing vaccines for influenza. On 4th February 1915 in the registry office in Paddington, London, Power married the independently wealthy Edith James Mary Lee. A fellow Australian, he was twelve years her junior, there is no mention of any children. From April 1917 Power served in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a physician, attaining the rank of Captain. It has been suggested his wartime experience was the reason Power abandoned his burgeoning medical career post-war to retreat into the intellectual and solitary world of art. An accomplished pianist, he maintained an interest in science, geometry and music throughout his life. These interests informed many of his works and writings.
The Powers left London for Paris in 1920 where Power entered the Atelier Araújo studying under Pedro Araújo, a Paris based Brazilian. Here he came in contact with pioneer artists associated with Cubism, De Stijl and Surrealism. His most prolific period spans the late 1920s to early 1930s. Although influenced by many styles, except the “filthy” Fauve technique [1], he is considered to be the first Australian-born artist to be influenced by Cubism. It informed his works until the 1930s when he briefly returned to the Baroque before adapting Surrealist techniques. He prepared numerous studies for his paintings based on the golden ratio and geometric proportion of Classicism. Attempting to preserve this tradition, Power self-published a text _Eléments de la Cunstruction Picturale _(Paris 1933). Written in French with a supplementary English translation, the text elucidates a geometric model for successful composition; it became incorporated into European art theory. Power also produced colour studies for teaching aids, with the view to further publications. His favourite medium was tempera and oil because of the colours which could be obtained. Between 1932 and 1936 Power regularly contributed articles to the Abstraction-Création publications.
The Powers preferred to make their home in quieter bourgeois locations; Power grew restless and fretted to get away after a month in a big town. However with the 1929 Depression Power suffered financially, prompting the move from Bournemouth to Brussels via Paris. Although Power owned a Parisian studio apartment for many years, he found life in Paris stimulating and too distracting to concertedly work on his art. Power actively maintained his artistic contacts in Paris and London and exhibited frequently, forever desirous of exhibiting with newly forming groups. His works were thus present in the public eye. Briefly represented in Paris by the dealer Léonce Rosenberg, he felt the pressure to produce on demand too great, preferring to sell his own works privately or in exchange as gifts with other artists. He frequently purchased contemporaneous works from Rosenberg. The extent of his collection was revealed posthumously at auction in 1962 after Edith’s death.
Largely unknown in Australia as an artist and rarely seen in Australian collections, his abstract compositions reflect a world familiar to the life inhabited by John and Edith Power. A life of leisure, steeped in the iconography of 1920s modernity, popular entertainment, theatre, music the seaside and landscapes. Often witty, always decorative, his choice of colour described as lurid, acidic or heightened, his forms fluid or biomorphic. Power’s works have an intellectual grounding and geometric form, extending to his monogram, the encircled five pointed star often inscribed with _J W P _or P O W E R. During a relatively short career Power developed a significant body of work including sketches, studies and drawings which lineally document the relationship between Power’s artistic practices, intellectual ideas and geometric concepts in depth.
In 1938 with the threat of German Occupation and Power’s health in decline, John and Edith moved again. With minimal income tax, a lower cost of living, no death duties and a refuge from World War II, Jersey seemed an attractive option. Power built a large studio on his property, rode his pushbike daily and became increasingly reclusive. Reportedly, many on the Island remained unaware of the wealth of the eccentric artist in their midst. When Jersey fell under German occupation in 1940, Power hid his entire collection of artworks. Because of the Occupation Power died in relative obscurity, succumbing to cancer on 1st August 1943. His death was not announced in the foreign press and the University remained unaware of the ‘Power bequest’ until the death of Edith in 1961.
When Power left Australia to continue his studies in Medicine there was no indication he intended to stay away indefinitely. In 1929 he wrote ‘if life were not so unendurable in my native land I would ( ) back there tomorrow’[2]. He never returned to Australia.
Synonymously Power is recognised as the philanthropist and benefactor of the generous cultural gift the ‘Power Bequest’. Power’s will of 1939 undertook 'to make available to the people of Australia the latest ideas and theories in the plastic arts by means of lectures and teaching and by the purchase of the most recent contemporary art in the world…suitably housing the works purchased’. Eventually this visionary gift enabled the establishment of the Power Institute of Fine Arts, incorporating the Power Department of Fine Arts, the Power Research Library of Contemporary Art (Schaeffer) and the Power Gallery of Contemporary Art the latter finding its permanent site in 1989 with the establishment of the Museum of Contemporary Art. The initial bequest was further enhanced in 1961 after Edith bequeathed 'all the pictures belonging to me…painted by my dead husband’ to Sydney University. The number of works approximates 1300, of which 300 are oil paintings. John Power’s personal library and ten hand-coloured prints by Picasso were subsequently bequeathed to the Australian National Library, Canberra following the death of Edith’s niece, Miss Ida Traill
^ Power to Bertram, Letter #25, 19/04/32
^ Power to Bertram, Letter #10, early January 1929
Writers:
Hendrika Knoblanche
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 12 October 1881
- Summary
- Painter, author, patron, philanthropist. After World War I he travelled to Europe and studied art where his abstract compositions reflect a life of leisure and 1920s modernity. His most prolific period spans the late 1920s to early 1930s. Power his estate to the University of Sydney to establish the Power Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Sydney that led to the creation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Aug-43
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-32.0468773 Longitude150.866996 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scone, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- jeweller and silversmith, daughter of a Sydney doctor, was a highly skilled metalworker and enameller who trained in London and was active in Sydney as a professional jeweller from 1907 to 1919. Through her professional practice, teaching, and membership of the Arts and Crafts Society of NSW, she strove to promote craft skills for women working in the production of jewellery as a business. Creed travelled extensively in Europe and studied enamelling and repoussé metal work in London before returning to Sydney in 1907. She is credited with pioneering art enamelling in Australia, exhibiting a collection of her enamelled 'modern art jewellery’ in the non-competitive section of the Women’s Work Exhibition that year, both in Sydney and Melbourne. In the 1910 catalogue for the annual exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society she advertised as a designer and craftworker from her studio in Bridge Street, Sydney, offering lessons in enamelling, jewellery, metal work, leather work and stencilling; she was also prepared to accept commissions for original work.
Mildred Creed was renowned for her technical skill in the production of beaten silver spoons. Her reputation as the designer and maker of over 2,000 of these during her career suggests that her studio functioned as a thriving small business.
Mildred Creed’s exhibits with the Arts and Crafts Society in 1910 illustrate the range and variety of her jewellery: pendants, necklaces, sleeve links, brooches and other works, 'all designed and executed by the exhibitor’. At the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria’s exhibition at Melbourne in 1919, she exhibited a mounted pendant and two brooches painted by Ada Newman . Commissions included the design and execution of 'a beautiful silver repoussé cover, set with opals’ for the Honour Roll in St Peter’s Anglican Cathedral, Armidale in 1923.
In 1943 a memorial exhibit of Creed’s hand-wrought jewellery and metalwork was held by the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW in recognition of her thirty-seven years as 'one of the Society’s most esteemed members’, a committee member 'who upheld the highest ideals in all craftwork’. She provided a role model for women aspiring to an independent income in the crafts through her establishment of a studio that functioned both as a school and a productive small business.
WORK: Heritage chapter 7, plate 293: 293: Tarantula Pendant and Chain n.d. (c.1914), silver and blister pearl 3.4 × 3.1 cm on silver chain 39.4 cm. AGNSW, purchased 1914
This ornamental tarantula with bulging eyes is no suitable subject for a neck…
A silver tarantula set with pearl…
Can such a seemingly sinister ornament be imbricated into the functionalist oeuvre of craftswoman Muriel [sic?] Creed?
2,000 silver spoons indicate the scope of her dependant income.
This pendant is dependent on that production.
This gem of creative craftsmanship is a singular work for the period in which it was made.
This tiny, sinister object, this personalising of specific difference, represents a shift from the serial reproduction of 2,000 spoons, no matter how individually different and expressive of handcrafted skill and aesthetic function each spoon may have been. The question is whether the functionalist aesthetic of truth to materials and honest handicraft, offering a sense of order and harmony in a world of disorder, can apply to a silver and pearl ornamented tarantula?
It may be that the etymological meanings of craft inhere, where craft and art are cognate words suggestive of both a destructive and constructive act. Origins which include the Hebrew cheresh or `secret craft’ may involve a fabrication from matter to reveal the hidden and concealed. It may be that by adding an aesthetic expressive of dimension Muriel Creed extended the concept of craft to include an idea of matter and spirit inhering in the object, an idea of an assertion of the senses. At the intersection of the senses, where material and form, fabrication and adornment activate associations and the memory of the maker through the made, it may be that the spider form is a residual fragment of the jeweller’s memory of both a widespread penchant (`the pursuit of novelty in jewellery, particularly in the form of insects, having a lengthy tradition’) and a personal distaste for the fabrication of the insect form. This may explain the inherent paradox.
Muriel Creed’s singular departure from functionalist aesthetics suggests a more wayward incorporation of the creatures of the everyday into the excesses of ornament and its detail. It suggests, too, the intersection of craft and art which characterised the Arts and Crafts Society of New South Wales. It suggests that Muriel Creed’s intention as both craftsperson and artist was to function in both worlds: truthful both to the hidden meanings of materials and skills and to the individuality of the craftsperson’s interpretation and interpenetration of the utilitarian functions and ornamental form, however sinister, of the transactions of the everyday.
Writers:
Giacco, Louise
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1874
- Summary
- Jeweller and silversmith, made 'modern art jewellery' and is credited with pioneering art enamelling in Australia. Regarded as one of the 'most esteemed' members of the Arts and Crafts Society of New South Wales, Mildred Creed strove to promote craft skills for women working in the production of jewellery as a business and set an example herself by running a thriving business that also functioned
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1943
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-36.5714085 Longitude145.9911966 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Benalla, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Matthew James MacNally (painter, critic and art teacher), was a well known watercolourist during the first half of the twentieth century. The only child born to Irish migrants, James MacNally was born in the north east Victorian town of Benalla on 5 July 1873. His parents were shopkeepers and they educated their son at Benalla College, and subsequently at St. Patrick’s College in Melbourne. As a youth MacNally wanted to be an architect, but due to failed family speculations he was forced into an insurance career in Melbourne. Several years later, in the mid 1890s, he moved to Sydney and became captivated in the world of art while continuing to work as a clerk. In Sydney he took drawing lessons with artists Hal Waugh and Hal Thorpe , and through them became friendly with several other painters, including Tom Roberts , who became an intermittent but lifelong friend. MacNally returned to Melbourne in 1899 and enrolled in the National Gallery of Victoria’s School of Design. He worked under Frederick McCubbin for a year, but the discipline of drawing from plaster casts was irksome. He later studied watercolour and printmaking with John Mather and etching with John Shirlow .
Family financial pressures again forced MacNally to abandon his art for a return to commerce. Turning his back on insurance, he began working for a butter exporting business. He found financial success in this venture, and soon purchased a studio apartment on the top floor of Oxford Chambers in Bourke Street, right at the heart of the fashionable Melbourne quarter known as 'The Block’. A very sociable man, MacNally began to mix with many of Victoria’s prominent artists, musicians, critics and connoisseurs. Despite his time-consuming business commitments, MacNally became increasingly dedicated to watercolour, often painting around Malmsbury (95 km north-west of Melbourne), and in 1908 he submitted several works to the Victorian Artists’ Society annual exhibition. He established a sketch club with a dozen or so artist friends (which included George Courtney Benson , Percy Lindsay and Ambrose Paterson ). MacNally’s involvement with the Melbourne art scene was curtailed for several years when he was relocated to England for extensive periods by his employer. Despite his English posting, MacNally continued to experiment with his art and enrolled at the Herkomer Art School in Hertfordshire. MacNally claimed that while in England he became a member of the prestigious Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours. While this may indeed be true, the Royal Institute has found no lasting evidence of his membership in their archives.
As war clouds formed over Europe, MacNally returned to Melbourne, but soon retired from the world of butter when his business was requisitioned by the government. MacNally’s wartime works were mainly pastoral panoramas dominated by large rain filled skies that showed the influence of J.J. Hilder . As well as his watercolours, MacNally also experimented in oil and revisited the art of printmaking. MacNally also began to regularly exhibit his work with the Melbourne art dealer, W.H. Gill, at his Fine Art Society Gallery. Dame Nelly Melba became friendly with MacNally, and in her circle he mixed with important art-loving establishment figures, such as Sir Baldwin Spencer and the war-time Governor-General, Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson. During the final years of the war MacNally joined two professional art groups, the Melbourne-based Australian Art Association, and the all male, Sydney-based Australian Arts Club. Both organisations had small select memberships, which included some of the most influential artists in the country. MacNally’s friendly nature, art knowledge and powerful friends soon saw him appointed, in 1918, as the Victorian representative on the Commonwealth Art Advisory Board. That same year, MacNally gained national attention with an illustrated profile in Art in Australia . Written by Harry Julius , in the eulogistic style associated with the magazine, the article tells of MacNally’s harsh editing of his own work, especially in the early years of his career when he often destroyed his work. The lack of early examples of his painting – especially his European period work – certainly raises doubt to the artist’s claim that he was a member of the prestigious Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours when he was living in England before the war.
MacNally was recognised, by several commentators, as a man who helped and encouraged emerging artists such as the Ballarat born painter, Harold Herbert . MacNally had noticed the skill of this watercolourist and helped him get attention on the Melbourne art scene. This mentorship led to the pair holding three joint exhibitions of their work in Sydney and Melbourne during the early 1920s. These shows were popular, especially after the publication of a MacNally and Herbert joint special edition of Art in Australia magazine in 1920, a significant compliment for two early career artists. The period from the end of the war to the mid 1930s was arguably the busiest exhibiting period in MacNally’s art career and during that time he held over a dozen one man shows in the eastern state capitals. The popularity of his heavy wash watercolours reflected the public interest in the medium in the early interwar period. In the 1920s MacNally joined the newly established Australian Watercolour Institute, and exhibited at most of their annual shows. During the 1920s and 30s almost all of the Melbourne newspapers employed well known artists to comment on the goings on in the local art world, so it was hardly surprising that The Age engaged MacNally as their principal critic from 1924 to 1926. MacNally took easily to journalism and his art writing and book reviews soon became a regular feature of the paper.
While working on The Age, MacNally met the journalist and poet Margaret (Rita) McLeod (b.1891). Despite being 18 years his junior, the couple married on 19 March 1925. The following year the couple left Victoria for a new life in Sydney. Initially settling in the Pittwater area, MacNally began to paint the Northern Beaches area of Sydney. While in Sydney he joined the Royal Art Society. MacNally had several addresses in Sydney but by 1928 he was living in Cronulla, a beach side suburb on the southern fringes of the city. The birth of a son named William (Billy) made the family complete. MacNally became the Daily Telegraph art reviewer after moving to Sydney. Along with his exhibition reviews, he also wrote profiles on established traditional artists such as William Lister Lister , Hans Heysen and Lionel Lindsay . While these articles were not groundbreaking his observations on mild Modernists are sometimes revealing. After leaving the Daily Telegraph in 1927 MacNally wrote little until the early 1930s apart from the occasional journal article and sporadic review in the (Sydney) Sun newspaper.
During the early thirties MacNally became friendly with W.H. Ifould OBE, then director of the Mitchell Library. Through Ifould, MacNally received a large commission to paint many of the historic buildings in the 'Macquarie Towns’ west of Sydney. Many of these architectural themed works were included in a 1931 show at the Macquarie Galleries while others were later exhibited at the Mitchell Library. Through this large commission MacNally became increasingly known as a painter of historical buildings and he painted many grand Sydney houses during the Depression years. After moving to Adelaide in late 1935, MacNally soon connected with the local art community by joining the Royal South Australian Society of Arts while continuing to be a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute. After his move to South Australia he became the principal art writer on the Adelaide News and Mail and also became a lecturer at the state gallery in Adelaide from 1938 until the early 1940s. The artist rarely exhibited in Adelaide during his final years, the exception being at Preece’s Gallery in 1938 and at the Royal South Australian Society of Arts rooms in 1942. After a long illness the 70 year old artist died at his Mount Lofty home on Thursday 24 September 1943.
Although MacNally became an artist relatively late in life, he approached his new profession like he had his business career. Through a combination of hard work, talent and adept social networking he soon became a leading member of the art world during the post war boom in Australian art. His works were mainly landscapes or decorative house paintings, but reflecting his sporting interests also included the occasional image of golfers, boxers and fly fisherman. Although he did experiment with oil and printmaking, his reputation is based mainly on his skill with watercolour, and after the medium became less fashionable in the late 1930s, so did his reputation. The artist signed his work as 'M.J. MacNally’, but was known to friends as James MacNally or more informally 'Mac’. Since his death there have been two major exhibitions of his work, one atJohn Martin’s Art Gallery in Adelaide (1946) and a retrospective at the Benalla Art Gallery (1974).
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 July 1873
- Summary
- A well known art critic and journalist, James MacNally was also a highly regarded watercolour artist during the interwar years.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Sep-43
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude43 Longitude12 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Italy
- Biography
- Sculptor Porcelli was born near Bari in Italy. He was the son of Leonardo, a mariner, and his wife Anna. He came to New South Wales in 1880 with his father. He had initial training with Achille Simonetti and was encouraged to return to Italy to train in the Royal Academy in Naples where he was a pupil of D’Orsi and won medals in exhibitions. He produced a marble Anima which was sold to America. He immigrated to Western Australia with his father in 1898 at the height of the gold boom. He exhibited a plaster bust of the Premier Sir John Forrest with the West Australian Society of Arts and though it is not mentioned in the catalogue it is included in the critical review. 'Hermit’ wrote that “[t]his is a very masterful piece of modelling and a good likeness – work deserving of high praise, and the best by a long way produced in Western Australia.” Porcelli’s father died in 1905 and he returned to Italy for a visit. In 1910 he married Margaret Godwin, a Welsh governess. They had a daughter and a son. Porcelli worked in stone, clay plaster and marble. His first commission was the bronze bust of Sir John Forrest now in the foyer of Parliament House. He created a large body of memorials and war memorials, the best known of which include the Celtic cross memorial for Sir William Marmion in Fremantle made in 1902, the statue of Alexander Forrest outside Stirling Gardens in 1903, the C. Y. O’Connor memorial of 1911 at Fremantle. In the 1920s he worked in Melbourne on twelve panels for the inner Shrine of Remembrance but made little impact in that city and returned to Perth. In 1922 he exhibited portraits of the Prince of Wales, Lord Kitchener, and Lord Hopetoun and portrait medallions and bronzes with the West Australian Society of Arts. He made the “peace” memorial to the fallen soldiers at the Midland Railway workshops in 1925.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1872
- Summary
- Italian-born sculptor who worked in stone, clay, plaster and marble and has a large body of public memorial sculpture to his name.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1943
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld., Australia
- Biography
- wood-carver and potter, with sister Alice Bott were leading figures in Brisbane’s Arts and Crafts movement earlier this century. Both were born in Brisbane where their father, William Bott, was an engineer. Sarah studied at the Brisbane Technical College and was awarded an Associate Diploma in 1898. She exhibited carving and modelling with the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association (QNAIA) from 1898 to 1909 and carvings and watercolours with the Royal Agricultural Society of Queensland at Toowoomba in 1904-07. She had two woodcarvings in the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition in Melbourne: a chest of drawers in silky oak and a pair of frames in stained beech.
Nothing is known of Alice Bott’s early career except that she received a first prize for woodcarving at Toowoomba in 1900 and exhibited oil paintings of flowers with the QNAIA in 1915. She may have been taught by Sarah. Both sisters’ careers remained obscure until 1923, when they advertised in Brisbane as 'The Birtle Art Work Company’, offering hand-made pottery, babies’ woollen goods and 'dainty novelties’ along with classes in oil and pastel painting, art needlework and sweet-making.
By then Sarah was studying pottery with L. J. Harvey , becoming one of his most dedicated students. She exhibited her pottery with the QNAIA and, later, with the Royal National Association (1923-32); she showed pottery, china painting and wood-carving with the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland (1929-41) and pottery with the Royal Queensland Art Society (1932-38). Alice exhibited china painting and lesser quantities of pottery, woodcarvings and woollen rugs with the Arts and Crafts Society in 1924-46 and similar items with the Royal Queensland Art Society in 1932-36.
Sarah was the more accomplished artist but Alice was a more prominent figure in the local arts community, serving on the committee the Arts and Crafts Society and teaching pottery and china painting at their studio as well as to the Queensland Country Women’s Association Younger Group and the Young Women’s Christian Association. Since Sarah was a large woman and Alice quite diminutive, their affectionate nicknames were 'Big Bott’ and 'Little Bott’.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- Sarah Ellen Bott and her sister, Alice Bott, were active in the arts and crafts movement of the early 20th century in Brisbane. They were regular exhibitors of their pottery, china painting and woodcarving with the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland and the Royal Queensland Art Society.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1943
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude53.9825271 Longitude-1.385249993 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yorkshire, UK
- Biography
- Painter and potter who was born in Yorkshire, England, the eldest son of a bankrupt agricultural machinery dealer. He was educated at the Primitive Methodist Jubilee School Elmfield, York. In 1884-1888 he was apprenticed to John W. Knowles, a glass painter and decorator of churches. Barker worked as a glass painter and decorator and studied at York School of Art in the 1890s. He won a scholarship to the South Kensington Art School but was unable to take it up. By 1890 he was working as a potter in Leeds. In 1893 he married seventeen-year-old Maud Leach. At this time he was recorded as a 'Pottery artist of Hunslet, Leeds’ where he was working for Maud’s uncle.Barker and his wife had two sons, Leolin (Leo) born 1895 and John Leach born 1897 (known as Leach). John senior earned his living as a broad-based professional potter, painter and art teacher in Leeds, Derbyshire, Burton-on-Trent and Torquay until 1924. In Torquay he worked at the Ulla Vale Pottery and then became designer-manager at Watcombe Pottery. In 1914 he had attempted to set up his own pottery in Torvale but World War I ruined that effort. He was then involved in setting up a Devon souvenir pottery with decoration known as scandi. Barker had a reputation as an excellent glaze technician. Both sons served in World War I and took returned servicemen’s packages to immigrate to Western Australia about 1922. They were attracted to the inland town of Narrogin by deposits of kaolin at nearby Popanyinning. The economy was poor in England in 1924 and the parents decided to join their sons and Maud’s sister Harriet and her husband Alan Bednall. The Leach girls were trained decorators brought up by their uncle Harold Leach at his Burmantofts Pottery in Leeds. The senior Barkers arrived in Australia in 1924 and went to Narrogin on 24 September 1924 to join the pottery. However problems of an undeveloped market structure and competitive imports exacerbated problems within the family group and the venture ended after about five years. Barker then painted and taught pottery and drawing. In 1926 and 1927 Barker exhibited oil paintings and watercolours of scenes of Torbay and near Narrogin with the West Australian Society of Arts. In 1928 he had an exhibition with Muriel Southern in the Book Lover’s Library. He showed watercolours of fruit and flowers described as delightful as well as landscapes around Albany. An unnamed critic wrote “it is Mr Barker’s evening pictures that will probably attract most attention. They possess a depth of colour not often seen in water-color work, and a marshy study done in the evening light at Albany, with the bulrushes and the marshy growth, is well worth seeing.” He used the letters BWS (British Watercolour Society) after his name. The Barkers moved to Albany in 1929 to stay with Leo and his wife Maree. John Barker concentrated on painting and teaching painting and exhibiting. He was a typical turn-of-the-century artist willing or able to undertake any type of art. His paintings exhibited in 1939 with the Perth Society of Artists were described as “typical studies, with dark trees, silvery light, and vapourous clouds”. He died in 1943.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1867
- Summary
- Painter and potter who exhibited with the South Devon Arts Society, British Watercolour Society, West Australian Society of Arts and Perth Society of Artists.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1943
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-38.2399456 Longitude144.3162167 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mount Duneed, Geelong, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Arthur Streeton was born on 8 April 1867 at Mount Duneed, Geelong, Victoria, the son of a schoolteacher. He took night classes at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, from 1882-87 and for two years during that time he worked as an apprentice lithographer with George Troedel & Co., Melbourne.
In the summer of 1886 Streeton met Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin, and subsequently joined their painting camps around Heidelberg and Box Hill, on the outskirts of Melbourne, where they were joined by Charles Conder . Streeton exhibited about forty small plein air paintings in the ’9 × 5 Impressions’ exhibition of 1889. He moved to Sydney in 1890, where he became known for his lyric views of the area around Sydney Harbour and heroic landscapes of the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury River.
In 1897, Streeton left for England, breaking his journey with a stay in Cairo and Naples. While living in London he visited Italy and France and made several return trips to Australia. He admired the landscapes of Constable and Turner, as well as those of Philip Wilson Steer.
During the First World War Streeton served as an orderly at the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth, and was subsequently appointed an official war artist, working in France. He finally returned to Australia in 1923, where he painted sunny, pastoral landscapes – which were appropriated in the cause of a conservative nationalism. In 1929 he became art critic for Melbourne Argus . He campaigned to preserve native forests, and sought better urban planning for Melbourne. After his wife’s death in 1938, Streeton retired to Olinda where he devoted most of his time to his gardening and listening to music. He died on 1 September 1943 at Olinda, Victoria.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 April 1867
- Summary
- A member of the Heidelberg School and part of the famous '9 x 5' Impressions Exhibition in Melbourne, Arthur Streeton spent a number of years abroad, including a stint as an official war artist, before returning to Australia in 1920, where his sunny, pastoral landscapes were appropriated in the cause of a conservative nationalism.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Sep-43
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- art student, studied at the Art Society of NSW under A. J. Daplyn in 1889 and was awarded second prize for her drawing of the antique: “Miss Banks has also some fair work in the antique, one head especially being worthy of notice, while an Apollo Belvedere attracts attention by reason of the flowing quality and ease of its lines” ( Sydney Morning Herald , 12 July 1889, 8). The 1892 Exhibition of Woman’s Work in Sydney included: Pupils’ Exhibits – Oil Paintings – Banks, L.D. – 18 years – Glebe – no.3 A Very Very Great Secret ; no.4 Cinderella ; no.5 Study from Crayon ; Oil Paintings – no.3 Bank, Louisa Dalton – Glebe – Return Home, Fruit and Flowers .
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1866
- Summary
- Louisa Dalton Banks was an art student who exhibited her works in the 1892 Exhibition of Women's Work. She had been a pupil of A.J. Daplyn's in 1889, studying at the Art Society of NSW.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1943
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and teacher, was born at Birmingham, England, son of Thomas Hall of Olton, near Bradford, Yorkshire. Arthur studied under T.R. Abbett and E.R. Taylor at the Birmingham School of Art and at the South Kensington Art Schools, London, where he was a gold medallist. Further studies were made in Paris and Antwerp. Woodward qualified as an art teacher and was principal of the Smallheath Branch of the Birmingham School of Art before he migrated to Victoria in 1889 for health reasons, planning to establish an academy of art and music with his friend and associate W.G. Laver. These plans were abandoned when Laver accepted an appointment as first Professor of Music at the University of Melbourne. Woodward was briefly Art Director of the Sale School of Mines; his marriage to Emma Jane Stokes at Sale evidently occurred at this time. In 1894 he was appointed Head of the School of Art and Design at the Bendigo School of Mines, a post he occupied until he retired in 1921.
Woodward mainly painted oils, usually portraits and genre subjects, and worked in a style that generally reflects English painting of the period. Terry Ingram has written about his watercolours, noting his competency as a painter and his unusual talent for capturing curious perspectives. He frequently painted portraits of himself as if seen from a birds-eye view, e.g. The Artist Smoking and Reading 'The Studio’ , sold by Deutscher Fine Art in October-November 1983 for $450. It shows a portion of the artist’s stomach, his thumb and finger holding a pipe, a magazine resting on his lap, his shoe, and a section of the sitting room around him.
His greatest achievement was as a teacher. He was conversant with the European art-scene and introduced methods and syllabi based on it, including outdoor art classes and life drawing so his students might proceed directly to French academies – as several did. He was also strongly influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement and, at an early date, introduced the teaching of crafts to the School. Well-known artists who studied under him at Bendigo include Inez Abbott, George H. Allen, Tom Bone, Ola Cohn , Madge Freeman , Agnes Goodsir , Norman Penrose, Louise Riggall , Elma Roach, Mary Shiress and John Walker. Woodward had a considerable influence upon teaching methods, standards and art training in Victorian technical schools and his advice on art education was widely sought. In 1899 he was appointed Examiner in Drawing at the Victorian Matriculation Examination; in 1906 he conducted vocational art schools in Sydney and Melbourne.
Woodward was involved with the formation of the Bendigo Art Society in 1920 and was closely associated with the development of the Bendigo Art Gallery, which in 1940 named a special art award the A.T. Woodward Commemoration Prize in his honour. He lectured on art history and art appreciation locally, at the National Gallery of Victoria and, according to Ingram, on Melbourne radio. In 1937 he was awarded the King’s Commemorative Medal for services to art in Australia. A commemorative exhibition of his work was held at the Bendigo Art Gallery in 1939. He epitomised the popular nineteenth century conception of the artist in many ways but had unusually diverse talents and interests. He was gifted musically and published a book of verse, From a Studio Window (1899). He was also interested in minerals and palaeontology, amassing an important fossil collection, making significant discoveries in the field and having a fossil, Atopograptus woodwardi , named after him.
Woodward died on 12 February 1943 and is buried in the Church of England section of the Bendigo General Cemetery. His painting Summer Sunshine 1929 is held by the National Gallery of Victoria.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1865
- Summary
- Arthur Thomas Woodward was a painter and art teacher. He introduced the teaching of crafts to the School of Art and Design at the Bendigo School of Mines. Woodward was also interested in minerals and palaeontology. 'Atopograptus woodwardi' fossil is named after him.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12-Feb-43
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude51.5070563 Longitude-1.534123556 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Windsor, Berkshire, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1865
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Jun-43
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude43 Longitude12 Start Date1861-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Italy
- Biography
- painter, came to Australia in 1885 after training in the Academy of Art, Florence. His oil painting, La Fiorentina , signed and dated 'U Nicolai Catani/ 1880’, was offered by Christies’ Australia at Melbourne on 7 May 2003, lot 341 (ill. est. $8,000-12,000). A fellow academy student, Girolamo Nerli, accompanied him to Melbourne and over the next nine years Catani shared studios with Nerli, Walter Withers and Arthur Louriero . He became deeply involved in art politics and, with Tom Roberts and the younger painters, rallied against the conservative Victorian Academy to establish the Australian Artists Association (committee member 1887). He exhibited in the Australian Artists Association’s 1887 winter (no.39 'Queen’s Wharf’, no.26 'What a Guy’) and summer exhibitions.
Catani won awards in the Oil and Watercolour Painting section at the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition: Honourable Mention for St. Kilda Pier and Stormy Weather and a 3rd order of merit for Studies at Queenscliff , Carnival 1888 (a still life of a hare and turkey for sale at 40 gns, offered by Bridget McConnell in May 2001) and its pair Carême (still life of fish and a lobster 40 gns, also offered Bridget McConnell May 2001 – both in their original Thallon frames with labels verso).Other works he exhibited in the Victorian Artists’ Gallery (Oil Paintings) included no.103 What a Guy! , On the Moorabul and Rêve Dor? , while the Ladies’ Court included a display of 83 paintings and drawings by the 'Pupils of Signori Catani and Loueiro’ (see Official Record p.658). The Illustrated Sydney News of 27 September 1888, 6 (info. Edwina Deakin) noted of the watercolours in the Victorian Gallery at the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial Exhibition: 'Signor Catani’s two pieces of still life, the one representing fish and the other game, as also his fruit on panels, are so cleverly painted as almost to justify him in cultivating this branch of art as a speciality’.
Most of Catani’s income, however, came from portrait painting and teaching, even though he had the reputation of being an impatient and intolerant teacher. In 1890 an article by 'Excalibur’ about artists’ studios noted: 'As it was, several of them [Melbourne artists] were out of town, among them being … Mr Catani…’ ( Sydney Morning Herald 8 February 1890, 2: info. Ingrid Anderson). In 1895 Catani arrived in London and exhibited a collection of his world travel paintings; most were of Australian subjects. He returned to Florence in 1923 and is thought to have died there in 1943.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1861
- Summary
- painter, came to Australia in 1885 after training in the Academy of Art, Florence. Resident of Melbourne, Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1943
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-34.58647365 Longitude150.7693336 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Shellharbour, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1860
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Mar-43
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-33.7962 Longitude151.2827 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manly, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- William Lister Lister was born in Manly, Sydney, on 27 December 1859. His English born parents, John Armitage Lister and Eliza Kirkby née Bateson, had first settled in NSW in 1854 but after the death of William’s paternal grandfather the family returned to England in 1868. Lister was educated at Bedford School in the southern English Midlands, and under the influence of Mr Rudge, the art master, began to sketch and paint. Lister left Bedford School and completed his education at Pont Sainte-Maxence, north of Paris. While this is the commonly accepted view of his early education, art historian William Moore, in his 1934 Story of Australian Art [volume II, p 195] states that Lister was taught at Bedford School of Art and completed his art education in France. It seems that Moore incorrectly assumed that Bedford School was an art institution. While in France, Lister began sending works to art dealers in London and by the age of 17 the artist claimed to have exhibited three watercolours at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. Lister’s parents were not supportive of his wish to become an artist, and persuaded him to enrol in a mechanical engineering course in Glasgow, Scotland. During his time in Glasgow he joined the St. Mungo Art Club. After four years studying engineering and art in Glasgow, Lister spent two years working at sea, and by his mid twenties he had reached the position of Chief Engineer. After travelling the world, Lister abandoned his maritime engineering career in the mid 1880s and became a professional artist based in southern England. By 1888 Lister had returned to the city of his birth, and begun sharing a studio with fellow artist Percy Spence. His documented early Australian period images were mainly watercolours with English themes, but by the mid 1890s his work was dominated by watercolours and oil views of Sydney and regional NSW. Soon after arriving in Sydney, Lister became an art teacher and one of his first pupils was the 13 year old Margaret McPherson (Margaret Preston). Lister saw the latent talent in his young pupil and encouraged her mother to persevere with her art education after her move to Melbourne. The teenage artist was certainly impressed by Lister and in later life she remembered him as a 'very nice-looking, charming young man.’ [E. Butel, Margaret Preston, Penguin 1985, p 7] Lister’s first major sale was The Ever Restless Sea which sold for £150 at the 1892 Art Society annual exhibition. Despite attempts at changing his technical approach to Australian landscape, his works remained more subdued than other local landscapers and can be compared with the Melbourne based artist John Mather. Seascapes were a popular subject in the late nineteenth century and most of the artist’s work included water scenes. Lister was a great advocate of plein air painting and according to a 1905 profile, by fellow artist D.H. Souter, all his small works were 'begun and finished in situ, and many of his larger canvases completed in the open air’. [Art & Architecture, Jan/Feb 1905, p 27] Soon after arriving in Sydney, Lister joined the Art Society of NSW then under the leadership of Julian Ashton. By 1889 he was a member of their Council and within six years was the vice-president. 1895 was a difficult time for the Art Society which saw a split between professional and amateur artists over voting rights which led to the formation of the rival Society of Artists, whose members included Julian Ashton, Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton. Lister was elected president of the Art Society in 1897, a role he would hold until 1941. As president, Lister helped the Art Society reunite with the Society of Arts in 1901 and it is to his credit that he was reappointed to the leading position in the reunited Society. In 1903 the Art Society was awarded a Royal Charter (perhaps a reward for amalgamation) making it formally known as the Royal Art Society of NSW (RAS). Lister also steered the organisation through the second permanent split in the Society which led to the re-establishment of the rival Society of Artists in 1907. Lister was appointed as a lifetime trustee on the board of the then National Art Gallery of NSW in 1899. The artist married a divorcee, Bessie Enid Wilkinson-Waldron at Woollahra, Sydney, in 1899, and the couple moved to Mosman, on Sydney’s North Shore. The Lister’s home on Redan Street, Mosman was positioned on an elevated site with fine easterly views of Middle Harbour and Manly’s imposing North Head. Some of the artist’s works were painted in Mosman and the surrounding area. Other popular painting spots included Sydney’s northern beaches, the Hawkesbury River, the Hunter Valley, the Central Tablelands and the south coast of NSW. Arguably, the most successful period in the artist’s long career was from the late 1890s to the end of World War I. In 1898 the artist won the Wynne Prize for with a Hawkesbury River landscape subject, The Last Gleam. Lister went on to win the Wynne prize seven times. His 1906 winner, The Golden Splendour of the Bush, a large low-light portrait of gum trees, remains his best known work. Lister’s skill as a representational painter saw him chosen as the 1913 winner of the Australian Government’s competition to paint a topographical view of the future national capital at Canberra. Every year Lister entered several oil and watercolour works in the RAS annual exhibition including at least one large canvas image. Lister’s reputation as a painter of gallery sized works was mentioned by Julian Ashton in a review of the 1912 Royal Art Society spring exhibition, published in the Sydney Mail: 'Mr. Lister-Lister president of the society again has the largest picture in the show. The public expects it; therefore he paints it.’ From the time of the outbreak of World War I up to the beginning of World War II, Lister began his long association with Anthony Hordern’s department store gallery. Around March or April each year the artist held a solo exhibition at the large gallery. Being the president of the Royal Art Society and a gallery trustee, these exhibitions were often opened by vice-regal representatives or prominent members of the art world. These exhibitions were almost always covered by the local Sydney newspapers although the specialist art press, which was mainly controlled by the Society of Artists president Sydney Ure Smith, largely ignored Lister’s work. The artist’s exhibitions were generally well received up to the early 1930s but with changes in taste his work began to garner criticism, as in this Sydney Morning Herald review (2 April 1936, p 6) of his 1936 annual exhibition: 'Each year, as regularly as Easter, Mr. W. Lister-Lister’s art show comes around. For some time now, Anthony Horderns’ Gallery has been the locale. There the public may see 48 examples of oils and water-colour of the kind which in earlier times, made Mr. Lister-Lister well known in the art world, and finally raised him to the eminence of president of the Royal Art Society. The wheel of taste has spun; and the faithful artist’s offerings no longer look so vivid or original as they once did. But visitors who take the trouble to examine these pictures closely will find a number of excellences behind a sober, rather unvaried exterior.’ In the late 1930s there was a successful attempt by Prime Minister Robert Menzies to create an Australian Academy of Arts similar to the Royal Academy of Arts in England. Lister resigned from the Sydney provisional committee believing that the proposed list of foundation 'Academicians’ (which initially did not include his name) were dominated by members of the rival Society of Artists. In April 1941 Lister held his final solo exhibition at Anthony Horderns’ Art Gallery and later the same year he retired as president of the Royal Art Society, a position he had held since 1897. Despite his retirement Lister continued in the role of gallery trustee, faithfully defending the interests of the RAS and representational art at a time when Modernism was emerging as a mainstream movement in Australia. While Lister’s work is in several national collections, he did not actively exhibit interstate and is therefore little known outside the city of his birth. His early success as a painter reflected the popular taste for Barbizon-influenced rural idylls and seascapes which were popular in Australian and British art during the late nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century. The 83 year old artist was killed on Saturday 6 November 1943 after being fatally injured by a taxi in Mosman. He was survived by his daughter Muriel and step-daughters Marjorie and Gladys, his wife having predeceased him in 1935. Several years after his death, the National Art Gallery of NSW held a memorial exhibition of his work in September 1946. Titled the 'Lister Lister Memorial Exhibition’ the show included 55 works by the artist. While the show was not a true retrospective, the hang included eight paintings from the host gallery’s collection.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, SilasNote:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 27 December 1859
- Summary
- As well as being a prolific landscape artist, Lister was President of the Royal Art Society of NSW and a trustee of the National Art Gallery of NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Nov-43
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1857-01-01 End Date1943-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Carpenter and wood turner, the son of Hookam and Hannah was born in Perth, Western Australia. He assisted R. C. Clifton with the five or so pipe organs he made for local churches. Chan is listed as an upholsterer in the 1884-89 Almanacks. In 1893-94 he was in St Georges Terrace, Perth but had altered the spelling of his surname to 'Tchan’. This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1857
- Summary
- William Chan was born in 1857. He was a carpenter and wood turner. Chan is also listed as an upholsterer in the 1884-89 Almanacks.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1943
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.8520678 Longitude151.153689 Start Date1910-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Drummoyne, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter, brother of Alan McCulloch , made pencil sketches and war drawings before being killed at Singapore where he was a stretcher bearer.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 17 August 1910
- Summary
- Mid 20th century Melbourne painter. He made pencil sketches and war drawings before being killed at Singapore where he was a stretcher bearer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Feb-42
- Age at death
- 32
Details
Latitude-33.8931044 Longitude151.2040292 Start Date1899-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Redfern, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- architect and painter
Trained under Byera Hadley at Sydney Technical College and Leslie Wilkinson at the University of Sydney.
Chief draftsman on the Brisbane City Hall project in the 1920s. While in Brisbane he worked on a number of landscape paintings, one of which, In Roma Street (watercolour, 1921), was acquired by the then National Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1922.
Dellit’s buildings include Kyle House and the Anzac Memorial in Sydney. He also designed the art deco interiors of the Kinsella funeral chapel (later used as a famous Sydney nightclub) and the Hotel Australia’s ballroom. His own house in Wahroonga was of a more modest, Spanish-influenced design.
“Mr Dellit’s architecture trends along modern lines, and for his achievements in this direction he merits great praise” – Decoration and Glass , 1 July 1935, p 40.
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1899
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney art deco architect and painter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1942
- Age at death
- 43
Details
Latitude-33.8894781 Longitude151.1274125 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ashfield, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- James 'Jim’ Muir Auld (b. 19 June 1879, d. 8 June 1942) painter, illustrator and commercial artist, grew up in the Presbyterian Manse in Ashfield, Sydney, where his father was the Minister. His Scottish parents, John Auld and Georgina Muir, migrated to Sydney not long after their marriage in 1873. Prior to the move John Auld had been a locomotive driver before being ordained as a Minister in the Presbyterian Church. Auld attended Ashfield Public School and completed his secondary education at Sydney Grammar School. He took evening art lessons at Ashfield Technical College while working as a clerk with Ashfield Borough Council. He later studied for six to seven years at J.S. Watkins’s art school in Hunter Street, Sydney. John Samuel Watkins, a painter, was popular with students seeking careers as commercial and black and white artists. Auld also took lessons with Julian R. Ashton at his school in central Sydney. From 1902 the artist exhibited black and white studies and poster designs at the Royal Art Society of New South Wales (RAS) annual show in Sydney, but from 1906 he contributed mostly oil portraits and landscapes. With the re-establishment of the Society of Artists in 1907 Auld maintained membership with the RAS. He resigned from his Ashfield Borough Council clerical position in 1907 to work full-time as a professional artist, advertising his services as a teacher of “drawing, painting and black and white” from his studio at Commercial Union Chambers, 99a Pitt Street, Sydney. The same year he was appointed to the RAS Executive Council and joined their hanging and selection committees. The following year Will Ashton shared Auld’s studio and the pair held a joint studio show titled 'Sketches & Impressions’. For this debut exhibition, Auld presented thirty-five landscapes with Sydney water themes. However, he was best known in his early career for his illustrations and joke blocks published in the Sydney Mail, Bulletin and Lone Hand. He exhibited four illustrations from the Sydney Mail short story 'To the Gold Diggings’ in the 1912 RAS annual exhibition. The artist illustrated at least five books, titles include: Seafarers, by Charles D. Websdale (1905); Little Pitcher, by Elsie Linacre (c.1905); Gray Horses, by Will. H. Ogilvie (1914); A Rogue’s Luck, by Arthur Wright (1919); and Lyrics and Mystic Sketches, by Agnes Littlejohn (1928). In 1909 Auld travelled to London where he visited galleries and, according to the biographical article in his (then National) Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) memorial exhibition catalogue (pg. 5), he admired the work of John Constable and contemporary painters Sir John Lavery and C.W Furse. While in London he contributed pen and ink drawings to London Opinion magazine. Auld returned to Sydney in early 1911 and reconnected with the Sydney art scene. He married Maggie Kate Kane, a divorcee, on 1 July 1914 in Woollahra; his wife and young stepdaughter soon became regular models in his work. When the AGNSW purchased Auld’s oil titled The Broken Vase, an illustrated profile by Bertram Stevens was published in Art in Australia (Third Number, 1917). Stevens’s (unpaginated) article mentioned that Auld, prior to going to England had been influenced by the impressionist-influenced painter Emanuel Phillips Fox. By 1918 Auld was living at Pacific Parade, Dee Why, on the northern beaches of Sydney, a picturesque area popular with artists, and he socialised with several including Lawson Balfour and Roland Wakelin who both lived nearby. In August 1919, Auld exhibited in his last RAS show. Two months later he began his long association with the Society of Artists (SOA), at the time of his election an organisation led by his former teacher Julian R. Ashton. Around this time Auld was recruited to the leading commercial art firm of Smith and Julius where he worked with Sydney Ure Smith, Albert Collins, Roland Wakelin, James Adam, Percy Leason, Frank Payne, Lloyd Rees and Harry Julius – all members of the SOA. According to a posthumous profile on the artist published in the catalogue of his AGNSW memorial exhibition (pg. 5), Auld found the work at Smith and Julius in the 1920s both “interesting and stimulating”. While the exact reasons for Auld’s defection from the RAS to the SOA are unknown, his changing art society affiliation was presumably connected with close friendships formed while working at Smith and Julius. Auld was also a competent watercolourist. From his student days up until 1930 he painted watercolour landscapes, and during the second half of the 1920s he contributed work to the Australian Watercolour Institute’s annual exhibition. While Auld was well known in Sydney, he held his first solo exhibition in Melbourne in 1927. Following the success of this event he began his association with the Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, with a solo show in November 1928. The thirty oil works on view were mainly landscapes inspired by the coastline near his Dee Why home. Auld also painted portraits such as his shadowy image of Australian poet Roderick Quinn (1929), a work later purchased by the AGNSW. Many of Auld’s portraits were submitted into the annual Archibald Prize competition held at the AGNSW including several self-portraits. Sometime around 1930 Auld became infected with tuberculosis. His relationship with his wife ended and, acting on medical advice, he relocated from Dee Why to a house in the bush at Thirlmere on the south western fringe of Sydney. He won the 1935 Wynne Prize for his oil landscape Winter Morning and following this achievement held a solo exhibition at Macquarie Galleries of landscapes painted at Thirlmere as well as a few portraits. While the artist had previously only used brushes in his painting he was now using the palette knife. Perhaps partially due to his close association with Sydney Ure Smith and the SOA, Auld was a foundation member of the Australian Academy of Art (AAA) in 1938. He held his third, and final, exhibition at Macquarie Galleries in October 1938. Despite his illness, he continued to paint and exhibit with the AAA and SOA up until the end of his life. He died in Camden District Hospital, New South Wales, eleven days short of his sixty-third birthday. A memorial exhibition of sixty-six works was held at the AGNSW in December 1942. His final career works were praised by art critic Paul Haefliger (Sydney Morning Herald, 3 December 1942, p 7): “Only in the last two years of his life did this painter attain, to some degree that detachment from the world so essential to the artist… his slightly brittle manner, so marked in his paintings of the nineteen thirties, left him, to give place to a beautifully subtle quality, opened to the majesty of the countryside. He began to feel the poetry of growing things, and the colours of his canvas lost their isolation and began to merge harmoniously.” Artist and long time friend Roland Wakelin wrote along the same lines in the obituary for the Society of Artists Book 1942 (p 44): “... it was not until the last years of his life when, broken in health he retired to Thirlmere, that his best work was produced. Here, except for the periodical visits of his sister and a few good friends, he lived for eleven years virtually alone. Children of a neighbour did odd jobs for him, brought him a hot meal. He was quite cut off from the art world, saw few books, would not even have a wireless in his small cottage, and the landscape around was not of an inspiring character.” Although little known after his death, Auld was a respected artist within the Sydney art community long before he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. His emotional and physical battle with this disease saw a greater intensity in his work which led his last works being his most enduring.
Writers:
Silas Clifford-Smith
Note:
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2009
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 19 June 1879
- Summary
- James Muir Auld was a respected Sydney-based portrait and landscape painter who trained with J.S. Watkins and Julian Ashton. He was active as a painter and illustrator for forty years and won the Wynne Prize in 1935.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Jun-42
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-37.938373 Longitude146.4703459 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Walhalla, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter and miniaturist, was born at Walhalla, one of the eight children of Arthur and Mary Walker. Her father, Chief Government Mining Engineer for Victoria, was based at Walhalla and Bendigo. Walker studied art under Arthur T. Woodward at the Bendigo School of Mines before undertaking further studies in Melbourne under the tonal realist painter, Max Meldrum (c.1918).
From 1903 Rose exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society; in 1914 she showed two watercolours, Primroses and A Sunset (each for sale at a guinea), with the Queensland Art Society in Brisbane. After her Melbourne studies, she exhibited with the Meldrum School for the next few years. In 1919 she was a foundation member of 'Twenty Melbourne Painters’ and exhibited with it until 1940. [Her painting of a bowl of roses, Sweet Eighteen 1929, was offered at Sotheby’s Melbourne on 28 November 2000, lot 166 (ill.).]
Walker worked as an art teacher at private and public schools, including the Melbourne University High School. She was also a member of the Victorian Artists’ Society and the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors. During the 1920s she exhibited regularly at the Athenaeum Gallery, Melbourne; reviewers praised her delicate sense of colour and her knowledge of values. After her marriage, she exhibited as Mrs George Hartrick.
Writers:
Perry, Peter
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1879
- Summary
- Painter and miniaturist, exhibited in Melbourne from c.1920s-1940s. Founding member of the Twenty Melbourne Painters art group.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1942
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-32.716667 Longitude151.55 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Maitland, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition 1887: NSW Exhibits – West Maitland Superior Public School – Button, Herbert – crayon drawing, Horse’s Head ; crayon drawing – Landscape .
Centennial International Exhibition 1888, Melbourne: NSW Court – no.27 Button, Herbert – Oakhampton Road, West Maitland – 1 pencil drawing.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1873
- Summary
- Artist exhibited at Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition 1887 and Centennial International Exhibition 1888.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1942
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-33.8583992 Longitude151.1807353 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Balmain, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Exhibition of Woman’s Work, Sydney, 1892 (pre-Chicago Exhibition 1893): Pupils’ Exhibits, Oil Paintings – no.8, Beaver, Eveline J., Croydon, age 19 – Oil Painting – competitive.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1873
- Summary
- A painter, Eveline, J. Beaver showed her work at the 1892 Exhibition of Woman's Work in Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1942
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- flower and landscape painter, craftworker and singer, was a member of one of the founding families of Melbourne’s Jewish Community, eldest daughter of Alfred Levi and Rachel, née Benjamin. A resident of St Kilda for many years, Sara’s landscapes were often painted in Melbourne’s suburban parks and beaches. As well as Brighton Beach, favourite subjects were Fitzroy Gardens, Richmond Park (now a golf course and freeway) and the River Yarra.
As well as painting, Sara’s talents included copper work and singing. She studied at Melbourne’s National Gallery School from 1893-1898 and also with E. Phillips Fox; the figures in Fox’s Art Students (1895, Art Gallery of New South Wales) are Sara Levi, Violet Teague , Cristina Asquith Baker and Bertha Merfield, according to Ailsa O’Connor . Later Sara became a member of the National Gallery’s Past-Students’ Association, as well as of the Australian Institute of Arts and Literature (founded by E.A. Vidler), the Victorian Artists’ Society and the Women’s Art Club of Melbourne (later the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors).
Levi also exhibited with the Australian Natives’ Association ( see Dora Serle ) and was awarded a gold medal in one of their competitions. She showed paintings in the Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne in 1907, and with the Yarra Sculptors’ Society (from 1898), the Art Society of Tasmania, the Bendigo Art Society, and in Adelaide and Sydney. She exhibited her work from 1898 until the late 1930s.
Levi’s mature work was typical of Melbourne paintings made under the dual influence of the National Gallery of Victoria’s treasured Bent Tree by Corot and the tonal theories of the contemporary painter Max Meldrum. The former is evident in her atmospheric ti-trees and the like, the latter in her use of strong colour and vague form. Comparable visual artists include Clarice Beckett , A.D. Colquhoun – husband of Amalie – whose father Alexander Colquhoun, as critic of the Melbourne Herald , praised Levi’s work, Edward A. Vidler and, in monochrome, the Pictorialist photographers John Kauffmann and John Eaton. One critic observed that Levi was 'ambitious in colour contrast, but unobservant in form’; another praised the manner 'in which the tone relations are exceptionally just in their balance’.
The Art of Sara Levi written by Leon Caetoni and published by Edward A. Vidler (Vidler alone is credited) appeared in 1922 and was one of the first books devoted to the work of an Australian woman artist. Vidler (1863-1942), a driving force behind the Australian Institute of Arts and Literature, published two further monographs on women artists, An Australian Flower Painter, E.A. Oakley (1923) and Margaret Baskerville, Sculptor (1929), his interest in flower painting being linked to his profession as a curator at Maranoa Gardens in the Melbourne suburb of Balwyn. Few of his publications made money and his publishing business folded in 1930. Vidler considered Levi very successful in painting wattle, a painting of this subject being described in the Argus (3 September 1917) as 'a choice example – quite a poem – that has caught the grace and charm of our national flower’.
After living with relatives in Armadale for several years, Sara Levi died suddenly in a Malvern hospital on 16 October 1942. She was buried in St Kilda Cemetery. She bequeathed money for a scholarship, awarded to Miss Barbara Smith in 1947.
Writers:
Riddler, Eric
Date written:
Last updated:
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- Early 20th century Melbourne flower and landscape painter, craftworker and singer.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Oct-42
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude52.51735855 Longitude-2.262210736 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Art teacher and painter, John (Jimmy) Samuel Watkins was born in the English Midlands town of Wolverhampton on 8 November 1866. His father, Joseph, owned an iron foundry while his mother, Hannah, came from a family of yeoman farmers. He was educated at Dudley Road School and later attended the local technical college. Watkins did well in his art classes and despite his youth was appointed to an art teaching position. Having saved money from his teaching, Watkins sailed to Australia arriving in Brisbane by late 1882. After doing some casual work he decided to make his way overland to Sydney. There he gained employment as a photographer, while in his spare time he studied art with Julian Ashton and at the classes organised by the Art Society of NSW given by A.J. Daplyn and Frank Mahony. Keen to study in Europe, Watkins moved to Paris in 1887 where he studied art at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. He later travelled around Europe and returned to England where he did further study. Despite returning to Australia, Watkins later exhibited nine works at London’s Grafton Gallery in their 1898 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’. By 1893, Watkins was back in Sydney and exhibited six works at the Art Society of NSW annual exhibition. During the mid 1890s there was a quarrel within the Art Society on the influence that amateur artists held within the organisation. This disagreement led to the establishment of a breakaway group known as the Society of Artists (SOA) of which Watkins was a founding member. Despite his involvement with the SOA, Watkins maintained contacts with the old group and occasionally exhibited with the Art Society in the early 1900s. From 1896-98, Watkins established an art school in Sydney on the floor above Julian Ashton’s art school at 88 King Street. Initially only open two evenings per week, Watkins’ class included lessons in drawing and painting as well as a life and outdoor class. Over the following forty years his school relocated a further five times around the northern parts of central Sydney, locations included: 26 Hunter Street, 1899-1908; corner of Jamieson and George Streets, 1911-20; 38a Pitt Street, 1921-23; 56 Margaret Street, 1924-36; and 76 Pitt Street, 1937-38. At each subsequent change of location Watkins built up his art school business by expanding the range of classes offered. To do this he was aided by several assistants, most notably by Alan D. Baker. By the time of his retirement in the late 1930s 'Wattie’, as he was affectionately known by his students, had taught approximately 5,000 students. Watkins’ school was well patronised by students keen to gain work as cartoonists and commercial artists such as John Banks, Henry Garlick, Peter H. Lindsay and F.W. Mahoney. Artist Herbert Badham, writing in his 1949 art history A Study of Australian Art (p 204), commented on Watkins’ methods: “J.S. Watkins ran an art school for many years which proved surprisingly popular and a large number of students passed through his hands. The training Watkins offered was elementary, without artistic principle. Little came from it although a number of students learned sufficient to function in the advertising world with success.” Despite Badham’s criticism, Watkins had many successful fine art students, including: John Muir Auld, John Eldershaw, Sir Erik Langker, Fred Leist, John Salvana and William Edwin Pidgeon. Former pupils Henry Hanke and Normand H. Baker went on to win the prestigious Archibald Prize in 1934 and 1937 respectively. With the disbanding of the SOA in 1902, the old Art Society of NSW was later reconstituted as the Royal Art Society of NSW (RAS) under the continued presidency of William Lister Lister. Watkins joined the reorganised group and was elected to its executive council. He stayed on the RAS council, with the exception of 1909, from 1903 to 1939. With the re-establishment of the SOA in 1907, Watkins remained loyal to the RAS, and in 1922 was selected as a Fellow of the Royal Art Society (F.R.A.S.). Two years later he was appointed to the position of joint Vice-President of the RAS, a role he maintained until his retirement. Watkins was a regular contributor to the RAS annual exhibitions up to the late 1930s. Most of his exhibits were oil portraits and figure studies. These varied from formal portraits such as his 1911 image of the acting New South Wales Labor Premier W.A. Holman, to mildly risqué depictions of women in the academic style popular in France during the late nineteenth century. Watkins’ first public recognition was in 1903 when his oil Delores was purchased by the (then National) Art Gallery of NSW from the RAS annual exhibition, although this work was later exchanged for The Mirror (1906). During WW1 Watkins designed a recruiting poster titled Women of Queensland – send a man to-day to fight for you (1917). Reviewers were generally appreciative of Watkins’ draughtsmanship although there was some criticism of his use of colour. Badham, in A Study of Australian Art, was critical of his technique: “His work was built on tone values, but lacks design. The shapes of his tone patches present a rather untidily realized chiaroscuro through their vague beginnings and reluctant endings, and he gave minor consideration to colour. He succeeded in teaching his students, however, the means of immediately reproducing something like the appearances of objects and he was popular in consequence” (1949, p 111). The artist’s own view of his technique was touched on in a profile on Watkins published in the August 1923 issue of the Triad magazine: “Mr. Watkins is a great believer in hard work and careful drawing, and he regards as most pernicious to a student the idea that a few casual and incoherent brushmarks can make a picture” (pp 17-18). Although he rarely exhibited outside the walls of the RAS, Watkins was an all round artist, proficient in many media, such as watercolour, oil, pencil, pastel, and etching. One of his former students, Erik Langker offered an assessment of his methods: “Watty inspired and enthused us. He encouraged us to cultivate our own outlook rather than to follow any particular style. He was essentially a draftsman more than a painter” (Sydney Morning Herald, 26 August 1942, p 9). In 1932 Watkins was appointed a trustee of the National Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney and later a member of their Marshall Bequest Committee, a trust which purchased Australian art for the gallery.In May 1916 Watkins married Emily (Emmie) Griffin Cave, and after the conflict they moved to a house at 7 Pockley Ave, Roseville. This house was a weekend retreat for Watkins who mainly stayed in the city during the working week. After his retirement in 1938 the couple moved to a house at 141 Queen Street, Woollahra. Watkins closed his school in 1938/39 and retired from all his RAS commitments, although he maintained his position on the board of trustees at the AGNSW until his death. Perhaps inspired by fellow art teacher Julian Ashton, Watkins began to write his memoirs. The whereabouts of this unfinished, yet possibly revealing document remains unknown. One of the last works created by the artist was a commission by the RAS to paint a portrait of George Collingridge. This oil, depicting the joint founder of the Art Society of NSW, was later purchased by the AGNSW. After years of poor health, Watkins died at his Woollahra home on 25 August 1942 and he was cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium two days later. The Bulletin wrote a pithy, yet lively, description of the man: “Artist and art teacher John Samuel Watkins (passed on in Sydney at 75) was for many years past “Watty” or “Old Wattie” to thousands – a fair epitaph. Short, square figure, uncommonly long arms, rugged phiz of one who had been a good boxer in his death, he was familiar to many apart from the 5000 or so pupils… who had heard him on his favoured theme – that an artist should learn his craft. With that as his guiding principle, he lived to see the day when a fried egg could be thrown at a canvas, framed and called a work of art; his comments on this development – he had a Carlylean hatred of all shams and affectations – were pungent and fruity” (2 September 1942, p 9). During June 1943, a loan memorial exhibition of sixty-two works was held at the National Art Gallery of NSW. In April 1976 the artist’s widow sold her collection at the Bloomfield Galleries, Paddington, Sydney. A portrait of Emily Watkins purchased from the 1976 exhibition was later sold at Christies, Melbourne (2 April 2003, lot 51) for $29,375, a record price for his work.
Writers:
Silas Clifford-Smith
Note:
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2009
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 8 November 1866
- Summary
- John Samuel Watkins (1866-1942) was an English born portrait painter. He is best known for operating a popular Sydney based art school during the early decades of the twentieth century.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Nov-42
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-34.4094096 Longitude139.127161 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Truro, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Art photographer John Kaufmann was born at Truro, near Kapunda in South Australia, on 30 December 1864, the son of Alexander Kauffmann, the local storekeeper. The family moved to Adelaide in 1868 and in the early 1880s John Kauffmann worked as a clerk in the office of Adelaide architect J.H. Grainger. In 1886 he attended evening art classes run by Harry P. Gill, director of the Adelaide School of Design.
In 1887 Kauffmann travelled to England where he worked in the office of a firm of London architects. Here he spent time photographing and sketching on weekend and holiday excursions to rural England, and it was here that he became interested in Pictorial photography and decided to pursue a career as an artist photographer. He spent three years studying chemistry at Zurich University, followed by experience at a fashionable Vienna portrait studio and a year studying photo-technology in Bavaria. By the time he returned to Adelaide in 1897 he was well versed in the art of Pictorial photography and had the necessary technical knowledge to practise it successfully.
Kauffmann was elected a member of the South Australian Photographic Society (q.v.) in July 1897 and showed specimen prints at that meeting. The Austral Company of Melbourne made bromide enlargements for Kauffmann which he submitted to the Society of Artists in Sydney for inclusion in their annual exhibition, but the society would not accept photography. However, the prints were shown in Sydney by the photographic firm of Baker and Rouse and were described by one Sydney newspaper as ‘some of the most perfect photographic work ever seen … clear and truly artistic’.
A week later the Australasian Photographic Review said the prints were ‘full of detail, yet beautifully soft … Mr Kauffmann is an artist as well as a photographer’.548 The prints were also shown in Adelaide, where the Observer reported:
In the course of his studies abroad Mr Kauffmann, jun., made a number of beautiful photographs of scenery, principally in Switzerland; and Messrs. Baker and Rouse, the well-known photographers in Rundle-street, have produced enlargements of them on the Pearl bromide paper specially manufactured by the firm in Melbourne. These reproductions are exquisite in the delicacy and gradation of the tones, giving a depth and softness singularly attractive to the eye of the lover of artistic effect, bearing eloquent testimony to the quality of the paper and the process. There are views of Lake Maggiore, Moravian village scenes, and a most delightful sketch of an old village near Zurich. The majority of the pictures present alluring landscape, water, and cloud interpretations of Nature, and are well worth inspection.bq). 1
In 1899 Kauffmann won first and third prizes in the landscape category of the New South Wales Photographic Society’s Inter-Colonial Exhibition, and in 1901 was a judge, along with his former art teacher H.P. Gill, at the South Australian Photographic Society’s annual exhibition, the first at which awards were made.
At the May 1902 meeting of the South Australian Photographic Society lantern slides made by members were shown and subjected to criticism. A ‘novelty’ introduced by John Kauffmann was a series of slides produced by the carbon process. ‘The colours were numerous, and in some instances peculiarly suited to the subject of the picture.’
John Kauffmann’s work stimulated the South Australian Photographic Society’s interest in Pictorial photography and, while he did act as a judge and show his work at the society’s meetings and exhibitions, he did not write articles or give lectures and demonstrations at meetings of either his own or other photographic societies.
An interview with John Kauffmann was published in the Australian Photographic Journal on 20 December 1907:
When Mr Kauffmann, of Adelaide, arrived in Sydney a week or so ago, we felt that it was our duty to levy on the gifted and accomplished photographer so that our readers should know more of the man and his work, much of which has been reproduced in the A.P.J. for some years past and, it goes without saying, has created quite a circle of admirers. It will be already known to our readers that Mr Kauffmann has had three pictures accepted this year at the Royal Photographic Society, London, being one more than last year …
Mr Kauffmann, a South Australian by birth, has had the supreme advantage of a ten years’ sojourn in Europe, where he has had the opportunity of studying the works of advanced pictorialists, both on the Continent and in England. Inspired by their aims, he found the camera held a new meaning for him, and he indefatigably sought for technical perfection of method, so that he could render nature according to his own lights. He acknowledges being largely influenced by such powerful workers as Drs. Heneberg and Spitzer, Hans Watzek, Heinrich Kuhn, and other leading members of the Austrian school, which school, at the present time, holds an unique position for strength and originality amongst the great pictorial schools of the world …
Asked as to his opinion of pictorial photography in Australia, Mr Kauffmann said it is but slowly gaining ground … Of the club of which he is a member, the Kapunda Camera Club, he speaks in warm terms, and states that the members are aiming high, and many of them will yet be heard of. We had the pleasure of looking through Mr Kauffmann’s portfolio of [photographs] and must say that it is a rare treat to see such extremely excellent all-round work by one man.bq).
Kapunda was a former copper mining town about 12 miles from Truro, the town where Kauffman was born, and a short train journey from his home in Adelaide. A Kapunda amateur photographer, Dorothy Warner (q.v.), has recalled camera excursions she had with Kauffmann when she was a teenager.
The Camera Club held exhibitions from time to time and received entries from city and country areas and Mr Kauffmann came there as judge and came many times later as guest of my parents. He and my father toured the country nearby in search of good subject matter. His home was at that time with his sister in North Adelaide. Later he went to Melbourne where he set up a studio and did some very fine work … It was from him that I learned so much, for on his visits to us we developed and printed together, much of it carbon work. He and I visited Baker’s Flat, an old Irish settlement the other side of the Kapunda copper mine. The houses were quaint thatched places where very aged Irish born people lived. Pigs, poultry and humans all had access to these places. A photographer’s paradise. It was from a photograph I took there, a carbon print, that I got the champion prize of a silver medal at the Women’s Work Exhibition.bq). 2
At the October 1907 meeting of the Kapunda Photographic Club the president referred to ‘the success of Mr J. Kauffmann, a member of the club, who had three pictures accepted by the Royal [Photographic] Society of London. He believed that two of the three subjects were Kapunda pictures – views of Baker’s Flat.’ In response to remarks about the success of Kapunda amateurs at recent exhibitions, the secretary, Thomas Warner, said that:
...whatever success his daughter or members of the club had achieved in pictorial photography was mainly due to the great assistance rendered by Mr Kauffmann. Last year we had the pleasure of congratulating Mr Kauffmann on getting two of his pictures accepted by the London Royal; but this year he has gone one better, and we are delighted to hear that three examples of his work have found their place on the walls of the Royal. It is undoubtedly a great honour, especially as one of his pictures, ‘Thro’ the Woods’, accepted by such a powerful body as the Royal Society Hanging Committee, had been adversely criticised in one of the Adelaide papers recently. It showed that in England they had very different opinions of the work to what somebody in Adelaide had. The other two pictures accepted were ‘The Lonely Cottage’ and ‘The Brow of the Hill’, the two latter being view of Baker’s Flat, Kapunda. That the club send its hearty congratulations to Mr Kauffmann (who is on a visit to Victoria) was unanimously agreed to.bq). 3
Around 1909 John Kauffman moved to Melbourne where he exhibited in local and international salons and where he eventually opened his own studio c.1917. In 1919 The Art of John Kauffmann was published, the first monograph about an Australian photographer. The book contained twenty of his photographs and a text written by Leslie Beer, editor of Harrington’s Photographic Journal.
To those outside his circle of friends John Kauffmann appeared to be vain and aloof, but to those who knew him well he was affectionate and entertaining. Melbourne photographer Jack Cato described him as:
... never quite one of us, those years in Europe having left him a confirmed Continental. He was 6ft. 3 ins. tall, very dignified and quiet, and seriously preoccupied with his thoughts. I knew him for thirty years, saw him almost every week, yet never knew him to smile. He was one of the best- dressed men in Melbourne; one would always note his ‘Red Indian’ profile as he strolled ‘The Block’ complete with yellow gloves, cane, spats and his pince-nez on a silk cord. He was usually off to an art exhibition, a chamber music recital, or an alfresco lunch in the Botanical Gardens, where he could find again something of the spirit of the Vienna Woods.bq). 4
John Kauffmann died in Melbourne in November 1942.
In 1996 a travelling exhibition of John Kauffmann’s work, Soft But True, was arranged by the National Gallery of Australia, and to mark the occasion the Gallery published John Kauffmann, Art Photographer written by Gael Newton, the Gallery’s Curator of Australian Photography.
1234
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) ‘Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915’, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, pp. 173-175.
Writers:
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 30 December 1864
- Summary
- During travel abroad in Europe, John Kauffmann decided on a change in career from his role as an office worker to artist photographer. Particularly interested in pictorial photography, Kauffmann studied chemistry in Zurich and photo-technology in Bavaria before returning to Adelaide in 1897. He was accomplished in the genre and exhibited in local and international salons before opening his own studio in Melbourne c. 1917.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Nov-42
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude50.416667 Longitude-4.75 Start Date1857-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cornwall, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born and raised in Cornwall, fourth of the five children of Thomas Briggs Ashton (1808-1866), an amateur painter, wood engraver and dealer in artists’ supplies from Philadelphia, and his wife Henrietta, daughter of Count Rossi. His eldest brother was the painter Julian Ashton (1851-1942). After studying at South Kensington School of Art, George joined the staff of the London Graphic at its inception and worked for it as an illustrator for seven years. Sent to South Africa in 1877 to draw the Kaffir War (1877-78) for the Illustrated London News , he joined the Cape Mounted Police and fought in the last Frontier War in 1878 and in the Zulu War under General Buller in 1879.
G.R. Ashton came to Melbourne in 1879, encouraged by Julian, who had arrived six months earlier. They both worked on the Illustrated Australian News and together covered the capture of Ned Kelly at Glenrowan. George found that 'there was plenty of work to be done. There was no trouble making from £20 to £30 a week, but it soon went, as everyone spent freely in the boom period’ (Moore ii, p.113). Both brothers moved to the rival Australasian Sketcher , and George also drew for Bohemia and the Illustrated Sydney News .
Ashton married Blanche Brooke in Melbourne, daughter of the actor and theatrical entrepreneur George Coppin. In 1888 he succeeded Phil May as staff artist on the Bulletin , engaged by J.F. Archibald. From Melbourne, he drew the leading double‑column weekly political cartoons until 1893, often on foreign events. Rolfe states (p.50): 'Archibald taking over as editor in April 1886 coincided with a major loosening up of the look of the paper with much greater space given to black and white, full‑page, even double‑spread, drawings. The paper settled into a pattern of an opening‑page cartoon, Hop 's Sydney cartoonlets facing the Melbourne page by George Rossi Ashton or Tom Durkin [Ashton’s successor] after the leader pages, [and] an increasing variety of joke blocks. George Rossi Ashton’s added capacity was the serious propaganda drawing. One of his most noted, 'Labour and Justice’, published October 11, 1890, at the time of the great maritime and shearers’ strikes [i.e. The Affiliation of Justice and Labour 11 October 1890, 12], is in striking contrast with the King Worker cartoons of the same period by Carrington in Melbourne Punch, which showed the worker as a depraved creature.’
His political cartoons include: 'The Situation in Queensland’ (police protecting scab labour) 1891 (ill. Coleman & Tanner, p.102 – also p.101); 'The New Social Function’ (re judges’ pleasure in hanging) 1891 (Rolfe, 160), signed with his monogram/cipher. 'The Depression’ 1893 (ill. Rolfe, 63) is an unusual commentary on prostitution, 'Jehu moralises: “Bein’ a purty woman 'pears the on’y purfession that there’s any money in these times.”’ Others include traditional bush (Rolfe, p.91), anti-semitic (ill. Rolfe, 67) and anti-Chinese gags, e.g. 'A Rotten Apple’ of 1890 (ill. Rolfe, 66), 'Small boy (to basket‑laden Chinese-Australian): “'Ullo‑‑yellow chow!”/ John: “You spotted lallikin. You altogether spotted. You call me yellow! I allee one color; you fleckle, fleckle, allee same lotten apple.”’ Joke blocks formed the bulk of his work, most reproduced full page.
G.R. Ashton remained in Australia for 14 years but spent only five on the Bulletin . His real love was painting and he exhibited widely. His paintings were usually of sentimental rural subjects and often featured horses. He also drew for the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia. In a long anecdotal interview published on the Bulletin 's 'Red Page’ of 29 June 1889 (p.20), he related peculiar commissions, his relationships with his models and his love of painting and dislike of black-and-white newspaper drawing.
He returned to London in 1893-94 and settled on the River Dart with his wife and two sons. He worked for the Daily Graphic , Lika Joka , Pearson’s Magazine , St James’s Budget , Fun , Illustrated Bits , Pall Mall Magazine and The Sketch . At the outbreak of the Boer War he obtained employment at the Alhambra Theatre doing a most unusual music hall act. In time to music provided by the orchestra and attired in full tropical kit he would create a large sketch using subjects related to the War in exactly 60 seconds while the audience cheered him on. Among the subjects chosen were portraits of Roberts, Buller and Kruger, but the most popular was One for Majuba showing a Highlander bayoneting a Boer. Arthur Pearson’s Royal Magazine (vol.3, November 1899-April 1900) stated that it 'is always completed amid howls of enthusiasm while that of Kruger is a favourite for derision’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1857
- Summary
- Painter, illustrator and cartoonist, came to Australia at the encouragement of his brother Julian Ashton. Remained in Australia for 14 years mainly working as an illustrator for various newspapers, developing a skill at political cartoons, which he later utilised back in London in an unusual music hall act doing lightning sketches of the likes of Roberts, Buller and Kruger.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1942
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1855-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, NZ
- Biography
- Exhibited [Royal] Art Society of NSW, 1880, 1883.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1855
- Summary
- Donald George Grant Commons exhibited with the Art Society of NSW during the 1880s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1942
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1851-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, etcher, art teacher and author, was born in Addlestone, Surrey, England, on 27 January 1851, the first child of Henrietta, née Rossi (born in Florence, married in Italy and said to have been of the Italian nobility), and Thomas Briggs Ashton (1808-1866), a painter, wood engraver and dealer in artists’ supplies from Philadelphia, USA. Soon after Julian’s birth the family moved to Gulval, Penzance, where his two sisters and two brothers (including George Rossi , born 1857) were born. J.R.A.'s earliest known surviving work, House and Garden Pengarye 1863 (National Gallery of Australia [NGA]), was painted in Cornwall. Soon afterwards (c.1864) the family moved to Totnes, Devonshire, where Julian attended the local grammar school. When his father died in 1866 the family moved to London. From c.1866-73 he worked for the Great Eastern Railway Company, Stratford, then for Hart Son Peard and Co., church fitters, London. From 1868/69 to 1871 he studied art according to the South Kensington system at the West London School of Art, then for a short period was at l’Académie Julian, Paris (1874). Six sketchbooks (NGA) include work of his student years: no.1 London c.1871-76; no.2, purchased in Paris, includes the address of an engraving shop in Paris and a drawing dated 5 September 1874, as well as a later sketch dated ’20 February 1875, Chiselhurst’; no.5 portrait notes with London addresses; no.4 begins with scene in Cape Town dated 1878; no.3 begins with Sydney scenes (Sturgess).
In London he worked as a freelance illustrator for various journals, including The British Workman (January 1877), Sunday at Home (1875-76) and Cassell’s Family Magazine (1874, 1877). He exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1873, 1876, 1877, 1878 and 1911, as well as at other London and Dublin venues: the Society of British Artists 1871-1879 (i.e. until after arriving in Melbourne), Royal Hibernian Academy of Art, Dublin 1876-78. Some works were drawings and others probably all watercolours. On 1 August 1876 he married Eliza Ann Pugh at Dalston English Presbyterian Church, Hackney; their son Julian Howard was born at Islington on 9 August 1877; a watercolour portrait of Howard done in England aged nine months (1878) is ill. in The Julian Ashton Book .
Ashton, Eliza and Howard arrived Melbourne on board the Cuzco in June 1878 after J.R.A accepted an offer by David Syme to go to Australia as b/w artist for the monthly Illustrated Australian News (IAN ), Melbourne. Their second son Percival George (Percy) was born in Melbourne in 1879; daughter Bertha (b.1882 at Fitzroy); son Rupert (b.1885), who died of meningitis aged nine (c.1895); and son Arthur Rossi (born 1886) killed in action in WWI. Ashton’s best-known sketches for the IAN depict the Kelly story (issue 273, February 1879), the final scenes of the Kelly Gang at Glenrowan and the trial of Kelly in Melbourne in 1880, published as special supplement on 30 July 1880. His view of Kelly in the dock appeared in IAN on 28 August 1880.
In 1879 Julian Ashton exhibited with the Victorian Academy of Artists (VAA), and again in 1880, 1882 (three paintings and five drawings in the first b/w section) and 1883 (although he had resigned as a member in 1880). He showed work at the 1879-80 Sydney International Exhibition in the Victoria Court and also in the 1880-81 Melbourne International Exhibition, Victorian section.
Ashton’s contract with the IAN ended in October 1880 and his last regular contribution appeared on 9 October, contributing only occasional illustrations thereafter [i.e. he worked only two years on the News ]. In December 1880 he began working on the Australasian Sketcher , a fortnightly also owned by the Melbourne Argus (i.e. Syme) and his first drawing appeared in issue 112, on 4 December. For two years he drew for the Australasian Sketcher , e.g. 'Accident to the Brighton Express’. 'A Sketch at the Ladies’ Gymnasium’ c.1880 (Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, engraved after Ashton, ill. Hansen cat.71) was reproduced in the Australasian Sketcher 16 July 1881, p.232, where he was then working with George. Other images reproduced in the paper include: 'Christmas-tide in England’ (18 December 1880, 344); 'Christmas-tide in Australia’ (18 December 1880, 345); 'Loading wheat for England’ (26 February 1881), frontispiece. He also contributed to the Town and Country Journal as 'J.R.A.’, e.g. 23 December 1882, p.1217 – 'Waiting for Papa coming home for Christmas’. Orara , a poem by Henry Kendall in an 11-page booklet featuring 13 engraved illustrations, each by a different artist and engraver, was published by the Art Union of Victoria in March 1881 and included one by Ashton.
On 4 September 1882 Ashton became a member of the NSW Art Society. Evening Merri Creek , painted October 1882 was, J.R.A. believed, 'the first [oil] landscape painted out of doors in Australia’ (Art Gallery of New South Wales [AGNSW], gift of Howard Ashton 1942). His last regular contribution to AS appeared on 16 December 1882, issue 161 though he continued to contribute on occasion. His mother visited the family in Melbourne in 1883, when Julian painted her portrait (AGNSW) and later that year he joined the staff of The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia and moved to Sydney, where he lived for the remainder of his long life. He soon began painting NSW views; a gouache of Sydney Harbour said to be dated 1882 was sold at Sotheby’s on 25 October 1985 (along with Broken Bay n.d.). He also did Neutral Bay (Fishing in the river) 1883 (Sydney City Council); Mosman’s Bay 1883 (Mitchell Library). Of Ashton’s watercolours executed in and around Sydney, the Sydney Morning Herald of 22 November 1882 noted: “That Mr Ashton has done his work entirely in the open air accounts in a great measure for the fact that nearly all his pictures seem full of light and atmosphere”.
In 1883 Ashton exhibited with the Royal Agricultural Society NSW and with the Art Society of NSW at Sydney Town Hall. In 1883 J.R. Ashton won both the J.P. Russell prize of £10.10s for the best black-and-white drawing of a head and a second prize of 10 guineas for a work exhibited in the Art Society’s Easter Black-and-White Exhibition. In 1884 Ashton was elected to the committee of the Society and that same year had work in the Society’s monochrome exhibition at Royal Arcade, Sydney.
Ashton had one work in the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London, in the Victoria Court: a water-colour drawing: On the Hawkesbury, NSW . He exhibited 10 paintings in the seventh annual exhibition of the Art Society of NSW in 1886 and contributed two sketches to a special presentation book for Lord Carrington, Governor of NSW, at the opening of the same exhibition. His Scene on the Hawkesbury (exhibited in the seventh annual exhibition of the Art Society) was reproduced in the Illustrated Sydney News , 15 May 1886, p.16, and in July that year he was elected President of the Art Society of NSW.
While visiting Townsville, North Queensland for the Picturesque Atlas, Ashton found an acquaintance who owned a stuffed crocodile about six metres long. Ashton had it taken to the bank of the Ross River, where he arranged it in 'a natural position’ and consequently sketched it. The sketch was pinned up on the wall of his bedroom at Queen’s Hotel where staff and guests saw it, leading a local lad to ask how far he had been from the crocodile when he drew it. When he replied, “ten feet” and asked if the animal bit, the enquirer exclaimed: 'My God, I wouldn’t do that for all the tea in China”. From then on, Ashton was pointed out 'as the man who sat and drew a crocodile not ten feet from him’ (Ashton, Now Came Still Evening On , p.42).
Ashton visited West Australia in 1887, landing at Albany where he made many drawings of the town and the wildflowers (again for The Picturesque Atlas ). By mid-August he was in Fremantle, which he described as 'a very picturesque town with its old buildings of stonework masonry built by the convicts’. The Western Mail of 3 September 1887 reported his visit in two separate articles (see Colonial Eye ).
Ashton was president of the New South Wales Society of Artists 1897-98 and 1907-21 and of the Art Society of New South Wales from 1887 to 1892. He then founded his own art school, the Académie Julian, in 1895 (later known as the Sydney Art School and still continuing). As a trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1889-99, he organised the first exhibition of Australian art to be sent overseas (the 1898 Grafton Gallery 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’ sponsored by Dame Eadith Walker). It included some of his Picturesque Atlas drawings, i.e. Julian R. Ashton, The Society of Artists, Sydney, cat.251, 'Queensland Alligator’, cat.252. 'Carved Whare, King Country, N.Z.’, cat. 253, 'Bulli Pass, N.S.W.’; original drawings for 'The Picturesque Atlas’ of Australasia, lent by the Trustees of Sydney Gallery.
Eliza (Lizzie) Ashton, who had been founding secretary of the Womanhood Suffrage League in 1891, died of a stroke on 14 July 1900. (A journalist, her articles had included one on 'Our girls’ and their status in 'this age of compromise’ in the 1888 Centennial Magazine .) In 1902 J.R.A. married Constance Irene Morley, generally known as Renee (his portrait of her dated 1903 was formerly in the Trout collection). His eyesight began to fail in 1914, the year he visited Percy in the New Hebrides. In 1918 his work was included in the loan exhibition of Australian art at the AGNSW. The following year he painted The Wave while living at Bondi, apparently his final painting. In 1920 he was awarded a retrospective exhibition at the Education Department Gallery in Sydney that he had helped to set up, marking his retirement from the art world. The Julian Ashton Book was published by Art in Australia to accompany the exhibition. The following year he became vice-president of the Society of Artists, which lasted until 1940. He received the first NSW Society of Artists’ medal in 1924, for 'the advancement of Australian art’, and a CBE in 1930. In 1935 the Sydney Art School was renamed the Julian Ashton Art School. In 1938 he was awarded the Sydney sesqui-centenary prize for watercolour painting, the same year as an exhibition, 'Three Generations of Painters’, was held at Farmers Blaxland Gallery.
He celebrated his 90th birthday in 1940, published his autobiography in 1941 and died at Bondi on 27 April 1942.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 27 January 1851
- Summary
- Founder of the Julian Ashton Art School. Ashton dominated artistic circles in Sydney for over fifty years. He re-established the Society of Artists of which he was President from 1907-1921.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Apr-42
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-31.9510774 Longitude115.849291 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1942-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hay Street, Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Embroiderer who was the eldest daughter of Edward Lane Courthope, Auditor General of the Colony of Western Australia, and his wife Annie n_e Mitchell, daughter of the Anglo-Irish Reverend Mitchell. Mitchell, the first rector of the Swan Parish in Western Australia, and children had arrived in The Shepherd in 1838. Annie Harriet’s father, Edward Lane Courthope, was born in England and came to the colony in 1841 to visit his sister, the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Irwin, the first military commander of Western Australia and owner of “Henley Park” at Upper Swan. In 1847 Courthope entered the civil service as a clerk. In 1854 he was appointed secretary to the Board of Education. Around 1872 he became Auditor General a post he held until 1891 whilst farming. Annie Harriet was born in a cottage in Hay Street, Perth behind the Western Australian Bank. Her father was at the time in the Audit Office under William Knight. Her godmother was her aunt, Eliza Irwin. From 1859-63 the family lived at “Whitehall” on the corner of Mounts Bay Road and William Street. This was the first stone house built in the colony. Perth in 1859 was tiny, described by a Melbourne visitor as “very pleasantly situated on a bend in the river where it widens considerably and consists of three or fours streets running east west.” The family then moved to Bridge House in Adelaide Terrace. In 1865 they moved to a Swan Valley property “Sandalford” where they made wine. In 1870, the year that Annie Harriet became engaged, they moved to “Henley Park”. Annie would have had a typical education for an Anglican girl in Western Australia at this time with either her mother or governess to teach embroidery, music, the scriptures and the social graces. She was close to her father and was encouraged to have a taste for literature. Her mother wrote: “She was her Father’s pride, our first born … Never was there a more devoted unselfish daughter.” Annie Harriet married Nathan Elias Knight at a service conducted by the Reverend Sweeting in her grandfather’s octagonal church, St Mary’s Middle Swan on her birthday 10 July 1873. The groom was born in the colony in 1848 at York, the son of Nathan Elias and Sarah Sophia n_e Hester. He had been educated at the Perth Boys’ School, worked in the Registrar’s Office and as a clerk in the magistrate’s office at Guildford where he probably met Annie Harriet. He became Chief Clerk in the Colonial Secretary’s Department two days after they married. In 1884 he became Inspector of imported stock in the Customs Department, a position he held until his death in 1904. They lived at first in Guildford and later at 4 Dean Street in Claremont, Western Australia. With eleven children in seventeen years Annie Harriet would have had a busy domestic life. However she took some time to become a student at Perth Technical School. She died in 1942. A lovely smoking cap made by her is in the Augusta Museum. The cap was made in 1870 as an engagement present for Nathan. She had just moved with her family from the farm and winery at Sandalford to “Henley Park” one of the best-known properties on the Swan. As the eldest daughter she had been her mother’s companion and help, a position she took up again in later life. Her mother wrote in 1908, “I am staying with her in her own home. She has always made her house our home whenever we needed care and rest. ... My sweet daughter has been my support and comfort all through these years of trial and change, constantly reminding me of our many mercies and of God’s love for us.” Annie Harriet’s father had been a man of scholarly tastes who delighted in literature. It is probable that he also wore such a cap and the twenty year old girl thought that such a gift made by her own hands would please her intended. The cap is of purple velvet lined with taffeta. The silk embroidery around the rim is of gold, white and olive green. Border designs for smoking caps were illustrated in books such as S.F.A. Caufield and Blanche C. Saward’s The Dictionary of Needlework: An Encyclopaedia of Artistic, Plain and Fancy Needlework, published in 1882 by AW Cowan in London and probably in earlier publications.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1850
- Summary
- Annie Harriet Courthope was born in 1850. She was embroiderer who was the eldest daughter of Edward Lane Courthope, Auditor General of the Colony of Western Australia. A smoking cap made by her is in the Augusta Museum of History, Augusta, Western Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1942
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-42.3018682 Longitude147.3728654 Start Date1886-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Oatlands, TAS, Australia
- Biography
- painter, photographer, wood-carver, silversmith, craftworker and designer, was born in Oatlands, Tasmania, where her father, Edward Joshua Cooper Whitesides was a bank manager. Her mother, Sara Jane Field, was a sister of the wood-carver Ellen Nora Payne . Vera was one of three children and inherited a family trait which resulted in her becoming deaf at the age of seven; so she was educated at home by governesses, one of whom, a Miss Glover, may have been the first to interest her in art. In 1896 the family moved permanently to Hobart.
Whitesides studied art at Hobart Technical School in 1906-09 under Benjamin Shepherd and Lucien Dechaineux, and metalwork with the Hobart architect and silversmith Alan Walker, who had trained in England. Both Dechaineux and Walker were proponents of an Arts and Crafts philosophy and were prominent in forming the Arts and Crafts Society of Tasmania in 1903. Vera’s brother Charles was in the family cabinet-making business and this connection, together with the influence of her aunt, may have interested her in woodcarving. She first came to public attention in 1901, however, when she won a competition to design an advertisement for a local department store from over a hundred entrants.
Vera Whitesides was a very versatile artist who was proficient in a wide range of art and craft media, although best known in her own time as a successful miniaturist and portrait painter. She executed at least thirty-five miniatures, many of them commissions, including those for two State Governors, Sir Francis Newdegate and Sir William Allardyce. Her larger paintings were mainly portraits and flower subjects, which she exhibited regularly with the Tasmanian Art Society from 1910 to 1930, usually carrying off first prize in the portrait section. Her miniatures were painted in an upstairs room from which all visitors were barred except her fox terrier; larger paintings were executed in her downstairs studio.
Her craft work was very varied, comprising woodcarving, china painting, raffia and leatherwork and metal work. Her earliest known woodcarvings were the panels shown at the Arts and Crafts Society’s inaugural exhibition in 1903. Later she executed large carved chests somewhat in the manner of her aunt. She exhibited a range of craftwork with the Arts and Craft Society for over twenty years, winning numerous prizes. In 1907 she contributed to the Women’s Work Exhibition in four disparate classes: woodcarving, photography, china painting and oil painting. Her china painting and leather and raffia work are beautifully executed and designed if somewhat conventional in style and manner; her metalwork, which was influenced by the principles imbibed from her teacher Alan Walker, shows her talent at its most original. She apparently produced photographs commercially from her darkroom in the family home, 'Birralee’ at Sandy Bay; Chris Long notes that 'Vera’ appears as a mark on photographs of the Pedder family.
Vera Whitesides was a woman of charm and character whose main recreation was golf and who courageously refused to be limited by her disability. She began to lose her sight in the late 1930s and died in Hobart in 1941.
Writers:
Miley, Caroline
Note: Heritage biography.
stokel
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1886
- Summary
- Described as a women of charm, Vera was a versatile artist proficient in a wide range of art and craft media. Best known in her own time as a successful miniaturist and portrait painter. Her family ran a cabinet-making firm and she was also active in furniture design and making.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1941
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude-27.467778 Longitude153.028056 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brisbane, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- Muriel Mary MacDiarmid was born in Brisbane on 21 February 1879, the eldest daughter of Duncan MacDiarmid, a banker of Scottish descent, and Jane Cameron née MacKergow, who was born in the then Moreton Bay District of New South Wales. She was educated at the Brisbane Girls Grammar School where she excelled in music, watercolour and drawing. The MacDiarmid girls had lessons with the well known Queensland artist Isaac Walter Jenner and later, in about 1921, when she was in her forties, Muriel joined L. J. Harvey 's classes at the Central Technical College.
A group of her pottery was included in the Second Annual Exhibition of work by Art Students of the Central Technical College in December 1933 and the Sixth Annual Exhibition in November 1937; she may have been included in the 1935 and 1936 exhibitions but individuals are not cited. She exhibited pottery with the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland 1930-38. In 1931 a reviewer for Brisbane’s The Telegraph found 'Great originality in the decoration of her pottery, an outstanding piece being a jug with a fish twined around the lip, its tail serving as a handle and its mouth as a spout’, while in 1937 'A futuristic blue and white pottery horse holding fast the blotting paper’ was granted approval by The Courier Mail reviewer .
In contrast to many of Harvey’s students, she only exhibited at the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association on one occasion in 1933, a slip decorated piece. Miss MacDiarmid exhibited collections of pottery and china painting with the Royal Queensland Art Society 1932-34, in 1936 a 17th century puzzle jug, an Indian bottle and a Turkish jug, a group of pottery in 1937 and a pottery ewer in 1938. In 1935 she won a second prize for works produced by students of technical colleges in Australia in a competition sponsored by the Society of Arts and Crafts of New South Wales with a Bulgarian bottle. (The competition required that the design for the piece be submitted as well.) Photographic evidence also shows Miss MacDiarmid was included in an exhibition in New South Wales in the late 1930s.
She had a particular interest in lettered decoration and folksy quotations often appeared on her pieces. Especially noteworthy is a plaque of 1938 carved with 'No handicraft can/ with our art compare/ our pots are made/ of what we potters are.’ (illustrated in the preface to Peter Timms’s Australian Studio Pottery & China Painting [1986]). She had another noteworthy specialty in the production of jugs and, from 1933, gained considerable local fame for her series of reproductions of antique drinking vessels from Germany, Hungary, Japan, England, China, Inca, Corinth, etc. These were reproduced primarily for their educational value as there were no equivalent collections of original vessels in Queensland. She copied models in the Victoria and Albert Museum and also sought the assistance of Mr. H. A. Longman, the Director of the Queensland Museum. A collection of some 25 of these vessels were subsequently bequeathed to the Royal Brisbane Historical Society. Her dedicated research gained her a reputation as an authority on ancient ceramics and she delivered talks to groups such as the Willmore Discussion Club on 'English Pottery from the Thirteenth to the beginning of the Nineteenth century’.
As the eldest daughter, hers was the responsibility, common at this time, to care for her aging parents. She set up a small studio attached to the kitchen of her home in Park Road, Milton. Miss MacDiarmid also taught a less rigid version of Harvey’s hand building techniques in this studio. She emphasised pinch building and was particularly concerned with the correct thickness of the clay (to prevent firing failures) and with the attachment of handles. She did not have an extensive number of pupils (probably no more than six a week) as only two at a time could be accommodated in her studio but Annie Scott, Gladys Sharp, her niece Dorothy McPhee and a Mrs Lane studied with her. She was hindered by frail health throughout her life and the reduction of her exhibitions from 1937 indicates its further failing. She died in Brisbane on 5 November 1941.
Queensland Art Gallery: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Date written:
2003
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 February 1879
- Summary
- Muriel MacDiarmid was a longstanding and capable student of L.J. Harvey. Her research and replication of historical drinking vessels established her reputation in Brisbane as an authority on ancient ceramics.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Nov-41
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 18 February 1878
- Summary
- His 1917 book 'Poems by Bernard Ingleby' dedicated, "To Jack Sommers Artist, Poet and Anzac."
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Jun-41
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria, Australia, Victoria (?)
- Biography
- wildflower painter, author, naturalist, journalist and equestrienne, was the daughter of Mr and Mrs J.S. Sundercombe of Victoria. The family moved to Western Australia in about 1893. Emily married Theodore Pelloe in 1901; they returned to Victoria when he was transferred to Mildura as a bank inspector. Emily was passionately fond of horse riding and competed successfully at several state Royal Shows. She and a woman friend were renowned for riding 1,000 miles to Sydney and back in 1916. After returning to WA in 1917 she combined her love of riding in the bush with the study of wildflowers, painting and sketching while her horse grazed nearby. She was a self-trained but very competent botanist, assisting the young Charles Gardner in studies that later equipped him for the post of State Government Botanist. She published two books on WA wildflowers in 1921 and 1930.
In 1923 Emily Pelloe inaugurated the 'Women’s Interest’ page in the West Australian . She was a fluent writer and often contributed illustrated articles on wildflowers under the pen name 'Ixia’. Inevitably, she was the first woman to join the Naturalists’ Club when it was founded in 1924. When the government centenary Story of a Hundred Years was published in 1929 Emily Pelloe contributed a chapter on the flora of the state illustrated with six colour plates and a number of black-and-white sketches. Subsequently she was commissioned to paint illustrations for brochures issued by the Government Tourist Bureau. The originals were hung in the Premier’s office. Negotiations for their purchase and for exclusive rights of reproduction, however, were not concluded until 1938.
Emily Pelloe died of a heart attack in 1941 while riding in the bush. Her husband gave more than 400 of her paintings and sketches to the University of WA to be held in trust for a future Women’s College. When St Catherine’s College was built, the collection was classified botanically, bound in four volumes and placed in the care of the university’s curator of pictures. Although her greatest claim to fame must be her publications, she is still remembered for her achievements in the show ring. One equestrian event, 'The Emily Pelloe Turnout’, has been conducted annually since 1948.
In 1921 Emily Pelloe was invited to join a party at Kendenup that planned to climb Mondurup, one of the highest peaks in the Stirling Range renowned for its unique flora. Kendenup was being promoted for close settlement by an enterprising Mildura businessman, C.J. De Garis. Another of his enterprises was the De Garis Publishing House, which produced Emily Pelloe’s first book that same year, Wildflowers of Western Australia . It includes six colour plates featuring fifty-seven species as well as numerous black and white sketches. The sixteen species in this plate are grouped in a style popular at the time. Emily Pelloe had a sure touch for colour and arrangement but occasionally her line falters, possibly because her material was wilting. The grace and poise of the flower is often more accurately depicted in the black-and-white illustrations, which appear to have been sketched in situ. Four chapters in her book are devoted to the four seasons of the year, describing many of the plants in flower and giving their localities. They are followed by a chapter dealing with the leading plant families and genera of Australia. A valuable addition is the appendix, which gives biographical notes on seventy-four early botanists and collectors.
The book, the first work 'published in the English language dealing exclusively with the extensive and diversified flora of Western Australia’, was an inspiration for many naturalists, including the writer. It established Emily Pelloe’s reputation as an authority on the subject and it became the mainspring for a burgeoning interest in a serious study of a flora hitherto too difficult for amateurs to engage upon. Her second book, West Australian Orchids , was published privately in 1930, illustrated with three colour plates and several sketches. Embarrassed by a storage problem, she donated a copy to every school in the state, thereby encouraging a very wide percentage of the population to study local wildflowers.
Writers:
Erickson, Rica
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1877
- Summary
- Emily Harriet Pelloe was a wildflower painter, author, naturalist, journalist and equestrienne. Well known for her riding expeditions, she became an expert botanist contributing to the wide study of wildflowers in WA.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1941
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland
- Biography
- Peter Harley was born in Scotland about 1873 and died in 1941 in Ipswich, after spending thirty-four years in the Ipswich Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He was aged thirty-five when he was taken into the Rockhampton Reception House as a 'lunatic patient’ in July 1907. On 7 July 1907 the Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton) reported the attempted suicide of Peter Harley by jumping from the SS Konoowarra as it left Maryborough on 1 July (http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/53101092), after which he was detained by the police at Rockhampton and then taken to the Wolston Park Hospital for the criminally insane. Although little is known of his history and background, Harley appeared to be a man of some education as he then had in his possession books of poetry and photographic equipment (including photographs of Pompeii) as well as a portfolio of mining shares and a Government Savings Bank book. By 1916 it was reported that Harley:
'spends his time in carving & has carved the Honour Board for the Institution. He has a little box where he keeps all his tools which he locks himself’ (quoted in Rix and Cooke, 2009).
It was this honour board that was instrumental in rescuing him from obscurity as the University of Queensland took over Challinor House as part of its Ipswich campus in 1997. When Harley was admitted in 1908 Challinor House had a thirty year history as an asylum.
Harley’s carving activity spanned more than twenty years and items carved with his distinctive motifs have appeared on the local market from time to time. There is nothing in Harley’s work to suggest that he had any formal training but, by the time record of Harley’s activity emerged, woodcarving was readily accepted as a hobby – a hobby, moreover, that required the simplest of equipment.
His carvings of people (notable in the Figure of a Scottish man and woman ) and animals (such as on the undated workbox inscribed Laugh and grow fat ) are readily recognised by the smoothness of their forms which appear as if they have been slightly inflated. His treatment of flowers with their formalised petal design, the incising of veins in his leaves and his tight rendition of half-opened roses appear consistently throughout his career.
John Lobley was the chief attendant at the Ipswich Hospital for the Insane for many years and the large number of works associated with the family suggests that Harley was commissioned by Lobley or that he created items in appreciation of Lobley’s encouragement. The looping carved details of the individual family names is quite distinctive. Although Maud Lobley’s work box is carved with her maiden name indicating that it would date prior to her marriage to Jack Day in 1920, it is also carved with a horseshoe which is a long standing symbol for good luck or marriage. Numerous carvings are also known to be in the possession of descendants of other former staff the Ipswich Hospital for the Insane.
Some of Harley’s works such as the European War: Roll of Honour 1914 – 1919 and the honour board for the Ipswich RSL Memorial Hall sub-branch were presumably commissioned, whereas his small-scale carvings (bearing inscriptions such as 'Merry Christmas’ or 'Mother’) and picture frames indicate that he found something of a market for his works.
This suggestion is strengthened by of a group of carved items in silky oak, dating from the 1920s when this Queensland timber came into popular use for furniture. They are also indicative of a development in Harley’s carving skills and control. A pair of plant stands in a simplified arts and crafts design are decorated with stylised fruit incorporated within diamonds, reflecting an angularity that can be associated with art deco. The Cupboard in silky oak is dated to the 1930s when arum lilies became fashionable, although the stylised sunflower harks back to the aesthetic period.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
helenpringle
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1873
- Summary
- Scottish born wood-carver who spent thirty-four years in the Ipswich Hospital for the Insane. The strong local connection and distinctive style enabled a corpus of his work to be assembled and exhibited at the Ipswich Art Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1941
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- photographer and orchardist, was one of the five children of Charles and Isabel Farran whose marriage brought together three pioneer families, the Farrans, the Wilkinsons and the Cunninghames. C.F.T. Farran had migrated to Australia in 1853 and had married Isabel in 1867. In the first decade of the 20th century, after a career as a banker and auditor, he retired to Cotmore, near Moss Vale in the NSW Southern Highlands. There his three daughters ran an efficient, innovative, and scientifically based agricultural project. Dorothy C. Farran (b.1887), who in 1910 became the first woman ever to receive a Diploma in Agriculture from the Sydney Technical College, wrote and lectured widely on the potential for women in well-managed rural pursuits. 'Fruit-growing and gardening’, she claimed in 1911, offered 'a life of independence, with many absorbing interests’. She suggested that to be successful, 'two or three girls should combine and work the farm together’. The possibilities for female autonomy based on the economic independence offered by communal farming seemed endless and had precedents in the co-operatives of silk-growers and bee-keepers which had been a feature of late nineteenth-century NSW. Most of these initiatives had failed, however, due mainly to economic depression, lack of capital and poor siting.
The Farran’s hoped to avoid such dangers through scientific management. Just as the concept of efficiency entered the rhetoric of the home, so the Farran sisters applied it practically at Moss Vale. At the Women’s Work in War Time Exhibition held at Sydney in 1916, the three women displayed: (cat.87) 'Fresh fruits, evaporated, preserved, & canned. Vegetables canned & dried. Citrus fruits preserved in various ways …Honeycomb in section boxes…’. They also demonstrated a dryer, peeler, corer, sulphurer and evaporator in use, as well as canning, pruning, soil analysis, planting and grafting.
At previous exhibitions Lillian Farran (b.1875) had lectured on various technical matters, including 'geology and the garden’. Cotmore was a 'business proposition’, run for profit. The Farran’s sold most of their produce in various forms. They also made jams, cheese and honey and manufactured pot-pourri and 'Cotmore cold cream’ to sell in Sydney. What Cotmore represents is a successful attempt by three women to combine what would initially appear to be conflicting ideals: 19th-century domestic ideology and 20th-century science, leisure and business, community and independence.
Emily’s photography sought this balance too. An advertisement she placed in the Women’s Work in War Time exhibition catalogue offered to supply 'photographs for reproduction in newspapers and periodicals, illustrated articles, pictorial advertisements, calendars, postcards etc. Specialities: Country subjects, hand-spinning.’
Writers:
Sear, Martha
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1868
- Summary
- A photographer and orchardist, Farran's practice was driven by her practical involvement in the family's innovative and scientifically-based agricultural project. A successful businesswomen, Farran and her two sisters ran the family property and were involved in the Women's Work in War Time exhibition in 1916.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1941
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- design student, Sydney. A drawing by Mr Cathells (sic) 'of Sydney School of Design’, exhibited with the Agricultural Society of New South Wales in 1872, was specially commended ( Sydney Mail , 18 May 1872).
At the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, the NSW exhibits from the Technical College, Sydney 'Art Class, Freehand Drawing’ included no.12 Cathels – aged 20 -student – Greek ornament.
Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition 1887: NSW Exhibits – Technical College, Sydney – Art Class, Freehand Drawing – no.12 S.W. Cathels – aged 20 – student – Greek ornament.
Cathels exhibited with the Royal Art Society of NSW in Sydney in 1904.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1866
- Summary
- Design student in Sydney. He exhibited with the Royal Art Society in Sydney in 1904.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1941
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-41.2710849 Longitude173.2836756 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nelson, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, was born in Nelson, second of the three daughters of the eight or nine children of Samuel Athanasius Cusack, an army surgeon who had settled in New Zealand because of his health, and his wife, née Holme. The Cusacks moved to NSW when Edith was three. All the girls were educated at home, first at Newcastle and later at Seven Hills, Sydney. After their father died of tuberculosis, the family was left in poverty. The eldest girl, a nurse, died young, also of TB. Edith attended weekly art classes at Parramatta taught by the Sydney painter Joseph Arthur Bennett. Fees being a problem, she worked for him concurrently as assistant teacher.
In 1888 Edith exhibited some sketches from nature in the amateur Fine Arts section at the Women’s Industries Exhibition in Sydney. She travelled to France for professional teaching in the early 1890s, using £300 left to her by an uncle, supplemented with earnings from the sale of her paintings. The Illustrated Sydney News reported that she was staying at the 'Governesses and Artists’ Institute in Paris’ while studying at a nearby branch of the famous Julian atelier. She 'worked very hard’ for three years (under Bouguereau, Lefebvre and Fleury) and had a painting hung in the Salon.
Back at Sydney, her sister Aline Cusack apparently showed Laragh and Drawings from Life competitively on her sister’s behalf at the 1892 Exhibition of Women’s Work in Sydney. Other works were sent to the 1893 NSW Art Society exhibition and when Edith returned in 1894 she continued to exhibit with the Society. The Herald noted that her 'clever pastel drawing’ of Aline had been purchased for fifteen guineas from that year’s exhibition by the Art Gallery of NSW. Her portraiture was commended in 1895, Doreen (a 'startlingly-colored’ oil, according to the Bulletin ) being mentioned as a notable example of the new and 'very different style’ she had acquired in Paris. Her other oils included For Mother (a child holding up a flower to a 'toil-worn woman’), judged to be in a rather mannered 'French’ style, and a portrait of 'Miss Meston’ ( Emily Meston ) 'rather tryingly arranged in sky-blue robes’ (reproduced – in black and white – in the catalogue). Day Dreams and Miss Weaver , Edith’s other exhibits, were pastels.
Although Edith Cusack had 'not done as much as usual’ for the 1896 show, Gathering in the Harvest 'with its careful drawing … and slightly French “tone”’ and the 'clever sunlight effects’ of her chief work, We twa hae run about , were admired. Her chief exhibits in 1897 were Reading ('The best pastel in the gallery’), Alice Grey ('a capital oil of a girl smelling a blossom’) and The Sculptress . In 1900 the AGNSW purchased her Wildflowers , de-accessioned in 1946. She continued to exhibit with the Art Society until 1935 and was a Council member from 1898 to 1903. Her paintings were included in the 1898 Grafton Gallery exhibition, 'Australian Art in London’ and her Christmas Bush was one of the few works sold.
From 1896 Edith and Aline Cusack had a studio in Paling’s Building, Sydney. Neither joined the successful rebels of the Society of Artists in 1907, which was perhaps a factor in their subsequent neglect. Both exhibited at the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition, Edith’s contributions including At the Florist’s , previously shown with the Art Society in 1902 for sale at 100 gns (reproduced in the Sydney Mail , 13 September 1902, 677 [from Eric Riddler]).
Together the sisters revisited Europe in 1914, did voluntary war work in England for the duration, then returned to Sydney and again opened a studio together at Paling’s. Both were exhibiting members of the Society of Women Painters. Edith died in her home at Pymble on 20 May 1941.
Writers:
Mendelssohn, JoannaKerr, Joan
Eric Riddler
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 5 September 1865
- Summary
- Painter and art teacher. Resident of Sydney, New South Wales.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 20-May-41
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude55.861111 Longitude-4.25 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter and illustrator. Exhibited in the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition 1888-89, Victorian Artists’ Gallery (Oil Paintings) no.105 Deserted .
In the 20th century he was primarily a Meldrumite tonal painter but did some graphic work in the 1890s.
Father and father-in-law respectively of painters A. D. and Amalie Sara Colquhoun .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 15 February 1862
- Summary
- Federation era Victorian painter and illustrator.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Feb-41
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-37.287625 Longitude143.7802916 Start Date1861-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Clunes, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Sir John Campbell Longstaff was born on 10 March 1861 in Clunes, Victoria. His father, Ralph Longstaff, from England, and his mother. Jessie Campbell, from Scotland, had one other son, Ralph, and three daughters, Phoebe, Jessie and Polly. When John was twelve he accompanied his father to Shepparton where the dense bushland was open for free selection. His father spent a year building a house and establishing a store before the rest of the family arrived. Ralph also had land further north in the Mundoona district, where he opened another store and a post office, sending John to take care of it. John worked for a time with Hector MacDonald, James Stuart MacDonald’s father, and he painted both father and son. In his personal papers (held at the National Library of Australia) MacDonald claims that it was his father who helped Longstaff overcome his own father’s opposition to his studying art. In 1880 Longstaff moved to Melbourne where his father had organised a job for him as a clerk at Sargood, Butler and Nichol in Melbourne. However, in 1882 he enrolled at the National Gallery School. At the National Gallery School Longstaff studied under G.F. Folingsby, whose portrait he painted around 1886. He worked alongside Emmanuel Phillips Fox, Tudor St George Tucker, Tom Humphrey, John Mather and Frederick McCubbin, with whom he went on weekend sketch trips throughout his years as a student. Longstaff was also a founding member of the Buonarotti Club which ran between 1883 and 1886. In 1887 Longstaff won the school’s first travelling scholarship with Breaking the News, a figure composition depicting the tragic aftermath of a mining accident (Art Gallery of Western Australia). His inspiration was drawn from a remembered mining incident in Clunes. However, the work drew much attention as it was exhibited shortly after the Creswick mining disaster of 1882. The travelling scholarship funded three years abroad, and in return Longstaff was to paint for the National Gallery of Victoria two copies of Old Masters and one original work. On 20 July 1887 he married Rosa Crocker, better known as Topsy. Longstaff and his new wife left for England on the Valetta in September 1887. In London they were met by his relative John Longstaff, visiting his house in south-east London before a brief stay at the Blackfriars Hotel. In January 1888 John and Topsy arrived in Paris, where they were met by the Australian artist John Peter Russell. Russell proved a good friend, organising accommodation for the couple at the Hotel de l’Univers et du Portugal and having them to dinner at his house with the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Russell suggested Longstaff attend Cormon’s atelier, which was not usually frequented by international students, although Longstaff later regretted attending this rather than the more popular Academie Julian. Further extending his hospitality, following Longstaff’s extended illness in 1889, Russell invited the Longstaffs to stay with him at his house at Belle-Ile. However, disagreement between their wives meant the Longstaffs relocated to a nearby fisherman’s cottage for the next three months. Here Longstaff painted numerous studies, and, influenced by Russell, experimented with Impressionist techniques. In Paris Longstaff also became close friends with Charles Conder, who, having arrived from Australia in 1890, had contacted him. Their time spent together is evident in Conder’s watercolour of Topsy. In 1891 Longstaff renewed his friendship with the illustrator Phil May, with whom he had been friends in Melbourne. To fulfill the requirements of his scholarship, Longstaff painted a copy of Titian’s Entombment of Christ in the Louvre collection. As his second work he chose to copy a work by Velasquez, one of the most admired and imitated Old Masters in the period. With the help of the National Gallery of Victoria Longstaff travelled to Spain in May 1890 to view Velasquez’s Aesopus. In Spain he experienced the local culture, going to a bullfight, learning dances and also learning to play the guitar. After three months Longstaff and Topsy returned to Paris, and that winter their first son Ralph was born. Topsy and Ralph were the inspiration for Mere et Son Enfant, which received a mention honorable in the salon of 1891, and is now in a private collection in Australia. Longstaff’s final scholarship work was The Sirens, a huge dramatic piece which he exhibited at the salon the following year and at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1894, where it hung on the line it received much attention. Although Longstaff was constantly working and successfully exhibiting, a steady income with which to support his family remained difficult and uncertain. He was often forced to rely on alternate funds, such as winning money playing billiards, and also assistance from friends such as Hector MacDonald who, when visiting, gave him a gift of one hundred pounds. Aside from financial issues, Topsy had disliked living abroad from their arrival, and over the years in Paris she rarely left the house and learnt no French. Hence, when her aunt visited, Topsy agreed to her suggestion that she and the baby return to Australia with her. Following this, Longstaff moved first to the Hotel de l’Univers and then the cheaper Hotel Pelletier. Here he entertained many friends including the Australian artists Rupert Bunny and Bertram Mackennal. By mid-1894 Longstaff was in London, first staying in May’s flat while he was in Italy, and when May returned he lodged nearby on Holland Park Road. Here, he taught for three months at the London School of Art. In 1895 Longstaff decided to return to Australia. When Longstaff arrived in Melbourne in mid-1895 it was in the midst of the depression, which did not bode well for obtaining steady work. He settled his family in a cottage in Brighton, close to Frederick McCubbin’s family. His family was quickly expanding; his second son Reginald had been born in Australia in early 1895, in mid-1898 a third son, Percy, was born, but died when only six months old, and John Campbell Junior was born in 1900. Longstaff divided his time between the house and his studio, which he first set up in the New Zealand Chambers and later the Grosvenor Chambers. Between 1895 and 1901 Longstaff spent much of his time travelling interstate visiting family, accepting invitations and importantly undertaking commissions. In 1896, along with Phillips Fox and McCubbin, he was invited to be a judge for the Sydney Gallery’s first travelling scholarship which they awarded to George Lambert. In 1898 he travelled to Gippsland with Desbrowe Annear to help fight the devastating fires. He later made studies recalling the event, and his large work Gippsland, Sunday Night, February 20th, 1898 was soon purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria. The unpredictable guarantee of work meant Longstaff accepted commissions from advertising companies, for example designing a whisky advertisement. Also, leading up to the Federation celebrations planned for 1 January 1901, Longstaff and Norman Lindsay were assigned to create invitation cards and a printed program. However, he built up a steady stream of portrait commissions, including images of Sir Edward Knox, Sir Anthony Brownless, the Chief Justice of New South Wales Sir Frederick Darley and the Lord Mayor of Melbourne Sir Arthur Snowden. Longstaff’s method was commented on by Henry Lawson, whom he had painted in a single sitting in Melbourne in 1900 before Lawson departed for London. Lawson commented on Longstaff’s rapid, vigorous and animated manner of painting, as he “quickly arranged the pose (if I ever 'posed’) and we had two or three hours at it that morning. I think I could watch that man work all day” (1994 Joske, pp 86-8). The thick, expressive paintwork that was a signature of Longstaff’s portraits was felt to not only illustrate an appearance, but to express the personality of the sitter, revealing their inner spirit and emotions. One of the most significant commissions Longstaff received whilst in Australia was that of the Gillbee Bequest. William Gillbee was an Australian art patron who bequeathed to the National Gallery of Victoria 1000 pounds for the commissioning of a painting of an Australian historical subject. Longstaff and Emmanuel Phillips Fox were both awarded the bequest, with Fox choosing for his subject the landing of Captain Cook and Longstaff the ill-fated expedition of Burke and Wills. The award stipulated that the work be undertaken in England, and so Longstaff returned to London. Arrival of Burke, Wills and King at the deserted camp at Cooper’s Creek, Sunday evening, 21st April 1861 was not completed until 1907, and at 285.7 × 433cm it was the largest canvas to be painted by an Australian artist. This immensity emphasised the sombre mood of the subject of the futile and fatal journey, which ultimately meant the picture was not well received. In the five years it took Longstaff to complete the Gilbee Bequest he continued to paint portrait commissions, the most important being Earl Beauchamp’s request to paint King Edward VII in 1902 as a gift to the Sydney Art Gallery. In response, the women of Sydney raised the funds for Longstaff to also paint Queen Alexandra. The finished pair arrived in Sydney in 1905, where there was a grand affair with an artillery band playing the national anthem as they were unveiled. Through his commissions Longstaff established a strong reputation as a portraitist. His increasing success is evident in his move in 1904 to the popular St John’s Wood, where he lived at 14 Carlton Hill. He also established a studio nearby at 1A Carlton Hill, which was later described as having a “loft ceiling, parquetted floor and old oak mantel, old tapestries on the walls and Persian rugs” (12 November 1908 British Australasian).Here he held many social events, and showed his recent works. Longstaff exhibited regularly; whilst in Paris he had exhibited at the Societe des Artistes Francais 1890-1894 and again in 1906, and after moving to London he exhibited largely in England, including nine works at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and thirty works at the Royal Academy between 1902 and 1920. Longstaff remained in London until 1920, aside from a brief visit to Australia in 1911 for less than three months. In WWI he was appointed an official war artist, and between 1918 and 1919 he painted the portraits of many servicemen. In August 1920 Longstaff permanently relocated to Melbourne, with Topsy remaining in England. He immersed himself in the art community, and held roles as the President of the Victorian Artists Society 1924-25, President of the Australian Art Association in 1926 until it dissolved around 1930, a trustee of the Public Library, Museums and National Gallery from 1927-41 and the first President of the Australian Academy of Art from 1938-41. He continued to receive acclaim for his portraits, evident in his winning of the Archibald Prize in 1925, 1928, 1929, 1931 and 1935. The most significant mark of his success was when in 1928 he became the first Australian artist to be knighted. Longstaff died in Melbourne on 1 October 1941.
Writers:
Robertson, Kate
Note:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 10 March 1861
- Summary
- Sir John Campbell Longstaff was a renowned portraitist both in Australia and England, winning five Archibald prizes between 1925 and 1935.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Oct-41
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-36.3594929 Longitude146.687012 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Beechworth, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Architect Michael Francis Cavanagh, son of John Cavanagh, builder formerly of Tipperary, Ireland, was born in 1860 at Beechworth in Victoria. In 1881 the family moved to South Australia where Michael went to the South Australian School of Art and then worked at the Public Works Department. In 1885-88 he studied in London under the architect John Slater and design in the atelier of Royal Academicians Millard and Bagallay before entering the South Kensington Academy. Cavanagh returned to work in the South Australian PWD becoming Chief Draughtsman. In 1891 he commenced his own practice in Adelaide, South Australia. Cavanagh served on the board of the Art Gallery, Museum and Library and was a member of the South Australian Society of Arts with whom he exhibited regularly. He was also active in other areas being President of the Australian Natives Association and a rowing champion. Cavanagh came to Perth in 1895 to set up a Western Australian branch office, but the opportunities were so great he stayed. He was joined by his brother James. Cavanagh and Cavanagh were architects and sworn valuators who undertook much work for the Roman Catholic Church including convents, monasteries, the Bishop’s Palace, Church of the Oblate Fathers in Fremantle, St John of God Hospital in Subiaco and St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Kalgoorlie. The Esplanade Hotel was their design. In 1897 they were listed in practice in Hay Street, Perth and Cliff Street, Fremantle. Michael exhibited Suburban Residence with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1896. He and his brother submitted a number of architectural drawings with designs by M. F. and the drawing by J. C.. In 1897 he married Dorothy Trench of Ballarat. Cavanagh served on the Perth City Council from 1901. He lived at 23 Altona Street, West Perth in 1904 moving to number 15 between 1910-14. Cavanagh also had a pastoral property at Kojonup with a merino stud of Bungaree blood. He hunted and played bowls. Cavanagh was a member of the Society of Arts in 1920 but did not exhibit.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1860
- Summary
- Michael F. Cavanagh was born in 1860. He was an architect who was a member of the South Australian Society of Arts with whom he exhibited regularly. Cavanagh came to Perth in 1895 and he was joined by his brother James. They undertook much work for the Roman Catholic Church including convents, monasteries, the Bishop's Palace, Church of the Oblate Fathers in Fremantle, St John of God Hospital in Subiaco and St Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Kalgoorlie. The Esplanade Hotel was their design.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1941
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-37.71373595 Longitude145.147673 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Eltham, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born and apparently lived all his life at Eltham, Victoria. He mainly painted bush and country scenes, including the undated oil on canvas Ploughing inscribed 'after C. Clark’ (Bridget McDonnell, Early Australian Paintings catalogue, Carlton Vic, May-June 2001, no.4, not ill.) and an oil on canvas view of an orchard dated 1909 (24 × 34.5 cm, Stephen Scheding collection 1980s). He spent some time painting at “Charterisville”, a community house at Heidelberg, with other members of the Heidelberg School. Waugh rescued the poet and writer C.J. Dennis when Dennis was living in drab penury at Melbourne in 1907, while the Gadfly was failing in Adelaide, and in 1908 carried him off to the camp Waugh had established in the picturesque highland settlement of Tollangi, some forty miles east of Melbourne. The pair lived in two weather-beaten tents, which Dennis dubbed 'The Hall of Hal’ and 'The Den of Den’. After publishing Backblock Ballads and Other Verses (1913, cover design David Low ) Dennis could afford to rent a weatherboard hut (interor and exterior photograph c.1913, ill. Chisholm facing p.32).
While Waugh was in Melbourne in 1908 preparing for a solo show of his paintings, Dennis was set the task of collecting gum leaves to be painted up as invitations to the exhibition (Chisholm, 31). Chisholm quotes Dennis’s verse and prose commentary on his collecting effort, from a manuscript then in the possession of Waugh’s daughter, which includes:
If you ever get rheumatics through chasing leaves in the snow for some damsilly exhibition, you rub 'em night and morning with wombat fat, and it makes 'em a damsite worse… However, I will say this, if Jack [the goat] hadn’t eaten my shirt I might have gone down to see the show. But a poet in Collins Street without a shirt might easily be mistaken for an artist.
Sophie Ducker notes: 'In the State Library of Victoria is a prepared gum leaf which has actually been sent through the mail marked with a round postal stamp and an invitation to an exhibition of paintings.
( Vic Sandr m Je 29 08.)
Hal Waugh invites you to an Exhibition of his Bushpaintings at Bernard’s Gallery 266 Collins St – July 2nd 1908 – open for a month – 10 to 5.’
Much of Waugh’s art done throughout his life was destroyed in the 1939 bushfires.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1860
- Summary
- Painter, was born and apparently lived all his life at Eltham, Victoria. He mainly painted bush and country scenes, and spent some time painting with members of the Heidelberg School. The invitations to his 1908 solo exhibition were printed on gum leaves.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1941
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, china painter, teacher and photographer was the daughter of Margaret Grubb Beale from Mountmellick in County Laois, Ireland, and her husband William James Creeth. Margaret and William emigrated to Victoria in 1853, joining her Quaker parents, the Beales, who had arrived in 1852. James and his brother Richard, who married Margaret’s sister Sarah, became importers, merchants and mining entrepreneurs. Margaret was apparently skilled in china painting. Helen was born in Melbourne and named Margaret Helena but was known as Helen. She had a sister, May, and a brother, Richard (b.1856). She trained as an art teacher at the South Kensington Schools (now Royal College of Art) in London. By 1893 she is recorded as teaching in Sydney where she remained till about 1910 when she joined May in Western Australia. They appear to have had independent means. They lived in West Perth, first in Wilson Street (now Parliament Place) then in 27 Outram Street where they lived and worked. Helen’s studio in 1914 was at 104 St Georges Terrace. She later joined May in her studio. A vase by Creeth is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia. This has delicate purple Native Wisteria – Hardenbergia comptonia trailing over a creamy bulbous base in striking contrast to the gold and black-rimmed neck. Helen Creeth died on 8 April 1941.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- Helen Creeth was born in 1859. She was a painter, china painter, teacher and photographer. Creeth trained as an art teacher at the South Kensington Schools (now Royal College of Art) in London. A vase by Creeth is held in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 8-Apr-41
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1857-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Tas., Hobart Town (Hobart), Tas., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Hobart Town on 28 March 1857, second of the eight children of Edward Hunter Cole, a merchant. By 1859 the family had moved to Geelong, Victoria, where Chassie (who also used 'Cara’ as a nom de plume ) was educated at the French College, Villamanta Street. She showed an early interest in art and began entering various exhibitions, starting with the Ballarat Juvenile Exhibition of 1878. She won silver medals in both sections of the Geelong Juvenile and Industrial Exhibition (1880), a set of Sévres vases for her paintings on silk and satin shown in the Melbourne Juvenile Exhibition (1880), and a second order of merit for her paintings on velvet and silk in the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition (1881). After the 1881 exhibition closed, Chassie offered her entries to the public in an art union, the first of several lotteries which became known as 'Cara’ art unions. This included practical offerings such as a firescreen, banners and d’oyleys as well as framed paintings on silk; later ones were to contain as many as twenty oil paintings, their subjects varying from landscape views of Geelong, other parts of Victoria and New Zealand, to animal and flower paintings.
As a result of these promotions and the skill she displayed, Cole received a variety of commissions. A lithograph, Australian Ferns , was included in Patchett Martin’s Fernshawe: Sketcher in Prose and Verse (Melbourne 1882), and she illuminated several addresses presented to respected members of the community on their departure from Geelong. In addition to producing numerous watercolours and oil paintings from her home, Pilrig, on Newtown Hill, Geelong, she offered painting lessons there from 1888. They proved so popular that by 1892 she had relocated her classes to a room in the Mechanics’ Institute. At the Sons of Temperance Hall in Ryrie Street that year, she organised an exhibition of almost 100 paintings by her pupils and about fourteen of her own works. The local newspaper commented that the former had 'not so much originality as could be wished’ but nevertheless showed 'evidence of a thoroughly sound method of training’. By 1895 Cole had taken over a portion of Elsdon Chambers in Moorabool Street as a studio where she could exhibit her own work and that of her pupils.
Chassie Cole showed paintings at the 1888-89 Melbourne International Exhibition, with the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1895, and elsewhere in Victoria. She exhibited at the 1889 New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition at Dunedin, as well as in Britain, remaining active until her death at Geelong in August 1941.
Also:
Melbourne International Exhibition 1880: Ladies Court – no.1574 Cole, Chassie, Geelong – Flowers painted on silk. At the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition 1888-89: Various Paintings, Drawings, etc. – no.16 Cole, Miss Chassie A., Barkly street, St Kilda – 'Shade and Shine’ (Hon. Mention); Ladies Court – no.188 'Where the rude axe was never heard’. She also received a third order of merit for her Daylight Fades .
Writers:
Filmer, Veronica
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 28 March 1857
- Summary
- Charlotte Ann Reeve Cole (Chassie) showed an early interest in art and began entering various exhibitions, including Ballarat Juvenile Exhibition of 1878. She won medals at the Geelong Juvenile and Industrial Exhibition (1880), and the Melbourne Juvenile Exhibition (1880), and a second order of merit for her paintings on velvet and silk in the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition in 1881.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Aug-41
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 December 1854
- Summary
- Baker was educated in UK arriving Australia in 1879. As a curator at the Technological Museum, Baker became a great supporter of the use of Australian flora and fauna in design and decoration. He also published widely on other Australian natural resources such as NSW stone and Australian timbers. His book The Australian Flora in Applied Art (1915) and his purchases for the museum were a great influence on the decorative arts.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Jul-41
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1853-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- woodcarver, was born Mary Brough Taylor in London. She came to Chewton, Victoria, in 1885 when her husband, John Waterhouse, was appointed manager of the Wattle Gully mine. After his death in 1897 she and her daughter Alice moved into Castlemaine. Mary started woodcarving in the early 1900s, having had some lessons in Denmark when staying there with her sister c.1898-99. Late in life she lived in South Yarra, Melbourne.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1853
- Summary
- Colonial artist, settled in Victoria, began woodcarving in the early 1900s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1941
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1941-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, etcher, cartoonist and barrister, was born in Sydney(?), NSW, on 3 August 1846, son of Robert Coveny (1809-1878, ADB 3) and Emma, née Tallon, from Cork, who had married in St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral, Sydney in 1839. They had four sons and six daughters all of whom inherited their mother’s artistic talents. Christopher qualified in law in London and became an associate of W.B. Dalley in Sydney. In 1875 he was appointed Classics Master at Bathurst Seminary and College, established by Bishop Quinn, from whence he sent satiric letters to his sister illustrated with pen and ink sketches. In 1877 he moved to Sydney as crown prosecutor. After his father died in 1878, Coveny worked solely as an artist and an art teacher at St Patrick’s College, Goulburn. He mainly produced watercolours and etchings, which he exhibited from 1881 with the RAS and the Art Society of NSW.
His etching Eatanswill Election. The Nomination 1882 is in ML (SSV*/ART/1), along with many ink drawings. In 1883 he published in Sydney, Twenty Scenes from the Works of Dickens. Designed and etched by Christopher Coveny , which were much admired. A.E. Greenwood and H.W.H. Stephen in Catalogue (Descriptive and Critical) of the Art Gallery with Sydney Art Notes (Sydney, 1883) called him 'a caricaturist of great power’ and claimed that his copper etchings illustrative of Pickwick were 'almost worthy of Cruikshank himself’ (their only too obvious source). In 1884, at the Art Society of NSW, he exhibited a series of about a dozen sketches telling the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin in caricature, along with 'a number of eccentric sketches of Dickens’s characters’ (apparently the Pickwick ones). The Bulletin critic commented (19 July 1884, 16): 'They are grossly humorous, probably clever, but why did he choose such peculiar subjects?’ A tiny book of Pied Piper drawings of 1884, evidently a smaller version of the exhibited series, was purchased in 1998-99 by Jim Bain and donated to the NLA (MS9317). A pen and ink portrait of the piper from the series is illustrated in the National Library of Australia News September 1999, 22.
Coveny’s original sketches for Tea , A Sly Pinch [ of Snuff ] etc. are in the SLNSW (DL V*ART 54A) along with 23 watercolours (V*ART 58) including varnish/sepia originals for Dickens’ Bleak House . An intricate set of ink drawings on a single page joking about the popularity of the Austrian Military Band, which visited Australia in February 1888, is also in the collection. Coveny died in Dublin on 14 May 1941.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 3 August 1846
- Summary
- Painter, illustrator, etcher, cartoonist and barrister. From 1881 he exhibited with the Royal Art Society and the Art Society of New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-May-41
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-32.916667 Longitude151.75 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1940-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator, printmaker, craftsperson and painter, was born in Newcastle, daughter of Mabel and Arthur W. Cornish. She studied art privately with Albert Collins and attended Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School in 1930-33 (one of her woodcuts was published in The Art Student in 1931). At some stage she also studied with Adelaide Perry . In 1913 she joined the Arts and Crafts Society of NSW, where she exhibited embroidery and china painting until the 1920s. A member of the Society of Women Artists in the 1920s, Cornish exhibited with its reformed version, the Women’s Industrial Arts Society, in 1936. She also showed with the Painter Etchers. Cornish died at Cremorne, Sydney on 13 July 1940. After her death, her uncle offered her designs to the NSW Society of Arts and Crafts (apparently in 1940); some are in the Society’s Archives.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1893
- Summary
- Sydney-born illustrator, printmaker, craftsperson and painter. Cornish studied art privately with Albert Collins and attended Julian Ashton's Sydney Art School in the early 1930s. She exhibited embroidery and china painting with the Arts and Crafts Society of NSW until the 1920s and with the Women's Industrial Arts Society in 1936.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Jul-40
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-33.9117191 Longitude151.2195058 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1940-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kensington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, was born in Kensington, Sydney, on 29 March 1893, daughter of John William Cocks, a partner in a long-established family legal firm in Sydney.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 March 1893
- Summary
- Painter and illustrator born in Kensington, Sydney (NSW). Resident of Sydney and England.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1940
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1940-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born in Sydney, daughter of Ann Emma and Richard Aldous Arnold.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1884
- Summary
- Marjorie Graham Arnold was a painter and printmaker. An active member of the arts community, she was a founding member of the Society of Women Painters and Exhibition Committee, and the vice-president of the Women's Industrial Art Society in 1937.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Jul-40
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-32.916667 Longitude151.75 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1940-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and etcher, was born in Newcastle, NSW. He went to Britain to pursue his art studies at London Polytechnic, Westminster School and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Spent some time working in Scotland and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1905. Returned to Australia in 1912 and built a studio at Dee Why, next to a waterfall. He succeeded Lionel Lindsay as President of the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society. His etching, The Paddle-Steamer (n.d., Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne) shows a rather rustic, home-made looking paddle-steamer, consisting of a hull with a tin shed on it, on the bend of a broad river overhung by large trees. (from Boats II: An exhibition , Leigh Scott Room, Baillieu Library, 8 August-29 October 1996, n.p.).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1872
- Summary
- Bruce Robertson was President of the Australian Painter-Etchers' Society, succeeding Lionel Lindsay. He spent some time studying and exhibiting in Britain.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1940
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1940-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia
- Biography
- A teacher of drawing, painting and applied arts, Mengler was born in South Australia and was the sister of Gustav Herman at Tenterden. She probably arrived in 1927 as in that year she advertised the following in the West Australian Society of Arts catalogue: “Miss B. Mengler. Teacher of: Drawing and Painting in oils, Water colour, French Pastel, Charcoal, China Painting, Batik Work, Poker Work, etc. No 26 Trinity Buildings” which were in Hay Street. Mengler exhibited a variety of handcrafts with the West Australian Society of Arts. In 1927 it was china painting and painting on silk, pokerwork and a batik cushion decorated with fruits and flowers. She also exhibited two very expensive oil paintings of South Australian landscapes. These were priced at _150 each when Walter Meston and John Barker were selling watercolours of Kings Park, Perth (viewed from Dalkeith), and Kandy in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) for _20 and _15. “Although rather crowded, the display of china was good and particularly all the artists chose flowers or birds as their motifs.” In 1928 she exhibited a watercolour titled Kangaroo Paws, King’s Park, an oil painting titled Dahlias and another called The Bathing Pool, Yallingup, batik, poker work and charcoal pictures of King’s Park. In 1929 she exhibited etchings of King’s Park, pokerwork, batik work, china painting and also watercolours and carved wood. She held an exhibition of “Paintings and Artistic Gifts” in the Club Room of Trinity Buildings in November 1930. This exhibition included Pewter, Poker, Leather and Barbola Work as well as Hand-Painted China.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1867
- Summary
- Teacher of drawing, painting and applied arts who exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1940
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-37.063611 Longitude144.217222 Start Date1861-01-01 End Date1940-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Castlemaine, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- designer/ 'crochet pattern designer’ (Australian Dictionary of Biography), was born on 24 September 1861 in Castlemaine. Her father, David Card, was a jeweller and watchmaker in this Victorian goldfields town until the 1870s, when he revisited his parents in Ireland then opened a jewellery business in Melbourne. Her mother and grandmother had both been successful professional actresses. The eldest of a close and lively family of twelve children, Mary Card attended the Melbourne Ladies College (the first girls’ secondary school of any note in Melbourne, according to Ballantyne, p.92) then spent a year at the National Gallery Design School before becoming a teacher of History and English. In her late thirties serious deafness forced her to seek other employment. At first she worked mending antique lace as a member of the Ladies’ Work Association, in the course of which she taught herself lace-making. In 1908 she produced her first published crochet pattern and in 1910 signed a six-month contract for crochet designs with New Idea , a new Melbourne magazine. Her designs proved so popular that New Idea 's successor, Everylady’s Journal , was soon publishing books devoted to them.
Late nineteenth-century women’s journals often had sections devoted to sewing, knitting and fancywork instructions. These, with their patterns and mail order services, were of British origin. However, at the turn of the century Australian designers promoted local motifs in embroidery designs. The rise in popularity of crochet work early in the twentieth-century attracted several designers to the medium. Ladies’ journals and the Weekly Times , a widely read newspaper serving rural areas of Victoria, helped disseminate the designs of professionals and amateurs. Although during the years of World War I women were urged to knit useful items such as socks and caps for soldiers and fancywork became less common, it was still popular to make commemorative pieces in filet crochet. Mary Card’s Anzac design was first published in Everylady’s Journal on 6 March 1916 and titled 'Your Own Soldier-Boy in Crochet. How to Make the ANZAC Cushion Cover. Special Design by MARY CARD’. The designer’s instructions began: 'So many correspondents have asked me for a “Soldier” subject in filet crochet, that at last I have arranged one, although the young man himself would probably be rather pictured in something else than lace’ -and ended:
the best suggestion I can make for the use of this pattern is to work it in fine thread, or silk of a khaki shade, mount it as a cover for a MSS or newspaper-cutting book, and fill the book with cuttings of very many fine poems, verses, stories and incidents of the war appearing in the daily press, and keep this as a memento of the times. The men at the front do not see the news day by day as we do, and many of them, when they return, will be glad to see in type what they have missed during their absence.
The name Anzac, the initials of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, was in common use by January 1915. The gallant and tragic landing on 25 April 1915 by ANZAC troops at the cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey, killed 8,587 Australians and wounded 19,367. The heroism of the troops involved in this campaign was internationally proclaimed and gave Australians, conscious of their relatively new nationhood, a feeling of importance in world events. The large numbers killed and wounded had a lasting effect upon the small Australian population. Anzacs and the heroism of the Aussie soldier or 'digger’ were the subjects of numerous paintings and sculptures. However, it is at a more popular level that some of the most poignant works of art were created.
The pattern was later included in Mary Card’s Crochet Book, Number 4 , published in Melbourne by Everylady’s Journal . Undated, the book was one of a series of five, the second of which was published in 1916.
Perhaps intended as a d’oyley, cushion cover or insert in a tablecloth or bedcover, this example worked by an unknown artist, includes a Victoria Cross and the letters `VC’ and the additional wording 'Our Hero/We’re Proud of Him’ as well as the original designs, 'ANZAC 1915’ and the wattle border. It is therefore possible that this particular panel was made with a specific hero of the original Gallipoli campaign in mind.
By 1917 Mary Card was a celebrity, with four comprehensive books and eight 'Giant Charts’ of popular designs to her credit. But opportunities in Australia were limited and that year she went to live in New York with her sister Harriet, where their brother Arthur was a singer and entertainer. There her work was published in Needlecraft , she self published a book, and she sent work back to continue being published in Australia. She also formed a company to produce her patterns.
In the early to mid 1920s Mary Card moved to a small village outside Wokingham in Berkshire, England, where she worked as chief designer for Weldon’s, publisher of knitting, crochet and dress patterns (anonymously). In 1930 she changed publishers when her friend and editor W.A. Somerset Shum moved from Everylady’s Journal to Australian Home Beautiful – a new, more sophisticated magazine appropriate to her later upmarket designs (notes Ballantyne, p.92). She continued designing until early 1940 when she returned to Australia in poor health. She died later that year, aged 79, in the home of her sister Harriet at Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne.
In October 1979 the Women’s Domestic Needlework Group in Sydney mounted an exhibition, The D’Oyley Show: An Exhibition of Women’s Domestic Fancywork , at Watters Gallery, East Sydney, which included another example after Mary Card’s design. This exhibition and the accompanying catalogue were the first attempts in Australia to seriously document such work. Sadly, much of the Group’s collection due to go to Sydney’s Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse Museum) was destroyed in a warehouse fire in the late 1980s.
Writers:
McPhee, John
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 September 1861
- Summary
- Designer and 'crochet pattern designer'. By 1917 Mary Card was a celebrity. In the early to mid 1920s Card moved to a small village outside Wokingham in Berkshire, England, where she worked as chief designer for Weldon's, publisher of knitting, crochet and dress patterns.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1940
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-37.247494 Longitude144.4552171 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1940-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kyneton, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born near Kyneton, Victoria on 3 October 1860, daughter of local farmers John Southern and Jane, née Elliott. Clara reportedly began her art training in Melbourne as a pupil of Mme Berthe Mouchette, painter, schoolmistress and a founder of the Victorian Alliance Franç aise . She studied at the National Gallery of Victoria’s Art Schools in 1883-87 under Frederick McCubbin and George Folingsby. Fellow students included Josephine Muntz-Adams, Jane Sutherland, A. M. E. Vale, Emanuel Phillips Fox and Arthur Streeton. Nicknamed 'Panther’ for her lithe beauty, Clara Southern was admitted on 23 January 1886 as one of the early women members of the students’ Buonarotti Society. Later, she took lessons from Walter Withers at his home in Heidelberg. From mid-1888 until 1898 she shared a teaching studio with Jane Sutherland in Grosvenor Chambers, 9 Collins Street. In August 1889 the Melbourne newspaper Table Talk described her as one of a 'trio of lady artists’ (the others being Sutherland and Jane Price) who had 'caught the “impression” fever, and show a great variety of charming little sketches, which however are not intended for exhibition’.
Southern presumably joined her Grosvenor Chambers neighbours on weekend painting excursions to the Eaglemont artists’ camp. She exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1889-1917 and served on its council for some years. She was the first woman member of the Australian Art Association and the first woman to serve on its committee. She also belonged to the Lyceum Club and to the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors.
In 1905, aged forty-five, she married John Flinn, a miner. The couple moved to Blythebank at Warrandyte where Clara became a central figure in a community of artists later to include Jo Sweatman, Louis McCubbin, Penleigh Boyd, Harold Herbert, Charles Wheeler and Frank Crozier. She contributed to the Artists’ Bushfire Relief Fund exhibition and to a 1934 exhibition in aid of the Hermannsburg Water Supply in Central Australia organised by Violet Teague and her half sister Una. Now working as Mrs Flinn, she lived and painted in Warrandyte until her death on 15 December 1940 at the age of eighty.
Writers:
Clark, Jane
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 October 1860
- Summary
- Clara Southern, painter, studied at the National Gallery of Victoria's Art Schools in 1883-87 under Frederick McCubbin and George Folingsby. Fellow students included Josephine Muntz-Adams, Jane Sutherland, A.M.E. Vale, Emanuel Phillips Fox and Arthur Streeton. Nicknamed 'Panther' for her lithe beauty, Clara Southern was admitted in 1886 as one of the early women members of the students' Buonarotti
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 15-Dec-40
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1940-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Melbourne on 18 August 1860, youngest of the five children of Thomas Rae, a partner in a soap and candle manufacturing company, and Janet, née Love, formerly of Scotland. She attended the National Gallery Schools in 1877-1887 where Oswald Rose Campbell , her teacher at the School of Design, stressed the importance of anatomy, while George Folingsby in the Painting School instructed her to paint figure subjects in a sober tonal style. Rupert Bunny and John Longstaff were fellow students.
Iso did well and won many prizes. In the students’ exhibition in 1883 the jury made special mention of her work along with that of Jane Sutherland and Amy Vale , and she received further honours in 1884 and 1886. In 1887 she gained third prize for Persuasion , a painting of a Chinese hawker displaying his wares to two girls standing at a kitchen door. Iso joined the Victorian Academy of Arts and exhibited portraits and figure studies with it in 1881-83. (Her undated, unprovenanced oil portrait of an unknown woman was offered at Deutscher-Menzies 1 May 2002, lot 158, est $3,000-4,000, ill. col., p.158.)
In August 1887 Iso and her family left Australia and settled in France. She mixed with Australian art students in Paris before making her home in Etaples, a well-known artists’ colony. Iso saw a great deal of Bunny when he visited Etaples on his honeymoon in 1902; she met him again in the summer of 1907. James Quinn , a fellow Gallery School student, also painted in Etaples at the turn of the century and had a following among the colony of young artists there.
During her early years in Europe Iso continued to exhibit her work in Australasia. She showed Marchand de Volaille in the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition at Dunedin in 1889-90, a group of landscapes with 'a poetical tendency and a dignified technique’ with the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1896, and a painting of a peasant girl carrying home a bucket of water in the evening gloom at Mrs Theo Anderson 's Studio in Collins Street, Melbourne, in 1908.
Grace Joel described Iso Rae as extremely sensitive and retiring. Nevertheless, she showed her work at the Old Salon in Paris and exhibited in London with the Royal Society of British Artists (1895-1901), the Society of Oil Painters (1898-1907) and other groups. One critic suggested that she carried her impressionist style too far, that the mist through which nearly all her figures were seen was annoying, although another thought it had a 'rare charm and poetry’ combined with 'harmonious colour and vigorous effects’.
In France during World War I Iso was employed in the YMCA camp at Etaples while her sister Alison worked in one of the many military hospitals there. At the end of the war Iso moved to the small village of Trepied, near Etaples, where she stayed until 1932, then went to England to live at St Leonards in Sussex. She died on 16 March 1940 at the Brighton Mental Hospital.
Writers:
Gray, Anna
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 August 1860
- Summary
- Critics have claimed that expatriate Isobel Rae 'carried her impressionist style too far'. Nevertheless, her paintings possessed a 'rare charm and poetry' combined with 'harmonious colour and vigorous effects', reminiscent of French post-impressionism.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Mar-40
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1857-01-01 End Date1940-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 January 1857
- Summary
- Painter Studied at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh. The Argus 27 April 1840 Obituary.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Apr-40
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1852-01-01 End Date1940-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born in England. He and Cecilia Rogers were both art students when they married. Their daughter May was born in England. Herbert came to Adelaide in June 1881 and his wife and daughter followed in October. In 1885 the family moved to Perth where Herbert became the main (sole?) cartoonist for the first series of 'Possum (1887) continuing in the position when the paper became the W.A. Bulletin in 1888, e.g. The Modern Cinderella (Westralia as Cinderella being promised by her Fairy Godmother that she will be 'as grand as your sisters yet’), lithographic 'Supplement to the W.A. Bulletin 4 August 1888’, copies BL. (The new series of Possum – 1890 – is not in ML, but H.C. Prinsep reputedly contributed to it.)
Lots of Gibbs cartoons in file are not very exciting, an allegory of a sleeping WA and a cartoon of a German newchum being overcome by the size of a Kauri tree are probably the best of them. He taught his daughter and evidently helped her get her cartoons published from the age of twelve. The SLSA has identified some of his cartoons as sources for his daughter’s in their proposed book on May Gibbs and her cartoons (1999).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1852
- Summary
- Late colonial era Western Australian cartoonist. Father of May Gibbs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1940
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-31.9437164 Longitude115.8413816 Start Date1901-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Subiaco, Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, was born on 27 March 1901 in Perth. Her father, Hubert Trethowan, was Under Secretary for the WA Colonial Secretary’s Department and Controller of Prisons. She studied art under Henri Van Raalte in Malcolm Street, Perth (c.1915-20) then at Perth Technical College (c.1925-27). In 1925 she exhibited a watercolour with the W.A. Society of Arts and in 1931 she showed nine woodcuts in a joint exhibition with J.A.B. Linton and Beatrice Darbyshire at Orient House, Perth. In 1933 and in 1935 she exhibited woodcuts with the Perth Society of Artists; she showed three drawings with them in 1936.
Trethowan, who never married, died in Perth on 4 February 1939. In 1978 a donation to the Art Gallery of Western Australia from Beatrice Darbyshire of four of Trethowan’s woodcuts revived interest in her work. A further donation of a complete set of her engravings from her sister-in-law Edna Trethowan and five of her original woodblocks containing eleven images from J.A.B. Linton led to an exhibition of her blocks and engravings in 1980 and to recognition of her contribution to the art of printmaking in Western Australia.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Syme, Elizabeth
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 27 March 1901
- Summary
- Western Australian painter and printmaker, regularly exhibited with the Perth Society of Artists in the 1930s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 4-Feb-39
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator and painter, was born Leonard Frank Reynolds in Hobart, Tas, on 3 March 1897. He attended Hobart Technical College in 1909-12, 1914 and 1918 and exhibited with the Art Society of Tasmania in 1918-19. Then he moved to Melbourne and contributed to Lone Hand , e.g. Seeking Knowledge 'HE: “I can never find anything I want; to run a house properly we should tell each other where things are kept.”/ SHE: “Well, suppose we start with your late nights!”’ 1 November 1920, 39; Pleasure in everything 'THE PESSIMIST: “If I died to-day the sun would shine as brightly tomorrow.”/ THE OPTIMIST: “Yes, but it’s nice to know you’d have a fine day for your funeral!”’ 1 January 1921, 7; Luxurious Living [shopkeeper to old bushie] '“Anything else, Sir?”/ “Oh, give me a tin of treacle; dammit, a man must have a blow-out sometimes!”'1 January 1921, 11; also in December 1920 issue.
Reynolds was employed as cartoonist and caricaturist on the Melbourne Sun Pictorial and Evening Sun , then as staff artist on the Melbourne Herald . C.J. Dennis was there at the same time and Reynolds drew a portrait/caricature of him signed 'To C.J.D. with regards L. F. Reynolds’ (illustration facing p.76 in Alec H. Chisholm’s The Making of a Sentimental Bloke: A sketch of the remarkable career of C.J. Dennis , Georgian House, Melbourne, 1946). He also contributed to the Bulletin ; 14 original cartoons of 1917-31 & 240 caricatures of Tasmanian and Victorian subjects, e.g. Reg Midwood , are in the ML Bulletin collection. He drew for Aussie , e.g. cover of shady-looking young woman coming out of a shop featuring a display of stockings in the window with the label 'Guaranteed Fast’, published 15 June 1922 (ill. Michael Sharkey, The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Humour , OUP, Melbourne 1988, 100).
Reynolds took over drawing the Herald 's comic strip 'Mr Melbourne Day By Day’ in 1925 when Jimmy Bancks returned to Sydney (an original Mr Melbourne strip of c.1934-37 is in LT, don. 1998). He also drew cartoons for Murdoch’s Melbourne Punch (1924-25), e.g. “Hey, Bill; there goes the bloke wot patted Sutcliffe on the back” [street kids] (ill. Lindesay, WWW , 114) and subsequently for Table Talk (expired 1930). Other cartoons include The Justice of Art; a tale of retribution , where an enraged artist thrown out of his studio by a greedy landlord paints the landlord as 'Greed’, wins lots of money for it and buys the studio, in turn throwing his old landlord on the street, Home 1 January 1927, 21.
A member of the Melbourne Savage Club, Reynolds drew a very serious pencil portrait of the Club’s seventh president Percy P. Cook (ill. Dow 27). Dow also reproduces his Savage Club cartoon The Club gets a new carpet with Mr Melbourne – I think – carrying a 'first prize’ parcel (p.50). The National Library has several original watercolour caricatures by Reynolds, including Portrait of Thomas Griffith Taylor 1919 and Portrait of J.A. Lyons 1927. Listed as by 'Les’ Reynolds in NLA IMAGES and News October 1996, 19, they are signed 'L.F. Reynolds’ – his usual signature.
In 1939 Reynolds was discovered drowned at the base of a cliff in the Melbourne, Vic, seaside suburb of Beaumaris – a 'fatal accident’, Dow states.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 3 March 1897
- Summary
- Cartoonist, illustrator and painter. Reynolds attended Hobart Technical College in 1909-12, 1914 and 1918 and exhibited with the Art Society of Tasmania in 1918-19.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 42
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1889-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St. Kilda, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Australian portrait painter active in the early twentieth century. McInnes won the Archibald portrait prize seven times (1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1930 and 1936). He was also awarded the Wynne prize, for a landscape painting, in 1918.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 May 1889
- Summary
- Leading interwar portrait and landscape painter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1888-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingsom
- Biography
- photographer, had work included in Helen Ennis’s exhibition Mirror with a Memory (Canberra: NPG, 2000).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1888
- Summary
- Cecil W. Bostock was a photographer who practiced in the early 20th century. He also designed window displays for David Jones department store. Examples of his work were included in the 2000 exhibition 'Mirror with a Memory' at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Exhibition of Women’s Work 1907 (Sydney): NSW Display – Oil Painting – Flower Painting, competitive – no.147 Cambage, Mabel F., 'Daffodils’, 3 guineas; no.148 Cambage, Mabel F., 'Ivy Geranium’.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1883
- Summary
- Exhibited in Exhibition of Women's Work 1907 Sydney, NSW.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-38.661326 Longitude178.0206487 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gisborne, New Zealand
- Biography
- Painter, born New Zealand and came to Australia with his family as a child. They named their Australian house Gisborne after the place of Elioth’s birth. Gruner began art classes under Julian Ashton, whilst working as a drapers assistant during the day. He first exhibited with Society of Artists in early 1900’s, and continued to do so for the remainder of his life. In 1911 he became manager of 'The Fine Arts’, a shop organised by Julian Ashton to sell local artists’ work. At this time he began travelling and camping throughout country NSW to find inspiration for his work.
In 1922 two of his works were accepted by the Royal Academy in London for display. Gruner’s mother died in 1923, allowing Gruner to travel overseas for the first time. He visited London, Paris, Italy and England. Gruner had his first one-man exhibition in 1926 at the Macquarie Galleries. It was a sell out. In 1928 his work was exhibited in the Salon des Beaux Arts in Paris.
In 1930 Gruner returned to New Zealand for a lengthy stay. His paintings, however, were rarely seen there until they toured in a group show in 1964. Gruner won the Wynne Prize, held by the AGNSW, seven times during his career. In 1916 it was awarded to Morning Light, in 1919 Spring Frost, in 1921 Valley of the Tweed, in 1929 On the Murrumbidgee, in 1934 Murrumbidgee Ranges, Canberra, in 1936 Landscape and in 1937 Weetangera, Canberra.
The AGNSW held a exhibition of 100 loaned works of Elioth Gruner in 1932-33.
Gruner was hospitalised in 1927 for alcoholism and depression. In 1935 he suffered a nervous breakdown and is again hospitalised. He died 17 October 1939.
In 1940, the AGNSW held a memorial exhibition of 252 of his works.
Gruner painted two oils offered by Bridget McDonnell Gallery, Carlton in Early Australian Painters, catalogue of exhibition 25 May-15 June 2001 (cats 14, 15 ill.): From the Artist’s Camp in the Blue Mountains 1914 and Misty Morning (estate of Clarice Thomas, youngest daughter of John Young, co-founder of Sydney’s Macquarie Galleries in 1925).
Writers:
kritchie
fishel
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1882
- Summary
- The New Zealand-born Gruner came to Australia as a small child but briefly returned to New Zealand towards the end of his life.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- miniaturist and watercolourist, was born in Melbourne on 17 May 1878, daughter of Thomas Norriss, a scientific chemist. From the age of ten Bess trained with Jane Sutherland , then studied at the Melbourne National Gallery School under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall (1897-1901), on one occasion, she recollected, being 'nearly expelled for fighting in the Gallery’. Norriss sent samples of her work to George C. Williamson, an expert on miniatures who advised her to come to London. She finally arrived in December 1905, it having taken her six years to save the fare. There, stated Norriss, Williamson 'introduced me everywhere’. She quickly attained critical acclaim for the freshness and originality of her style and in 1907 was made a member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters. Later she developed a preference for painting watercolours on a larger scale and became a member of the British Water Colour Society.
On 27 July 1908, at St Peter’s Church, Cranley Gardens, London, Bess Norriss married the Australian musical entrepreneur Nevin Tait (1876-1961). They visited South Africa in 1909, then came to Australia. In 1910 Bess held exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne and carried out portrait commissions in both cities. The National Art Galleries of NSW and Victoria both purchased miniatures. She returned to London early in 1911 and settled in Chelsea. Her patrons included Queen Alexandra, J. Pierpont Morgan and well-known artists and musicians.
Norriss Tait exhibited miniatures and watercolours with the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, at the Grosvenor Galleries, the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon and was chosen to paint the miniatures in Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House (Windsor Castle). On a later Australian visit, the Sydney studio photographer Yvonne Gregory took her portrait photograph for Home . F. Derwent Wood’s bronze bust of her (1922) is in the Tate Gallery and a copy is in the Art Gallery of NSW. Her son was the painter G.N. Tait.
As soon as Bess Norriss came to London from Australia in 1905, her miniatures were acclaimed and she rapidly acquired a fashionable clientele. In 1906 she took a studio at 49 Roland Gardens, South Kensington where her sitters included Lydia Russell (née Burton) who had married Walter Westley Russell (later Sir Walter) in 1900. Walter Russell, a portrait painter, was a teacher at the Slade School where Norriss was an intermittent student. The miniature of Lydia Russell was exhibited in the New Salon, Paris, and at the Royal Academy, London, in 1908. It received favourable attention in the Australian press at the time, and again in 1910 when Tait exhibited it in Sydney with other of her miniatures. It was then purchased by the National Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Norriss broke with the old tradition of what she described as `superficial, pretty, chocolate-box miniatures’, so popular at the turn of the century. She dispensed with the traditional hallmarks of the Victorian and Edwardian miniature, abandoning stippling to paint in a fluid style and with a spontaneity which distinguished her work from that of fellow practitioners. She believed that miniature painting should be governed by the same technical disciplines as large-scale paintings, with attention being paid to `drawing, structure and colour’. She particularly admired the miniatures of Samuel Cooper (d.1672) who, in the words of Daphne Foskett, abandoned the `detailed technique’ of earlier miniaturists and `painted with a broader and freer brush stroke, more usually associated with that used by painters of oil portraits’. The statement might equally be applied to Norriss’s work, except that her pieces have more affinity with watercolours, being far more loosely painted and less highly finished that those by Cooper. As a writer in Art and Architecture (probably D.H. Souter) observed after viewing Norriss Tait’s miniatures of Lydia Russell and others in Sydney: 'Except for the delicate modelling of the heads and except for the material upon which the subjects are painted, one might with all conscientiousness describe them as water colors’.
In the portrait of Lydia Russell, Bess Norriss Tait also reveals an interest in tonal studies inherited from Whistler and the Aesthetic Movement. Other than the pink of the face and the background, the muted brown of the hair, the white of the blouse and the use of blue highlights and shadows, the work is a study in grey. Veil, dress, fur, and muff are all rendered in shades of it, the textures of the various materials being broadly painted but distinctively rendered. An interest in costume and drapery is a characteristic of her work, developed from a disciplined early training which included, in her own words, `numberless studies of hands and draperies’.
It is interesting to compare the miniature of Russell with Norriss’s own miniature self-portrait (NPG, London), also exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1908 (both were illustrated in the Sydney Mail that July). The two women are posed with an almost identical tilt to the head and wear similar costumes and wide-brimmed hats. The self-portrait was shown under the title The Brown Hat , suggesting that Tait regarded fashionable dress as a female attribute. Indeed, her portraits are essentially idealised depictions of upper middle-class women in languid poses, the emphasis being on the beauty and the costume of the sitters. Nonetheless, Lydia Russell is no straightforward Edwardian society beauty. Her wistful, indeed somewhat sad, expression indicates that Bess Norriss Tait’s works were also marked by psychological insight.
Writers:
Lennon, Jane
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 May 1878
- Summary
- A miniaturist and watercolourist. In London she was renowned for her miniatures and exhibited them at the New Salon in Paris and the Royal Academy in London.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Bert Ive, British Australian cinematographer and official film photographer for the federal government from 1913 to 1939.
Writers:
newtog
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1 January 1875
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Jul-39
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude-22.1646782 Longitude144.5844903 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Queensland
- Biography
- black-and-white artist, was born in Queensland. He had no formal art training and the cartoons he contributed to the Sydney Bulletin in 1897-1934 were initially quite amateur looking – as well as obviously from Queensland, e.g. joke block about Toowoomba mosquitoes, published 25 June 1898. Most are effective and funny, eg Apollo up to date 10 December 1898, 27 (about a skinny nude bather). He was Hon. Treasurer of the Queensland Authors and Artists Association.
His style later became strongly influenced by that typically employed for Bulletin bushie gags. With Arthur Hoey Davis ('Steele Rudd’), he founded Steele Rudd’s Magazine in 1904, which lasted until 1907. The first issue was full of his illustrations in Bulletin bush manner, e.g. The Bush Funeral (p.12) and On a Bush Racecourse : 'The Black Gins Race. Ten starters, four ran into the scrub, three fell off./ “Yellow Liz on Black Beetle, by a neck”, said the judge’ (p.16). With Ruby Lind , Ruth Simpson and Norman Lindsay , he was one of the illustrators in Back at Our Selection , originally serialised in his magazine then published in book form in 1906. He also drew for Steele Rudd’s Annual (1917-22).
At the same time, cartoons signed 'E. Ashton Murphy’ occasionally appeared in the Brisbane Worker , e.g. (bush gag) Took His Pleasures Sadly (Grafting). 'Mac: “Not workin’, Jerry?”/ Jerry: “No; wouldn’t work every day for nobody. Want a rest sometimes.”/ Mac: “Watcher goin’ to do?”/ Jerry: “Oh, jest goin’ ter give ther ole man a hand sinkin’ a dam”’ 16 December 1899; Leahy’s Victims or Looking for Work (swaggie on bike and another walking with a dog) 20 April 1901; and (strong swaggie image) Pilgrims of the West . 'Bagman with the Pup (cynically): “A very merry Christmas, mate.”/ Mate: “Same to you, an’ many of them”’ 5 December 1908.
In the 1920s Murphy was employed by Joseph Cornelius Marconi (aka Joe Mahoney, son of Irish immigrants) to draw cartoons and do graphic designs that made extravagant claims for his Brisbane-based Goanna Salve, 'the Australian bush ointment’, which became an Australian icon.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1874
- Summary
- Federation era Brisbane (and Toowoomba ?) black-and-white artist. In the 1920s he was employed by Joseph Cornelius Marconi to draw cartoons and do graphic designs that made extravagant claims for his Brisbane-based Goanna Salve, 'the Australian bush ointment', which became an Australian icon.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-37.8001 Longitude144.9671 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Carlton, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born in Carlton, Melbourne, on 10 January 1871. Enrolled as Mr M.M. Blashki, he studied Design at the National Gallery of Victoria [NGV] Schools in 1893 and Painting in 1895. He exhibited with the [Royal] Art Society of NSW in 1894. In 1896 he competed for the NGV Travelling Scholarship as 'Myer Blashki’ (his real name). He contributed cartoons to the radical Melbourne paper Champion (published 1896-97), e.g. Shelter 14 November 1896, Wanted – A Buyer! (Melbourne 'for sale’ as owner 'gone west’ [to Kalgoorlie]) 21 November 1896 (cover), and A-RESTING (policeman complaining about no longer being able to move people on) 12 December 1896 (cover, apparently signed 'MB’). The University of Sydney’s then Power Research Library had copies of the first two in slide form.
Blashki lived in Sydney in 1896-98. His drawings 'On board the Japanese training ship Kongo’ appeared in Town and Country Journal on 25 June 1898 (33) and he spent the next 40 years overseas in England, Europe and the USA, mainly the last where his son Philip Evergood (d.1973) became a leading American social-realist painter. As 'Miles Evergood’, Blashki returned to Australia in 1931. He exhibited his paintings at Melbourne and Sydney in 1933. He died in Melbourne on 3 January 1939.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 10 January 1871
- Summary
- Late colonial-era painter cartoonist who worked under a variety of pseudonyms including Miles Evergood. Blashki spent nearly 40 years living and working overseas, particularly in America where his son, Philip Evergood, became a leading American social-realist painter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Jan-39
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-43.5536905 Longitude172.663178 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Opawa, New Zealand
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-37.063611 Longitude144.217222 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Mary Florence Leviny (1869 -1939) was the eldest daughter of the well-known Castlemaine arts and crafts Leviny family and was expected to assist her mother in the running of the household and the care of the younger children.Mary had a strong social conscience. She signed the Women’s Suffrage petition of 1891 and was an inaugural member and treasurer of the local Red Cross in 1914. She was involved in the Castlemaine Progress Association and in the establishment of the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum in 1913. Mary managed most of the family’s business affairs after her father’s death in 1905.
Writers:
fulleg
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1869
- Summary
- Eldest of the Leviny sisters of Buda House, Castlemaine, Victoria. The Leviny family was renowned for arts and crafts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- illustrator, was born in England on 9 September 1867 and educated at the City of London schools and the Lambeth School of Art. He came to Australia in youth (c.1886); watercolour paintings of Australian scenes are extant.
Back at London Rackham became famous for his fantastic children’s book illustrations. In 1893 he married Edith Starkie, who had studied art at the Slade and later in Paris; they had one daughter. He died on 6 September 1939.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 9 September 1867
- Summary
- Arthur Rackham came to Australia in his youth but found success and fame back in London with his fantastic children's book illustrations.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Sep-39
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude51.897077 Longitude-8.4654674 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cork, Ireland
- Biography
- Architect, Waldie Forbes was the son of Walter Scott Forbes of Banff Scotland and was born in 1866 in Cork, Ireland where his father was serving in the Imperial Army. The family went to India and New Zealand where he pursued his studies at various institutions. At fifteen Forbes entered the office of Walter Law an architect in Melbourne remaining there for eight and a half years. He then worked in Sydney for Edward Raht before coming to Western Australia where he worked for Wilkinson & Smith, then with E. J. Dean-Smith. Forbes served on the committee of the West Australian Society of Arts from 1901-03. In 1903 he married Clara daughter of David Strickland of Perth. By 1905 he was listed in partnership as Hobbs, Smith & Forbes. His residence in 1904 was 882 Wellington St, Perth and in 1914 Thornton, Keane St, Peppermint Grove. Forbes was a member of the Western Institute of Artists and exhibited with them in the Art Gallery in 1921. He was a freemason and a sportsman playing golf and sailing. Forbes died in April 1939. His most important buildings were Dalgety Buildings, Fremantle, The Bon March_ Stores and Boans Emporium.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1866
- Summary
- Walter James Waldie Forbes was born in 1866. He was an architect whose most important buildings were Dalgety Buildings, Fremantle, The Bon Marché Stores and Boans Emporium. Forbes served on the committee of the West Australian Society of Arts from 1901-03.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Apr-39
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-33.42 Longitude149.577778 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- watercolour painter, Sydney. Exhibited [Royal] Art Society of NSW, 1894.
Society of Artists 1895: “Mr R. Sidney Cocks … well represented here [watercolour section]” ( Sydney Morning Herald , 27 September 1895, p.2). “Mr Sidney Cocks shows some very artistic water-colors” ( Bulletin , 5 October 1895, p.20).
Society of Artists 1897: “R. Sydney Cocks’ 'Showers’ (no.77) is a tender water-colour worth noting for its cloud effects and for the suggested fall of rain in the distance” ( Sydney Morning Herald , 1 May 1897, p.7).
Society of Artists 1897: “Mr R. Sidney Cocks appears to be the most prominent contributor to the water-colour division. His sea-scapes are of unequal merit, but No.25 'The Ceaseless Battle 'tween Sea and Rocks’, is decidedly clever, and the rich tints of the rock in the foreground are true to nature. 'Sunset on Leura Cliffs’ (no.7) is at fault not from the richness of the blue colour, but from its opaque quality. An atmosphere so palpably solid is an absurdity” ( Sydney Morning Herald , 2 October 1897, p.7).
Exhibited Society of Artists 1899.
Exhibited Society of Artists Commonwealth Exhibition 1901.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 January 1866
- Summary
- A watercolour painter active in the late 19th and early 20th century. He had exhibited at Society of Artists.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Aug-39
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- Amateur woodcarver and engineer who was British born. Cairns specialised in refrigeration and arrived from Queensland in 1902. Examples of his woodcarving are found in the house Nyleeta designed for him by Charles Oldham at 19 Central Avenue, Swanbourne, Western Australia. The house, completed in July 1908, is listed by the National Trust, which states: Mr Cairns’ hobby was woodcarving, and the house has an important collection of his work on the architraves in the hall and the lounge. The motif for these is possums and gum leaves and the earlier work is beautifully executed. A number of loose items of significance include two fire fenders in rough polished jarrah with beautifully carved wildlife, a bobtailed goanna, a frog (allegedly fed to the lizard after its image was complete) and a dolphin sketched from the base of the C.Y. O’Connor statue in Fremantle. Other items include bookshelves, tables and furniture specially made for the bay window in the drawing room and lozenges applied to a bought sideboard. A matching set of dining chairs in the same motif as the seat is also extant. The house has several fireplaces, the best being in the drawing room of which the mantel is original polished sheoak.This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1865
- Summary
- Allan Dreghorn Cairns was born in 1865. He was an amateur woodcarver and engineer. Examples of his woodcarving are found in the house Nyleeta designed for him by Charles Oldham at 19 Central Avenue, Swanbourne, Western Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, UK
- Biography
- Painter who was born London around 1865, daughter of Ishmael Rogers, an accountant and stockbroker. She left London with her family in 1886 arriving in Fremantle, Western Australia in 1887 where because their belongings had been lost on a cargo vessel her mother established a private school. Ridley had trained at the London School of Art and was able to help her mother in the school. She was sister of Cecilia Gibbs and an aunt of May Gibbs. Ridley was a member of the Wilgie Sketching Club and exhibited a painting of irises in their only exhibition in 1890. In 1892 she married Bernard Walford Ridley, a licensed surveyor who worked in the Great Southern Railway and with the Public Works Department in the south of the state. Their residence was in Stirling Street, Perth. Her daughter was Majorie Ridley and her son was Geoffrey Ridley. This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1865
- Summary
- Painter who was born London around 1865. Ridley was a member of the Wilgie Sketching Club and exhibited a painting in their only exhibition in 1890.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-27.8511375 Longitude151.3874815 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yandilla, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born at Yandilla, Queensland, in 1864, daughter of William Elliott, a station owner, and Ann Jane, née Faulks. In November 1881 at Blackall she married Donald Gray Brims, an engineer from Caithness in Scotland; between 1882 and 1890 she gave birth to five children. In about 1894 the family moved to Ingham, where Donald Brims constructed a homestead with an adjoining sawmill and wharf near the mouth of the Seymour River. Within a few years Harriett Brims had established herself professionally as a photographer.
She is the first listed in Pugh’s Trade Directories as proprietor of the 'Britannia Studios’ at Ingham in 1902. In 1903 she moved her operations to Mareeba, where her husband started a joinery works. At this time two of her sons extended the family’s interests into the building trade, forming the firm of 'Brims Bros’ which built the Queensland National Bank and the Anglican Church at Mareeba. From 1904 to 1905 Harriett Brims also worked as a photographer in Chillagoe, but this seems to have been just a 'visiting’ studio. She ran similar operations at Irvinebank and Watsonville, near Herberton, in 1907.
Her photographs were taken with dry-plate cameras manufactured by her husband, himself an enthusiastic operator. They were made from the local maple-wood he harvested, and fashioned in his workshops. He also made her camera shutters from sheet brass recovered from opium tins discarded by the district’s Chinese workers and cow-hide carrying cases which she used to transport her equipment. Her subjects ranged from the Melanesian labourers who were transported to live and work in the northern canefields to views of the Gairloch and Macknade sugar plantations, the copper smelters of Chillagoe, and landmarks such as Wallaman Falls, near Ingham.
Mrs Brims acted as a photography judge at Mareeba District Agricultural and Industrial Exhibitions, and her view photographs were published in the North Queensland Herald (1907) and the Australasian Photographic Review (1902), the latter describing her as 'the first lady photographer who ever dared, single handed, to face the “stronger sex” in fair and open competition’ (a popular myth applied to women photographers from the 1850s until well into the twentieth century).
In 1914 Harriett Brims followed her family from Mareeba to Milton, Brisbane, where her husband established D.G. Brims & Sons, a successful joinery and (later) plymill works. After this she ceased to practice commercial photography, confining her activities to recording local sights and family and friends. She died in Brisbane on 25 October 1939, aged 75.
Writers:
Byrne, Dianne
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1864
- Summary
- A pioneering photographer who ran a successful photography business, Harriett Brims mostly used cameras made by her husband.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Oct-39
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- David Davies, who is best known for his romantic moonlit landscapes, was born in West Ballarat, the son of a Welsh miner, Thomas Davies, and his wife Mary Harris. After attending the local state schools he took art classes from J.F. Martell and Thomas Price at the Ballarat School of Mines and Industries. In 1886 he left Ballarat for Melbourne, where he enrolled in classes at the National Gallery School, under George Folingsby and Frederick McCubbin. In November 1888 he was awarded the student landscape prize with A Hot Day. In 1890, after Ballarat Fine Art Gallery bought Under the Burden and Heat of Day, he travelled to Paris where he enrolled in classes at the Academie Julian. Fellow students included the Australian, Aby Altson.On 18 December 1891 he married a fellow art student from Melbourne, Janet Sophia Davies, who was studying at Colarossi’s atelier. The successful Australian painter, Rupert Bunny, was one of the witnesses to the wedding.Soon after the couple travelled to the artists’ colony of St Ives in Cornwall, and based themselves there. Davies’ work responded to the softly romantic impressionist vision of the English artists.They returned to Australia in 1893, and settled at Templestowe where he painted landscapes of dusk or night light, usually lit by moonlight. His work was well appreciated: _Moonrise _of 1894 was purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1897 the family returned to Europe,settling at first in Cornwall, then later in Wales.In 1908 the family settled at Dieppe in France, where Davies painted while Janet taught English. They were based in France for some years, but Davies continued to exhibit in England, and returned often to visit his friend and patron Richard Heyworth. They did move to London on the outbreak of World War I, but later returned to Dieppe as he found his subject matter in the landscape of rural France. In May 1926 the Fine Art Society’Gallery Melbourne held a major exhibition of Davies’ European works. It was his only major Australian exhibition. He returned to Cornwall in 1932, and died at Looe of congestive heart failure on 26 March 1939. Janet Davies died of pneumonia five days later.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 May 1864
- Summary
- David Davies, the son of a Ballarat miner, first came to public notice in the late 1880s when he was a student at the National Gallery School. Although he is best known for his romantic moonlit landscapes of the Victorian countryside, most of his career took place in Paris and in Cornwall, where he was closely associated with the St Ives artists' colony.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Mar-39
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude54.9698431 Longitude12.42494604 Start Date1861-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Møn, Denmark
- Biography
- woodcarver and metalworker, was born on Møn, an island off Denmark. Before coming to Australia in 1890 [1896 acc. Cook] to marry a Dane, she is thought to have had some formal art training in Denmark. In 1906-7 Elisabeth studied repoussé work under F.W. Atkins at the Sydney Technical College. She exhibited in the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne and in the preliminary exhibition in Sydney, with entries in both competitive and student categories. She joined the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW that year and regularly exhibited in its annual exhibitions from 1909 to 1922. She was on the Committee and a member of the selection committee until 1920.
An accomplished woodcarver, Söderberg also excelled in designing and making metalware. She worked predominantly in copper, silver and brass, being assisted by her dentist husband in the production of the tools and the plaster casts of objects used for her designs. Her attractive bowls, candlesticks and tankards decorated with Australian flora and fauna motifs were often selected by the Society of Arts & Crafts as gifts for patrons and visitors. In the best examples of Söderberg’s work the naturalistically rendered flying foxes, cicadas and Geebung berries are imaginatively applied to the objects to become an integral part of the design. She also drew on marine life for her imagery, and she continued to use traditional Scandinavian motifs. Most of her decorative metalwork shows a notable Art Nouveau influence.
Söderberg returned to Denmark in 1922. She died in Copenhagen in 1939, bequeathing fifty works, all made in Australia, to members of the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW. Part of the collection was presented to the Art Gallery of NSW, others to the Technological Museum (now Powerhouse Museum) and some sold to establish a memorial fund from which the Society made an award for 'best executed exhibit’ at the annual exhibition for some years. The pieces she sent out, in silver, brass and copper and enamel work, included decorations of cicadas, frilled lizards and bats and also included pottery, weaving, furniture – notably a dining room suite in exotic turquoise, silver and black – and needlework ( Daily Telegraph 14 September 1939).
A 'bat bowl’ inspired by the Australian Little Red Flying Fox ( Pteropus scapulatus ) was shown in the annual exhibition of the Society of Arts and Crafts in 1912 and purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 1921 Söderberg redesigned the bowl, giving it a more streamlined, tapering shape that allowed her to maximise the impact of the highly decorative features of the flying fox and, at the same time, fully integrate the animal with the bowl. The resulting repoussé copper and brass Flying Fox Bowl 1921 (8 × 22.9 cm), made shortly before she returned to Copenhagen, is one of her most successful metalwork designs. Part of the Powerhouse bequest, it was included in the museum’s 'Style’ exhibition in 1988-89. The museum also chose a silver sugar spoon with geebungs worked on the flat handle.
Writers:
Czernis-Ryl, Eva
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1861
- Summary
- Woodcarver and metalworker. Best works are bowls, candlesticks and tankards decorated with Australian flora and fauna motifs which were often selected as gifts by the Society of Art
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-35.2576239 Longitude138.8956803 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Strathalbyn, SA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 30 October 1858
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 20-Apr-39
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-41.2218021 Longitude146.3473314 Start Date1857-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Spreyton, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- artist, was born in Spreyton, Tasmania, daughter of David Cocker, entrepreneur.
This entry is a stub you can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1857
- Summary
- Annie Cocker was a daughter of of David Cocker, entrepreneur.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1851-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, painter, illustrator and theatrical designer, was born in Geelong, Victoria, in 1851, according to McCulloch (1984 edn). If so, he must have been the namesake son of Will R. Barnes , a staff artist on Melbourne Punch c.1855-60.
In 1882 W.R. Barnes was listed as a student at the NGV School under G.F. Folinsby . He had a watercolour in the 1890 Victorian Artists Society exhibition. An article in Table Talk of 12 June 1891 praised his watercolours and his theatre designs. By 1892 Barnes was in New Zealand. He painted lake and bush views in 1893 when staying at Papaitonga with naturalist James Buller. He exhibited with the NZ Academy of Fine Arts in 1892-94 as a Wellington member, in 1895 as a Wanganui member. Unless it was his father, Barnes was back in Australia in 1894 working as a cartoonist on the Queensland Boomerang while apparently living in Victoria. Alan McCulloch’s Victoria sesquicentenary regional touring exhibition, Art and the Theatre in Victoria 1844-1984 (Mornington Peninsula Arts Centre, 1984), includes many of Barnes’s designs, including at least 13 watercolour costume designs for the pantomime Djin Djin (script by J.C. Williamson and Bert Royal, with music by Leon Caron) first performed at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre in 1896 (p.c.) and several watercolour costume designs and the program cover for the pantomime Matsa (p.c.) also at the Princess that year. ( Robert Crafter also designed some of Matsa 's costumes.) A working sketch by Barnes for a costume for Matsa was illustrated in the theatre program, while two designs for women apparently of ancient Egypt (i.e. Matsa ) were reproduced in colour on the back cover of McCulloch’s catalogue.
According to Greenop (148), Barnes – like Luther Bradley – went to the USA (c.1897, according to McCulloch 1984). There he became well known as a cartoonist and illustrator, primarily of postcard designs. Most of his work is signed 'W.R. Barnes’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1851
- Summary
- Early 20th century cartoonist, painter, illustrator and theatrical designer; active in Melbourne, New Zealand and America.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1939
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1849-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- craftworker, represented in the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, with 'a map of the world with all its modern discoveries, printed on silk and embroidered in the nineteenth century by Janet Berry’ [ML 289].
Possibly Janet Causemaecher (née Berry), 1849-1939.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1849
- Summary
- An embroidered work by 19th century craftworker Janet Berry is held in the Mitchell Library collection. Printed on silk and embroidered, it features a map of the world with all its modern discoveries.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1939-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Pokerworker and painter on wood and fabrics, was born in England and came to Australia as a child. She studied at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School. She joined the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW in 1916 and exhibited regularly with it until the mid-1930s. She also belonged to the Society of Women Painters.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1836
- Summary
- Alise M. Parsons was a pokerworker and painter on wood and fabrics. In 1916 she joined the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW and also belonged to the Society of Women Painters.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1939
- Age at death
- 103
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1885-01-01 End Date1938-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, caricaturist, printmaker, illustrator, commercial artist, publisher and company director, was born in Sydney on 15 November 1885. According to Rafty & Mack, he served in the Boer War as a bugler then studied at Julian Ashton 's (called the Sydney Art School from 1906). In 1906, with Sydney Ure Smith , he founded Smith & Julius, perhaps the first advertising agency in Australia to feature outstanding colour printing states Nancy Underhill (in her biography of Smith, ADB 11); 'they set new standards for Australian advertising and provided work for artists including J. Muir Auld , Percy Leason , Roland Wakelin , Lloyd Rees and, later, Adrian Feint and John Passmore. Ure Smith remained active in Smith & Julius until 1923.’
In 1907 Will Dyson , Norman Lindsay and Julius had caricatures in Room 2 of the annual NSW Society of Artists Exhibition; Julius’s drawing of J.J. Hilder (with enormous feet) is reproduced in the catalogue (p.24). In 1907 the NSW Bookstall Co. commissioned Smith & Julius to illustrate Poor Parson by Steele Rudd (Mills, p.35) and Julius subsequently did a lot of work for the NSW Bookstall Company as well as being a director of Art in Australia. He contributed to the Evening News (pre-1906?), drawing caricatures and sketches of Sydney street characters (Syd Ure Smith, quoted Caban, 53). He also published joke drawings in colour and black and white in the weekly Comic Australian (Sydney 1911-13) (Lindesay 1979), eg (b/w) A Mighty Pestilence. 'Budgeree Billy: “By cripes, you pfellers, look out, here comes a big pfella mosquito”’ (plane flying overhead) 17 February 1912, 12, and Literature, the Drama, and Art (on poets, actors and painters) 18 November 1911, last page.
Julius specialised in caricatures of theatrical personalities at the Bulletin ; select examples were published in his book, Theatrical Caricatures 1912, e.g. Harry Lauder (ill. Caban, 55) and Bert Bailey, maker and producer of Australian plays c.1910 (brush and ink original NLA). BFAG has the original caricature of 'Alex [sic] Sass who is making pictures… of New York’, published Bulletin 12 July 1917 (gift of Les Tanner 1971). Other original caricatures are in the ML Bulletin collection, which comprises one cartoon of 1920 and 27 caricatures of 1916-17 and 1921-29; they include Jim Bancks , Cruickshank (pseud. Alex Laing ), Martin Stainforth, artist, and a good large original Bulletin caricature by Julius of Annette Kellerman shown performing in the glass tank at the Sydney Tivoli, published 16 June 1921 (ML Px*D471, f.62, included in SLNSW b/w exhibition 1999). Josef Lebovic Gallery Collectors’ List 62A , Paddington 1997, cat. 26, advertised a Julius pen-and-ink drawing of a pantomime male character (actor?) holding a programme 'The Modern Cinderella’ n.d. (1920s?), 23.2 × 14 cm, signed l.l., for sale at $390.
Julius wrote and illustrated articles for Lone Hand , e.g. illustrations to a story by Lyn Ridge, 'Wiggs and the Baby’, 1 February 1910, 418-421. His article 'Clothes and the man’ 12 (April 1913), 502-507 complements his cartoon 'Clothes make the man’, 12 (November 1912), 13. In 1911 he wrote 'About artists’ models’, giving it an excellent comic heading of four types of models (ill. Caban, p. 59). His newspaper illustrations include a drawing of The Hold-Up: Labour’s awful responsibility (50,000 thrown out of employment in the 1916 miners’ strike), Sydney Mail 29 November 1916 (ill. Harris, 233), and The Weaker Sex Grows Stronger , a sympathetic then-and-now portrayal of women published in the Wentworth Magazine (October 1925, 26).
He drew at least one propagandist cartoon for an ALP election broadside, Ned Kelly Up to date! ('If the Tories win they will extend the Income Tax so that it will include as many low incomes as possible./ Watch your Pockets! Vote Against this!’), for the 1929 Federal Election Campaign. It shows the capitalist Fatman, labelled 'Country-Progressive Party’, in a Ned Kelly mask holding up a terrified, pleading little John Citizen with a briefcase labelled 'Queensland’s Weekly Wage’ (NLA ephemera; published in Sally Young’s article on ephemera in NLA News June 2002, p.9).
Julius was interested in comic strips and drew them for the Sunday Times before Jim Bancks’s Ginger Meggs appeared. Eventually, he went to New York to work in an animated art studio (Caban, 53). Moore claims he was the first Australian artist to do animated cartoons for the cinema and that he secured a patent for them. In America, he drew a caricature of “Cruikshank” (Laing) as an animated filmmaker (original ML: in SLNSW b/w exhibition 1999) so presumably had an antipodean colleague in this pioneering enterprise. His daughter, Ruth Julius, has an entry in Germaine, while Roger Butler’s NGA www.australianprints.gov.au website records him as making monotypes in NSW. Filmer and Butler both state that he died in Sydney in 1938.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 15 November 1885
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney cartoonist, caricaturist, printmaker, illustrator, commercial artist, publisher and company director. Founded Smith & Julius agency with Sydney Ure Smith.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1938
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude-41.63984 Longitude147.969899 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1938-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fingal, TAS, Australia
- Biography
- Francis (Frank) McComas was one of the foremost watercolourists working in North America during the early decades of the twentieth century. Much of his career has been well documented in the United States publications, most recently in Scott A. Schields’s, Artists at Continent’s End: The Monterey Peninsula Art Colony, 1875-1907 , University of California Press, Berkeley, 2006.
Despite his success overseas, McComas was Australian by birth and undertook his early training in Sydney at the end of the nineteenth century. Watercolour was not well regarded as a medium in Australia before the First World War and according to art historian Jean Campbell, writing in Australian Watercolour Painters , McComas seems to have been a watercolourist well ahead of his time: “In his handling of watercolour McComas was, in Australia at least, well in advance of his time. The breadth, fluency, and bold yet subtle contrast of his colour and tone are still exciting today” (Campbell, 1981).
Francis James McComas was born at Fingal, Tasmania on 1 October 1874. His Tasmanian-born mother Julia McComas (née Davies) came from a newspaper family that owned the [Hobart] Mercury newspaper, while his Irish-born father was Richard Newton McComas. Expressing an early desire to become an artist, McComas and his parents moved to Sydney when he was sixteen (c.1891) and he enrolled at Sydney Technical College. It is not known what he was studying but it must have been art related as he was soon employed by the commercial art firm John Sands Ltd.
McComas’s exhibiting career began in March 1895 when two of his works were chosen for the autumn exhibition of the Society of Artists (SoA), in Sydney, NSW. His oil entry ( Sketch, Kensington priced £1.11.6) was positively commented on by the Daily Telegraph critic (13 March 1896, p. 6). Over the following years he regularly exhibited his work at the spring and autumn exhibitions of the SoA. Up to October 1897 his exhibits were a mix of oil and watercolour landscapes that seem to have been painted around Sydney.
While in Sydney, McComas studied under the distinguished art teacher Julian R. Ashton. Ashton was a pioneer of the plein air approach to landscape painting and he often encouraged his pupils to paint the picturesque Hawkesbury River district to the north-west of the city.
An early highlight of his career was when two of his works ( Hot and Dusty Highway, Richmond, NSW and The Rain Cloud ) were shown at the Exhibition of Australian Art at the Grafton Gallery in west London, England, UK. For the August 1898 spring exhibition of the SoA McComas exhibited an impressive twelve watercolours. Images included views of the Hawkesbury and Sydney harbour. One of these exhibits was listed in the catalogue as being owned by the black and white artist D. H. Souter – a leading member of the SoA. The public support of such a respected member of the Sydney art community suggested that McComas was an artist with promise.
The 1890s was a time that saw many professional artists leave Australia for further training and inspiration in Europe. With the intention of studying in Paris, McComas left Australia in late 1898. He travelled first to the United States via Samoa and Hawaii. Upon arrival in San Francisco he decided to visit Monterey on the Californian coast where he painted and made many new friends. In February 1899 he opened a show of his watercolours in San Francisco which included scenes of Australia, Samoa, Hawaii and California. The show was well received in the local press.
Distracted from the original purpose of his journey, McComas stayed in Monterey until early 1900 before leaving for Chicago – where he had an exhibition – and then travelled on to Europe. He studied for a few months at the Academie Julian in Paris, and while there decided that he would return to Monterey. From this time McComas can be thought of as an American artist as that was his principal home for the rest of his life. Over the following years he regularly exhibited his watercolours to critical acclaim in the United States of America and London. Following his move overseas, McComas dropped the use of his nickname Frank; he justified the change in an article in Australia: “In America I keep my full name of Francis. There’s a great deal in a name… Frank is familiar; Francis is dignified. It pays a painter to appear dignified to his patrons. Dignity raises prices; familiarity lowers them” (McComas quoted in the Bulletin , 11 May 1905).
In 1905 McComas returned to Australia with the intention to visit his family and friends. His notoriety in the USA had been noticed by many in Australia, and at a Sydney dinner hosted by D. H. Souter celebrating his visit many distinguished guests came to see him. Notable diners at the May 1905 event included Julian R. Ashton, William Lister Lister (president of the Royal Art Society), and the former Australian prime minister Edmund Barton. McComas’s vitriolic views about the state of Australian art were reported in the Bulletin :
I just came over to see my family; going back now. America’s been very good to me; the people couldn’t be kinder. Australia’s just as good, but not for a painter who wants to live by his painting. If you burn half the pictures in N.S.W. National Gallery, hang half the trustees in front of the building, and make the other half buy good pictures instead of sheer downright rubbish, things may change. I hope they will (McComas quoted in the Bulletin , 11 May 1905).
It is not known if McComas ever returned to Australia. Despite this, his career continued to be noticed in Australia as he was the subject of an illustrated profile in the seventh number of Art in Australia in 1919.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 October 1874
- Summary
- Tasmanian born landscape painter who later trained and worked in Sydney, NSW. McComas later migrated to California where he made his name as an artist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1938
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1938-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bridge Street, Kensington, Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Adelaide on 25 May 1872, youngest of the three artist daughters of William Hambidge and Leah né e Russell.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 May 1872
- Summary
- Adelaide based painter best known for her watercolour portraits.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 28-Mar-38
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude51.36216925 Longitude0.603309557 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1938-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gillingham, Kent, England
- Biography
- John William Tristram was born on 7 October 1870 at Gillingham, Kent, England. He was the oldest of eight children born to Samuel Herbert Tristram and his wife Hannah (nee Thompson). He arrived in Sydney with his parents and siblings on 21 December 1883.
As an artist, he was completely self-taught and took up serious drawing and painting soon after his arrival in Australia. His artistic talent helped to secure his first job and by April 1885 he was employed in the Civil Service of New South Wales as a junior draftsman in the Architect’s Branch of the Department of Public Instruction (which became the Department of Education in 1915). He pursued this career until his retirement in 1930.
By the early 1890s Tristram was living in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. On 14 October 1891 he married Maude Face in Woollahra and for the next few years he lived and painted there and in Double Bay.
In 1899 he and his family moved north of Sydney Harbour to the leafy suburb of Mosman which, from its earliest days, had strong connections with the creative arts in Sydney.
Tristram painted in watercolour and his style was soft and delicate. His approach to art was primarily aesthetic, with the objective of balancing elegance and harmony in the colours of a painting. Much of his work employed muted colour and was suggestive rather than realistic. His coastal scenes and rural landscapes were generally soft-edged and appeared as if viewed through coloured, misty veils. There was a sometimes mysterious, sometimes melancholic character to his paintings. His works can be found in the collections of many Australian public galleries including: National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia and Queensland Art Gallery.
Aside from his painting, Tristram was known as a contributor of poetry to publications such as The Bulletin and The Lone Hand. He was also known to be a gifted musician.
J. W. Tristram died at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney on 19 August 1938 from liver disease. He was survived by his wife, Maude; sons, Ashwin & John (Jack); and daughters, Norah (Biddy) & Molly.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Stephen Robertson Marshall
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2023
- Born
- b. 7 October 1870
- Summary
- Self-taught English-born painter who arrived in Sydney as a child in 1883. He was a resident of Mosman for most of his life and was known for his landscapes and coastal scenes in watercolour which are in the collection of several Australian public galleries.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Aug-38
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1938-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- exhibited in [Royal] Art Society of NSW, 1886.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1860
- Summary
- Artist who exhibited in Sydney in 1886
- Gender
- Unknown
- Died
- 1938
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1938-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Port Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, illustrator and etcher, was born in Port Adelaide (SA) on 22 or 23 February 1860, later describing himself as 'inartistically born in Australia’ ( Who Was Who 1929-40 , quoted Clark). He went to London in 1879 with his father and soon after married a ward of his father’s, Rose Grosse. Studied at South Kensington under Poynter & Sparkes and exhibited RA. 1880-81 doing etchings influenced by Whistler. In 1887 he visited Japan and the following year had an exhibition of his paintings of Japan at Dowdeswells, London. Whistler was furious that his so-called Japanese methods were identical to his and accused him of plagiarism.
Menpes became celebrated as an etcher with a special interest in Japonisme. Decorated his house with real Japanese carving. Wrote Whistler’s biography. He also illustrated numerous books, largely accounts of his travels. Fine Arts Society, London, regularly sells his work. The Art Institute of Chicago has 14 images by Menpes, eight related to Whistler and one a sketch of Sarah Bernhard.
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.22 February 1860
- Summary
- While living in Japan in the 1880s, Menpes outraged Whistler, who accused him of plagiarising his own Japanese methods in painting. Whether this was so or not, Menpes did admire Whistler and eventually became his biographer. He was also an enthusiast of Japonisme, and acquired a substantial collection of Japanese carvings for his home. He was a keen traveller, and his legacy includes a number of h
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1938
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1857-01-01 End Date1938-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born in England and studied at Heatherley’s Art School, London. After gaining experience with a London lithographic firm he came to Sydney in 1879. There he contributed to the Illustrated Sydney News [ ISN ], e.g. 'Balled (Bailed?) Up’ 2 September 1882 (1st prize in ISN art competition, original V*/ BUSH 12/ 1), which Dart says shows the influence of Alfred Clint ; also a double-page spread depicting the embarkation and return of the Australian troops for the Sudan, 11 April 1885 (supplement).
Hunt also drew for the Town and Country Journal , e.g. 'The New Sydney Water Supply” 8 September 1887, p.494, the Sydney Mail and Queensland Punch (1878-94), e.g. possibly Miss Britannia to Queensland 1 October 1883 ill. M. Anderson et al., When Australia was a Woman , Western Australian Museum, 1998, cat. 91. His friend Arthur Collingridge also worked on the Sydney Mail and, with Ernest Blackwell, the two men established the Centennial Magazine in August 1888, which lasted to September 1890. He did lots of straight illustrations for it. In 1892 Hunt and Collingridge held an Art Union of their paintings.
Hunt recollected to William Moore ( Story of Australian Art , vol.2, p.111) that black and white illustration was booming when he arrived in Sydney and most artists worked for a variety of papers and did all sorts of jobs. Living was cheap and one could obtain excellent board at twenty-five shillings a week, he said, while the average price for a full-page drawing was six guineas. He drew for the Bulletin in 1881-89, e.g. 23 July 1881 (including the visit of the royal princes) and The Horrors of Music , a five-part, strip-style cartoon signed 'C.H. Hunt’, published 29 June 1889, 13. His Bulletin drawings were influenced by Clint, Dart states, citing examples of 6 August 1881, p.4, 13 August 1881, p.4, 1 October 1881, p.13, 21 January 1882, p.8, and 29 July 1882, p.8.
Hunt was a foundation member of the Art Society of NSW and exhibited with it for years. In 1885 he showed a watercolour La Fille du Boulanger 1883, said to be typical of the genre subjects he exhibited in the 1880s (along with titles from the theatre and local landscapes) when it was offered at Sotheby’s auction 27-28 August 2001 (lot 236, not ill.). He illustrated Harry Tighe’s A Man of Sympathy for the NSW Bookstall Co. in 1908 (8 ills).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1857
- Summary
- Late colonial era painter, illustrator and Bulletin cartoonist. In 1882 he won 1st prize in Illustrated Sydney News art competition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1938
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude52.6285576 Longitude1.2923954 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1938-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Norwich, England, UK
- Biography
- homeopathic chemist, painter and photographer, was born on 10 July 1854 in Norwich, England and was educated at Norwich and Derby. Married in England to Emma, they came to Tasmania in c.1882, where he established a business as a chemist, becoming president and examiner of the Pharmaceutical Society of Tasmania. He died in Launceston on 17 April 1938.
F. Styant Browne (cited without the hyphen) had two oil paintings on show at Dunning the Launceston drapers’ shop in 1884 ( Launceston Examiner 22 November 1884, 2). The following year he showed paintings in Howard Hayward’s Tasmanian Exhibition at Longford and Launceston ( Tasmanian 9 May 1885, 25, 6 June 1885, 20). He conducted an art union with Joshua Higgs at Launceston in 1885; his painting HMS Nelson ('one of his best’) was won by William Costain ( Launceston Examiner 2 July 1885, 2).
Other paintings by F. Styant Browne include:
Two oils on terra cotta – one of bears, the other of horses ( Launceston Examiner 5 September 1885, 2).
Two works on show at W. Joscelyne’s, The Shipwreck and A Close Show ( Launceston Examiner 22 March 1886, 2).
An excellent oil painting of the Berean on show at the Homoepathic Pharmacy, Launceston ( Tasmanian 17 November 1888).
He exhibited oil paintings in the Tasmanian Court at the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition: Class 1 [Oil paintings] cat.3 – 'At the Mercy of the Waves’ (original), 'S.S. “Pateena”’ – ( Official Record p.565, see card).
Christmas Day in the Bush 1886, watercolour on card initialled 'F.S.B.’ (presumably Styant-Browne) was offered at Deutscher-Menzies’ auction 24 November 1999, lot 115, as 'Artist Unknown’, estimate $600-900.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 July 1854
- Summary
- Homeopathic chemist, painter and photographer, was born on 10 July 1854 in Norwich, England and was educated at Norwich and Derby. Married in England to Emma, they came to Tasmania in c.1882, where he established a business as a chemist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Apr-38
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1938-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, etcher, china painter, botanical illustrator and teacher, was born on 22 July 1854 in the family home, Gable House, North Adelaide.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 July 1854
- Summary
- A painter and etcher who lived her whole life in North Adelaide. An accomplished botanical illustrator and flower painter Fiveash was also a pioneer of china painting, responsible for introducing the technique to Adelaide.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Feb-38
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-34.4385643 Longitude148.7188286 Start Date1898-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Boorowa, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and painter, born Boorowa, near Harden, NSW, worked as a process engraver until he enlisted in 1915, aged seventeen (acc. 1964 exhibition catalogue). He began sketching while serving with the AIF 1st Field Ambulance on the Western Front 1915-19 (where he lost part of a hand). After the war he worked on the Sunday Times and Truth , joining Smith’s Weekly as a cartoonist in 1928. He is best known for his Digger jokes in Smith’s , which he took over drawing for 'The Unofficial History of the A.I.F.’ (which survived the paper’s entire lifetime of 30 years) after Cec Hartt died in May 1930, his tough, ugly, squat figures lifting them to new degree of popularity (acc. Rolfe, 269, who considers Smith’s a harsher and cruder paper than the Bulletin ), e.g. 'Tommy Officer: “Could you direct me to the nearest bar, Diggah?”/ Digger: “Yairs, come on; you’re the first bloke to shout me a drink over here!”’, 1937 (ill. Caban, 43). His diggers were in turn succeeded by Lance Mattinson’s at Smith’s when Dunne died.
Dunne drew good political and civvy cartoons, e.g. 'Ideal Home’ (high-rise architecture joke) 4 August 1928, 23. He was an outstanding draughtsman, although he had lost part of a hand at Pozières. Blaikie notes that he did a drawing of meticulous detail with thousands of leaves and blades of grass for Smith’s because editor Frank Marien wanted 'more background’. Marien gave it its title: '1st Tramp: “Why did Frank Dunne stick us in this sketch?”/ 2nd Tramp: “Because the boss 'as been growling that 'e wants prettier pictures!” '. He was also colour blind (and 'a teetotaller, but he’s so popular that nobody holds that against him’, noted Smith’s 20 April 1935).
Lindesay states that Dunne was a first-class painter (he took one of his sons on painting expeditions to indicate red and green). A painting exhibition planned in 1938 never eventuated due to his premature death on 23 December 1937, aged 39. In 1965 the Black and White Artists’ Club held a 'Cartoonists’ Dinner’ and an exhibition on the theme of Digger humour, comprising original works by Hartt, Dunne, Mattinson, Daryl Lindsay, “Unk” White, Ted Scorfield, Stan Cross, Will Dyson, “WEP” (William Pidgeon), Alex Gurney (who had toured battle areas in WWII to record Oz soldiers in action against the Japanese) and Tony Rafty (official war artist in WWII), at which Dunne’s sons, Tony and Roger—his only surviving family—were present (Lindesay 1994, 45).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.March 1898
- Summary
- Mid 20th century War themed newspaper cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1937
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude-37.8557913 Longitude144.9915847 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Windsor, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Herbert Rose, painter and printmaker, was born in Windsor, Melbourne, in 1890, the son of George Rose, a well-known photographer, who established the Rose Stereograph Company and later turned his skill to Rose Series Postcards. After attending school at All Saints Grammar along with his brother Walter, Herbert Rose assisted his father in the family business. However, his interest in art later led him to enroll at the National Gallery School, where he studied under the tutelage of L. Bernard Hall from 1914-18. Following the encouragement of his mother, Rose traveled throughout New South Wales and Victoria, painting oils of the Australian bush.
Whilst drawing inspiration from the Australian landscape, Herbert Rose was also interested in depicting the picturesque scenes of distant lands. Following his interest, he ventured abroad and visited places such as France, England, Italy, Spain, Morocco and Tunis, at the same time recording the sunlit villages, towns and landscapes that he witnessed on his travels. His compositions repeatedly returned to the evocation of natural light, for which he was best well known, receiving glowing tributes from fellow artists and critics Harold Herbert, Arthur Streeton, Will Ashton and Charles Bryant. Described as a ‘Painter of Sunlight’ in the catalogue accompanying an exhibition of his work at Sedon Galleries, Melbourne, in 1937, he experimented with the depiction of full sunlight, overcast, ‘grey’ light and the difficulty of portraying luminous reflected light in sun-baked vistas. Rather than limiting his work in landscape to scenes of the natural environment, Rose developed a keen aptitude for rendering the architectural details of ancient bridges and buildings.
Rose exhibited his work in Australia, the United States of America and Europe. In the 1930s, his work was repeatedly represented at the Royal Academy (1932-33, 1935-36) and the Paris Salon (1935-36), reflecting the critical heights of international recognition that Rose had attained as an artist. According to the Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, in 1937, Rose had also won prizes at an exhibition of etchings at the Los Angeles gallery.
Tragically, at the beginning of 1937, whilst traveling overland from Paris to India, where he intended to sketch, Rose contracted smallpox in Delhi and passed away within a week at the age of 46. Following his death, a collection of his oil paintings, watercolours, drawing and etchings, was exhibited at Sedon Galleries, which had previously held similar exhibitions of Rose’s work, with Arthur Streeton as the speaker for the official opening. Receiving popular praise in local newspapers such as The Argus, The Herald and The Age, critics lamented the loss of an artist at the pinnacle of his career. Another exhibition was held at the Sedon Galleries in 1939, presenting the works that had since been returned to Australia by the artist’s London and Scottish agents.
The art of Herbert Rose is represented in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
Writers:
ecwubben
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1890
- Summary
- Herbert Rose, painter and printmaker, was born in Windsor, Melbourne, in 1890. He studied at the National Gallery School, Victoria and was an exhibitor at the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon and was known as a 'painter of sunlight.'
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1937
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, Sydney. Exhibition of Women’s Work (Sydney) 1907: NSW Display – Oil Paintings – Australian Landscape, competitive – no.6 Carter, Emma Maude Sophia, 'Rose Bay’; no.232 Carter, Emmie Maude Sophia, 'Suburban Muscats’; no.233 Carter, Emmie Maude Sophia, 'Sweet Waters’, 3 guineas; no.234 Carter, Emmie Maude Sophia, 'Study of Pears’.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1883
- Summary
- Painter from Sydney, NSW. Participated at the Exhibition of Women's Work (Sydney) in 1907. She was not the daughter of John Carter the Watercolourist born in 1821 in England,as stated in the Associates Field, her Father was Johhn Carter born in 1841 in Paddington,Sydney and Mother was Sophia Gray also born in Paddington,Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1937
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-33.8996968 Longitude151.170986 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Enmore, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Enmore, NSW, on 11 May 1883; died Manly, 22 January 1937.
Exhibited [Royal] Art Society of NSW, 1900.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 11 May 1883
- Summary
- Early 20th century marine painter
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Jan-37
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-33.8945061 Longitude151.1554222 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Petersham, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Leslie Harold Beer, watercolour and graphic artist and arts writer was born in Petersham, Sydney,in 1882 or 1886, the son of William Lewis Beer a printer and wife Elizabeth nee Smith. Brothers or relatives were involved with commercial photography in Sydney and Bowral in the 1915-20s. Leslie Beer studied drawing at Sydney Technical College in 1898. He exhibited at the Society of Artists 1901 and Royal Art Society of NSW from 1903, mainly watercolours of Sydney.
In 1909 Beer spent time in Paris studying art and wrote of his experiences 'An Art Student in Paris’ in the Harrington’s Photographic Journal of December 1909 and on 'The Latin Quarter Today’ in_ The Lone Hand_ of 1 February 1913. He was employed by Harringtons Ltd Sydney 1910-17 as editor of Harrington Photographic Journal and relocated as manager of the Melbourne Harrington’s by 1917 remaining with the firm until 1925.
Leslie Beer illustrated a number of articles with his own drawings and appears competent as do the small number of extant watercolours of Sydney in a manner similar to J.J. Hilder. While involved with Art Societies there is little evidence of ambition for a professional practise as an artist. Census records list Beer variously as salesman and journalist. Beer wrote on an art and photography for The Lone Hand around 1914-16 taking an interest in cinematography in the May and October issues of 1915. He gave lectures to Camera clubs in Sydney and Melbourne and acted as a judge for amateur competitions and society salons. In 1919 he provided substantial essay for _The Art of John Kauffmann _- a deluxe monograph on prominent art photographer.Difficult times followed in the 1930s. Beer may have started a photographic studio in Carlton in 1926 but fire in 1935 or 1936 brought ruin. He appears to be the Leslie Harold Beer who commits suicide by prussic acid on the South Yarra banks on 13 May hoping his demise would lift a burden from his wife Vera.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1882
- Summary
- A watercolourist who mainly painted views of Sydney and who exhibited with both the Art Society of NSW and the Royal Art Society. Beer was also a columnist and arts writer. He was the editor of the Harrington Photographic Journal from circa 1910 and manager of the firm into the 1920s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-May-37
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude-33.9130231 Longitude151.1170149 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Canterbury, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, exhibited in annual exhibition of Bathurst Amateur Art Society: Amateurs, Original – “Section G … Muriel Allard, 2” ( Sydney Morning Herald , 20 November 1896, 6).
Report on 'Art Union and Pupils’ Exhibition’ re Miss E.R. Goddard’s pupils work on view at 169 The Strand: 'Miss Gertrude Goddard, whose painting of Enfield Church won the first prize at the Bathurst Amateur Art Society’s exhibition of 1896; Miss Muriel Allard similarly carried off second prize’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 14 February 1898, 3).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- Colonial female painter who exhibited in the annual Bathurst Amateur Art Society exhibition in 1896 where she won second prize.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1937
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude40 Longitude-100 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- USA
- Biography
- Architect and town planner USA and Australia
As a town planner, designed Canberra, ACT, Leeton, NSW, Griffith, NSW, Castlecrag, Sydney, NSW, and part of Eaglemont, Melbourne, Vic.
This biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1876
- Summary
- In addition to his achievements as an architect and town planner in the USA and Australia, the Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin practice designed furniture for the Melbourne Cafe Australia and Newman College, University of Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1937
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-32.4023764 Longitude151.7593455 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dungog, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist and illustrator, was born on 17 November 1863 near Dungog in the NSW bush (according to birth certificate, Australian Dictionary of Biography & Sothebys - cited as 1864 [ sic ] by Rainbow, Christie’s, etc.), son of Irish-born Bridget Murray, aged 17, who in 1869 married his father, George Minns, a farmer. The family lived near Inverell, where Minns began his art career at the age of 14 taking drawing lessons from an “old lady in the town” (Lindesay, 1979, 13). Aged 17 he went to Sydney and entered the legal offices of Abbott & Allen, where he met Charles Conder and they decided to share a studio.
Minns studied art at Sydney Technical College under Lucien Henry , joined A.J. Daplyn 's life class at the Art Society of NSW and took lessons from Julian Ashton . Conder, already employed by the Illustrated Sydney News , got Minns his first job on this paper. Minns also drew for the Sydney Mail (William Moore, Lone Hand 2 March 1914, states that the two started on the ISN – repeated by Renniks and the ADB – while other sources state his earliest work was for the Mail ). Both men then drew for the Town and Country Journal , e.g. Minns 5 April 1890. On 9 June 1888 Minns married Harriet Ford in St John’s, Darlinghurst; they had no children.
Minns’s pro-suffrage cartoon, Just out of reach 1891, shows a woman carrying a baby chained by 'woman’s sphere’ and unable to reach a club labelled 'The Ballot’ to defend herself, her baby and other small children against fierce snakes released from boxes labelled 'Whiskey’, 'Seduction’, 'Gambling’ and 'Cruelty’ by four men who are each standing safely on top of a box. It was published in Vita Goldstein’s Women’s Suffrage Journal 1/7 (December 1891) with the above title and is the only cartoon ever used. The artist was acknowledged on page 8. The original, unsigned, drawing was presented to the State Library of New South Wales [SLNSW] by J.T. Fischer on 13 April 1937 (Mitchell Library [ML], transferred to SV/80 in August 1999 from SV*Cart/26: colour transparency digitised 2000).
Vane Lindesay (1979) considers Minns to be the first significant freelance Bulletin cartoonist. He began submitting cartoons on outback subjects in 1887 and continued to send them until 1937. The ML Bulletin collection has 103 original cartoons of 1899-30, 77 dated 1931-37 and undated, two political cartoons and four titles, suggestions, etc. [cartoons missing 1913, 1914, 1916] (acc. index). He first made a name for his 'Edwardian beauties’ in the Bulletin and the Lone Hand , although he is remembered today for his bush images – and for his Aboriginal gags, which Moore claims he introduced to the Bulletin . They include: The Original Land Proprietor, on the N.S.W. Boom-Bank Smash , an Aboriginal portrait head annotated: 'KING BILLY (loq): “Budgeree! You collar my land. Now you go bung. Ha, ha!”’ (cover, 10 October 1891). 'They [the Aboriginal people] have always interested me,’ he said years later (reported in W. Moore, Story of Australian Art vol.2, 115-116), 'owing to the peculiar way they express themselves. I don’t know how their humour would strike people abroad, but its appeal in this country is evident from the trouble bushmen take to send me jokes from all parts of Australia. When the black dies out, his humour will still stand.’
Minns painted and drew straight portraits and landscapes as well as urban cartoons and illustrations. The Art Gallery of New South Wales purchased his Season of Mists in 1891 and a painting of an Aboriginal subject in 1894. When J.F. Archibald took Robert Louis Stevenson to visit the artists’ camp at Balmoral in the 1890s, the visitor was sketched by Minns and by Percy Spence who were both living there with Julian Ashton , Streeton and Roberts (Rolfe, 43: see also Bohemians in the Bush cat.).
Minns and his wife went to England in 1895 and spent 20 years away from Australia. (In 1914 he was living at Hendon and was said to have been out of Australia for 18 years.) The 1898 Grafton Gallery Exhibition of Australian Art in London included three drawings by 'B.E. Minns of 121 Church Street, Chelsea, England’, lent by the Bulletin Newspaper Co. In England he drew for Punch (examples in 20 vol. selection c.1933, owned JSK), The Strand Magazine , St Paul’s Magazine , The Bystander , Idler, Black and White, London Opinion and other English periodicals. He also regularly sent work back to the Bulletin and Lone Hand . He exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Paris Salon where in 1913 he 'was represented by a striking group called “The Legion of Adversity”, suggested by Roderick Quinn’s poem, “Camp Within the West”.’ His pen and ink drawing on the subject appeared in Lone Hand in 1914 (Anon, 'B.E. Minns’, Lone Hand 2 March 1914, 262-263). Articles he wrote in England for the Lone Hand include a review of the Royal Academy Summer Show (August 1907, 386-88), 'Independents of Paris’ (August 1907, 388-90) and a review of the Paris salons (August 1907, 390-94). Drawings include The Poor Poet , seated drunk and/or mournful on a chair in a garret illustrating a poem by Victor Daley published June 1897, 167 (ill. Watkins). Drawings dated 1907 were used to illustrate Roderick Quinn’s The Advanced Idea , published 1 February 1910, 373-80. His illustration to John Carew’s poem, The Paying Guest , published May 1907, 100, is inscribed 'London’.
Minns’s many Bulletin drawings include society jokes like the rather Souterish Propinquity (a bike crash), annotated: 'They rode a Tandem Bike in fair/ And sometimes stormy weather;/ Engaged? Of course. You see they were/ A good deal thrown together/ B.E.’, published 1897. Others of 1897-98, all done in London, include: Bluffing It Out 1897 (unwittingly insulting a society woman’s husband, ill Rolfe, 180); a courting couple illustrating a ballad 'Goody Two-Shoes (An Australian Version)’ by “The Breaker” (Morant) (ill. Rolfe, 105); 'Visions, After a Severe Course of Penny Novelettes’ (a servant girl’s dreams), signed 'London '04’ and published 7 September 1905.
Lots of Minns’s Aboriginal cartoons and comic drawings were done in London; they were often used for the title page of the Christmas issue of the Bulletin . They include: 'King Billy (politely raising his belltopper): “You musn’t look at me like that – I’m a married man”’, 22 December 1900; Close up, marry me mine tinkit 1901 (ill. Moore II, facing p.114); Budgeree! Mary Ann 1908 (ink original Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, gift of Les Tanner 1971); Behind the Times. 'Billy (to tourist): “Yer never bin in a blacks’ camp?”/ Tourist: “There are no such things in my country.”/ Billy: “Well, Hingland MUST be a funny place”’ 1914 (ill. Rolfe, 92). Some Aboriginal jokes turn on status, e.g. The Monarchist . 'Australian Girl: “That’s King Billy and his Queen.”/ English Girl: (newly arrived): “What?!! Royalty?!! Hadn’t we better curtsey?”’ 24 September 1914 (original ML PX*D494/29). Others are simple puns, e.g. Subjugated. '(Nervous Bushwoman): “My Goodness! A wild black!”/ (Mary): “Oh, no, missus! He bery tame; he my ole man.”’ 1912 (original held in private collection).
Non-Aboriginal bush cartoons done during Minns’s expatriate years include: Well Stocked / “[Sydney is] ... the place for gettin’ a boy. You can just pick 'em and draft 'em and cull 'em over there” 1902 (bush damsel back home from a city visit, ill. Rolfe, 100); The Reservoir. 'New Chum: “Can you sell me some milk?”/ Cocky: “We ain’t got none.”/ New chum: “Why, there’s a whole cowful over there”’ 1911 (ill. Rolfe, 93). They often appeared most belatedly, e.g. a cartoon of an old maid in front of cupid’s arrow (a statue) titled She: “Who’s afraid!” was published in the Bulletin on 22 March 1922, but it is signed 'B.E. Minns/ 1901’ {original SLNSW}.
Minns returned to Sydney in 1915 at the outbreak of World War I. The paintings he was bringing back were destroyed in a shipboard fire en route. Cartoons done for the Bulletin back in Australia include: Too Dark for the Light Horse. 'A Question of Colour./ “Hulloa Jacky, not enlisted yet?”/ “Yes Boss! Tried to join Light Horse, but plurry sergeant turn me down. Him say: 'You too plurry dark for light horse’ – he, he”’ 1915 (ill. King, 111; also title of AWM exhibition) – presumably done back in Australia. Other wartime Bulletin cartoons include: The Pilgrim’s Progress (re digger being held back from Victory by Shirker, Wowser, Capitalist, etc) 2 March 1916, 12; “Help!” (re war continuing into 1918) 16 November 1916; Another Duffer (re Verdun) 1 June 1916, 13; In the Dark (re censorship) 4 May 1916, 12; Australia First! 6 April 1916, 12; The Easter Show – Machinery Section (German death 'harvesting’ machine) 20 April 1916; The Crucifixion (re war profiteering and strikes) 6 January 1916, 13.
Less topical and political are: The Struggle of the Hour (on 6 o’clock closing) 25 May 1916, 14; a bleak view of boarding house guests at dinner with their tough landlady and timid maid (very English), '“They tell me there’s a hypnotist in town who makes people eat candles and drink kerosene.”/ “What boarding house does he keep?”’ 1922 (ill. Rolfe, 179); and A Dream of Auld Lang Syne (n.d. full-page ill. Rolfe, 172) of an old man dreaming of his wild youth at Christmas time. Rolfe (196-97) illustrates four other Minns cartoons from the Bulletin (1905, 1921 & 2 of 1930), including Just Took Things As They Came. / Mrs Primanproper: “But these can’t all be your children. You told me you were an old maid.”/ Mary: “Yus, I ole maid orl right, but I not one o’ those fussy old maids”’ 1930. Rolfe (270) also mentions a Minns cartoon showing an Aboriginal woman cooking a snake with the caption 'And the serpent tempted her and she did eat’ (not illustrated).
Four Minns originals drawn for the Bulletin in the Art Gallery of Western Australia are (according to Janda Gooding’s catalogue): Squatter and Blackfellow , Out of Bounds, Loquat Jam and Rev. McSnagg and Sally, or Sally and the Minister . He contributed to the Bulletin for 50 years and occasionally to Smith’s Weekly . The latter include 'Eminent Artist: “I wish to see the editor”./ Boy: “The editor can’t see no one to-day”./ EA: “Well, show him these drawings”./ Office Boy: “Yessir. Will yer wait or call back for 'em?”’ 5 January 1924, 9. Two undated Smith’s Weekly originals from the Stan Cross collection are illustrated in Rainbow: '“Mary not too well this morning Jacky?”/ “No Boss. That your missus fault – gibbit plurry stays – ringbark her”’ and [hunter outside mia mia] '“What was the row about, Mary?”/ “Jacky stop out all night and spend all my plurry two bob”.’
He also made (straight) etchings of Aboriginal people, including Aboriginal Study , The Bees Nest 1924 (ML SV / 166), The Hunter (AGNSW: see file) and an Aboriginal woman and child 1924(?) (ML SV / 167). In 1928 the AGNSW commissioned him to paint a self-portrait in oils for the collection, along with George Lambert and John Longstaff . Although he mainly worked in watercolour, his top painting price ($28,000) was for an oil, Balmoral Beach , sold at Sotheby’s in August 1989, but Dedman notes that other oils have sold for well under $1,000.
Minns founded the Australian Watercolour Institute in 1924 and was its first president (1924-37). His watercolour, On The Harbour , offered by Christie’s Australia at Melbourne on 7 May 2003, lot 371, is dated 1924. Two watercolours, Preparing for Bed (a woman plaiting her hair) and Australian Aboriginal in War Paint , were offered at Christie’s Australian painting auction part 2, 27 November 1996, lots 354 (ill.) & 386. A watercolour Pisa [sic] Cottage, Bathurst 1932, from the collection of Dr Philip Rasmussen, was in Christies’ Australian and European Paintings , Melbourne 27-28 April 1999, lot 30. London’s Canon Gallery had Pitt Water, Sydney Harbour on sale for £4,200 at the Watercolour and Drawing Fair, London, in February 2001. Roger Dedman (2003) gives the record price for a Minns watercolour as $27,000, for Hauling Timber , which was sold at Sotheby’s in November 1988 (lot 330). Beach Party with Boats Moored , lot 240 at Christie’s sale of the Trout collection in June 1989, sold for $20,000. Sotheby’s offered his watercolour Pittwater , dated 1935, in its 7 May 2001 auction (lot 173) with an estimate of A$5,000-8,000. Lot 177 in Deutscher-Menzies’ Sydney auction of 5 March 2002, a very good, early watercolour, Bondi Beach 1925, was estimated at $6,000-9,000, while lot 179, an undated portrait of an Aboriginal girl, was estimated at $2,000-3,000.
Minns lived at Gordon on Sydney’s North Shore. His last cartoon appeared the week before he died, on 21 February 1937 while sketching at Taronga Park Zoo. He was cremated according to Anglican rites. In 1938 he was posthumously awarded the Sydney Sesquicentennial prize for a historical painting in oils, The Landing at Botany Bay 1788 painted in 1934, at the 'Art Competitions Exhibition: Australia’s 150th Anniversary Celebrations 1788-1938’ held at Sydney’s Education Department Art Gallery in February 1938 (cat. 18). The estimated price for this meeting of Cook and his embarking crew with a group of Aboriginal men when it was offered as lot 73 in Deutscher-Menzies Australian and International Fine Art Auction at Melbourne on 28-29 August 2002 was $35,000-45,000.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 17 November 1863
- Summary
- B.E. Minns was introduced to art by the young Charles Conder, with whom he shared rooms in the 1880s. He soon developed a successful career as the first significant freelance Bulletin cartoonist. He is also remembered for his sensitive watercolours. Subjects include Aboriginal and suffragette themes, as well as landscapes and portraiture.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Feb-37
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude53.0162014 Longitude-2.1812607 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stoke on Trent, England
- Biography
- We know surprisingly little about the life of Louis Bilton. According to Desmond Eyles, the authority on Doulton, Louis Bilton trained under William Mussell (1828-1906), a gifted painter of flowers and birds at Mintons. The 1881 British Census revealed that Bilton was also living in Stoke-on-Trent and, then aged 21 years, was described as a china-painter. As this famous ceramics firm was established at Stoke-on-Trent in 1796 and Mussill was active there from c.1870 until his death this suggestion seems very likely. The census also reveals a close connection to the ceramic industry as his father John was listed as a pottery manager and his older brother Ernest, was his assistant. Perhaps they worked at Mintons also.
It is uncertain as to how the connection between Bilton and the `Picturesque Atlas of Australasia’ was established, but he travelled to Sydney in 1885 to work on the project and returned to England in 1887 after its completion. The 'Atlas’, published in three volumes 1883-86, provided a comprehensive coverage of the discovery, geography and development of the Australian colonies written by the most authoritative writers available and illustrated with engravings by leading artists such as Julian Ashton, W.C. Piguenit, Henry Fullwood, Tom Roberts and Marian Ellis Rowan (who provided designs of Australian flora for the rival firm of Worcester). The 'Atlas’, an artistic but not financial success, greatly assisted the development of the Australian black and white school of illustration clustered around the Sydney `Bulletin’. Bilton’s role in this venture was to provide decorative frames of Australian flowers and foliage for some of the scenic panels and vignettes of Australian flora.
Bilton did not involve himself much in Sydney’s artistic activity while he resided here. In the catalogue of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales’ annual exhibition in 1886 Louis Bilton was listed as a member of the society and his address was given as 382 George Street, Sydney. His only exhibit was in the eighth annual exhibition the following year. Bilton exhibited No. 196 Bush beauties (described as an 'original from nature’) in the category of decorated plaques – by this time, however, he had returned to London. Bilton’s was one of eleven entries in this category. Whereas the others were in the range three to five guineas his plaque was priced at £26/5/- which gives an indication of the value that Bilton attributed to his work.
When Bilton took up employment with Doultons in 1892 (where he stayed for twenty years), he brought with him a splendid portfolio of Australian flowers he had sketched in situ: wattle, waratah, wild fuchsia, desert pea, flannel flower, bottle brush, etc. His painting of some of these motifs on vases (as noted earlier) were displayed at the 1892 Chicago Exhibition and won worldwide acclaim. The vases and plaques he decorated are in a distinctive period style with rather feathery china painted details and the outlines enhanced with gilt.
But did he actually produce any china painting in Australia? In 1915 Richard T. Baker, then the Curator of the Technological Museum (later the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences and subsequently the Powerhouse Museum) in his The Australian Flora in Applied Art, included an illustration of a plaque decorated by Bilton with waratah and the cream flowers of the Wonga Vine (Pandorea pandorana). It was owned by John Shorter, Parramatta, the representative in Australia of the Doulton Factory and the wording 'Painted from living specimens by Doulton’s artist, Louis Bilton, when visiting Australian in the 1880s, suggests the plaque was painted in Sydney rather than after his return to England. But was it a ceramic plaque? The illustration does not suggest china painting as it was an exceptional, 40 centimetres across, and one wonders what kiln was available in Sydney where the plaque could have been fired numerous times to fix the glazes. Perhaps it was a painted metal plaque as records of these being exhibited in contemporary exhibitions are not uncommon. John Shorter’s family collection does, in fact, have a piece by Bilton which was a record of a trip that he and Louis took to the Blue Mountains. It is a tile and a work of such small dimensions could have easily been fired in Sydney.
Bilton is represented in Australian public collections with some quite spectacular pieces decorated with Australian floral motifs The most famous is the large urn in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, with its spectacular decoration of waratah. It has a rival, however, in the vase in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia. Despite the assumptions we find in publications on Australiana motifs, such hand-painted pieces are rare. However his designs were later adapted for transfer prints such as the 'Rose and waratah’ design from the turn of the century. They will be found to be the commonest examples of Bilton’s decorative skills in Australia.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
keithbritten
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 1860
- Summary
- The time Louis Bilton spent in Australia working on the `Picturesque Atlas of Australasia' provided him with a portfolio of floral motifs which he reproduced on bone-china pieces while in the employ of Doulton's factory in Burslem, England. He also contributed a design for a waratah in R.T. Baker's The Australian Flora in Applied Art, Technological Museum, Sydney, 1915. Figure 25.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Nov-37
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude52.5310214 Longitude-1.2649062 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, printmaker and sculptor, was born in UK, son of Frederick Woodhouse senior and brother of Frederick Woodhouse . He came to Australia in 1857, left school at 14 to do lithographic work and draw for New Sporting Era . He contributed to the Adelaide Lantern (1874-90) and in (?)1868-72 [Moore ii, 121, says the dates are 1878-84] worked for Adelaide Punch , including being proprietor for a year.
His cartoon Rival Pyrotechnists , depicting the rival fireworks’ entrepreneurs the Frenchman Brock and the German Pain was published in Australian Life on 27 Janurary 1887 (ill. Colligan,144).
Woodhouse exhibited with Victorian Academy of Arts 1867-87, the Yarra Sculptors’ Society in 1901, and with the NSW Society of Artists. He also worked in Tasmania and WA in the 1890s. In 1920s he was exhibiting with the Victorian Artists’ Society in Melbourne. Did mining, hunting and fishing pictures as well as drawing illustrations.
He is buried in Geelong Cemetery.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1858
- Summary
- Late colonial period Melbourne painter, illustrator, printmaker and sculptor, is buried in Geelong Cemetery, Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1937
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- amateur photographer and medical practitioner, was born in London, son of a pharmacist. He studied at the University of Edinburgh, became a ship’s doctor and arrived at Victoria in 1885. Married Kate Henrietta Lawrence c.1882. Died Victoria.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1858
- Summary
- Thomas George Beckett was an avid amateur photographer who travelled to Australia in 1885 as a ship's doctor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1937
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1857-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kensington, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was the elder sister of Alice and Milly Hambidge . She also worked in Adelaide, showing work regularly in the SA Society of Arts’ annual exhibitions and, later, in the Society’s Federal Exhibitions. A review of the 9th annual Federal Exhibition by various 'art correspondents’ in 'The Art of the Year’, Lone Hand (1 April 1910, 678), noted:
“As painters of pretty miniatures, we have to look to the Misses Hambidge, who are well represented this year. Occasionally, their miniatures express real charm; but when the same stippled method is applied to a large watercolour like “Fireside Reflections,” the result is lamentably weak. Here all form has been sacrificed to a doll-like finish. After all, the study of characteristic form is the basis of all good pictures; fine colour is but an embellishment; and the sooner our Australian painters acquire that belief, the sooner will we develop a national school of painting.”
An illustrated article in the Lone Hand of July 1914 headed 'Three Adelaide Artists’ described the Hambidge sisters as a 'family well dowered with talent’ (their brother Bert was a caricaturist who contributed to the Bulletin and the article claimed they were related to the noted American illustrator Jay Hambidge). The sisters were praised as portraitists whose models
“have been many and varied, among them Hadji Mullah the Mohammedan high priest [painted in 1895 by Helen] ... who must have wondered what had come to him that he allowed himself to be painted by a woman.”
In 1902 Helen and Milly Hambidge were elected Fellows of the SA Society of Arts.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1857
- Summary
- Federation era Adelaide painter, the elder sister of painters Alice and Milly Hambidge. Bulletin cartoonist Bert Hambidge was their brother.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1937
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- painter, is known for an oil on canvas painting of a monk illuminating a book in a scriptorium entitled A Labour of Love and dated 1885 (69 × 47 cm, inscr. l.r. 'J.L. Griffin/1885’), first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1885 as 'Miss J.L. Griffin’ of 24 Eardley Crescent, London. The artist, a landscape and figure painter, also showed one painting at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and one with the Society of Women Artists in 1883-84.
After exhibiting at the Royal Academy Griffin moved to Sydney. She was living in the beachside suburb of Manly in 1886 when she showed A Labour of Love at the seventh annual exhibition of the Art Society of New South Wales. It was an unusual subject for Sydney at a time when portrait, still life and landscape paintings dominated exhibitions and an historical work of any sort was rarely seen, let alone a religious painting. It therefore attracted attention, rightly of a favourable kind. The Herald art critic wrote:
A “Labour of Love” (72) by Jane L. Griffin, is perfect in an artistic sense. It is simply a young priest seated illuminating a book of prayer, but the idea has been carried out boldly and the picture must rank among the best in the Exhibition.
Despite the artist’s gender, nationality and relative obscurity, the painting was considered for acquisition for the colony’s national collection, but the all-male board of trustees declined to purchase it. It ended up in the Art Gallery of New South Wales as a loan from the artist until J.G. Griffin (obviously a relative) made the loan permanent in 1918 by which time this sort of religious genre picture was quite unfashionable.
By 1926 Labour of Love had disappeared from memory as well as sight. It was not even listed in the new edition of the Illustrated Catalogue of the National Gallery of New South Wales published that year. Presumably, it had been exiled to a country collection since the catalogue omitted works out on such long-term loans. It has long since returned to the vaults of the gallery but had never in living memory been on public view until the 1995 National Women’s Art Exhibition. Its obscurity was clearly a blessing in the 1940s and 1950s when numerous works from the collection were de-accessioned, particularly Victorian narrative paintings. (Examples of the latter, minus monks and by eminent English Royal Academicians, were sold off at ridiculously low prices in the late 1940s, several being purchased by St Joseph’s Catholic College, Hunters Hill.) Not until 1953 when Bernard Smith, the then curator, published his Catalogue of Australian Oil Paintings in the National Art Gallery of New South Wales could even the most diligent art historian discover that the gallery owned such a work-and that it was by a woman resident in Australia. Little has since been added to Smith’s information.
In 1887 'Miss Griffins [sic]’ showed Lake Scene with the Art Society of NSW (unlocated), her only known work that may have been done in Australia. It was called a 'very good’ if very small study of sky and water and mountains by the Herald 's anonymous art critic, presumably the same man who had so highly praised the previous year’s exhibit, although he had some reservations about her treatment of this far more conventional subject:
The light breaking through the hills is very soft and clear, and the hills and distance are well managed, but the water is not so well done. It has been worked too much and what would be otherwise a most worthy little picture is injured in effect.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1854
- Summary
- Her most memorable work 'A Labour of Love' attracted attention for its unusual subject matter for Sydney at a time when portrait, still life and landscape paintings dominated exhibitions and an historical work of any sort was rarely seen, let alone a religious one.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1937
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude52.8603096 Longitude-3.0548201 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Oswestry, Shropshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Henry Tilbrook was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, in 18481, and arrived in South Australia with his parents on the Albemarle in 1854. He worked for a time as a compositor at the Register office in Adelaide, then worked at the Arkaba Station in the Far North until the pastoralists were driven out by the severe drought of 1865. On the Paratoo run he was employed as a lamb minder and shared a one-roomed hut with three other men. ‘It had a doorway, but no door, and a window opening, but no window.’ There was one bunk only so three of them had to curl up on the earth floor at night. ‘Kangaroo rats ran over our prostrate forms, and perched upon us …’2
Smitten with gold fever, he went to New Zealand for two years where, having no luck on the goldfields, he worked for the Grey River Argus at Greymouth. Henry Tilbrook was still a young man when he returned to South Australia and in 1869, aged 21, he established the _Northern Argus_newspaper in Clare, and on New Year’s Day in 1870 he married Marianne Clode at Christ Church, Noah Adelaide.
He became a keen and careful amateur photographer, and his interest has been described by Solomon Williams (q.v.), the local tinsmith and ironmonger:
I early made the acquaintance of Mr Tilbrook, and have numbered him amongst my friends since that time. I found him a congenial companion, and in several directions his tastes were similar to my own. He was fond of mechanics and of scientific study and invention. He preceded me as an amateur photographer, and it was on account of his success that I was induced to take up the art. This was the period when the ‘dry plate’ system had recently been introduced, which made it much easier for amateurs than the old ‘wet plate’ system was.
The printing paper then used was the albumenised paper and we had to sensitise this by floating it on a bath of nitrate of silver solution and then fuming with liquid ammonia. For years we worked together, comparing work and notes. At one period we concentrated on stereoscopic pictures, and many drives have we had around the district securing tit-bits of scenery, of which there is such a variety in the locality. Then again, we were both fond of astronomy, and here again Mr Tilbrook preceded me in construction of an astronomical telescope, and later assisted me in similar work.3
In September 1889 Henry Tilbrook and his friend Fred Lester, the local AMP agent, went on a hunting trip to the Far North. At the time Tilbrook was 41 years of age and Lester 26 years. Tilbrook did not take his camera, as the sole purpose of their trip was to obtain euro skins for rugmaking, but in his reminiscences he said ‘I regretted the absence of my camera’. He retired in 1891 and moved to East Adelaide where he maintained his interest in photography, and in September 1894 made another trip to the Flinders Ranges with Lester.4
‘This time, although I took my combined hammerless gun and rifle with me, I decided as my main objective to obtain photographic records of the scenes of our explorations. I packed my 8 × 5 camera, with Ross lenses of three kinds – Rapid Symmetrical, a short-focus symmetrical, and a pair of stereoscopic lenses – with an old brand of plates which, unfortunately, did not give the best of pictures. They were not orthographic either, and the “distances” in my negatives on this trip were not as distinct as I afterwards succeeded in obtaining with isochromatic plates and Burchett and Ilford color screens.’
They travelled to Carrieton by train, then on to the Flinders Ranges with a pair of horses drawing a four-wheeled wagonette laden with chaff, provisions, camera equipment and ammunition. Tilbrook took photographs along the way, sometimes climbing to the top of a range with his camera to obtain a view, handicapped by a severe bout of influenza.
In his notes Henry Tilbrook wrote:
It was hard work climbing the ranges to obtain photos, but I persevered. At night I had to change plates, with my head in a ruby-colored bag and a candle outside. Marianne had made me this bag of turkey twill, doubled. It had a little ruby glass window through which came the dull candle-light.
This red bag was really a small tent which I placed inside the 8 × 6 calico tent, over the shortened camera stand. With my arms, head and shoulders inside this, and the lower end tied tightly around my waist with strings to keep out all white light, and the candle outside the little ruby glass window, I changed the plates every night. It was a tiresome job, as I was on my knees all the time, and the perspiration rolled off me.
The candle through the ruby glass gave me enough non-actinic illumination to enable me to see what I was doing, but much of the work I did by touch. I had to take the exposed plates out of the dark slides, pack them carefully in their proper rotation, label them, as it was absolutely necessary to know each individual plate, as each negative required distinctive treatment with the developer according to exposure and the class of subject. Some required four grains of pyro, some six grains, and others eight grains of pyro to the ounce in the developer. Some wanted the developer diluted with an equal bulk of water; some wanted retarding with bromide of potassium, or metabisulphite more than others.
Thus it was that I must know the name of each plate before I developed it. I did no development in the field, but waited until I got home. By my thoroughness and care I did not spoil a single plate.
In a portrait studio there is only one developer – namely four grains of pyrogallic acid to each ounce of ‘A’. But out-door view photography is vastly more complicated and difficult. Four grains of pyro with a landscape view [and] nearly all green grass and green foliage would be useless. While, on the other hand, eight grains of pyro on a portrait negative would render it so harsh and ‘hard’ that the resulting picture would be pure ‘soot and whitewash’.
All this is technical, but it is necessary to explain why I had to be so careful in changing plates. Then again, dust and fluff, those enemies to good photography, had to be kept off the plates, or terrible ‘pinholes’ would result. I had a plush brush in a cardboard case to keep the dust off with. But it was a very difficult matter even then – for dust is everywhere – it is universal. It will get into every crevice … It was generally a two hours job changing plates – on my knees all the time … Taking the photos involved many miles of walking each day with a heavy load. But the results were worth it, for I have now permanent and almost satisfactory pictures of our visit to those interesting regions.
Dear Marianne appreciated and was proud of them, always asking me to show them to her friends and visitors when I arrived home … I wanted Marianne with me to make me happy. I often broached the subject to her, when in Adelaide, of taking trips with me and camping out. But she would not budge!
Other photographic excursions that Tilbrook mentions in his writings5 include:
1898 – to Mount Gambier and district1899 – to the top of Mount Bryan, north of Burra1900 – back to the South East1905 – Mount Gambier and Portland Victoria
In 1901 he supplied a large number of photographic views of scenery in the South-East to the Railways Department which were to be placed in railway carriages.6
Henry Tilbrook had a brother who lived in Molong in New South Wales between 1911 and 1932.
In 2001 the Art Gallery of South Australia held an exhibition, The photography of H.H. Tilbrook: South Australia at the turn of the century, which was curated by Alisa Bunbury.7
11851 census of Llanforda, Shropshire, Public record Office, London, H.O. 107/1993 Information from Marcel Safier in correspondence with Art Gallery of South Australia, 15 October 2007. It was previously thought Tilbrook was born in Llandudno, Wales.2‘Reminiscences of Henry Hammond Tilbrook’, hand-written copies in possession of descendants. Some of his notebooks are in State Library of South Australia.3Northern Argus, 5 January 1934.4See for further information on this trip.5See for further information on these trips.6Northern Argus, 26 April 1901.7See Alisa Bunbury, The photography of H.H. Tilbrook: South Australia at the Turn of the Century, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2001.
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, pp.304-06.
Writers:
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1848
- Summary
- Photographer Henry Tilbrook embarked on many photographic expeditions around South Australia. He experimented with various photographic apparatuses in order to capture a variety of scenic views and portraits. In 2001, his work was featured at the Art Gallery of South Australia, in the exhibition ‘The Photography of H.H. Tilbrook: South Australia at the Turn of the Century’.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1937
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- An architect and timber miller, Francis Bird was born in England in 1845. He arrived in Western Australia in 1869 aboard the Bridgetown. On the 14th of February, 1871 he married Augusta Maud Earnshaw. He lived at Woodloes, Cannington, a home he designed and built in 1871. This still stands and is reputedly in good condition. It is listed by the National Trust. Bird was in partnership with Benjamin Mason as a timber miller at Cannington. He relinquished this interest in 1877 and began practising as an architect. Bird acted as Colonial Architect in 1884-5 following Richard Roach Jewell’s retirement and until the appointment of George Temple-Poole in 1885. Francis Bird was responsible for a number of houses in the Claremont area built for the upper echelons of colonial society. Corry Lynn and Craigmiur were two of these. With respect to the former, he built his own home in 1885 on fifty acres, which he had bought from J. S. Parker in 1884. This was later known as Corry Lynn. When Bird moved to Albany in 1889, this property was sold to John Elliot Richardson, pastoralist and the ? Methodist Ladies College of Roebourne. Thomas G. Briggs, quarry owner and one time mayor of Claremont bought the house in 1909. On the larger part of the land the Methodist Ladies College was built. Craigmuir at the Methodist Ladies College was designed by Francis Bird for Judge Burnside in 1888. Nearby were another two houses built for Messrs Macklin and Bennion c1888 that reputedly became part of Christchurch Grammar School. These no longer remain. When Bird moved to Albany he partially rebuilt the historic Spencer home Strawberry Hill, after it was damaged by fire. RED SECTIONS
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1845
- Summary
- Architect and timber miller. Bird was responsible for a number of houses in the Claremont area built for the upper echelons of colonial society.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1937
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1937-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in London on 4 January 1844, daughter of James Huggins, believed to be the first lawyer to practise at Kapunda, South Australia, and Henrietta, née Kilby. On 10 April 1867 Amie became the second wife of William Hoare Benham, who continued her father’s legal practice at Kapunda. They had 12 children. Amie lived in Kapunda until the 1920s; she died at Clarence Park on 25 January 1937. As Miss Huggins she was awarded prizes at the 1866 exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts for Winter Scene ; Allen’s Creek, Kapunda ; Waterfall in Switzerland ; and Buchsgarten, North Tyrol (a copy in watercolours). Her copy of the heads of a madonna and child, also on display though not a prize-winner, was said by the critic of the South Australian Advertiser to show 'of how much that is really good in painting Miss Huggins is capable’.
At the following year’s exhibition the new Mrs W.H. Benham was awarded eight prizes: for drawings, watercolour landscapes and oil and watercolour copies of well-known paintings. This time the South Australian Advertiser considered her best work to be that awarded the prize for the 'best Watercolour Painting, Landscape by Ladies, original or copy’, judging her winning entry in the open watercolour landscape category as less effective: 'the moon is not, and does not throw a pure white light, and…by inattention to this simple point, the whole mystery of moonlight and shadow is entirely lost’. In 1868 she received eight more prizes. Bridge near Allandale , described as 'a pretty view of a country bridge with a couple of genuine gum-trees by the side of a small creek’, was judged the best pencil landscape sketch, while an 'exquisite little cabinet sketch’ depicting a gold-prospector’s camp won second prize for a watercolour painting illustrative of colonial life (no first prize was awarded). She also won the prize for the 'best oil painting, a study of a tree or trees, by amateurs, original or copy’.
At the society’s 1869, 1870 and 1871 exhibitions Mrs Benham received further prizes for her oil and watercolour paintings and drawings, her subjects continuing to be landscapes, still-life and trees.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 January 1844
- Summary
- Amie Benham entered her landscape watercolours in several Adelaide exhibitions in the late 1860s/early 1870s and garnered various prizes and acclaim for her artworks.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Jan-37
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-33.8894781 Longitude151.1274125 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1936-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ashfield, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher and illustrator, was born on 9 May 1895. After attending Presbyterian Ladies’ College, she went on to study at the University of Sydney. She graduated BA in 1917 and, with the financial support of her father, then studied at Julian Ashton’s School of Art under Albert Collins . At university Crane had begun to sketch and draw caricatures, many of which appeared in Hermes , the Sydney University Union magazine. For example, Oval Oddities: Alumnae Versus Alumnos (vol 22, no. 2, August 1916, 61) shows pandemonium on a hockey field when male and female students play each other. Women’s emancipation, particularly in academic areas, was a concern and she often used her artistic abilities to comment on this.
Little is known of Crane’s sojourn at Ashton’s although William Moore mentions her as one of the younger skilled brigade, along with Grace Crowley and Myra Cocks . From this time until 1921 her work was hung annually in the Society of Artists’ exhibitions held in the Education Department’s Art Gallery. In her second year of exhibiting the Society’s catalogue reproduced several of her works, all evidently narrative illustrations for books.
Very quickly Crane became a book illustrator (beginning with Zora Cross’s The City of Riddle-Me-Ree , Sydney 1918) as well as a designer of Christmas cards and bookplates (example of the latter in Jeremy De Rozario Bookplate Collection, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia, donated 2000). Sir William Dixson’s library included N. J. Cocks, The Betty Songs , Sydney, W.Geo. Smith, n.d. [1919?] (91/834), poems about WWI such as I. The Call ('Belgium in her trouble’), II. The Riding of the King’s Men , XXIII. Betty Receives a Cable Message “Wounded” (ill.). Many of her drawings emanate from a world of fantasy, although the reality of war is also observable. There is little doubt that Crane defined herself as an artist and set out to prove that she could survive in that industry. Indeed, she wanted to show her family that she could earn a living from her chosen career.
Crane made little distinction between high art and decorative images and her highly stylised quality work became relatively well known. In 1920 she exhibited several watercolours with the Society of Artists and was hung with the 'male greats’. One of these, The Tired Dancer , was bought by the National Art Gallery of NSW; a critic in the Sydney Mail (22 September 1920) wrote that the purchase 'well deserved that honour’. The Plain Princess , a very linear watercolour, was reproduced in The Society of Artists Pictures (special number of Art in Australia , 1920, plate 40). A year later the same Sydney Mail critic wrote about another work that 'Crane’s watercolours reveal conspicuous ability’.
Between 1922 and 1926 Crane, like many Australian artists, decided to further her career by travelling in Europe and studying in England. Etchings made in England include Jeune Homme Ias [Weary young man] (1924, NGA). She sent works home for exhibition in Sydney during her absence. On her return to Australia in 1927, she married fellow artist Kenneth Macqueen and moved to Millmerran in rural Queensland. In 1930 she exhibited for the last time. Crane gave birth to a daughter, Mildred, in 1932 and a son, Revan, in 1935. She died in 1936.
Writers:
Eisenberg, JosephKerr, Joan
Note: additional information: changes made according to entry on Kenneth Macqueen, ADB 15
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 9 May 1895
- Summary
- Early 20th century sketcher and book illustrator. She was a contemporary of Grace Crowley and Myra Cocks - the three women were among the 'younger skilled brigade' at Julian Ashton's Art School. Crane made little distinction between so called high art and decorative work, and became very well known for her stylised aesthetic.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1936
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude61.1529386 Longitude8.7876653 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1936-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Norway
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1881
- Summary
- Lars Halvorsen was a Norwegian boat builder who immigrated to Australia in 1924 where he established a boat design and construction firm. After his death, his sons formed a boat-building company Lars Halvorsen Sons.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-36
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude48.2 Longitude16.366667 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1936-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1874
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Jan-36
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1936-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1873
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Apr-36
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude57.15 Longitude-2.11 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1936-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- Meston was a sign writer and painter who was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. He immigrated to New Zealand in 1884 where he was apprenticed to a sign writer. He came to the goldfields in Western Australia in 1887. By 1901 he was in partnership in Perth off 245 Murray Street as Meston & Walters “Signwriters and Decorative Artists, William Street: Glass gilders and embossers, calico signs, designs and estimates, banners, illuminated addresses, scenic artists, cottage plates, monograms, house painting and paperhanging.” This firm continued until Meston’s death in 1936. Meston was largely self-taught as an artist. He joined the West Australian Society of Arts in 1898 and remained a member until 1933, exhibiting regularly. He was President of the Society between 1924-1927. His oil painting Harvest Otago New Zealand was admired at the 1898 exhibition: “[t]he horses are well drawn and the colouring and technique are masterful, save the sudden change to the cold distance, which is inclined to be harsh as well.” Meston also exhibited regularly with Phillip Goatcher in the exhibition room under the Town Hall. In 1922 he exhibited a set of six 'autolithographs’. He exhibited nine watercolours as well as two oils in 1926. In 1930 his The Reward was exhibited with some smaller paintings. A 1932 watercolour is in the collection of the J. S. Battye Library of Western Australian History.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- Sign writer and painter who was an exhibiting member of the West Australian Society of Arts and served as its president in 1924-1927.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1936
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-37.7984 Longitude144.9785 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1936-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fitzroy, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and author, was born on 28 April 1869 at Fitzroy, Melbourne, only daughter of Charles Muskett, a bookseller, and Phoebe, née Charlwood who carried on the business after her husband died in 1873. Alice’s brother Philip became a medical practitioner in Sydney; in 1885 Alice and her dying mother joined him there. Alice became the second pupil at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School while continuing to live with Philip until he died in 1909; she endowed her old art school with a prize for landscape painting in his memory in 1928.
From 1890 Muskett exhibited annually with the NSW Art Society. On 15 October 1894 she was elected to its council, but resigned in February 1895 in order to go to Paris and study at Colarossi’s (1895-98).
Indirectly a great compliment has been paid to Mr Julian Ashton, of the Julian Academy here, in the praise bestowed upon Miss Alice Muskett, now in Paris, where she has lately exhibited her first work at the Salon. In a long letter written to Miss Muskett by Ivan Dorsner, the custodian and instructor of the Colarossi classes, during the absence of the visiting professors, that painter speaks enthusiastically of the technique with which she began work in Paris. It is the style taught at the Munich Art Academy, and is followed by many famous artists whose names he quotes’ ( Sydney Morning Herald 25 July 1896, 7: info. Ingrid Anderson).
She had a painting hung in the 1895 Paris Salon and was included in the 'Australian Art in London’ exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in 1898; Study of Roses was purchased from it by the National Art Gallery of NSW. Later that year she returned to Sydney. Work had been shown with the Society of Artists in 1895-97, while she was away, including a small oil still life Violets and Old Letters in 1896 and The Red Ribbon , a 'remarkably strong’ pastel of a dark-haired young girl, in 1897. In 1898 the NAGNSW purchased her Ave Imperator! Morituri te Salutant from the Society of Artists’ exhibition for £42 – a flower painting of over-ripe yellow and crimson roses, plus 'scattered leaves and the suggestion of a skull grinning in the dark gloom of the background [which] give point to the ingenious application of the Latin text’, stated the SMH critic (27 August 1898, 7). The Day’s at the Dawn (72 gns) was included in the Commonwealth Exhibition of Australian Art in 1901.
According to Craig Judd, the first illustration by a woman published in the Bulletin was Alice Muskett’s picture of puritans illustrating her own poem, The Pillory 1905
Muskett continued to show regularly with the Society of Artists and her paintings were reproduced in its catalogues. In 1907 the Sydney Mail reported that, despite being 'quite young’, she was the only woman on its committee of management. The Mail 's art critic called her the 'first among lady exhibitors in the present art season’ – which included the First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work in Melbourne, to which she contributed paintings including The Shrine ('exquisitely painted’, according to William Moore). At the 1909 Society of Artists’ exhibition, the Lone Hand reported that 'Miss Muskett’s triptych, “Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh,” is a harmonious decoration rich in color; as for her roses, she has always painted flowers most sympathetically’ ('The Art of the Year’, Lone Hand 1 April 1910, 665 [by various 'art correspondents’]).
As well as flowers, Muskett painted views, e.g. In Cumberland Street c.1902 (o/c, transferred from AGNSW to ML 1920), and produced stylish black and white illustrations for various Sydney journals. Her strong b/w illustration (not a cartoon) of figures in US Puritan dress, drawn to illustrate a very poor poem she wrote about a wicked woman 'who has slain Love’ entitled The Pillory , was published in the Bulletin on 6 July 1905. It appears to have been the first illustration by a woman ever to appear in that paper(information Craig Judd). She contributed illustrated articles to Lone Hand : 'White Witch’ 1 (July 1907), 264, 'Playing the game’ 2 (January 1908), 3 16-319, and 'Tapers’ 13 (June 1913), 130 (from index). She decorated other writers’ verses in Lone Hand too, including Hugh McCrae’s The New Year , 1 February 1908, 454. A romantic self-portrait accompanies her poem Aspiration in the Sydney Mail of 9 December 1908:
Once in the blue hour of dawn I saw glowing
The rose of the world that fulfils all desire…
Muskett’s commentary 'The Royal Academy through Australian Spectacles (being a letter by Alice Muskett to the Editors)’, published in the July-August 1910 issue of Art and Architecture when she was revisiting London, is very different in tone:
There are far too many pictures painted, it seems to me… it is a thousand pities this same energy and talent is not put into applied art of some kind… There are 777 oil paintings in the Academy this year… frankly bad as a whole.
Although mainly appalled by the number and quality of British works (and the painters’ 'self-complaisant lethargy’), she was also unimpressed by the Australian exhibitors, singling out Thea Proctor , Tom Roberts , John Longstaff , George Lambert and Arthur Streeton for some equally tart judgments ('Alfred East seems to be more like Streeton used to be, than Streeton himself does’.)
After painting in Egypt in 1911, Muskett returned to Sydney. There she shared a studio with Florence Rodway and became active in the Society of Women Painters. During World War I she worked in a soldiers’ canteen in London. Back at home after the war she lived in poverty (in rented rooms at Neutral Bay from the late 1920s). As 'Jane Laker’, her maternal grandmother’s name, she wrote a semi-autobiographical feminist novel set in Sydney in 1913, Among the Reeds (1933). In 1936 she suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died on 17 July.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 28 April 1869
- Summary
- Federation era painter, illustrator and author. Residing for most of her life in Sydney, she was internationally exhibited.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-Jul-36
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1856-01-01 End Date1936-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland
- Biography
- Cabinetmaker and woodcarver born in Scotland who arrived on the Fitzroy in 1883. He was one of the large team who worked for Smith & Co in Goderich Street, Perth. He lived in Ruth Street, Perth. This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1856
- Summary
- Cabinetmaker and woodcarver born in Scotland who arrived in 1883.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1936
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude51.2800275 Longitude1.0802533 Start Date1855-01-01 End Date1936-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Canterbury, UK
- Biography
- Architect who was born in Canterbury, England of Edward Beasley (a dyer) and his wife Caroline. Beasley was educated at Wesley College in Sheffield before being articled to a firm in Dover. He then worked in London, Oxford and Carlisle before going to South Africa where he worked for the public works. He married Fanny Clarke in 1877 in England. In 1886 Beasley arrived in Victoria. Beasley opened his own practice and one of his first commissions was the Presbyterian church in St Kilda in 1887. He lectured at The Working Men’s College (now RMIT), the University of Melbourne and was involved in the Victorian Institute of Architects. Beasley and Little went into practice together in 1891-1895. They undertook a number of major commissions. In 1893 Beasley presented lectures at The Working Men’s College. He is listed in private practice in the West Australian Post Office Directory of 1897. In January 1896 Beasley joined the Public Works in Western Australia as a specification draftsman. From July 1897 he was appointed Assistant Architect and in 1901 he was Acting Chief Architect. Beasley and John Grainger had previously worked in a variety of interconnecting practices in Melbourne including Grainger’s own practice. Beasley had joined the Public Works in a lower position than Grainger and succeeded him in 1905. He is credited with designs for the Art Gallery, the Public Library, Fremantle Technical School and, with Grainger, Parliament House among many other places. He retired in 1917. Beasley was a member of the West Australian Society of Arts and exhibited with them in 1896. This was when the aims of the society were “to advance Painting, Sculpture, Architectures and Kindred Arts in the colony.” There were many architects in those first few years. His exhibit was the Design for St Albans Church Armidale. Beasley was a conservative architect knowledgable in the eclectic architectural language of the late 19th century. He believed that the style of buildings should suit their purpose. He was responsible for the Art Gallery Wing of the Museum, Government House Ballroom, Parliament House, College Claremont Teachers’ and a great number of Government works throughout the State. In his retirement he lectured at the University of Western Australia 1920-21 and retired to live in Albany where he became choirmaster of Scots Church.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1855
- Summary
- Architect credited with designs for the Art Gallery, the Public Library, Fremantle Technical School and, with John Grainger, Parliament House among many other places.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1936
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1936-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tasmania
- Biography
- painter, wax modeller and art teacher, was born in Tasmania on 24 May 1848 and educated at Miss Garrett’s Ladies College in Hobart. She gained a reputation for her paintings of Tasmanian wildflowers on wooden table tops and other furniture, which she exhibited widely. Her album, 'Wildflowers of Tasmania’, is held at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, which also owns an album of paintings by women artists presented in 1883 to Lady Smith, wife of the Governor of Tasmania, that includes some of her watercolour and gouache wildflower paintings.
At the 82nd meeting of the Photo Science and Art Association of Tasmania, Hope showed 'two very beautiful oil colour sketches’: a view of Mount Direction and one of the Upper Derwent. Her series of drawings of the poisonous plants of Queensland was published as identification for stock-owners, Backhouse states.
Margaret Hope died at Hobart on 25 April 1936.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 May 1848
- Summary
- Painter, wax modeller and art teacher, Hope was born and worked in Tasmania. She gained a reputation for her paintings of Tasmanian wildflowers on wooden table tops and other furniture, which she exhibited widely.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Apr-36
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude55.6100589 Longitude-4.4964652 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1936-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kilmarnock, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- crochet lace-maker, embroiderer, painter, writer and amateur astronomer, was a woman of strong character who devoted 45 years of her long life to the development of a new form of crocheted lace. Born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, on 22 April 1842, she was the eldest of the eight children of Thomas and Matilda Lang. When she was 13, the family followed Thomas Lang out to Australia on the Star of the East and settled in Ballarat. From surviving letters it appears that she and her father were very close; he called her 'Maggie Ann’ and shared with her a strong interest in spelling reform, a subject on which she later wrote.
In 1864 Margaret Ann Lang married Edwin Richard Field, a mining engineer whose pioneering survey and prospecting work tended to take him to some of the wildest and most remote parts of Australia. In the early years of their marriage they lived in Costerfield (Vic.), named after Edwin and his mining partner Alan Coster. When Edwin went to the Gulf of Carpentaria Margaret Ann trekked north with their three children to join him in Normanton where, like many pioneer women, she established a home and cared for her children in the face of isolation and considerable hardship. This she eased through the study of astronomy and through countless hours absorbed in experimenting with her crochet hook.
In 1909, about seven years after her husband’s death, Margaret Ann published the first of her two books, Australian Lace Crochet (Easy and Artistic) , under the name of '“A Briton Beyond the Seas” (Mrs Edwin Field)’. In it she presented instructions for the delicate crocheted lace she had so painstakingly developed, with each different design called after a star or constellation, thus linking the two great passions of her life. Both the London and Melbourne press received Australian Lace Crochet favourably and, seeking to have her work endorsed, Mrs Field wrote to Queen Alexandra. The queen’s commendation was duly given and a lengthy correspondence with the ladies in waiting followed. Sadly, Australian Lace-Crochet never achieved the widespread acclaim that its inventor had so optimistically imagined. Her second book, The Stars for 3D (1910), is an instructional booklet for star gazers which describes the planets, comets and meteors and explains how to find the stars and constellations of the southern sky.
Margaret Ann Field lived to be 94, always retaining a strong allegiance to her British, especially Scottish, origins. She also retained her adventurous spirit, returning to London in 1917 – aged 75 – in order to attend the Slade School of Art. She died in 1936, remembered by her grandchildren as an indomitable old lady with an ear trumpet.
Writers:
Sumner, Christina
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 22 April 1842
- Summary
- A painter and embroiderer who dedicated much of her life to the development of a new form of crocheted lace. An amateur astronomer, she wrote two books, one on Australian lace crochet that received a commendation from Queen Alexandra, and another, an instruction booklet on star-gazing.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1936
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1936-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia
- Biography
- sketcher and professional photographer, was born in South Australia, only son of William Henry Belcher, a tailor, and his wife Elizabeth. He began working as a photographer with the newly arrived George Freeman in 1861; their studio was at 97 Hindley Street, Adelaide. He seems to have had his own firm in 1865; E.W. Belcher & Co.'s photograph of the architect G.S. Kingston’s neo-Gothic monument to Colonel Light was published as an engraving in the Illustrated Sydney News on 16 July. He was again listed in partnership with Freeman in 1866-67 at the Town Hall Photographic Gallery ('opposite the Adelaide Town Hall’). He seems not to have moved to Rundle Street with Freeman in the 1870s, working on his own until at least 1885 from various Adelaide addresses, as well as at Port Adelaide, Prospect and Wallaroo. Davies and Stanbury also note an undated carte-de-visite produced by E.W. & W.H. Belcher as 'Belcher Brothers’.
Belcher married Catherine Elizabeth Moulder(?) at North Adelaide on 26 September 1877; they had at least two children. He died on 10 November 1936 and was buried in the Congregational section of the Mitcham Cemetery. An album of 76 drawings by Belcher dating from about 1869 to 1902 is in the Dixson Galleries at the State Library of New South Wales.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1842
- Summary
- Edward William Belcher worked as a professional photographer in 19th century South Australia, alternatively in partnership with George Freeman and on his own.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Nov-36
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-37.585285 Longitude141.4037762 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1935-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Casterton, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Casterton (Vic.) and educated at Queens College, Ballarat, where she boarded until 1903, completing her schooling at Melbourne Church of England Girls Grammar School. Her first art tuition was in charcoal drawing with Eva Hopkins of Ballarat. In about 1914 she took drawing classes under Louis McCubbin at Melbourne’s National Gallery School, but then chose to study under the exciting and impressive Max Meldrum who had recently returned to Melbourne from Paris. During her year with him, Clarice totally embraced his theory of art as optical truth based on tonal relationships and for the rest of her life regarded herself as a realist and remained loyal to his teaching, if not his practice. Meldrum stated to several contemporaries that he found her work unique.
In 1918, Clarice’s father, Joseph, moved to the Melbourne bayside suburb of Beaumaris with his wife, elder daughter, Hilda, and Clarice; here she spent the rest of her life. With demanding, ill parents, she dutifully cared for the home; thus her painting time was limited. Her studio was the kitchen table; consequently most of her work was executed out of doors in the early mornings and evenings when she would wander the cliffs and shoreline with a home-made cart which held her easel and painting equipment.
She took her subject matter from what she found around her and could turn a strip of wet tar-sealed road with equally unpicturesque telegraph poles into a pictorial poem, evocative of some eternal yet always elusive truth. Her subjects encompassed delicately restrained sunsets and grey, misty days with a tram or T-model Ford, lights glowing in the fog. She was a master of the early motor car, yet these appeared in her paintings only because they came rattling into sight at the moment she was truthfully depicting what she saw. She worked swiftly and compulsively, never reworking a painting. She worked for the sheer joy of it and rarely signed her canvases.
Clarice usually exhibited with the Meldrum circle of painters. She had her first solo exhibition at the Athanaeum in 1923, and showed there annually until 1934. She also participated in Twenty Melbourne Painters and Women’s Art Club shows until the early 1930s. Her work usually received hostile reviews (especially from J.S. MacDonald and Blamire Young) and very few of her paintings sold in her lifetime. All who knew her, however, admired her ability to paint and had a deep affection and sympathy with her role in her home life. She had a passionate love of theatre, ballet, classical piano, poetry and prose. She treasured her collection of murder mysteries and macabre stories, along with Greek tragedies and novels by Tolstoy, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood.
Clarice later took a few classes with Justus Jorgensen to develop her still-life painting techniques, joining his group of students at the annual San Remo summer camps. These appear to have been the happiest times of her life, where she could paint from early morning until dark. During her last years she began to use more colour in her work to reinforce form and developed a daring release of design and a modernity of style that holds its own with many later artists.
In 1934 her mother died of a stroke. Clarice, already exhausted from nursing both parents, became very frail. Still painting with fervour in all weathers on whatever fragments of board or material available, she became even more withdrawn. In 1935 she was admitted to a private hospital in Sandringham, where she died from the effects of double pneumonia. A memorial exhibition was held at the Athenaeum Gallery in Collins Street in May 1936. In 1971-72 two major exhibitions were mounted at the Rosalind Humphries Galleries, Melbourne, to wide acclaim.
Writers:
Hollinrake, Rosalind
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1887
- Summary
- Passionate about the philosophy and practice of painting and inspired by the teachings of Max Meldrum, Beckett practiced her craft at every available moment. As the dutiful daughter of infirm parents these moments proved limited but Beckett nevertheless managed to exhibit regularly throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. It was only after her early death in 1935 that her work began to receive the acclaim it deserved.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1935
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude-33.8961132 Longitude151.1801893 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1935-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newtown, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- comic artist, watercolour, oil and scene painter, exhibited at the Royal Art Society of NSW in 1907 and was included in the Sydney Art School retrospective in 1933.
He worked for J.C. Williamson as a theatrical scene painter. A set of six humorous postcard designs featuring 'The Kiss’ as sent from the five Australian capitals and one from NZ were printed in garish colours by the NSW Bookstall Co. Another set, published anonymously, shows young women with dresses teasingly blown in the wind.
Board entered a comical drawing of a gigantic stork reading a book watched by a shocked tiny kangaroo with a row of waratahs in the background in the Bookfellow’s 1907 'Decorative Drawing Competition – Headpieces and Tailpieces’, but it was disqualified, perhaps because it had already been published elsewhere ( Bookfellow 18 April 1907, ill. 8).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- Leslie Board was an early 20th century painter and comic artist. A student at the Sydney Art School, Board worked for a time as a theatrical scene painter for J.C. Williamson.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1935
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude58.7523778 Longitude25.3319078 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1935-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Estonia
- Biography
- commercial photographer, was born in Estonia. He came to Australia in 1889 and worked as a professional photographer in Sydney before moving to the Lyndhurst area of NSW circa 1900, where he chronicled the life and times of the small communities of Mandurama and Lyndhurst in the high country of central-west NSW, not far from Bathurst and Orange, from 1900 to 1915. John Thompson’s book Faces of Mandurama (published by the National Library of Australia [NLA] in 1998) is a selection of Lumme’s Mandurama Collection of some 3,500 glass-plate negatives, rediscovered in the 1970s under the old Lumme house at Burnt Yards near Mandurama and donated to the NLA by R.M. Hines of Mandurama. It includes two photographs of Aborigines of the central west of NSW c.1900, one being a well-dressed Aboriginal girl (possibly Wiradjuri?) holding a well-dressed white baby (P82.1), the other a group photograph of four Aboriginal and four white children posed outside a wooden building with a European man wearing a hat, evidently the local schoolteacher.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1865
- Summary
- Professional photographer who chronicled the life and times of the small communities of Mandurama and Lyndhurst in the high country of central-west NSW, not far from Bathurst and Orange, from 1900 to 1915.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1935
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude57.15 Longitude-2.11 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1935-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist, poet and journalist, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on 30 March 1862, son of David Henry Souter, engineer, and his wife Ann Smith, née Grant. After studying at the South Kensington Art School, London (c.1880), he joined the staff of the Aberdeen Bon Accord (Aberdeen). He spent five years working as an illustrator and journalist in Natal, South Africa (1881-85), started a paper that failed and was a colour sergeant in the Prince Alfred Guards. On 17 February 1886 at Port Elizabeth he married Jessie (Janet) Swanson (d.1931). They came to Melbourne [apparently in 1886] but had settled in Sydney in 1887 (Mills says arr. Melbourne in 1886 but had moved to Sydney by 1887). At Sydney he worked as an editor for John Sands, later for William Brooks. From 1 July 1887 (p.7), he regularly contributed cartoons to the Tribune , along with Alfred Clint (and another contributor signing “Whitstocke” in 1886, who is very similar in style to Souter & there is some speculation it could be a pseudonym). Later he was famous for his drawings of cats and for his stylish society cartoons, although this short, stocky, hard-headed Scot was said to have had few social graces himself.
Souter began contributing to the Bulletin in 1892. He had had at least one cartoon a week in it for more than 40 years, ranging from art nouveau ones influenced by Beardsley and The Yellow Book to art deco and flapper age social commentary in the 1920s-30s. Included in c.1930s list of Bulletin Artists (ML Px*D557 pt 5, ’23 & 24’). His Bulletin cartoon, 'At the N.S.W. Society of Artists’ Show’, published 12 September 1896, 10, includes parodies of eight works in the exhibition by Streeton , Roberts , Fullwood , Ashton (and others unnamed or illegible in the sighted example). A member of the Art Society of NSW (later RAS) from 1889, he exhibited black and white drawings, watercolours and, later, oil paintings with it until 1904 and helped found its Brush Club in 1888. He also helped found the Society of Artists in 1895, was president in 1901-02 and remained a member until at least 1918. His oil paintings were often as fin de siecle in style and subject as his cartoons.
The 1898 Grafton Gallery 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’, held from 2 April to 7 May 1898, included his (cat 264) 'The Kitchen Lancers’ 1897, a lively and stylish ink cartoon of a dance in the servants’ hall. It is now in the Art Gallery of NSW, purchased from the Bulletin in 1968, when ACP owned the company. The 1906 Society of Artists catalogue lists six watercolours by Souter, all landscapes according to Mills (who quotes his comic biography with 'sic’ after 'arrived 1885’). Souter’s advertisement for La Boheme nightclub/ restaurant was also featured in the Society of Artists’ 1907 catalogue, along with his Royal Doulton-ware cats in a Farmer’s ad. The cat was also reproduced on Art Nouveau vases and dinner services for the Civil Service Stores in Sydney. Seven lots of cartoons and drawings were lent to the 1918 AGNSW loan exhibition, including cat.563, “drawings” lent by the Bulletin newspaper company.
Souter illustrated articles in the Town and Country Journal , e.g. for the serial The Raft in the Bush that began 19 April 1902, 40, as well as stories and verse in Lone Hand . He also wrote articles for Lone Hand : 'Australian drama’ 4 (Feb. 1909), 447-449, 'Commercial art: money making avenues open to the art student’ 9 (Sept 1911), 428-433, 'Dancing Girl’ 11 (Sept 1912), 399-405, 'Australian Girl’ 10 (February 1912), 399-405, the one-act play 'In the Park’ 12 (April 1913), 458-466, and a story, 'Blue Mountain Blue’, published in vol.13 (June 1913), 91-95. Examples of his Lone Hand drawings include a couple in the surf together, published 1 December 1910, 103; an unsigned advertisement for La Boheme 2 December 1907, xi; theatre pictures, e.g. The Skirt dancer’s Hand June 1907, 218, Contralto dramatique 1 July 1907, 257 and Prima Donna assoluta 1 August 1907, 412; and a pen-and-ink Hockey Girl 7 (May 1910), 50.
In 1904-11 Souter edited Art and Architecture . An original 1919 pen and ink cartoon of a beach belle with parasol talking to a male admirer (for an unidentified publication, possibly Lone Hand ), 'Oh no! I’ve never come down here without a covering of some sort’, was offered for sale in Josef Lebovic’s collectors’ list 58 (1996), cat.14 (ill.). The eight cartoons Rolfe chose to illustrate Souter’s Bulletin work of 1895-1901 (pp.130-31) include: Ne Plus Ultra 17 March 1900: “Oh, nothing Australian is good enough for her! Her husband came from America!! She gets all her dresses in Paris!!! And now I hear she is going to England for her health!!!!”, and Between Poses 1898 (male artist to female model): '“Are you making a fortune at the 'Altogether’?”/ “Oh, no, only a bare living!”’ Other Bulletin cartoons include Q.E.D. n.d.: '“How is it that so many worn-out old johnnies have such up-to-date wives?”/ “Oh, that’s easy. A fellow has got to slave himself to death before he can afford them”’ (ill. Rolfe, 212); '“Terrible war—isn’t it?”/ “Frightful—why this is the seventh Red Cross Dance I’ve been to this week!”’ 1915 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 154); 'Birds of a Feather’ 1923: '“Oh, I say, are you married?”/ “Would it make any difference?”/ “Not a bit—so am I!”’(ill. Rolfe, 182); 'The Body Was Identified’ 1926 [stylish smoking man and woman in evening dress, with cat], '“How did dad know we borrowed his car last night?”/ “So unfortunate! He was the old pot we pushed over at the tram terminus” (ill. Rolfe, 284); 'Snapped’ 1929 (two stylish women on beach, one with cat on bathing costume): '“This beach always makes me sad. I lost my best boy here two seasons ago.”/ “What! Shark?”/ “No—Sheila” (ill. Rolfe, 297); '“Do you approve of clubs for women, uncle?”/ “Ye-e-es—but only after every other way of quietening them has failed!”’ n.d. (ill. Lindesay 1979, 193).
Souter was founding art editor of Art and Architecture (later Architecture , then Salon ), published 1904-11, Australia’s first art journal (acc. Mills). Of his own painting, often fin de siecle in style and subject, he wrote in Art and Architecture in 1909:
“most of my own art, I am told, is only suited for private bars, and wall decorations for those popular places of resort are more cheaply … obtained for [from?] the continents of Europe and America.” (there is speculation that the quote also appears in Mills.)
Souter’s employers, the printers and publishers William Brooks & Co., published many of the books he illustrated, e.g. Ethel Turner’s Gum Leaves (1900), a book of his own verse and four later novels. His only known lithographed poster is an undated WWI colour lithograph published by William Brooks for the 'Win the War League’: 'It is nice in the surf but What About the men in the trenches. Go and help’, ill. Josef Lebovic collectors’ list 1996 no.58, cat.17, and in NLA Recruiting exhibition 1996-97. As well as writing and illustrating books for children, he illustrated children’s books by other authors. He initiated and drew ' Weary Willie and the Count de Main for Australia’s first comic strip supplement, four pages in the Sydney ( Sunday ) Sun , which commenced in November 1921. His early strips of Sharkbait Sam were done for the same paper. He illustrated Ethel Turner’s books for children – Gum Leaves , The Raft in the Bush – and for several years from 1899 edited William Brooks’s monthly Children’s Newspaper .
Souter also wrote verse, stories, plays and art criticism for the Bulletin , Art in Australia and Lone Hand and judged some literary contests held by the last. His operetta The Grey Kimona was produced at Adelaide in 1909; he illustrated two books for the NSW Bookstall Company in 1911. The first Artists’ Ball at Sydney Town Hall (21 August 1922) had decorations supervised by Souter; Cec Hartt went as his own Smith’s Weekly joke block character, The Dummy; Stan Cross was a toreador, George Finey a convict (Peter Kirkpatrick, p.272). Everyone wore masks but removed them at midnight. Two artists’ balls were held in 1923, both at the Town Hall. The first, on 25 July by the Society of Artists to raise money for the London exhibition of Australian art, was more exclusive and dull (several people dressed as famous paintings; others included George Lambert as a Persian prince and Leon Gellert as a Lambert self-portrait; Millie Sheldon as Gainsborough’s Mrs Siddons won the prize). The second, on 27 September, also had decorations supervised by D.H. Souter ('a jazz phantasy’ – including Cubist decorations). Souter himself was 'King of the Cannibal Isles’ with attendant savages, and it was here that Dulcie Deamer came dressed as a cavewoman; Percy Benison was 'Miss 1923’ with a head-dress of chickens. The Artists’ Ball of 29 August 1924 had theme of childhood, with decorations again by Souter, including an enormous toy Noah’s Ark on stage containing the band; Deamer’s verses gained her free admission and were illustrated by Souter for the Ball Souvenir (ML, and see Kirkpatrick, p.178); Finey wore a nappy secured with safety pins hiding bottle of rum and Benison went as Widow Twanki (Kirkpatrick, p.274). Souter’s full page cartoon, 'Artists’ Ball’ includes J.D. Moore as a 'Figien’, Miss Pye as 1830, Abbott Studios male and female soldiers, Miss Australia does the Charlston (woman blacked up in grass skirt with boomerang, almost certainly Dulcie Deamer as Aboriginal girl, a part she acted in a play she wrote), Miss Erna Livinge and Albert (Joe) Collins as cockneys, Franck Angel (as angel in top hat) and Syd Ure Smith as a (fat) sheik. The large original of his Artists’ Ball fantasy of 1927 is in the Norman Lindsay Gallery, National Trust (NSW).
1930s Souter cartoons published in Smith’s Weekly include 'Mother: “Heavens, George! The child’s swallowed the matches”./ Father: “Never mind, dear, use my cigarette-lighter” 8 February 1930. His novel, The Ticket in Tatts , was finally published in 1988. Fifty years claims he was a 'portrayer of lissom women, sardonic men and langorous cats, drawn with extreme grace of line’; Taylor (39) states that his drawings were 'reproduced in numberless American and English journals’.
The SLNSW has a large collection of uncatalogued originals (cartoons, illustrations and paintings, presumably from Souter’s estate). 1999 SLNSW B/W exhibition included a girl on a 'champion’ merino holding a shield in the shape of Australia inscribed with a sheep and carrying a sword-waratah with a wattle wreath on her head (drawn for the opening of the Harbour Bridge in 1932, acc. Jo Holder 2000). Also a man with sheep and a stockwhip in the city (used for 'Town and Country’) and an untitled bacchanalian scene. The last (used by SLNSW for its 1998 Christmas card) was intended as the endpaper in a book planned with Frank Morton in 1923 but abandoned on Souter’s death [sic – in 1935!].
Souter lived at Waverley, later Bondi, with his Scottish-born wife, Janet, their three daughters and two sons, David and Alexis (Lex). He composed verses for his children, which he later illustrated and published as Bush Babs (1933).
There is some speculation that Souter may have been related to Charles Henry Souter (born Aberdeen, 1864), a writer who began to contribute to the Bulletin in 1908. C.H. Souter, a country doctor who had been to China as a ship’s surgeon, wrote bush and sea ballads (Rolfe, 105-6, quotes bush ballad in 1929 Xmas issue). His last book, The Lonely Rose , was published in 1935.
Mitchell Library originals include: “Why Not?” (original Px*D526-1/ 136), a man camping it up in a low-cut evening suit with short trousers parodying his wife’s outfit (she is reeling back in shock), n.d. but early-ish (1920s? used in 1999 SLNSW b/w exhibition); “Now to me speak some of your language Australian.”/ “Righto; Coogee, Bondi, Callan Park.”/ “Ah, the Callan – what does it mean?”/ “Oh, just, there’s no place like home” (wartime drawing of female on soldier’s lap with sign 'English spoke here’ behind, PxD 526-1/5) published 11 July 1918; flapper and man on violently patterned couch (PxD 526/38) published 22 April 1926.
Portraits and self portraits include: D.H. Souter, 'Drawing on his imagination’ (self portrait with muse), Smith’s Weekly 1931 (original Norman Lindsay Gallery, National Trust NSW). David Low , 'Norman Lindsay and Souter Swop Models: Souter gets a Low deal here, the bear getting off with his cat’ (appeared in Lone Hand sans caption 1 April 1914, 318, republished Bulletin 1956: original unlocated). Photograph in Taylor, 39. Mick Paul , caricature of Souter as one of his cats, Lone Hand July 1907, 280. Will Dyson , caricature of Souter smoking a pipe with a cat coming out of it, published in 1907 Society of Artists’ catalogue, 29 (original unlocated), annotated:
“D.H. SOUTER, born in Scotland, escaped to Australia 1885 [arr. Melbourne 1886, acc. Mills, in Sydney by 1887] began an art career by drawing cats, and gradually worked his way up to [sic] animal kingdom, until now he can draw women. At an early art age, Souter decided that he ought to have imagination, and he got it. He has a Scotch habit of getting everything he wants. If it is nailed down hard—well, an odd nail or two comes in handy to a family man with a hen-house to keep in repair. So far, Souter has done little notable work in colour; but there is yet time…”
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 30 March 1862
- Summary
- Popular Scottish-born Federation period Sydney painter, cartoonist, poet and journalist, noted for his stylish cat cartoons.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1935
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude53.8985048 Longitude-0.6805281 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1935-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Londesborough, Yorkshire, England
- Biography
- Blamire Young was born at Londesborough, Yorkshire in 1862 the second son of twelve children. His father had decided that Blamire would pursue a career in the church but much to his parents’ disappointment this vocation held no appeal for the young Cambridge graduate. Immediately after receiving his arts degree in 1884 he departed England and sailed to Australia to take up a teaching position at Katoomba College in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. He was described by J. F. Bruce as being '6’ 3” high, aesthetic, virile, uniting the Cambridge manner with the Bohemian Spirit (with) a picturesque and paradoxical personality’. Whilst at Katoomba he made the acquaintance of Phil May who tutored Young in oil painting. This chance meeting with a recognised artist encouraged Young to consider art as a serious pursuit. His love of watercolour, however, soon ensured he abandoned oils, a medium he was never comfortable using.
In 1893 he returned to England and studied under Hubert von Herkomer at his art school in Bushey, Hertfordshire. It was here he met fellow student Mabel Sawyer who was an accomplished wood carver and they married in 1895. During this period he also met James Pryde and William Nicholson who were creating innovative poster designs via their commercial partnership known as The Beggarstaffs.
Young returned to Australia with his new bride and in 1896 took up residence in Melbourne. Influenced by The Beggarstaffs he worked in the area of poster design with Norman & Lionel Lindsay and Harry Weston. Ure Smith (quoted Caban p.55), along with many others, praised his poster work. His connection with the Lindsays led to an involvement with the Victorian Artists’ Society which was to last for the rest of his life. He exhibited with the Society in 1901-07, 1912, 1931 and 1934 and was a member of Council in 1909 under the Presidency of Frederick McCubbin.
The early years in Melbourne were financially lean and it was not until 1910, at the age of 48, that his work attained the level of public recognition required for him to derive a modest income from sales. These paintings were mostly small landscapes depicting the Mount Buffalo region of Victoria described in Young’s own words 'as curious Japanese-printlike drawings’ (see Marshall p.19). They were small in scale, low in price and many were sold.
In 1911 Australia’s Postmaster-General selected the Victorian Artists’ Association to nominate an artist for the design of Australia’s first stamp. Young was commissioned to perform the task and in 1913 a red one penny stamp was issued bearing a kangaroo within a map of Australia. This design was used continuously until 1935, the year of Young’s death, and superseded the state stamps used prior to that time.
His reputation grew as a result of a number of successful one-man exhibitions in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney but by late 1912 Young’s desire to establish himself as an artist in his country of birth lured him away from Australia for a second time. He and Mabel, now with two daughters, sailed to England via the Canary Islands, Portugal, Spain and France.
By 1913 they had settled in South Downs, Sussex where Young painted for approximately 18 months, however, World War 1 interrupted his artistic ambitions and in 1915 he enlisted in the British Army as a firearms instructor. There followed a 3-4 year hiatus from full time painting and exhibiting with little artistic output during that period.
After the war he exhibited in London at the Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Society of British Artists, Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, National Portrait Society, Fine Art Society and International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers. He also had pictures hung at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, The Salon in Paris and Art Institute of Chicago.
Having tasted some international success Young returned to Melbourne in 1923 and lived out the remainder of his days widely regarded as one of Australia’s greatest watercolourists. Today he is represented in the collections of every major public gallery in Australia.
In late 1923 he joined a select group of fourteen eminent artists to become a foundation member of the Australian Watercolour Institute. The Institute was modelled on the Royal Watercolour Society (established 1804) and American Watercolor Society (established 1867). The impetus for its creation was the growing feeling amongst Sydney watercolourists that the existing art societies were not giving their work adequate respect and exhibition space. He exhibited with the Institute in: 1924, 1926-28, 1930 and 1932.
Young painted the very atmospheric The Chaplain (Early Days) [also known as: Convict Prison, The Old Hobart Gaol and The Prison], watercolour and gouache on paper (1930-32), which showed the prison chaplain Rev. Robert Knopwood on his white horse, Timor, in front of the building along with some aborigines and a red-coated soldier on guard in front of his sentry box. This painting was one of Young’s Early Days series, a collection of eleven works which depicted Australian colonial history of the early 19th century. Other subjects of the series included: William Buckley, John Pascoe Fawkner, Lady Franklin, John Batman and the explorers Joseph Gellibrand and George Hesse. He also drew for The Lone Hand (including the cover of 2 March 1908 featuring an Aboriginal woman).
He was sought after as a book illustrator providing colour plates for Magic Casements by Helen E. Wallace (Melbourne, 1925) and The Golden Octopus, Legends of the South Seas by Viscount Hastings (London, 1928). His talents even extended to designing ladies’ gowns and programmes for musical evenings in Toorak.
Aside from his visual art Blamire Young was also a writer. He contributed to publications such as The Argus, The Lone Hand and Art in Australia in addition to over 400 articles for The Herald (Melbourne) in his capacity as art critic. He wrote the article “Fremiet’s 'Gorilla and Woman’”, The Lone Hand 1 (June 1907), 226-29 (see Fink monograph). He wrote plays, produced a number of art related manuscripts and in 1923 published his book The Proverbs of Goya.
He died on 14 January 1935 at his home in Montrose and was buried in the local cemetery at Lilydale. He was survived by his wife, Mabel and daughters, Ida and Lalage. Writing in The Argus on 19 January 1935, the prominent art author Bob Croll paid tribute to a great Australian:
‘Again I saw the man as we knew him. Tall, erect, quiet-spoken, gentle in debate, hesitating to correct when he knew so much better, generous to a fault – had he lived one hundred years he would have died too soon. I walked with him again through the bush and saw him stoop to discuss an orchid with a small boy; I heard him discourse of the symbolism of Goya, the merits of his favourite Australian poet John Shaw Neilson, the scientific growing of roses, and a wide variety of topics; and I watched him, the perfect host, pour perfect wine into delicate glasses while he discovered to his listeners his wonderful knowledge of vintages.’
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Stephen Robertson Marshall
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 9 August 1862
- Summary
- Originally a mathematics teacher, the English born Blamire Young established himself as an illustrator, painter, designer, writer and art critic. An article in 'Art and Australia' in 1921 described Young as being '6' 3" high, aesthetic, virile, uniting the Cambridge manner with the Bohemian Spirit (and with) a picturesque and paradoxical personality'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Jan-35
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-34.8741198 Longitude150.6004709 Start Date1861-01-01 End Date1935-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nowra, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born and lived most of her life in Nowra (New South Wales). Crippled from youth, she was sent by her father to live for a time in King Street, Sydney, so that she could manage daily classes at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School on crutches. As with many other favourite women students, Ashton painted her portrait (dated Christmas 1893, oil on wood panel, purchased from Sotheby’s in 1988 by Westfarmers Western Australia). Although best known for her still-life work, Margaret Fleming also painted portraits (e.g. Dr Hodgkinson as a boy, for his mother) as well as genre studies (e.g. Country Visitors c.1894).
Her still life “Study of Birds” was shown in the annual exhibition of the Art Society in Sydney in October 1894, and described by a reviewer as having “the neutral tints of the plumage delicately enforced in effective contrast” . She was an early member of the Society of Artists when it broke away from the Art Society in 1895 , and exhibited at its first exhibition in Sydney in September 1895. At that exhibition her still life “Cockatoo” was bought by the Art Gallery of NSW for £7/7/- , and was one of seven of the pictures bought that were reproduced in a newspaper at the time . It was exhibited at the Exhibition of Australian Art held at the Grafton Gallery, London in 1898. She gave her young niece, Annie McIlwraith, (1888-1969), her first painting lessons before Annie too went to Ashton’s, and probably taught art to other young women of the Nowra region.
An advertisement for the sale of the assets of a deceased estate in December 1904, which included a painting of hers, described her as an “eminent artist” , and in 1913 a journalistic survey of the contribution Australian women had made to the arts included her name amongst the women artists .
She died on 18 July 1935. Her obituary in The Shoalhaven News and South Coast Districts Advertiser makes no mention of her activities as an artist.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
joecampbell
JohnTaranto
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1861
- Summary
- A painter who lived most of her live in Nowra, she came to Sydney in order to study at Julian Ashton's. He painted her portrait in 1893. Fleming was included in the first exhibition of the Society of Artists in 1895.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 18-Jul-35
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1935-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, daughter of a well-known costumier (Madame) Mary Jane Beattie, was born in Sydney in 1860. Married Edwin Macrae in 1883. Died at North Sydney in 1935. Jessie painted two copies of Lucien Henry 's La Baie du Mirroir, New Caledonia and may have been his private student during the 1880s. The Powerhouse Museum purchased her painting of New Caledonia c.1999 and plans were made to borrow further Beattie copies for an exhibition of Henry’s work opening at the Museum in late 2000.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1860
- Summary
- Daughter of the well-known costumier Madame Mary Jane Beattie, Jessie Beattie is thought to have been a pupil of the painter Lucien Henry as she painted two copies of his work 'La Baie du Mirroir, New Caledonia' which were later included in a retrospective exhibition of Henry's work at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney in 2000.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1935
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude54.447864 Longitude-1.317728905 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1935-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Isle of Man, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and art teacher, was born on the Isle of Man, UK in 1859 [or 1860?]. Studied at the York School of Art and later under Henry Moore RA. Came to South Australia, where he conducted the Norwood Art School in 1885-95. He drew for the Adelaide Lantern (1874-90), according to William Moore ( SAA ii, p.121), but is best known for establishing the Academy of Arts, Adelaide, which he directed until 1927. Taught Hans Heysen and Will Ashton (his son). Art Master at Prince Alfred College 1887-1926. In 1895 his academy was affiliated with the Royal Drawing Society, London. Member RAS London. Often painted marine paintings. Note: works signed 'J. Ashton’ are almost always by James Ashton; Julian Ashton invariably signed 'J.R. Ashton’.
J. Ashton of Norwood exhibited in the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition 1888-89, South Australian court, Class 1 [Oil paintings] cat. no. 2 'Evening at Knightsbridge’, 'Old Age’, 'Home, Sweet Home’, 'Early Morning, Onkaparinga River’ etc; Class 2 [Various paintings, drawings etc], 'Granite Island. Port Victor’ (black and white), 'Toilers of the Deep’ etc ( Official Record p. 551). Exhibited Society of Artists Commonwealth Exhibition 1901.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1859
- Summary
- Influential Federation era Adelaide painter, illustrator and art teacher. Ashton, the father of painter Will Ashton, is best known for establishing the Academy of Arts, Adelaide, which he directed until 1927.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1935
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1935-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- sketcher, eldest daughter of Austin Forrest Wilshire and Eliza, née Pitt, married Edward Southwell Ruthven on 31 March 1874. Her pencil drawing Garden Island (Mitchell Library) is inscribed verso 'To Mary Prince from her fond friend Isabel Wilshire’ so was evidently done at the same time as her sister Alice 's sketch, i.e. anytime before 1871.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1846
- Summary
- Sketcher, eldest daughter of Austin Forrest Wilshire and Eliza, née Pitt, married Edward Southwell Ruthven on 31 March 1874. Her pencil drawing 'Garden Island' is inscribed verso 'To Mary Prince from her fond friend Isabel Wilshire.'
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1935
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1935-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was presumably the artist mistakenly listed as Samuel 'B.’ Green in Waugh and Cox’s Sydney Directory for 1855 when living at 41 King Street East. Samuel E. Green was born in England and educated at Rugby, then ran away to sea and ended up in New South Wales. In 1861 he sailed from Sydney to New Zealand in charge of a cargo of horses for the Waikato War and did not return. Later that year he was in Otago, and he subsequently purchased land in Akatori. He died at Taieri.
A prolific artist, Green exhibited with the Otago Art Society in 1876-1904 and 1911-15 and is represented in various New Zealand public collections; watercolours of Southland and Otago are in the Hocken Library. Australian paintings are held privately in New South Wales.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1837
- Summary
- After running away to sea from England, Green ended up in New South Wales before he sailed to New Zealand where he subsequently stayed and lived. He exhibited prolifically with the Otago Art Society for 32 years.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1935
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-37.2843443 Longitude142.930621 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1934-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ararat, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Watercolorist and teacher who exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts for a number of years. She was born in Ararat, Victoria, the third daughter in the family with a younger brother. She came with her family to Western Australia early in the century. She is listed as a teacher of painting in Wise’s Western Australian Post Office Directories 1903, 1905, 1910. Her address was 235 James Street, Perth in 1903. In 1910 it was 284 Newcastle Street. She studied art at Perth Technical School under J. W. Linton and David Ross from 1906 to 1915. She was a close friend of Flora Le Cornu (Landells) who attended many of the same early classes. By 1914 Ballment was living at 210 Lincoln Street, Highgate and by 1922 she was still an art teacher. Her work exhibited in 1912 was described in the following terms: “Miss Ballment shows that she has made great advancement in the work she has submitted.” In 1920 she exhibited watercolours of Spring and Spring Blossoms in the West Australian Society of Arts exhibition in St George’s Hall. In 1922 she exhibited a watercolour of St George’s Cathedral. The family moved to Sydney about 1925 where her brother became a graphic artist. She is listed in Wise’s Western Australian Post Office Directory of 1924 as a teacher of drawing in Albany.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1879
- Summary
- Painter and teacher who exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts for a number of years.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1934
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1934-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 9 November 1877
- Summary
- 'Jack' Sommers married Flora 'Vivienne' Francis,and their daughter Tess van Sommers was born in 1919. Joined AIF in 1914, and served in the Middle East. He divorced Flora in 1920 and in 1922 married Eirene Browne. In 1931 he had TB and with a horse caravan he and his family set out on the road and became 'wanderers' in the country areas, until Jack's death from TB in 1934.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Dec-34
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1934-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, exhibited [Royal] Art Society of NSW, 1897. Her oil painting of Sydney Harbour is in Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1876
- Summary
- Miss Margaret I. Coulter, painter, exhibited at the Royal Artists' Society in 1897. Her oil painting of Sydney Harbour is in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1934
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-37.7984 Longitude144.9785 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1934-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fitzroy, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist, illustrator, etcher and journalist, was born in Fitzroy, Melbourne on 6 September 1872, only son of the six children of Mr & Mrs James Charles Nuttall of Harpurhey, Lancashire. He studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne (c.1895) then joined the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1896, where he was an occasional exhibitor and the designer of its 1902 and 1903 catalogue covers. There is some speculation that he was also a member of Council in 1903. (There is some speculation that Nuttall was also secretary of the Black and White Club[?] in 1900 [sic] (see: Cook) but the Black and White Artists Club was not formed until 1924). He contributed to Melbourne Punch and to the Bulletin (e.g. 1902 fat swaggie joke ill. Lindesay 1979, 129), signing his cartoons 'Nuttall’. A member of the Melbourne Savage Club in 1903-12, Nuttalll drew The Story of the Bunyip -an Aboriginal woman gesturing over a fire with three terrified piccaninies listening to her tale – as the cover for a Smoke Concert programme held 28 March 1903 (# ill. Dow, 81).
Nuttall was colour-blind, so specialised in black and white work and monochrome paintings from which prints were often made. Reproductions of his The First Test Match (1904) sold in hundreds throughout Australia, while the print from his monochrome Opening of the First Commonwealth Parliament by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales (1902), which contained 400 likenesses of those present (cf Tom Roberts’ “big picture”), was also extremely popular. The original was acquired by the Trustees of Melbourne’s Exhibition Building – the scene of the event – and after disappearing for decades was again hung there in 2001, the Centenary of Federation.
Nuttall went to New York in 1905 and became a staff artist on the New York Herald for some years (Johnson, 82). He contributed to The Century , Harper’s and other magazines and continued to send work back to Australian periodicals, including New Idea . For Life he wrote and illustrated 'Day and Night on Broadway’ (15 May 1906), 'A Cluster of Types of America’s Immigrants’ (15 June 1906) and 'Glimpses of New York; An Australian New Chum in America’ (15 November 1906, pp43-?). He also drew 'comic’ images of blacks that now seem like racist propaganda, e.g. 'John Bull as the caricaturists picture him; And John Bull as he really is’ (John Bull menacing two little black boys compared with one of him giving one lad a fatherly slap on the bottom for his own good), Life 1 July 1911, 24..
In 1910 Nuttall returned to Melbourne via Britain and Europe. There he conducted art classes and continued to draw. In 1911 he published Nuttall’s Xmas Annual ('Charles Nuttall is announcing the fact that he has returned from America to Australia to stay, by the issue of the first of, we trust, a long series of Christmas annuals…’ Life remarked on 1 December 1911, 648). Bulletin cartoons include: A Shocking Home [re introduction of electricity] 1913 (ill. King II, 91) and The Coming Costume [multiple jokes re bathing suits] 1913 (ill. King II, 99). In 1916 he had drawings included in an exhibition of war cartoons in Melbourne (NLA has his pro-conscription postcard, The Women’s Big Gun ). He had a solo drawing show at Melbourne in 1916, and he showed his drawings in London in 1917 jointly with war cartoons by a fellow Melbourne Punch cartoonist, George Dancey .
Nuttall’s 'Two-up’, a wartime strip, appeared in Melbourne Punch in 1918 (ill. King II, p.108). He also continued to illustrate for Life . Lieutenant Hudson Fysh’s 'Fording it across Australia’, Life 1 January 1921, pp.37-40, has a header and two illustrations by Nuttall (as well as photographs of the trip – including Aborigines at Boorooloola – evidently by Fysh himself). Nuttall also exhibited with the VAS; a comic drawing of an old man, Peasant of Zealand , was purchased by the NGV from its 1925 exhibition. He is also said to have showed with the Painter-Etchers Society. His etching, Homestead , is in Castlemaine Art Gallery, while his portrait of the admired Victor Cobb 1910-11 is in the State Library of Victoria (SLV).
He wrote and illustrated several books and illustrated many more, including C.H. Chomley’s Tales of the Old Times (1903), a school edition of Jeannie Gunn’s The Little Black Princess (c.1912), including the cover illustration, and Melbourne editions of Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1913), Scott’s The Talisman (1915) and Ballantyne’s Coral Island (1930s). He contributed illustrations to Melba’s Gift Book of Australian Art and Literature (1915) and to the Adam Lindsay Gordon Memorial Volume (c.1921).
As an artist on the weekly Table Talk Nuttall contributed to the Melbourne Herald and Weekly Times 's stable-mate Pals , the first Australian boys’ weekly paper (1920-26), including illustrating a serial in the last volume, Charles Barrett’s 1915 novel 'The Isle of Palms’. He drew its crudely coloured comic strip 'Pip Squips’, begun in 1925 as a rival to Bancks’s 'Us Fellers’. His address in Fred Johns’s Who’s Who in Australia, 1927-28 was 'The Block, Collins St., Melbourne’ (p.195).
Nuttall was an especially prolific postcard artist, mainly of comic drawings – including some done for the Bulletin Publishing Company. Comic postcards by him, apparently all drawn for other publishers, are in the SLV along with other works (see SLV website). He also drew glamorous women, an 'Australian History’ series published in 1934-36 that included John Batman, and a number of Aboriginal subjects in sepia and white on black (see Cook) – though a couple of undated coloured examples (an Aboriginal man of South Australia and an Aboriginal woman from Queensland), presumably coloured by the publisher, are in the SLV’s collection of artists’ postcards. (The SLV also owns his charcoal drawing Evolution 1922 – apes climbing up steep cliffs towards an open sky – purchased by the Trustees of the NGV under the Felton Bequest from the Victorian Artists’ Society Spring exhibition 1922, cat. 243, and transferred 1948.)
Before going to the US Nuttall designed postcards for his own short-lived firm, Renwick, Pride & Nuttall, including one of two living Siamese twin children posed with their mother that Mills calls 'repulsive’ (p.22). '“Love’s Young Dream” at Manly Beach’, a postcard from the series 'Sydney by Night’, published by the Oceanic Stamp and Post Card Company (ill. Cook, p.203), shows a couple kissing in front of the moon, with baths to the right and a carrousel to the left. The identical illustration appeared in the 'Melbourne by Night’ set (1905), with only the caption changed.
When the short-lived Australian Institute of the Arts and Literature was formed in Melbourne (c.1921) with Ida Rentoul Outhwaite , Furnley Maurice, Jeannie Gunn and Nuttall among the members, Nuttall was appointed to the Sectional Committee for 'Art and Art-Crafts’. In 1924-25 he toured Europe and Asia with his wife, Leila. Later he added radio broadcasting to his repertoire. He died suddenly in 1934, survived by his wife.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 September 1872
- Summary
- Federation era Melbourne painter, cartoonist, illustrator, etcher and journalist. Nuttall was colour-blind, so specialised in black and white work and monochrome paintings from which his prints were often made.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1934
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1934-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1871
- Summary
- Holman was an apprentice in the Cleveland Works in cabinetry. He arrived in Australia in 1888 where he worked as cabinet maker, Sydney, He was elected to NSW Parliament 1898.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-34
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-34.339951 Longitude138.915863 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1934-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kapunda, SA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 12 February 1870
- Summary
- The third generation in a family of photographers, Charles Nixon practiced as a photographic artist and landscape photographer. He was based at Kapunda in South Australia’s Barossa Valley for some time, before moving to Fremantle in Western Australia c.1894. Late in the nineteenth century, he and work partner Henry Merilees published a book of photographs titled ‘100 Glimpses of Western Australia’.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Feb-34
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude-37.864 Longitude144.982 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1934-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Kilda, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in St Kilda, Melbourne on 25 January 1862, one of the six children of English Jews Lewis Barnett (Eliezer ben Baruch) and Alice Jacobs. In 1875, aged 13, he left school and joined Melbourne’s leading photographic studio Stewart & Co, where he met Tom Roberts when he joined the firm in 1877. Barnett claimed to have enabled Roberts to made his first ever sale of a painting (in 1881) and he himself purchased Holiday Sketch at Coogee (1888, Art Gallery of New South Wales) as soon as Roberts had painted it. He also bought Arthur Streeton 's The Three Liners, Circular Quay in 1893 (now National Gallery of Australia).
In 1880 Barnett moved to Hobart and set up his first commercial studio, jointly owned with Harold (Herbert?) Riise. After two years he sold out to Riise and travelled the world, working for leading photographers in San Francisco (I.W. Taber), Chicago (Joseph W. Gehrig), New York (various, perhaps including Falk whose name and logo he used in Sydney) and London (W & D Downey). Returning to Australia in 1885 he set up Falk Studios in the Royal Arcade, 496 George Street, Sydney, which became the leading celebrity studio in the city specialising in portraits of local and visiting theatrical stars, including Mrs Brown Potter (1890) – his first commercial success – Sarah Bernhardt (whom he paid 100 gns for the exclusive rights to photograph her in Australia in 1891 & whom he rephotographed in old age at London in 1910) and local star actress Nellie Stewart, as well as famous visitors like Robert Louis Stevenson (on his fourth and last trip to Sydney in 1893) and Mark Twain (on his world lecture tour in 1895 – and at London in 1899, 1902 & 1907). He married Ella Forbes in Sydney on 18 July 1889. The couple soon became known for lavish entertainments at their home in Middle Street, Lavender Bay.
In 1895 Barnett opened a studio in Melbourne managed by his sister Phoebe (born 1867) and brother Charles – mainly the former. In November 1896 Barnett produced a film of the Melbourne Cup, considered one of the earliest, if not the first, newsreels ever made. He revisited London in 1896 and possibly decided to open there then. He exhibited some of his best Sydney photographs with the Royal Photographic Society and was awarded its annual medal. Returning with his wife in March 1897, he took over the studio of John Edwards at 1 Park Side, Knightsbridge, which he totally refurbished. After returning to put J. Brooks Thornley in charge of the Sydney Falk Studios, he settled permanently in London in 1898, establishing a highly successful studio under his own name, 'H. Walter Barnett’. Five years later, in January 1904, he published a brochure entitled 'A List of Well Known People Photographed by H. Walter Barnett’, which contained 610 famous names. By then, he had taken a partner into the business, Ethel Arnold (1866-1930), niece of Matthew Arnold and sister of the novelist Mrs Humphrey Ward.
Barnett also took portraits of Australian artist friends in London, including Roberts, Conder , Streeton (who said he 'made better portraits than any living painter in his age’), Phil May , James Quinn and John Longstaff . He photographed Auguste Rodin and the painter Jacques-Emile Blanche when they were in London in 1904 (and later). His portrait of A. H. Fullwood taken in London c.1915 was included in Helen Ennis’s Mirror with a memory (Canberra, National Portrait Gallery [NPG], 2000).
During the Great War, Barnett photographed officers, publishing 'Officers On the Active Lists of His Majesty’s Army and Navy Photographed by H. Walter Barnet’ containing over 100 names. In 1917 he held an exhibition, Warriors All: Exhibition of Portraits of Officers of the British, Overseas and Allied Forces and Ladies Engaged in War Work . After the war he and his wife spent part of the year in France, mostly Dieppe, and on the Italian Riviera. In 1920 he sold his London studio to Oscar Hardee and moved his home and studio to Dieppe, where he photographed the ageing David Davies , Walter Sickert and Lillie Roberts (Tom’s wife) as well as the town’s working men (a series exhibited in his studio in 1921).
In 1920 he began amassing a major collection of contemporary French art, which he took to Melbourne in 1927 and exhibited in W.H. Gill’s Fine Art Society Gallery in Exhibition Street. The reception was tepid. Some were shown again by Gill when Barnett made a final visit in 1930, while others were returned to be exhibited in London later that year. His 50-year friendship with Roberts was shattered during the 1927 trip and never repaired. He also fell out with the National Gallery of Victoria. When Barnett died in Nice on 16 January 1934, his passing went unnoticed in Australia. Ella burned his correspondence.
Photographs are held at the National Portrait Gallery (London) and in Europe and the USA as well as in Australian public collections. His best-known photographs in Australia are of the ageing Henry Parkes (1892). Neill believes that 'Barnett was arguably Australia’s first world-class portrait photographer’ (p.9). His protégé, Jack Cato , whom Barnett employed for nine months from 1909, wrote the first record of his life and works. A major exhibition curated by Roger Neill, Legends: The Art of Walter Barnett , was at the State Library of New South Wales in December 2000 then at the NPG, Canberra (the organising gallery).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 January 1862
- Summary
- A professional photographer working in Australia and Europe in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, Barnett was arguably Australia's first world-class portrait photographer. His sitters included Mark Twain, Sarah Bernhardt and many artistic Australians - Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Phil May among them.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16-Jan-34
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-37.823 Longitude144.998 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1934-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Richmond, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1934
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude-37.8760772 Longitude144.1790878 Start Date1856-01-01 End Date1934-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Steiglitz, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, art teacher and needleworker, was born on 7 October 1856 at Steiglitz, Victoria. In 1890-91 she attended classes at the National Gallery School, Melbourne. For most of her life she lived in Royal Parade, Parkville, and attempted to make a living by giving lessons in painting. Although a gifted needleworker, she regarded this as a hobby. Painting was her profession, and she is reputed to have held an exhibition of her paintings in the Melbourne Town Hall in the late 1920s or early 1930s. In later life she devoted herself to watercolours of wildflowers in the style of Ellis Rowan . She died at Parkville on 2 August 1934.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
McPhee, John
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 October 1856
- Summary
- Weir was a painter, art teacher and gifted needleworker, though she regarded this element of her artistic life as a hobby. A student at the National Gallery School in Victoria, Weir's later wildflower watercolours were said to be inspired by the style of Ellis Rowan.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2-Aug-34
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1934-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia
- Biography
- sketcher and art teacher, was born in South Australia, youngest of the four children of James William Lewis, postmaster-general of South Australia, and Esther (or Hester), née Read. She won the prize for the most meritorious drawing by a pupil of the School of Design at the 1864 exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts with a copy of a horse’s head from (a print of) Rosa Bonheur’s Horse Fair ; C.E. Baker won another prize at the exhibition for the same subject. In the following year’s exhibition Ellen Lewis was again awarded first prize in this category and shared first prize for the best 'crayon’ (probably pastel) drawing by a young lady with E.E. Randall . In 1866 she received second prize, after Miss Rowe , for the most meritorious drawing by a pupil of the School of Design, both being considered 'persevering pupils and we wish for the state of their advancement that they had something better to copy from than those abominable crayon studies of Jullien’. Lewis had copied a head.
Ellen Lewis won two prizes for her crayon drawings at the 1867 exhibition – one being in the section reserved for 'Young Ladies born in the colony’ – and, newly graduated, received the prize for the best pen-and-ink drawing by a lady amateur in 1870. In the late 1890s she was employed as drawing mistress at Adelaide’s Advanced School for Girls.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1848
- Summary
- A nineteenth-century amateur sketcher who received numerous prizes for her work as a student. In the late 1890s Lewis was employed as drawing mistress at Adelaide's Advanced School for Girls.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1934
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.8783381 Longitude151.219225 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Sydney on 7 February 1887, son of a Darlinghurst cab-driver. He studied at evening art classes while working as a brewery clerk, sold caricatures of boxing and turf celebrities to barbers’ shops as a student and had occasional cartoons published in the Bulletin and other illustrated papers. He apparently used 'PO’S’ as his signature initially but because it was constantly confused with 'PAS’ ( Pasquin ) changed to 'Pat Sullivan’.
In 1904, aged 18, Sullivan was employed as a cartoonist by the Worker and remained there for three years. Then he illustrated for the Gadfly , e.g. 'Consoling’ 1907, a poorly-drawn shipboard joke about there being no danger of drowning because of the sharks (ill. Lindesay 1979, 141). Canemaker claims it’s the only signed cartoon by Sullivan in the paper. (Nobody seems to have investigated the Worker , though Gibbney and Smith cite 19 August 1905, p.6, as well as 22 February 1933, p.19. The latter is evidently an obituary, even though Canemaker says none was published in Australia.)
Sullivan left for England in 1908 where he did drawings for children’s penny weeklies at two shillings each. Then he sailed to America in a cattle-boat in 1909. He worked in the boxing ring and on the vaudeville stage before he began selling comic postcards and cinema posters. Finally, he made big money with Felix the Cat , created in 1917 (ill. Lindesay 1979, 164, and Canemaker). It became a comic strip in 1923. He drew other film animals and 'a little coon, “Sambs”’ ( Home , 1926). According to Inkspot 24 (Summer 1994, p.13): 'Historians [presumably Canemaker] now state that Felix was actually created by Otto Messmer in Sullivan’s New York studio in 1919 [ sic ], although Sullivan took all the credit.’
[In October 2004 the ABC Television programme Rewind broadcast a segment on this question, in which Judy Nelson of the State Library of New South Wales revealed a USA Library of Congress copyright record crediting Pat Sullivan with the film 'The Tail of Thomas Kat’, 3 March 1917 (Thomas Kat being an earlier name for Felix or the character on which Felix was based, depending on one’s stand in this dispute). This discovery formed the basis of an exhibition at SLNSW the following year]
He revisited Sydney in 1920 (according to Gibbney and Smith) and in 1925 and was reportedly given a civic reception on the latter occasion. A drawing of Felix inscribed 'With Best of the Best to my old Pal Perrier’, and annotated: 'His last visit to Australia early 1930s’, is in ML (SSV*CART 40: filed under 'Pat O’Sullivan’ though signed 'from Pat Sullivan’).
Sullivan died in New York on 15 February 1933.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
stokel
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 7 February 1887
- Summary
- Successful and influential Sydney born American cartoonist and animator, creator (or, with Otto Messmer, co-creator) of Felix the cat.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Feb-33
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude-33.9002762 Longitude151.2073137 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waterloo, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Amateur watercolour painter and manufacturers’ agent. George Cross Thomas Orr was born in the Sydney suburb of Waterloo in 1882, the son of Thomas W. Orr, a Surry Hills bootmaker, and his wife Maria (née Turner). G. C. T. Orr married Annie V. Plunkett in Petersham in 1906 and died in the Chatswood district in 1933.
A number of paintings by Orr, done in the greater Sydney region during the 1920s, are in private collections in Australia and Europe.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Riddler, Eric
Stephen Robertson Marshall
Date written:
2005
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 1882
- Summary
- Part-time painter and manufacturers' agent working in Sydney c.1910-1933
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Jul-33
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brighton, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- editor and journalist, was born on 10 January 1869 at Brighton SA, 10th of the eleven children of Samuel Prior, farmer from Cornwall, and Jane, née Geake. Briefly edited the Bro ken Hill Times (later the Broken Hill Argus ), then from c.1889 edited the Barrier Miner for 14 years. Joined the Bulletin at Archibald’s invitation, taking over from James Edmond ( ADB 8) as finance editor in 1903. He also wrote theatre criticism for the Bulletin . Associate editor 1912, major shareholder 1914 and senior editor 1915. D.H. Lawrence praised Prior’s Bulletin as 'the only periodical in the world that really amused him’. In 1927 he became both manager and editor with the purchase of William Macleod 's shares. His second son, Henry Kenneth Prior, succeeded him at the Bulletin after he died at Mosman on 6 June 1933 and the family kept control until ACP bought the magazine in 1960.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 10 January 1869
- Summary
- Early 20th century Bulletin editor and journalist
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Jun-33
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude-33.8583992 Longitude151.1807353 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Balmain, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born on 14 December 1868 at Balmain, Sydney, the seventh child of English-born Francis Spence, a civil servant, and Hannah, née Turnbull. He was raised in Fiji. By 1888 he was back in Sydney taking lessons at the Art Society of NSW. He was a foundation member of its Sketch Club in 1888 and exhibited with it. A sketchbook of his pencil portraits includes one of R.L. Stevenson, evidently done in 1893: 'Archibald took Robert Louis Stevenson to visit the artists’ camp at Balmoral where the Scottish writer was sketched by Bulletin artists B.E. Minns and Percy Spence, who were living there with Julian Ashton , Streeton and Roberts . Spence’s sketch is in the National Portrait Gallery, London’ (Moore, SAA , cited McCulloch and Rolfe, 43).
Spence worked as an illustrator for the Daily Telegraph [acc. ADB ], the Sydney Mail (McCulloch), the Illustrated Sydney News , Queensland Punch [McCulloch] and especially the Sydney Bulletin (from c.1890). He also contributed illustrations to the Town and Country Journal (see file). His ISN story illustrations include four pen drawings for 'Gnomes and Gnails’ by Jessie Whitfeld (using the pen name 'Mary Feld’), Illustrated Sydney News 20 December 1890. Other illustrations for the ISN are: Poo-bah-ton, O’k-nor and Ko 16 December 1893 (cover on corruption?); A world-famed novelist – Robert Louis Stevenson 25 March 1893 (cover); Fijian warrior equipped for the dance 23 December 1893, 3; “So nice, you know” , title page 20 May 1893; Old Times have changed, old manners gone (comparing governors with convicts) title page ISN 8 April 1893 (no original); and Scene of Crime on wet night (original DL Pe Z4Z), published ISN 23 December 1893, 17. His original 1893 'Circus Sketches’ are at DL Pxx 57 and another 1890 original is at ML PXD 764. He had a painting in the 1893 Chicago International Exhibition (Columbia World’s Fair).
On 30 January 1894 Spence married Jessie Wright at Ashfield and they went to England for a year. They had two daughters, born in Sydney in 1895 and 1896. A report of an Art Society of NSW Smoke Night in September 1897 stated:
But to draw lightning sketches, with all the disadvantages of brown paper, in front of a gallery of critics, and gain not only a favourable verdict but a storm of cheers – that is something of which to be proud; and so Messrs A.R. Coffey, Perry, Spence, Leon Pole, G. Taylor, and Salvana are to be complimented on that often mentioned but seldom realised event – an artistic success ( Sydney Morning Herald 13 September 1897, 3).
Spence’s Bulletin cartoons include: When Women Vote (anti-suffrage cartoon n.d., ill. Coleman & Tanner 20); man on horseback reading the Bulletin entitled Bliss , cover of Xmas issue19 December 1891 (ill. Rolfe, 82, also in file) & also Bulletin Newspaper Coy large independent print (ML PxD514/ 105); A Ruling Passion 1891 (milkman and maid re Jersey cow/governor joke – not funny – ill. Rolfe 41); More “Self Denial”. 'HE (sob): “Now, let’s see of what else shall I deny myself ? Ah, I have it! The wife can do without that new bonnet” 22 July 1893, 13; A Family Connection. 'Landowner’s daughter (scornfully): “Surely you don’t claim relationship with us! How were you connected with my grandfather?”/ Old man (apologetically): “Only by a bit of leg chain, Miss; but we was werry intimate”’ 1894 (ill. Rolfe, 75); 'Station overseer: “You camp at Mulga tank tonight; take some BAITS; see if you can catch any dingoes.”/ New chum: “Very well, Mr. Johnston, but – er – where is the FISHING ROD?”’ 1895 (newchum gag signed 'Percy F.S. Spence/ London/ ’95, ill. Rolfe 93).
Back at London in 1895, Spence joined the Chelsea Arts Club and contributed work to Black and White and The Graphic . Later he drew for the Sphere , Illustrated London News , Punch , Harpur’s Monthly , Ludgate Monthly , Pall Mall Magazine and Windsor Magazine [and see ADB for others]. The 1898 Grafton Gallery Exhibition of Australian Art included cat.2: Percy F.S. Spence [no address], 'Two Drawings’ and cat. 5 'Two Drawings’ lent by the “Bulletin” newspaper Co., Sydney. He illustrated Britain’s Austral Empire , mainly with portraits of Australian politicians of the day. Greenwall notes that his drawings about the Boer War appeared in With the Flag to Pretoria , and he contributed over 20 illustrations to The Graphic between January 1900 and 13 July 1901. He also continued painting in oils; his Portrait of a Gentleman 1898, oil on wood panel, was included in Sotheby’s auction of 'The Fairfax Corporate Collection of Australian Paintings’ 17 November 2002, lot 79 (est. $1,000-1,500, not ill.). He was hung at the RA in 1899, 1900 and 1901.
Spence and family returned to Sydney in 1905-6. There he drew illustrations for Lone Hand , e.g. Roderic Quinn’s poem 'Homing Sails’, drawing dated 1908 published 1 March 1910, 486; wash drawing 'Glacarium Girl’, Lone Hand 7 (1 September 1910), 379. Back at London in 1910, Spence spent the year working on 75 watercolours for Frank Fox’s [ADB 8] Australia . Postcards published in England by Raphael Tuck & Sons in their 'Australian Life’ series were originally illustrations in Fox’s Australia (London: A. & C. Black, 1911 [1910 acc. ADB ]). He also had postcards in the NSW Bookstall Co’s 'Art Series’ (see Cook). His oil painting, Australian Fleet entering Sydney Harbour 1913, was purchased for the Royal collection. Like Tom Roberts , Spence served with the RAMC during WWI. He died in Middlesex Hospital, London, on 3 August 1933.
According to Carol Mills, the books Spence illustrated include: F. Agar, Eros! Eros Wins! (Sydney: NSW Bookstall Co., 1910, new edn 1911), Edward Dyson, Tommy the hawker and Snifter his boy (Sydney: NSW Bookstall Co., 1911), Fergus Hume, The Dwarf’s Chamber and Other Stories (London: Ward Lock, 1896), and “Ironbark” (G.M. Gibson), Ironbark Chips and Stockwhip Cracks (Melbourne, George Robertson, 1893?), with 78 illustrations by Spence and Alf Vincent . His illustrated books for children include Ernest Favenc’s Marooned in Australia (London: Blaikie, 1897), The Secret of the Australian Desert (London: Blaikie, 1896) and Tales for Young Australia (Melbourne: Empson, 1900?), as well as Arthur Ferres’s His First Kangaroo (London: Blackie, c.1898).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 14 December 1868
- Summary
- Federation-era Sydney painter, illustrator and Bulletin cartoonist. Spence was born in Sydney but raised in Fiji before spending a number of years in England, living, working and exhibiting. Spence's 1913 painting of the Australian Fleet entering Sydney Harbour is held in the Royal Collection.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Aug-33
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- watercolour painter, Sydney, showed two watercolours competitively at the 1892 Exhibition of Woman’s Work at Sydney, viz 'Water Colours – no.59 Aitken, Elizabeth Mary – Sydney – 2 water colours (for competition).’
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1868
- Summary
- Colonial female watercolourist from Sydney who exhibited competitively in the Exhibition of Woman's Work in 1892.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1933
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- illustrator and cartoonist, was born in Adelaide. Although art was a side line during his successful business career as branch manager of the Atlas Assurance Company for about thirty years, William Moore claims him as the oldest black-and-white artist in Adelaide. He had cartoons in many periodicals, contributing to the Lantern (1874-90) then joining Quiz (copies Mortlock Library) as its cartoonist when it began in 1889, e.g. Lion taming 26 March 1896 (Miss Graham, temperance reformer, standing on top of a lion who is Premier Kingston), ill. M. Anderson et al., When Australia Was A Woman (Western Australian Museum, 1998). As well as the full page political cartoon, he drew caricatures of Adelaide’s leading citizens until 1897, then left to join the Critic as its founding artist. His place on Quiz was taken by Claude Marquet . Chinner and Ambrose Dyson were the chief artists on the Critic . ( Will Dyson took over from his brother as chief cartoonist in 1903: other contributors were Alec Laing and Oswald Pryor .)
Later Chinner joined the Adelaide Express and Chronicle associated with the Advertiser . He contributed to the Sydney Bulletin , to Adelaide’s Review of Reviews and Saturday Journal (his final works – caricatures – were done for the latter, which was connected with the Adelaide Register , acc. Moore, 122). He had two drawings published in London Punch – the peak of his ambition. He illustrated G. Flecker’s 'interesting little book of travel notes’ Well , published in 1897: 'Mr Flecker, an Adelaide citizen, journeyed over considerable area of Europe last year, and has set down his impressions in a humorous narrative which is excellent company for an idle hour’ ( Bulletin 11 September 1897).
Chinner was a Sunday School superintendent for 30 years (Moore 123), an Unley councillor 1899-1903, mayor 1903-05, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1865
- Summary
- Federation era Adelaide cartoonist, branch manager and local politician.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1933
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-36.75 Longitude144.266667 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bendigo, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- architect and teacher of drawing, lived and worked in Melbourne. His drawings for the Victorian War Memorial were illustrated in Art in Australia 7 March 1924.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1865
- Summary
- Born in 1865, Harold Desbrowe-Annear was an architect and teacher of drawing. His drawings for the Victorian War Memorial were illustrated in 'Art and Australia' in March 1924.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1933
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-37.6751897 Longitude144.4366202 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bacchus Marsh, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Australia but spent most of his life in Scotland. After studying at the Edinburgh Trustees Art Academy, he enrolled at the Antwerp Acad émie Royale des Beaux-Arts aged 19, giving his address as Kirkcudbright. From 1 October 1883 he was in the antik class, then transferred to natuur on 20 November. Hornel was enrolled in the summer natuur class in 1884 along with one 'Charles Goldie’ of Nantes. Both continued in the winter term of 1884-85. (Hornel was not on the list of enrolled students, but he entered the concours for which he received 57.6 out of 60 for a painting from life (torso), 52.8 for painting from life (model with helmet, curaisse, pike), 54 (clothed woman) and 51.6 (drawing from life).
Hornel twice visited Japan, in c.1890-94 & 1920-21. After a painting visit to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1907, Hornel briefly revisited Australia.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1864
- Summary
- Edward Atkinson Hornel was a painter. He was born in Australia but spent most of his life in Scotland where he studied at the Edinburgh Trustees Art Academy. In 1883, aged 19, he enrolled at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Belgium.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1933
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-34.8418829 Longitude148.911085 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yass, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Craftworker, won 1st prize for her stencilled parasol at the inaugural exhibition of the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW held in Suzanne Gether’ s King Street, Sydney studio in August 1907. It presumably was sent on to the First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work in Melbourne, which opened in October. Mrs Hume, who joined the Society in 1907 was still an exhibiting member in 1932.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1862
- Summary
- Mrs E. A. Hume was a craftworker. She was a member of the Society of Arts and Crafts of New South Wales from 1907 until 1932. In 1907 Hume won 1st prize for her stencilled parasol at the inaugural exhibition of the Society of Arts and Crafts of New South Wales.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1933
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-37.7667 Longitude144.9628 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brunswick, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- Gladstone Eyre, portraitist and landscape painter, was born 11 June 1862 in Brunswick, Victoria. His name was registered as William James Gladstone Eyre and he was the third child of William Eyre and Amelia née Watts. Arthur Eyre, Gladstone’s eldest brother enrolled at Scotch College, Melbourne, in 1868 where Henricus Leonardus van den Houten taught. Gladstone Eyre studied elementary drawing under van den Houten.
The Eyre Family moved to Sydney, New South Wales, in 1877 where Gladstone Eyre studied under Knud Bull. William Eyre began to promote his son’s artistic talents by writing to important politicians and church leaders of the colony seeking their advice on how he might develop as an artist. Not surprisingly, they suggested study at art schools in London, Rome or Paris. Regardless, Gladstone Eyre remained in Sydney and established himself as a portrait painter throughout the 1880s. His subjects included Reverend Dr Vaughan, Catholic Archbishop of Sydney; Dr Barker, Anglican Bishop of Sydney; Mr W S Lyster, supporter of the opera; Sir John Robinson, Governor of the Colony of New South Wales; Thomas Walker, President of the Bank of New South Wales; Cardinal Moran; J T Gannon, President of the Goulburn Mechanics Institute; and Sir Henry Parkes, Chief Secretary of New South Wales.
In January 1882 the Duke of Manchester presented Eyre with a pair of early English silver candlesticks in recognition of his splendid portrait of the Duke. Eyre became a member of the Art Society of New South Wales in 1883 and in the same year exhibited a life-size, three-quarter figure of Mrs Lillie Langtry. He also painted portraits of the Earl of Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli) and the Right Hon William E Gladstone. Eyre married Margaret Ross Falconer on 26 June 1883 at St James Church, Sydney.
Eyre exhibited a portrait of Cardinal Moran at the Centennial International Exhibition, Melbourne, 1888 and was awarded a Third Order of Merit. River scenes in New South Wales, usually in watercolour, were painted by Eyre as were scenes of Sydney Harbour. Titles include Sydney Harbour looking towards the Heads, Sydney Harbour from Cremorne Point, Sydney Skyline from Hungry Bay, and Sydney Harbour from Rose Bay.
The Blue Mountains, near Katoomba west of Sydney, were of special interest to Eyre. His father was a land developer who promoted the establishment of the township of Leura and Eyre had considerable land holdings in the area. Titles of his mountain paintings include Gordon Falls, Blue Mountains, NSW; The Megalong Valley; The Three Sisters; and Jamieson Valley. Some of Eyre’s Blue Mountains paintings were exhibited at the Hydro-Majestic picture gallery at Medlow Bath.
In 1891 Eyre moved to Launceston, Tasmania, with his family under engagement to Mr R J Nicholas, photographer of St John Street. His paintings were displayed regularly in the shop front of this studio. Four of his portraits of local dignitaries (Mr S J Sutton, Mayor of Launceston; Mrs Sutton; Mr George Horne, Manager of the National Bank; and Mons. Jules Joubert) were the centrepiece of the Tasmanian Court at the 1891-92 Tasmanian International Exhibition in Launceston. Other portraits included those of Archbishop Murphy of Launceston, Hon G T Collins, and Sir Lambert Dobson, Chief Justice of Tasmania.
Throughout the 1890s Eyre painted landscapes of Tasmania in oils, crayon and watercolours from life and photographs. His Launceston scenes (Cataract Gorge in Flood; Shadows of the Evening; Sunset in the First Basin; and Lingering Autumn) elicited commendation from contemporary art critics in the city both for their aesthetic qualities and fidelity to nature. In evening classes he taught 'finishing students and beginners’ in the art of drawing, painting and outdoor sketching at his studio in St John Street, where he also undertook the restoration of old paintings. Regular sales of his works were held in Launceston. He also exhibited at the 1893 Tasmanian Juvenile Industrial Exhibition in Launceston.
Fundraising concerts and plays were a feature of Launceston social life in the late 1890s. Eyre’s daughter Winifred performed in numerous productions in aid of the Academy of Music, The Early Closing Association, St Patrick’s Day Anniversary Association and the Indian Famine Fund. Not only did Eyre recite and sing in these productions, he also painted the backdrop scenery which was noted in newspaper reviews.
Eyre and his family returned to Sydney in 1902 and resided at 56 Middle Street, North Sydney until his death in 1933. He travelled and painted landscapes in many parts of New South Wales. In 1903 and 1904 he visited Wagga Wagga and received a Complementary Member’s Ticket from the Murrumbidgee Pastoral and Agricultural Association. He joined the renamed Royal Art Society of New South Wales in 1904. Eyre painted a series of watercolours of bushfires and of rural pioneer life typified by titles as The Round Up; The Three Drovers; Cobb and Co. Coach Outside the Stockman Hotel; Rural Landscape with Timber Wagon; and The Slab Hut. His paintings of New Zealand scenes were based on photographs.
Writers:
Staff Writer
nelsod
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 11 July 1862
- Summary
- Gladstone Eyre, portraitist and landscape painter, was active in Sydney and Launceston in the mid Victorian to Edwardian era.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-May-33
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- The son of Thomas and Amelia Reid, David Graeme Reid was born in Scotland sometime between 1860-62. Little is known of his upbringing apart from that he was educated at the Lancastrian School in Edinburgh. Reid arrived in Sydney in November 1883 and established himself as a plumber and gas fitter in Newtown, Sydney. The following year he married Sarah Bignell (1865-1954) and the couple had six children between 1885-1903. Reid later established a successful plumbing business in King Street, Newtown, and lived in Black Street, Marrickville, from around 1900.
Despite his work commitments, Reid maintained his interest in art and took lessons at the Art Society School under instructors A.J. Daplyn and Julian Ashton, teachers who were advocates of the plein air method of painting. Reid first came to public notice when he exhibited a sketch at the Art Society of New South Wales’ annual spring exhibition in 1890. The following year he exhibited a watercolour view of the Cooks River, then a picturesque waterway near his home. Reid continued his involvement with the Art Society up to 1894. In 1895 he joined the newly established Society of Artists (SoA) and exhibited with them until their (first) disbandment in 1902. Despite Reid’s status as a non-professional artist, he was elected to the committee of the SoA in 1897. A highlight of Reid’s art career from this period was when three of his watercolours were included in the 1898 'Exhibition of Australian Art’ at the Grafton Gallery, London.
Following state government pressure over public funding, the SoA and the Art Society reunited as the Royal Art Society of New South Wales (RAS). Reid joined the amalgamated group in 1902 and maintained membership in the RAS for the rest of his life. He was an active member and served on its executive council for twelve years from 1908-18 and 1920-22. Several of his works and his photographic portrait were reproduced in Fifty Years of Australian Art, 1879-1929 (RAS Press). In 1929 he was formally recognised as an Associate Member of the RAS (ARAS). A newspaper review of the 1931 RAS annual exhibition described Reid as “a painter with some feeling and imagination” ( Sydney Morning Herald , 1 August 1931, p. 15). While most of his images were painted in the Sydney region, an oil entitled, Montville, Queensland , was exhibited at the 1929 RAS annual exhibition.
While he did dabble in other media, Reid is best known as a watercolourist specialising in views of riverbanks and farmland close to gentle flowing rivers, most notably the Hawkesbury-Nepean river system. After the death of watercolourist J.J. Hilder in 1916, there was an increasing male interest in watercolour painting that led to the formation of the Australian Watercolour Institute (AWI). Although never a member of the Institute, Reid exhibited at their first exhibition in 1924 and occasionally at other AWI shows.
As well as demonstrating an interest in watercolour, Reid also responded to the increasing popularity of printmaking in the early twentieth century and experimented with etching. Before the start of the Great War, he produced over thirty-five intaglio etchings, mainly of pastoral landscapes and Sydney architectural subjects. His first known works were The Brewery and St. Stephen’s, Newtown , images that were reproduced in the September-October issue of Salon . Reid was a regular exhibitor with the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society from 1925.
The artist concluded his career when he exhibited three watercolours at the Sydney AWI exhibition in April 1933. Reid died suddenly at his home in Black Street, Marrickville, on 20 April 1933 and was buried in the Church of England section of Woronora cemetery, Sutherland, Sydney. He was survived by his wife and five sons, his only daughter, Nellie, having predeceased him in 1926. He is represented by the 1916 watercolour An unfrequented by-way in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. An exhibition of thirty-eight of his watercolours was held at the Christopher Day Gallery, Paddington, Sydney, in December 1986. The artist signed his work either as 'David G. Reid’ or 'D.G. Reid’.
Writers:
Silas Clifford-Smith
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2010
- Born
- b. 1860
- Summary
- Scottish-born artist David G. Reid was an active member of the Sydney art scene from the mid 1880s up to the early 1930s. He is best remembered for his mildly impressionistic pastoral watercolours of rivers in the Sydney region and also some late career etchings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Apr-33
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, seemed to be the artist, (mis)catalogued as 'Lila Raidy 1880’, who was said to have signed a pencil, charcoal and ink panoramic view of Port Arthur, Tasmania, when the drawing was auctioned by Gowan’s of Hobart on 4 November 2000 (lot 209). Advertising in the Hobart Mercury of 24 January 1880, 'Miss Reidy’ offered to teach painting, wax flowers and fancy work in its various branches. However, when the drawing was re-offered by Masterpiece Gallery in September 2002 (cat. 8), Heather Curnow had identified it as one of a series of amateur drawings of the settlement, all done on the same paper c.1845 before the reclamation of the harbour (c.1849). Slightly different views are in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tas., and Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW; a third, now lost, was photographed by Stephen Spurling c.1920 – photograph in National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT – while a later, damaged version dated 1849 is in Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tas.
Lilla Reidy signed an unusual and competent Heidelberg School oil on canvas on board landscape (45 × 70 cm) with an Aboriginal woman in a long blanket cloak standing in front of a bark hut beside a giant hollow tree in the bush. The painting, acquired by James Fairfax from Thirty Victoria Street, was offered by Sotheby’s in the sale of the 'Fairfax Corporate Collection of Australian Paintings’ in Sydney on 17 November 2002 (lot 14: est. $4,000-6,000) when it was called Native Campsite , although Sotheby’s suggested it could be the painting titled Alone that Reidy had exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society in January 1900 (cat.58).
By then Lilla Reidy was living in Victoria. She exhibited regularly with the Victorian Artists’ Society from 1895 to 1910. In 1900 she showed Flowers – perhaps the undated oil (35 × 30 cm), done in early Roberts Heidelberg School illustrative style, of a young girl holding a posy of wildflowers offered at Sotheby’s on 17 November 1988 (lot 273, est. $6,000/8,000).
Lilla Reidy worked at Charterisville with Emanuel Phillips Fox and Tudor St George Tucker in the 1890s and Fox painted her portrait (see Zubans, cat.44, plate C14). In 1901 she was included in the Society of Artists’ Commonwealth Exhibition. At the First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work, Melbourne 1907, Lilla Reidy showed two copper repoussé plates (not for sale) in section G, class 59, 'miscellaneous’, won by Elizabeth Ada Mackenzie of NSW with Mildred Creed second. She also showed After the Bath in the section devoted to genre painting, which William Moore (1907, p.849) noted 'was distinguished by fine painting of the central figure’.
Lilla Reidy applied her artistic skills to fundraising eforts on behalf of Australian servicemen during World War 1. An article from 1918 (http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article130035958) describes her designs on calico and watered silk, memorialising service personnel.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Margaret Birtley
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1858
- Summary
- Lilla Reidy, sketcher and painter, exhibited regularly with the Victorian Artists' Society from 1895 to 1910. During the 1890s she worked at Charterisville with Emanuel Phillips Fox and Tudor St George Tucker. She was influenced by the Heidelberg School painters.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27-Nov-33
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1851-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Edinburgh on 18 September 1851. He came to Melbourne with his parents in 1856, where he was educated at Dr Brunton’s school. In the late 1860s White studied at the Artisans’ School of Design in Carlton. He is undoubtedly the John White who exhibited a watercolour portrait and a sketch, The Close of Day , at the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition and who showed Victorian landscapes with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870 when living in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. When White’s Cray Fishers, Phillip Island, Western Port Bay, Victoria was included in the preparatory exhibition of works to be sent to the 1873 London International Exhibition, the Age of 6 November 1872 described it as 'a landscape on Phillip Island, with three figures in the foreground, two hauling up a creel loaded with fish, and a third hurrying up to inspect the catch … The headland is bold and vigorous, but the colour is slightly too vivid.’ The perspective, however, was judged perfect and the figure-drawing strictly in conformity with the laws of anatomy. White also showed a portrait of a gentleman and another landscape in oils, Riddell’s Creek ('the sunlight effect is striking, and the reflex of the timber in the flowing stream is treated with artistic skill’). When these were shown in London, White was identified as a student at the National Gallery School under von Gué rard .
By then White too was in Britain. He studied at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, in 1873 79, winning the Keith Prize for design in 1875. From 1877 his paintings were hung at the Royal Academy and most of the other major exhibition venues in London; in 1882 his oil painting Silver and Grey was acclaimed 'landscape of the year’ at the Royal Academy. He painted numerous landscapes, portraits and genre subjects and became well known for his Pear’s soap advertisements. Elected to the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1882, he remained a member until retiring in 1931. He lived at Beer, Devon until his death in 1933.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 September 1851
- Summary
- Training in Melbourne in the 1860s and Edinburgh in the 1870s White's landscape, portrait and genre subject paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy and other London exhibition venues.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1933
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude53.7406425 Longitude-2.0092336 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and decorator, was born at Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire. He came to Australia in 1875 and settled at Wollongong, where he was alderman, president of the Eisteddfod Society and choirmaster of the Methodist Choir. Collings died at Wollongong on 2 August 1933.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1850
- Summary
- Born in Yorkshire, Collings was a painter and decorator who settled in Wollongong in 1875. A certain extroversion in his personality may be seen in his roles as president of the Eisteddfod Society and choirmaster of the Methodist Choir.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Aug-33
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-37.6188704 Longitude143.8542885 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tower Hill, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Harriet Halhed was born at Tower Hill, Victoria, on 20 July 1850. Her father, William Duodecimus Halhed (as his Latin name says, the twelfth son of John Halhed of Hampshire) and his elder brother Francis Halhed (the eighth son in a family of eighteen) arrived at Sydney in 1837 and obtained land grants at Wandsworth Station in New England and Collyblu on the Liverpool Plains. Francis appears to have to gone back to England after a decade. William married Mary McVittie on 15 May 1847 at St James, Sydney, and they were living at Surry Hills when their first child was born. They moved to the Port Fairy area of Victoria in about 1849, where William was farming at Tower Hill and had an auctioneer’s licence for trading horses. Their second child,Harriet, was born in 1850. Two more children were born in 1852 and 1856, before both parents died in late 1856: William died of apoplexy in September (aged 47) and Mary succumbed to TB in December (aged 34), leaving four children aged between 8 years and 9 months. Their uncle Francis (1804-1880) came to the rescue and took them back to England, where he raised them beside his own family of five at his home at Harbledown in Kent. The younger siblings both died young at Harbledown, leaving only Harriet and her older sister. Harriet’s Portrait of Francis Halhed is an affectionate tribute to her generous uncle.
Harriet seems to have been the only Halhed to have pursued an artistic career. She was trained in England and France. Her Times obituary (17 February 1933) states that her training began at the art school founded by Sidney Cooper in Canterbury, but, as she would have been 32 in 1882 when the school opened, and had already been exhibiting since at least 1877, this is hard to credit. Perhaps she took private lessons with Cooper before he set up the school or perhaps she took some post-graduate courses there to refine her technique. The Times obituary says that Harriet won a scholarship to South Kensington (Royal College of Art) and then went to Paris, where she worked for some time at the studios of Louis Deschamps. He was only four years older than her, which suggests this may have been a professional partnership, rather than student/teacher relationship. His style influenced hers for the rest of her career. By 1892, she was resident in Sevenoaks, Kent, and giving art classes. Amongst her students was the wealthy young heiress Janet Forbes. In January 1897, Harriet moved to London, renting a studio at the rear of a house on Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, which the young architect and designer Charles Robert Ashbee had designed and which he now occupied, together with his mother and sisters. Through Harriet’s classes Janet met and married CRA (as he was always called) in spite of his open homosexuality. Despite their rather disastrous marriage, the Ashbees were leading figures in the Arts and Craft Movement, followers of William Morris and 'sentimental Socialists’. Harriet was now part of the bohemian Chelsea set of Edwardian times, an eccentric dresser and rather shy. She was also a member of the Women’s International Art Club and took part in many of their exhibitions.
Although she does not appear to have visited Australia again and her work contains no Australian subject matter, she was claimed as an Australian by her contemporaries. The Adelaide Advertiser of 2 May 1910 states: “The following Australasian artists are represented at the Old Salon, Paris: Miss Harriet Halhed, Mr. Arthur Streeton, Miss Ada Levey, Miss Hilda Rix.”
Harriet did not marry and most of the subjects of her portraits are women or children. Upon her death in 1933, The Times obituary described her as: “An artist through and through, whose work has won recognition in the leading exhibitions of this country and in Paris, she would have been more widely known had not a sensitive and somewhat elusive nature led her to shun all that savoured of self-assertion or advertisement.”
Writers:
Edwards, John
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 July 1850
- Summary
- Australian-born painter in the Edwardian style; trained in UK and France. Associated with Chelsea bohemian set and Arts and Craft Movement.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Feb-33
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1849-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- kindergarten teacher, was a Scot who was appointed infant mistress at the newly-established Public Kindergarten Infants School at Riley Street, Surry Hills, Sydney in 1866 and remained in charge for the next 15 years. Her children’s work was awarded a diploma and a bronze medal at the 1887 Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition and a gold medal at the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition. In October 1888 she took 150 children to the Women’s Industries and Centenary Fair in Sydney where they displayed their 'games, exercises and singing lessons’. In the Handbook for Teachers of infants’ schools and junior classes (Sydney, 1898) Miss Banks is credited with providing the school’s drawing lessons, although the whole book reveals her influence. She retired in 1917 and died on 1 September 1933 at her home, Avalon, in Cremorne.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1849
- Summary
- An educator who brought drawing classes into the curriculum under her charge. Banks was appointed infant mistress at the Public School on Riley St in Sydney's Surry Hills in 1866 and remained there for 15 years. She exhibited the work of her students at the 1887 Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition and the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition, where it won prizes both times.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Sep-33
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-42.7352717 Longitude147.4384546 Start Date1849-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Richmond, Van Diemen's Land
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Richmond, Van Diemen’s Land, on 16 March 1849, eldest daughter of Rev. Arthur Davenport, subsequently Anglican archdeacon of Hobart Town. Anna Maria Nixon was her godmother. Fanny’s diary, kept from 1860 to 1878, refers to drawing lessons with Rev. John Dixon in 1860, with John Carter Northcote from 23 August to 29 November 1862 and with Miss Blyth who was still 'offering to help me with my drawing’ on 6 September 1867: 'very kind as I do not now have lessons from her’. Like most art students at the time, Fanny sketched from nature and painted copies: 'Finished my painting of the Abbey’, she noted on 26 July 1862. Painting and sketching excursions are frequently mentioned. For instance, on 19 November 1862 'Mr. Northcote took us out sketching in the domain’, and three days later she was on her own taking 'a sketch from the burial ground’. One sketchbook containing views of the Ballarat and Windsor districts was painted on a trip to the mainland in 1874-75 (Archives Office of Tasmania).
Less typical of the subject matter sketched by colonial girls is Fanny’s small watercolour portrait of an Aboriginal woman dated November 1862, annotated: 'Wapperty, aged 60, Sister to the Queen of Oyster Cove’ (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery). It was presumably drawn on a family excursion of 3 November, a 'pleasure trip’ to celebrate the Prince of Wales’s twenty-first birthday. 'Papa, Bessie, Amy, Walter, Arthur and I went in the Culloden at 2 o’clock to Little Oyster Cove … Returned at 7 pm’, she noted in her diary. Wapperty was still living at Oyster Cove (she died on 12 August 1867) and Fanny’s sketch seems to have captured frankly and quite competently the passive yet sullen features of an old woman facing the inspection of yet another party of tourists and resenting her enforced role as model to a 13-year-old girl.
Fanny Davenport married Rev. G.W. Shoobridge on 30 October 1877 in Holy Trinity Church, Hobart Town. After he died, she married George Wood. She died at Hobart on 9 November 1933, aged eighty-four.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Note: (Heritage biography)
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 16 March 1849
- Summary
- Fanny Maria Davenport was born in Richmond, Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania in 1849. She was sketcher.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Nov-33
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1847-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter, came to Melbourne from England in 1853. He studied painting at the National Gallery School, Melbourne in 1875-76 and privately under J.H. Scheltema. Exhibited Victorian Artists’ Society, 1895-98.
A painting offered to the Art Section of the Australian War Memorial in 2001 titled Aussies (oil on canvas, 77× 63 cm) has a small gold wooden nameplate carrying this title attached to its gilded wood frame. It depicts well-laden soldiers marching along an Australian bush track and has been dated c.1914-15 by the AWM on the basis of the weaponry, haversacks and uniforms. Signed solely with a monogram in the lower right hand corner – a capital 'R’ encircled with a capital 'C’ like a copyright symbol – the painting has been attributed to Robert Camm. Claire Baddeley thinks 'the quality and size of the frame would seem to indicate that the work was intended for public display, possibly an exhibition (a patriotic fund exhibition?) or for display in a club. It is in good condition and the curators were keen for it to enter the collection, as they had seen few images of soldiers painted in Australia at the beginning of WWI.’ Nevertheless, it had some doubts about the attribution and in May 2001 were keen to find out more about artist and painting. Robert Camm (1847-1933) painted few figurative works, being best known for his pastoral scenes and his coastal views in Victoria of the Apollo Bay, Lorne and Ocean Grove areas.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1847
- Summary
- Robert Camm (1847-1933) painted few figurative works, being best known for his pastoral scenes and his coastal views in Victoria of the Apollo Bay, Lorne and Ocean Grove areas.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1933
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1933-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Adelaide, South Australia, eldest daughter of William Rogers, a Cornish stonemason, builder, pastoralist and member of parliament, and Elizabeth Ann, née Wright. She won a prize of 3 guineas 'for the most meritorious original picture by a young lady’ for her view of St Peter’s College shown with the South Australian Society of Arts in 1864. The next year she won second prize in the same section; her younger sister Jane (q.v.) won first prize. In 1866 Elizabeth Margaret’s The Port Creek won another prize, but Miss Rogers’s prize-winning pen-and-ink Gipsy and the Children (presumably also hers) was considered to 'present no features worthy of special notice’ when the exhibition was reviewed in the South Australian Advertiser . Photographs of St Peter’s College and The Port Creek (both watercolours) are in the Mitchell Library. Elizabeth Margaret Rogers married Mr Verco, a stonemason from Cornwall who had settled in South Australia like her father.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1846
- Summary
- In 1864 Elizabeth Margaret Rogers shown with the South Australian Society of Arts and won a prize, "for the most meritorious original picture by a young lady".
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1933
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-40.6218161 Longitude175.2865854 Start Date1905-01-01 End Date1932-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Levin, New Zealand
- Biography
- printmaker, sculptor and decorative artist, studied in America before following his family to Australia in 1928. There he rented a studio at Circular Quay where he produced sculpture and linocuts as well as Arts and Crafts pieces such as lampshades, book-ends, wall hangings and batik shawls. He is presumably the ' F.W. ' who did the colour cover of New Triad used for the final issues of March-July 1928. Later that year, he participated in the Burdekin House exhibition and co-designed an interior for a “man’s study” with Henry Pynor. This included furniture, textiles and other elements.
Weitzel worked closely with Ronald Wakelin and exhibited with the Society of Artists and the Group of Seven at Macquarie Galleries in 1930. Only 14 linocuts are known, some produced before he arrived in Australia. They are strong images, all apparently in colour, eg Island Legend [German expressionist primitive], not dated, and Cafe [sailors in port] c.1927 (ill. Lebovic & Warner, Fifty Years , cats 100, 101) Latter also ill. Josef Lebovic Gallery, 20th Anniversary Exhibition Collectors’ List 1997 No.63 , Paddington 12 April-17 May 1997, no.140, which gives alternate birth-date.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Michael Bogle
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. c.22 November 1905
- Summary
- Weitzel is a New Zealand printmaker, sculptor and decorative artist who lived in Sydney during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Furniture by the artist is also known from the Burdekin House exhibition, Sydney, 1929.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Feb-32
- Age at death
- 27
Details
Latitude-45.8665305 Longitude170.4903244 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1932-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Roslyn, Dunedin, New Zealand
- Biography
- James Fraser Scott was born in Roslyn, Dunedin, New Zealand, on the 24 September 1877, the son of David Scott, a picture framer, decorator and artist, and Catherine née Fraser. He studied at the Dunedin School of Art and, while studying there, won the Otago Art Society’s gold medal for landscape and figure drawing upon his exhibition debut with the Society in 1896. He then travelled to Europe in 1898, studying first under Benjamin Constant and Jean Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian in Paris, along with Melbourne artist James S. MacDonald, then at the Munich Academy of Arts (Akademie der Bildenden Künste München) under Carl von Marr. Scott also travelled through Brussels, Antwerp, Rome, Florence and Venice. In 1901, while studying in Munich, Scott had a work, Intérieur hollandaise (Dutch interior), accepted by the Paris Salon of the Société des Artistes Français, apparently the first New Zealand-born artist to be so honoured. There are examples of Scott’s Venice studies in the Auckland and Christchurch collections. After several years abroad, Scott had returned to New Zealand by the early 1900s. He worked in a studio overlooking the Octagon, Dunedin, which was the subject of his 1903 painting The Octagon, Dunedin, looking across George Street to Stuart Street from the artist’s studio. Scott then took up a position teaching at Wellington Technical College in 1906 and 1907. By now his work was being regularly exhibited in Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington, where his portraiture in particular was gaining press notice. “Here,” said the Wellington Evening Post of 12 October 1907 about his latest portraits, “the artist frankly confesses that his work must not be examined with a magnifying glass; but in his few (seemingly) rough sweeps with the brush, he has produced pictures that command respect.” In 1908 he moved to Sydney, living and painting around Narrabeen, in the northern beaches, exhibiting with the New South Wales Society of Artists, the Royal Art Society of New South Wales and the South Australian Society of Arts (SASA). During this period Scott also worked as a book illustrator for the New South Wales Bookstall Company. Scott’s interest in the landscapes around Sydney attracted the attention of the Sydney Morning Herald in October 1910, its art critic describing Scott’s Evening at Rose Bay as his “chief work… wherein the eye lingers with pleasure upon a clever foreground of stream and grass, with light gleaming on the tree-trunks, but does not entirely accept the accentuated crimson of the sun-set touches in the distance. It is to be feared that the idea of remoteness so ably conveyed will not be true to the locality much longer.” Another work from Scott’s Sydney period is Fetching the cows (1911), now in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa collection. By 1912 Scott was living in Gawler Street, Adelaide, having apparently travelled there cross-country, and continued to exhibit with the SASA. His Adelaide work seems to have concentrated on portraiture and genre painting rather than landscape subjects, as can be seen in the work “Hold that!” (the rehearsal), which was exhibited at the SASA’s 1915 Federal exhibition and reproduced in the catalogue. In May 1916 Scott enlisted with the Australian Infantry Force [AIF] and was serving in France in September 1917 when he was wounded in his left hand. While in hospital, Adelaide artist Ida H. Hamilton made contact with him. After his recovery, Scott trained as a camoufleur and was commissioned as an official war artist for the AIF, along with Melbourne artists Daryl Lindsay, Frank Crozier, Will Longstaff, Louis McCubbin, George C. Benson and his former Parisian classmate James S. MacDonald. Originally sent to the Flanders battlefields while the other AIF artists were sent to the Somme, Scott later joined his colleagues at the Somme. He was supposedly the first artist on the scene at Mont St. Quentin in the early days of September 1918, just after the decisive battle there, in which the Australian forces had played the pivotal role. The Australian War Memorial (AWM) collection has a number of Scott’s paintings. These include battle and aftermath scenes, as well as images of everyday army camp life and a later self-portrait. His oil painting of a Nissen Hut occupied by 1st Division AIF (1918) shows the rough frontline accommodation cheered up by a bouquet of white and yellow flowers in a bucket, an image of domesticity in adversity that is reminiscent of Frank Hurley’s colour photograph of Trooper George Redding gathering anemones in Palestine, taken in the same year, which is also in the AWM collection. Scott also contributed illustrations to the AIF’s monthly journal, Dinkum Australian. After the armistice, Scott was working with three of the AIF artists, Will Longstaff, Frank Crozier and George C. Benson, in a studio in St. John’s Wood, London, when he decided to remain in London. He explained in his demobilisation papers that England was “a much better field” for artists than Australia, or New Zealand. Ironically, Australian art was on the verge of a sales boom at the time, with several of his AIF colleagues choosing to return to Australia during the early 1920s. In 1919 Scott’s work was accepted into the Royal Academy (RA) for the first time and, contrary to legend, he would become a semi-regular exhibitor with the RA for the next few years. In 1920 Scott’s paintings attracted press attention when news reached London of the imminent return of Sir William Orpen’s painting Sowing New Seed (for the Board of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland) by the Art Gallery of South Australia to Orpen’s studio, the work having been purchased for the gallery by Margaret Rose Macpherson (Margaret Preston) before the war. It was pointed out by the London Daily Sketch that Scott’s The Glory of Dawn (a.k.a. Dance to the pipes of Pan or Spring rite), which was then on exhibition in London with the Society of Australian Artists, was significantly more erotic in content and free with figure composition than the controversial Orpen work rejected by Adelaide’s art establishment. Scott was also one of the expatriate New Zealand and Australian artists whose work was reproduced in Colour magazine around this time, a group which included Raymond McIntyre, Frederick Porter, Frances Hodgkins, Margaret Rose Macpherson, Horace Brodzky and Hall Thorpe. In 1924 Scott was commissioned to contribute work to decorate the Australian pavilion at the 'British Empire Exhibition’ at Wembley, London. The following winter, Scott was commissioned to add similar works to the New Zealand pavilion in preparation for the Exhibition’s 1925 season. A painting also exists showing the Australian Pavilion looking towards the Indian Pavilion. In the spring of 1925 Scott also participated in the 'Australian Artists’ Exhibition’ held at Spring Gardens Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London. Scott evidently visited France after this, as he exhibited a scene in Brittany, The Rance, Lower Dinan, in the following year’s RA exhibition. In the 1929 edition of Who’s who in art, Scott listed his favourite recreation as golf. After having spent the Depression years struggling to keep painting while living on a meagre pension, Scott became seriously ill during early 1932. He nevertheless continued working and submitted a painting to the RA. This work, A sculptor’s studio, was a watercolour showing Scott’s neighbour, British sculptor James A. Stevenson, a.k.a. 'Myrander’, surrounded by a number of models of war memorials. On Anzac Day, awaiting news of the Royal Academy’s selection committee’s decision, he was admitted to St. Thomas’s Hospital in Lambeth, London. Scott died, apparently within hours of being told his painting had been accepted for exhibition, on 26 April 1932. A memorial exhibition was held in Dunedin the following year. Besides the Australian War Memorial’s collection, Scott’s work is held in many New Zealand public galleries, libraries and museums, including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington, Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Otago University’s Hocken Library in Dunedin, Hawkes Bay Museum and Art Gallery in Napier, Te Manawa Manawatu Art Gallery in Palmerston North, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna O Waiwhetu, Rotorua Museum of Art and History, Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare O Rehua Whanganui in Wanganui and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.
Writers:
Eric Riddler
Note:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2009
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 24 September 1877
- Summary
- A New Zealand born artist who had early success as a student in Europe, then worked as a war artist for Australia before setting up a studio in London. Scott is the signed author of an illustration of a waratah in R.T. Baker's The Australian Flora in Applied Art, Technological Museum, Sydney, 1915. Figure I.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Apr-32
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude-29.43679805 Longitude151.1770693 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1932-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Inverell, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1868
- Summary
- Inverell-born, Sydney-based painter who exhibited with the [Royal] Art Society of New South Wales and in local exhibitions in her childhood home town of Wagga Wagga at the turn of the twentieth century.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Jul-32
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude54.98 Longitude-1.61 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1932-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, UK
- Biography
- amateur topographical artist, lithographer and politician, was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. He assisted his father as a scenic artist at Covent Garden before coming to Australia and settling in Victoria. From March to June 1884 cartoons signed 'W. E. Johnson’ appeared in the Democrat (Sydney), according to Gibbney no.114. An original pro-suffrage cartoon signed W.E. Johnson is in the Mitchell Library.
Johnson also made lithographic views, e.g. Collins Place [Melbourne] (LT), Cottage, Smith’s Hill, South Yarra (NLA) and Rocks area, Sydney (LT). He did the first drawings of the Government Camp and other features of early Canberra. He was a Federal MP and Speaker of the House of Reps in 1913-14 and 1917-23.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 10 April 1862
- Summary
- Federation-era amateur topographical artist, lithographer and Federal politician. Johnson assisted his father as a scenic artist at Covent Garden in London before migrating to Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Dec-32
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude41.1494512 Longitude-8.6107884 Start Date1853-01-01 End Date1932-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Oporto, Portugal
- Biography
- painter, father of cartoonist Vasco de Loureiro , was born in Oporto, Portugal and studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Oporto and l’ademie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, exhibiting at the Paris Salon in 1880-82. He lived in Fontainebleau, London and Surrey before he came to Australia with his Tasmanian wife. He painted and exhibited with Buvelot, Roberts, Conder and Streeton in Melbourne. His portrait of a young girl with bird, Young Companions , signed and dated 'Arthur Loueiro/Surrey 1884’, oil on canvas, was offered Christie’s Australian and European Paintings, Drawings and Prints, Part 1 , Melbourne, 29 April 1997, lot 41. A comparable oil on panel of a little girl seated in a field attributed to de Loureiro, which had been purchased from Deutscher-Menzies November 2000, lot 84, was offered for sale by Masterpiece Fine Art Gallery in September 2002, cat. 35 ($28,000).
Death of Burke 1892 (p.c.: included in Tim Bonyhady’s exhibition) was painted from sketches of the place Burke had died supplied by Alfred Howitt . Loureiro himself spent 'months sketching and painting in the open bush, with a view to getting actual atmospheric effects and colouring’. When it was first exhibited at Melbourne in 1892 critics commended it as 'one of the most important’ pictures painted in Australia and 'the most speaking monument’ to the dead explorers, although Frederick McCubbin complained to Tom Roberts: 'This is no primeval desert, but a bit of cattle-graing country where the grass has been sown’ and, ironicially, accused Loureiro’s Burke of 'dying within coo-ee of Heidelberg’ (Bonyhady after Andrew McKenzie, The “Proff”’ and Jane Clark Golden Summers ).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 11 February 1853
- Summary
- Academic symbolist and plein-air painter, Loureiro came to Melbourne after studying and living in Portugal, Rome and Paris. In Australia he established an association with the Heidelberg School and exhibited with the Australian Art Association.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Jul-32
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude50.7405628 Longitude-3.0701242 Start Date1849-01-01 End Date1932-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Colyton, Devonshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Edwin Marchant was one member of a large family of South Australian photographers. He was a brother of Philip Marchant and his son, George Lionel Marchant, also became a photographer of note.
Edwin ‘Ned’ Marchant was born in Colyton in Devonshire, England, on 9 December 1849, and was eleven years of age when he came to South Australia with his family, arriving at the Semaphore anchorage on 17 February 1861. From the Semaphore jetty the family walked over the sandhills to Port Adelaide. They then made their way to Gawler where the father, John Marchant, was to manage the Victoria flour mill.
After unsuccessfully trying his luck on the Victorian goldfields he spent some time at Brisbane before returning to Adelaide where he worked in his father’s Light Square flour mill. In 1875 he learnt the art of wet-plate photography in the studio of his brother Philip Marchant, and may have worked there until May 1879 when he advertised in the Northern Argus: ‘E.W. Marchant, from Adelaide, is now at Clare, and will remain two weeks or more if inducement offers’. His studio, probably a tent, was ‘adjoining Main Street’, and sufficient ‘inducement’ must have materialised as he was still there in July when the Argus reported:
We are pleased to notice that Mr Marchant’s studio in Clare is well patronized by the public. He is very successful in the art, his photos being much admired. Previous to coming to Clare many people were prejudiced against travelling photographers, who from time to time visit the place. Mr Marchant has shown that as far as he is concerned there can be no ground for prejudice, for he has by his work proved himself to be a first class artist.
By the end of March 1880 Edwin Marchant had completed and opened ‘new and substantial portrait rooms’ in the Main Street of Clare, opposite Gray’s Hotel (now Bentley’s Hotel). Here he advertised, ‘Portraits copied or enlarged to any size, and finished in oil or water colours. Animals and residences photographed’.
Edwin Marchant’s brother Philip manufactured dry-plates and was offering them for sale by August 1880 under the name of Adelaide Instantaneous Dry Plates, and it would have been these plates that Edwin was using in December 1880 when he advertised: ‘Instantaneous portraiture. Children photographed in any weather by the instantaneous dry process’. He also stocked his shop with albums, Berlin wool, homeopathic medicines, organs, pianos, accordions and concertinas, and was repairing musical instruments as a sideline to his photography business.
On 22 August 1881 Edwin Marchant married a Clare girl, Catherine Hooper, and in November 1882 their son, George Lionel Marchant (q.v.) was born, who, like his father, became a photographer. The couple had five children while at Clare, but two of their daughters died at an early age.
Edwin Marchant’s photograph of the triumphal arch which had been erected to welcome the Governor in September 1884 was described as a picture ‘well worthy of a place in anyone’s album’, and his photograph of Kimber’s six-horse team leaving the Clare preserving works on 1 April 1885 was called a ‘faithful representation of the load, the factory, and surroundings, the whole making a capital picture’. While at Clare he produced a number of stereoscopic views of Clare and a folding panorama of the town made of five cabinet-size sections with tape hinges.
His studio narrowly escaped destruction by fire in January 1896 when an oil lamp which had been left burning in his darkroom overheated. It was only through the prompt action of a man who happened to be on the premises that a disastrous fire was averted, the main damage being a burnt window and door frames and the loss of a large number of photographic plates. Six months later Edwin Marchant was holding a clearance sale of stock as he was about to leave Clare, and he advertised his ‘dwelling house, studio and shop to let after July’. By September 1896 the studio had been taken by the local tinsmith, Solomon Williams, an amateur photographer who had become a part-time professional.
Edwin Marchant was listed as a photographer at Petersburg (Peterborough) in the directory for 1896, which would have been printed six months before he closed his Clare studio. He had been to the Peterborough district two years before leaving Clare, photographing the scene of a train accident at Orroroo and the foundation stone ceremony for the Petersburg Town Hall additions in 1894. While at Petersburg he also had a branch studio in Jamestown.
Edwin Marchant moved to Kadina in 1904 where, assisted by his son George, he operated a studio in Taylor Street under the name of E.W. March & Son. By 1910 George had married and moved to Adelaide, and in October 1912 the Wallaroo Times reported that ‘Mr E.W. Marchant, who has been in business in Graves [?] Street, Kadina for about 10 years, contemplates retiring and will take up his residence on one of the [Adelaide] suburbs in a few weeks’.
However, it appears Edwin Marchant did not retire as he was listed as a photographer at 5 Hughes Street, North Unley, in 1914. This listing as a photographer continued until 1935, which must be as error as he was an invalid for ten years before his death on 20 June 1932.
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, pp.195-96.
Writers:
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 9 December 1849
- Summary
- Part of a large family of photographers, Edwin Marchant emigrated from England to South Australia in 1861. His main interest was in portraiture, where he was skilled in several techniques including wet-plate and dry-plate photography.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Jun-32
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1932-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land , Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- sketcher, was born on 28 April 1848, one of the eight sons of Dr Edward Samuel Pickard Bedford, a successful medical practitioner in Hobart Town, and Mary, née Selby. A watercolour donated to the Mitchell Library by Ruth Bedford and attributed to her father, Mount Olympus—in the Interior of Tasmania , is annotated 'from a sketch by Mr. Gould’ but this is the only hint of a connection with the painter W.B. Gould and nothing is known of any early art training. In 1863 Bedford moved to Sydney with his parents and siblings. As 'Alfred Bedford’, he was listed as a portrait painter of Parramatta Road, Camperdown, in Sands Sydney Directory for 1867. On 26 August 1876, in St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, he married his cousin Agnes Victoria, the 17th child of Sir Alfred Stephen, chief justice of New South Wales, and eighth child of his second wife Eleanor Martha Pickard, née Bedford. They had three daughters.
Most of the 12 works by Bedford in the Mitchell Library are unsigned and undated; a few carry the initials 'A.P.B.’ and the watercolour War Canoe Whakatane Tauranga is dated 1865. All have good family provenance. As well as New Zealand scenes, the subjects include figure studies ( Two Children , crayon) and watercolour and pencil views of Sydney and Hobart. All apparently date from before his marriage, the only time he seems to have worked as a professional painter.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 28 April 1848
- Summary
- Born to a large family in Hobart Town, Bedford moved to Sydney in 1863 with his family and worked as a portrait painter in Camperdown until marrying his cousin in 1876 and apparently ceasing to paint.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1932
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1847-01-01 End Date1932-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- illustrator, engraver and publisher, was born in Hobart Town on 6 January 1847, a son of the portrait painter Thomas Bock and Mary Anne Cameron. He was taught drawing and engraving by his father and became known locally as a designer of illuminated addresses, crests and seals. In 1868 William Bock went to New Zealand, where he apparently spent the remaining 64 years of his life. He set up as a publisher and printer in Wellington, both on his own and in partnerships, his best-known work being done in partnership with Cousins in 1879-89, notably the printing and publishing of Sarah Ann Fenton’s Art Album of New Zealand Flora , the first fully-coloured book to be printed in New Zealand (1889). He designed crests, seals and illuminated manuscripts but no surviving Australian work is known. The Wellington firm he established, W.G. Bock and Sons, was being run by his great-great grandson in 1988.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 6 January 1847
- Summary
- William Rose Bock learned engraving and printmaking from his father Thomas Bock and was well-known in Tasmania as a designer of illuminated addresses, crests and seals before relocating to New Zealand in 1868. In Wellington he established himself as a publisher and printer and was responsible for publishing Sarah Ann Fenton's Art Album of New Zealand Flora, the first fully-coloured book to be prin
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1932
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude51.58607595 Longitude-0.80137568 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1932-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1840
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-32
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-36.3143823 Longitude146.8390836 Start Date1880-01-01 End Date1931-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yackandandah, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, caricaturist and cartoonist, was born in Yackandandah (Vic.), daughter of Charles Edmonds who had trained in art at the South Kensington Schools, London and was her first teacher. The family moved to Brisbane in the mid-1880s, where her father became Secretary of the Art Society. Mabelle studied at Brisbane Technical College under a Mr Jackson for five years. She exhibited in the 1897 Queensland International Exhibition and with the Queensland Art Society in 1899 and 1901. After her father died Mabelle moved to Sydney and set up a studio in Royal Chambers, Castlereagh Street, where she also taught art. By 1903 she was illustrating for the Commonwealth Journal (her name misprinted as Mabelle Edwards) and for All About Australians (AAA). Later she drew for other journals as well. AAA ran a feature on her in its series 'Artists of Promise’ in 1904, when her studio-with a reproduction of Lord Leighton’s Flaming June in a prominent position-was in Royal Chambers, Hunter Street.
Edmonds painted and drew mild flattering caricatures of many theatrical subjects, e.g. Mr Albert Gran as Lord Jeffries in “Sweet Nell of Drury Lane” , drawn from the audience (ill. AAA). She also drew children. She became renowned for her black and white sketches of glamorous women, heavily influenced by Charles Dana Gibson’s 'Gibson Girls’, then almost as well-known in Australia as in the USA (e.g. 4 sets of Gibson’s postcards, printed in Melbourne, were offered for sale through New Idea in 1906). Edmond’s bejewelled young woman looking into a mirror observed by the devil illustrated a verse on the superior, lasting qualities of poetry over beauty in AAA 7 December 1904, 687. Many were reproduced as postcards in 1905-6, including Smoke Memories , six coloured cards of glamorous women smoking cigarettes with men appearing in the smoke. At least one of the set is in the SLV Australian artists postcard collection (PCV PCA 109), pictured on the library’s website.
Despite stating in 1904 that her ambition was 'to draw for ever and ever’, Mabelle Edmonds disappeared c.1908, marrying Pultney M. J. Murray in 1909. She died in Sydney in 1931, aged 51.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1880
- Summary
- Federation era Brisbane and Sydney painter, illustrator, caricaturist and cartoonist. In 1904 Mabelle Edmonds stated that her ambition was 'to draw for ever and ever', however, she disappeared around 1908, marrying Pultney M. J. Murray in 1909.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1931
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude53.7975 Longitude-1.543611 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1931-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leeds, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- English born artist who trained at the Royal College of Art, London. Arrived in Australia in 1921 and exhibited in Sydney with the Royal Art Society of NSW and the Australian Painter Etchers’ Society. Associated with Sydney Long and Squire Morgan.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1879
- Summary
- English born etcher active in Sydney during the 1920s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1931
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude-37.2843443 Longitude142.930621 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1931-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ararat, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Charles James Merfield was born in Ararat, near Stawell, Victoria 28 April 1866. He was educated at Stawell Grammar later studying mathematics a, surveying and civil engineering. He worked on the roll out of railway lines through Victoria and then New South Wales in the 1890s. His interest in astronomy grew though personal association with astronomer John Tebbutt F.R.S. F.R.A.S. Merfield contribute articles to both scholarly and local press. In 1904 he was appointed to the Railway department of the Government observatory. Merfield transferred to Melbourne Observatory in 1908, eventually becoming Deputy Director. He was a member of various scientific and astronomical bodies and a founder of the Astronomical Society of Victoria.
Merfield would have been inroduced to photography through astronomy but became adept at art photography. was active in photographic salons winning a gold medal in 1913 at the Great All Australian Exhibition in the Melbourne Exhibition Building. He was a founder member of the Melbourne Camera Club,in 1919 and served as a Vice-President and judge as well as lecturing on astronomical photography and other formula and techniques.His salon work was soft pictorial landscapes rather than scientific or astronomical. See his 'Deserted’ _Australasian photo-review_15 August 1916, p.427
Merfield took up filming in the 1920s as a member of Melbourne Observatory Eclipse Expedition in Goondiwindi, Queensland, September 1922.
Writers:
newtog
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 28 April 1866
- Summary
- Charles James Merfield was an amateur and later professional astronomer with expertise in photography and film. He was active in photographic salons winning a gold medal in 1913 at the Great All Australian Exhibition in the Melbourne Exhibition Building. He was a founder member of the Melbourne Camera Club,in 1919 and served as a Vice-President and judge as well as lecturer on astronomical photography.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Jan-31
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1931-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- caricaturist and pastellist, was born in Ballarat.
Exhibited Victorian Artists’ Society, 1889, 1892, 1900.
He drew a conte caricature of his friend David Davies in 1925, also a caricature of 'Barney O’Dowd, the poet’, pencil n.d. Both are in BFAG, the gift of Valerie Albiston and Yvonne Cohen, 1977.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1866
- Summary
- Federation era Victorian caricaturist, illustrator and pastellist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1931
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1931-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Sculptor
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- Influential Melbourne born sculptor who had great success in late 19th and early 20th century Europe.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1931
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude50.7132064 Longitude-2.4371229 Start Date1856-01-01 End Date1931-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dorchester, England, UK
- Biography
- Tom Roberts was born on 9 March 1856 in Dorchester, England, the son of a newspaper editor. In 1869, following his father’s death, the thirteen-year-old Roberts emigrated to Australia with his family. In Melbourne he worked for a photographer and, in 1873, attended weekly drawing classes at the Schools of Design at Collingwood and Carlton. He studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, from 1874 to 1880, then in 1881 he travelled to London where he attended the Royal Academy Schools from 1881-83. To help finance his studies he contributed illustrations to Graphic . In the summer of 1883 Roberts visited Spain; he met Spanish art students Laureano Barrau and Ramon Casas, who encouraged him to paint directly in front of the motif. Roberts returned to Melbourne in 1885, where he promoted plein air painting and, together with Frederick McCubbin , established the famous painting camps around Heidelberg, on the outskirts of Melbourne. He was a major instigator of the 9 × 5 Impressions Exhibition of 1889.
During 1889-98 Roberts worked in Sydney around Sirius Cove and spent much of his time visiting outback stations in New South Wales, painting rural works of a national character such as Shearing the rams 1890 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). He also established a reputation for his portraits, including those of public figures such as Sir Henry Parkes, and a series of 23 informal panel portraits of Australian types. He moved to Sydney in 1891.
In 1901 Roberts was commissioned to paint a vast representation of the opening in Melbourne of the first Federal Parliament of Australia and, in 1903, he returned to England where he completed the work. During the First World War he served as an orderly at the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth. After visits to Australia in 1919 and 1920, he returned in 1923 where he painted landscapes in a low-key palette. Tom Roberts died from cancer on 14 September 1931 at Kallista, Victoria.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne Note: Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 March 1856
- Summary
- One of Australia's most iconic painters, Tom Roberts was an early champion of plein-air painting and together with Frederick McCubbin, Roberts helped establish the famous painting camps around Heidelberg in Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Sep-31
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude52.43966455 Longitude-2.140987909 Start Date1853-01-01 End Date1931-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stourbridge, Worcester, UK
- Biography
- Joseph Harry Grainger (frequently Granger) was born at Stourbridge, Worcester, UK, c. 1853 and died in Brisbane on 28 June 1931. He was inspired to become an artist through visits to the Birmingham Art Gallery and it is possible that he had some training prior to his arrival in Brisbane on the Darling Downs in 1886.
In Brisbane he worked as a buyer for the Finney Isles department store. Grainger was involved with the founding of the Queensland Art Society (QAS) in 1887 and exhibited with the Society from 1889 to 1930. Grainger was awarded a Gold Medal for a seascape at 'Queensland International Exhibition’ in 1897 and was especially noted for his beach scenes which are quite typical of late nineteenth century Australian landscapes. Grainger favoured subjects in the nearby Brisbane and especially Cooloongatta and Tweed Heads. Subjects also include the Blue Mountains (in 1907) and the Barron Falls (1917). He also contributed to the QAS display at the Queensland National Association in 1903. He was a teacher and examiner at the Brisbane Technical College for some time and also painted stage settings.
He was survived by a daughter; his wife, a son and another daughter predeceased him.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1853
- Summary
- J.H. Grainger was one of the original exhibitors at the Queensland Art Society and made a significant contribution to the development of art in early Brisbane, being noted especially for his beach panoramas.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Jun-31
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude50.7241405 Longitude-3.660778816 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1931-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Devon, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist and lithographer, was born in Devon and studied art with the Exeter painter and lithographer William Spreatt. Stopps came to Victoria in the early 1850s and worked on the goldfields at Sandhurst (Bendigo) and Ballarat. Employed as a lithographer by Campbell & Ferguson of Melbourne, he put ten of S.T. Gill 's lithographs on stone for Diggers and Diggings of Victoria As They Are in 1855 (Melbourne 1855), published by J.J. Blundell & Co. He was lithographing scenes on the goldfields as early as 1853 ( Puddling Machines on the Epsom Road, Looking towards Sandhurst and View of Sandhurst , LT). His lithograph Camp Buildings, Beechworth (c. 1855) in the Diggers book was stated to be after a daguerreotype by Acley & Rochlitz . In 1856 he exhibited four engravings of Bendigo scenes, also after photographs, in the Victorian Exhibition of Art at Melbourne. The views were possibly taken by Alexander Fox whose 1857 photographs of Bendigo were lithographed by Stopps for a number of illustrated letterheads: for instance a letter dated 9 March 1857 (LT) from John Lees at Kangaroo Flats, Bendigo to his wife was written on Stopps’s Pall Mall, Sandhurst, from View Point .
Stopps was listed in the Melbourne Directory for 1858-59 at 54 Collins Street, East Melbourne. In 1860, on the eve of his departure with the Burke and Wills expedition, Ludwig Becker bequeathed his lithographic table to him. Subsequently employed as an assistant lithographer in the Department of Crown Lands, Stopps was one of the professional witnesses called to give evidence before the parliamentary inquiry into the photolithographic process invented by J.W. Osborne . From 1864 to 1909 he was employed in the New South Wales Lands Department at Sydney, where he was considered a first-class lithographer. His most outstanding reproductive engravings are possibly his exquisite lithographs for Robert David Fitzgerald’s Australian Orchids (1875 92), work commemorated in the poem 'One Such Morning’ by Fitzgerald’s grandson D.F. FitzGerald ( Product , 1977).
Stopps also painted, sending a watercolour view, The Hermitage, North Kurrajong , to the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition as an amateur. He was a judge for the lithographic section of the same exhibition. Earlier that year he had won a competition to design the Agricultural Society of NSW’s seal, which he described as a 'central figure allegorical of New South Wales, draped in rich robes, who with encouraging mien, holds aloft the wreaths for the victorious’. According to Nesta Griffiths, he lithographed programs for regattas on the Lane Cove River and produced numerous original caricatures of and for friends and neighbours. Stopps lived at Loombah in Hunter’s Hill from 1863 until his death on 18 September 1931. He had been blind since 1923.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1833
- Summary
- A watercolourist and lithographer, Stopps produced many scenes from the Victorian goldfields.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Sep-31
- Age at death
- 98
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1893-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New South Wales
- Biography
- cartoonist, landscape painter, illustrator and theatrical artist, was born in NSW, youngest of the three artist sons of Alfred Clint . He is included in a c.1930s list of all Bulletin artists (Mitchell Library Px*D557 pt 5, '7’). An original 1920s ink cartoon, Carried away by music , is in the National Library of Australia (R4919).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1893
- Summary
- Early 20th century cartoonist, landscape painter, illustrator and theatrical artist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1930
- Age at death
- 37
Details
Latitude-37.8519135 Longitude145.0005993 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Prahran, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born on 16 July 1884 in Prahran, Melbourne, son of James Hartt. He had drawing lessons from Alek Sass . After getting a cartoon accepted by the Bulletin , he moved to Sydney in 1909. As a freelance artist from 1908 he contributed to Comments , the Clarion and the Bulletin (e.g. Encouraging Matrimony: Extra damaged lots should demand top prices – on ugly wives) and also to the Comic Australian (e.g. 16 December 1911, 18).
He had cartoons in the Australian Worker in 1915 (Gibbney no.473), the year he enlisted in the 18th Battalion of the NSW Contingent of the AIF. He was badly wounded in the right hip and ankle at Suvla Bay on 27 August 1915, during the Gallipoli campaign. While convalescing in England from 1916 he contributed drawings to the Bystander , Passing Show and London Opinion (there is some speculation Hartt also contributed to the British Australasian , published weekly in London). His booklet of Digger jokes, Humorosities (London, Australian Trading and Agencies, n.d. [1917], 1/-: partial copy in Joan Kerr Archive, National Library of Australia, including a self-portrait), proved a surprise bestseller, selling over 60,000 copies. To Hartt’s astonishment he was presented to King George V. Lone Hand of 1 February 1917, 147, reproduced some of these cartoons.
After his discharge in 1919 Hartt returned to Australia and began work at Smith’s Weekly as its first staff artist. From 1919 until his death he established the character of the 'Digger’ page (which continued for 30 years, the paper’s entire lifetime) with 'The Unofficial History of the AIF’. Original Hartt digger drawings from Smith’s are in the Sue Cross collection (ill. Rainbow, 35). Examples of his Smith 's work include a 1919 cow-cocky joke (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 150), Six stages of a digger 24 June 1922, 22 (see JK Archive), A Treat for the Kiddies (disastrous family outing) and Reducing His Overdraft 4 February 1922, 15. He created the strips “Bob and 'Orace”, “Dummy” and “Ask Bill, he knows Everything”. Many of his cartoons continued to be about the WWI Digger and some were collected into booklets, e.g. Diggerettes and More Diggerettes (n.d. but evidently 1920). The short stocky digger figures he created (with jokes under them) were continued into the 1930s by Frank Dunne then Lance Mattinson .
At the first Artists’ Ball at Sydney Town Hall (21 August 1922), with decorations supervised by D.H. Souter , Hartt went as his own Smith’s Weekly joke block character 'The Dummy’ (see Souter). Hartt was the first president of the Australian Black and White Artists’ Club (1924-30) formed on 17 July 1924, which virtually expired with him. (Stan Cross, the next president, was confirmed in this position when the Club was reformed in 1937 as the Australian Black and White Artists Club, although Lindesay’s 1994 history claims that Cross was president from 1931 to 1954, thus giving the club an unbroken history). A good friend of Henry Lawson, Hartt’s life also came unstuck through alcohol (Kirpatrick, 352). On 21 May 1930, he was found dead with a wound in the head and a shotgun beside him on a mountain near Moruya (NSW). His daughter, Dianna de Bring (who presented a Stanley award in 1994), lives in the USA.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 16 July 1884
- Summary
- Early 20th century Melbourne-born Sydney and wartime newspaper cartoonist. He was the first president of the Australian Black and White Artists' Club (1924-30) formed on 17 July 1924.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-May-30
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude-33.283333 Longitude149.1 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Orange, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- Alice Cocks was remembered by the The Kiama Independent, and Shoalhaven Advertiser as “an artist of considerable repute and her exquisite “pen and ink work was known to many, being also proficient in water colours and oils. As a judge in the art sections she very often officiated at district and other shows.” The daughter of a former mayor of Kiama, Cocks exhibited in the Fine Arts section in local agricultural shows in the Illawarra region during the early years of the twentieth century.
Writers:
Eric Riddler
Date written:
2018
Last updated:
2018
- Born
- b. 1881
- Summary
- A talented amateur painter who had a high profile in the Illawarra region during the early years of the twentieth century
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 30-Sep-30
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude59.938732 Longitude30.316229 Start Date1873-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Petersburg, Russia
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, was an Anglo-American born in St Petersburg, Russia. He came to Sydney with his grandparents in 1887, aged 14, and worked on station properties around Nevertire, near Warren, NSW (chiefly at his uncle’s property?). While working as a cashier in a Sydney grocer’s shop, he studied art under Julian Ashton. He got his start as an artist when the Bulletin published some of his drawings in 1895-96; Cain or ('Biblical History’) (A back blocks version) , an original Bulletin drawing dated 1895, is in the Aer Gallery of Western Australia. Cartooning gave him an income that allowed him to devote his time fully to art. Some early bush cartoons are signed 'Geo. W Lambert/ Nevertire’ (e.g. 1896, ill. Rolfe, 99), others dated 1896-98 without an address are often of bush subjects, e.g. 'Boss cockie: “Give you a job? Why, you’re the fellow that set fire to my grass last season.”/ Traveller: “Yes, but surely you won’t let a man’s political opinions interfere?”’ 1896 (ill. Rolfe, 188). He also did stylish urban illustrations, e.g. for a poem The Two Gossips by “Breaker” Morant (n.d., ill. Rolfe, 104).
The Chivalrous Male 1897 (ill. Rolfe, 207) shows an Aboriginal man carrying spears with a woman and two children behind him and below it, an empty-handed man at the beach with laden woman behind: 'Legend (in both cases): “'Urry up. Liza – 'ow you women do drag!”’ Points of View , about a male and female artist discussing a new model’s figure, was published in the Bulletin on 9 December 1899, 18. Five Bulletin cartoons by Lambert are illustrated in Rolfe (216-19). Along with 'high art’ works by Lambert, the 1898 Grafton Gallery Exhibition of Australian Art in London included: Geo. W. Lambert, The Society of Artists, Sydney, cat.273, Six Drawings , lent by the “Bulletin” Newspaper Co., Sydney (et al).
As a good friend of the author, Lambert illustrated Louise Mack’s Girls Together (Sydney: A&R 1898). In 1899, aged 26, he won the NSW Travelling Scholarship. He studied in London where he also drew for the Strand and Pall Mall magazines; he also studied art in Paris. He continued to contribute to the Bulletin , which paid him a small salary. His work was usually illustration rather than comic drawings. Nothing Else , an ink and wash drawing heightened with white and gum Arabic of a man approaching a lady reclining on a sofa, was published in the Bulletin on 11 October 1902, 17 (for sale at Bridget McDonnell Gallery in July-August 2000 from the estate of Charles Donald, Sydney).
Three works by Lambert were offered by Bridget McDonnell Gallery in May 2001. Two were from the estate of Clarice Thomas: The Road to Jerusalem ,oil on panel, shown as catalogue no. 118 in the Lambert Memorial Exhibition at Anthony Hordern’s Fine Art Gallery, Sydney in 1930 (a larger version Australian War Memorial), and a pencil drawing, Fallen Australian Soldier , signed by Gladys Owen and Basil Burdett as trustees of the Lambert Memorial Fund. The third was the oil on panel Croquet on the Lawn at Belwethers, Cranleigh in Surrey . Tableaux of Australian history, held at the Imperial Institute, London 1911, included Enter the British (on the landing of the British) organised by Lambert – who played an Aborigine – Fred Leist and George Bell . Illustrated J.M. Whitfield, The Spirit of the Bush Fire Series , 3 parts, Sydney, n.d. (original drawing in Ron Radford’s Art Nouveau catalogue, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery [BFAG]).
Representative images: My Lady Nicotine , grey wash with opaque white highlights 28.4 × 25.4, original illustration to poem by 'P.Luftig’ (Peter Airey) describing the attractions of nicotine as if it were a woman, published Bulletin 4 December 1897, 14 (Mitchell Library [ML] Px*D439/8). See also Anne Gray, George Lambert: Catalogue raisonn? , 1996, Ill. no.62, p.204 etc. Illustration to Bancroft Boake, Where The Dead Men Lie and illustrations to Jessie Whitfield’s Spirit of the Bushfire , etc.
Black and white works in public collections include: Art Gallery of New South Wales (including History and Sport 1896, pen cartoon published Bulletin 23 May 1896 re governess and pupils: Teacher – What did Wallace do for Scotland? Bookie’s son – Nothink much. I’ve heard dad say he wished to.he’d pegged out when he was a foal , and The Letters 1907 (Paris), ink drawing of stockman at desk separated from a woman with music and painting by a line and a cupid illustrating a poem signed 'T.T.’, purchased from Josef Lebovic 1987); ML (lots); Dubbo Regional Art Gallery; National Gallery of Australia; National Library of Australia ( Oh, let us be joyful! 1895, ink original R4922, pub. Bulletin 18 January 1896 with caption: 'The Old Lady: “Stop crying, you little fool, and sing. Here comes a swell.”’); BFAG ( The wolf was at the door , acquired 1971 etc.), et al.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1873
- Summary
- Influential painter and illustrator.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1930
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-37.8334603 Longitude144.9570188 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Emerald Hill, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Australian painter George Coates was born on 9 August 1869 at Emerald Hill, Melbourne, son of a bookbinder and his Irish-born wife. In 1884, he was apprenticed to the stained-glass firm, Ferguson and Urie, where he worked for seven years. He studied art at the North Melbourne School of Design, and was a part-time student from 1886 to 1896 at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, where he became one of the school’s best draughtsmen. Fellow students included Margaret Preston (Rose McPherson), Dora Meeson , Max Meldrum, James Quinn and Hugh Ramsay.From 1895 to 1896, Coates ran a drawing class in his Swanston Street studio, where his students included George Bell . He travelled to Europe in 1897 on a National Gallery Travelling Scholarship. He studied in Paris at the Académie Julian, where Meeson was a fellow student and James Quinn was a friend. In 1900, Coates moved to England where he became known principally as a portrait painter. In 1903, he married Meeson. About 1906, they rented Augustus John’s studio at 9 Trafalgar Studios, Chelsea, where Ambrose and Mary McEvoy were neighbours. As a source of income, Coates produced black-and-white illustrations for H.S. Williams’ Historians’ history of the world and the Encyclopaedia Britannica .Coates and Meeson supported the suffrage movement. During the First World War, Coates was an orderly at the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth, alongside C.R.W Nevinson, Tom Roberts , Arthur Streeton , and Francis Derwent Wood. His paintings Casualty clearing station 1920 (Australian War Memorial, Canberra), effectively conveys the emotional drama of war that he experienced while working in the hospital.In December 1921 Coates visited Australia, returning to England in 1922. After his return to England, he worked on further commissions for large historical paintings from the Australian War Records Section. An assiduous, even obsessive painter, he remained faithful to his essentially representative approach. George Coates died suddenly of a stroke on 27 July 1930, aged 60.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne Note: Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 August 1869
- Summary
- A contemporary of Charles Conder and Margaret Preston, painter George Coates ran a drawing studio in Melbourne before leaving for Europe and further study in 1897. Despite never being an official war artist, Coates's painting, depicting his experiences as a hospital orderly in London during WW1, is held in the collection of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Coates was married to fellow artist Dora Meeson.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Jul-30
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-37.8377695 Longitude144.9918537 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Yarra, Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- painter and engraver, was born at South Yarra on 11 August 1869. Louis Buvelot and his wife took an interest in him. Employed by David Syme & Co. as engraver for the Age , Bennett lived in High Street, St Kilda, later at Healesville and Yarra Glen. He married Zilpah Pyke (or Pike); their only son, Royden Louis Charles Bennett, died in France during World War I.
Colonial & Indian Exhibition, London 1886: Victorian Court – Bennett, Chas. S., 29 Darling-street, South Yarra – Ten water colours descriptive of Victorian scenery.
Exhibited with the Australian Artists Association (Victoria) in 1887, in both its winter and summer shows.
Exhibited in the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition and won a Jury award, 3rd order of merit (Oil and Watercolour Painting) for Bush Track . The catalogue gives his address as 271 Collins-st, Melbourne. Other works exhibited in the Victorian Artists’ Gallery (Watercolours) included no.137 Old Melbourne Stables , City Marble Yard , Blackwood Ranges and Near Mentone .
C.S. Bennett of 18 Collins-street east, Melbourne exhibited in the Victorian Court Class 2 (Various paintings, drawings etc) cat. no.2 Near Dandenong , At Blackwood and The Old Home , and class 5 (Engravings and lithographs) cat. no.162 Wood engravings, descriptive of Australian life, and landscape.
C.S. Bennett died at Mornington on 22 April 1930.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 11 August 1869
- Summary
- Charles S. Bennett was active in the Melbourne artistic community in the late 1880s and exhibited both in Melbourne and London during that time.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Apr-30
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude53.1853016 Longitude-6.8087131 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland
- Biography
- cartoonist, painter and illustrator, was born at the cavalry barracks, Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, on 10 May 1868, son of Benjamin Strange, a private in the 10th Hussars, and his French wife Augustine, née Menefoz. His father retired to England after serving in India and Ben attended a London boarding school, learning painting and drawing at evening classes from an unidentified family friend who is said to have illustrated weekly journals. He migrated to WA in 1885.
Later, when working on the Yilgarn, WA, goldfields as a dryblower, Strange had a cartoon accepted for publication in the Bulletin . Then a coloured drawing was exhibited in the window of the Coolgardie Sun and he was invited to join the Coolgardie Miner and Coolgardie Pictorial in 1894. In 1895 he was retained by the Coolgardie Goldfields’ Courier to draw a weekly page of humorous sketches. He contributed to the Coolgardie Pioneer in 1897, and from April 1898 he began drawing 'cartoonlets’ for Winthrop Hackett’s Western Mail , a Perth weekly. He moved to Perth and became the Western Mail 's staff artist for the rest of his life (30 years), apart from serving in the South African war in 1899-1900, for which he was awarded the Queen Victoria Medal. There is some speculation that May Gibbs replaced him as staff cartoonist on the Western Mail when she returned from London in 1905 but it is more likely that she simply took over doing the front page cartoon.
Strange was known for his drawings of WA identities and for his pro-conscription cartoon East is East and West is West which, Rainbow states, was known all over Australia during the 1917 conscription campaign. The Temperance Vote 17 July 1914, Frankenstein Monster 16 April 1915 (a male monster, 'trade unionism’, towering over a pleading woman), Britain expects… 18 August 1916 (in favour of conscription) and At Stern Duty’s Call 25 May 1917 (re: women police) are included in When Australia was a woman (WAM, 1998), cats 133, 123, 113 & 131. A political cartoon in the Stan Cross collection of Smith’s Weekly cartoons (ill. Rainbow, p.55), showing Billy Hughes with a healthy horse labelled 'Referendum’ and a buggy labelled 'Win the War’ being blocked by 'the little boy from Manly’ labelled 'Australia’ with a dead horse on the road labelled 'voluntary system’, was evidently done c.1917.
Strange died in Perth on 16 August 1930 and was buried in Karrakatta Cemetery.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 10 May 1868
- Summary
- Federation period Irish-born Western Australian cartoonist, painter and illustrator. Strange worked as a cartoonist for the Western Mail for over three decades where May Gibbs was a one-time colleague.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16-Aug-30
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born in Birmingham, England. He studied at the Birmingham School of Art and was already an experienced etcher when he arrived in Sydney in 1881 and was appointed a staff artist on the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia . Originals include Wet evening, George Street, Sydney 1889, charcoal & white (Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased 1898) and evidently The Argyle Cut, Sydney 1885, watercolour and bodycolour (Deutscher-Menzies Sydney auction 5 March 2002, lot 126, est. $6,000-8,000). He also contributed drawings to the Town and Country Journal (possible example with 'HF’ monogram is Our canoe upon the Lachlan , 7 February 1885, 287) and to the Bulletin , where he signed his cartoons 'Remus’, e.g. “Why Sir the climate’s so bracing you don’t even have to wear a belt” (old salt with suited gent at beach), pen and ink original, Josef Lebovic collectors’ list 1996 no.58 ('On the Beach’), cat.5.
Fullwood helped establish the NSW Society of Artists in the mid 1890s. Also a prolific painter, his oil paintings include Bad News from Town 1894, which was exhibited with the Art Society of NSW in 1894 under this title but called Sad News when illustrated by Deutscher-Menzies, Australian and International Pantings, Sculpture and Works on Paper , Melbourne 22 November 1998, lot 289 (it is not actually a war painting, as catalogued by Deutscher in 1985 and in subsequent references).
In 1896 Fullwood married Clyda Blanche Newman, daughter of photographer John Hubert Newman.
Fullwood returned to England around 1899/1900. He worked in the USA in 1900 but was in London when his friend 'Hop’ visited in 1903. His watercolour London (Deutscher-Menzies Sydney auction 5 March 2002, lot 180, est. $2,500-3,500) is dated 1909. He exhibited with the Salon des Artistes Françaises, at the RA and in the USA. Works shown at the Royal Academy included three paintings of South African interest: Table Bay, South Africa, during the Boer War, 1900 (1901), The Castle, Cape Town (1904) and Cape Town from the Malay Quarter (1904). Boer War subjects for the London Graphic consisted of four illustrations published December 1899 (and one of 10 March 1900) depicting Australian troops leaving Sydney (or Melbourne?) for South Africa. Greenwall owns a painting by Sydney Prior Hall with a label on the back stating that it was presented to [or by?] 'Fellow artist Fullwood at the Graphic on his marriage to Miss Donaldson’.
In 1920 Fullwood returned to Sydney. In April 1926 Home reported that his hair 'looked more startled than usual’ at a Water Color Institute opening. Bathing Beauties , a gouache and bodycolour view of women surfing with a pier ending in a lighthouse behind them (offered Deutscher-Menzies, Australian and International Paintings, Sculpture and Works on Paper , Melbourne 25-26 April 1999, lot 142), is likely to have been done in NSW, but he must have been back in London before 1929 when Dorothy Hopkins published her biography of her father; she noted Fullwood’s popularity in London, where he was universally known as 'Old Remus’.
Fullwood is credited with making the largest block engraved for reproduction in Australia, according to Greenwall, a panorama of Sydney measuring 90 × 60 cm, then in the Sydney Morning Herald library. He was also well known as a postcard artist. He died in New South Wales on 1 October 1930.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- Leading late colonial era painter, cartoonist and illustrator.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Oct-30
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1862
- Summary
- Peddle was one of the principals of the firm later known as Peddle Thorp and Walker (PTW). His early work in Australia was in interior design and furniture design and a brother, George Peddle was also a furniture designer/maker. He travelled to the USA in 1911, working in Pasadena, California and returning to Australia in 1914.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-30
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-37.8076092 Longitude144.9423514 Start Date1861-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- sculptor, was born in North Melbourne on 14 September 1861.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 14 September 1861
- Summary
- Despite training across several artistic disciplines Baskerville is best known for her sculpture, indeed she is regarded as Victoria's first professional woman sculptor. In 1911 Baskerville achieved a first for Australian women sculptors when she was awarded the major commission for a political figure, a bronze monument of the former Premier of Victoria, Sir Thomas Bent.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Jul-30
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia
- Biography
- painter and teacher, born SA. She studied at the SASA, Adelaide—at the School of Painting under L. Tannert and at the School of Design under H.P. Gill—then went to London and studied at the Royal College of Art, South Kensington. After returning to Adelaide, she was appointed Art Instructor at the School of Design in 1892 [acc. Mather] or 1893 [acc. Lindsay], a position she was still holding in 1913 stated J.B. Mather [when it was called the Adelaide School of Art].
Her paintings, in oil and watercolour, consisted of still life and flower subjects. Her Ranunculus (oil, 19 × 19 ins) was purchased for the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) from the Elder Bequest in 1903. It is a fine floral study, “one of the many successes that this artist has achieved in this department of art” (J.B. Mather, AGSA catalogue 1913). A 1917 photograph in an album of photographs taken and collected by Alfred Searcy (ML: see postcard) shows 'Miss Lizzie Armstrong, the Artist and Pupil’.
Armstrong died in England in 1930 (McCubbin) and in 1931 a fund was started to establish the Elizabeth Armstrong Memorial Library in the old SA School of Arts and Crafts.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1860
- Summary
- South Australian-born painter and teacher, Amstrong alternated between Adelaide and England. Following her death a fund was started to establish the Elizabeth Armstrong Memorial Library in the old South Australian School of Arts and Crafts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1930
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude57.15 Longitude-2.11 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- photographer and collector was born in Aberdeen, Scotland 1859; arrived Tasmania 1878; collected prints, paintings and drawings of Tasmania bought by the Launceston City Council in 1927.
Purchased Anson Bros photographers.
Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery (TMAG) has photographs: one of horse-drawn waggons and another of a bullock-drawn cart decorated for a parade c.1919. Also TMAG purchased in 1989-90 12 full plate gold-toned photos on glass of the East Coast c.1900 by J.W. Beattie, mounted on original frame, from the Gordon Highlander Hotel, Sorell. Also 4 photos by Beattie of the interior of TMAG 1902, donated to TMAG by Mrs F.V. Thomson, Bull Creek, WA. Many copies of earlier photos were sold by him, e.g. Nixon and Woolley photographs of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- John Watt Beattie was a collector and photographer in turn-of-the-century Tasmania. Three years before his death in 1930, Launceston City Council purchased his collection of prints, paintings and drawings of Tasmania.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1930
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-33.8583992 Longitude151.1807353 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Balmain, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- watercolour painter, exhibited Sydney International Exhibition 1879-80 (NSW Court).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1858
- Summary
- Miss Esther A. Cripps was a watercolour painter. She exhibited at the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879-80.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1930
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Darlinghurst, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter John Peter Russell was born on 16 June 1858 in Darlinghurst, Sydney, the son of a Scottish engineer. In 1880 his father died and he received an inheritance that enabled him to travel to Europe to study art. Initially, Russell studied at the Slade School of Art in London, under Alphonse Legros, where he admired the work of James McNeill Whistler, Jules Bastien-Lepage and the neo-classicists Albert Moore and Frederick Leighton.
In the summer of 1883 Russell visited Spain with his brother Percy, William Maloney and Tom Roberts , where they met the Spanish art students Laureano Barrau and Ramon Casas, who inspired them to paint directly in front of the subject. The following year Russell moved to Paris where he studied with Fernand Cormon and became friends with fellow students Emile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh, as well as with Auguste Rodin. Russell joined van Gogh on a painting trip to Belgium and, in 1886, painted a portrait of him. In Paris, in 1887, he met up with E. Philips Fox . In 1886, Russell had visited Belle-Ile and met Claude Monet. The two artists painted together during the summer of 1886 and, in 1888, Russell moved to Belle-Ile and lived there for over 20 years with his wife Marianna (who had been one of Rodin’s favourite models).
During the summers of 1896 and 1897, he met Matisse at Belle-Ile. Russell had an extensive knowledge of colours and their properties, and he encouraged Matisse to exchange his earthy Flemish palette for intense, pure colours. After his wife’s death in 1908, Russell left Belle-Ile and from that time mainly painted in watercolour. He travelled with his daughter, Jeanne, through the south of France and, in 1912, married his daughter’s friend, the American singer Caroline de Witt Merrill. They settled for a time in Italy and Switzerland and, in 1915, moved to England where his five sons were serving in the Allied forces.
In 1921, Russell returned to Australia, and the following year he travelled to New Zealand where he established his son on a citrus farm. He returned to Sydney two years later to live in a fisherman’s cottage at Watson’s Bay on Sydney Harbour. He died of a heart attack brought on by lifting rocks, on 22 April 1930 in Sydney, aged 71.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne Note: Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Date written:
2004
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 June 1858
- Summary
- Painter John Peter Russell spent three decades living and working in Europe where Vincent Van Gogh was a fellow student in Paris. With his extensive knowledge of colours and their properties, Russell encouraged Henri Matisse to exchange his earthy Flemish palette for intense, pure colours. For several summers he was also the painting companion of Claude Monet. Russell returned permanently to Australia in 1921.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Apr-30
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude55.861111 Longitude-4.25 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glasgow, Scotland
- Biography
- painter, poet and illustrator, was associated with the Heidelberg School artists in Melbourne (Juliet Peers). Jack Sommers illustrated 'Jim’s Bargain’ by Alice A. Kenny, a Maori tale published in Lone Hand on 1 April 1910, 640-46, that includes a drawing of a young and beautiful 'bad slave’ of the chief 'Tied by her two thin wrists to a post … moaning with pain and despair’ (641).
This record is a stub. You can help by adding more detail.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1846
- Summary
- John (Jack) Sommers was a painter and illustrator with association with the Heidelberg School artists in Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31-Jul-30
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.897077 Longitude-8.4654674 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cork, Ireland
- Biography
- painter and teacher, was born in Cork, Ireland, daughter of Ambrose Jennings Sheppard. Always known as Kate, she came to Victoria with her parents in about 1852. By 1858 the family were living in Geelong and Kate was working as an assistant teacher with the Education Department. She was teaching at Ashby in 1860 and at St Mary’s, Geelong, from 1861. Instructed in drawing and painting by Edmund Sasse , by 1867 she was a licensed drawing teacher.
Catherine Elizabeth Sheppard gained public recognition in 1869 for her portrait in oils of the Very Rev. Dean Hayes, commissioned for St Augustine’s orphanage. It was greatly admired when exhibited at the Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition: the Geelong Advertiser noted on 26 February 1869 that 'this latest effort of this talented young lady entitled her to rank high among our colonial artists’, and, having singled her out on 4 March as 'the only lady artist’ represented, magnanimously acknowledged that 'the painting does not suffer in comparison with others as a work of art’. The portrait was also exhibited at the 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition. It was still 'pronounced by connoisseurs to be of a high order’ in 1885, long after she had left Geelong. By this time the artist’s age was given as a precocious sixteen (rather than the realistic twenty-six) and this myth of Sheppard as a prodigy persisted throughout her long career. Two other major portrait commissions followed Dean Hayes : Portrait of Mother Xavier Maguire (Sacred Heart College, Geelong) and a portrait of Father Power which was disposed of by art union in 1872.
In 1874 Sheppard moved to Ballarat as senior assistant teacher at Redan state school; she was appointed head of Scarsdale school in 1878. In that year she was awarded an honourable mention for her painting of Byron’s Manfred , at the Universal Exhibition in Paris, as well as marrying Dr J. Streeter in Ballarat and changing her name. Kate Streeter was teaching at schools in Bendigo in 1883 and in Melbourne from 1884 to 1894. She continued to paint (exhibiting at the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition in 1888) and to conduct private drawing lessons from her studio in the Grand Hotel. She was herself a student at the National Gallery school in 1890-91. Her portrait of Rev. W.A. Quick, President of Queen’s College, University of Melbourne in 1888-1909, was commissioned in 1907 (Queen’s College, MU), and she also painted a portrait of the Chancellor of the University, Sir Anthony Brownless.
Because of ill health Streeter moved to Brisbane in 1921, where 'the climate of Queensland…quite restored her’. Two years later she held an exhibition at 363 Queen Street, showing a new life-size portrait commission, Dr Wallis Hoare , as well as her 1878 Paris success, Manfred . In reviewing the exhibition the Queenslander repeated the apocryphal tale that she was only sixteen when she painted Dean Hayes . Catherine Elizabeth Streeter died at Brisbane on 7 January 1930. Although known mainly as a portrait painter, Streeter also painted altar pieces ( The Sacred Heart 1870 and Assumption of the Virgin 1877) and landscapes (a view of the You-Yangs, exhibited 1891). Her self-portrait (DG) shows a distinguished and vital woman with palette and brushes, still at work in old age. A manuscript autobiography dating from the 1850s is mentioned by Moore.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1842
- Summary
- Catherine Elizabeth (Kate) Sheppard was mainly known as a portrait painter, although she also painted altar pieces. In 1869 she gained public recognition for her portrait of the Very Rev. Dean Hayes, commissioned for St Augustine's orphanage.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Jan-30
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude51.897077 Longitude-8.4654674 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cork, Ireland
- Biography
- painter and teacher, was born in Cork, Ireland. Always known as Kate, she came to Victoria with her parents, Mr and Mrs Ambrose Jennings Sheppard, in about 1852. By 1858 the family were living in Geelong and Kate was working as an assistant teacher with the Education Department. She taught at Ashby in 1860 and at St Mary’s, Geelong from 1861. Instructed in drawing and painting by Edmund Sasse of Geelong, she was a licensed drawing teacher by 1867.
Kate Sheppard gained public recognition in 1869 for her portrait in oils of the Very Rev. Dean Hayes, commissioned for St Augustine’s orphanage. It was greatly admired when exhibited at the Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition. The Geelong Advertiser noted on 26 February 1869 that 'this latest effort of this talented young lady entitled her to rank high among our colonial artists’. Having singled her out on 4 March as 'the only lady artist’ represented, it magnanimously acknowledged that 'the painting does not suffer in comparison with others as a work of art’. The portrait was also exhibited at the 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition and was still 'pronounced by connoisseurs to be of a high order’ in 1885, long after she had left Geelong. By this time the artist’s age was given as a precocious 16 (rather than the realistic 26) and the myth of Sheppard as a prodigy persisted throughout her long career. Other major portrait commissions followed: Portrait of Mother Xavier Maguire (Sacred Heart College, Geelong) and a portrait of Father Power, raffled in an art union in 1872.
In 1874 Sheppard moved to Ballarat as senior assistant teacher at the Redan public school. She was appointed head of Scarsdale school in 1878. In that year she was awarded an honourable mention for her painting of Byron’s Manfred shown at the Paris Universal Exhibition; she also married Dr J. Streeter in Ballarat and changed her name. Kate Streeter was teaching art at Bendigo schools in 1883, then at Melbourne schools from 1884 to 1894. She also conducted private drawing lessons from her studio in the Grand Hotel, Melbourne. In 1888 she exhibited her portrait of Dr Brownlees (later Sir Anthony Brownlees, Chancellor of the University of Melbourne) at the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition (now University of Melbourne [MU]). Her portrait of Rev. W.A. Quick, President of Queen’s College (1888-1909), was commissioned in 1907 (MU).
Because of ill health, Streeter moved to Brisbane in 1921. Two years later, aged 81 with health quite restored, she held an exhibition at 363 Queen Street, Brisbane, showing work ranging from a recent life-size portrait commission, Dr Wallis Hoare , to her 1878 Paris success, Manfred . In reviewing the exhibition the Queenslander repeated the apocryphal tale that she was only 16 when she painted Dean Hayes . Although mainly a portrait painter, she also painted altar pieces ( The Sacred Heart 1870 and Assumption of the Virgin 1877) and landscapes (a view of the You-Yangs was exhibited in 1891). She died in Brisbane on 7 January 1930. A manuscript autobiography dating from the 1850s is mentioned by William Moore.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1842
- Summary
- Painter and teacher, was born in Cork, Ireland and came to Victoria with her parents. The myth of Sheppard as a prodigy persisted throughout her long career, driven by the early mistaken belief that she painted her first acclaimed portrait at the age of 16. Although mainly a portrait painter, she also painted altar pieces and landscapes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Jan-30
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude50.7241405 Longitude-3.660778816 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1930-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Devonshire, England, Uk
- Biography
- quilter and embroiderer, was born in Devonshire, England on 27 March 1840. She came to New South Wales with her family in 1842 and her father worked as a shepherd for the Australian Agricultural Company. After spending a short time at Port Stephens, the company’s headquarters, the family moved to the Goonoo Goonoo outstation, near Tamworth. After her father died and her mother remarried, they settled on a farm at Blandford, near Murrurundi, called Balmoral. Mary Jane maintained the farm with her unmarried brother after her mother died in 1891. Although she never married, she had a daughter who married in 1887. At the time of her death, on 1 June 1930, Mary Jane was living with her daughter’s family on their farm, Ivy Home, near Balmoral. She was buried in the Murrurundi Cemetery.
Mary Jane Hannaford was a very devout woman. Earlier in her life she had copied morally uplifting poems, which she decorated with borders and fancy headings, and made samplers, but it seems she did not begin making quilts until 1920, when she was 80 years old. There are seven known quilts initialled 'M.J.H.’, all found in the Parramatta (NSW) district. Her quilt Time 1924, cotton, wool, linen, silk, rayon 164 × 154 cm, embroidered l.r. 'M.J.H. Aged 84 yrs. 1924’ (National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1982) is one of three appliqué patchwork hangings by Mary Jane Hannaford in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection. The others, similar in execution, are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and Advance Australia Fair . All three are made of small pieces of various textiles in cotton, wool, linen and silk, probably from a haberdashery sample book, with some wool and rayon embroidery threads used for the fine detail and lettering and an occasional glass bead or sequin denoting an eye.
There are no specifically Australiana motifs in Time , but Advance Australia Fair has a central medallion incorporating Aborigines-the woman carrying a baby on her back, the man a spear-a kangaroo, an emu that has laid two green velvet eggs, and a kookaburra with a snake caught in its beak. A lower medallion has an unlikely mixture of birds and insects, including a rosella, magpie and grasshopper. The angels, which appear as a curious inclusion in Advance Australia Fair and more traditionally in Time and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden , have been cut out with the aid of a template. Age may have been responsible for the very poor, even crude, quality of the needlework and the poor spelling and reversed 's’s that would otherwise denote a semi-literate artist. All three quilts appear to be autobiographical; Advance Australia emphasises the artist’s patriotism, Adam and Eve her Christian beliefs and Time her ethical principles.
The theme of Time , made when she was an old lady of 84, is human mortality. This is emphasised in the embroidered inscriptions:
A minute how soon it has fled:
And yet how important it is
God calls every moment His own
For all our existence is His
And tho’ we may waste it in folly and play
He notices each that we squander away.
Why should we a minute despise
Because it so quickly is o’er
We know that it rapidly flies
And therefore should prize it the more;
Another indeed may appear in its stead
But that precious moment forever is fled.
Tis easy to squander our years
In idleness folly and strife
But oh! no repentance or tears
Can bring back one moment of life
But time if well spent and improved as it goes
Will render life pleasant, and peaceful its close.
This doggerel verse accompanies the image of a clock, and the theme of the passing of time and the inevitability of death is further emphasised by the verse embroidered above crudely depicted forget-me-nots:
O 'tis a lovely little flower
That blue forget-me-not.
We see it blooming on the grave
Of one who seems forgot.
Above the bust of a bearded Father Time with his scythe and two angels is 'Time, /The mower with his scythe’. A nativity scene, similar to that featured in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden , is accompanied by a verse from the well-known Christmas carol, 'While shepherds watch’d their flocks by night’ by Nahum Tate (first published in the Supplement to the New Version of the Psalms in 1700)-an affirmation of the artist’s certainty of a Christian heaven, with angels. The most moving of the vignettes, an apparent valedictory self portrait, depicts an old lady, dressed in black and leaning on a walking-stick, addressing a woman and shaking hands with a man who doffs his hat-presumably Mary Jane Hannaford’s daughter and son-in-law. Above this are the lines:
For all our days are passed away; we spend our years as a tale that is told. Farewell my dear ones. Fare thee well.
Beneath it and leading to the artist’s signature is the line, 'May God bless you all. “Good-bye”’.
Mary Jane Hannaford lived on for another six years, dying in 1930 aged 90. Her touching farewell to the world remains as a novel witness to her lifelong Christian faith.
Writers:
McPhee, John
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 March 1840
- Summary
- Quilter and embroiderer, Hannaford began making quilts in 1920, when she was 80 years old. There are seven known quilts initialled 'M.J.H.', all found in the Parramatta (NSW) district.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1930
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lambeth, London, UK
- Biography
- Despite his Dutch name, Henri van Raalte was born in Lambeth, England, on 11 February 1881. His mother, Frances Elizabeth née Cable, was from the English county of Suffolk, while his father, Joel, was born in the small town of Raalte, Holland, but had lived in England since he was aged ten or eleven. Henri was encouraged by his father, a relative of the painter Jozef Israëls, to take up art, and at the age of eighteen he commenced studying under Edward Charles Clifford R.I. and William Monk R.E. at the Berry Art School, an institution which soon became amalgamated with the larger St. John’s Wood School of Art in London. Van Raalte’s earliest known prints date from his time as an art student in London. Two 1900 etchings, Ye Olde Mermaid Inn, Rye and The Boat-Builder’s Shop, Rye, demonstrate the artist’s early ability as a printmaker. These images were reproduced in a special etching edition of The Studio (titled 'Modern Etching and Engraving’) in 1902, a major accomplishment for a young artist, even though he had been awarded an A.R.E. (Associate of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers) in 1901. Despite early experiments in etching, van Raalte was encouraged to concentrate on drawing and painting. Dedication to such traditional skills saw him enter the Royal Academy schools and he later exhibited at the Royal Academy. During this period van Raalte visited his father’s homeland, and while there he drew many vernacular subjects, such as windmills and locals in traditional Dutch dress. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century van Raalte had returned to his first artistic love, etching. Several extant prints from this time include a series of genre etchings portraying bulldogs. An undisclosed illness seems to have motivated the artist to travel to warmer climes, and in 1910 van Raalte migrated with his brother to Australia. Sea-sickness led to the artist’s decision to leave the ship at the first port of call, Fremantle, rather than at his planned destination, Melbourne. Soon after disembarking on 10 October 1910, van Raalte moved to the forested territory between Perth and Albany. For several years he worked as a timber-getter and seemingly abandoned art. Rather than resenting the landscape of this alien land, van Raalte became an admirer of the large eucalypt trees growing in this part of the country, and these forests became the inspiration for much of his later art work. During his travels he met, and later married, Kitty Symers, a local woman ten years his junior. By 1914 the couple was living close to the centre of Perth at 28 Outram Street, West Perth. Van Raalte initially found work in a department store writing price tickets, but he soon made contact with the small art community in Perth and began to re-establish his art career. He began teaching art at Loretto Convent, Perth, and Queen’s School in Cottesloe. By 1916 he had established his own art school, nostalgically known as the Berry School of Art, at 35 Outram Street, West Perth. One of his best known pupils was Beatrice Darbyshire who became a skilled printmaker in later life. Under van Raalte’s leadership the Berry School of Art later moved to Hay Street and became known as the Perth Art School. While van Raalte produced a few etchings in Perth he was limited by not having access to an etching press. In May 1918 the Perth engineering firm Hoskins & Co built a press to the artist’s specifications. The first print made on this machine was an aquatint of Perth’s Town Hall. With his own purpose built equipment, van Raalte actively involved himself in printmaking. As well as topographical views of Perth, the artist also took up the theme of the heroic gum tree, a subject popularised by the influence of the French artists of the Barbizon School on Australian artists such as Hans Heysen. In October 1918 van Raalte exhibited several of his prints at the Society of Artists annual show in Sydney. This Sydney exhibition included van Raalte’s most highly regarded print, The Monarch, Kalgan River, W.A., a work described by Roger Butler as a “seminal image of the gum tree school of etching” (Butler 2007, p.31). This 1918 dry point made van Raalte’s name as a skilled etcher not only in Perth but also in the eastern states, thanks to positive praise received from Lionel Lindsay in the fifth number of Art in Australia in 1918. At this time, this work was selling at an unprecedented £52 a print, a brief but commercial highpoint in van Raalte’s art career. Lindsay, himself a skilled etcher, wrote several positive reports on the artist in the years following the end of World War I, such as his 'Forward’ to the catalogue of van Raalte’s 1924 exhibition at Preece’s Gallery, Adelaide: “Romantically, and of late with greater powers of realism, he has drawn the great gums and twisted branches with that insight which is stimulated by a passion of the mind. By the skillful use of chiaroscuro, he adds a poetic quality to his drawing, which is native to them, and is yet part of the great tradition which threads the history of Dutch art and Rembrandt to the brothers Maris…. van Raalte has the courage for the big plate, on which with singular breadth of vision he conveys his mental impression.” The end of the Great War saw van Raalte hold several solo exhibitions in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne. These exhibitions were all well received and he was now well established on the Australian art scene at a time of increasing interest in etching and printmaking. The popularity of etching saw the establishment of the Australian Painter-Etchers’ Society (APES) in 1921. Van Raalte took twenty-seven etchings to the first APES exhibition in Sydney in June 1921, and that year he was listed as an APES member. Following the death of Gustave Barnes, van Raalte successfully applied for the position of Curator at the Art Gallery of South Australia. In late 1921 van Raalte, accompanied by his family and etching press, moved east and settled at 221 Wellington Square, North Adelaide. Despite the job-title of Curator, van Raalte’s public service position was that of managing director of the gallery and he reported to the SA Department of Education and the Board of Trustees. His main legacy at the Gallery was his attempt to improve the storage and conservation of works and the cataloguing of the collection, including the large print collection, then the largest in Australia. As well as his managerial and curatorial duties, van Raalte also gave several public lectures on the value of art and art history. After a split from the South Australian Society of Arts in late 1923, van Raalte helped establish the United Arts Club (UAC) in Adelaide, and became the Club’s founding President. In late July the following year the UAC and several other organisations organised Adelaide Artists’ Week, an event that included a national art exhibition, concerts, as well as theatrical performances. This event helped establish Adelaide as an important centre of the arts in Australia. Unused to the bureaucratic limitations expected of a senior public servant, Van Raalte had a troubled time working at the AGSA. He attempted to update the catalogue but was frustrated by indecision from the trustees. He considered resigning after Artists Week but persevered with attempts to catalogue the extensive print collection. During late 1925 van Raalte came into open conflict with the trustees’ chairman, Sir William Sowden, over several issues, and in January 1926 he resigned. Following his resignation he was commissioned to report on the condition of the AGSA collection. Van Raalte’s damming report was published in the [Adelaide] Register (18 February 1926) and during January and February 1926 there was much bitter debate in the Register over the reasons for van Raalte’s resignation. Despite his work at the AGSA and with the UAC, van Raalte continued to work as a printmaker. While the tree portrait had dominated his work in Western Australia, the move to Adelaide saw the tree become more a supplementary subject in his larger landscape vision. With such high prices being charged for some of his prints, it was inevitable that the artist would be criticised. In the May 1922 issue of Art in Australia, Ronald Finlayson negatively commented on van Raalte’s work on show at the Adelaide APES exhibition: “One is a little embarrassed in writing of this artist’s work. It has an air of being strong, even of being profound and dignified; and yet one is not quite sure. It does not seem to hold or compel one. The forms are massive but the background is often vague and indecisive, as if the etcher could not decide to sacrifice realism to romance.” The artist had many solo exhibitions of his work in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne during the mid to late 1920s. These included important shows at W.H. Gill’s gallery in Melbourne, Gayfield Shaw’s and Anthony Horderns’ in Sydney, and several exhibitions at F.W. Preece’s in Adelaide. After his resignation from AGSA, van Raalte moved with his family to Second Valley, South Australia. There he motored the Rapid Bay district in his Model T Ford in search of subject matter for his work. During this time he continued with his printmaking and experimented with portraiture and coloured aquatints. Prone to depression, which was exasperated by his dependence on alcohol, van Raalte was also often in financial difficulty. These problems seem to account for his shot-gun suicide on 4 November 1929, less than a week after Black Tuesday, the recognised start of the Great Depression. The forty-nine-year-old artist was survived by his widow, and three sons. In December 1929, a Memorial Exhibition of his work was held at the Argonaut Galleries in Adelaide. A well illustrated monograph of the artists work titled Henri van Raalte Master Printmaker was published by Arthur Spartalis Fine Art, Perth, in 1989.
Writers:
Silas Clifford-Smith
Note:
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 11 February 1881
- Summary
- English trained printmaker who arrived in Western Australia in 1910. During the following two decades he was one of Australia's best known printmakers working mainly in Western Australia and South Australia. During the early 1920s he was also a leading arts administrator in Adelaide.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Nov-29
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Born Gwendoline Todd in Adelaide. Studied at the Adelaide School of Design c.1888. Married Professor W.H. Bragg in 1889 (later Sir William Bragg, President of the Royal Society, and Nobel Prize winner). Both she and her husband painted landscapes in watercolours and both exhibited them at the SA Society of Arts in 1896 – 'their paintings were praised in the press and pronounced virtually indistinguishable’. The Braggs moved to Yorkshire in 1909.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1871
- Summary
- Late nineteenth-century painter of watercolour landscapes who studied at the Adelaide School of Design in the late 1880s. Bragg was the wife of fellow painter Sir William Bragg who would go on to become the President of the Royal Society and a Nobel Prize winner.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1929
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Commercial photographer born in Ballarat, Victoria. Alice Mills trained in the Melbourne photographic studios of Henry Johnstone and Emily Florence Kate O’Shaughnessy.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
DAAO staff writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1870
- Summary
- Photographer, Melbourne, top ranking commercial photographer, she was frequently published in magazines and produced hundreds of portraits of young World War I soldiers.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1929
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude51.4792494 Longitude-0.020200983 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Deptford, Kent, UK
- Biography
- Charles Ernest Astley was born in Deptford, Kent on 12 May 1869. Nothing is known of his early life or education but it appears that he studied at the Goldsmiths Institute, London under Frank Marriott. He came to Australia c.1887-88 and lived in rural New South Wales before moving to Hobart. There he painted (exhibiting with the Tasmanian Art Society in 1899) and performed as a violinist in the Hobart Philharmonic Society. He came to Queensland about 1902 and settled in Toowoomba where he became art instructor at the Toowoomba Technical College. He was instrumental in organising the first art show for the Austral Association in Toowoomba in 1903. He travelled back to England in 1907 and on his return settled in Warwick where, except for one year teaching in Rockhampton in 1925, he was to spend the remainder of his life as art master at the Warwick Technical College and High School. Charles E. Astley was a major figure in the cultural life of Warwick as he also performed with local musical groups.
His students exhibited their work annually and reports in the local papers describe stencilled curtains, woodcarving and modelling as well as painting and drawings. About 1920 he began to teach china painting and pottery. While the establishment of a course in ceramics in a small Queensland regional centre does not seem remarkable it becomes much more significant if we remember that the course was instituted more than a decade prior to courses at such institutions as the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. The Warwick Technical College in fact acquired a kiln before the Central Technical College, Brisbane, and received a positive response when the students’ works were displayed at the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association annual exhibitions in 1921 and 1923. The College also submitted a display to the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium in 1924. ( Gladys Fell 's 'Kookaburra bowl’ was included the contingent from Warwick.)
Astley was a competent painter and exhibited oils and watercolours at Toowoomba and in Queensland Art Society Exhibitions in 1902, 1911 and 1914. His pottery classes at the Warwick Technical College was a major expression of the interest generated by L.J. Harvey 's classes in Brisbane. Astley’s own work is much more sophisticated that that of his students and compares favourably with the pottery being produced in Brisbane.
His most significant artistic achievement is carved 'Hallstand: Flanders Field’ which is a significant example of the distinctive Arts and Crafts furniture style that evolved on the Darling Downs in the late nineteenth century through the association of Edith Robinson with the Toowoomba Technical College. By looking at Astley’s carving with the tradition of symbolic devices, the effects of World War One on the Warwick district and the association with John McCrae’s poem, one can conclude that the strong underlying social forces in Astley’s environment affected his choice of motif. Astley’s work thus transcends its intended function as a simple domestic object and provides an opening to explore the social and artistic context of the period.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 May 1869
- Summary
- Charles Astley's paintings were no more than competent but his teaching of pottery and china painting at the Warwick Technical College and High School and his own woodcarving, both manifestations of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Australia, establish him as a significant cultural figure in both Toowoomba and Warwick.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Jun-29
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1855-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Painter, was born in England in 1855. He studied at the National Gallery Schools, Melbourne in the 1880s. In September 1890 he was one of the artists renting a lodge in the grounds of Charterisville at half a crown a week ( Walter Withers was in the main house and other tenants were Hal Waugh , Leon Pole and Tom Humphrey .)
After trying his luck at the WA goldfields in the 1890s, Fred Williams went to Perth. He designed the catalogue for the 3rd exhibition of the W.A. Society of Art (1896-1914), successor to the Wilgie Club, that was held in Hamburg Chambers, Hay Street, Perth in December 1898. It shows a young woman in classical dress painting a landscape on an easel and holding a palette (ill. Erickson, 13). According to Moore, Williams was the creative force behind the Society’s art courses, which he had campaigned to set up. He was President of the Society from 1898 to 1904 and remained a member until he left WA about 1916. Along with Pitt Morison and James Linton , he 'led the push’ to set up the Perth Technical School (Erickson, 11).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1855
- Summary
- English painter who was trained in Melbourne and travelled to Perth, via the WA goldfields before becoming President of WA Society of Art. Before leaving Perth, Williams helped lead the push to establish the Perth Technical School.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1929
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, cartoonist, commercial artist and advertising agent, was born in Adelaide: William Moore calls him the first black-and-white artist born in that colony. At the 1870 South Australian School of Art annual exhibition, prizes included 'Miscellaneous Drawings – £1.1s. ... Subject, in indian ink, pen and ink, or neutral tint, or any combination of them, by boys under 16 years of age … no.33, A. Broad.’
He began to contribute drawings to South Australian illustrated papers even earlier. He was with Adelaide Punch from 1868 then for the Portonian in 1871-79 where he was principal illustrator with J. Eden Saville , acc. Moore (ii, 121). He contributed cartoons to the Lantern (1874-90) and with Pyndar Willis was chief cartoonist on the Adelaide Figaro (originally Peepshow , later South Australian Figaro ) in 1877 when it was published by D. Kinner Brown of Pirie Street, Adelaide (acc. Moore: copies ML).
A.S. Broad later moved to Melbourne and drew for the Australasian Sketcher and Illustrated Australian News , according to Moore (p.123). He was evidently the 'A.B.’ on Melbourne Punch in the 1880s too. Back at Adelaide, he told William Moore (p.123):
... I met John J. Horrocks, editor and then proprietor of the Illustrated Sydney News , who besides other commissions engaged me to do the art and business side of the Adelaide Exhibition 1887. I was next asked to make a sketching trip to Kangaroo Island. Besides forwarding six illustrated articles, I had numerous commissions for small oils and watercolour views from the islanders. I was then sent to Broken Hill to do a bird’s-eye view of the town and make drawings of the mines. On my own initiative, I tackled the commercial part of the problem and netted about £500 for marginal advertisements on the view, thus saving the editor the expense of sending an agent, which he had proposed to do. I was subsequently invited to join the staff in Sydney. I made bird’s-eye views of Newcastle and also the Maitland district, and again secured the ads. I then sketched around Sydney, through the Blue Mountains, and the Lithgow district.
Broad and J.C. Gasking were the ISN 's staff artists in 1889, when the paper was taken over by the Town and Country Journal , which kept its chief artist, E.M. Grosse (Moore ii, 112). Broad returned to Adelaide and took up commercial art, indulging a lifetime love for landscape painting in his spare time. A 1906 cartoon on the Moroccan question signed 'A.S.B.’ (original SLNSW DG Pe 248) is presumably his.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1854
- Summary
- Late colonial South Australian painter, illustrator, cartoonist, commercial artist and advertising agent
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1929
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1851-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- painter and stage designer, was born and bred in the United Kingdom. He painted many backdrops as a theatre assistant under William Beverly at Drury Lane, London, and exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy and with the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colors. He came to Australia under contract to the Brough-Boucicault Comedy Company in 1886 and stayed for eleven years.
With his friend Tom Roberts , Spong painted the backdrop of Comedy Banishing Melancholy for the opening of the Company’s second Bijou Theatre at Melbourne in 1890: Roberts painted the figures and Spong did the trompe l’oeil lace background. It cost £350, yet was used for two years only. Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin were guest scene painters at the Bijou Theatre in Christmas 1891, painting the scenery for Much Ado About Nothing with the company’s chief scene painter, Spong.
While still working as a theatrical manager, Spong was a foundation member of the breakaway Australian Artists’ Association (Melbourne) in 1885 along with Roberts, McCubbin et al. He exhibited regularly with the conservative VAS (“Vics”) and was a member of its watercolour hanging committee with Arthur Loureiro and George R. Ashton . In 1889 he exhibited Street Scene in Sydney with the Art Society of NSW, evidently his watercolour now in the Dixson Galleries entitled Old George Street Markets, York Street 1889. He also showed work in the Art Society’s 1890 and 1894 exhibitions. The AGNSW purchased one of his Egyptian watercolours in 1890. Five watercolours were shown with the new Society of Artists in 1896 and his absence was regretted the following year when he was en route to England.
Spong left Australia in 1897, spent some time with Streeton in Cairo then settled in London, where he became a successful painter and stage designer. He was a member of the London {and/or Melbourne?} Savage Club. His daughter, Hilda Spong, was a well-known actress: her watercolour portrait by Julian Ashton shown with the Vics (VAS) in October 1890, cat. 46, was sold at Sotheby’s in April 1997 (cat.407). Roberts also painted her. In April 1996 Christie’s was offering five watercolours by Spong, all overseas views. Eight English and Continental watercolours purchased in England from a relative of Robert Brough were sold at Christie’s auction on 27 November 1996 (part 2, lot 383), including one of Norfolk dated 1904 and one of Hambledon Common in Sussex dated May 1911. Sotheby’s Fine Australian Paintings , Melbourne 28-29 April 1997, had 25 watercolours by Spong, including three untitled Egyptian market scenes (lots 402-406, ill.) and views in England, New York ( Flat Iron Building ), Sorrento, Capri and other places. Lot 354 of Sotheby’s Fine Australian and European Paintings , Melbourne 25-26 August 1997, comprised three buildings by Spong, lot 402 three views.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1851
- Summary
- Spong first worked in Australia with Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin painting theatrical backdrops. After eleven years in the country, working primarily in watercolour, Spong returned to England via Cairo with Streeton.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1929
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist, illustrator, stained-glass designer and businessman, was born at 18 South Street, Manchester Square, London, on 27 October 1850, elder child and only son of William Macleod, 'a Londoner, of Highland stock – one of the Macleods of Skye’, according to his second wife’s biography. His mother, Juliana Esner, was of Cornish origin. The family migrated to Victoria in search of gold; his little sister died on the voyage out in 1855 and his father died at Beechworth, Victoria, soon after their arrival. William and his mother moved to Sydney where she married James Anderson , an alcoholic portrait painter from Northern Ireland whom she had probably met at Beechworth. Anderson made young William’s childhood miserable with his drunken brutality and greed. Known as 'William Anderson’, Macleod began work at a Sydney photographic studio at the age of 12, also studying art at the Sydney Mechanics Institute (School of Arts) under Edmund Thomas . At fifteen, he was the chief prize-winner at the school and began to receive portrait commissions. As 'William Anderson junior’ he was commissioned by Mayor Charles Moore to paint a (vividly coloured) watercolour of the interior of the pavilion erected by the Corporation of Sydney for a ball and other celebrations in honour of the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh ( Empire 25 March 1868, cited Dart & Conor Macleod 3). He also designed transparencies for the Royal Visit. He also had several oil paintings exhibited in the window of Charles Furse’s shop, George Street, including one of a kangaroo hunt. At seventeen, he was earning enough to install himself and his mother in a new home. He lived with her until she died, aged 93.
Early work of the late 1860s-1870s included designing (and sometimes installing) stained glass windows made and fired by John Falconer in Sydney. Examples include the large windows flanking the altar in St Benedict’s Catholic Church, Broadway; windows at Burrogorang; 'The Prodigal Son’s Return’, done for the old Darlinghurst Gaol and now in the Long Bay penitentiary chapel (Rolfe, 51, 174, 213-219); 'The Baptism of the Saviour’ window, St John the Baptist’s Anglican Church, Queanbeyan; 'The Confession of the Divinity of Christ by St Thomas’ window at Molongolo. For the memorial window to Robert Campbell in the Anglican church at Duntroon (ACT) and the windows in the private chapel of Dr Jenkins at Nepean Towers (now the Redemptorist Monastery St Mary’s Towers, Douglas Park) he was awarded the Art Section of the Agricultural Society of NSW’s medal – see Freeman’s Journal . He also did the library windows at Douglas Park (Conor Macleod, 4).
At eighteen years of age he was appointed drawing master at Madame Dutruc’s Academy for Young Ladies; he also taught at other schools. His first newspaper illustration appeared in the Illustrated Sydney News in 1866. He continued to send it drawings, including Albury Railway Demonstration , published 7 July 1883, 13. In 1871 the first exhibition of the NSW Academy of Art opened in the Chamber of Commerce, Sydney Exchange; it included 3 paintings by Macleod, the largest being a coastal scene, Tranquillity (Conor Macleod, 4). With other students he founded the Artists and Amateurs’ Life Academy, a society for studying and practising art. In 1874 he exhibited two oils at the Victorian Academy, The Tryst (in the Macleod home at Dunvegan in 1931) and a portrait of J.H. Carse in his studio. Perhaps his most notable portrait of this time, states Conor Macleod (6) was one of Sir Edward Deas-Thomson, hung in the Academy of Art’s 1875 exhibition and later in the home of Sir Edward Grigg, grandson of the subject and Governor of Keyna Colony, British South Africa. He also painted portraits of W. Long, Worshipful Master of the Leinster Marine Lodge (in full Masonic regalia); W. F. Hinchy and Alexander Rethel, officials of the Manchester Unity Lodge of Oddfellows; the Rev. William Slatyer (which won a silver medal from the Art side of the Agricultural Society); Archbishop Polding (Sancta Sophia Women’s College, SU) – a subject also painted by his stepfather, now at St John’s College; Archbishop Vaughan (St John’s College, SU); Mr Thomas Hewitt, a Grafton pioneer; James Squire Farnell MLA; James Warden MLA; P.B. Walker,, Assistant Superintendent of Telegraphs; and Watkin Wynne. Some were shown with the Academy of Art, as were Mephistopheles (from the Second Act of “Faust”) shrinking before the sign of the Cross. He also did animal painting, including prize cattle and other pedigree stock for prominent pastoralists. Imperial Purple , a pedigree bull done for a Mr Woodhouse, received much publicity.
On 27 January 1873, aged 23, 'William Anderson’ married Emily Collins in St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral, Sydney. They had five children, two sons and three daughters. Emily died in May 1910. At this stage Macleod was still often signing his work 'W. McL. Anderson’. After his marriage, however, William obtained a copy of his birth certificate from London, discarded the 'Anderson’ and lower-cased the 'l’ in his legal surname. Although Conor Macleod (p.5) claimed that William’s first newspaper illustrations appeared in James and Edward Fairfax’s Sydney Mail and depicted the NSW Field Artillery camp at Macquarie Fields, he actually began working there in 1874 (confirmed by account books, Dart, 11). He did illustrations for the Town and Country Journal , including The Treatment of Smallpox Patients in Sydney , published 10 September 1881, 512, and The Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay , 16 December 1899 (see file for others). From about 1875 he had regular work drawing cartoons for Sydney Punch . (Dart says that in 1856, aged 15, he contributed 2 drawings on wood to Sydney Punch apparently initialled 'P’.) He also drew for Queensland Punch from 1878, e.g. Ginx’s Baby 1 April 1879, p.91 (Ross Woodrow Aborigines, racial types archive website – in file).
Labelled 'a distinguished portrait painter’, Macleod had work from the first issue of J.F. Archibald’s Sydney Bulletin (1880). He drew the Bulletin 's first political cartoon, an unsubtle attack on municipal corruption, Design for the New Sydney Corporation Seal , published on 13 March 1880 (ill. Conor Macleod 1v, facing p.17). Conor Macleod claims it was his first Bulletin cartoon, but he also appears to have done The Wantabadgery Bushrangers , published on 31 January 1880, a portrait of Nosey Bob the hangman, according to Stewart, 13 (not especially well-drawn). Although his earliest works were unsigned after March 1880 they were initialled 'W McL’, e.g. Vice-regal Sport 12 June 1880, 'Henry Ketten’, the first 'Poverty Point’ caricature, 29 May {1880?}. Some of his early Bulletin cartoons were after Wangenheim . Dart states that the earliest ones show the influence of Charles H. Bennett and Linley Sambourne of London Punch but that by early 1883 the US influence is obvious.
Macleod’s Bulletin cartoons include: Not Much of a Choice : 'New Guinea [between Germany and John Bull], “How Happy I could be with neither”’ 1885 (ill. Rolfe, 33); A Terrible Poser : 'The Sphynx: “Is patriotism a virtue in Englishmen, yet a crime in Soudanese?”’ 1885 (ill. Rolfe, 34); Better Got Through Soudanly [Sydney newspapers eating humble pie ladled out by knight in armour Bulletin ] 1885 (ill. Rolfe, 39); As It Is : 'N.S. Wales to John Bull: “Principle be dashed, Daddy, hit him again! I’ll help you!”“ (NLA neg. see file). Other undated examples are reproduced in Tanner’s CAB .
Macleod drew most of the Bulletin illustrations until Livingston Hopkins ('Hop’) arrived in May 1883. Then Macleod joined the staff of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia (Moore ii, 113), although Dart notes a Bulletin cartoon by him published on 9 December 1883, 11. He was the first Australian artist appointed to work on the Picturesque Atlas and spent two years travelling around the country sketching. His speciality, however, was historic works, especially portraits, including 'primitive’ Aboriginal subjects like Truganini, nameless 'types’ and especially early European explorers such as Captain Cook (frontispiece portrait, landing at Kurnell, and proclaiming NSW a British possession after J. A. Gilfillan , the Endeavour on the reef; the entrance to the Endeavour River, with Mount Cook in the distance), Sir Joseph Banks etc. He drew Arthur Phillip and all NSW Governors following him down to Robinson; Viscount Sydney; La Perouse, De Bougainville and Baudin – and many others. (See Conor Macleod, '“Picturesque Atlas” Days’ chapter, 8-12, who notes that many originals are preserved in ML and at the AGSA). Finally, he became Chairman of Directors of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia Company.
Although Macleod and Samuel Begg jointly owned a third share in the Bulletin in March 1880 it was later relinquished. In 1886, however, Macleod was persuaded by Archibald to return to the Bulletin as manager. He became the majority shareholder and managing director (appointed 1912, retired 1927). Although praised as 'prudent’ and 'fair’, he was not much liked by his staff. (Dorothy Hopkins, p.92, called him 'generally beloved’ but she was writing when he was still alive.) Francis Myers commented: 'He loves a crawler’. He installed his son Norman as manager of the Sydney Bulletin office in c.1915 (but Norman died c.1919 during the great influenza epidemic, as did one of his sisters). Later he made his other son, Ronald, manager of the Melbourne office. Most notoriously, he organised J.F. Archibald being committed to Callan Park Lunatic Asylum in February 1908 for which Archibald – understandably – never forgave him. Yet Macleod also published Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life fully realising that the Bulletin would make no money from it and he generously revised the Bulletin 's contract with Steele Rudd to allow the author to regain film and stage rights to On Our Selection .
Macleod lived in the city before moving to Waverley, then to Dunvegan in Mosman Bay from about 1903. Agnes Conor O’Brien, who wrote for the Bulletin from 1901 to 1911, became his second wife in the Church of the Sacred Heart, Pymble, on 10 April 1911. After they returned from a world tour honeymoon in 1912, Macleod was appointed managing director of the Bulletin (with Norman Macleod as manager).
At about this time he took up sculpture. A self-portrait bronze bust done for his wife was, she wrote in 1931, to be left to the Mitchell Library. He also continued to paint, chiefly as a hobby, although he entered for the Archibald Prize with a portrait of Hop (AGNSW) and one of Archibald (won by McInnes, whom he acknowledged as 'the best man’ (biog. 45). In 1931 Conor Macleod published the posthumous Macleod of “The Bulletin” , an inaccurate hagiography, which Rolfe says is best read in the ML copy with lively, malicious annotations and corrections by the Bulletin 's A.G. Stephens. As an artist, said Stephens, Macleod’s portraits from life 'preserve some of the flat and literal air of those colored enlargements by Chinese artists which you get in three months by depositing £5 at a Chinese vegetable shop in Lower George Street’. A list of all Macleod’s published cartoons, caricatures and papers is at ML A 2147-2148. His art collection is discussed in his wife’s biography (pp.42-43); the women artists included in it were Alice Norton and Ellis Rowan.
Listed as 'Mcleod Anderson’ at 212 Pitt Street in 1871 and at Pitt Street in 1873 ( Sands Directory , 1871, 1873). Listed as 'W. Anderson’, he exhibited at the Agricultural Society of NSW Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition of 1874 in the section called 'Fine Arts – Competitive – Exhibits from the NSW Academy of Art’, cat.44, an oil painting, Portrait of Mr Carse (the artist).
For the Garden Palace in 1879, 'Allegorical representations of Europe, Asia, Africa and America [were] Painted by Messrs Anivitti, Montague [sic] Scott, McLeod and Habbe ( Notes on the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879 , Government Printing Office, Sydney 1880).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 27 October 1850
- Summary
- Federation era painter, cartoonist, illustrator, stained-glass designer and businessman. One of the founding Bulletin artists and editors.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Jun-29
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude49.4938975 Longitude0.1079732 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Le Havre, France
- Biography
- painter and botanical artist, was born at Le Havre on 22 October 1844 when her parents, Edward Hamersley and his French wife, Anne Louise, who had migrated to Western Australia in 1836, were revisiting France. In 1850 the family came back to their home Pyrton, near Guildford, outside Perth. The Hamersleys were substantial landowners and led a refined lifestyle. Margaret received her early education from her parents and, later, governesses. As with other young ladies of the day, the emphasis was on sketching and singing and modest academic accomplishments. She loved wildflowers, gardening and watercolour painting but disliked needlework. A watercolour view of King’s Park overlooking Perth inscribed 'M.H.’ (Royal Western Australian Historical Society, ill. cover Australiana 22/1, February 2000, where it is dated 1890s) may be by her and therefore pre-1876.
After a long courtship, Margaret Hamersley married John Forrest, a government surveyor and explorer, in St George’s Cathedral, Perth, on 29 February 1876. They settled at The Bungalow, a property in the centre of Perth bequeathed to Margaret by her father (who died in 1874). Reputedly due to a childhood riding accident, she was unable to have children.
Margaret Forrest’s interest in wildflower painting brought her into contact with similar artists, notably Ellis Rowan and Marianne North . While the latter was in Western Australia in 1880, Forrest acted as her guide and painting companion. Her work of this period is typical of the formal Victorian-style of botanical painting where flowers are isolated on the sheet of paper with a darker halo background. In 1889 Forrest and Ellis Rowan went on a painting excursion to the north west of the state. The two women made their journey by horse and carriage and stayed at various stations in the Gascoigne region. By then, Forrest’s style had matured. Her compositions are bolder with more free-flowing arrangements in watercolour with gouache and glazed highlights; 71 examples are held by the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
Margaret Forrest exhibited six wildflower paintings in the inaugural and only exhibition of the Wilgie Club, on 4 June 1890. She was a founding member of the Club, believed to be the first WA artists’ society. In 1896 she was involved in the formation of the WA Society of Arts and was vice-president until 1902. In the 1890s she produced a small number of book illustrations and attempted oil painting, but her time was increasingly spent furthering her husband’s political career and little work was produced after 1900. Erickson illustrates her reversible card/tea table of jarrah made (there is some speculation as to whether or not Forrest actually made the table herself or if it was simply in her possession) in the 1890s. Formerly in the Hall Collection, its current whereabouts are unknown (ill. Erickson, 17).
John Forrest was elected Premier of Western Australia in 1890; he moved to Federal Parliament in 1901. Margaret accompanied John on interstate and overseas missions, becoming involved in women’s issues following the granting of female franchise in 1899. She was a founding member of the Karrakatta Club, the first women’s club in Australia (founded Perth 1894), which aimed to broaden women’s cultural horizons by bringing them into contact with the fine arts. She was in charge of the arts. She was also a member of the WA Society of Arts.
Sir John Forrest died in 1918. In her last years Lady Forrest lived at Georgina station near Geraldton, where she died on 13 June 1929, aged 93. Both she and her husband were buried in Karrakatta Cemetery, Perth.
Writers:
Gooding, Janda
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 October 1844
- Summary
- Painter, botanical artist and the wife of John Forrest who was elected Premier of Western Australia in 1890. Margaret was also politically active and a founding member of both Australia's first women's club and the West Australian Society of Arts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Jun-29
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, sculptor and writer, was born in Croydon, Surrey. She came to Melbourne with her family in 1852, aged about 9, and later joined classes held by sculptor Charles Summers. She was one of the first three students permitted to copy from the antique plaster casts (restored by Summers after their long journey to the Antipodes) in the newly opened National Gallery of Victoria . Thomas exhibited sculptures in Melbourne from the first exhibition of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts in December 1857 (a 'Medallion Portrait’) until after she left Australia. Although Theresa Walker and Elizabeth Kelly also made small-scale sculptures (wax medallions and cameos), Thomas was the only woman in any of the Australian colonies known to have modelled large-scale sculptures at this time. Ironically, the Daphne she showed in the 1860 Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts was attributed to James Scurry in the catalogue, corrected (by hand) in the State Library of Victoria’s copy.
When Thomas’s bust of Dr A. Barnett and a plaster figure, Napea , were shown at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition, the former won a first-class certificate, and both were included in the 1862 London International Exhibition. At the 1863 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition she showed a 'Cabinet bust’ (afterwards donated to the Auction Bazaar) and two portrait medallions. One was of Burke and Wills, subsequently the subject of her teacher’s most famous work. Her own best-known portrait, The Late Charles Summers, Esq. (o/c, 127.5 × 102 cm, La Trobe Library), was long dated 1879 (the year after Summers died in 1878) due to an ambiguous inscription on the back but is now accepted as the portrait of her teacher she showed in the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, probably reworked in England. It depicts an almost life size Summers, aged about forty, in his Melbourne studio with a maquette of his major Australian work in the background – the life-size Burke and Wills Melbourne sculpture (which was not completed until 1869) – and was certainly painted in Summers’s Melbourne studio. Thomas presented it to the National Gallery of Victoria in 1881.
Painting was soon Thomas’s major medium. In 1862 she showed a painted portrait at the Annual Exhibition of Fine Arts in Melbourne (although it is not certain – despite the Argus critic of 5 January 1862 who believed they were one and the same – that she was also the Miss C. Thomas who exhibited [painted] Flowers from Nature ). In 1864 she exhibited one sculpture, The Quadroon Girl (with a descriptive quote by Longfellow) and six paintings or drawings: Portrait of Miss T.M. Thomas , Portrait of G. Knowles Parker, Esq. (described in the Argus as one of the two best portraits in the room), A Girl Crocheting , a miniature portrait, and two scenes from Tennyson’s Idylls of the King : 'Enid and Geraint’ (with quote) and 'Merlin and Vivien’ (ditto). [ Greig also showed a Vivien painting, and cf Sophia Sinnett .] The Argus described the last as an 'interesting sketch, but the expression thrown into the faces of the figures, the excellence of the attitudes in which they are placed, and the effect of a few rough touches by way of background and sky, prove that this work, had more time been devoted to it, would have been one of the most interesting and attractive of the exhibition’. A Girl Crocheting was said to bear 'the same mark of haste and want of care, and much of the same promise’.
The jurors’ report at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition commended Miss Thomas as 'a most industrious student of art, who has exhibited many well-executed copies in oil, as well as models in plaster, and an original portrait cameo, excellently carved.’ Her own exhibits included an oil version of The Quadroon Girl (according to the catalogue); C.E. Horsely exhibited her portrait medallion of himself and the five oil paintings included the portrait of Charles Summers.
She was represented at the 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition by a 'Shell Cameo Portrait’ lent by T. Thomas, possibly the subject, and oil copies of paintings by Eddis, Cope and Reynolds lent by local residents H.T. Dwight and Judge Bindon. A cast, Boy and Dog , was apparently shown by Thomas herself, although she had actually already left Australia. In 1867 she followed Summers, his wife (whom he had married in Victoria) and their young son to Italy, then moved to London and spent ten months studying at the South Kensington Schools. In 1869 she was again living in Rome, spending most of her time visiting the works of the great masters and sometimes copying their work (Clayton, 260). Two and a half years later (1871) she returned to London and entered the Royal Academy Schools for two years, becoming the first woman ever to receive the academy’s silver medal for modelling at the end of her studies. Several English portrait busts survive, including marble ones of Charles Summers (c.1878, Shire Hall, Taunton, Somerset), Henry Fielding (1880s), Dr Wilson Fox (1888) and Richard Jefferies (1891, Salisbury Cathedral, England).
Thomas’s paintings have largely disappeared even though they greatly outnumbered sculptures in her oeuvre. Of the thirty-three works included in major London exhibitions between 1868 and 1880 only one (the first) was a sculpture – a medallion of Frederick Wallis shown at the Royal Academy in 1868. Ten works were subsequently hung at the Academy from addresses in Croydon and Pimlico, but all were paintings, apparently oils. Eight were portraits (six shown in 1874 alone) preceded in 1873 by a biblical subject ( Rachel ) and a literary one ( Renzo: I Promessi Sposi ). Between 1872 and 1880 she showed seven watercolours and ten oils with the Society of British Artists (Suffolk Street), mainly domestic genre like Italian Girl and A Rainy Afternoon (1872/1873), Roman Woman (1874/1875, w/c), Companions (1877/1878, oil) and Ianthe (1878, oil). A few portraits were shown at Suffolk Street in later years, and oil landscape paintings are also known.
Douglas Sladen stated in 1888 that Thomas had made enough from her portraits to be able to retire on the proceeds in order to devote her life to travel and to writing and illustrating travel books. Typical titles are A Scamper through Spain and Tangier (1892), Two Years in Palestine and Syria… (1899) and Denmark, Past and Present (1902). She travelled with Rev. John Kelman to do the sixty-seven illustrations in his From Damascus to Palmyra (London, 1908). How To Judge Pictures (1906) and How To Understand Sculpture (1911) are simply written basic primers, while her best-known book is a hagiography of Charles Summers (1879); its title, A Hero of the Workshop , aptly encapsulates its tone. She also published poems in English, American and Australian periodicals. Sladen included seven in his anthology Australian Poets, 1788 to 1880 (London, 1888) and others appeared in the all-women anthology Coo-ee (London 1890) edited by Harriette Anne Martin.
Margaret Thomas died at Norton, near Letchworth, Hertfordshire on 24 December 1929, aged eighty-six. Her early plaster medallion of Sir Redmond Barry, purchased for the NGV in 1881 for three guineas, and a collection of watercolour sketches of Australian landscapes signed 'M. Thomas’, also believed to be her work, are now in the La Trobe Library. She is also represented in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1843
- Summary
- painter and sculptor, the only woman in any of the Australian colonies known to have modelled large-scale sculptures. She was successful enough to retire on the proceeds of her portraits.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Dec-29
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, station manager and auctioneer, was born in Sydney, fourth son of the painter Frederick Garling and Elizabeth, née Ward. At the age of sixteen William took drawing lessons in Sydney from S.T. Gill and many years later made a sketch of Gill as he remembered him in 1859 – heavily bearded and wearing a cutaway coat and topper (p.c.). He recollected that he had originally been attracted to Gill as a teacher by seeing some of his bush pictures in the windows of Mader’s shop in George Street. 'His private residence was in Woolloomooloo (I think Stanley Street) and I used to occasionally go there at night for a lesson’, Garling wrote in his memoirs (ML ms). Classes were normally held in Gill’s studio room at Mader’s.
William’s brothers Frederick and Clarence also sketched, an interest doubtless encouraged by their father. In 1856 their sister, Adelaide Sophia, married Sloper Piper Cox (whose uncle, Edgar Cox, had married Mary Andrewina Piper of Henrietta Villa, Potts Point in 1843) and William became the manager of the Cox family property, Hobartville, at Richmond (NSW), as well as of other stations owned by Sloper Cox. William Garling’s known paintings (p.cs) are mainly of animals, usually horses. He had a business as a horse auctioneer in Richmond and for a time was mayor of the town. He married twice (his second wife was called Mary) and he died in Sydney on 30 March 1929.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1840
- Summary
- William Garling's known paintings are mainly of animals, usually horses. He had a business as a horse auctioneer in Richmond and for a time was mayor of the town.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Mar-29
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Knightsbridge, London, England, UK
- Biography
- portrait painter, professional photographer, businessman, civic leader and politician, was born in Knightsbridge, London on 15 January 1836, son of the well known dealer in photographic apparatus Joseph Solomon (1803-90) and his wife Dinah, née Davis.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1836
- Summary
- Portrait painter, professional photographer, businessman, civic leader and politician. The La Trobe Library has a number of albums of his work and the Mortlock Library also holds examples.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1929
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1929-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- Architect, newspaper proprietor, director and politician.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1834
- Summary
- Architect, newspaper proprietor, director and politician.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1929
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, cartoonist, architect, town planner, author, editor and inventor, husband of the architect and town planner Florence Taylor, née Parsons, was born in Sydney on 1 August 1872, second son of George Faulty Taylor, an Australian-born fruiterer, and his Irish wife, Annie Maria né e McFadden. Educated at Marist Brothers and Sydney Technical College (Building), he worked as an architect then joined the NSW Mines Department. Finally in the 1890s he worked solely an artist, chiefly living by cartooning, especially for the Bulletin and London Punch .
He was a fluid and rapid sketcher. At a Smoke Night for the Art Society of NSW in September 1897, it was noted: 'But to draw lightning sketches, with all the disadvantages of brown paper, in front of a gallery of critics, and gain not only a favourable verdict but a storm of cheers – that is something of which to be proud; and so Messrs A.R. Coffey, Perry, Spence , Leon Pole, G. Taylor, and Salvana are to be complimented on that often mentioned but seldom realised event-an artistic success’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 13 September 1897, 3).
Above all, Taylor was a highly energetic achiever (unlike most of his fellow members of the Dawn and Dusk Club). So when he published Those Were The Days (Sydney: Tyrell’s, 1918), many of his colleagues were suspicious of his stories claiming he had been far too busy to have attended many of the events he described (acc. Kirkpatrick). While doing poster work at John Sands he invented a way of casting posters in high relief rather than having to print them and produced a highly successful set of coloured caricatures in relief. Adapted to building materials his 'bagasse’ invention – a sort of cement plaster – proved most lucrative after he patented it (with Alexander Knox) and exhibited examples all over the world ( AAA ). It won him a gold medal at the 1897 Queensland International Exhibition.
In 1901 Sydney’s major – and most expensive – Federation arch, the Commonwealth Arch at the intersection of Park and Elizabeth Streets designed by Varney Parkes (son of Henry Parkes, the 'father of Federation) and built by George Hudson and Son of Redfern, which cost £1,000 and was said to look as if it was made of marble, was actually a wooden frame covered in Taylor and Knox’s 'Bagasse fibrous composition’, which could be sawn and nailed and generally worked like timber. The classic triumphal arch (topped with a dome with a kangaroo and emu) contained mottos and names, three busts of Parkes and one of William Lyne, Edmund Barton and George Reid, statuettes of Sir John Robertson and W.B. Dalley, a relief of the First Federal Convention balanced by an allegorical, 'futuristic’ portrayal of the first Federal Parliament, which was not to meet for five months. There was also set of low-relief spandrel decorations executed by sculptors Macintosh , James White , Nelson Illingworth and James Sherriff featuring the single figure of a seated allegorical woman (NSW & Vic in the wide central arch, SA, Qld, Tas and WA in the flanking ones. Above the side passageways were four oil paintings done under the direction of William Lister Lister , President of the NSW Art Society. F.R. Mahony depicted Australia’s mounted soldiers of the Queen, a Lancer, a member of the Mounted Infantry and a member of the First Australian Horse; Arthur Collingridge did the landing of Captain Cook; Charles C.S. Tindall showed Sir William Denison landing as 1st Governor of NSW after the advent of responsible government; and Joseph Wolinski showed the birth of the Commonwealth as allegorical female figures. (Tessa Milne, Archways to Federation , Researching Federation Manual No.2, 1901 Centre, University of Technology, Sydney, 2001, pp.42-45.)
Taylor contributed cartoons to the Bulletin in 1897-98 and again later: Mitchell library [ML] has various originals, while National Library of Australia [NLA] has neg. of Another Case of the Evils of State Socialism , published 23 May 1903. In 1898 he founded his own comic paper, Ha Ha , for which he wrote most of the articles, drew the illustrations and engraved some of the blocks. When it failed he freelanced as a cartoonist for the Sunday Times , Melbourne Punch and other Australian papers; he also contributed cartoons to London Punch . 'Federation Ode’ from Taylor’s Blue Book , Sydney c.1901 is in NLA [neg. 22749]. It is unknown if he or Laurie Tayler did the anti-Commonwealth cartoon (NLA neg,) apparently signed 'Tayler’ but listed as 'Taylor’ by McCracken, published Sydney Daily Telegraph 20 June 1899: Vote “NO” – NSW and her duty to posterity (ill. Gillian McCracken, Federation! But who makes the nation? Museums and Galleries Foundation of NSW exhibition catalogue, 2001, p.16) G.A. Taylor also contributed to The Commonwealth, an annual of Australian art and literature 1-2 (1901-2) and its successor, Rowlandson’s Success (1907-8).
A large number of Taylor’s drawings were made into postcards, virtually all comic. There is some speculation that a number of these postcards were executed by C.E. Taylor as they are signed as such but given their content it would seem that C.E. Taylor and G.A Taylor are the same person in this instance. Most of these postcard images were taken from Taylor’s b/w pen-and-ink originals, with bright colours added by the printer. Unembellished black and white examples include: a series of 'comic’ Aboriginal sketches (e.g. The Kanaka Nigger , Sometimes he deals with Policemen & First Aid ), a series on The Adventures of a Jackaroo ('Losing his money – he starts “prospecting” in Sydney Harbour’, 'He tackles shearing!’) and an Australian Comic Alphabet Series .
Taylor was a Council member of the Royal Art Society (NSW). He founded the Wireless Institute of NSW and Building magazine. He published many booklets and articles on a great variety of subjects, including A History of Caricature (Schaeffer Library; slides from it in Fine Arts Dept, University of Sydney). He wrote art criticism for Sydney newspapers and for London’s Studio magazine. An article on Australian black and white art appeared The Commonwealth in 1902-3.
Taylor’s original artworks include: a large monochrome gouache The Ebb Tide depicting a Chinese opium den (ML V*ART/39), inscribed verso: 'Exhibitions/ Art Society NSW 1897/ Qld International 1897 ['where it held the post of honor’, according to AAA , p.152] / Wellington NZ Art Gallery 1898’; Taylor said 'he spent two awful nights in the Sydney opium dens in order to gather material’ ( AAA 1/12/1902, p.152). Other ML ink and wash large originals are: an employer standing on an 'established business’ block with 'Labor’ as a villain about to blow it up, signed 'Taylor 1913’ (V*CART 17); The Son of Man hath no place to rest his head (V*ART 12); an orphan child with the 'shades’ of his parents (V*ART 16); Capitalist and Worker (V*ART 13); Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth re bequeathing money to the church versus a starving widow (V*ART/29); a profiteer on a heap of money versus a stonebreaker (V*ART/23); The Siren – a woman approaching a man with Death behind her (V*ART/43); The Suicide (”...wilful deed shall wreck life’s plan/ ...soul must serve its destined span”: V*ART 19); “Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?” – a soldier priest with battle scene in the background (V*ART 14); “Oh For a Touch of a Vanished Hand” (V*ART 11); The Funeral March of a Conqueror 1928 (V*ART 9); a Boer War drawing labelled The Conqueror ('The Harvest’ under the picture) at ML V*ART 21: see slides and photos. His patriotic painting of a soldier was reproduced in Town and Country Journal on 27 January 1900, 42. NLA holds his coloured caricature of Billy Hughes as Lord High Executioner from The Mikado (1923).
An epileptic, George Taylor drowned in the bath at his Sydney home on 20 January 1928, survived by his widow, the architect and town planner Florence Taylor .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1 August 1872
- Summary
- Prolific Federation era painter, illustrator, cartoonist, architect, town planner, author, editor and inventor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Jan-28
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tasmania
- Biography
- frame-maker, was born into a wealthy Tasmanian family, a daughter of Caleb Williamson and Elizabeth, née Cakebread. By the 1880s her father was manager of Craig & Williamson’s, a prosperous department store in Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. The family home then became Rangeview in Mary Street, Kew. After attending Mrs Cowper’s school at Launceston Lillie matriculated to the University of Melbourne in 1876. Although full details of her early art training remain unknown, she attended the National Gallery Schools in the early 1880s.
In 1886 Lillie embarked on the Grand Tour with her friend Mrs Lewis and family. They visited England, France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Not long before she left, she met the painter Tom Roberts ; her first surviving letter to him is dated 15 April 1886. They were married on 30 April 1896 in St Hilary’s Church of England, East Kew, spent their honeymoon in Tasmania then moved to Sydney, where they lived at 6 Little Paul Street, Balmain. Their son, Caleb, was born on 31 January 1898.
In 1888 Lillie Williamson had become an exhibiting member of the Victorian Artists’ Society; she showed about five oil paintings in the annual exhibitions between 1888 and 1892. The earliest date given by Helen Topliss for a frame carved by her is 1894; it houses Tom Roberts’ painting, Billie Millera (unlocated). There is evidence that Lillie was also carving frames for other artists at this time. Early in 1903 Lillie Williamson and Tom Roberts travelled to London, in part so that Roberts could complete 'the Big Picture’ (on the opening of the First Commonwealth Parliament at Melbourne). They remained there until 1923 and these years represent the blossoming of Lillie Williamson’s career. In 1905-8 she attended woodcarving and gilding classes in London. In 1908 two of her works were hung 'on the line’ at the Royal Academy. She was exhibiting her work, receiving commissions, some from royalty, and carving frames for her husband’s work.
Mrs Tom Roberts was awarded a first prize certificate for a carved and gilded frame (now lost) shown in the Imperial Exhibition at Shepherd’s Bush in 1909. Her reputation as a frame-maker was well established in both London and Australia by the mid-1900s. One of Lillie’s frames, still with the family, contains her husband’s portrait of her (1910). Another frames Roberts’ portrait of a neighbour at Hampstead Garden Suburb, Mrs M.P. Thompson (1912), and Lillie may have framed other paintings by Roberts for the Thompsons.
Lillie left England for Australia on 6 January 1923. After her death, on 3 January 1928, Tom Roberts married Miss Jean Boyes of Lochmalien, Tasmania, a lifelong friend of Lillie’s.
Writers:
Gray, Pamela Clelland
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1860
- Summary
- Elizabeth Sarah (Lillie) Williamson was a frame-maker. She married Tom Roberts on 30 April 1896. Her frames were hung at the Royal Academy in London and she also received commissions from royalty. By the mid 1900s her reputation as a frame maker was well established in London and Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Jan-28
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude53.2352134 Longitude-1.4264097 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist, decorative artist, art teacher and journalist, was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England on 14 May 1859. As 'A. Constance Jones’ she studied at the Derby branch of the South Kensington School of Art and in London at Heatherley’s and at the British Museum’s antique classes. She then managed a decorative arts firm in Glasgow and taught decorative art classes to working-class girls at the Glasgow School of Art. (She may also have held life classes.) In a review she wrote in Sydney ( Centennial Magazine 1/10, May 1889, p.742) ostensibly devoted to an imported exhibition of British paintings she argued the need for art classes for working girls in Sydney, commenting: 'When manager of the decorative section in connection with the Glasgow School of Art, I had … control of a large evening class of girls, from eleven to 18 or 20 years of age, drawn chiefly from the domestic servant and factory girl order’. They were, she said, easily worked up to second grade Freehand and Model Drawing South Kensington examination standard and then to doing original, if simple, decorative designs.
Constance Jones married Felix Roth in Sydney in 1881. Her uncle, Dr William Cutts, lived in Melbourne and the Roths arrived there in late 1884. They soon returned to Sydney. Having failed to find work as a decorative artist 'Madame Roth’ became instructress in life drawing for the Art Society of NSW’s women’s art classes under Julian Ashton in August 1885 – Sydney’s first life drawing classes for women (for which Ashton alone has been credited).
The Roths lived in Orwell Street, Darlinghurst, and Constance conducted a noted artistic salon in her extravagantly decorated “aesthetic” city studio in Elizabeth Street ( Tom Roberts and Charles Conder met there in 1888). She exhibited regularly, chiefly in her employer’s annual exhibitions. The Art Society’s 1885 show included her study, Sunflowers (unofficial emblem of the British Aesthetic Movement). The following year she showed two 'admirably painted panels for the side of a fireplace’, Dies and Nox .
She also exhibited with the Australian Artists’ Association in Melbourne, while in 1887 her Spring was among the NSW paintings sent to the Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition, for sale at 14 guineas. She showed studies of Australian parrots, American toucan and other 'plumage birds’ at an Art Society conversazione that year and at the annual exhibition hers was 'the only decorative work worthy of note’, her Design for a Frieze being called by the Sydney Morning Herald art critic, 'one of the best things in watercolours [and] ... quite as good as the excellent “Australian Flowers” of Mr Henry’ [ Lucien Henry ]. 'In this class of decorative work Mme Roth has no rival here’, the Sydney Mail stated in 1888, when her Art Society’s exhibits included a door panel painted with cockatoos and parrots perched above prickly pears.
Roth drew illustrations for The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia , the Illustrated Sydney News and the Centennial Magazine , e.g. a little girl watering sunflowers initialled 'A.C.R.’ for a story, Pearl by Edith Lamb, Centennial Magazine 1/5 (December 1888), 325, illustrations signed 'A.C. Roth 1889’ for a poem, Baby Song by Henry Parkes, Centennial Magazine 1/7 (February 1889), 454-55, and three witty frog drawings for Alexander Lesley’s 'Frog – Myths’, Centennial Magazine 1/10 (May 1889), 770, 772 & 774 (and see JK Archive). In 1888 she won a prize of £1 for her Christmas cards entered in the Women’s Industries Exhibition.
She revisited Melbourne and travelled to Tasmania in 1888-89. At the 1889 Art Society exhibition in Sydney she showed five watercolours, four door panels 'consisting of peacock feathers relieved against a gold background’ (very Whistlerian) and four oil paintings, including A Mer-Child and a panel with a kookaburra on a blue-gum bough. Three works were sent on to the 1889 New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition at Dunedin. Her many exhibits with the Art Society in 1890 included I’m a Gentleman from Japan (a girl looking up at a Japanese mask, the title from The Mikado already successfully mounted in Sydney) and a long narrow decorative panel Apples , which was purchased by the trustees for the National Art Gallery of NSW. One of her seven exhibits in 1891 was Last by Phillip’s Farm I Flow, To Join the Brimming River .
In her review of The Anglo-Australian Collection in the National Gallery of NSW organised by the Anglo-Australian Society ( Centennial Magazine 1/10, May 1889) Roth admired some paintings, including Frederic Leighton’s Phryne , G.P.J. Hood’s decorative procession The Triumph of Spring (purchased by the Art Gallery of NSW trustees for £750) and S. J. Solomon’s Remorse but she noted they were 'salted’ among dross: 'people at home still hold firmly to the theory that anything is good enough for the Colonies!’
In 1891 the then National Art Gallery of New South Wales held an acquisitive competition for watercolours illustrating 'picturesque New South Wales’. The eight prize-purchases included Roth’s Kelso Churchyard , acquired for the gratifyingly high sum of £75. The very large watercolour, dated 1891 and signed 'A. C. Roth’, was loaned Bathurst Technological Museum by 1906, and in the Bathurst Historical Society Museum in the 1980s.
Roth left Sydney in late August-early September 1892 accompanied by her lover Charles C. Penstone , a black-and-white artist who had drawn cartoons for Adelaide Punch (1878-84) and outback subjects for the opposition Frearson’s Weekly (Moore, SAA ii, 121-22). She took ’30 or 40 sketches of Australian subjects, chiefly birds and flowers’, with her, stating that she aimed to set up as a decorative artist in New York. This may have been deliberately misleading since she was soon in England. In 1894 her A Hunt for Breakfast on an Australian Lagoon was hung in the Royal Academy summer show. She moved to South Africa in 1895 as Mrs Penstone, marrying Charles (who founded the Cape School of Art) the following year after Felix Roth had divorced her.
Charles and Constance Penstone founded The Owl in 1895, a magazine originally published in Johannesburg but soon transferred to Cape Town because they feared that Kruger would not maintain freedom of the press after the Jameson Raid. The first Cape Town issue appeared on 6 June 1896 renamed The Owl: Penstone’s Weekly . Both drew cartoons for it and both used the initials 'C.P.’ (though Constance also used 'ACP’) and their work is not easily distinguished until Charles died in August 1896. [National Library of Australia, Canberra, doesn’t have issues of The Owl or of the Cape Times but a cartoon signed 'C. Penstone’ – probably Charles – is on p.99 of Gerald Shaw’s Some Beginnings: the Cape Times (1876-1910) , Lon & NY: OUP, 1975, reproduced from the Cape Times Weekly Edition , 3 June 1896.] Although the ownership and editorship of the weekly Owl changed regularly, Constance continued to manage it. She used her own name, her initials and the pseudonym 'Scalpel’ on the cartoons she contributed both to it and to the weekly edition of the Cape Times . The Owl , which ceased publication in 1908, employed a large number of cartoonists during the Boer War. The regulars were Constance Penstone, Heiner Egersdorfer , Boonzaier and Captain Mordaunt Cyril Richards ('M.C.R.’). Later, Roth contributed cartoons to The Cape and Cape Argus .
She also sent artworks back for sale in Sydney. At the Art Society’s 1897 exhibition she was 'well represented’ by a new craft – illuminated addresses. In 1902 she was a founding member of the South African Society of Artists. She married her third husband, the artist George Crosland Robinson, in South Africa. From about 1910 she concentrated more on watercolour landscapes than cartoons, according to Greenwall. However, Greenwall mentions that a woman known only as 'S.A.H.[sic] Robinson’ contributed Boer War illustrations to The Graphic and The Daily Graphic in 1900. Her original painting, The convent at Mafeking wrecked by Boer shells, was reproduced in The Graphic of 16 June 1900 and is now in the Mendelssohn Collection, Library of Parliament, Cape Town. There is some speculation she may also be 'A. Constance Smedley’, who signed work in the The King during the Boer War (although this is unlikely). She died at Glencairn, South Africa in 1928.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 14 May 1859
- Summary
- Constance Roth, painter, cartoonist, decorative artist, art teacher and journalist, taught life drawing at Julian Ashton's in 1885. She departed Australia in 1892, travelling to England and South Africa. She founded 'The Owl' in 1895.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1928
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-20.1624522 Longitude57.5028044 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Port Louis, Mauritius
- Biography
- commercial artist, drew Edwardian glamour girls for coloured postcards, including a Fairy Butterfly series and a set of allegorical women representing each Australian state.
Born Edward (Edouard?) Tenri Leopold Pierre de Closy d’Errey in Mauritius in 1859, trained in Paris, arrived in Sydney in 1900. Known in Australia as Edward Tiger De Closay.
Exhibited Royal Art Society of NSW, 1910. [cat 108. School of Self-Defence. Artist’s address 58 Elizabeth Street].
Presumably father or brother of printmaker and violin maker Ernest Tiger De Closay (d.1936).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- Edward Tiger De Closay was a Federation period postcard illustrator who drew Edwardian glamour girls for coloured postcards. In 1910 he exhibited with the Royal Art Society in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1928
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-34.58647365 Longitude150.7693336 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Shellharbour, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 19-Jun-28
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-35.3621503 Longitude150.4751713 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ulladulla, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- botanist and surveyor.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- Richard Hind Cambage was a botanist and surveyor. He died in 1928.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1928
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1858
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Nov-28
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- Sculptor and art teacher, was born in Hobart. As a youth was given drawing lessons from Mr Schuetz in Hobart, then studied at the Sydney School of Arts (Technical College) under Lucien Henry and Archille Simonetti 1885-89. Appointed Art Master at Hobart Technical College 1890-95 and also taught drawing at the Collegiate School, Hobart (formerly Ladies College) in 1895. He was Secretary of the Art Society of Tasmania in 1890, 1893-94 and exhibited with it in 1894 as well as in the Hobart 'International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art’ held in 1894-95.
Tranthim-Fryer went to London and in 1896 worked for Farmer and Brindleys, where he learnt marble carving, and attended lectures at the RA. In 1896-99 he studied under W. Firth at the Lambeth School of Art (he won a London County Council scholarship giving him free tuition then won annual prizes every year). In 1897 he also studied under Professor Lanteri at the Royal College of Art and worked as a studio assistant to Paul Montford and Onslow Ford. He visited Paris five times, culminating in a visit to Rodin in 1899.
He returned to Australia in 1900 and taught at Sale School of Mines in 1903. Appointed Director of Horsham Working Men’s College in 1904-6, Art Master at Gordon Technical College, Geelong in 1907 and was the first Director of Swinburne Technical College in 1908 and Head of its Art School in 1917, holding both positions until his retirement in 1928. He was a founding council member of the Society of Arts and Crafts of Victoria in 1908 and its president for many years. He also exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1900-2 and 1914-28 and the Yarra Sculptors Society in 1901-2 and 1904. He died at Croydon, Vic, on 13 July 1928.
Commissions include War Memorials at St John’s Church of England, Toorak; All Saints Newtown (Vic); St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, and Sale High School (1923); portrait medallions and busts.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1858
- Summary
- Tasmanian born sculptor and art teacher. He returned from London to settle in Victoria where he became first Director of Swinburne Technical College in 1908, then founding council member of the Society of Arts and Crafts of Victoria in 1908.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Jul-28
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-36.9113175 Longitude149.2389375 Start Date1857-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bombala, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 3 April 1857
- Summary
- Monaro Plains-born photographer who emerged from the financial collapse of his early partnership with A H Lamartinere to establish Kerry & Co, a prolific photography studio in late 19th and early 20th century Sydney
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-May-28
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude40.712778 Longitude-74.006111 Start Date1853-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New York, NY, USA
- Biography
- painter, was born in New York on Boxing Day 1853, the eldest daughter of George Sutherland , wood-carver, and Jane, née Smith, a Glaswegian couple who returned to Scotland before migrating to Sydney in 1864 then moving to Melbourne in 1870.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 December 1853
- Summary
- Jane Sutherland advocated women's art in late nineteenth century Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Jul-28
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illuminator and embroiderer, was born in Liverpool, England on 9 August 1850, a descendant of Thomas More and a niece of the Benedictine monk William Bernard Ullathorne, former Australian missioner and scourge of the convict system, later Roman Catholic archbishop of Birmingham. She was one of three sisters to enter the English Congregation of the Third Order of St Dominic, founded in 1844 by Mother Margaret Hallahan with the assistance of the then Father Ullathorne. Mary Emma was clothed as a novice at the mother house in Stone, Staffordshire, on 5 November 1867, taking the name in religion of Francis Philomena; she was professed on 9 November 1868.
Transferred to the order’s convent in St Marychurch, on the outskirts of Torquay, her artistic talents were recognised. She was one of several nuns who provided designs to a terra-cotta works at Watcombe near Torquay. On the occasion of the silver jubilee of the consecration of the Bishop of Plymouth she illuminated an address to the designs of the prioress, Mother Rose Columba Adams, a work that was much admired and which included a number of miniature paintings.
Francis Philomena Ullathorne was one of the founding members of the community which came to North Adelaide in 1883 with Rose Columba Adams as prioress. In addition to her widely recognised talent for illumination, she was a particularly creative and skilful embroiderer, designing and executing a number of outstanding vestments as well as developing and directing the efforts of other embroiderers in the community. Several excellent examples of her creativity and talent in illumination and embroidery are held in the convent’s museum.
Mother Francis Philomena held the offices of sub-prioress and prioress at North Adelaide, dying in the sixtieth year of her religious profession, on 5 October 1928.
Writers:
Andrews, Brian
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 August 1850
- Summary
- Francis Philomena Ullathorne was a member of the English Congregation of the Third Order of St Dominic who came to North Adelaide in 1883. Widely recognised for her talent in illumination, she was also a particularly creative and skilful embroiderer.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5-Oct-28
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude52.666667 Longitude1 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Norfolk, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and sketcher, was born on 3 January 1850 at Sedgeford Hall, the Dower House of Heacham Hall, Norfolk, fourth of the nine children of Charles Fawcett Neville-Rolfe and Martha Holt, née Chapman. She was educated by a governess and learnt Latin from the local vicar. 1861-63 was spent in Italy with her family, where her mother died. Her father later remarried. Harriet Jane found her stepmother unsympathetic and escaped to London, where she attended the Slade, probably from its opening in 1871. In 1874 she moved to Paris and studied at L’Ecole Nationale de Dessin de Jeunes Filles (1874-77), winning bronze medals in its student 'concours de place’. A first-prize charcoal head of a young woman (1874) and a full-length female figure drawing (1876), are held in private collection.
'HJ’ (as she signed her work) remained in Paris—where she converted to Roman Catholicism—until 1883, then left to visit her sister and brother-in-law, Margaret and Charles Torrey, brothers Charles (Carl) and Arthur and Carl’s wife, Kunigunda (Kunie), who were all living on a cattle station in central-west Queensland. During the year and a half she spent at Alpha, HJ depicted with verve most of the activities associated with the property: drafting the cows, branding the cattle, breaking in the horses, the Alpha and Frankfield mailmen and the carriers waiting for the beef. She went camping ( Alpha Creek at Rainmore 11 February 1884, 'the eve of our first night in the bush’), kangaroo hunting and visited the outstations: Lanark, Frankfield and Woltang.
Several watercolours were inspired by the bright light and bleached colours of the Queensland bush; others such as Brumby Jack’s Camp Rainmore (August 1884), showing Mr Thomas making Johnny cakes while HJ, as usual, is sketching, contribute to a lively visual narrative. She also painted flowers, birds, animals and insects. In 1884 she accompanied Kunie to Clermont for the birth of Clive, painting her new-born nephew in the arms of Mrs Mackintosh as well as the nearby gold diggings. She made portraits of the Alpha Aboriginal women; Luke and Iguana shows the lad who helped around the homestead; and Kong, the Chinese cook, appears in several of her watercolours.
In April 1885 HJ sketched Parliament House, Brisbane, then embarked for England. Staying with her sister Mary at Park House, Heacham, she met Holcombe Ingleby. Henceforth sketching was rare, despite living in Naples and Marseilles immediately after they married at Kings Lynn Catholic Church on 27 October 1886. Helen was born on 17 August 1887 and Clement on 20 October 1888. Settling back in Norfolk, the Inglebys leased Heacham Hall from HJ’s eldest brother, Eustace, in 1893. In 1904 they moved into Sedgeford Hall.
Harriet Jane painted a few views of her homes and drew charcoal sketches of the Heacham servants. She did mural decorations in some family houses and, with her niece Ada, some ornamental work in the Heacham brickyard in the late 1890s. She organised 'creations’ for the first Heacham Carnival in 1900 and for the Sedgeford Summer Carnivals of 1905 (the first) and 1907-09 such as Ye Ancient Fayre and Pocahontas . In old age she is said to have decorated title pages of books for young family members. She died at Sedgeford Hall on 11 October 1928. In 1964 Clement Ingleby presented 84 of her Queensland watercolours to the Queensland Art Gallery. Others remain in private collection.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 January 1850
- Summary
- A painter and sketcher. During her time spent living in central west Queensland, she sketched and painted the bush.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Oct-28
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- painter and wood engraver, was born and bred in the UK. In London he engraved drawings by Henry French and Fred Barnard (“the Dickens illustrator”). After migrating to Perth, he became a landscape painter. It is unknown if he produced any additional print or b/w work while in Western Australia.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1848
- Summary
- Late 19th century London and Perth painter and wood engraver. While in London Symmons engraved drawings by Henry French & Fred Barnard - "the Dickens illustrator".
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1928
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- sketcher, second daughter of Austin Forrest Wilshire, a Sydney merchant, and Eliza, née Pitt, married Frank Lord in Sydney on 8 August 1871. Her undated pencil sketch on tinted paper, Rushcutters Bay (Mitchell Library), is inscribed verso 'To Mary Prince from her affectionate friend Alice Wilshire’ so was obviously done before her marriage. Alice and her sister Isabel were nieces of William Pitt Wilshire .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1848
- Summary
- Sketcher, second daughter of Austin Forrest Wilshire, a Sydney merchant, and Eliza, née Pitt, married Frank Lord in Sydney 1871. Her undated pencil sketch on tinted paper, Rushcutters Bay is in the Mitchell Library, Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1928
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude47 Longitude2 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- France
- Biography
- painter and teacher, trained as a painter in Paris then taught art in various Parisian schools. She exhibited in the Salon in 1878, 1879 and 1881. Then she was inspired to emigrate after attending a geographical conference on Australia in Paris. She arrived at Melbourne in 1881 with her husband Nicholas Emile and her unmarried sister, Marie Lion, a miniature painter and novelist who published as 'Noel Aimir’, an anagram of her name (a Melbourne edition of Marie’s novel, The Black Pearl , was published in 1911). While Nicholas worked for the French consulate, Madame Mouchette taught art from her studio in Collins Street. In 1885 her 'portrait in oils from nature’ was exhibited in an art exhibition at Launceston, Tasmania, organised by Monsieur Maurice (mainly of his pupils’ work), evidently a Parisian colleague ( Examiner 18 December 1885).
Berthe’s husband died on 10 October 1884. The following year she purchased the Oberwyl Ladies’ College in Burnett Street, St Kilda, founded by the Swiss-born Madame Elise Pfund in 1867. Initially, the enterprise was most successful and when Oscar Comettant visited Oberwyl in 1888 he was overwhelmed:
I do not think that anywhere in Europe there is an institution for young ladies that is better organised or more wisely directed… Every year more stress was put upon the teaching of our language [French]... our literature, our arts and our history… the young Australians of St Kilda were formed in our habits of elegance without losing their native charm…When I left Melbourne the institution had more than a hundred pupils and twenty-seven teachers.
Mouchette’s encouragement of the arts included a student-produced magazine, the Oberwylian , visits to exhibitions, theatre and concerts in town, and music, needlework, drawing and painting classes. At her studio she took students from outside the school for art classes, including Isa Rielly and 'Miss Macpherson’ (attributed to Rose McPherson, the future Margaret Preston , however, this has been questioned; nevertheless, Rose McPherson and Mouchette would later have studios in the same Adelaide building). In 1886 she showed an oil view of Oberwyl and a portrait of her late husband in the Victoria Court at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, along with a collection of work by her pupils that included sculpture, drawings, oil and watercolour paintings and 'Imitation Tapestry’. The Victorian Alliance Française, founded by Berthe and Marie, first met at Oberwyl. Berthe’s work as an artist and educator was acknowledged in 1889 with an order of the Palmes Academiques.
On 25 July 1892, however, the sisters auctioned their collection of paintings, etchings, prints and teaching illustrations and moved to Adelaide. The following year they were both exhibiting members of the South Australian Society of Arts. In Adelaide Mouchette founded another branch of the Alliance Française and was associated with the Theosophical Society. Her life-size oil portrait of the latter’s second international president, Annie Besant (SA Theosophical Society), was shown at the 1907 Women’s Work exhibition in Melbourne and at the preliminary exhibition in Sydney.
From 1906 to 1910 Berthe had a studio in the Adelaide Steamship Building, 57 Currie Street; in 1916-19 it was in the National Bank Chambers, King William Street. By 1909 the sisters were advertising drawing lessons in the Strathalbyn Southern Argus . They taught French at Tormore House and worked as governesses for various South Australian families. Shirley Cameron Wilson mentions that Miss Lyndall Bonnear, who knew them as a child, was spellbound by their large floral hats and colourful flowing gowns. Always carefully preserving their pure Parisian accents, they were piqued to be called 'those Australian ladies’ when they returned home. Berthe died at Breteuil sur Iton in Normandy on 20 June 1928.
Extant paintings include The Queen’s Bouquet (1891, National Gallery of Victoria), Portrait of Lucinda Gullet (private collection [p.c.]) and Portrait of Patience and Catherine Hawker (1907, p.c.), presumably both her pupils. The latter shows that she used photography for her portraits.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1846
- Summary
- painter and teacher, residing in Paris, Melbourne and Adelaide, she taught and created in a variety of media including sculpture, drawings, oil and watercolour paintings and 'Imitation Tapestry.'
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 20-Jun-28
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude52.5310214 Longitude-1.2649062 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England
- Biography
- taxidermist, with mother Jane Tost founding proprietors of Tost & Rohu, a taxidermy firm that operated in Sydney from 1860 until well into the 1930s. Jane Tost was the daughter of a naturalist, Herbert Ward, who trained both son and daughter into his profession. Jane Tost’s brother, Henry Ward, became John Audubon’s taxidermist before opening his own business in London. His son, Rowland Ward, is probably the most famous taxidermist of the nineteenth century. In 1839 Jane Ward married Charles Tost, a Prussian cabinet and pianoforte maker and taxidermist in Soho. Between 1840 and 1857 they had six children, including Jane Catherine (known as Ada Jane).
During the 1840s and early 1850s Jane Tost carried out work for the British Museum. Then in 1855 the Tost family migrated to Tasmania where Mrs Tost earned a living stuffing and mounting specimens for the Hobart Town Museum, run under the auspices of the Royal Society of Tasmania (now part of TMAG). In 1860 the Tosts moved to Sydney. From 1864 to 1869 Jane Tost was employed as a taxidermist by the trustees of the Australian Museum, a job for which she received the same wage as her male counterpart, £10 a month. This arrangement came to an end, however, when Charles Tost clashed with the museum’s curator Gerard Krefft , who had tried to frame him for theft.
Ada Jane Tost, who appears to have been a well-known actress at the Victoria Theatre in Pitt Street during the 1860s, married James Coates, an earthenware, china and glass dealer, in 1868. They had three children before James Coates, along with Ada Jane’s brother Charles, were killed in the Prince of Wales Theatre fire in 1872. Following the fire, mother and daughter opened Tost & Coates, Berlin Wool Depot and Taxidermists, at 60 William Street. After Ada’s marriage in 1878 to Henry Rohu, a naturalist and curio collector, the business became Tost & Rohu. In 1896 it expanded into second premises at 10 Moore Street, near the GPO, and by 1899 was being run by Ada’s son, Willis. Tost & Rohu continued well into the twentieth century; it was once owned by the bookseller James Tyrell, who delighted in the fact that it was known as the 'queerest shop in Sydney’.
For over forty years (1860-1900) Jane Tost and Ada Jane Rohu were the most consistent and most successful NSW women exhibitors at international exhibitions, winning at least twenty medals between them. They showed their work at London in 1862 and 1886, at Paris in 1867, Sydney in 1879, Calcutta in 1883, Melbourne in 1888, Launceston in 1891-92 and Chicago in 1893 where Ada Jane won an award in group 164, 'Two stuffed specimens’ for her 'Apteryx (Kiwi)’. They also exhibited in local exhibitions; Mrs J. Tost of 60 William Street, Sydney, showed 'Stuffed Birds’ for sale at £7 in class 587 (cat. 1640) 'Perfumery and Fancy Articles’ at the Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition organised by the Agricultural Society of NSW, which opened at Sydney on 6 April 1875. Their success highlights not only their great skill and artistry but the value placed by exhibition organisers and judges alike upon the 'unique’ products of Australasia, including its fauna.
Writers:
Sear, Martha
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. c.1845
- Summary
- Taxidermist, who worked with her mother Jane Tost. For over forty years (1860-1900) Jane Tost and Ada Jane Rohu were the most consistent and most successful NSW women exhibitors at international exhibitions, winning at least twenty medals between them.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1928
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- sketcher, eldest daughter of Edmund Blacket.
One kown work is House at Glebe Point n.d., photograph of pencil drawing, 4¼ x 6 inches, (Mitchell Library), signed 'Edith Blacket’ l.r. Note on mount in pencil 'Copy by D. Speer Bowral’ (ML). Shows Blacket family home in Glebe, designed and built by Edmund Blacket .
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1844
- Summary
- Edith Blacket is represented in the Mitchell Library by a photograph of one of her drawings of the family home in Glebe, designed and built by her architect father Edmund.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1928
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1928-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Van Diemen's Land (Tas)
- Biography
- sketcher, was born 13 January 1837 Launceston the third daughter of Robert Cowie and Julianna nee Luthman. Mary came from an artistic family and participated in their enthusiasm for sketching, though no extant work is known. Her father and her sisters Emily Bowring and Julia Cowie drew and painted; so did her paternal aunts, Emma von Stieglitz in particular.
She married Charles Nichols, a recent partner in the Launceston firm of Du Croz, Nichols & Co., in 1858 at Longford, Tasmania, and in about 1869 they moved to Dunedin, New Zealand, on behalf of Dalgetys, where Charles was killed in a carriage accident in 1878.
Mary Nichols moved to Europe with nine children. She made a number of visits back to Australia and New Zealand.
Mary Nichols was a prolific painter in water colours so far nearly 100 paintings have been found in family collections, they are mainly of scenes in New Zealand and Europe but in 1910 she painted various scenes of New Guinea and down the East Coast of Australia.
She also had portraits of herself, her sister Emily Bowring and her three daughters, Mary Beatrice Fell White, Emily Maud Blair White and Ada Marion MacGeough Bond, painted by James Jebusa Shannon which she then copied.
Mary Nichols died in London in 1928.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 January 1837
- Summary
- Nichols came from an artistic family and is believed to have been enthusiastic about sketching, however there is no existing work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1928
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-36.840556 Longitude174.74 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Auckland, NZ
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Auckland, New Zealand of Irish descent. His father was a stonemason and competent amateur violinist. Joe also played the violin. With his older brother, sculptor Guy Lynch (known as Frank) and former schoolmate Cecil “Unk” White , Joe came to Sydney in 1922, encouraged by reports from their NZ mate George Finey . Six-foot, red-haired Lynch with his 'mad Irish humour and his mad Irish rages’ (Dutton) contributed to the Bulletin , Smith’s Weekly and Melbourne Punch (c.1925). He was considered a rising cartoonist when one night in May 1927, dead drunk, he jumped off the 7.45 p.m. Neutral Bay-Mosman ferry Kiandra en route to a party at George Finey’s house (at Manly acc. Lindesay, Neutral Bay acc. newspaper report) and drowned near Fort Denison, inspiring Kenneth Slessor’s elegy “Five Bells”.
Cartoons in Smith’s and the Bulletin signed 'Lynch’ include the [undated] Bulletin bushie joke signed 'Lynch’: 'Sarah (at city hotel): “Are you going to leave anything for the waiter?”/ Dad: “No hope! Ten to one 'e wouldn’t eat it if I did!”’ (ill. Lindesay 1979, 183, who attributes it to 'Joe Lynch’). Others are: Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made Of (England, America, Japan and Russia dreaming of smoking canons, Australia dreaming of cricket), Smith’s Weekly 16 January 1926, 12; The Little Evening (two man getting drunker and drunker), Smith’s 14 June 1924, 23; 'Dave: “I’ve brought some hundreds and thousands. Would you like one?”’ Smith’s 26 June 1926, 8; and 'Shame of a traffic cop on realising that his blunder is irremediable’, Smith’s 8 May 1926, 15.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1897
- Summary
- New Zealand-born early 20th century cartoonist. His death inspired Kenneth Slessor's poem "Five Bells".
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- May-27
- Age at death
- 30
Details
Latitude55.6867243 Longitude12.5700724 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Biography
- Architect and pottery entrepreneur was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he studied architecture at the Copenhagen Technical School. Mouritzen sought adventure and moved to South Africa and then to Charters Towers in Queensland where he was a building contractor. He moved to Western Australia in 1892 to be a draughtsman in the civil service and became Supervisor of Works and then architect for the Eastern District. He went into private practice as an architect and hotel owner. Mouritzen designed hotels in Boddington, Brookton, and Kunnunoppin in Western Australia. In 1921 he started the Calyx Porcelain and Paint Factory. When this was not as lucrative as Mouritzen would have liked, he returned to architecture in practice with George Temple Poole, whom he had known from their days in the PWD. They built the Capitol Theatre and the Temple Court Building in William Street, Perth, Western Australia.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1862
- Summary
- Architect and pottery entrepreneur was born in 1862 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Mouritzen designed hotels in Boddington, Brookton, and Kunnunoppin. In 1921 he started the Calyx Porcelain and Paint Factory. Mouritzen and George Temple Poole built the Capitol Theatre and the Temple Court Building in William Street, Perth, Western Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1927
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, was born Amelia Kenworthy at Launceston on 10 April 1860. She married the photographer Alfred Edward Burrows on 28 October 1881 and died at Launceston on 13 March 1927, predeceasing her husband. A well-known Tasmanian landscape painter, Mrs Burrows delighted in working on a variety of surfaces. 'Amongst the additions to the Tasmanian Court at the [Melbourne International] Exhibition I noticed a hand-painted gown, the work of Mrs A.E. Burrows, of Launceston. Tasmanian scenes are painted on the several parts of the dress, even the buttons showing pretty scenes in the sister island. Mrs Burrows is already well-known as a successful painter, but Melbournites [sic] have not been privileged to view her work before’ ( Melbourne Punch , 23 August 1888, 155: info. Anita Callaway).
At the 1891-92 Tasmanian International Exhibition, Mrs Burrows received awards for three painted screens. They included a four-panel screen painted with vignette views and trompe l’oeil objects, inscribed 'A. Burrows/ Launceston/ 1889’, which was offered for sale by Masterpiece Fine Art Gallery in September 2002, cat.45 ($25,000). It was described in the International Exhibition catalogue as: 'Large folding screen, four panels, painted in oils on canvas; views of Hobart and Launceston, also miscellaneous subjects – Highly commended.’
A. Burrows of Launceston painted 2 comportes and 10 dessert plates with Tasmanina scenes (undated, Wrobel Collection, Sydney). An oil painting by A. Burrows called Scottish Scene 1905 (probably a Tasmanian view) was included in an exhibition by the Armidale and District Historical Society in 1967.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1860
- Summary
- Painter, was born Amelia Kenworthy at Launceston on 10 April 1860.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1927
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-33.87978 Longitude151.18541 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glebe, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- art student, (presumably the daughter of architect James Barnet , along with Miss A. ( Amy ), Louisa ( Lilia ?) and his son James ) exhibited student work at the NSW Academy of Art’s fifth annual exhibition in 1876: 'Pupils in the NSW Academy of Art – Miss R. Barnet – no.208 Head of Decius – crayons – study from cast’. At the Academy of Art’s sixth annual exhibition in 1877 'Art Students, Pupils in the NSW Academy of Art’ included 'Barnet, Miss R. – copies, no.179 Study – oil; no.180 Head – oil; no.181 Study – oil’. 'Prizes – To art students, pupils of the Academy … Certificates of Merit: Miss R. Barnet, Study, no.179’.
At the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition in the NSW section of the Ladies Court, Miss Rosa Barnet of Braeside, Ross Street (Sydney) showed: no.1268 Two oil paintings, Sybil of Cuma , copy; Head after Gainsborough , copy. At the following Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880 the Official List of Awards included: Ladies Court NSW – Barnet, Miss Rosa, Sydney – Two Oil Paintings – 2nd award.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- Rosa Barnet was an art student at the NSW Academy of Art where she exhibited her works in the school's exhibitions of 1876 and 1877. She went on to exhibit at shows in Sydney and Melbourne.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 30-Apr-27
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1852-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- Henri Tebbitt was one of the most commercially successful landscape artists working in Australia during the early years of the twentieth century. The son of English parents, Tebbitt was born a British national in Paris in 1852; the application of a French spelling for his forename being at the insistence of the local authorities. His father was a pin and needle merchant who had lived in the French capital since the time of the Second Republic in 1848. Despite his English heritage, Tebbitt lived mainly in Paris during his youth and French was his first language. For his final two years of schooling Tebbitt was sent to the prestigious Queen Elizabeth School at Cranbrook in Kent, England, where he perfected his English language skills, and while there he excelled in music and art.
After completing his education, Tebbitt returned to Paris where he joined his father’s firm. His debut in the commercial world ended when France declared war on Prussia on 19 July 1870. After a brief military campaign Paris was encircled by the enemy. In his memoirs Tebbitt writes of this dramatic period in which he witnessed the deprivations associated with the siege, the humiliating French capitulation of February 1871, and the subsequent insurrection of the Communards. Tebbitt admits to briefly joining the National Guard before the French defeat, and later witnessed the violent suppression of the Commune in May 1871.
Lacking any interest in his father’s business, Tebbitt, after the war, informally trained as an artist in Paris and later in London. While in London he became associated with the Artists’ Society & Langham Sketching Club, and sometimes went sketching with members along the upper reaches of the Thames. Views of the River Thames remained common subjects in his work in subsequent decades. During this period, he exhibited individual oil works at the annual shows of the Royal Society of British Artists (1882) and the Royal Academy of Arts (1884). Tebbitt’s skill at playing the piano, as well as his artistic connections, helped him gain entry to the homes and studios of several of the leading artists in England.
Although, revealingly, not mentioned in his memoir, Tebbitt, in 1878, married a woman named Martha Bateman in Scarborough, Yorkshire, and the following year their daughter, Marguerite, was born in Paris. Soon back in London the young family move to his parents’ house in south London, which they had established during the Franco-Prussian war. Tebbitt, however, soon relocated to Belgium, and subsequently toured Germany, Holland, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France. Seemingly travelling the continent on his own, Tebbitt supported his travels by selling watercolour sketches and gambling. Following a big win at the Monte Carlo casino he moved to North America for several years where he went into partnership with the journalist Charles F. Denslow, to produce illustrated character sketches. After returning to London, Tebbitt was living in Chelsea, London, with his wife and child. Finding little success, he resolved to travel to Australia.
According to Tebbitt, he first arrived in Australia in 1889. While this may indeed be true there is evidence to suggest (see: A Traveller’s Tale , p. 18) that he first arrived in November 1891. Whether arriving in 1889 or 1891, Tebbitt first disembarked in Sydney, without his wife and child, and soon moved to Melbourne where he had relatives. From there he travelled through country Victoria visiting Ballarat, Maryborough, and Castlemaine. Subsequently moving on to Adelaide, he met up with an (unnamed) English amateur naturalist and the pair spent their first antipodean summer camping on the banks of the Onkaparinga Creek near Balhannah in the Adelaide Hills. While there Tebbitt sold his images to local landowners. He later toured Tasmania on foot, then travelled to Queensland via Sydney.
Tebbitt admitted late in life that he had trouble adapting to the vegetation and light of Australia. This may account for his preference for painting coastal and river scenes as well as images of northern Europe for homesick migrants. By 1894 he had settled in Brisbane where he made a living as an art and music teacher. One of his painting students was Edward Colclough, who later became a trustee of the Queensland Art Gallery. While in Brisbane, Tebbitt exhibited his work for several years with the Queensland Art Society (QAS). His English-themed watercolour, Twilight (1895), received much praise in the local press and was subsequently purchased by the Queensland Art Gallery. A 1896 photograph of Tebbitt and several other QAS artists on a sketching excursion in Ipswich is the earliest known image of the artist.
By the late 1890s Tebbitt had returned to Sydney, and by 1900 he was listed living in the working-class harbour-side district of Balmain, Sydney. Around the turn of the century Tebbitt went into partnership with William Aldenhoven, a European-born art dealer who ran a large commercial gallery in Sydney which specialised in artistic images that appealed to popular taste. From 1900-13, Aldenhoven heavily promoted Tebbitt’s work which was sold through his gallery at 74 Hunter Street and at exhibitions and auctions in several state capitals. Tebbitt was a prolific artist during this period and his relationship with Aldenhoven led to great financial success.
Typical watercolour images painted during these years include crepuscular views of rivers, and lofty gum trees set in mountain scenery. Other common subjects included views of Sydney Harbour and scenes from northern Europe. Many of his works were painted on large-sized sheets of watercolour paper making his images more striking than other contemporary watercolourists. Despite the uncommonly large sizes of his images, these works were in the realist artistic tradition associated with British and French art of the 1870s and 1880s.
In 1901 Tebbitt became a member of the (Royal) Art Society of New South Wales (RAS) and contributed many works to several of their annual exhibitions, but after a few years his work was rejected by the RAS exhibition selection committee. In his memoirs Tebbitt posits that these rejections may have been caused by his high-profile association with Aldenhoven, a relationship which led to him being the target of resentment from other artists jealous of his close association with the successful dealer.
Tebbitt regularly toured the eastern states during his time in Australia and painted many regional areas. During the early years of the twentieth century, he established a studio in the bush at Allgomera Creek in the Eungai district on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, and this remote heavily forested area provided inspiration for many of his late-period works. At Allgomera, Tebbitt befriended a local farmer named Tom McGuigan and in 1903 he married Tom’s daughter, Bertha. Despite his love for the area, Tebbitt continued to be based in Sydney, and during their marriage the couple moved several times, mainly within Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Revealing, the 1903 wedding certificate makes no mention of the ending of Tebbitt’s first marriage, and as his first wife was still alive and using the Tebbitt name in England the omission may indicate that Henri was a bigamist, an offence that may explain why he avoided discussing his personal life in his memoir.
Tebbitt’s career, arguably, reached a high point in 1910 when a five-page illustrated profile of his work, written by Aldenhoven, was published in the prestigious British art magazine, The Studio . That same year Tebbitt held several exhibitions around the country including a high profile show of his watercolours at the NSW Tourist Bureau in Martin Place, Sydney, where he was described in an advertisement in the 1919 RAS exhibition catalogue as 'Australia’s Favourite Artist’.
By 1913 Tebbitt and Aldenhoven had parted company, for reasons unknown. Tebbitt continued to paint during his final years and exhibited his work at exhibitions and auction sales but received little press attention. Publisher George Robinson (of Angus & Robertson) urged Tebbitt to write his life story, a twenty-two thousand word memoir which was never published and remains in the collection of the Mitchell Library in Sydney. This work is significant as it is arguably the first lengthy autobiography written by an Australian artist.
Although his death is often, erroneously, listed as being in 1926, Tebbitt actually died on 3 January 1927, aged seventy-four, at his Rose Bay, Sydney home. In his obituary in the Brisbane Courier , the art historian and reviewer William Moore critically assessed his work:
Although he was not regarded as an artist of the first rank, Henri Tebbitt, who recently passed away, was widely known as a landscape painter in Australia. One got the impression when one viewed his works, that he might have become a painter of some distinction had he not been content to produce the kind of picture which was most in popular demand (1927, p. 19).
Despite his popularity with the Australian public during the first decade of the twentieth century Henri’s reputation was soon forgotten with the post war art boom. Tebbitt’s technical skill as a watercolourist is undeniable and he remains a notable pioneer of the medium in Australia. His work is included in the collection of the Queensland Art Gallery and several regional galleries. An expanded illustrated version of this biography, titled A traveller’s tale: the life and times of artist Henri Tebbitt , was published in the February 2011 issue of Australiana magazine.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1852
- Summary
- During the first decade of the twentieth century Henri Tebbitt was one of the most succesful landscape artists working in Australia. He is best known for his watercolours of rivers, coastal scenes and views of forests. Before moving to Australia he worked in Europe and North America.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Jan-27
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Painter, painted many Melbourne Cup winners, including Auraria, Winner of the Melbourne Cup, 1895, with John Stevenson up, at Flemington 1895, oil on canvas, which was owned by the jockey John Stevenson and his descendants until 1995. In May 2001 Bridget McDonnell Gallery, Melbourne, had it for sale (cat.5 ill.).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1848
- Summary
- Painter, painted many Melbourne Cup winners, including 'Auraria, Winner of the Melbourne Cup, 1895, with John Stevenson up, at Flemington,' 1895, oil on canvas, which was owned by the jockey John Stevenson and his descendants until 1995.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1927
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude40.3611643 Longitude-83.7596557 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bellefontaine, Logan County, Ohio, USA
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in Bellefontaine, Logan County, Ohio, USA, second youngest of a family of 14 (acc. to Hop, 'His Confessions’). His father died in 1849, when Hop was three, leaving his widow with nine surviving children. Hop fought in the American Civil War, having enlisted at the age of 17 as a private soldier (Union side) for the few months that remained. Taylor writes: 'at the outbreak of the American war in the sixties, evidently thinking the sword was mightier than the pen, he enlisted and went through the campaign without doing any particular damage, and to-day is proud to state that he is about the only survivor that does not happen to be a colonel!’ (Taylor p.34, referring to Hop 'His confessions’).
Hop began to be interested in making cartoons for a living in the early 1870s and 'left a country newspaper office “out west”, where I was very happy and decently paid as “local” editor and general utility man, to accept an offer made by the conductor of a new magazine to be called Scribner’s Monthly (the name was afterwards changed to The Century )’ in New York (Hop, 'His Confessions’, 1 December 1913, 21). His first drawing, which he engraved himself, Under the Gaslight , appeared in a small Illinois newspaper (the one 'out west’ [evidently in 1870]); it is reproduced in 'Hop, His Confessions’, Lone Hand 1 December 1913, 21. He worked for the Toledo Blade (Toledo was where he finished his education) as with Thomas Nast an illustrator of satirical 'literatoor’ written by 'Petroleum V. Nasby’ (David R. Locke). While at Scribner’s (October 1870) he took drawing classes under Aug. Will two nights a week, working in the business department of Scribner’s during the day for 12 dollars a week. This being a somewhat low salary, he decided to contribute to other magazines, so left Scribner’s and set up his own freelance studio at 116 Nassau Street, up three flights of stairs, also ceasing drawing classes. At about this time he stopped signing his full name and used 'Hop’.
He contributed freelance commercial art drawings and cartoons to a wide variety of journals, including Wild Oats , Judge , New York Daily Graphic , various Harper’s magazines – Harper’s Weekly, Harper’s Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and Harper’s Young People – and many others. In 1876, for the American Centenary, he wrote and illustrated The Comic History of the United States, by Livingston Hopkins, with seventy-five illustrations from sketches taken at a safe distance by the Author (New York: George Carleton, 1876), 'which I seriously wish mine enemy had written’, he stated in 1914 (Hop, 'His confessions’, Lone Hand 1 April 1914, 325). It was widely criticised for not being respectful enough, although when it was reprinted a year or two later by an English firm based in New York (Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.) it sold and reviewed better. Hop in 'His Confessions’ put this down to a cooling of nationalistic fervour after the centenary ( Lone Hand 2 March 1914, 246, chap XXVII 'Native Americans’ 1 April 1914, 325-26).
Hop had also regularly contributed to St Nicholas , an offshoot of Scribner’s for children. A serial, 'The Countess and the cat’ by T. Bailey Aldrich, which he illustrated with silhouette drawings, was later brought out in book form. In 1873 he illustrated an annual satirical magazine by the renowned humorist 'Josh Billings’ (Henry W. Shaw), Josh Billings’ Farmer’s Allminax (New York: George Carleton, 1873) – about the third in the series – and continued this work until 1879. His illustrations dominate the bound version of nine Allminaxes and he illustrated a book of humorous essays by Robert Burdette for the same publisher.
Other books Hop illustrated include Don Quixote, Gulliver’s Travels, Baron Munchausen and Irving’s Knickerbocker History of New York . While working on a space-rate basis for the Daily Graphic Hop, aged 37, was induced to join the Bulletin by W.H. Traill in November 1882 (he gives a detailed and amusing account of this in 'His confessions’, Lone Hand 1 May 1914, 396). After Keller of the San Francisco Wasp had agreed but backed out at the last minute, Traill went to NY and interviewed Wales of the Judge , Opper of Puck and Hamilton Birch of the New Century . The last sent him to Hop, still a fairly new arrival at the Daily Graphic .
A month later Hop and his family began the train trip cross-country to catch the S.S. Australia to Sydney, reaching San Francisco on Friday evening, 9 February 1883. The last thing he had done before leaving New York was to illustrate A Model Primer by Eugene Field. As well as Hop, his wife Harriet Augusta, the daughter of General Commager of Toledo, Ohio, whom he’d married seven years earlier, and their three small daughters, Traill got him to bring out Australia’s first photo-engraving equipment, which allowed drawings to be photographed and transferred onto metal plates for printing thus making topical daily cartoons a possibility. After less than successful initial experiments with the technology, Hop’s suggestion that the Bulletin engage an expert – from New York as it happened – was heeded (Hop, 'His Confessions’, 1 May 1914, 436-7).
The family found temporary accommodation in Sydney near the top of William Street. Traill gave Hop a tour of the city, introduced him to the Colonial Treasurer George Dibbs and pointed out other local identities as potential subjects for caricature. Unimpressed by his initial view of the Bulletin offices ('His Confessions’ 1 May 1914, p.436), Hop was soon provided with a new studio in Bond Street. Later on he shared a studio for a few months with Phil May , another Traill acquisition engaged in 1885. Hop notes that they both simplified their drawings in order to cope with the limited technical capabilities of the Bulletin 's machinery. Hop had a relatively advanced knowledge of printing processes and was often frustrated by the Bulletin 's primitive equipment and techniques (Caban, 32). He describes his method of working and talks about cartoons and caricatures in general in 'His Confessions’ ( Lone Hand 1 June 1914, 16-20).
After May left in 1887, Hop became the chief Sydney Bulletin cartoonist for decades. George Rossi Ashton was engaged for Victoria and Norman Lindsay contributed many cartoons in Sydney until he finally took over the Sydney slot in 1913 when Hop retired. The subjects Hop made most famous were Henry Parkes – perhaps his favourite, according to his daughter Dorothy – Sir George ('Yes-No’) Reid, who claimed he added his monocle for Hop – and 'The Little Boy at Manly’, whose name derived from one on a subscription list of contributions to Boer War funds and whose appearance combined Millais’s 'Bubbles’ and an old-fashioned Tenniel child. He symbolised NSW according to Tanner and 'Young Australia’ according to Rolfe (46). Both were correct. George Taylor described how the character developed (p.36), and Hop also told the story in 'His Confessions’ ( Lone Hand 1 June 1914, 19).
The little boy stayed with the Bulletin for years and was used by other cartoonists as well. His first appearance was in The Roll Call , Hop’s parody of Lady Butler’s renowned painting of the same title done when the AGNSW briefly owned a replica by the artist (in the belief it was the original work). Hop’s original caption (ML V* CART 30) is The Roll Call, or The Contingent’s Return. After the Original by Miss Thompson recently purchased by the Government from Mr. John Sands . Other Hop cartoons with the little boy include The Yellow Trash Question 1895, with the lad perched on flotsam in the sea while a man of Asian ethnicity tries to climb aboard (ill. King, 69).
Initially employed on a two-year contract (acc. to Caban 1983, 32, it was three years), Hop stayed 30 years and did an estimated 19,000 drawings for the Bulletin . In 1900 he invented 'Hop’s Understudy’ – actually Hop in a hurry – to help with the weekly grind. Some colleagues claimed he never really understood the sort of paper he was working for, considered passages in the 'Red Page’ unfit for any young woman to read and thought some of Norman Lindsay’s work prurient. Lindsay didn’t like Hop much either, complaining that the substance of Hop’s being was that of 'a witch-hunting puritan’, like his ancestor Stephen Hopkins, and stating in 1950 that Hop refused to acknowledge his existence on the staff leading to Archibald introducing them over and over again (Rolfe, 46, from Lindsay in Jubilee issue 1950). Hop’s daughter, Hattie F. Hopkins, responded, claiming that her father was a far more complex figure than Lindsay depicted – moreover, he didn’t recognise his own daughters in the street either ( Bulletin , 1 March 1950, 35). Possibly because he was an American, Hop failed to see how his anti-British royal family cartoons could appear subversive (ill. Rolfe, Tanner & Coleman, King etc.). He may have been responsible for the Bulletin 's anti-suffrage and anti-feminist agenda, which is evident in his early US cartoons (see Hop scrapbooks).
Hop originals in ML include Henry Parkes in bed with his head tied up, published 11 February 1890: 'Federation in the 'Air is all very well, but when it gets into the 'ead, Oh Lor!’ (Px*D431/11). Also, a page of 'cartoonlets’ – topicalities that include Barton white-washing natives now that New Guinea has become part of Australia in order to preserve the White Australia policy and a giant rat labelled 'plague’ frightening the Little Boy at Manly (DG SV* CART 23). Some of his cartoons were reproduced by the Bulletin as postcards (see David Cook) and collections appeared as books.
Hop acquired shares and became a director of the Bulletin . He was friendly with a number of Bulletin men, playing bowls with William Macleod and going on trips to the country with Banjo Paterson. With Archibald he was a member of the Sydney Athenaeum Club, which he attended whenever he was in town – though the two men were never close. With Julian Ashton , he started an artists’ camp on land he partly owned and partly rented at Balmoral (attributed Dorothy Hopkins, p.126). Visitors to it included his friends A. H. Fullwood and Daplyn and (fleetingly) Robert Louis Stevenson. He and his wife had three more children in Australia, including two sons. (The younger son, Almon(?), went on the land and one of them helped Hop make the furniture for the Hopkins Mosman home.)
Hop called Australia 'the love of my life’ and refused a number of offers to work elsewhere but never became an Australian citizen. He made two trips to Europe and America – a world tour beginning with Japan in 1903, after severe illness had led to the need for a long rest, and another in 1913 after he retired. His wife died at the age of 40 and his daughters then looked after him and his home, 'Fernham’, in Raglan Street, Mosman (though he committed his daughter Dorothy to a lunatic asylum {Stephen Garton has written about her}). Both house and garden were equipped with trick objects, including a seat that screeched when sat on and a garden chair that squirted Norman Lindsay when he sat in it, as Lindsay recalled in Bohemians of the Bulletin. He therefore had a sense of humour of a sort – just not of the type Lindsay approved of.
In his retirement Hop continued to make etchings, violins and violoncellos. He had been making violins since his youthful American years and had taught etching in both his Jamieson Street studio and his Mosman home to numerous students, including Ashton, Tom Roberts , B.E. Minns and Arthur Streeton (Dorothy Hopkins, p.166). His most famous etching is probably I thought I had a stamp! 1898 (copies ML, NGA, etc., original drawing in AGNSW ), but there are many others including conventional landscapes and streetscapes, e.g. Governor Bouke Hotel 1886 (NGA). According to Caban (p. 33) this interest had waned by 1893 when he took up cello making, yet he kept an office in town until he died and continued to draw. In old age, when his eyesight was failing, he made clock cases (Dorothy Hopkins, 157). Two hours before he died at Fernham, late at night on 21 August 1927, he delivered a little dissertation on etching to his nurse to entertain her, according to Dorothy Hopkins (p.1). His last words were, 'Where have you lived all these years?’ when his attendant asked him if he was the man who had been the Bulletin artist.
EXHIBITIONS: At the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition the 'Sydney Bulletin’ exhibited, at the entrance to the NSW court (with other newspapers and institutions, eg the Picturesque Atlas), 'Original drawings by Phil. May and Hopkins’ (cat.58, p.492 in Official Record ). He made serious romantic etchings, eg Street in Sydney 1893, possibly done for the 'Old Sydney’ competition at AGNSW (ML SSVI/ST/1) and there is speculation he was also represented in the 1893 Chicago World Fair. At the Grafton Gallery’s 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’ in 1898, L. Hopkins of The Bulletin Office, Sydney exhibited: cat.3 'My Turn Next!’, cat.4 'Klondyke’, cat. 369 'Prince of Wales and the Devil’, cat.370 'The Australian Attitude, Sydney’ and cat.371 'Not Wanted on the Voyage’ – all lent by the “Bulletin” Newspaper Co. His work was shown in Fifty years of Australian Cartooning in 1964 and in many other cartoon exhibitions since his death. He occasionally painted in watercolours; a monotone watercolour, Night Attack by Blacks , is in ML (SV / 157).
EXAMPLES: (all Bulletin ) King pp.66-7, 72-85, 90-1, 94-5, 98-9, 110; That New Guinea Protectorate 29 Nov 1884, 10; 'Three Ways if Exterminating and Civilizing the noble savage’: He Gets There Just the Same (gun, cross, alcohol) 1890 (Ross Woodrow) cf Laing ; The Shrieking Sisterhood 23 June 1894 (NSW Premier Sir George Dibbs and the Suffragists, ill. Oldfield 1994, 26); “Of Arms and the Woman I sing”/ Virgil/ (slightly altered) , original DG Pic ACC 202 / DG *D35 no.18 (women in the army – need for women to learn to shoot – riding across or side saddle, 'Veteraness – survivor, say, of the great Japano-Australian War of 1915’, nurses “the most charming trained male nurses … sweetly urging our brave wounded girls to 'do try and take a little nourishment’”, shooting at a target labelled 'Man’, machine gun inspection (“where do you put the coffee?”), a female Nelson – “England expects every woman to do her duty” and 'An eye like ma’s to threaten and command – Shakespeare (mutilated to suit the occasion)’) to accompany Scripture up to Date – A Bit of Mixed Metaphor on the Womanhood Suffrage League (an ugly old woman) begging from 'Laban, the Wriggler’ (Premier George 'Yes-No’ Reid), published 2 July 1898.
Art jokes include: The official sculpture and the official poetry of Botany Bay (re Sani 's GPO carvings and Henry Parkes) 10 January 1891, 13, a parody of Charles Bruce 's convict chain gang titled The Landing of our Forefathers From an old print 1891 (ill. King, p.31) and Art as it is in Yass (a rural lady confronting a nude statue) 20 January 1894, 15.
Several large prints of The Roll Call, or The Return of the NSW Regiment from the Soudan , showing William Bede Dalley reviewing the troops, were produced separately by the Bulletin (ML copies include V*CART/33). It was later reproduced by George Taylor in 'The Spirit of Caricature in the Commonwealth; With incidental remarks on Australian “Black and White”’, Commonwealth Annual 2 (1902-3), 32. Hop tells the story of drawing it in 'His Confessions’ 1 June 1914, 18. Elizabeth Butler’s original oil painting The Roll Call was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874 and purchased by Queen Victoria after it became the sensation of that year’s Royal Academy Summer Show; Butler noted that the day following the private view she 'woke up to find myself famous’ (see Autobiography ). Despite enormous publicity in London at the time about the painting and the Queen purchasing it, the purported 'original’ was purchased by the AGNSW from 'a Sydney dealer’ [John Sands]. When it was discovered to be a replica (though done by the artist herself), the dealer – who claimed to have been misled himself – 'promptly took the picture back and returned it to London’. The NAG then only had an engraving by F. Stacpoole after Butler, purchased 1885 (1908 cat. p.150), since deaccessioned.
The affair had excited a widespread interest, second only to the approaching return of our warriors from the Soudan. A voluminous correspondence in the press had riveted public attention to the replica episode, and “The Roll Call” being a celebrated picture, our artist seized upon it as a basis for a cartoon that should be, so to speak, double-pointed, hitting off two events of absorbing public interest. “The Roll Call” or “The Return of the Soudan Contingent,” which was a parody upon Lady Butler’s great painting is to-day the best remembered of the Sydney Bulletin cartoons. Our artist to his own mind has done better things before and since, but nothing which has had the vogue of the “The Roll Call” (Livingston Hopkins, 'Hop, his confessions; chapters from the autobiography of Livingston Hopkins’, Lone Hand 1 June 1914, 18).
The story was also mentioned by Dorothy Hopkins in 1929 (p.135), who called the image 'probably the most notable of all the Bulletin cartoons’. ML also holds 12 large scrapbooks of his cartoons compiled by Hop and an original by 'Hop’s Understudy’.
PORTRAIT: rather straight full-length portrait in Norman Lindsay, Bohemians , 91; Julian Ashton, Livingston Hopkins esq. (“Hop”) 1908, watercolour, AGNSW, gift of the artist 1933 (Ashton’s portrait of Hop, exhibited in 9th Federal Exhibition, Adelaide, was called 'the strongest bit of character portraiture … but it lacks vitality of color somewhat’: 'The Art of the Year’, Lone Hand 1 April 1910, 678 [by various 'art correspondents’]); W.T. Smedley , [portrait of] Hop (Livingston Hopkins) , pencil on grey paper, AGNSW acquired 1929; self-portrait cartoon holding club with 'Bulletin’ on it (ill. King, 64); caricature of Hop [by Will Dyson ? – illegible photocopy] in 1907 Society of Artists catalogue, 38; Hop by Phil May, clay mask (illus. Taylor and Caban 1983, p.29); probable self portrait caricature pointing at a straight portrait plus photographic 'portrait’ of 'Hop and “his understudy”’ in George Taylor, 'The Spirit of Caricature in the Commonwealth; with incidental remarks on Australian “Black and White”’, Commonwealth Annual 2 (1902-3), 31-32.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1846
- Summary
- A conservative and influential late colonial era Bulletin cartoonist, who came to Australia after a successful career in the US. He was known as an anti-suffragist and anti-royalist who habitually ignored Norman Lindsay, even after being introduced to him many, many times.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Aug-27
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia
- Biography
- Lacemaker who was born in Western Australia into the boat building family. She married Thomas Sherwood who worked in the Lands Department and was a director of the Perth Building Society. A beautiful silk and lace wedding handkerchief made by her c.1920 is in the Rockingham Museum. This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1845
- Summary
- A beautiful silk and lace wedding handkerchief made by Sherwood around 1920 is in the Rockingham Museum.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1927
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.6649565 Longitude-1.1209114 Start Date1841-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newington, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, house painter and decorator, was born in Newington, England, in March 1841, third child and second son of William Insull Burman and Sarah, née Smith.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. March 1841
- Summary
- Burman worked for his father's painting and decorating firm, Burman & Co before establishing a house painting business, Burmam & Co with just his brothers in 1865. Frederick eventually decided to follow his father's lead and practice photography exclusively. The business was successful enough to have several studios operating in and around Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1927
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude51.3158434 Longitude0.8911283 Start Date1841-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Faversham, Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and medical dispenser, was born on 19 January 1841 in Faversham, Kent, son of William Parker Hoare and Helen, née Webster. He accompanied a shipload of British migrants to Brisbane in the Golden City about 1860 but eventually settled in Adelaide in 1865. He was undoubtedly the 'W.H.’ Hoare reported as winning the prize for the best oil painting of animals 'from life’ by a resident of the colony at the South Australian Society of Arts’ 1865 exhibition. He painted watercolours of South Australian insects in 1866 (Mortlock Library).
In 1868 Hoare was appointed surgeon’s assistant and dispenser on Goyder 's expedition to the Northern Territory (then part of South Australia) and left Adelaide with the rest of the party aboard the Moonta in December. They arrived at Port Darwin on 5 February 1869 and Hoare made an oil sketch of the landing place and camp. He painted eight panoramic views showing Port Darwin from Fort Point to Point Emery which he sent back to Adelaide in the Moonta ; these were favourably reviewed by the Adelaide Observer . For the ship’s captain, Hoare also made a souvenir sketch of the waterfall named after him, Barresson Springs.
Apart from his medical duties as assistant to Dr Robert Peel, Hoare spent most of his time at Port Darwin engaged in sketching, noting in his diary: 'I had a box of moist watercolour given to me belonging to the Government and was given to understand that I am to illustrate all perishable specimens of Natural History’. He painted animal specimens for Peel (who also acted as naturalist) and botanical specimens for the father and son botanists, Frederick and Alfred Schultze. For Goyder he painted two black butterflies and received access to Goyder’s library in return. For himself he sketched the Aboriginal weapons and artefacts he obtained by barter.
Hoare also painted the scenery for the makeshift 'Theatre Royal’, his drop-curtain representing a panoramic view of Port Darwin. Goyder encouraged the nightly performances at the 'theatre’ in an attempt to lift the spirits of his party, many of whom were suffering from dysentery and/or scurvy. Hoare wrote dispiritedly in his journal on 23 August: 'I cleaned and sent 21 Water Colour Drawings to Mr Goyder. It rained hard at 2.15 a.m. All the men had Lime Juice as Scurvey is amongst some of them. We had some goat’s Flesh for tea which I thought a great treat. No Gulnare arrived but I hope she will not be long before she is sighted. My legs pain me very much towards evening’, and then: 'Ship in Sight good news’.
The Gulnare , captained by the photographer Samuel Sweet , brought mail and fresh provisions, and a month later took Hoare and most of the party back to Adelaide. After his return, Hoare worked as a dispenser in Adelaide Hospital until he retired in 1892; he then left for England. An oil painting of kangaroos in an Australian landscape (1894, NLA) was done after his return. He died, unmarried, at Ramsgate, Kent, on 20 October 1927.
Hoare seems to have had a flair for the theatrical. He wore, even as a young man, a long, flowing beard reaching to his waist. On board the Moonta he took part in, and won, a round-robin boxing tournament, using the assumed name 'The Queensland Slasher’. And Margaret Goyder Kerr has published a photograph of Hoare – still bearded, wearing a costume and boots made of fur – as an 'ancient Briton’ in the 1911 Empire Pageant at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 19 January 1841
- Summary
- Painter and medical dispenser, in 1868 he joined Goyder's expedition to the Northern Territory (then part of South Australia) and painted flora, fauna and landscapes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Oct-27
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude60 Longitude-110 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Canada
- Biography
- John Louis Leverman was a Canadian-born country cabinetmaker cum undertaker who arrived in Western Australia in 1859. He married Elizabeth Rowland and they had ten children. She was a strict Methodist and he a Catholic which caused a rift with her family. He worked at the Greenough from the 1860s into the 20th century. Assisted by his son Charles Louis (1870-1936), he fitted-out of the Catholic Church at Greenough. The pair also made furniture for the Waldeck family of the district. By 1874 he had acquired land and was farming. He made a travelling medicine chest for his son- in- law Charles Conway.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1838
- Summary
- A country cabinetmaker who arrived in Western Australia in 1859. He worked at the Greenough from the 1860s into the 20th century.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1927
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude52.3730796 Longitude4.8924534 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Biography
- painter, was born in Amsterdam, where he studied art. In 1880 he became a naturalised Belgian citizen. He came to Melbourne c.1885 – at about the same time as the Italian Nerli and the Portugese Loureiro – and was listed as 'J. Carabain’, artist, of 95 Collins Street, Melbourne, in Sands 1886-88, 1895-97 and Sands & McDougall (Melbourne) 1888. Table Talk (21 December 1888, p.3) commented: 'The number of foreign artists who are settling in Melbourne is steadily increasing, and their residence here cannot fail to make an impression on the art history of the colony’. Clarke (Sotheby’s 2002) also notes that he had travelled widely in Europe and now did so in Australia and NZ before returning to Brussels by 1889 [sic].
Carabain’s painting of Melbourne Town Hall 1889 is in the SLV (LT). Collins Street at Melbourne and King Street, Sydney 1889, two very photographic oils on canvas, were auctioned at Christie’s part 1, 26 November 1996, lots.144, 145 (ill.). George Street, Sydney 1889, oil on canvas, is in the NLA (R8). All his works are exceptionally detailed and photographic. Clearly all could have been painted from photographs, but Carabain seems to have returned to Victoria. The exhibitors listed at the 1892 VAS included 'J. Carabain, 194 Gore Street, Fitzroy’ though no exhibits were listed under that name in the catalogue. Instead, no.36 'View of Capri’ and no.73 'Falconer in Algeria’ were said to be by 'T. E.’ Carabain. Included in the Ladies Court at the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition was no.184 Portrait of R.H.J. Millett. Carabain’s View of Verona, Italy , lent by the artist, was in the Victorian Loan Collection, cat. 9 ( see card). Jean (sic) Carabain, an artist of 117 Collins Street, Melbourne, was listed in Sands & McDougall’s directory for 1896. Early King William Street, Adelaide (inscribed 'The Main Road Adelaide, Western [sic] Australia’), dated 1907, oil on canvas, was lot 31 at Sotheby’s Fine Australian and International Paintings auction, Melbourne 30 April 2002 (est. $70,000-$120,000). The painting is precisely the same in style as the earlier works; Clarke suggests it was painted from a photograph taken between 1872 and the early 1880s, though the costumes look later, and that it was probably the painting sold at auction in Antwerp, May 1968 as 'View of Adelaide’, then onsold Christie’s London, March 1969. The 2002 seller was a 'Corporate Collection, Australia’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1834
- Summary
- Painter, born in Amsterdam. Resident of Melbourne during the 1880s and 1890s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1927
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1927-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, etcher and poet, was the eldest son of Andrew Murison and Georgiana Huntly McCrae . Born in Scotland on 29 May 1833, he was almost eight years old when he arrived at Port Phillip (Victoria) with his mother and three younger brothers in March 1841 to join their father. George and his brothers were given lessons by their mother. From 1842 they were also tutored by John McLure MA of Aberdeen, from whom they received 'a regular and systematic course of instruction’ and who proved to be a capable teacher and ideal companion. Like his mother George kept a diary, only a fragment of which has survived. It details his fascination with the birds, animals, reptiles, trees and flowers of the countryside around Arthur’s Seat on the Mornington Peninsula, (Vic.), and shows that even by the age of thirteen his powers of observation and ability to express himself were well developed. At Arthur’s Seat he also gained an understanding of and affection for the local Aboriginal people, greatly admiring (and learning from) their skill at fishing, hunting, swimming and riding. He was later to use Aboriginal legends and imagery in his writing.
From the age of seventeen to twenty-one George tried a variety of occupations, from surveying to retailing to banking. None suited him and in 1854 he joined the Victorian government service, where he remained until his retirement as deputy registrar-general in 1893. During this time he published a great deal of poetry as well as several works of fiction. A long poem in blank verse, The Man in the Iron Mask , published in 1873, was one of his most successful.
McCrae was an early member of the Yorick Club, together with Henry Kendall, Marcus Clarke and R.H. Horne , the group being said to form 'the only significant centre of literary interest and achievement in Victoria in the late sixties and seventies’. He was elected honorary secretary of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts at its inception in 1856 and exhibited a watercolour titled Victorian Butterflies at the society’s first exhibition. Although clearly regarding himself as a poet first and foremost, McCrae was a competent, lifelong sketcher. Contributions by him can be found in several of the illustrated journals of the 1860s and 1870s, while Garnet Walch’s 1875 Christmas annual On the Cards; or, A Motley Pack , a fantasy, is illustrated with his eccentric two-colour engravings of a deck of decorated cards (proofs SLNSW). His manuscript accounts of his travels in 1864, 1887 and 1894 are interspersed with sketches illustrating the scenes he describes, in Europe, Mauritius and the Seychelles. According to his son, Hugh: 'His heart was in Seychelles; and he had got the trick of talking to us in creole, the patois of the people. He drew a picture of a negro woman with a bundle on her head; and, adapting an ancient rhyme, wrote beneath: Where are you going to, Mozambicky maid? / Moi ne pas connay, m’si, she said’.
Hugh also noted that his father 'couldn’t draw a man, but he could draw a sailing ship against anybody. Oswald Brierly [q.v.] testified to the fact’. Brierly, whom he had met in youth, encouraged his interest in marine painting. In a letter to Hugh, Tom Roberts mentioned 'a pen and ink of two vessels beautifully done’. According to Moore, Nicholas Chevalier and R.H. Horne taught McCrae to etch.
Writers:
Bruce, Candice
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 29 May 1833
- Summary
- Primarily a poet, McCrae kept a diary and sketched; his work was influenced by the Indigenous population at Arthur's Seat on the Mornington Peninsula. His best known work is long poem in blank verse, The Man in the Iron Mask, published in 1873.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1927
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1897-01-01 End Date1926-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1897
- Summary
- Anderson was a Victorian motor mechanic, opening perhaps the nation's first female motor garage in Kew, Victoria. She designed an "up and under" (known widely as a "creeper") for rolling under and inspecting motor vehicles under repair.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-26
- Age at death
- 29
Details
Latitude-37.063611 Longitude144.217222 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1926-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter and craftworker, was born in Castlemaine, Victoria, eldest of the five children of George Thomas McDonald, a surveyor, and Amelia Margaret, née Mitchell. She moved to Queensland in childhood when her father took up a property, Cluden, outside Gladstone. Educated at home, she was quite intimidated by the sophistication of her four younger cousins (the daughters of Edward Mitchell), but her aunt Letita was a painter and a possible role model.
Before attending the National Gallery School, Melbourne, in 1888-89, where she studied under Frederick McCubbin, Isabel exhibited drawings at the 1887 Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association (QNAIA) Exhibition in Brisbane. In 1892 she was a student of Godfrey Rivers at the Brisbane Technical College; she also attended Miss Baily’s embroidery classes. She travelled between Brisbane and Sydney and Melbourne quite frequently, re-enrolling at the National Gallery School in 1895. She is also thought to have taken lessons from Tom Roberts and, indeed, was painted by him in 1895: Profile Portrait of a Young Girl (NGV). She exhibited oil paintings with the Queensland Art Society in 1892-1901; in 1898 she showed a carved screen and chair as well.
At Brisbane in 1901 Isabel McDonald married Cecil Henry Foott (1876-1942), an army officer who retired with the rank of brigadier general. They had one daughter, Celia Mary Lumsden (b.1902), and two sons (b.1904 and 1908). Her photograph with her two eldest children was taken by the professional Brisbane photographer Ada Driver (1868-1954), known for employing largely women staff in her Queen Street studio (and playing the violin to them during the lunch breaks).
Isabel’s painting career seems to have ceased with her marriage but craftwork did not suffer the same strictures. She included a bookplate, carved box and copper jug in the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition together with a painting, Golden August , executed eight years earlier. At the 1908 QNAIA Exhibition she was awarded a first prize for a silky-oak sideboard carved in early Jacobean style.
The birth of her third child probably put paid to Isabel’s craft activities too. She travelled to England with her husband in 1912-19 and apparently had a busy public life. Nothing more is known of her until July 1926 (just before her death) when she became an executive member of the Red Cross in Brisbane.
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1871
- Summary
- It is believed Isabel McDonald studied under both Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts, powerhouses of Australian romanticism. Roberts was certainly known to her though, even if not as a teacher - he painted her portrait in 1895. After her marriage in 1901, Isabel ceased to paint, but she continued her craftwork, exhibiting a bookplate, carved box and copper jug in the 1907 Women's Work Exhibition.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1926
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude43.1672254 Longitude11.46718116 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1926-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Siena, Italy
- Biography
- Itinerant artist, son of an Italian Marquis and an English mother he was born in Siena, studied art in Florence and arrived in Melbourne in 1886. In 1892 he painted Robert Louis Stevenson. He helped introduce impressionism to Australia. He appears to have been resident in Western Australia in 1898. His address was c/o “Norman” Hay Street.
He exhibited On the Canning ; Old Man ; Laughing Jackasses ; The Independent ; Portrait of Mr A. Austin and a watercolour The Student with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1898. The reviewer was fulsome “Mr G. P. Nerli is a new name in this colony, and hails from the Italian school. His best work is undoubtedly Ninety Years of Age which is also in my opinion, considerably above any other work in the exhibition. It is a simple subject, showing, one might say, one of the 'simple annals of the poor’ – an old woman attending to her household duties, while fowls are picking about on the kitchen floor. The chiaroscuro, brushwork, and colour are very admirable, and in Mr Nerli’s treatment of his subject one can also see the real feeling and sympathy of an artist.” (48) He was not quite so complimentary about the other works though he did describe The Independent as a “masterful piece of work unmistakable evidence of a Continental training in the broad rapid brush strokes and effects.”
Writers:
Erickson, Dorothy (Dr)
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- Itinerant artist, son of an Italian Marquis and an English mother he was born in Siena, studied art in Florence and arrived in Melbourne in 1886. He helped introduce impressionism to Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1926
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1926-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and photographer, was born in Birmingham, England. He spent his formative years in Suffolk, where he became a great admirer of John Constable’s art. He came to Australia in the Firth of Clyde because of a chronic chest complaint, arriving in Queensland in 1882. Initially he worked at various jobs, including being employed at the Ipswich lime pits and at the Butley sawmills at Coomera as a saw sharpener. With the money earned, he purchased 160 acres on Maybury Creek adjoining the Coomera River beside the Gorge Road to Canungra, planted a citrus orchard, including 300 orange trees whose fruit he sold in Brisbane (largely unprofitably because of costs of packing and transport), and built a modest house 'Maybury’ (the property was also known as Bodesville at various times). Bode brought out an oil painting from England, Close Friends and My Home Road , which stood unframed on an easel in his house for many years; when the Walker family purchased Maybury from Bode it was the only object that remained in the house. It now resides in the replica of Bode’s Hut in Canungra after being rescued from a fire in 1900 by the Walkers.
Bode moved to Canungra in 1886 where he lived in a small hut opposite the cemetery. He travelled throughout the agrarian hinterland, working on properties in the Canungra, Wonglepong and Mt Tamborine regions, doing odd jobs and often offering exquisitely detailed watercolours of homestead or farm in return for food and board. For a time he lived in one of the small huts erected for workers at the Canungra sawmill owned by the Lahey family ( Vida Lahey apparently spent some time in the district painting too). He and a number of unmarried mill hands called themselves 'The Baches’ and spent evenings together at the Canungra School of Arts hall enjoying concerts and dances.
Bode abandoned oils in Queensland and worked exclusively in watercolours, becoming 'one of the finest artists to document early pastoral scenes of the Gold Coast’ (Adlington). Many of his paintings are still with descendants of the families who first acquired them ( Gold Coast Bulletin 20 January 1979: cited Adlington). They include At Canungra 1886 (Gold Coast City Art Gallery Collection, purchased 1995, ill. Adlington, p.6); Valley of Nerang from Mt Roberts 1923 (Gold Coast City Art Gallery [GCCAG], purchased 1992: ill. Adlington, p.11); Homestead Crossing, Commera River 1919 (private collection); Upper Coomera Wharf 1889 (Rex Nan Kivell Collection, National Library of Australia); Numinbah Falls 1907 (GCCAG, purchased 1992: ill Adlington p.19); Orbust Farm (Nerang Side of Carrara) 1888 (Local Studies Library, Gold Coast City Council); and – one of his largest and most impressive works – Lower Falls Guanaba, Tamborine (Fall Said to be 180 feet) 1898 (GCCAG, purchased 2000: ill. Adlington, p.10). His earliest known Queensland paintings are Phillpott’s Pinnacle on the Nerang and a View of the Cobb and Co. coach at the Coomera ferry , both painted in 1884.
In the early 1900s Bode travelled to Sydney, where he painted a number of harbour views. Then he returned to Canungra and continued his prolific records of that region. In 1913 he began to experiment with photography, developing his own films and using some of the resulting landscapes, predominantly of the Canungra region, as references for his paintings. An anonymous memorial, 'To the Memory of a Great Artist’, published in the Daily Standard on Monday, 18 June 1928, noted that he was a member of the working class long associated with the Labor Movement. Mr J.W Cowie stated at his memorial service that Bode had still been painting in the final days of his life. He died at Dunwich, North Stradbroke Island in 1926 and his body was returned to the Wonglepong cemetery, Canungra, for internment. His tombstone carved in sandstone with artist’s palette and brushes was funded by Canungra residents and friends is inscribed: 'Erected by the many friends and admirers of our natural artist, E. Bode, in memory of his glorious work’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- Edwin Bode was a painter and photographer who travelled throughout Queensland painting watercolours of homesteads in exchange for board and lodging. A longtime resident of Canungra, on his death in 1926 the town's residents paid for his sandstone tombstone, which featured a palette and brushes and was inscribed 'Erected by the many friends and admirers of our natural artist, E. Bode, in memory of his glorious work'
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1926
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude50.110556 Longitude8.682222 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1926-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, on New Year’s Day 1845, son of Peter Joseph Lindt, a customs officer, and Justine, née Rambach. He came to Melbourne in November 1862, aged seventeen, having worked his passage out on a Dutch ship, and was soon travelling around bush townships in Victoria and New South Wales as a piano-tuner and repairer. Stopping at Grafton, New South Wales, he became photographic assistant to Conrad Wagner from whom he learned his craft. Soon after a brief trip back to Europe in 1867 68 Lindt took over as manager of the Grafton studio. On 20 September 1869 he became a naturalised British citizen.
The Grafton studio was so successful that early in 1870 Lindt opened a new and more luxurious one in Prince Street. He married Wagner’s daughter, Anna Maria Dorothea, on 13 January 1872. His well-advertised business produced photographs of steamers on the Clarence River, wool drays, sheep stations and local gold-mines, as well as 'Portraits in any size and style of the Art, equal to Sydney Houses. Large instantaneous pictures of horses and cattle’. His extensive travels in 1870 73 resulted in views of small townships, view pictures, mining scenes and group photographs.
Lindt’s studio portraits of Clarence River Aborigines—twelve are assembled in his Album of Australian Aboriginals (1880)—were considered by contemporaries to be 'the first successful attempt at representing the native blacks truthfully as well as artistically’. This desired combination of art and nature was rarely possible when posing Aboriginal groups in the natural environment (because of the long exposure times and the transport and developing problems associated with the wet-plate process). Whereas the fifty men in his outdoor photograph Aboriginal Corroboree are all stiffly posed in lines, Lindt’s studio settings paradoxically gave detail, character and personality to his sitters, reinstating (or fictionally creating) an independent and exotic lifestyle of interest to white settlers once few signs of it remained around them.
These Aboriginal tableaux were so admired and considered so true to nature that the New South Wales government purchased copies of the album for presentation to 'various scientific institutions in the old country’. The Museum of Mankind, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the Royal Commonwealth Society (in London) and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford all hold copies; a set acquired by Von Hégel on his 1874 77 visit to the South Pacific is in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
Lindt won a silver medal for his photographs from the New South Wales Academy of Art in April 1876, by which time he had moved to Melbourne. Initially he worked for Batchelder & Co. (see William J. Stubbs) but within a year he had opened his own opulent studios in Collins Street and was soon photographing everything associated with the booming city: large banks, new public buildings, the Botanical Gardens, bustling Port Melbourne, members of parliament and many other Melbourne people. The wide variety of subject matter was his especial strength. A newspaper commissioned him to record the capture of the Kelly gang at Glenrowan in 1880, resulting in Lindt taking, on 29 June, what has become in retrospect his most famous single photograph. It shows the strung-up body of Joe Byrne being photographed outside the Benalla lock-up by the Victorian government photographer A.W. Burman (son of William Insull Burman ) and in the manner of much later press photographs incorporates casual bystanders—and the artist Julian Ashton who had been sketching Byrne’s body for the Illustrated Sydney News .
This was a wet-plate albumen print, but Lindt had already (in March 1880) started to work with dry-plate negatives ordered from England soon after they became commercially available. He imported much of his own equipment throughout his career and was sole Australian agent for many photographic products. Having invented an improved method for making enlargements, he boasted that he often cleared the cost of a new painted backdrop 'out of the first available sitter by chancing a large picture when only a cabinet was required’. He said that he aimed to produce negatives 'as nearly as possible perfect in expression, lighting and pose’, and surviving negatives and prints are of excellent quality. The La Trobe Library holds the most comprehensive collection.
Lindt was official photographer for the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition where he was awarded a gold medal for his photographs. He always exhibited extensively – at Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Philadelphia, Paris, Christchurch, Amsterdam, Frankfurt-am-Main, Calcutta and Vienna – and won many awards including at least twenty first prizes. On a visit to Europe in 1887 he was appointed a judge for the General International Photographic Exhibition at his birthplace, Frankfurt-am-Main. With his friend and fellow photographer Nicholas John Caire , he was selected as a judge for the Intercolonial Exhibition and Photographic Congress held in 1896, a disillusioning experience, he later commented.
A keen ethnographer in nineteenth-century style, Lindt undertook three expeditions, to New Guinea in 1885, to the New Hebrides in 1890 and to Fiji in 1892, in order to make a documentary survey of the native peoples and to satisfy his curiosity about their ways of life. As a result of being appointed official photographer by the New Guinea Expedition leader Sir Peter Scratchley, he produced several hundred original photographs and a book entitled Picturesque New Guinea (London 1897).
The depression forced the closure of Lindt’s city studio in 1895. Ever resourceful, he built a large guest-house, the Hermitage, at Blacks’ Spur near Narbethong, Victoria, where he continued to sell prints from his old glass negatives together with new photographs he took of the dense forest surrounding his new home, visitors in his gardens and genre scenes. In 1913 he and Caire prepared a tourist booklet on the area, encouraging visitors to sample both his hospitality and his pictures. Despite setbacks caused by anti-German feeling during the First World War, he continued an active social and professional life from the Hermitage and was an influence on the next generation of photographers, both through exchanging work with them and via the Australasian Photographic Review . He had a long and active involvement with the Royal Geographical Society, of which he was a British as well as a Victorian member, being appointed a councillor of the latter in 1893.
After the death of his first wife on 27 May 1888 as the result of bearing a still-born child, Lindt married his retoucher, Catherine Elizabeth (Kate) Cousens, on 10 July 1889. He died of heart failure on 26 February 1926 after violent bush-fires had been raging for several days around his beloved Hermitage. He was survived by Kate.
Writers:
Johanson, GraemeJones, Shar
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 January 1845
- Summary
- Professional photographer, was born in Germany. Known as the first person to successful attempt the representation of the 'native blacks truthfully as well as artistically'. These photographs were used for scientific study. He was a keen ethnographer, and won many awards.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Feb-26
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1926-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and farmer, was born on 21 April 1844 in Birmingham, England, son of William Millington Nixon . He had a photographic studio at Robe, South Australia, in 1867-68 and also worked as a photographer at Kapunda. From 1862 he was probably one of the proprietors of the widespread firm of Nixon Brothers whose cartes-de-visite survive from New South Wales and Victoria as well as South Australia. Nixon married Sophia Short on 26 June 1873 and they had two children. Sophia died in 1910 and Joseph subsequently married Ruby, with whom he had a further child. He died at Melbourne on 28 April 1926.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 April 1844
- Summary
- Joseph Nixon emigrated with his family from Birmingham to South Australia in 1855. For a time, Joseph and his brothers worked together as photographers under the name 'Nixon Brothers'. Joseph also spent several years as a travelling photographer, servicing southern South Australia during the nineteenth century.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Apr-26
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1926-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer and dentist, was born in England, eldest son of Robert Hastings Norman and his wife, Sarah. He came to South Australia with his parents when he was a year old and was educated mainly at St Peter’s College, Adelaide. He exhibited photographs at the third annual exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts in 1859, the year he was apprenticed to his father as a dentist. After completing his six-year apprenticeship he studied in the United States, graduating as a doctor of dentistry from the New Orleans Dental College in 1871. He visited London, then returned to Adelaide in 1872, establishing both home and surgery in Rockville House, North Terrace. His dental practice continued at North Terrace until about 1911 but in 1882 he moved his residence to North Adelaide. He married a daughter of Edward Dewhurst of Adelaide and they had three sons and three daughters.
Dr Norman’s lifelong hobbies were amateur photography and drawing in French crayon (pastel). His biographer notes that he was also 'fruitful in mechanical inventions’. He died in 1926, aged eighty-three.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1843
- Summary
- A dentist, sketcher and amateur photographer. He exhibited some photographs at a South Australian exhibition in 1859. Although he spent his time working as a dentist. Photography and drawing were two of his lifelong hobbies.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1926
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-34.9281805 Longitude138.5999312 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1925-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, printmaker, illustrator, enamellist and art teacher, was born at Blackwood, near Adelaide; Gwen Barringer was her sister-in-law. Her art studies were undertaken under H.P. Gill and his staff at the South Australian School of Design and in private classes with Rosa Fiveash , Helen and Millicent Hambidge and Hans Heysen. Barringer won prizes at the Society of Arts Women’s Exhibition in Adelaide and at the subsequent Australian Women’s Work Exhibition in Melbourne in 1907. She was awarded a gold medal in the Fine Arts section of the 1910 Adelaide Exhibition as well as silver and bronze medals, a special prize and silver medal in the 'Women’s Work’ section. In 1911 she was elected a member of the Council of the Society of Arts.
After teaching drawing and painting in Adelaide from 1905 to 1911, Ethel Barringer travelled to England in 1912 to study at the Goldsmiths’ College – under Harold Speed, F. Marriott, W. Lee Hankey (who taught etching), A. Amor Fenn and Edmund J. Sullivan – and at the Sir John Cass Technical Institute. She also took classes at the London County Council’s Camberwell School and at the City and Guilds of London Technical Institute. By the end of her studies she was expert in a variety of new media, notably etching and enamelling. She also produced aquatints and etchings. On returning to Adelaide Barringer continued to work in a variety of media, but after 1921, when appointed to the teaching staff of the Adelaide School of Arts and Crafts (principal L. Howie), she became increasingly interested in etching. As well as making many etchings herself – which were exhibited interstate as well as in Adelaide – she purchased a large etching press for the School. The Adelaide News (11 February 1925) called it 'probably the largest etching press in any art school in the Commonwealth’; it made plates up to 28 × 40 inches (71.1 × 91.6 cm) possible.
Sadly, Ethel Barringer had the use of her press only from February to May 1925, when she suddenly died. Nevertheless, as her colleague Mary P. Harris stated, it was she who 'introduced the craft of etching into the curriculum’. Her estate provided funds for a prize and a scholarship in the etching class in her memory. A much later tribute from South Australian printmakers came from the noted artist Barbara Hanrahan (1939-1991), who produced an etching titled Dear Miss Ethel Barringer in 1975; a copy is in the Art Gallery of SA.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1884
- Summary
- An accomplished artist across various media, Ethel Barringer became passionate about etching and was instrumental in establishing this medium as a core part of the curriculum of the Adelaide School of Arts and Crafts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- May-25
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude53.1459288 Longitude-1.021497117 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1925-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nottinghamshire, England
- Biography
- Elizabeth Ann Owtram was born in Nottinghamshire, England, the daughter of Henry Owtram and his wife Elizabeth Champion. After the family migrated to the Hunter Vallery in NSW she began to paint mainly landscapes – she is recorded by the Maitland Mercury as having exhibited a landscape plaque in the Hunter River Agriculture and Horticulture Society Show of 1891.She appears to have moved to Western Australia by the following year, living with her brother William Carey Owtram who was a partner in the estate and insurance agency, Owtram & Purkis in Claremont. As well as exhibiting her own work she tutored private students and taught art classes at Perth College, Hale School and Miss Best’s. Her students included Frances Cecil Ross, Rena Bell, Montague Marks and Marion St Clair Layman.Her work was sufficiently noticed to have been reproduced in an edition of the Western Mail in 1898. In 1907 she exhibited in the Women’s Work Exhibition at the Perth Town Hall before being forwarded to the national exhibition in Melbourne.The social notes in Western Australian newspapers record both Elizabeth and her sister Kate as leading an active social life, largely connected with the parish of Christ Church Claremont.In 1919, with her sister, she returned to England. Although they were noted as being on the WA electoral roll in 1925, neither returned to Australia. Both died at Palmerston North, New Zealand, in 1925
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1864
- Summary
- Miss E. A. Owtram both exhibited and taught painting in Perth i from the 1890s to the 1920s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1925
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-32.716667 Longitude151.55 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1925-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Maitland, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- George Kedwell 'was a native of Maitland, and [lived to] 60 years of age. He served his time as a photographer with the late Mr. M. Moss in premises in High-street, now occupied by Messrs. Poulton, Cameron, and Morris, and later for several years had a studio in Hart’s buildings. He was a very successful amateur actor, and was conductor of several dramatic societies that met with a large measure of success in Maitland. He always associated himself with charitable entertainments, and was one of the most popular artists on the amateur stage in the north. He went to Sydney [in about 1905], and succeeded so well in the hotel business that he was able to retire and take a trip to Europe’ – from the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 6 March 1925, page 6.
Writers:
Eric Riddler
Date written:
2019
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 1864
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Mar-25
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude-33.9308118 Longitude137.6272608 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1925-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wallaroo, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Levido was an architectural draughtsman, watercolourist, illustrator and teacher of technical drawing. He was born in Wallaroo South Australia. Levido taught technical drawing at Perth Technical School and in 1907-8 relieved J. W. R. Linton while he was overseas. He was a member of the West Australian Society of Arts from 1905-10, exhibiting each year. In 1908 his works were described as “spirited watercolours”. In the 1909 exhibition his work was described in the following terms: “Mr A. Levido has hanging some charming little sketches executed in his usual vigorous manner.” He contributed drawings to a number of publications. In 1914 he was listed in practice as an architect at 715 Hay Street, Perth.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- Architectural draughtsman, watercolourist, illustrator and teacher of technical drawing. He was a member of the West Australian Society of Arts from 1905-1910.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1925
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude55.7759095 Longitude-4.033442 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1925-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamilton, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- photographer, born in Hamilton, Scotland and married to Nellie. Bell served in sailing ships and arrived Australia c.1885. he worked on surveying parties and as a photographer on the Sydney Mail in the early 1890s. He also worked with C.H. Kerry on Kosciusko scenes and travelled with the royal party in 1901. He is believed to have been an early aerial photographer. Bell died in Sydney 22 October 1925.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1862
- Summary
- George Bell was one of the early aerial photographers in Australia. He worked variously as a photographer on the Sydney Mail in the early 1890s and on surveying parties and in 1901 travelled with the royal party as they toured parts of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Oct-25
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude50.3712659 Longitude-4.1425658 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1925-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Plymouth, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1858
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Feb-25
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude52.46018745 Longitude-6.606515459 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1925-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wexford, Ireland
- Biography
- caricaturist, cartoonist, postcard artist, illustrator and writer, was born in Wexford, Ireland. From a very early age he submitted drawings to Zozimus , the Irish version of Punch , and he later came to London to work for Punch itself. He also contributed to the Graphic , the Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News , The Illustrated London News , the Strand Magazine and others. He was in great demand as a humorous lecturer, touring the USA, Canada and Australasia. He visited Australia and New Zealand in the 1890s. His P & O Sketches (Studio of Design and Illustration Supply Agency, 1898), Australian Sketches Made on Tour (Ward Lock, 1899) and Confessions of a Caricaturist (Fisher & Unwin) – three among many books he published – all contain Australian sketches.
Furniss illustrated several books, including works by Lewis Carroll. After a disagreement with Punch , he resigned in 1894 and founded Lika Joko (a nom-de-plume he sometimes used) and The New Budget . Some of his numerous publications are listed in Greenwall, 135. He wrote many 'photoplays’ for the cinema and produced and acted in them in both England and the USA. He died in Hastings on 14 January 1925.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1854
- Summary
- 19th century Irish-born caricaturist, writer and illustrator who published a book based on his travels in Australasia in 1899.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Jan-25
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude51.16175085 Longitude-3.075386706 Start Date1849-01-01 End Date1925-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Somerset, England, UK
- Biography
- sculptor, was working in Brisbane during World War I, when Anne Alison Greene took lessons in modelling from him.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1849
- Summary
- Sculptor and painter, first full time curator Qld Art Gallery 1915. Best known for Boer War Memorial sculpture "The Scout" 1912, and busts of - TJ Byrnes, Sir Hugh Nelson, Sir Thomas McIlwraith and Emma Miller. Instructed modelling at Central Tech College, potter for James Campbell & Sons. Taught Josephine MuntzAdams and Anne Alison Greene.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1925
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude52.6025283 Longitude0.3773258 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1925-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Downham, Norfolk, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, watchmaker and jeweller, was born in Downham, Norfolk, youngest son of Henry Norman and his first wife Harriet, née Chapman. He came to South Australia with his father, step-mother, brothers and sister Harriet Norman some time after 1852 and the family settled at Mount Gambier. By 1864 Abraham was working as a photographer in his father’s shop, in partnership with his brother, William Chapman Norman . He also worked as a watchmaker and jeweller in his father’s business and eventually became proprietor of the firm. On 20 October 1883 Abraham married Sarah Jane, née Jacob; they had three daughters and three sons. He died at Mount Gambier on 4 October 1925.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1844
- Summary
- A photographer who worked in his father's shop alongside his brother, William Chapman Norman, in South Australia. He also worked there as a watchmaker and jeweller.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Oct-25
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1925-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Sydney on 8 November 1843, the second daughter and fifth child of the stormy Presbyterian minister Dr John Dunmore Lang and Wilhelmina, née Mackie. She spent part of her childhood, from 1846 to 1850, in Britain but thereafter lived in New South Wales, until 1874 when with her father and aunt she travelled to the United States and Britain. While in Britain in 1874 Isabella and her only surviving sister Mary inherited the estate of Goulburn Grove near Dunmore in New South Wales from their uncle, Andrew Lang. On her return to Sydney Isabella married, on 8 July 1875, the Presbyterian minister at Paddington, Rev. Peter Falconer Mackenzie, who before 1874 had been unaware, in her father’s words, 'when paying his addresses to Isabella, that he was courting a lass with a “tocher”’.
Isabella was minister’s wife at Paddington until 1883 and thereafter, until her husband’s death in 1904, at the new Hunter Baillie Memorial Church in Annandale (which her husband planned) where she was deeply involved in the large Sabbath School. The marriage was childless. After 1904 the widowed Isabella lived with her sister Mary and her invalid brother John at Dockra near Casula, surrounded by objets d’art collected abroad by John in his earlier years. She died at Casula on 24 January 1925.
Isabella’s drawing-book, inscribed by her in 1859 when she was fifteen years old, contains pencil sketches of buildings in England and France and two watercolours of flowers, one signed and dated 1863. Her father, in a letter to Adelaide Ironside dated 21 November 1862, noted that 'my daughter Isabella does a little occasionally in your way – well enough of course for a colonial girl, but with no pretensions to exalted genius like yours’.
Writers:
Jack, R. Ian
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 November 1843
- Summary
- Long-lived nineteenth-century amateur sketcher.Her drawing-book, a work of her adolescence, contains pencil sketches of buildings in England and France and two watercolours of flowers.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Jan-25
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude50.7259985 Longitude1.6118771 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1925-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Boulogne-sur-Mer, France
- Biography
- painter, worked in Tasmania. Lots of examples of his paintings were included in Sotheby’s The Colonial Sale , Hobart 7 September 1997. Some oils were done in collaboration with the photographer John Watt Beattie , eg The Australian Squadron 1884.
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1826
- Summary
- A painter who worked in Tasmania, many of whose paintings were included in Sotheby's 'The Colonial Sale' in 1997. Some oil paintings were collaborations with the photographer John Watt Beattie.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1925
- Age at death
- 99
Details
Latitude-45.874167 Longitude170.503611 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1924-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunedin, New Zealand
- Biography
- painter, was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 26 May 1865, daughter of Maurice and Catherine Joel, a family comfortably off and sympathetic to the arts. Dunedin, too, provided a supportive environment with a solidly established educational infrastructure: primary, secondary and university education, as well as the art school established in 1870, were all open to female students. The Otago Art Society had grown from its modest beginnings in 1875 and a public art collection was established in 1884.
Joel began her art studies in her home town, then crossed to Melbourne and the National Gallery School (1888-89 and 1891-94) where she won first prize for painting from the nude in 1893. She returned to Dunedin in 1894, remaining there until 1899, then studied and painted in England, France (at the Académie Julian) and Holland from 1899 to 1905 and made a return visit to Australia and New Zealand from December 1905 to April 1907. Thereafter she lived in London, where she seems to have maintained closer links with Australian artists than with New Zealanders.
Joel exhibited frequently at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français and with other organisations and galleries in England and Scotland, including the Society of Women Artists and the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists of which she was a member. Nevertheless, despite her assiduity and professional commitment, she never established a solid critical reputation within the more conservative wings of the British and French art world where she aspired to make her mark. The progressive, mildly avant-garde position she held within New Zealand painting in the 1890s was already outmoded in the world of Post-Impressionism, Cubism and the beginnings of Abstraction.
Portraits and the figure were major themes in her work from the beginnings of her exhibiting career, although in the 1880s and 1890s these were often overlaid by literary and narrative concerns. Her training in Melbourne introduced her to the nude. More substantial, however, is her extended exploration of the relationship between mother and child. Flower subjects and landscapes, and townscapes which some commentators saw as 'Whistlerian’, also appear throughout her career although of secondary interest.
Grace Joel died in London on 6 March 1924. Through a £500 bequest, she endowed a scholarship for painting from the nude at the National Gallery School, Melbourne.
Writers:
Collins, R. D. J.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 May 1865
- Summary
- A painter born in Dunedin, New Zealand who studied in Melbourne and France. Portraits and the figure were the major themes in her work and on her death in 1924 Joel, through a £500 bequest, endowed a scholarship for painting from the nude at the National Gallery School, Melbourne.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Mar-24
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1857-01-01 End Date1924-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- illustrator and reporter. Studied art in Brussels and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Worked for the Illustrated London News who, in 1895, sent him to Western Australia to collect stories and sketches from the eastern and Murchison goldfields. These were published in the newspaper and later published in book form as The Land of Gold: the narrative of a journey through the West Australian Goldfields in the autumn of 1895 .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1857
- Summary
- Federation period London-based travelling illustrator and reporter who visited Western Australia in 1895.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1924
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1855-01-01 End Date1924-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- Painter, scenic painter and decorator, was born in Scotland. John Campbell was said to have been a member of an aristocratic Scottish family who lived in Parramatta in the late 1880s and early 1890s, but if he emigrated earlier he may well be the John Campbell who signed an extremely detailed watercolour of a large unidentified house in Sydney c.1875 (Historic Houses Trust on NSW Conservation Resources Centre, Lyndhurst), which shows the colour of the shutters, the cast iron posts and upstairs verandah panels (brown), birds nest ferms in terracotta pipes and post and rail fencing. John Campbell travelled to or lived in Queensland for a time (he was working in Brisbane c.1889 and was back in NSW c.1890 as well as Tasmania (thought to be c.1905-6, leading to speculation that John Campbell might also be known as J.T. Campbell ).
John Campbell moved to Perth c.1900 and remained there until he died, working as a scene painter and decorator (and apparently active WA c.1896-1910 and possibly longer; again in NSW c.1918). He painted naïve detailed views of places and buildings around Perth and is said to have remarked, 'Lucky to get 10 bob for a picture’. Osborne Park Hotel 1904, watercolour (Holmes à Court Collection, Heytesbury) depicts the pub at the end of one of the first electric tramlines in Perth, the tram and the passengers and picknickers in detail. Perth, Railway Station 1903 (p.c.) includes a notice on a billboard stating: 'For pictures and scenery go to J. Campbell, Perth’. Other paintings include The Swan Brewery 1904, pen, ink and wash (UWA), Subiaco Railway Station 1909, oil on canvas (RWAHS), a view of Perth and South Perth from Kings Park 1910, o/c (Holmes a Court, Heytesbury), Military Camp at Blackboy 1915, oil on board (p.c.), Military Camp, Claremont 1915, oil on canvas showing troops training at the Claremont Show Grounds (offered Deutscher-Menzies 'Australian and International Fine Art’ auction, Sydney, 5 March 2002, lot 69, est. $50,000-$60,000) and Shamrock Hotel 1919, oil on board (p.c.): all are illustrated in Baker.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1855
- Summary
- Scenic painter and decorator who worked in Western Australia, Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania. Campbell also painted views of places and buildings around Perth.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1924
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-32.5470851 Longitude151.1806307 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1924-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hunter River, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher and collector, elder daughter of Wellington Cochrane Bundock and Mary Ellen Bundock , was born in February 1845 at her maternal grandfather’s property, Merton, on the Hunter River, New South Wales. Mary spent most of her childhood on the family property at Wyangarie on the Richmond River. The family led a very isolated life, but Mary became friendly with the local Aboriginal people and interested in the native flora. Educated by her mother and for a few months by Rev. Arthur Selwyn and his wife, Rose, at Grafton, the women presumably encouraged her interest in sketching. However, Mary’s enthusiasm for watercolour painting was specifically aroused in September 1853, she later wrote, when, aged eight, she went with her mother and Uncle Edward (Ogilvie) to Lismore to attend the marriage of Teresa Wilson, a daughter of family friends, to Oliver Fry, the district commissioner: 'The eldest Miss Wilson (Bessie) painted flowers well and let me have a small box of colours to try and paint flowers myself and from that time on one of my greatest pleasures has been flower painting’.
Mary Bundock later went to boarding school at Parramatta, but she remained only a few months as she developed asthma. For three years from about 1860 she lived with her grandmother at Fairlight, Edgecliff Road, Edgecliff, and attended Miss Moore’s nearby school. In old age she wrote: 'I have a little pencil sketch of Double Bay as seen from the tower windows of Fairlight showing the place as it looked then’. At the age of 17 she returned home to take over the teaching of the five youngest children from her mother: 'I found it no easy job to teach brothers and sisters so little younger than myself and who were very ready to disobey a mere sister’.
Mary’s father took her to Britain and Europe in 1885. In the early 1890s she became the second wife of Thomas Murray-Prior, a member of the Queensland Parliament whose family held land at Wyangarie. He died not long afterwards and Mary took over the management of his various properties for some years. McBryde states that she was known as 'the Florence Nightingale of the Upper Richmond’. Then she moved to Sydney. In the 1920s she went on a second European tour, was taken ill on the return voyage and died at Perth in April 1924.
Mary Bundock and her sister Alice were significant collectors of Aboriginal artefacts from the Wyangarie district. Mary’s collection of dilly-bags was shown at the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879 and subsequently presented to the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, England. She sent dilly-bags, water vessels and fishing lines to the 1883 Amsterdam International, Colonial and Export Trade Exhibition and subsequently donated boomerangs, water vessels and message sticks to the Rijksmuseum voor Volkunde, Leiden (in 1888 and 1892). She gave boomerangs and water vessels to the Australian Museum in Sydney in 1895. Further collections of dilly-bags and necklets were also presented to the Australian Museum, as well as to Leiden.
McBryde considers these collections exceptional. 'Not only are they larger and more comprehensive than any other group of artefacts from the north coast of New South Wales, but they are also carefully documented. With the items come examples of the raw material used, notes on the technique of manufacture, and on their Aboriginal names. This material was collected not for its curiosity value, but as representing the life and culture of a distinct society, soon to disappear. This awareness of the urgency of the record, and the professional expertise shown in the documentation of her material, mark Miss Bundock as a pioneer in Australian cultural anthropology’.
According to her elder daughter, once established at the pioneer property, Wyangarie, on the Richmond River, Ellen Bundock never saw a woman friend, 'except on the very rare occasions when she went to see Mrs Wilson at Lismore’. She also frequently visited her brother’s modest bachelor home, Yulgilbar, on the Clarence River, the subject of her only known (attributed) painting.
The Bundocks had six more children at Wyangarie. Ellen taught all six boys and two girls until they were old enough to go to boarding school just as she and her brothers had been taught by her mother. Her husband held Latin classes for the boys, and later on Mary, as the elder daughter, assisted in the teaching.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. February 1845
- Summary
- Bundock was only eight years old when discovered her love of flower painting, when family friend and flower painter Bessie Wilson gave her "a small box of colours." She travelled extensively and with her sister Alice, accumulated one of the most important collections of Aboriginal artefacts in Australia. The meticulous archiving of her items makes Bundock a pioneer in Australian cultural anthropol
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Apr-24
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-32.5470851 Longitude151.1806307 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1924-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hunter River, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher and collector, the elder daughter of Wellington Cochrane Bundock and his wife, Mary Ellen Bundock née Ogilvie, was born at her maternal grandfather’s property, Merton, on the Hunter River in New South Wales in February 1845. Mary spent most of her childhood on the family property, Wyangarie, on the Richmond River. The Bundocks led very isolated lives, but Mary became friendly with the local Aboriginal people and was interested in native flora and artefacts. The collections she later made of Aboriginal artefacts were donated to various museums in Australia and Europe. A collection of water vessels (c.1890s) in the Australian Museum, reputedly made by Aboriginal women of the Richmond River district, were presented by Mary Murray-Prior in 1895. However, a descendant of the Clarence River people, Robyne Bancroft, claims that they were actually made by Clarence River women much earlier and collected by Edward Ogilvie, who sent them to Mary. Then she sent them to museums assuming they were Richmond River work. (see also Isobel McBryde).
Mary Bundock was educated by her mother and for a few months by Rev. Arthur Selwyn and his wife, Rose Selwyn , at Grafton, who presumably encouraged an interest in drawing, although her enthusiasm for watercolour painting was specifically aroused in September 1853, she later wrote, when at the age of eight she went with her mother and Uncle Edward (Ogilvie) to Lismore to attend the marriage of Teresa Wilson, a daughter of family friends, to Oliver Fry, the district commissioner: 'The eldest Miss Wilson (Bessie) painted flowers well and let me have a small box of colours to try and paint flowers myself and from that time on one of my greatest pleasures has been flower painting.’ Later Mary went to boarding school at Parramatta but remained for only a few months because she developed asthma. For three years from about 1860 she lived with her grandmother at Fairlight, Edgecliff Road, Edgecliff, and attended Miss Moore’s nearby school. In old age she wrote: 'I have a little pencil sketch of Double Bay as seen from the tower windows of Fairlight showing the place as it looked then’. At the age of 17 she returned home to take over the teaching of the five youngest children from her mother: 'I found it no easy job to teach brothers and sisters so little younger than myself and who were very ready to disobey a mere sister’.
Mary’s father took her to Britain and Europe in 1885. In the early 1890s she became the second wife of Thomas Murray-Prior, a member of the Queensland Parliament whose family held land at Wyangarie. He died not long afterwards, and Mary took over the management of his various properties for some years; McBryde says she was known as 'the Florence Nightingale of the Upper Richmond’. Then she moved to Sydney. In the 1920s she went on a second European tour, was taken ill on the return voyage and died at Perth in April 1924.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. February 1845
- Summary
- Murray-Prior spent most of her childhood on the family property, Wyangarie, on the Richmond River. She was friendly with the local Aboriginal population and took a keen interest in the native flora and collecting artefacts. She bequeathed her collections to museums in both Australia and Europe.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Apr-24
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1924-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter, designer and decorator, was born in Sydney on 5 March 1843, only child of William Buchanan, a civil engineer and surveyor, and Elizabeth, née Lucas. Bessie’s childhood was spent mainly at Mersheen, her father’s grant on the Hunter River (NSW), and from about 1851 on the family property, Tara, near Walcha. The latter was sold in 1865 and the Buchanans retired to Tara in St Leonards, Sydney. In 1874 they moved from St John’s Terrace to a house in Darlinghurst named Lara.
A family trip to Britain in 1867-69 was crucial to Bessie’s development. Her diaries refer to regular drawing lessons in Dublin, and an album and scrapbook survive. A watercolour of a vase with honeysuckle, removed from the album, always hung in the drawing-room of her married home, Rouse Hill. Copies were made from the large collection of prints she acquired, e.g. one of a series of T. Nelson & Sons’ books of scenic chromolithographs, Loch Lomond and Its Scenery and Scenery of Perthshire Dunkeld to Glen Tilt , was the source of her watercolours of the Trossachs and a view of a bridge and waterfall. Although conventional picturesque compositions of sublime dramatic scenery, these would have embodied familiar associations with 'the ancient Buchanan lands near Loch Lomond’ – associations made fashionable by the Romantic movement and Queen Victoria’s enthusiasm for Scottish Highland scenery.
In March 1874 Bessie married Edwin Stephen Rouse (1849-1931) and spent fifty years with him at Rouse Hill until her death. The couple had two daughters: Nina (later Mrs Terry 1875-1968) and Kathleen (1878-1932). Australian copies as well as original sketches were probably begun soon after her marriage. One source, identified by Patricia R. McDonald, was H.J. Johnstone’s Billabong on the Goulburn, Victoria , acquired by the NSW Art Gallery in 1884. A Blue Mountains scene in oils (c.1890-1910) was apparently based on a Government Railways’ photograph. Originals in a sketchbook include a pencil sketch of the front hall at Rouse Hill, various unidentified interiors and a scene of a gate – the basis of an oil painting in the main bedroom which looks like an early work in her oil painting phase (c.1885-1920). Bessie worked in a broad range of mediums: pencil, watercolour, oil, découpage, decalcomania and needlework.
While personal associations were central to her choice of subject, they are also significant in the social context of her work. Rouse Hill contains a significant body of work by relatives and friends, including oil paintings by her cousin, Rev. Robert Fraser of Bridge of Allan, Scotland (the easel painting in the 1894 view of her studio is one of these) and pencil portraits by Fred Nixon. Antoinette Hayden, wife of the rector of St John’s, Darlinghurst (the church where Bessie and Edwin Stephen were married), produced a fine 1872 portrait of Bessie. Louise Gunther, presumably a daughter of the Rouses’ pastor at Gulgong, contributed a pair of painted plaques, while two fancy-dress costumes – Little Bo-Peep and Boy Blue – are attributed to her governess-nanny, Sarah Frances Cockram (c.1850-1913). Long after their departure the sketchbooks of Elizabeth Campbell (née Rouse 1845-1930) and Mary Phoebe Dangar (née Rouse 1847-1931) remained in the schoolroom.
Bessie’s work of adorning her home belongs firmly within the mid-nineteenth century context of a gentlewoman’s 'accomplishments’. Others were playing the piano, dancing (at least in early life) and riding. She was also a noted Sydney beauty.
Writers:
Carlin, Scott
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 March 1843
- Summary
- Anne (Bessie) Rouse was a highly talented painter, designer and decorator. A family trip to Britain in the late 1860s was crucial to her creative development. She had all the requisite accomplishments of a 'gentlewoman' of her time and was also a noted beauty.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1924
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-33.8371562 Longitude150.6504013 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1924-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mulgoa, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- Illustrator, was the youngest daughter of George Cox, a descendant of William Cox. Some of her sketches were used to illustrate her father’s George Cox of Mulgoa and Mudgee: Letters to his sons 1846-49 (Sydney, 1980) with notes by Edna Hickson and contemporary illustrations by Jill Francis.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1842
- Summary
- Illustrator, was the youngest daughter of George Cox, a descendant of William Cox. Some of her sketches were used to illustrate her father's George Cox of Mulgoa and Mudgee: Letters to his sons 1846-49 (Sydney, 1980).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1924
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1924-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter, born in England c.1840. McIlwaine migrated to the North Queensland town of Herberton with her brother, Dr William D. Bowkett.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
DAAO staff writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. c.1840
- Summary
- Leila McIlwaine's skills were beyond that of the average amateur but it is not known whether she trained as an artist in England before coming to Australia in the early 1880s. She lived close to ten years in the north of Queensland, which was a popular escape for International and Australian artists.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1924
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.45200635 Longitude-0.968473549 Start Date1839-01-01 End Date1924-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Reading, Berkshire, England
- Biography
- painter and professional photographer, was born in Reading, Berkshire, son of an ironfounder, Samuel Hood, and possibly a grandson of the sketcher John Hood . He went to school in Bath and was later sent to Imperial College, Paris, where he studied drawing and painting. After completing his education he returned to England and worked for the London photographers Elliott and Fry as an artist and retoucher. Later he had his own photographic studio near London Bridge.
In 1863 Hood migrated to Adelaide, under contract to Townsend Duryea for six years as a retoucher and colourist. At the end of his indentures he married Martha Mary Hü bbe and opened his own photographic studio at Glenelg, where he remained until 1883. As well as practising photography, he painted portraits in oils and drew cartoons for papers such as the Lantern . He also taught at the Adelaide School of Design; Alfred Scott Broad and Mortimer Menpes were among his pupils. At the 1870 exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts Hood won the prize for the best oil painting illustrative of colonial life. His 'ink portraits upon a photographic basis’ shown in the South Australian court at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition were judged 'entirely charming’ by the Sydney Mail 's critic and 'not surpassed in the Garden Palace by anything of the same character’.
Hood moved to Sydney in 1883 in order to work as a photographer and engraver on The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia but appears to have maintained his studio in John Street, North Adelaide (presumably with one of his four sons in charge). In 1888 he opened a studio at the Glebe, Sydney, where he continued his portraiture and photographic practice as well as teaching French and restoring oil paintings. It was probably at this time that he overpainted photographic portraits taken by J. Hubert Newman . In 1895-96 the Glebe studio had become Hood & Sons. Hood ultimately worked as an ecclesiastical artist and is said to have decorated many churches throughout New South Wales. He died in Sydney on 15 May 1924, aged eighty-five.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1839
- Summary
- Painter and professional photographer, was born in England and arrived in Adelaide in 1863 as an indentured employee of Townsend Duryea. Later he ran his own studios in both Adelaide and Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-May-24
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude50.9025349 Longitude-1.404189 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1924-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Southampton, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, sketcher and miner, was born in Southampton, England, third son of George Darvall and Eliza, née Aberdein. The Darvalls, a London family of Huguenot origin, later lived in Honiton, Devonshire. Charles’s father possessed considerable drawing ability and an older brother, Henry Darvall, was a prominent English painter and Royal Academician. After some early art training, Charles entered the designing-room of Stone & Kemp, London silk manufacturers, where he was remained from 1848 to 1853. Then he was engaged in clerical work, until 1857 when he migrated to the Australian goldfields. He reached Melbourne in the Maidstone in January 1858 and almost immediately proceeded to Beechworth where his brother Alfred was golddigging and a cousin, William H.C. Darvall, was town clerk. Several years were spent mining in the Beechworth district and at nearby Chiltern where for a time Darvall also ran a store. At Beechworth in 1860 he married Emma Thomas, who died in 1862; the following year, at Williamstown, he married Julia Scott. The child of the first marriage died in infancy, but there were eight children of the second marriage one of whom, Mary Aberdein Darvall, was also a painter. The Australian artist Henry Lancelot Darvall was a nephew.
It is likely that Darvall began conducting art or drawing classes at Beechworth in the 1860s. In December 1876 he was granted a licence to teach drawing in Victorian schools. He moved to Sandhurst (Bendigo) in 1878 and was appointed drawing master at the Sandhurst School of Art and Design (later the Bendigo School of Mines) in March 1879. As well as conducting life classes and teaching landscape painting there he taught drawing in local government schools. He was deprived of his post in December 1880, probably through being uncertificated, and began private classes. However, he was reappointed the following year. In 1887 he became a certificated teacher of drawing and continued teaching at the school until retiring in 1892, possibly on account of failing eyesight. He died at Bendigo in 1924 and is buried in the Eaglehawk Cemetery.
Darvall was a skilled watercolourist in the English landscape tradition. He painted mainly land and seascapes and often worked in sepia. As a teacher he exercised considerable influence on the local art scene in its formative years. Before coming to Australia he exhibited a domestic scene in London in 1855 and designed many of the commissions for Honiton lace undertaken by his mother, lace-maker to Queen Victoria. In later years he executed some very fine illuminated addresses. He is represented in the Bendigo Art Gallery by two watercolours ( At Ravenswood and Prospector’s Hut ); another mining landscape is held by the Bendigo Historical Society. Most of his other paintings, together with several sketchbooks and lace designs, remain with the Darvall family.
Writers:
Cusack, Frank
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1831
- Summary
- Watercolourist, sketcher also taught drawing 1860s to 1880.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1924
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude51.25 Longitude-1.916667 Start Date1890-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wiltshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born into the wealthy and artistic Anglo-Australian Boyd family in Wiltshire, England, on 15 August 1890, the third son of artists Arthur Merric Boyd and Emma Minnie Boyd (née a’Beckett). He enrolled at the National Gallery of Victoria Schools in 1905, aged 15, and studied there under Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin until 1909, exhibiting with the VAS from 1908. His 1910 oil painting The Boyd Homestead at Yarra Glen shows his parents’ farm 'Tralee’ where Penleigh spent many weekends and holidays (auctioned Sotheby’s Melbourne, May 2000, lot 85). It was probably included in his first solo show at the Guildhall, Melbourne, in 1910 (catalogue unlocated acc. Sotheby’s).
He had a second solo show before travelling to Europe in 1911. There his Springtime was hung at London’s Royal Academy. In Paris he met the Queensland painter, playwright Edith Susan Gerard Anderson (1880-1961), born in Brisbane (then Phillips Fox’s favourite model). They married in Paris on 15 October 1912, returned to Melbourne on a honeymoon tour and settled at Tralee. In 1913, Boyd won second prize in the Federal capital site competition and held another solo exhibition of his paintings. The following year they moved to Warrandyte, Penleigh won the Wynne Prize for landscape and exhibited his landscape paintings in Venice, Paris, Sydney, Tasmania and Victoria.
In November 1915 he enlisted in the AIF and was sent to the transport section of the Australian Electrical and Mechanical Mining and Boring Company, where he became a sergeant. Having been badly gassed at Ypres, he was invalided to England where he published Salvage: Pictures and Impressions of the Western Front by An Australian Artist, Sergt Penleigh Boyd, Electrical & Mechanical Mining Co., A.I.F. (London: The British Australasian, 1918, 2/6). A facsimile reprint with introduction by Anne Gray was issued by the AWM in 1983. It has 20 [serious] black and white drawings of life at the front drawn between August 1916 and September 1917 and, what Tipping calls, a 'racy text’. He commented about the sketches: 'I drew chiefly to occupy my time and distract my thoughts, during the long hours of rumbling bombardment overhead’ (intro). He drew mostly with a mapping pen whose nib holder he wrapped with fuse wire in order to weigh the nib down and produce a better line (letter to wife 8 September 1916, quoted Gray). Retrospective drawings of the war made in a sketchbook c.1918 include a comical ink drawing: 'ALF. [on high ground to half submerged mate]: “You’ll find it a lot drier over 'ere, 'Enery’ (p.c., ill. Gray).
He drew war cartoons for the Bulletin in 1918-19. Surviving originals include: '“Pinched yer primus 'ave we? You come in an’ make them accusations to our Sergeant and se what you get” (enemy retires Bluffed)’, which shows two soldiers in undress blocking a doorway while their sergeant cooks over a primus in the rear of the room (Px*D447/10, paid 13 June 1918); a view of two soldiers in a rat-infested ruin, 'Alf (just out of the line after tough spell): “Ain’t this 'Eaven Bill”’ (Px*D447/18, paid 10 October 1918); and a clever drawing of two soldiers on a battlefield titled 'Resource’: “What’s up, Bill?”/ “I’m tryin’ to look like a sandbag” (Px*D447/17, paid 23 January 1919). The AWM holds his undated (1918, according to Gray) original cartoon 'The little mistakes of war’, a pen and ink drawing acquired 1982, showing an arrogant new subaltern poking an old tired, seated soldier with his cane: 'New Sub: “What’s your Battalion, my man?”/ Old Hand: “78th”/ New Sub: “Who’s the C.O.?”/ Old Hand: “I am”.
Boyd’s illustration of a soldier reunited with his beloved illustrating a sentimental poem by 'S.D.L.’, 'To “Her”’ (’...the end of the Great Adventure’) was published in Homeward on the H.M.T. A.14 , the souvenir magazine of the HMAT A14 – the ship on which he returned to Australia (Sydney, March 1918: in AWM Printed Records collection, troopship serials, S79/4). Boyd also did the cover with an art nouveau waratah decoration and coloured picture of a wounded digger gazing out from the ship to a flat blue mountain [Cape of Good Hope?] as well as several other illustrations (Kent).
In 1918 he held an exhibition of landscape paintings at the VAS, for which he is now known. In 1919, aged 29, he joined the Melbourne Savage Club. Despite continuing to suffer the effects of gas, he had annual solo shows of his oil and watercolour paintings in 1920, 1921 and 1922. Works of this period include Lorne , Victoria 1921, oil on canvas (Christie’s Australian and European Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings and Prints, Part I & II , Melbourne 25-26 November 1997, lot 128, est. $15,000-20,000). His best-known painting, Wattle Blossom , was hung in the RA Summer Show, London in 1923. A similar painting, Warrandyte , hangs in the Social Room of the Savage Club (ill. Johnson, 111).
On 28 November 1923, aged 33, Penleigh Boyd was killed instantly in a car accident en route to Sydney, where the family was then living. One of his two sons was the Melbourne architect Robin Boyd .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 15 August 1890
- Summary
- Early 20th century Melbourne painter and cartoonist and the son of painters Arthur Merric Boyd Snr and Emma Minnie Boyd. As a seargant in the AIF during WWI Penleigh Boyd drew numerous cartoons and sketches but he was also a painter whose work was hung on several occasions in the Royal Academy of Art in London.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Nov-23
- Age at death
- 33
Details
Latitude-32.7575206 Longitude151.5854642 Start Date1883-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- East Maitland, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- woodcarver and composer, was born in East Maitland (NSW) on 11 March 1883, youngest of the four girls among the 11 children of Margaret, née Young, and John Shannon. Ruby was educated at Rockhampton Girls Grammar School in the early 1920s. She married Major T. McLeod, a Brisbane barrister. Ruby Shannon composed watzes, eg The Normanby Waltz written for the Normanby Picnic Races at Saltbush and The Midnight Waltz . She was also interested in woodcarving. For instance, she carved the pulpit in St Luke’s Church of England, Toowoomba, given by the family in memory of their mother, Margaret (died 1916). Ruby died in April 1923; there were no children of the marriage.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 11 March 1883
- Summary
- Ruby Shannon composed waltzes. She was also interested in woodcarving having carved the pulpit in St Luke's Church of England, Toowoomba.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- Apr-23
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, was born in Geelong, only daughter of Mary Ann and Thomas Peters, a slater and timber merchant. Also known as 'Annie’, Helen received her education in Geelong, passing both her Civil Service and Matriculation examinations at Flinders School in 1883. Then she became a student in the School of Art and Design at Geelong Technological School under Edmund Sasse . She continued to study under Sasse at the Gordon Technological College when it was established in 1888. In 1891-94 she was a pupil at Melbourne’s National Gallery Schools under Bernard Hall. She also studied at the Melbourne Art School under Tudor St George Tucker and Emanuel Phillips Fox and attended their summer school at Charterisville, a memento of which survives in the form of a portrait sketch of her by Fox (GAG). Peters was a successful student, Dux of Gordon College and winner of several awards. She was a prize-winner in the 1884 competition held by Schools of Design throughout the colony and at the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition won a first and second order of merit for two chalk drawings. She received awards in several categories of the drawing section in the 1890 teaching certificate examination in connection with the South Kensington School of Art, London.
From 1892 Peters was offering private drawing and painting classes at her home in Elizabeth Street, Geelong. From 1895 to 1905 she exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society and the Yarra Sculptors’ Society in Melbourne. She also exhibited in the NSW Society of Artists’ Commonwealth Exhibition in 1901 and with the Royal Arts Society in 1904. According to the Geelong Advertiser 's reviewer of her retrospective exhibition at the Gordon Technical College in 1903, she was 'probably better known in the art centres of Melbourne and Sydney than she is in Geelong’. She showed almost sixty paintings in her exhibition, with sentimental figure groups and portraits dominating. The Advertiser reported that Frederick McCubbin had sent a letter to mark the opening, which stated that 'Geelong should be proud of Miss Peters’ work when it was considered that she was one of the foremost lady artists in Australia. He concluded by congratulating her upon her industry and position in the art world.’
Helen Peters was actively involved in the Melbourne art scene. She was a member of the Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors for ten years (1906-16) and her work was included in the Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne in 1907. In 1911 she had work hung at the Royal Academy, London. She continued to teach art in Geelong, where she was also called upon for her talents as a pianist. She died at her Elizabeth Street home on 7 September 1923, aged fifty-seven, and was buried in Geelong Cemtery.
Writers:
Filmer, Veronica
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1866
- Summary
- Peters is a painter, art teacher and pianist. She spent most of her life in Geelong, Victoria.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Sep-23
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-34.8983219 Longitude138.5756758 Start Date1856-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brompton, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Thomas Adcock was born In Brompton, Adelaide in 1856 son of English immigrants Thomas Adcock schoolmaster and secretary of Hindmarsh Institute, Hindmarsh councillor and Elizabeth daughter of John Burnell. Thomas’s career was varied; as a Baptist pastor and evangelist well known for his 'picture preaching’ by lantern slides which drew large audiences, journalist and Temperance advocate He studied at the Union College theological around 1875 later holding the role of Sunday-school superintendent at the Hindmarsh Christian Church and was ordained circa 1893. Adcock was variously pastor of the Christian Church in Bentham street, Adelaide,(1891) the Baptist Church at Wayville,(1894) and the Fremantle Baptist Church (1896-97. His various photographic businesses ran concurrently from 1887 until circa 1918.
From 1882 Adock was presenting lantern slide lectures including in 1883 at the Congregational Church, Gawler, Clare Town Hall on insurance for the AMP Society. The following evening at the Hall he showed fifty slides of Christ and St Paul. He continued with religious theme lantern slide and musical presentations and services as minister at Wayville into the 1890s.
By 1885 Adcock was making photographs as he became a foundation member of the South Australian Photographic Society and opened how own studio in 1887, offering a range of portrait and view services at Port Road, Hindmarsh. He attracted commissions undertaking in 1890 portraits of the Premier and Speaker of the House of Assembly and fifty two members. Adcock was working as a portrait and enlarging artist at a studio in Freeman street by 1894. He took over Saul Solomon’s Rundle street studio c 1890.
How Adcock learned photography or portrait art is not known but he was a nephew of local photographer George Burnell.(q.v.) Adcock was known for his enlarged portraits some life size – a skill perhaps arising from his experience with lantern slide projection. He published a series of South Australian stereographs in the mid 1880s, a number held by the State Library of South Australia.
From 1891-95 Adcock had studios in Hindmarsh, Kadina, possibly Gawler and Moonta and in Frearson’s Building, King William Street, Adelaide from 1894-1899. He also made visits to Western Australia as a minister. From 1903-05 he was located at 143 Rundle street Adelaide, trading as Alpha studios.
Religion and social causes were a constant in Adcock’s career. An advocate for temperance since the mid 1880s, from 1900 to 1902 Adcock was secretary for the South Australian Temperance Alliance and editor of Alliance News to which he position returned briefly in 1906. He advocated the use of photo postcards for Alliance campaigning.
On 3 February 1917 _The Mail _ described his commodious studio in the new City Market building in Grove street – noting as well that he had once been a lecture in photography at the School of Mines. His role as a pastor continued apparently and he died in 1923 whilst performing a marriage ceremony at his Church in Southwark, Thebarton.
Writers:
newtog
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 23 September 1856
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Nov-23
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- Edmund Diederich was born in Berlin on 5 February 1854. As a young man he learnt lithography, a profession followed by his father, but as prospects were dull he turned to photography. He had a studio at 97 Neuer Steinweg in the city of Hamburg.
At the age of 27 Diederich emigrated to South Australia, arriving on the Catania on 26 July 1881. Soon after his arrival he must have been employed at W.H. Hammer’s studio at 172 Rundle Street, Adelaide, as a memo from Hammer to Diederich on the studio letterhead, dated 14 August 1882, said, ‘When you left me to work for yourself some months since, we talked it over about your coming back again. I will give you £3 per week and a steady place. If you will come let me know at once or I must advertise as I am in want of a retoucher.’
For a time Diederich worked for C.W. Haehnel & Co. (q.v.) where, his daughter said, her father was the ‘Co.’. Diederich then branched out on his own again, advertising as ‘R.E. Diederich, Australian Photographer’. He had a studio on wheels built, a box mounted on a four-wheel trolley, with a telescopic section that could be retracted for travelling but drawn out to give more length when the studio was in use. Sash windows in the side walls gave light and ventilation.
About 1890 Diederich dismantled the mobile studio and turned it into a portable unit by cutting the walls into sections and adding a pitched iron roof with a glass skylight. From about 1892, when his daughter was two years old, to about 1894, Diederich toured the mid-northern towns, and is known to have called at Port Wakefield, Balaklava, Snowtown, Redhill, Port Germein, Wirrabara, Appila, Booleroo Centre, Georgetown, Melrose and Yongala.
The studio was taken from town to town on a hired wagon, assembled and erected on a vacant block and secured with stakes and fencing wire. Diederich distributed handbills which said that ‘E. Diederich, artist and photographer, had erected his studio in the town and promised he would ‘execute only good portraits’. When business fell off, he put out his ‘Last Week’ sign, dismantled the studio, and with wife and daughter moved on to the next location, where they rented a small cottage or stayed at a lodging house or hotel.
About 1895 Diederich completed his tour and settled on a twenty-acre section near Hahndorf where he erected a small two-room slab cottage. From here he combined photography and life as a small farmer, photographing people and places in the neighbouring districts. Edmund Diederich died on 24 April 1923, and in 1966 some of his half-plate glass negatives (Noye collection) were recovered from above the ceiling of his old cottage at Hahndorf.
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) ‘Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915’, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, pp. 83-84.
Writers:
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 5 February 1854
- Summary
- Trained in lithography and photography in Germany, Edmund Diederich emigrated to South Australia in 1881. He worked for a short time in Adelaide before pursuing a career as a travelling portrait photographer and artist with his mobile studio. He travelled through the mid-north of South Australia before settling in Hahndorf around 1895 where he worked as both a photographer and farmer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Apr-23
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1849-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, author and teacher, was born in Scotland. He came to Australia in 1865 as part of his wider travels. It is unknown if Nisbett temporarily settled in Australia or revisited at a later date but it appears that he spent some time in Sydney given the dates and subjects of his works: a sunset view of Sydney Harbour is dated 1874 and a set of three watercolours of bush scenes is dated 1879. After returning to Scotland in 1879/80, Nisbett exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy (1880/85). He wrote and illustrated more than 23 books and illustrated others.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1849
- Summary
- Scottish painter, author & teacher, spent time in Australia during mid 19th century. He wrote and illustrated more than 23 books and illustrated others.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1923
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.8527674 Longitude-2.2553694 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, UK
- Biography
- During the late 1880s, 90s and early years of the twentieth century, Samuel Edmonds was employed as the manager of the Creswick branch of the Bank of Australasia. During his residency in the town he was also a keen landscape painter. During the 1880s he befriended the young local artist Percy Lindsay and despite the differences in their ages they became painting companions. Percy’s younger brother, Daryl Lindsay, described Edmonds in his memoir ( The Leafy Tree, p 33):
'Sambo’ Edmonds, the manager of the Bank of Australasia, was another bachelor who gave select dinner parties for four – never more than four – and occasionally afternoon parties in his garden for the children of his friends. He dressed in English tweeds, and having something wrong with one eye, wore a monocle to disguise it. His hobby was painting , and with some help from Percy, he did creditable little oil paintings. After his retirement, years later, I went to see him in Kooyong Road where he lived with a sedate white-capped old housekeeper. At the disposal sale of his effects after he died, I purchased a Georgian decanter and some rummers, and all his old paint brushes which had been kept in perfect condition – some of them I use to this day .
Edmonds was a steady influence on Percy Lindsay and seems to have acted as an early career mentor. Norman Lindsay also mentioned Edmonds in his autobiography, My Mask (pp 28-29):
There was a middle-aged bank manager in Creswick named Edmonds who practised landscape painting as a hobby, and who sometimes had painters from Melbourne staying with him. Walter Withers was one, and a watercolourist named Miller Marshall.
This comment tells us that Edmonds seems to be responsible for inviting the artists Walter Withers and John Miller Marshall to teach in Creswick during January 1893. The Withers/Marshall summer residency saw Percy Lindsay advance his plein air oil technique, while younger brother Lionel Lindsay experimented with watercolour. This early art training soon inspired Lionel to become a professional illustrator in Melbourne.
There are no Australian birth records for Edmonds so he possibly arrived as a British migrant. After moving to Melbourne c.1905 he exhibited several works at some of the Victorian Artists’ Society annual exhibitions. Daryl’s coment about the condition of his brushes after his death suggests that he continued to paint up to the 1920s.
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1845
- Summary
- Samuel Edmonds was a landscape painter who exhibited some of his work at Victorian Artists' Society exhibitions during the first decade of the twentieth century. During the 1880s he befriended the young local artist Percy Lindsay while working in Creswick, Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Jan-23
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- wood engravers, were born in London and came to Sydney with their parents, Walter and Eliza Mason, in 1852.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1845
- Summary
- English colonial wood engraver and painter who worked with his brother Frederick on numerous illustrations for a range of Sydney newspapers. He had many jobs in his lifetime such as farmer's boy and rabbit inspector, but was a wood engraver until its decline with the introduction of photo engraving.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1923
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator and scene-painter, was born in England, a son of the landscape and marine painter Alfred Clint (1807-83), who was president of the Incorporated Society of British Painters for some time, a grandson of the eminent 'painter of players’ George Clint ARA (1770-1839), a nephew of Raphael Clint and apparently a cousin of Scipio Clint . He came to Victoria about 1860 or earlier, presumably after gold even though he appears to have worked as both a theatrical scene-painter and cartoonist from the first. A lithograph cartoon by 'A.C.’ of the Governor’s Victorian tour in 1858, with all protagonists depicted as armoured knights (sold Deutscher), looks like his work despite being dated earlier than he is known to have been in the country.
Clint rather than A. C. Cooke was surely the monogrammist 'A.C.’ who worked on Ballarat Punch in 1867-69 under editor and illustrator C.A. Abbott . If so, he produced the livelier and more developed of its coarse but pungent cartoons. Examples of 1867 by 'A.C.’, then the major illustrator, include: 29 February (Maori tattoo joke), 9 March ('Blair versus Darwin’), 16 March (re loiterers on the Melbourne Post Office steps being banned), 30 March (Chirnsides cheating on his obligations under the Land Act, also boys asking their mother if they can go to the theatre to see Madame Celeste), 15 April (men laughing at two strange silhouettes of fashionable women), 27 April (small people crushed under a Roman siege engine of bad investments), 1 June (series of small vignettes of puns about mining terminology), 22 June (full page of caricatures of opera scenes from Semiramide , Faust , Lucia etc), 29 June (silhouette vignettes about a trip to Ballarat that ends up in prison), 13 July (jokes about English news, including Disraeli as a boxer and the Princess of Wales as a ballet dancer), 10 August (a miner as portrayed on stage by Mr W.M. Brown compared with a miner in reality, tired and worksoiled), 7 September (parody of phrenology – waiter reading heads so that diners don’t have to give him orders), 19 October (interior of Ballarat theatre with audience yelling advice to Hamlet actors), 26 October (train accident), 6 November (two urchins think they have spotted the Duke of Edinburgh), 7 December (Mr Punch welcomes the Duke – one of few existing cartoons about the royal visit. Most of the royal visit cartoons are lost in the State Library of Victoria copy, which has pages missing), 21 December (full page sheet of silhouettes showing Prince Alfred’s visit behind the scenes, with the prince collapsing with exhaustion in his private train, glad to be leaving Ballarat).
Examples by Clint in 1868 include: 4 January (a parody of Holman Hunt’s famous painting The Light of the World with a building society director looking for a honest man), 25 July (horse labelled 'Victoria’ baulking at fence marked 'revolution’), 15 August (Ballarat Volunteer Mounted Rifles swamped in their new greatcoats), 17 October ( A Fancy Sketch of the Can Can , i.e. male and female dancers made from tin cans), 24 October (nurse letting children fall out of the pram while kissing her boyfriend).
Caban says Alfred Clint contributed to the Adelaide edition of the Illustrated Melbourne Post before 1868 but it must have been from Melbourne (Caban 1983, 13). As a theatrical scene-painter, he began his Australian career at the Melbourne Theatre Royal in 1867 as assistant to John Hennings . Irvine says his first acknowledged work was some scenery for Walter Montgomery’s production of Antony and Cleopatra . For the 1867-68 Christmas pantomime at the Royal, Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son, and Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary; or, Harlequin Piggy Wiggy, and the Good Child’s History of England , the advertisement stated that 'the new and magnificent scenery [was] designed and painted by Mr John Hennings, assisted by Messrs Clint and Little, &c.’
Towards the end of 1869, when Ballarat Punch was expiring, Clint moved to Sydney and was employed as scenic artist at the Prince of Wales Theatre. His first work was nine scenes for W.H. Hoskins’s production of The Tempest in October, including two 'working’ sea scenes (with waves rolling and crashing on a rocky shore) and the masque scene with mythological figures descending via a rainbow and a car drawn by peacocks. Sydney Punch (for which Clint was to work and may already have been working) particularly noted his contribution: 'Nor must Mr Clint be forgotten, who, from the ability he has displayed as the scenic artist, is to be congratulated for having established himself in the good opinion of the Sydney public’. On 4 March 1871, he presented a diorama at the Sydney School of Arts with the mechanist John Renno , the first part being scenes of the Franco-Prussian war, the second views of Sydney.
He moved to Adelaide to become chief cartoonist on two publications, the short-lived Mirror in 1873-74 and the Lantern from the first issue of 5 September 1874 until the end of 1875. Examples of his work for the latter include The new vision of judgement , lithograph (National Library of Australia [NLA] #S10480), Lantern 4, 26 September 1874. Clint was back in Sydney by 3 December 1875 when his first major cartoon, a conventional allegory, appeared in Sydney Punch and he remained on the paper until it closed in the 1880s. Cartoons he drew for it include Compulsory Education 1878 (ill. King 44), published 16 August 1879, 44. Alternating with E. Montagu Scott – and for a short time in 1875 with William Macleod (stepson of James Anderson ) – as chief cartoonist for the full-page political cartoon in each issue, Clint told William Moore 'that he and Scott used to discuss the subjects for the cartoons as they travelled by bus to Black Wattle Swamp, Glebe Point, where the editor, Mr Neville Montagu, resided. He added that their drawings were transferred on the stone, a much quicker process than wood-engraving’ (Moore ii, 108). Clint caricatured the cartoonist (and painter) Gustavus Wangenheim (identified by annotations in Clint scrapbook, State Library of New South Wales [SLNSW] Mitchell Library) for Sydney Punch 's 'People We Know’ series (December 1878) – which, Mahood claimed, is Australia’s first cartoon of a cartoonist (although she thought the figure was Monte Scott). Most of Clint’s Punch work was produced in the form of pen lithographs. He often used theatrical analogies in his cartoons, understandably.
Clint was briefly employed on the Sydney Bulletin (founded in January 1880), although he does not seem to have been one of the original cartoonists as was long thought. Dart says that his first Bulletin cartoon was published on 24 March 1883 ( Immigration ), others were published in April (e.g. 1 April, p.9) and he ceased work after Livingston Hopkins 's first cartoon was published on 24 May. Both Clint & Hop parodied the GPO carvings in 1883, Clint’s effort being published on 28 April, p.9.
Clint’s An electioneering puzzle was the cover of the Australian Workman on 2 June 1894. The Choice – Freetrade let loose! was the cover on 21 July (NLA plate 24615). The SLNSW has his original cartoon showing Chinese and Caucasian paupers coming in the back door of 'Australia’, which is being held open by two politicians, despite the 'whites only’ warning over the front (Dixson Galleries [DG] PXX 40).
In October 1879 Sydney Punch issued a grand chromolithographed supplementary folio sheet to celebrate the opening of the International Exhibition at the Garden Palace in Hyde Park. The drawing by Clint included a procession in which over 100 colonial identities could be recognised, together with representative citizens from the many participating nations. Clint excelled in such robust, crowded scenes. Some of his cartoons, often initialled 'A.C.’, show 'an ironic, slightly Teutonic sense of humour reminiscent of the German comic artist Wilhelm Busch’, writes Mahood.
He illustrated books such as Southerly Busters, by Ironbark (G.H. Gibson), published in 1878, and was also a fine artist. A founder of the Art Society of NSW (later the Royal Art Society), he sent 'eight or nine of those clever characteristic sketches of public men which he hits off so quickly and so well’ to its first exhibition in 1880. His painting, Near Mrs Macquarie’s Chair , 'a pretty and well-painted scene’, was shown in an 1890 art exhibition. This could be the oil on canvas Anniversary Regatta, Sydney Harbour – Picnic at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair (SLNSW DG, presented by Sir William Dixson in 1935), despite it being generally dated to c.1855 or c.1870 (when John Black Henderson , who actually worked in Sydney 1877-1903, supposedly did his lithograph after it). Ellis notes (p.7) that reproductions also appeared in the Sydney Mail of 30 January 1897 (when the painting was in the hands of John C. Lovell, 'furniture, warehousemen and fine art dealers’ of George Street, Sydney) and in the Anchor of 5 October 1911.
Clint painted landscapes and natural history studies as well as portraits of local 'men of mark’ (mainly in watercolour) for exhibition at least from his South Australian years. On 20 January 1877 he displayed a series of portraits at the Victoria Theatre, Sydney, providing a short address as each local personality was presented to the audience. Clint’s two lives again intersected during a season of Shakespeare at the Victoria in 1877-78 when he held an exhibition in the vestibule of 'some admirable life-sized watercolour paintings of sundry colonial notabilities’.
They really do “speak for themselves” in every sense of the word except a vocal one, and without being caricatures, at the same time have a humorous characteristic about them which renders them exceedingly amusing. It is needless to say that during the recesses in the drama they have attracted crowds of observers.
Clint continued his career as a scene-painter in Sydney, working in turn at the Royal Victoria, Criterion and Her Majesty’s, and at the Opera House. With Andrew Torning, he produced the six different tableaux in the transformation scene for Alpine Apples, or Harlequin Intelligence, or Swiss A, B, C , the 1876-77 Christmas pantomime at the Victoria, which was called 'a remarkable exhibition of the scenic and mechanical arts’. His efforts for the pantomime Amphibio, the Rhine Queen; or, Harlequin Sir Rupert at the Victoria for Christmas 1879-80 quite overwhelmed the Australasian 's critic: 'The scenery is in the truest sense gorgeous, and the transformation eminently lovely’. Theatre critics regularly praised Clint’s scenery at length, including the Sydney Morning Herald reviewer of George Rignold’s esteemed production of Julius Caesar at Her Majesty’s in 1889. William Moore notes that it was while he was painting the scenery for Rignold’s historic productions at His Majesty’s Theatre that he became associated with D.H. Souter as one of the Tribune cartoonists.
Clint and Owen provided the scenery for The Merry Wives of Windsor , which opened at Melbourne’s Theatre Royal on 19 September 1891. The following January, back at Sydney’s Royal, Clint alone was cited as scene-painter for the pantomime The Babes in the Wood . His many other theatrical efforts included the scenery for the first Australian production of George Darrell’s Transported for Life . Late in life he and his sons established one of Australia’s first scene-painting studios at Camperdown, NSW. Although his death certificate (possibly by mistake) stated he was unmarried, Clint had three sons: Alfred T. , George and Sydney Raphael Clint (c.1893-1930), all landscape painters, illustrators and theatrical artists like their father.
Alfred Clint died in Sydney on 20 November 1923. Some original cartoons, drawings and watercolours survive as well as hundreds of published illustrations. The Art Gallery of South Australia holds the original watercolours from two sets of his cartoons, numbers 1 and 2 of his Prominent South Australians (1874), and the watercolour Water Cresses (early 1870s).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1843
- Summary
- A Colonial-era cartoonist, illustrator and scene-painter, Alfred Clint contributed works to the Ballarat and Sydney editions of Punch among others. Equally well-known for his work in the theatre work, Clint and his sons established one of Australia's first scene-painting studios at Camperdown, NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Nov-23
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude50.9025349 Longitude-1.404189 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Southampton, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and teacher, was born on 7 April 1843 at Southampton, England, the second daughter of John and Eliza Thurston . She came to New South Wales on 23 December 1853 with her widowed mother and two sisters, and she lived with her mother and sister Emily until the mid 1860s. She probably worked as a teacher in later years. The Eliza Thurston listed as a schoolmistress at Rylstone, near Mudgee in Balliere’s Official Post Office Directory of New South Wales for 1867 (compiled 1866) was surely the daughter rather than her elderly mother. However, not long afterwards, on 2 March 1867, Eliza West Thurston married Dr John Morton at Mudgee.
Pencil drawings dated 1858, a watercolour of a moss rose dated 1863 and a sepia wash drawing dated 1867, all initialled E.W.T., survive in a family collection. An accomplished later watercolour of passionfruit flowers, leaves and tendrils is also initialled E.W.M. Her notebook giving details of Thurston family history is with the Sir John Bates Thurston Papers (National Library of Australia, ms 1914/1).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 7 April 1843
- Summary
- Sketcher and teacher, was born on 7 April 1843 at Southampton, England. She came to New South Wales in 1853, working as a school teacher. She is likely to have had a daughter before she married Dr John Morton. Some of her artworks remain.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1923
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-35.1035857 Longitude138.7961057 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Echunga, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, art teacher, pastoralist and utopian socialist, was born on 21 May 1843 at Echunga, South Australia, second child of Stephen Hack and Elizabeth Marsh, née Wilton. Sent to his grandparents in Gloucestershire to be educated (at Sandbach Grammar School, Cheshire, and at the University of Heidelberg), Wilton rejoined his father’s pastoral enterprises in the mid 1860s. After the 1865-67 drought he abandoned his run, Pinaroo, and became a drawing master at various schools in Adelaide. In 1868 his pen-and-ink copy of Landseer’s The Combat won a prize at the twelfth annual exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts. It was commended in the South Australian Advertiser of 12 December 1868 but its lack of colour was considered monotonous. On 10 May 1870 Wilton Hack married Anne Maria Stonehouse and they had at least four children.
Hack began visiting prisoners at Yatala Gaol during his drawing-master years (1868-73) and presumably taught the anonymous artist who painted a unique series of lively watercolours of prison life in a sketchbook dated 1877 (Mortlock Library) attributed to 'one of the prisoners’. Hack went to Japan as a missionary in 1873 but returned to Adelaide in 1876 to obtain government permission to settle some hundreds of Japanese families in the Northern Territory. The scheme came to nothing. He subsequently floated gold-mines in New South Wales, attempted to create a utopian socialist village for the unemployed at Mount Remarkable, South Australia, studied Theosophy in India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and travelled to England in 1890 promoting Western Australian gold mines. Returning to Glenelg, (South Australia), he settled down to oil and watercolour painting as a full-time career until his daughter married and his wife died (in 1911). Then he went to Western Australia to visit two of his sons and there had a serious accident. Aged almost 73, he married his nurse, Minnie Alice Wierk, on 26 April 1916. Hack died at Beverley, Western Australia, on 23 February 1923. A sketchbook of elegant drawings in the Mortlock Library mainly records foreign scenery, plus a few South Australian subjects such as the beach at Glenelg, dated 1894.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 May 1843
- Summary
- Painter, art teacher, pastoralist and utopian socialist, Hack taught drawing in Adelaide from 1868 to 1873. He travelled widely and a surviving sketchbook records foreign scenery and South Australian subjects.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Feb-23
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude53.869694 Longitude10.7431833 Start Date1841-01-01 End Date1923-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark
- Biography
- painter, decorator and commercial artist, son of the Burgomaster of the Town of Keil, was born in Schleswig-Holstein where he trained as a painter, art decorator, wood-grainer and signwriter. His family actively supported Prussia against Denmark in 1848-64, and the upheavals in his homeland convinced the young artist to emigrate. He left Hamburg on 30 September 1864 aboard the steamship Lord Cardogan , eventually reaching Australia via Liverpool and New York. He met his wife, Mary Talty from County Clare, en route. They settled in Victoria, for a time at Emerald Hill (now South Melbourne), before moving to Bendigo where Georg Carl Jess worked as a church painter and decorator. One of his few known oil paintings, the unusual, industrial, View of the Yarra at the Turning Circle 1886, sent for auction by a direct descendant to Sotheby’s 'Fine Australian and European Paintings’, Melbourne, 28-29 April 1998, lot 155 (with biography), went for $18,400 against an estimate of $5,000-8,000.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1841
- Summary
- Upheavals in his homeland of Denmark prompted Georg Jess to emigrate to Australia in 1864. He settled with his new wife in Victoria where he worked as a church painter and decorator.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1923
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1875-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- marine painter, son of master mariner John Henry Borstel, had little formal art training before exhibiting his ship portraits in the windows of photographic studios and on board ships. He was employed to paint ships after and for photographs by Frederick Temple West , a Newcastle photographer (c.1895-1901), which were then signed by both parties. An undated postcard by the Adelaide Photographic Co. (Sydney) after his painting of the Hans is in the Hood Collection, Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney.This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
marineart
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 1875
- Summary
- Reginald Arthur Borstel painted genre scenes of ships and maritime subjects in the late 1890s/early 1900s. He was known to have collaborated with the photographer Frederick Temple West.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1922
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude51.25 Longitude-1.916667 Start Date1870-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wiltshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born Alexander Phillip Williams in Wiltshire, England. He came to Melbourne with his family in the 1880s and (with George Coates ) studied at the NGV School at night in the 1890s while working as a sign-writer. He was a member of the Prehistoric Order of Cannibals, founded 1893. When he began working as a cartoonist on Melbourne Punch (1896-1912) he used the name 'Alek Sass’ (sometimes given as 'Alex’ and he was later wrongly but commonly called 'Alec Sass’ by Smith’s Weekly ). His cartoons for Melbourne Punch include a pair signed 'SAS’ published 4 November 1897: Contrasts – “Under the Elms” [and] “On the Flat”’ , which compare an upper and working class crowd at the races (ill. Fabian, 36).
'ALEK/ SASS’ cartoons in Melbourne Punch include The Fashion in Whiskers . 'Georgie: “Hello! dear boy; What’s gone wrong with your face?”/ Gussie: “Oh, nothing. But all us chappies who shaved clean in honour of Hopetoun will have to hurry up and grow Duke of York beards now, don’t you know”’ 18 October 1900 (ill. Fabian, 64). A better example is Hunting the Governors [two dumb cops with two dumb bloodhounds confronting the two Aboriginal bushranger brothers at their camp]. 'Intelligent Policeman (addressing the culprits): “Good day to yez. I’m out huntin’ thim Governors; have yez seen anny black men about?”’ 30 August 1900 (ill. Fabian, 156). The Wild Woman in Politics , a Hop-like picture story of a physically aggressive large woman with numerous children taking over a political meeting by force, was published 22 November 1906 (ill. Oldfield 1994, 29).
Sass exhibited paintings with the Art Society of NSW (and also in Victoria, possibly with the Victorian Art Society). He contributed cartoons to the Bulletin in 1902-6, including a loose charcoal-style drawing, published 21 June 1902, of a couple with the woman explaining that being thin is more important to a woman than love. He illustrated a poem by Edward Fisher on 23 February 1905 (about a man proposing at the theatre), did a well-drawn, graphic advertisement for the Victorian Railways’ excursion to Gippsland Lakes (re couple trying to get on horse-drawn cab with massive collection of luggage) 14 December 1904, an ad. for Lincoln Stuart (a Melbourne menswear company) 14 December 1905 and an ad. for Dyasons tomato sauce (man and maid, 'sauce! saucy! and sauciest!’) 8 March 1906. He taught Hal Gye .
In 1907 William Moore wrote an article on Sass for Native Companion (2 December 1907) illustrated with a bookplate of a female nude holding a skull signed 'Alex. Sass’. Then he drew for Lone Hand e.g. seasonal drawings of 'The Australian Girl’ published 1 January 1910, 287, 'February’ (girl playing croquet), 'April – The Australian Fishing Girl’ and '[December] Camping Girl’ 1910 (vol.6, 411 & 590, & vol.8, 115). Stories and poems illustrated in 1909-10 include Ethel Turner’s verses, 'The Christ Child in Australia’, 1 January 1910, 233-35, T. Carnett’s 'A Promising Pupil’ 1 January 1910, 316-21 (a story that includes a colour plate and a good heading of a woman graduate in front of men, 316) and T.B. Clegg’s 'A soul and a butterfly’ (with a female angel and a skull on an orb, 1 June 1909, 148). He illustrated a posthumous publication by George Essex Evans (d.1909) Queensland Queen of the North. A Jubilee Ode (Brisbane: Government Printer, 1910, 30 pp. with numerous illustrations; $60 Antiquariat 2002).
Sass revisited London c.1911 but then returned to Australia. He worked in New York in 1912-18, drawing for the New York World and making posters for the movies (also animated animal cartoons, according to Harry Julius 's 1917 Bulletin caricature of him in New York). Afterwards he settled in Sydney and worked as a commercial artist with the firm of Smith & Julius ( Sydney Ure Smith and Harry Julius). Later, circa 1919, he became the third artist to join Smith’s Weekly and its first art editor:
Then Alec [sic] Sass blew into “Smith’s” office from New York. He wanted a job. And he wanted to be “Smith’s” art editor. Sass produced a portfolio of his work, which showed that in addition to contributing regularly to New York “Life” and high-class magazines, he had mastered the technique of drawing for the rotary press – that is, for papers produced on newsprint by high-speed magazines. He was a find, for he imparted his methods to the young artists who were endeavouring to work out the problem he himself had solved ( Smith’s Weekly , 20 April 1935, 20, 26).
Cartoon published 7 January 1922, 13; original political cartoon showing Fisher, Hughes and Bill Lyne as comic entertainers in Stan Cross collection (ill. Rainbow, 54).
Sass died in December 1922 while still working at Smith’s but there is some speculation as to in what capacity he was working as some sources state that he retired about 1919 but remained Art Director until his death (see Fifty Years… )
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1870
- Summary
- Federation-era Melbourne painter and cartoonist who also spent time in New York and Sydney. Sass was a member of the Prehistoric Order of Cannibals, founded 1893.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Dec-22
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- painter, with first wife Anne Moore-Jones (née Dobson), was exhibiting with the Art Society of NSW and holding art classes in the 1890s.
This artist’s biography is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 February 1868
- Summary
- Painters Horace and Anne Moore-Jones were exhibiting with the Art Society of NSW in the 1890s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Apr-22
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, mural artist and designer, was born in England. Apprenticed to the London ecclesiastical designers Clayton and Bell at the age of 13, he did stained-glass window designs for both English and Australian churches for some years (Moore ii, 107). He came to Melbourne for his health in 1891 and in 1894 succeeded Alf Vincent as a cartoonist, later chief cartoonist, on Melbourne Punch , where he was a colleague of Alek Sass . He retired from the position in 1896, due to ill health, and George Treeby ( “Bron” ) took over.
In 1897-98 Dancey did an ink wash and gouache drawing, The Braddon Clause , showing the Commonwealth of Australia as a young woman in mediaeval court dress, a coronet of stars resembling the Australian colonies on her head and clasping a shield marked 'Braddon Clause’ to her bosom. Beside her, dressed as a court jester in dunce’s cap with bells, is the rotund figure of Sir Edward Braddon, Premier of Tasmania (who introduced section 87 into the Federal Constitution, allowing three-quarters of the revenue from customs and excise to be returned to the states for 10 years in order to ensure the acceptance of the Constitution by the smaller and poorer colonies). The drawing was formerly in the collection of Marguerite Mahood (now State Library of Victoria).
Dancey resumed the position of chief cartoonist on Melbourne Punch in 1898 and stayed until 1919. Two original political cartoons of 1914 (National Library of Australia) were presumably drawn for it. His painting of 'The Australian Girl’ was reproduced as one of a series in Lone Hand (1 January 1910, 289). He illustrated W. Sabelberg’s 'Etella of the Pangurangs’, about a white Aboriginal woman, in 1910 (pp.330-34). In 1917 he and Charles Nuttall held an exhibition of their war cartoons in London.
Dancey chiefly designed stained-glass windows for the Melbourne firm of Brooks Robinson, e.g. Matthew Flinders window with a red-haired midshipman in the rowboat landing in Port Phillip Bay for a Melbourne suburban church (Dow, p.76). He also painted murals, the best-known being his tile mural at the entrance of the National Mutual Home Purchase Company building, 243 Collins Street (apparently now demolished). He was obsessed with Lord Leighton’s draped figure studies and made numerous imitations of them. Even in his cartoons he followed Leighton’s neo-classical practice of drawing the figure nude before draping it, which led to his cartoons being labelled 'murals in miniature’.
A member of the Melbourne Savage Club, Dancey made a generous donation of original cartoons to the club (some ill. Dow).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1864
- Summary
- British born Federation era cartoonist and stained glass designer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1922
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude52.2109495 Longitude-2.156955513 Start Date1853-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Worcestershire, England, UK
- Biography
- artist, was born in Worcestershire in 1853, studied at the RA Schools and exhibited with the RA, Royal Institute, Royal Society of British Artists. He was a professor of painting at St John’s Wood Art Schools, London. Collins came to Adelaide for health reasons in 1899 and worked as the Life and Antique master at the Adelaide School of Arts in 1900-09. He taught Hans Heysen . Collins died at Gilberton (SA) on 2 August 1922.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1853
- Summary
- After exhibiting with the Royal Academy, Royal Society of British Artists, and the Royal Institute, Collins moved to Adelaide for health reasons in 1899. He was also know to have taught Hans Heysen.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Aug-22
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1853-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- painter, scene painter, designer and art teacher, was born in Paris, France, in 1853, to Mathias Alexandre Tischbauer (a Moravian emigré) and Marie Julie née Favaud. He had trained as a scene painter and designer and worked at the Paris Opera before becoming involved in the Paris Communes of 1871, resulting in him being transported to New Caledonia. From there he came to Sydney, as did his friend Lucien Henry who modelled his bust in Sydney. Tischbauer was living at 139 Castlereagh Street in 1880 when he showed 'Sketches in Water-colours for Churches and Apartments. Panels for Apartments’ at the Melbourne International Exhibition. He found a job teaching classes in perspective at the Sydney Technical College, Ultimo, where Lucien Henry taught modelling (Moore).
In 1883 he showed an oil painting (now in the State Library of New South Wales collection) in the third annual NSW Art Society exhibition:
A. Tischbauer has only sent one picture, No. 218, but that is so good that it is worth half a dozen less carefully painted. It is a view of George St., from the north side of Wynyard St., and looking south. The architectural work is finished to the utmost degree, the perspective is simply perfect; not a detail, as regards signs etc., has been omitted and the atmospheric effect is good. Cabs and other vehicles throng the streets, while on the footpaths there is a bustling crowd of pedestrians, several portraits being introduced, among them those of Mr Combes and Mr J.P. Russel [sic]. ( Sydney Morning Herald , 31 March 1883, 5)
John P. Russell exhibited a Portrait of A. Tischbauer, Esq. in the same exhibition.
The fourth annual exhibition of the Society followed later that year and Tischbauer showed more street scenes. The SMH (5 October 1883, 8) noted that he 'has made a speciality of street scenes and the representation of long vistas of lofty buildings a la Canaletto’, adding that his views in George Street and Macquarie Street were 'unrivalled in their perspective and the harmony of their colouring’. Several are known to survive.
Two other extant paintings from Tischbauer’s years in Sydney depict the Art Gallery of NSW when still in its original home, the fine arts’ building designed by W.W. Wardell erected at the entrance to the Botanic Gardens for the 1879-80 Sydney International Exhibition. It survived the fire which destroyed the adjacent Garden Palace in 1882, but the structure was declared unsound in 1885 and a new building subsequently begun (part extant within the present gallery). Tischbauer’s undated interior view of the condemned gallery, offered for sale by Hordern House in April 1998 for $24,000, shows the architectural features of Wardell’s building in detail and identifies many of the gallery’s original holdings. Many of the paintings and sculptures on view, mostly British or European, have since been de-accessioned; W. C. Piguenit’s An Australian mangrove, ebb tide, Alphonse de Neuville’s The Defence of Rorke’s Drift; both seen on the left; Keely Halswell’s Non Angli sed Angeli ; seen on the right hand side; and Jean-François Portael’s Esther; at the far end; are among the few that remain regularly on view. The two big bronzes in the middle of the room are still on view in the gallery, but the majority of the oil landscapes and marble heads are rarely seen and many appear to have gone.
At the seventh annual Art Society exhibition in 1886, the Sydney Morning Herald (20 April 1886, 4) noted:
Mr Alfred Tischbauer has two paintings of the National Art Gallery; the one of the central room (74) in oils and the other of the loan room (204) in watercolours. The latter is decidedly the better, but both are of interest. In the former, portraits are given of the trustees of the gallery, Sir Patrick Jennings and Mr. Montefiore being easily recogizable but the figures are not first-class.
In the late 1880s Tischbauer moved to Melbourne where he worked, under the stage name 'Alta’, as a theatre designer for Alfred Dampier.
'Alta’ was the scenic artist at the Alexandra Theatre, Melbourne in the late 1880s-90s. He was the chief scene-painter of the 'elaborately realistic’ scenery in Marvellous Melbourne – a great success, which had opened on 19 January 1889 and ran for over five weeks. The Argus of 21 January described it as belonging to 'the order of sensational and spectacular drama which has recently come into fashion, and in which the scenic artist and stage carpenter play as important part as the leading actor’ (quoted Williams 151). Although the critical eye of the Australasian of 26 January 1889 noted that several of the sets had been recycled from earlier dramas (including one, surprisingly, from His Natural Life), all the reviews commended the beautifully executed pictures of the city. The mechanical change from Chinese opium den to Falls Bridge by moonlight was especially mentioned.
Even the Bulletin was unreserved in its praise:
But the backbone of this show is scenery of a beautiful and entirely local character. Nothing approaching it had previously been set up on the big Alexandra stage, and three pictures created such prolonged howlings that certain wild-looking artists were required to come forward and smile at their admirers.
'The wild-looking artists became the backbone not only of this production, but also of what became known, in parody of the land boom, as the “Dampier boom” at the Alexandra’ (Williams 153-56). In 1890 Dampier, with Garnet Walch, followed Marvellous Melbourne with Robbery Under Arms. Like His Natural Life (the previous success), it became a permanent part of the Dampier Company’s repertoire (photographs of scenes ill. Williams 162, 163). It also had a London season at the Princess’s Theatre in 1894. Another Boldrewood book dramatised by Dampier and Walch, The Miner’s Right, opened on 14 February 1891. Table Talk of 20 February 1890 (quoted Williams, 167) 'was greatly enamoured of Mr Alta’s sets, “realistic in the highest degree”’:
The diggings in the second act are remarkably true to nature, the cloth showing the forest of straight gum trees with the ranges in the distance, being one of the best Australian landscapes that has ever been painted for the stage. The Cascade scene is good, but the diggings scene has the real colour of the country.
In late 1891 Tischbauer’s theatrical design career faltered after he was named in the suicide note of Selina Palmer; a young woman, employed by Alfred Dampier, whom Tischbauer had befriended; and had to endure public scrutiny of the nature of their friendship during the coronial inquest. Tischbauer continued his work for Dampier after the tragedy, until the collapse of Dampier’s business in 1893 caused a rift between the two men.
Sometime after 1893 – the date on his last known painting of a Sydney subject, a watercolour of Fort Macquarie & Man of War Steps; signed 'Alf. Tischbauer’ and dated '13th August '93’ (Bussell); – he started teaching art at Sale in Gippsland. In January 1897 he married Harriet Watson at Footscray in Melbourne.
At the start of the twentieth century Tischbauer left for New York where, according to William Moore, he became a successful scenic artist and theatrical designer.
Tischbauer and his wife later moved to California, where he worked for the American Film Company in Santa Barbara. Alfred Louis Tischbauer died in Los Angeles in February 1922 and was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills. Harriet Tischbauer returned to Australia later in 1922.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Eric Riddler
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 25 March 1853
- Summary
- French born artist and theatre designer who painted various Sydney street scenes and documented interior views of exhibition spaces at the Art Gallery of New South Wales during the 1880's. Tischbauer taught at the Sydney Technical College and at Sale, Victoria
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Feb-22
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- natural history painter, was born in Melbourne on 30 July 1848, eldest of the seven children of Charles Ryan and Marian, née Cotton. Ellis (as she was always called) had an upper middle-class girl’s education, including some tuition in watercolour painting, apparently from John Mather in Melbourne, and possibly private art classes in England (which she first visited in 1869), although she later claimed, with characteristic exaggeration, to have been entirely self-taught. Rowan began to exhibit her large watercolours of native flowers and plants at about the time of her marriage to Captain Frederic Charles Rowan (on 23 October 1873), mainly at intercolonial and international exhibitions of art and industry. Between 1872 and 1893 she won ten gold, fifteen silver and four bronze medals, starting with a bronze at Melbourne’s second Intercolonial Exhibition and ending with a gold at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. At the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition, Rowan and another flower painter, Catherine Purves , received the only gold medals awarded to any artists from Victoria (although one was belatedly awarded to Louis Buvelot after an official protest from Melbourne’s male professional painters). In 1888 Buvelot was dead and, despite more protests, Rowan was the only painter in any Australian colony to receive a gold medal.
Since she had turned her back on the Victorian Artists’ Society and similar artists’ institutions, it is hardly surprising that when the Commonwealth Government decided in 1921 to purchase a large collection of Rowan’s paintings for a future national gallery the male art establishment complained. Professional painters said that it was totally unsuited for any public art gallery, let alone worth the £21,000 she was asking. (Norman Lindsay, ironically, called her work 'vulgar’.) The Commonwealth offered her £2,000 for her lifetime collection, eventually raising this to £5,000 – paid a year after her death. The collection remains with the National Library of Australia. When the National Gallery requested part of the old Commonwealth pictorial collection in 1993, it did not include any of the Library’s 947 flower paintings by her.
Rowan was immensely prolific. She did not document her paintings in an organised way, but her biographer Margaret Hazzard estimates that she painted well over 3,000 pictures. Her final exhibition, at Anthony Hordern’s Fine Art Gallery in 1920, contained over 1,000 exhibits, all for sale. It was said to have been the largest solo art exhibition ever held in Australia and to have made a record £2,000. She wrote and illustrated A Flower Hunter in Queensland and New Zealand (1898), published a children’s story about her pet bilboa, Bill Baillie, His Life and Adventures (1908), and provided illustrations for popular publications such as The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia (Sydney 1884-86) and New Idea (1905). She also painted murals and occasional oils. Her wildflower paintings were used commercially on Royal Worcester china. The William Henry Gill Papers (ML mss 285/13, item 1, pp.261-63) contains a prospectus, Ellis Rowan Pictures Limited , for a company set up to buy her 328 paintings for exhibition and sale in the USA, including info. re price of shares etc. (from Anita Callaway).
A tiny woman with an 'ultra-sweet voice’ Rowan’s appearance belied enormous physical stamina and absolute ruthlessness of purpose. She was as proud of her delicate, youthful appearance as she was of her trips to remote and difficult places, the one being exemplified by a face-lift in New York when she was in her early fifties, the other by two independent expeditions into the New Guinea Highlands to paint birds-of-paradise in her late sixties. Although helped by family money and connections, a steely determination and unashamed self-publicity, the fact that a colonial woman could make an international reputation from the despised female 'hobby’ of flower painting – normally consigned to an artistic 'no-man’s land’ without scientific, economic or artistic value – was a considerable achievement.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1848
- Summary
- A Melbourne born, prolific natural history painter with an international reputation. Her work was classified within the despised female 'hobby' of flower painting.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1922
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1847-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- Samuel Nixon was born in Birmingham, England, on 12 September 1847, the son of William Millington Nixon, a gunsmith who arrived in Adelaide with his family in January 1855. William Nixon became a photographer then moved to a farm at Pomanda near Wellington about 1859. Three of his sons, Stephen Edward, Joseph Henry and Samuel also became photographers. Samuel was probably a member of the photographic firm of Nixon Brothers (q.v.) in the early 1860s, and could have been associated with his father who for a time was working as W.M. Nixon & Sons.
In August 1869 Samuel Nixon spent several weeks taking portraits at Saddleworth where it was reported that ‘considering the dullness of the times’ he had been well patronised. ‘He has succeeded in taking some very fine portraits and has given general satisfaction to those who have favoured him with a visit. He will be welcome to come to this part again.’1 In February 1871 he was again at Saddleworth. ‘Mr Samuel Nixon, the travelling photographer, has paid us his yearly visit and gave, as usual, satisfaction.’2
When Samuel Nixon married Rose Hannah Ireson at Norwood on 28 January 1873 his address was given as Pomanda. It is thought he moved to New South Wales when his father took up land in the Deniliquin district in the late 1870s, and in 1882 he selected blocks of Crown Land beside Lake Gunbar and called his property Gunbar Farm. One of his cartes de visite (Noye collection) has the imprint ‘S.Nixon, Photographer, South Australia and New South Wales. Residence, Harbourne near Deniliquin’.
Samuel Nixon died at Hillston, New South Wales, on 27 December 1922.
1Kapunda Herald, 20 August 1869; South Australian Register, 21 August 1869.2South Australian Register, 3 March 1871.
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, p.217.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 12 September 1847
- Summary
- Samuel Nixon was a professional portrait photographer who started out with the Nixon Brothers firm, located in Kapunda. His carte-de-visite studio portrait of an Aboriginal man in European dress was exhibited in Sydney in 1989.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Dec-22
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude53.479444 Longitude-2.245278 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manchester, England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.June 1844
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Dec-22
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude22.5726459 Longitude88.3638953 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Calcutta, India
- Biography
- painter, scene-painter, topographical draughtsman, amateur photographer, settler and public servant, was born on 5 September 1844 in Calcutta, India, where his father Charles Robert Prinsep was British agent-general. Educated in England under the care of his uncle Thoby Prinsep, Henry (known as Harry) was given art lessons by George Frederick Watts in company with his older cousin, Valentine Prinsep. Later he studied law at Oxford and art at Dresden and Heidelberg. His father died in 1865 and in January 1866 Prinsep set sail in the David and Jessie for the Swan River Colony (WA), where his father had bought land in 1857. He arrived at Fremantle from Singapore on 20 May 1866, having made many sketches on the voyage. In October he met Charlotte Josephine Bussell (1847-1929) – known as Josephine – the youngest daughter of Charlotte and John Garrett Bussell . They married on 26 February 1868 and settled at Prinsep Park, Dardanup, near Bunbury, one of the East India Company’s properties that Henry managed.
At Prinsep Park, Henry supplied the Nygungar George Coolbul with drawing materials and encouraged him to do coloured pencil and crayon drawings in a sketchbook entitled 'West Australian Native Art’ (AGWA). He wrote: 'The drawings in this book are a few among many drawn by a West Australian native known as George Coolbul, of the Vasse district during his service with me on a horse station at Prinsep Park, Dardanup in 1868 and 1869. He came to an untimely end in 1871 being speared through the body by another native at night during a feast which prevented his further progress in art.’
Following the almost total loss of a cargo of horses and railway sleepers in 1870 when the Heimdahl (with Prinsep, his wife and eldest daughter, Carlotta, on board) ran aground on the mudbanks of the Hoogley River, Prinsep was forced to abandon pastoral pursuits. In February 1874 he joined the Lands and Surveys Department as a draughtsman. The family settled in Perth, in a house next door to the Royal Mint known as 'The Studio’. By 1894 he was head of the Mines Department and, in 1898, Chief Protector of Aborigines. He retired in 1907, lived in England until 1912 and died at Busselton on 20 July 1922.
Prinsep’s artistic training served him well in obtaining employment as a draughtsman, but there were few other professional outlets for his talents. He painted the scenery for a dramatic performance at Perth soon after his arrival as well as for later performances in both Perth and Geraldton, but these efforts, like the scenery and drop-curtains he painted for an 1878 Mechanics Hall production for the St George’s Cathedral organ fund, were probably purely voluntary. He was also a keen amateur photographer; one of his photographs shows Perth Town Hall under construction and is thus dated 1869. The house to which he retired at Busselton, named Little Holland House after his uncle Thoby’s London home, had its own darkroom.
Prinsep’s sketches for John Forrest’s Journal of Proceedings of the Western Australian Exploring Expedition (1875) and Ernest Giles’s Australia Twice Traversed…1872 to 1876 (1889) were commissions from the Lands Department. Although adequate for their purpose, the illustrations betray their official origin. (It is interesting to note that in the introduction to Giles’s book he is conflated with his more famous artist-cousin and called Mr 'Val’ Prinsep of Perth.) Far more expert are his watercolour views of Perth, Geraldton and Rottnest Island; these charming works are deceptively simple. His diary for 1876 records the execution of one such sketch: 'Mrs Hocking and I would take our blocks and Josephine would read to us as we painted and I have brought home a trophy in the shape of a rather nice water colour sketch of the Falls’.
Prinsep helped found the Wilgie Club, WA’s first art society, and was connected with the short-lived illustrated paper, Possum . He was a member and vice-president (1904 05) of the Western Australian Society of Arts, with which he exhibited from 1901 to 1908. Of his three daughters, Virginia Mary (1880 1958) and Carlotta Louisa (1869 1960) also sketched and painted. Extant sketches by Prinsep himself are largely topographical, but they include an unusual and amusing black and white sketch of a fancy dress ball on roller skates apparently taking place in the Perth Town Hall, the central participant being disguised as a (rather wobbly) Egyptian obelisk (BL).
Writers:
Callaway, AnitaKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 September 1844
- Summary
- Harry Prinsep was active in many parts of Western Australian society. Trained in Law and associated with the east India Company he worked as a draughtsman among other thing, producing numerous amateur and professional sketches, paintings and photographs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Jul-22
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- professional photographer and civil servant, was born near Belfast, Ireland. He was apprenticed in 1863 to Alfred Bock. From 1867 until the end of 1875 he worked as a commercial photographer from Alfred Bock's former studio at 140 Elizabeth Street, Hobart. In the 1860s the firm became Nevin & Smith. Robert Smith’s partnership with Nevin was dissolved in 1868. The bulk of the practice was the normal one of taking views, mainly of and around Hobart, like the stereo photo New Town from the Public School (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery), and carte de visite studio portraits, such as the hand-coloured cartes-de-visite in the Archives Office of Tasmania, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery and in private collections. Larger commissions included photographing the full range of coaches used by Samuel Page’s firm in the early 1870s, and convict identification mugshots for the Municipal Police Office, Hobart town Hall held at the National Library of Australia, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office, and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
Seventy CDV identification photographs of Port Arthur convicts taken in about 1874, two years before the settlement was closed, have been attributed to Nevin because several of them carry his studio stamp. These were exhibited at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in 1977 as Nevin’s work and remain in its collection. Chris Long, however, believes he was merely the printer or copyist of these and claims that the Port Arthur commandant A.H. Boyd was the sole Port Arthur convict photographer. Professional photographers, however, were employed to take identification photographs in mainland Australian prisons from the beginning of the 1870s ( see Charles Nettleton ) and these Port Arthur portraits fit the genre. Moreover, the darkroom Boyd authorised in the Port Arthur garden was not necessarily for his own use; no photographs taken by him have been identified.
Nevin’s commercial photographic stock and negatives were purchased by Samuel Clifford at the end of 1875 and on 8 January 1876 the studio was advertised for lease. 'Mr Thomas Nevin, photographer’, had been appointed over twenty-three other applicants to the office of keeper at the Hobart Town Hall following the death of the former keeper Mr Needham. Despite a tendency to drink on duty, he remained in the position until 3 December 1880, when he was dismissed for being drunk the previous evening. The more serious charge for which he had been arrested, that he was associated with (or was) a figure in phosphorescent clothing who had been terrorising local residents by appearing late at night as a ghost, was dismissed for lack of evidence. Nevin continued working for the Municipal and Territorial Police until 1888.
Writers:
Staff Writer
willid
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1842
- Summary
- A professional photographer who worked in Hobart, photographing the views of Hobart and a range of coaches as well as taking portrait photographs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1922
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1841-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Morphettville, Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Morphettville, South Australia, second of the six daughters of (Sir) John Morphett and Elizabeth, née Fisher . Her father lent her flower painting Milnthorpe Church and Barnard Castle to the 1859 exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts. On 24 June 1861 Amy married Charles William May ; they had seven children. She died at Glenelg on 16 May 1922.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1841
- Summary
- Sketcher from South Australia. In 1859 her father lent her flower painting to the exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-May-22
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Tas, Australia
- Biography
- professional photographer and sketcher, was born in Hobart Town on 17 December 1834, second son of Joseph William Woolley (1797-1880), a cabinetmaker, and of Frances née Facy. From about 1859 to 1870 Charles Woolley worked as a photographer at 42 Macquarie Street in premises adjacent to his father’s upholstery and carpet warehouse. He took wet-plate photographic views of Hobart and its environs, including stereos such as Rocking Stone, on Mount Wellington (1859) in Alfred Abbott 's album and The Old Theological Institute, Hobart Town (1860s, Archives Office of Tasmania, Hobart, Tas). A woodcut of Government House, Hobart Town , taken from one of Woolley’s photographs, appeared in the Illustrated Melbourne Post in 1864. Like most photographers, Woolley mainly took portrait photographs. Numerous examples are extant including some overpainted with watercolours. Henry Button wrote that Henry Dowling 's portrait of Sir Richard Dry (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tas.) was painted in England from a Woolley photograph. More unusual were the seven published photographs Woolley took of four tableaux vivants designed and produced by Louisa Anne Meredith at Government House, Hobart Town, on 18 January 1866. Major Thomas Wingate took one photograph in the set and the eight were published later that year as an album, Souvenir of the Masques of Christmas, and of the Old and New Year . Most of Woolley’s photographs illustrate aspects of the festive season in the antipodes, but Second Tableau – Right Group shows four men and a woman representing Australian industries: a gold-digger, vine-grower, reaper, shearer and gleaner. In 1868 Woolley was one of the photographers appointed to cover the Hobart Town visit of the Duke of Edinburgh.
Woolley is best known for his photographic portraits of the five surviving Oyster Cove Aborigines taken in August 1866 and exhibited at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition later that year. The Tasmanian Commissioners considered them 'admirable likenesses’ and ordered them to be 'framed in Colonial woods – two women in each frame and the man in a frame by himself’. (At the Colonial Eye conference in 1999 Anne Maxwell mentioned that Woolley exhibited a portrait of Trugannini at the 1866 Melbourne Colonial but is said to have taken her nude at the same time for 'anthropological institutes’.) The 'man in a frame by himself’ was, of course, William Lanne (also called 'King Billy’) who reportedly objected that the portrait was 'too black for him’.
Engravings after the photographs appeared in James Bonwick’s The Last of the Tasmanians (1870), Enrico Giglioli’s I Tasmaniani (1871), and many subsequent publications. Woolley again exhibited prints of them at the 1875 Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition held preparatory to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Several sets of the original prints survive, especially in English collections, as well as copies made later by the Tasmanian photographer J.W. Beattie. In 1869, after Lanne’s death, the desecration of the graveside by two competing parties of resurrectionists (letter to Editor from 'Humanitas’, TT 22 March 1869, cited Petrow p.102) and the inquiry over the mutilation of his body, the Evening Mail (16 April 1869) advertised that a 'complete, full sized bust of William Lanne by artist Franciso Sante’ could be seen by the Hobart Town public for a small fee. At the same time: 'In the storage rooms of Walch and Sons and Birchall’s bookshops “numerous” busts of Lanne’s head produced by Charles Woolley could be found’ (Petrov, p.99, citing Hobart Town Examiner 10 April 1869). Woolley is not otherwise known as a sculptor and Sante is not thought to be known at all. An anonymous cartoon about the evil graveside robbers testifying against their rival resurrectionist, the noble Dr William Crowther, is in the Tasmaniana Library.
Woolley was married twice: to Ada, eldest daughter of C.H. Huxtable of Elphinstone Road, Hobart Town, on 19 July 1866, then to Harriett Elizabeth, second daughter of George Burn of Hobart Town, on 13 July 1876.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 December 1834
- Summary
- Charles Alfred Woolley was a professional photographer and sketcher. He was one of the photographers appointed to cover the Hobart Town visit of the Duke of Edinburgh in 1868.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1922
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude50.781519 Longitude-0.7065119 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1922-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Aldwick, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, was born on 29 November 1829, one of the eight children of John Barrett Fogg and Charlotte, née Newbury, of Bridge House, Aldwick near Manchester, Trimley Hall, Flintshire, and Hargate Hall, Derbyshire, England. The family fortunes must have dwindled over the years for the Foggs followed the classic pattern of retreat to cheap living in Europe. Sarah Ann lived in Mannheim, Germany, with her parents and sisters from 1843 to 1850. In a letter of 8 December 1848 to her brother Peter Parry, who was being educated at Müttlingen, Germany, she noted: 'I am getting on very well in painting’.
Mrs Fogg, accompanied by her four daughters – Charlotte Martha, Sarah Ann, Harriet Elizabeth and Frances Mary – and three of her sons -Peter Parry, John Newbury and James Alfred – arrived at Launceston, Van Diemen’s Land, on board the Aden from London on 20 November 1850. Mr Fogg appears to have gone to Victoria in search of gold; his death is recorded at the Ovens goldfields on 31 December 1853. Three years later Mrs Fogg became the second wife of Edward Dumaresq (brother of Eliza Darling , father of Amelia ), but they lived together for only a few months.
Sarah Ann Fogg was living in Launceston when selected as one of the Tasmanian contributors to the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition. Her 12 watercolour paintings of the indigenous flora of Tasmania, a portfolio lent to the exhibition by 'J. Dalton Hooker R.N. M.D., F.R.S.’, were considered by the local jurors to be 'very beautifully executed, and not more remarkable for the great delicacy of touch they display, than for their fidelity to nature in tint and outline’.
In 1860 Miss Fogg showed 10 pictures at the exhibition celebrating the opening of the Launceston Mechanics Institute building, all apparently copies of European works. While living at George Town she contributed two copies, Sybil after Guercino and The Singing Lesson after Nescher, to the Tasmanian court of the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. Her original Tasmanian views, however, are now considered to be of greatest interest. View of Launceston from Windmill Hill from John Eddie’s Garden (c. 1865, w/c, Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania), Quamby Bluff from Westbury, Tasmania (not dated, water colour, National Library of Australia) and her panoramic view of Launceston from the verandah of a relative’s house, with a telescope mounted on the verandah framing the view (1860s, w/c, ALMFA), are impressive and informative.
Fogg’s diary, begun early in 1878 when she was travelling in Italy shows that she took every opportunity to see art treasures on display and to record them in detail. On 5 February she noted 'My first lesson in “gouache”’, and the following day 'did views of Naples in gouache: pleased’. She mentions sketching the scenery and working on flower paintings on a number of occasions. By the end of June she was in England. There, on 24 July, she 'went to order a lithographic stone and get some hints, then bought materials for working’.
Her diary for 1880 reveals that she was sketching on a visit to Gladstone, Raglan and Rockhampton, Queensland. Back in Tasmania by the middle of the year, she showed her 'George, Cape and Raglan sketches’ to her friends, the South African subjects suggesting that she had also visited her brother, the Venerable Peter Parry Fogg MA, archdeacon and rector of George from 1871 to 1910. On 28 September 1880, while visiting Rev. J.C. Dixon and Mrs Dixon ( Eliza Cox ) at Beaconsfield, Tasmania, she commented: 'Mr D. kindly showed me the method of colouring photos in oil, & gave me notes, which I copied’.
In November 1880 Fogg paid a short visit to Melbourne to see the International Exhibition; in late December and early January she was briefly in Hobart Town. Early in 1881 she departed from Launceston for Melbourne, then left that city by ship, probably to go to South Africa. The diary finishes on 9 March 1881, but it is known that she lived with Peter in South Africa for many years. Sarah Ann Fogg died on 1 January 1922 at Pacalstdorp in the division of George, South Africa. Her body was one of the last to be interred in the St Mark’s Cathedral burial ground at George. Her will, made on 7 February 1881, included the bequest of her gold watch to Johannah Clyne Crear of Clyne Vale, Epping, Tasmania, a token of affection in a long-standing friendship between fellow artists; she had drawn a pencil and wash view of Johannah’s home in 1868 (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery).
Writers:
Valentine, Barbara
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 November 1829
- Summary
- Sarah Ann Fogg lived variously in Germany, Italy, South Africa and Tasmania and had many opportunities for studying the great Western works of Europe. It is her detailed watercolours of Tasmania, however, that are the most valued and tell us much about the environment at the time.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1-Jan-22
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1921-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- designer, painter and modeller, was born in London and came to Australia as a child. He studied art with his father and at the Royal College of Art, London. Exhibited Royal Art Society of NSW, 1911. He became art supervisor at the SA Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery 1915-18 and curator of Art Gallery of SA 1918-21. Exhibited SA Society of Arts Gallery, April 1921.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1877
- Summary
- Barnes emigrated to Australia as a child and held important positions in the arts in South Australia, which included positions as a curator at the Art Gallery of South Australia and as the art supervisor at the South Australian Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1921
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude-32.728465 Longitude151.9380101 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1921-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Port Stephens, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, included in the 1907 Sydney Exhibition of Women’s Work: NSW Display – Oil Paintings – Australian Landscape, competitive – no.7 Challinor, Minnie E. 'Diamond Lake’ 2 guineas.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1871
- Summary
- Painter, included in the 1907 Sydney Exhibition of Women's Work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1921
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude-35.3393279 Longitude143.5592026 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1921-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Swan Hill, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- Edward Cairns Officer was born near Swan Hill in 1871. He studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in the School of Design (1893-94) and the Melbourne Art School of E Phillips Fox and Tudor St George Tucker. Officer departed Melbourne in 1895 and continued his artistic training at the Académie Julian in Paris. He was abroad for a period of five years during which he received guidance from the French landscape painter and engraver Henri-Joseph Harpignies. Officer worked at Etaples, on the north-west coast of France, and in the region of Normandy where he completed 'Autumn in Normandy’.
Edward Officer returned to Melbourne in 1900 and then settled at the family property Kallara in New South Wales. In 1903 he was awarded the Wynne Prize for landscape painting. He held an exhibition of landscapes in 1908 at the Guild Hall, Melbourne, which included views of Kallara, Normandy, Tasmania and Victoria.
Officer was a council member of the Victorian Artists’ Society (1911-12); exhibited with the VAS intermittently between 1894 and 1911; and was inaugural president of the Australian Art Association (1912). In 1916 Officer was appointed a trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria, a position he held until his death.
During the First World War, Officer contributed to the activities of the Red Cross and donated the proceeds from war-time exhibitions of his work to the organisation. He was a member of the Melbourne Savage Club (1911-21) and died at Macedon, Victoria, in 1921.
Writers:
Sullivan, LisaThe Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1871
- Summary
- Early 20th century landscape painter
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1921
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1921-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- painter and muralist born in Melbourne. Bertha Elizabethwas the daughter of Thomas Merfield and sister of the astronomer Charles James Merfield.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 1869
- Summary
- Known for her mural paintings in Victoria, Bertha E. Merfield was a pioneer of landscape painting among female artists in Australia. Her mural for the Cafe Australia, Melbourne with interiors by the Burley Griffin practice received considerable public acclaim.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 20-Sep-21
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude-34.0636914 Longitude150.8206159 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1921-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Campbelltown, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, craftworker and poet, was born in Campbelltown, NSW, seventh of the 13 children of Rosalie Ada Pettingell and William James Wilshire, a son of Catherine Maria, née Robertson, and artist William Pitt Wilshire . Nothing is known of any early art training, but she presumably had lessons from her grandfather. Even so, an attributed early view of the Hawkesbury River dated '1873’ in pencil verso seems far too accomplished for a seven-year-old (1893?). By 1903, however, she was giving her occupation as 'artist’ on the electoral rolls, her address being the family home 'Idle-a-While’ at Cronulla, where she lived until 1916, then at 'Pelagos’, Ewos Parade, Cronulla until her death.
The first known review of Rosie’s art appeared in The Ladies’ Own Paper on 1 July 1905 (12-13) – a commentary on her work in 'The Cronulla Exhibition’ held at Vickery’s Chambers, 76 Pitt Street, Sydney. The exhibition was the work of five Cronulla women: Mrs Otho Windsor, Mrs and Miss Board and the Misses Rosie and Hero Wilshire. All were members of the Wilshire family. Mrs Otho Windsor was Rosie’s eldest sister Ada Pitt Ripley Wilshire (d.14 January 1921), who ran the Museum at Cronulla that comprised a large and varied collection of shells. First exhibited in a building near Shelley Beach, Ada later moved the collection to 'Lawna’, about a block from Ewos Parade, where she and another Wilshire sister, Hero (a flower painter), lived. At Ada’s death the collection was said to have numbered six million shells of some 50,000 varieties, many from Cronulla, valued at £25,000. Mrs Board was Rosie’s widowed sister Rosalie May Wilshire who had married Clarence W. Board (d.1891) at St Andrews Summer Hill on 8 September 1888, and Miss Board was obviously their daughter.
Although Rosie showed 'some very fine oil paintings … many of which were sold at highly satisfactory prices’ (Merrillees notes that an oil painting of pippies in her oeuvre ), the Cronulla Exhibition chiefly consisted of shellwork articles of all descriptions, e.g. drapes for mantels, walls, tables &c. adorned with wonderful designs in shells. The Sydney Mail of 12 February 1906 illustrated 'A portiere painted by Miss R. Wilshire, and bordered by roses in shells’. On 19 February 1908 (p.487), the Sydney Mail illustrated an extravagant 'Bridal Bouquet of Cronulla Shells’.
As well as painting NSW landscapes and occasional still-life subjects in oil and watercolour and working with shells, Rosie designed book covers and did illustrations. Most of her paintings were oil on board views of the countryside in and around Cronulla but also included scenery at the picturesque Bulli Pass south of Cronulla, the Wollondilly River in the Great Dividing Range to the southwest and the Colo River in the Blue Mountains north of Kurrajong. In 1911 W.C. Penfold of Sydney published her book of poems, From Cronulla , illustrated with photographs of her paintings. It was dedicated to 'The Seekers’ – a reference to the Sydney Theosophists, of which she was at least a fellow traveller. (Her brother Hector was a member of the Theosophical Society, joining in 1912.) One of her poems is entitled 'Voice of Divine Guide to One About to Reincarnate’ and there is a reference in The Seeker 2 (March 1918) to a meeting of the Theosophical Society at Kirribilli in September 1918 when 'Miss Wilshire’ – evidently Rosie – was to read a paper on 'Arnold Bennett’s Book “The Glimpse”’. She was also a vegetarian.
Always defining herself as an artist (or 'artiste’), Rosie was said by the family to have marketed her paintings through one or more of Sydney’s department stores.
Rosie Wilshire, who never married, died after a year’s illness with carcinoma of the liver in St Luke’s Private Hospital on 7 July 1921, aged 54. Wilshire family headstones in the Church of England section of Woronora Cemetery include one in her memory. It gives her date of her birth as 1866.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1866
- Summary
- Sydney-based poet and illustrator whose oil and watercolour paintings included landscapes, still lifes and shell studies. She had a book of poetry published illustrated with photographs of her own paintings.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Jul-21
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1921-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kentish Town, London, UK
- Biography
- Albert Edward Aldis was born in the London suburb of Kentish Town to Elijah Aldis, a native of Norfolk, and Elizabeth (nee Fendick). Aldis’s birth date is widely reported as 1870, however the correspondence of his wife, Olga, gives his birth date as 31 January 1865 (283-2, Grainger Museum). Aldis’s age as given in the 1871 and 1881 British Censuses agree with this date.
In April 1886 father and son embarked for New Zealand where they established a studio and art gallery in Auckland and began conducting art classes and exhibiting their own works for sale. During the following years Elijah took commissions as a portrait painter while his son set about establishing his own credentials as a landscape artist, traveling widely and painting prolifically. A portrait by Elijah and three of Albert’s paintings are held in the permanent collection of the Auckland City Art Gallery. Albert’s travels also brought him into contact with the Maori communities and stimulated what became more than just a passing interest in Maori culture.
When Elijah died in Auckland in July 1889, Albert moved to Melbourne. In the early 1890s he boarded with Rose and Percy Grainger at their Glenferrie home, 'Kilalla’, where he taught Percy drawing and introduced him to Maori chants and songs. Grainger credited him as an important early influence and the Grainger Museum (University of Melbourne) holds a number of his works.
Aldis enjoyed working in the open air and visited many of the same locations as the 'Heidelberg’ artists, though it is not known whether he had any personal association with them. He was associated with the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS) and exhibited in their May 1892 winter 'Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings’. Soon after this exhibition he moved to Sydney where, as well as painting, he gave art lessons, played in an orchestra – he was an accomplished violinist – and worked as a teacher on a property in the country. Little else is known of his life in New South Wales at this time.
In 1896 Aldis returned to New Zealand where, following a short stay in Auckland, he moved north to the small town of Te Kopuru, where he again taught music and art. He also established a dance orchestra that worked around the district and continued to travel and paint in his spare time, selling what work he could. On 31 January 1900 he married Olga Margaret Herrich (b.1875), one of his students. They settled in Te Kopuru and Albert took employment as a storekeeper. Over the next six years four children were born. In 1902 Aldis came down with typhoid fever. His deteriorating health and increasing financial difficulties resulted in a move to Australia to join his brother William in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales.
The family arrived in Katoomba in early 1907 and Aldis immediately began placing advertisements for art and music classes in the local newspaper. They remained in Katoomba for the next thirteen years, during which time three more children were born. As well as teaching, Aldis responded to the growing tourist market by specializing in Blue Mountains landscapes. His work, both water colour and oil, encompassed the wide vistas of the Jamison and Grose Valleys, along with more intimate studies of waterfalls and bush tracks. Olga took on the role of business manager, doing the rounds of the hotels and guesthouses seeking permission to display his paintings for guests to enjoy and purchase.
As a member of the Royal Art Society of NSW, he also exhibited at their annual exhibitions in Sydney. His Blue Mountains paintings have been dispersed widely, both throughout Australia and overseas, and his work appears regularly in art auction catalogues. Nevertheless, a few have remained in the local area and some in the possession of descendants.
During his time in Katoomba, Aldis also became increasingly interested in painting Australian native flora and his skills as a botanical artist gained wider recognition. He received a commission to paint a variety of botanical subjects for Sydney Teachers’ College and these (seventy-five items) are now held as part of the University of Sydney’s Art Collection. One of his botanical paintings, Cootamundra wattle, is held in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of NSW.
Music had always been important to Aldis. Besides teaching both the piano and violin, he conducted the Katoomba Orchestra for a number of years and, during World War I, performed at many fundraising concerts. His children were taught to play several instruments and for a time formed a family orchestra, while his eldest daughter Gwyn went on to study at the NSW Conservatorium and made a career as a professional musician.
By 1921 most of his children had finished school and were seeking work opportunities not available in Katoomba. Aldis’s health was also fragile and showing signs of further deterioration and the decision was made to move to the seaside suburb of Manly. Though his health did not improve, he continued to work, exploring and painting the flora and coastal landscapes of his new environment. At Christmas, after a day sketching on the rocks near Fairy Bower, Aldis collapsed and was taken to the Manly Cottage Hospital. He never recovered and died on 26 December 1921.
In May 1994 descendants planted a cherry tree in his memory in the grounds of the Blue Mountains Historical Society’s property at Wentworth Falls.
Writers:
Low, John
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 January 1865
- Summary
- Albert Edward Aldis, an English artist who emigrated to New Zealand in 1886. He lived and painted in both New Zealand and Australia, spending the last decade of his life in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. He died in Manly, Sydney, in 1921.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Dec-21
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-34.0675469 Longitude137.5894365 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Moonta, SA, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born on 8 May 1869 in the copper-mining town of Moonta, South Australia. He began his working life in the mines (as Oswald Pryor was to do later), then served before the mast before becoming a printer and learning all aspects of newspaper work (Moore, ii, 122). By 1891 he was a proficient (self-taught) black-and-white artist contributing to the Bulletin e.g. 'Woman’s Suffrage!’/ 'No.1: “Are you going to vote for Mr. Blank today, Miss Butterfly?”/ No.2 “Indeed, I am not: he is not my ideal of a member of parliament. I went to hear him speak the other night, and do you know, he’s quite bald”’ 1891. In 1898 [1897 acc. Australian Dictionary of Biography ( ADB )] he succeeded J.H. Chinner as chief cartoonist on the Adelaide comic paper Quiz . He also worked on the Adelaide Sporting Life and had cartoons accepted by the Sydney Bulletin before moving to Melbourne in 1902. In 1903 he submitted a cartoon on the Victorian rail strike to Tocsin , a radical Labor newspaper loaded with debts and libels, edited by Frank Anstey who also edited/ owned Labor Call and many other papers (see ADB vol.7). Marquet worked for Tocsin until September 1903, when he was fired. His farewell cartoon was: “The Tocsin” artist was here fired out into the night for sketching Mrs Fatman from the semi-nude! frontispiece 10 September 1903 (ill. Senyard?): a Tocsin photogravure is in Mitchell Library [ML].
From 1904 to 1906 Marquet reverted to running a printing workshop; there is some speculation that he was responsible for the Melbourne printing union’s 1904 Xmas card which shows a comical printing works and printer, possibly a self portrait (Lilley collection, ML drawer 19). He contributed cartoons to Table Talk (1903-4) and Melbourne Punch , signing some 'CM’ or 'QUET’ (later signatures were 'Claude’ and 'C.A.M.’). From about 1910 to 1920 he contributed to Tocsin 's successor Labor Call (1910-11, 1915-16, 1918, 1920 ill. Senyard), apparently as an occasional contributor. He was invited to Sydney to be staff cartoonist on the Australian Worker in 1906 and drew for it from 25 October 1906 until his death (lots of slides 1913-1919 in Sydney University Slide Library), e.g. King Coal 1909 (original Dixson Galleries). A portrait of Mawson in ice with penguins in his head, dated 12 March 1914, labelled 'X-ray Portraits – No.18’ was evidently done for the Worker too.
Marquet was a major contributor to Norman Lilley’s short-lived, sixpenny Lilley’s Magazine (1911) – 'the literary lamp-post of “The Worker”’, the Sydney Sportsman called it – as well as to Lilley’s earlier penny paper, Vumps (January 1908), which Ryan says (148) was the first Australian comic-paper for boys. It lasted one issue (ML). { ADB says it was a failed comic paper experiment by the Worker. } He drew covers for both papers as well as many of the cartoons inside (originals in drawer 19, ML). His comic strip Borrowed Plumes on the back page of Vumps about two 'Domain-dossers’, Marmyduke Miffles and Snoofter McSnickle, reminiscent of the English tramps Weary Willy and Tired Tim, was set during the much publicised visit of the American Fleet to Sydney (ill. Ryan). It led to a similar strip by D.H. Souter about two Domain tramps on the cover of the Sunday Sun 's children’s supplement of 20 November 1921 – Australia’s first comic supplement – but its references to alcohol and crime so offended 'Sunbeams’ editor Ethel Turner that she threatened to resign unless it was withdrawn. Five weeks after the supplement began, the strip was replaced by Us Fellas , later Ginger Meggs , drawn by J.C. Bancks . Turner wrote in her diaries that she did not like the ’12 pictures appearing on our front page, despite the fact that they were drawn by one of our cleverest and most successful draughtsmen’: see Philippa Poole (ed.), The Diaries of Ethel Turner , Sydney, Lansdowne Press, 1978 paperback edn 1998, pp.332. However, Lindsay Foyle , who is writing a book on Meggs, says the whole story is untrue.
Marquet also drew for another Worker publication, Our Annual . By 1919 he was doing up to four detailed cartoons a week for the Worker and many of his powerful anti-conscription and anti-war cartoons appeared there: The Greater Patriot of 1916 depicts a woman mourning at the grave of the Gallipoli dead beside a fat capitalist carrying 'Interest on War Loans’ in a bag (ill. King, 104). Similar anti-war imagery can be seen in Patriotism should begin at home , an allegorical Australia sitting at Captain Cook’s landing place (National Library of Australia has neg.); The “Case” for Labor 1916, and I’ll Have You of 1917 where Billy Hughes appears as a rabid Kitchener parody (ill. King, 106). Lots of Marquet’s Worker cartoons attacked Hughes, e.g. The Expulsion / 'Hughes: “This is an outrage! I created it, and I claim the right to destroy it!”’-'it’ being Australian Democracy, a female on a plinth, being attacked by Hughes with a 'Conscription’ bomb but being foiled by Labor’s 'No Conscription’ boot (from the anti-conscription leaflet, Hughes’ Expulsion , ML, ill. Harris, 236). A leaflet shows Hughes in a CSR sugar-bag (Harris, 292, presumably ML), and others include: EVERYBODY’S DOING IT / 'Registrar: “What can I do for you, my little man?”/ Hughes: “These darn profiteers! They’re exploiting me. I haven’t the heart to shoot 'em; but I’ll settle 'em! I’LL COPYRIGHT MY FEATURES!” (NLA neg. prob. from the Worker ); caricature of Hughes captioned 'In these topsy-turvy times, with the right publicity agent, even the character of the late Daniel Quilp might have been saved’.
Other anti-conscription cartoons include a Worker one signed 'Claude Marquet, 12 Fletcher Street Bondi N.S.W.’ (Harris, 241). “NO for ME, Daddy!” drawn for the Bulletin in 1915 (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 126) gives the city address, 'St Andrews Place, Sydney’. His most famous, The Blood Vote , was said to have played a significant part in defeating conscription at the ballot box. Published by the Worker as a broadsheet on 12 October 1916 (reputedly as a million leaflets: see ADB) , it carried an anti-conscription verse signed by William Robert Winspear (1859-1944), coalminer, socialist and journalist – see ADB vol.12, article by Verity Burgmann, which states that the poem was actually by E.J. Dempsey, a leader writer on the pro-conscription Evening News who had asked Winspear to sign it. {ML’s annotated copy denies this.} Marquet illustrates the poem with a woman deciding whether she will 'condemn a man to death’ or vote 'no’ (Sydney: The Worker Print, n.d. [1916]), ML A3095 (ill. Harris, 239).
Like many of the Left, Marquet continued his opposition to the war even after the conscription vote was lost. Josef Lebovic 1997, list 62A, cat.42, had The Spoils are Heavy , a framed 1919 pen and ink original, 37.3 × 30.8 cm, for sale at $890, captioned 'Australian Wage-Earner: '“They may say I’m ungrateful, but, somehow, I can’t get enthusiastic over this 'victory’ celebration”.’ (Was it another Worker cartoon?) He worked on People (Sydney) in 1918 when it was owned by the Socialist Labor Party of Australia (Gibbney). Marquet was at the height of his career when he was drowned on 17 April 1920 returning home to Kurnell from Botany in a sailing boat. Harris (264) states:
“Claude Marquet, the famous labor cartoonist, who died tragically in a boating accident [in 1920], tried to picture the problem faced by the Labor Party in the 1917-22 period, when attempts were made to link the Party with the worst developments of the postwar, post-Revolution era.”
The Worker issued an anthology of his cartoons as a tribute, Cartoons by Claude Marquet: A commemorative volume with appreciations by leading representatives of literature and politics (Sydney: The Worker, 1920). According to Lindesay in ADB , there are 75 original Worker cartoons by Marquet in ML.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 8 May 1869
- Summary
- Significant early 20th century Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney political cartoonist
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Apr-20
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Melbourne but lived, worked, taught art and died in St Ives, England. An undated oil on panel view of St Ives was offered at auction by Deutscher-Menzies on 24 November 1999 (lot 113). Grier revisited Melbourne in 1892 and held an exhibition of his work at the Atheneum Club, which was highly praised by Table Talk (1 April 1892: cited Ingram).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1864
- Summary
- Painter, was born in Melbourne but lived, worked, taught art and died in St Ives, England.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1920
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in South Australia. He studied in Adelaide and Sydney and was living in Kalgoorlie (Western Australia) sometime between 1894 and 1900. Exhibited in South Australia in 1898. Spent some time in Europe between 1900 and 1902 selecting works to be exhibited in the Australian Federal International Exhibition, Melbourne (November 1902-January 1903). In New Zealand from about September 1905 to 1907, where he exhibited in 1905 and 1907. Painted scenic views of NZ and the Murray River area, also of WA including the goldfields. Member of Royal Society of British Artists, exhibiting with it in 1909 and 1910. Extensive traveller. Died in Honolulu sometime before 1920.
Bonyhady calls him a minor Melbourne artist who painted landscapes with Aborigines and dead trees.
Exhibited [Royal] Artists Society of NSW, 1894.
'Mr E.W. Christmas, who showed at the Sydney Art Society’s exhibition some three years ago, is a regular contributor to the annual shows in Adelaide, and is represented in the collection of the National Art Gallery at Brisbane, will exhibit some of his newest works at the Equitable Building to-day. Mr Christmas has secured for his purpose a noble chamber on the ground floor, so that his pictures, which chiefly illustrate New Zealand scenery and [—-?] beauty of the Murray, are placed at an advantage. Mr Christmas makes his successes in many instances with sunset effects, which he interprets skilfully with an eye to the picturesque. Amongst the two score works now exhibited visitors will especially admire 'In the Prime of Summer Time’ (no.20), showing a glassy pool on the Flinders Ranges, with much carefully executed detail in waving grasses in the foreground, and a remarkably clever effect by which the glowing sunset dyes the distant purple hills with orange fruits that suggest the lingering warmth of the departing day. 'At Eventide’ (no.22) ... 'One of the Glories of Fjordland, New Zealand’ (no.21) ... 'Porter’s Pass’ (no.27). Altogether this exhibition … which remains open to-morrow and Friday, will well repay inspection” ( Sydney Morning Herald 3 November 1897, p.1).
His paintings on show Town Hall, Hobart (see Mercury , 9 February 1898, p.2, for long description).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- Ernest William Christmas, painter, was born in South Australia. An extensive traveller, he spent time in New Zealand, Europe and Hawaii. Christmas mainly painted landscapes featuring Aborigines and dead trees.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1920
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude40 Longitude-100 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- USA
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, was born in the USA. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy and in Paris with Jean Paul Laurens. In about 1886 he was invited to Sydney to work (briefly) on the Picturesque Atlas . Back in America by 1887, he made a name as a painter of landscapes, portraits and genre scenes. The Grafton Gallery 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’ 1898 included W.T. Smedley (no address), cat.227, Spring Street, Melbourne , cat.256, Old Sydney Markets ; original drawings for 'The Picturesque Atlas [of Australasia]’, lent by the Trustees of Sydney Gallery.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1858
- Summary
- American born painter and illustrator, trained in the Pennsylvania Academy and in Paris under Jean Paul Laurens. Worked briefly on the Picturesque Atlas and in 1898, he was included in the Exhibition of Australian Art at Grafton Gallery in London.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1920
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-35.2576239 Longitude138.8956803 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Strathalbyn, SA, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 25 August 1854
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Apr-20
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter, came to Victoria as a baby in 1851 and returned to England in 1873, aged twenty-three. For twenty years from 1877 he exhibited genre and historical paintings in London, including three at the Royal Academy, eleven at Suffolk Street and ninety-four with the Old Watercolour Society. When Gregory showed an oil painting, Thorns , at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London the catalogue gave his address as Parliament House, Melbourne, but this was subsequently corrected to 'late of Melbourne, now Bridgefoot House, Ripley, Surrey’. Gregory’s youthful Australian years were also artistically productive. He painted numerous watercolours of ships, including Sailing Ship Preussen , S.S. Katoomba , City of Hobart , Sophia Jan e and Wreck of the Admella among a large collection in the La Trobe Library. According to McCulloch, he also drew native birds.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1850
- Summary
- Gregory spent most of his adult life in England, exhibiting genre and historical paintings at the Royal Academy but his youthful Australian years were also artistically productive. He painted numerous watercolours of ships and also drew native birds.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1920
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- civil servant and amateur painter, was born in Hobart on 28 January 1846. He died at Armadale (Victoria) on 10 December 1920. Victorian Customs Officer c.1864-94; Vic. Deputy Commissioner of Taxation c.1895-1911. Member Victorian Academy of Arts c.1873-87. President Victorian Artists’ Society, 1910-11. Represented in Warrnambool AG. See VAS Journal , vol.2, no.2, 1911. (McCulloch, 2nd edn).
Victorian Academy of Arts third annual exhibition: Oils 'Cape Wollamoi’ is by Fred H. Bruford, and is painted in a bold free style that does the artist credit. A more judicious use of the blue tints would have improved the picture. ' Pyramid Rock, Phillip Island’ , is by the same artist. This is a pleasing picture; the touches are bold, the perspective is good, and the coloring is effective. The rollers breaking on the beach are however painted with too great a mathematical precision to be natural’ ( Age 24 March 1873: info. W. Chapman).
Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London 1886: Victorian Court – Oil Paintings – Bruford, Frederick Horatio, Merton-street, Albert Park – Three Landscapes – no.1 'The River Hopkins near Framlingham’ ; no.2 'The Upper Yarra’; no.3 'The Yarra near Warburton’ .
Exhibited Australian Artists Association (Vic.) in 1887 winter exhibition: no.4 'The Forest Primeval’ .
Exhibited Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition 1888-9, Ladies’ Court no. 183 View near Moe and On the Thompson River, Gippsland , and in the Victorian Artists’ Gallery no.102 On the Road to Walhalla and At Sandridge .
Listed in Sands (Melbourne) in 1891.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 28 January 1846
- Summary
- Victorian civil servant and amateur landscape painter. He exhibited at a number of significant venues but was once criticised for painting with "too great a mathematical precision to be natural".
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Dec-20
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.0874669 Longitude-4.0522623 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Raleigh, Barnstaple, England
- Biography
- Technically accomplished amateur furniture maker, woodcarver and embroiderer. He exhibited at international exhibitions such as the Indian and Colonial Exhibition of 1886 in London where he exhibited three carved photograph stands. He received a medal for woodcarving – possibly for the work in this exhibition. Passmore was born at Raleigh, Barnstaple, England on the 22 February 1840 and died 6 March,1920 in North Fremantle, Western Australia. He married Mary Sarah Ellis (1838-1877) about 1860. He was Anglican, the literate son of a lacemaker, himself the son of woolmaker. Passmore however became a midshipman in the Royal Navy serving on HMS Ceasor in the Baltic and Crimea from 1854-1862. He then saw Imperial Service at Dartmoor Prison arriving in Western Australia aboard the Racehorse on August 15 1865 as warder in charge of convicts. Passmore joined the Public Works Department in Western Australia when there were only five officers and was in charge of convict public works, roads, bridges, river dredging among other duties. He also took up land on the Upper Swan, working it between 1866-8 while supervising the building of roads and other infrastructure in the area. In the 1870s he lived in Perth where the Supreme Court Gardens are now. In 1872 he was in charge of the dredging of the Swan River. One of his embroideries shows the dredge Black Swan working opposite where he later had his house in North Fremantle. Embroidery, like painting, was one of the pastimes that naval officers used to fill relaxation time on their long voyages and it is probable that he took it up when at sea. In 1881 Passmore was an exhibitor in the Perth International Exhibition staged by Joubert and Twopenny on the Esplanade. The critics considered that some of the woolwork exhibited was an example of misapplied industry. This was the work of Henry Passmore. He used stitchery in wool to realise the panorama viewed from where he would later build his John Street, North Fremantle home across the river to the Fremantle township and Arthur’s Head. There is a certain naivet_ in the use of the high perspective. He also embroidered the representation of a cricket match on the Perth Foreshore. This he reputedly embroidered whilst working on the Black Swan dredging Perth Water. As this took place in the 1870s it is probable that both pictures were exhibited in the 1881 exhibition. When his wife died in 1877 leaving him with seven young children, Passmore 'married’ his housekeeper. It is probable that it was about this time he commenced his furniture making and woodcarving. He exhibited his intricately carved objects in the 1886 exhibition in London. Later the furniture Passmore made was on show in Sandovers shop window in Perth once a year with the sign “Henry Passmore’s Suite”. He also exhibited in an exhibition held in the Congregational Hall in 1903 or 1908. At some stage he married a much younger Marion Dibb. This was possibly about 1891 when he bought lots 47,48, 36 and in 1895 lot 35 of Fremantle Suburban lot 25, North Fremantle. This area was between Harvest Road and John Street and he developed a small village there. He built a home for each of his children, although not all took up residence. There were six wooden cottages and a random rubble limestone cottage all built between 1892 and 1910. Gardens fronted John Street. Raleigh Avenue had arches across it. The seven houses fronted this narrow street and on the rear of the blocks were stables, orchards, windmill, vines, and a fowl yard. Passmore retired in 1899 to be followed by C. Y. O’Connor. He was a member of the North Fremantle Council and a Justice of the Peace. A newspaper tribute to him, written in 1900 following his retirement, stated the following: “In his comfortable residence at Raleigh Avenue is to be found a perfect museum of highly artistic carvings and other articles for beautifying the home all showing wonderful skill and possession of extraordinary patience. Bookcases, sideboards, chairs and occasional tables have all been made during spare hours and then decorated with carvings executed in a style worthy of any art school. Mr Passmore is entirely self taught, but some of his carvings in high relief, as well as others on the flat, are really works of art and clearly show that if he had devoted the whole of his time to this particular branch of industry he would have had a distinguished career” (The Umpire) He died at eighty years of age in 1920 at his residence in Raleigh Avenue (now Passmore Avenue), North Fremantle and was buried with full military honours. When the second Mrs Passmore died his son Harry collected the furniture and parcelled it out among the family. Each of his children received a piece of intricately carved furniture. I am indebted to descendent Kate McGurk for much of the information on Passmore.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 February 1840
- Summary
- Amateur furniture maker, woodcarver and embroiderer who exhibited internationally.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Mar-20
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in New South Wales, a daughter of Henry Curzon Allport . Surviving works include two ink sketches both titled A King’s School Boy (1859 and 1862, ALMFA), a simple cartoon (ALMFA) and some watercolours dating from about 1850 (ML). She died at Sherbrooke, Rosehill Street, Parramatta.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Fahy, Kevin
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1840
- Summary
- Sketcher, one of a number of children of artist Henry Curzon Allport. Examples of Alice's work can be found in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts in Hobart, Tas.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1920
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1839-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland
- Biography
- architect and botanist, was born Edinburgh 14 May 1839. Died Melbourne 14 May [sic] 1920. Arrived in Tasmania in 1884 as a architectural draughtsman. Botany was his hobby … herbarium and papers lent to the National Herbarium in Victoria.
Bastow advertised thus: 'Reporter on Design at the Vienna Exhibition. Author of “Practical Cabinet Maker”. Fourteen years as Sanitary Surveyor Manchester Corporation. Having had a thorough practical as well as professional training, is prepared to Design, Plan, and carry out Building or Furnishing in all its branches in Good Taste, Substantial, Workmanlike. Special attention to Sanitary matters. Unexceptionable [sic] References. Moderate charges. Office: Collins-street, Hobart’ ( Mercury , 6 February 1885).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 May 1839
- Summary
- Arriving in Tasmania in 1884, Richard Austin Bastow advertised his services as an architect and designer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-May-20
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter and professional photographer, was born in England on 15 April 1835, second daughter of Amelia and Maurice Felton . She arrived at Sydney on 27 September 1839 on board the Royal Admiral with her parents, her unmarried aunt Myra Felton, her brother Maurice and two sisters. Too young to have learned more than an enthusiasm for art from her father before his death in 1842, Myra Felton is said to have taken lessons from Marshall Claxton when he was in Sydney between 1850 and 1854. She may also have learnt oil painting from James Armstrong Wilson . Maurice Felton’s death had left his widow and large family impoverished. As soon as she was able Myra worked to help support them 'in the galleries of some of our most popular photographists as a finisher in colours’. Then, in January 1859, she opened her own studio – 'Miss M. Felton’s Photographic Gallery’ – in the family home on the south side of Hunter Street, Sydney, two doors below Phillip Street. She rapidly set herself up in a separate studio, being recorded as working from 421 George Street that same year. With no male figure behind the enterprise Felton seems to have been one of the first independent, professional women photographers in the colony. The Sydney Morning Herald of 26 February 1859 reported that her coloured photographic portraits were 'highly satisfactory and beautifully artistic’, but no surviving examples are known from this time.
Although advertising solely as a 'photographic artist’ Felton always seems to have worked as a portrait painter too. The Herald of 25 February 1859 commended her studio on the grounds that the photographic process 'has induced many portrait painters to give it their serious and practical attention. The result has been that the skill of the artist has given power and beauty to photography’, implying that she considered herself primarily a portrait painter even then. In 1867 Felton was listed in Sands Sydney Directory as 'artist and teacher of drawing’ at 69 Wynyard Square West and was advertising exclusively as an 'artist’ (painter), though this did not necessarily exclude photography as a secondary activity. Some of her paintings certainly continued to be developed from photographs, such as a small painting of five Scotch terriers exhibited in the Sydney Horticultural Society’s exhibition in November 1866 by Mr J.J. Calvert. Nevertheless, whether aided by photography or not, painting was now Myra Felton’s life’s work. She appears to have been one of the first colonial photographers to have made this (reverse) change. Newspaper reviewers continued to write glowingly of her pictures, always as if they were original paintings, but like other painter-photographers – Thomas Price and Victor Prout , for instance – many of her portraits were based on photographs while some seem to have been painted over an enlarged photographic base. Felton’s oval pastel on paper on canvas portrait of a young girl with scotch terrier (555 × 46 cm) was probably of Lucy Fitzgerald (1850-1939), daughter of Elizabeth Henrietta Rouse and Robert Fitzgerald, since it was discovered at 'Dabec’, the Rouse family’s rural property at Rylstone, along with a pastel of her mother (now Historic Houses Trust NSW). It also looks as if it has a photographic base (ill. Sotheby’s “Australia 2000” sale, Sydney, 16 August 2000, lot 328).
In June 1866, when Felton’s oval 'crayon’ (pastel) portrait of the late Dr Woolley in his Sydney University chancellor’s robes was praised, she was described as 'a lady artist whose talents have been unreservedly recognised by all who have had an opportunity of seeing the noble results of her labours at the easel’. The critic recommended that the Sydney Mechanics Institute purchase the portrait (now at the University of Sydney). Later that year, her 'Coloured Drawing of the late G.V. Brooke’ in the role of Virginius, said to be a 'spirited specimen of the skill of a New South Wales artist’, was forwarded to the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. Her pastel, Mother and Child was shown at Sydney’s Intercolonial Exhibition in 1870 and was thought deserving of 'special mention’ by both the Herald and the Sydney Mail . Two untitled portraits (one oil and one pastel) were shown with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872, while works by her pupils were shown at a conversazione held by the academy in October 1874 and at subsequent exhibitions.
Large pastel portraits by 'Myra Felton after Bolton [possibly a misprint for the photographer E. Dalton ]’ of the Rev. and Mrs John West, editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and his wife, were donated to the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, by the Wests’ son-in-law. Her pastel portrait of William Pitt Faithfull (1867), which also appears to have a photographic base, is in the National Library of Australia. Her oil portrait of Samuel Wensley Blackall, Governor of Queensland, was painted on commission for the Legislative Assembly Chambers of Queensland Parliament House in 1868.
In about 1869 Felton opened an 'Art Academy’ in Brougham Street, off William Street, where she taught painting for many years. She also taught art to girls, advertising in 1870 that she attended 'families and schools and takes pupils at her residence 121 Castlereagh Street’. Her Art Academy was still in existence in 1888 when the Aldine Centenary History of New South Wales commended 'the number of her pupils who have taken prizes in public competitions’.
Felton wrote a novel, Eena Romney; or, Word-Pictures of Home-Life in New South Wales , published at Sydney in 1887 in aid of the Queen’s Fund for Distressed Women. A pious melodrama of the 'upright city gentleman confronts and reforms evil bushman’ genre, it has a poor heroine from Sydney who is fond of sketching and may contain some romanticised autobiography.
For many years before her death, on or about 13 July 1920, aged 85, Felton lived at Goodhope Street, Paddington, NSW. She befriended her brother Maurice’s daughter Amelia, whom she instructed in painting and to whom she bequeathed most of her paintings. Unfortunately, almost all were destroyed after Amelia’s death in 1955, aged 91. She and Amelia were interred in the same plot at Waverley Cemetery in Sydney, NSW.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 April 1835
- Summary
- A professional photographer, portrait painter and published author, Felton began her career working as a colour finisher in various Sydney photographic galleries. Thereafter, between photography and portrait painting, (sometimes combining both), she successfully established her own art academy and nurtured many prize-winning students. A regular exhibitor herself, Felton's work regularly attracted the considered praise of the newspaper critics.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.13 July 1920
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- Sketcher, was a son of Frederick Garling . He and his younger brother William (and possibly their older brother Frederick ) took art lessons from S.T. Gill . Surviving works by Clarence appear to have been executed from the 1870s onwards. There was some speculation that two watercolour views of the interiors of Henrietta and Richmond Villas were by Clarence, but they are now considered far more likely to have been by his father.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1835
- Summary
- Sketcher, little known about his works. Took lessons from S.T. Gill.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1920
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- painter, professional photographer, engraver and craftsman, was born in Hobart Town on 19 April 1835 (although the register of Holy Trinity Church, where he was baptised, gives his birth date as 9 April), younger son of Alexander Cameron, a seaman, and Mary Anne, née Spencer. Within a few years his mother formed an association with and eventually married Thomas Bock whom Alfred seems to have regarded as his natural father and who taught him drawing, painting and photography. Alfred, however, lacked his stepfather’s drawing ability; his portraiture in particular lacks intrinsic merit. Other interests included music and small boats – as a young man in Hobart he took part in the regattas of the 1850s and 1860s – and he seems to have had more than a casual interest in botany. Later at Sale, Victoria, he prepared, in conjunction with the Victorian government botanist Ferdinand von Mueller , some photographs of herbarium specimens and a series of hand-coloured cartes-de-visite of the wildflowers of Gippsland.
Alfred Bock married twice. On 24 July 1858, he married Mary Anne Parkinson, the second daughter of Robert Parkinson of Hobart Town. They had six children, of whom the first five were born in Hobart. Their second child, Amy Maud Bock (1859-1943), became, according to the New Zealand Dictionary of Biography , 'New Zealand’s most celebrated and energetic confidence trickster’. Mary Anne died in a Melbourne lunatic asylum on 14 January 1875 and on 25 March 1882 Alfred married Eleanor Rachel Blackburn, granddaughter of the architect James Blackburn. Eleanor and Alfred had seven children, the three eldest sons being born in New Zealand.
Alfred Bock’s major interest increasingly became photography. He inherited Thomas Bock’s daguerreotype establishment at the family home, 22 Campbell Street, and in April 1855 announced his own photographic business. At the end of July he moved into W.G. Elliston’s premises at 78 Liverpool Street, Hobart Town, formerly occupied by the photographers Duryea & McDonald , where he built a 'Crystal Palace’ studio and purchased photographic apparatus from Andrew Ross of London. Apparently because of continuing financial difficulties, Elliston’s rooms were again available for rent in October 1855. Bock’s photographic establishment moved several times. By 1857 he was at 18 Macquarie Street; on 6 February 1858, the Launceston Examiner announced he was insolvent. Later that year Bock re-established himself at 140 Elizabeth Street, where he remained until June 1865 when he was again declared insolvent. On 2 August the 'Stock-in-Trade of a Photographer, comprising – Instruments, Chemicals, Background, accessories, chairs, tables, pedestals, vases, and many other necessary articles for taking photographic portraits, &c.’ was auctioned from his premises on behalf of John Milward, the assignee of his estate, along with 'A large and exceedingly well furnished glass house, 22 feet by 8 feet [6.7 × 2.4 m], with dark room attached’ and 'A few choice oil paintings in gilt frames, show cases, and photographs and a small collection of books’.
With Thomas, Alfred had practiced photography commercially from its beginning in the daguerreotype form and he was concerned in every stage of development of the technique in Australia, undertaking innovative work in connection with the wet-plate process. Davies states that Bock introduced the carte-de-visite to Hobart Town in 1861, its first appearance anywhere in Tasmania. In 1864 he himself claimed to be the only person in the colony using the genuine sennotype process, a technique that gave a rich three-dimensional effect to portraits by overlaying a waxed albumen print on a normal photograph. The claim led to a lengthy controversy with Henry Frith , aired in the press from April to July. In the Mercury of 3 September 1864 Bock advertised that he had 'succeeded, after a great number of experiments, in producing ALBUM PORTRAITS, by a modification of the SENNOTYPE PROCESS, retaining all the relief, delicacy, and lifelike beauty of the larger pictures’. He became most expert at the process and introduced a variation for cartes-de-visite in 1864. He continued to advertise sennotypes and 'every description of Photograph from Locket to Life-size, executed in the most perfect manner’ until he left Hobart Town. His repertoire also included oil portraits painted over solar-enlarged photographs. His painted photographs of J. Boyd , civil commandant at Port Arthur, and 'the late Captain Spring’ were commended in the Mercury of 14 July 1866.
Bock’s income from photography was supplemented by a variety of pursuits. An address presented to Rev. W.J. Dunne was illuminated and engrossed by him in 1866. He engraved the silver cups presented to John Ritchie (1855) and T.C. Brownell (1858), a medal designed and made by Charles Gaylor (1862), a salver presented to Dr E.S.P. Bedford (1863) and a silver spade used to turn the first sod on the Launceston and Western Railway (1868). He produced engravings on paper of portraits and buildings and did the St George and Dragon series of Tasmanian revenue stamps in 1863-64. Clifford Craig describes him as 'an accomplished and versatile engraver’ and lists a number of extant works in his volumes on Tasmanian prints, including a portrait of the murderer William Griffin ; interior and exterior views of St John the Baptist’s Church, Goulburn Street, West Hobart; St Michael’s Church, Campbell Town; the Town Hall, Hobart Town; and the Johnson home, 'scene of the Glenorchy murders’. Nevertheless, despite all such efforts, the business was not a commercial success.
In 1867 Bock moved to Victoria and settled at Sale where he again conducted a photography business, producing not only the popular cartes-de-visite from his studio in Foster Street but also enlarging hand-coloured photographic portraits of Gippsland notables. At the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition, Sale Borough Council was exhibiting two Alfred Bock watercolours, Redbank, River Avon, North Gippsland and On the Albert River, South Gippsland , possibly painted earlier. Bock himself showed his work at various exhibitions – the London International Exhibition (1873), the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition (1876), the Sandhurst (Bendigo) Industrial Exhibition (1879), the Adelaide International Exhibition (1887) and the Paris International Exhibition (1889) – and gained several awards.
In 1882 Bock advertised the sale 'of the whole of his portrait and landscape negatives as well as those by the late Mr Jones and others, to Mr F. Cornell of Foster Street, Sale’ and went to Auckland, New Zealand. The family was back in Melbourne by 1887 where they remained until about 1906. Then Alfred retired from business and settled near Wynyard, Tasmania. He died there on 19 February 1920, survived by his second wife and a number of his children.
Writers:
Plomley, N. J. B.Kerr, Joan
fulleg
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. c.19 April 1835
- Summary
- One of the pioneers of early photography in the 19th century along with his stepfather Thomas Bock, Alfred Bock also pursued a number of other interests including botany, painting and engraving. Mostly a resident of Tasmania, Bock also spent time in Victoria and New Zealand.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Feb-20
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Born in England in July 1834, Joshua Finch arrived in South Australia on the John Henderson in 1849. Although a carpenter by trade, and only listed as such in the directories, he also figured prominently as a Gawler photographer in the 1860s.
In 1861 the congregation of St George’s Anglican Church decided to have a photograph of their new church ‘sent home’ to the London International Exhibition, which was to be held in 1862. Coombe’s History of Gawler, says: ‘a discussion took place as to whether or not it was necessary to “point” the church before it was photographed for the great exhibition, and it was at last decided that the south side of the church should be done, since that was all that would appear in the photograph’. In December 1861 the Register reported that Joshua Finch’s photographs of the south side of the church had been ‘handsomely framed’ and were ready to be sent to London.
An advertisement in the Bunyip, 11 February 1865, said:
Joshua Finch, photographer, Jacob Street, Gawler, in returning thanks to the public for their patronage, hopes to continue to receive a share of the same, by turning out a good article at a moderate price. Photographs taken on glass or paper. Works of art copied. Portraits taken for lockets, brooches, &c. Carte de visite and vignette portraits 10s per half-dozen.
In June that year he copied an engraving of the late General Wiseman that had appeared in the Illustrated Times, reducing it to carte de visite size for inclusion in family albums. The Advertiser was quite impressed, saying, it ‘reflects great credit on his knowledge of the art’.
The Gawler Institute held a grand ‘fancy fair, on the parklands in November 1865, and to commemorate the event produced a pamphlet which included photographs taken by Joshua Finch. Loyau’s Gawler Handbook describes one photograph, which was of ‘a noble arch of large dimensions’, on which was displayed ‘on a colossal scale, the music or notes of “The Song of Australia”, supported by the mottoes “Willkommen in Gawler”, and “Te Revidere Spero”’.
Joshua Finch died at Gawler on 15 February 1920.1
1Jill Statton (ed.) (1986), Biographical Index of South Australians, 1836–1885, South Australian Genealogy and Heraldry Society, p.499.
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, p.113.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 24 July 1834
- Summary
- Joshua Finch emigrated from England to Australia in 1849 on the 'John Henderson'. Based at Gawler, north of Adelaide, he was a professional photographer listed in the mid 1860s with Davies and Stanbury, as well as a carpenter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Feb-20
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude47.223193 Longitude11.5261028 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1920-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tyrol, Austria
- Biography
- Woodcarver and carpenter who was born in the Austrian Tyrol. He arrived in 1857 on the Dolphin. He married in 1867 and lived in Fremantle until 1879 when his wife died. He moved to Geraldton where he lived with his son Augustine and then moved to son Joseph at York. He is noted for his work in the construction of churches at York, Guildford and Subiaco. This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1828
- Summary
- Noted for his work in the construction of churches at York, Guildford and Subiaco.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1920
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-37.425 Longitude143.891667 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Creswick, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- illustrator and cartoonist, was born at Creswick, Victoria, on 20 March 1885, the seventh child and third daughter of Dr Robert Charles Lindsay and Jane Elizabeth, née Williams. Encouraged by her elder sister Mary, who had her own thwarted ambitions, Ruby left home in the early years of the century, ostensibly to keep house for her eldest brother Percy but in reality to study art at the National Gallery School, Melbourne. Ruby was easily drawn into the milieu of freelance illustration. Her steady (but meagre) source of income for those years was as illustrator for the Hawklet ; Ruby Lindsay was the fourth member of her family to be staff artist for that disreputable police gazette. Because she wished to follow her own path and not ride on the reputation of her brothers, she signed her work 'Ruby Lind’.
In November 1903 her brother Lionel married Jean Dyson, whose three brothers, Ted, Will and Ambrose , managed to flourish in the risky world of freelance writing and illustration and she became close to the family. In 1905 she designed the cover for The Waddy , a publication that ran for only one issue. It also included a full-page drawing by Will Dyson. The next year she illustrated William Moore’s Studio Sketches . From 1906 to 1908 she joined the Dysons in drawing illustrations and cartoons for the Adelaide based magazine, The Gadfly (1906-08), edited by C.J. Dennis and A.E. Martin. Her cover illustration of the 27 March 1907 (2/66) which showed a young woman crossing the street being ogled by a line of men, could have been drawn from her own experience as she was acutely embarrassed at the attention her beauty received. Her illustrations were also published in the Sydney based Bulletin and Lone Hand . She became a regular illustrator for Steele Rudd’s Magazine and with Ruth Simpson and Ashton Murphy, she illustrated Back at Our Selection (1906), providing 11 drawings.
At the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition in Melbourne, Ruby Lind’s Book Lovers’ Library poster was awarded a first prize; she also won a silver medal and a special prize of five guineas for best Design exhibit. She designed the First Class Diploma certificate awarded at the exhibition (a group of allegorical women), Eirene Mort 's design being chosen for the Second Class Diploma. Ruby Lind’s cartoon on the exhibition for the Bulletin was unusual in being sympathetic; it was also the only cartoon on the exhibition identified as being by a woman artist. Her work was beginning to attract critical attention. William Moore noted in the Native Companion (2 December 1907): 'S he has turned out every variety of drawing, from book illustrations to designs for pantomimic costumes. As the designer of the prize diploma and the prize poster exhibited at the Women’s Exhibition, Ruby Lindsay must realise that she has already made a distinct advance .’ Moore later interviewed her for New Idea (6 December 1907, p.848) as a successful woman black and white artist who 'tried every form of black and white, from the poster to the book-plate’.
When Percy Lindsay married in 1906 Ruby could no longer keep up the pretence of being his housekeeper, a fiction that had amused her siblings as she was notoriously uninterested in the domestic arts. She was however determined to make her own path, and maintained an aggressive indifference to the attentions of those men who claimed they wished to further her career. In an undated letter to her brother Norman, written shortly before Percy’s wedding, Will Dyson wrote: ' She’s a silly little bugger in a lot of ways. She thinks she can take care of herself which I suppose she can but I am dam [sic] certain she doesn’t know enough to save herself from the nasty compromise of herself … She has had so many of these young pricks taking on themselves the airs of guardianship that she resents my attempts to direct her faltering footsteps—I who am a truly great man. ' He was perhaps not an impartial observer. On 30 September 1909, Will Dyson and Ruby Lindsay married at Creswick and shortly afterwards left for London, accompanied by Norman. The following year Norman was joined by his new partner, Rose Soady. When the Dysons declined to meet Rose, the relationship with Norman became decidedly strained.
In London Ruby Lind and Will Dyson collaborated on black-and-white illustrations and posters. Will concentrated on the figures while Ruby drew landscape backgrounds. Dyson also developed his career as a political cartoonist and caricaturist. Their daughter, Elizabeth (Betty), was born on 11 September 1911. Ruby continued to paint fans, illustrated children books such as Naughty Sophia (London 1912) and sent back drawings to Lone Hand and the Bulletin . Domesticity appears to have honed her feminist instincts as she began to draw political cartoons for Christabel Pankhurst’s The Suffragette as well as posters supporting socialist causes, a political tendency she shared with her husband. One of her most arresting images was a lithograph poster produced in about 1912 with the slogan: 'Mothers! 'Make the World Fit for Me: Vote Labour’ . The subject is a small naked girl with arms outstretched, presumably based on her daughter Betty.
During World War I she stayed in London with Betty while Will Dyson became Australia’s first official war artist. From family accounts it appears that she deprived herself in order to ensure that Betty’s health did not suffer with wartime rationing. In early 1919 she travelled to Ireland with her younger brother, Daryl, to renew contact with their Irish cousins. It was on this journey she caught a chill which proved to be the Spanish influenza. She died back at London, in Chelsea, on 12 March 1919.
Ruby Lindsay’s art was preserved through the combined efforts of her husband, sister Mary, and her brothers Lionel and Daryl. Dyson privately published Poems in Memory of a Wife and also edited The Drawings of Ruby Lind (1920) published by Cecil Palmer. Her siblings ensured that her original drawings entered public collections, especially that of the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria. Daryl Lindsay, who had turned to art after he became Will Dyson’s batman in France, was especially active in ensuring that this sister was properly regarded in his memoir, The Leafy Tree (Melbourne 1965).
Writers:
Mendelssohn, Joanna
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 20 March 1887
- Summary
- Early 20th century Melbourne and London illustrator and cartoonist. Member of the influential Lindsay and (by marriage) Dyson families. She won several awards in her own right and after her marriage to Will Dyson, collaborated with her husband on black-and-illustrations and posters.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 12-Mar-19
- Age at death
- 32
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist and poster designer, was born in London. He began his career with a house decorating firm, then worked for furniture designer Edmond Foley for several years. Showing an aptitude for poster design he was employed by Messrs Hill, Siffken & Co., the largest poster firm in London; he also did excellent work for Kodak. He came to Australia in 1913 'in the hope of finding life less strenuous than it had been in London’. Before long he was refusing commissions. Although offered a regular job on the Bulletin , he preferred to remain freelance. He fell ill after painting a large frieze for the Anthony Hordern Pavilion at the Royal Easter Show in 1919 and died soon afterwards at Bondi. His obituary in Home called him 'a most likeable man and competent artist whose death at 47 is regretted by all who knew him’.
'Eassie’ cartoons include a frontispiece for Lone Hand February 1915, Goodbye, Baby Bunting, Daddy’s going hunting (soldier, nurse and baby); frontispiece for September 1915, 'The Australian nurse – cheerful and comforting’. For the Bulletin he drew 'The Road to Judgement’ (re the Kaiser) [1915?], 10; 'Excelsior’ (re Labor Movement) 16 October 1919, 13; 'The Alien Shillelagh’ (re the Irish in Australia) 6 November 1919, 10. Cartoons of various types of chair, 'Upholstery versus art’, appeared in Home (June 1920, 27).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1872
- Summary
- Early 20th century Sydney cartoonist and poster designer. He died in 1919 and his obituary in 'Home' called him "a most likeable man and competent artist whose death at 47 is regretted by all who knew him."
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1919
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Member of the Society of Arts & Crafts of NSW.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1871
- Summary
- Member of the Society of Arts & Crafts of NSW.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1919
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Metal worker, exhibited with the Society of Arts & Crafts of NSW in 1909-14.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1869
- Summary
- Metal worker, exhibited with the Society of Arts & Crafts of NSW in 1909-14.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1919
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude-37 Longitude144 Start Date1858-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- Elizabeth Jane Kingsbury was born in Victoria c.1858 the eldest daughter of the six sons and three daughters born to David and Mary Ham of Ballarat and Queenscliffe, Victoria. Like many women of the period it is difficult to establish details of her life except through the agency of her husband, John James Kingsbury, who she married in 1880 and bore two sons and a daughter. The couple arrived in Brisbane in 1881 where John James set up the Queensland Deposit Bank and Building Society Ltd. and other groups and commenced investing in land. Together with Acheson Overend he brought a large tract of land at Norman Park and in conjunction with his father-in-law, David Ham, obtained 150 acres in the hills east of Norman Park which they called Seven Hills.
John Kingsbury was born in Dublin in 1854 and received his Bachelor of Arts Degree from Trinity College in 1878. He came to Melbourne later that year and in 1881 settled in Brisbane. When he visited Dublin six years later a Master of Arts Degree was conferred on him. He was, among other positions, a founder and director of the Queensland Deposit Bank, a director of the Queensland General Insurance Co. and the Queensland Permanent Trustee, Executor and Finance Agency. According to the Historical Society of Queensland Journal, in 1893 he was MLA for North Brisbane and also acted as Crown Prosecutor for the Queensland State Government for 25 years.
The Kingsbury’s were much involved with the Methodist Church, mainly the Albert Street Methodist Church. Elizabeth Kingsbury was a founding member and first president of the Queen Alexander Childrens Home at Coorparoo. An extension wing was added to the building in about 1919 and it was named the Kingsbury Wing to commemorate her support. According to Eris Jolly, shortly after the death of Elizabeth, J.J. Kingsbury sold the Seven Hills Estate to the War Service Homes Commission in 1920 and retired to Melbourne.
Mrs Kingsbury herself appears to have had some art training as she exhibited Roses (cat. 2) and Fruit (cat. 63) in the annual exhibition of the Queensland Art Society in 1892 and paintings of the Victorian coastline the following year (cat. 70 & 77). However, her authorship of a major item of art furniture was unsuspected until a sideboard decorated with pokerwork came onto the market and was matched with a description in reviews in Brisbane’s Evening Observer of the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association Exhibition, Brisbane, in 1906:
“One of the handsomest exhibits in the section allotted to women’s industries is a magnificent sideboard with canopy top and large bevelled mirror. The plinth and frieze are ornamented with a neat conventionalised design in pokerwork, the shading being admirably carried out. The side panels have a lovely design of fruit and flowers and the cellaret doors are similarly decorated. This exhibit was the centre of an admiring crowd all day. The same exhibitor also shows a chair of green wood, the back and seat having panels of lovely pokerwork.”
The decorator of this sideboard, Mrs J.J. Kingsbury, was identified in another earlier article in The Daily Mail . The decoration of her sideboard with its urns and stylised grotesques is similar to the neo-Renaissance ornament that was favoured by Brisbane’s carvers at the same time. It is also amongst the earliest examples of pokerwork produced in Brisbane, the first of which was exhibited at the QNA&IA in August 1900 by a Mrs Bruck (cat. no. 3367)
Most of the pokerwork produced in Australia is small in scale and the ambition of decorating an entire sideboard is quite exceptional. It was entirely within the parameters of the Arts and Crafts Movement (and the idea of women’s work) that large-scale pieces of furniture were made and decorated to provide an individual touch to the home. It would have been a prominent feature in the dining room of the Kingsbury home at 'Carlton’, Wickham Terrace, then a most select address. Apart from being a striking and significant piece in its own right, this sideboard fits completely within the social and cultural milieu of Brisbane at the turn of the twentieth century.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1858
- Summary
- Mrs JJ (Elizabeth) Kingsbury produced a remarkable art item in her poker-worked sideboard (which was identified quite fortutiously). She is representative of the many remarkable works produced by unknown women artists.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1919
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator and sculptor, was born in London but came to New Zealand with his parents at the age of six. He moved to Sydney in 1877 and joined the staff of the printers Gibbs, Shallard & Co. At Victoria in 1878 he covered the Jolimont railway disaster for the Illustrated Australian News as an on-the-spot witness. He contributed illustrations to Sydney’s Town and Country Journal in 1879-80 (or to 1883 acc. DAA note), e.g. a cartoon-like woodcut initialled “S.B.”, Signing Her Agreement (on a domestic servants’ agency) 10 July 1879, 120. A second drawing, The Hiring Room , appears on the same page but is unsigned [both ill. Margot Riley, 'A refuge for the women of colonial Sydney’ (on Hyde Park Barracks), Australian Antique Collector 42nd edn (July-December 1991), 70-71].
William Moore (ii, p.110) reproduces a long quote from Begg about his manner of working at the time:
Whenever we had work to do for the Journal , we would whenever time allowed, make our way to the cliffs above Bondi, taking our boxwood with us. Vignetting for newspaper illustrations was much in vogue at the time, so our boxwood was usually a round of wood. Bondi in those days was exactly as nature had made it. Lying on the cliffs in this open-air studio the drawing would be made. Then it was Appleton’s turn [ L. Appleton , who belonged to a family of wood engravers in London], as, after getting back to Sydney, he would have the job of sitting up all night engraving it. Shipwrecks were favourite subjects for illustration. I had done one of a large sailing-ship and not long after a big steamer was wrecked. Before instructing me to deal with this subject, the art editor took me aside and said solemnly, “Now we know you can draw a sailing-ship, but” (with great caution) “can you draw a steamer?”
Begg designed the face of the medal awarded at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition and the obverse of the Sydney International Exhibition Medal in 1879 (see James W. Sayers file for description and illustration, Sydney Mail 5 April 1879). The Committee on Art for the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition resolved to remunerate those engaged in the drawing of the Design for the Certificate of Merit including: 'to Messrs S. Begg and H. Kent , for conjoint design, bearing the motto Sidere Mens Eadem Mutate , a sum of 20 guineas, and to Miss Kent for recasting design for 15 guineas’ ( Sydney Mail 2 August 1879, 188).
Begg and William Macleod were the only professional cartoonist-illustrators employed on the first issue of the Bulletin , along with the steel engraver Saddler ('Old Sadd’) who resigned after the first issue. (“You deserve that a blackfellow should engrave for you with a waddy” was his parting comment, according to Rolfe, 44.) Then Macleod and Begg’s cartoons (1880-83) were mostly cut by the prolific Sydney firm of wood engravers, Mason Brothers . In the first issue of the Bulletin (31 January 1880) Begg illustrated 'A Heavy Wet’, two columns of heavy satire on a visiting evangelist who practised energetic total immersion (Lawson, 74). As Dart points out, his cartoons clearly related to the popular Aly Sloper series in London’s Judy being drawn by C.H. Rose in 1880. ( Phil May 's early cartoons, along with many others, show the same influence.)
Dart found only three sets of signed cartoons and one architectural drawing by Begg in the Bulletin : (1) 'Warden’ series, e.g. 'A nice way to treat a lady, I must say’, 31 January 1880, 3; (2) 'Free Trade’, a fop stealing cakes from the tray of a baker’s boy, 2 October 1880, 4; (3.) 'Protection required for Native Industry’, a baby Aboriginal boy pulling a face at a dog, 2 October 1880, 4. Lawson (78) thinks Sam Begg was probably the unnamed artist who illustrated Archibald’s lengthy article on the hanging of the Wantabadgery murderers, drawing the scaffold, Scott and Rogan about to be hanged, the sheriff and the executioner from life after McLeod had reputedly panicked at the prospect (Lawson, 78).
After studying at the National Gallery (Victoria) Design School at Melbourne in 1881-82, Begg returned to London in 1883 and joined the Illustrated London News . A sheet of his Sketches in Australia [sic]: Maori civilization was published in the ILN on 2 October 1886 (wood engraving, NLA NK4182/251). He remained with the paper for at least 17 years, described as 'an illustrator of public functions and events’ (Greenwall, p.107). Greenwall (p.19) illustrates his full-page 'The Making of The Illustrated London News: How the Paper is Produced Each Week of 2 September 1911, which shows 12 men in a room mostly drawing or seated at an easel with Begg himself in the left foreground seated at a table apparently elaborating on an image in a sketchbook on his la
From 1896 to 1913 Begg drew illustrations of the Boer War . Most consisted of members of the Royal family visiting troops in hospital or receiving news from the Front. On 19 May 1900, his black and white painting The Queen listening to a despatch from the Front was donated to the National Bazaar for War Funds. When its illustration appeared in the ILN on 17 March 1900, the publication of 1,000 signed photogravures was announced.
Begg also worked for Black and White in 1895-96, and Dart says he contributed to the Pictorial World . He was still in England in 1919, according to Dart – the year given as his death date by the NLA. Houfe thought he represented 'the worst of the late nineteenth-century illustrators’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1854
- Summary
- Late colonial era cartoonist, illustrator and sculptor. London-born Begg arrived in Sydney in 1877 via New Zealand. He and William Macleod were the only professional cartoonist-illustrators employed on the first issue of the Bulletin.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1919
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-33.8652715 Longitude151.2041829 Start Date1849-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kent St. Sydney
- Biography
- John Mitchell Cantle, painter and illustrator, was active in Sydney in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cantle’s essential lifetime work consists of several hundred watercolour and gouache paintings of birds. Made with great attention to detail, including date, place and size, they are scrupulously annotated. Cantle also worked in conjunction with the Australian Museum, Sydney, and some of his works are of museum specimens, including a few non-Australian birds. Most were sketched in the wild in the Sydney area, but also throughout eastern New South Wales while he was working as a railway surveyor.
Cantle is also known for his series of ornithological postcards of Australian birds, which include comic compositions. A watercolour, or possibly gouache, painting of birds bathing is held in a private collection and is presumably an original for one of his postcards. It was exhibited at the RAS in 1883.
Other exhibitions include the Third Annual Exhibition of the Art Society of New South Wales to which Cantle sent five pictures, the colouring of which was described as “very crude” by the Sydney Morning Herald. His work Hard Pressed, however, received a favourable review: “Hard Pressed shows promise for the drawing is correct and distance good, and the story easily intelligible” (Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March 1883, p.11).
A single catalogued collection of 228 Cantle bird paintings is held in a private Melbourne collection. The works date from 1887 to 1918, but the majority were completed between 1887 and 1895. Other paintings belong to his descendants.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
fjcamp
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 24 October 1849
- Summary
- Late colonial era ornithological painter, illustrator, cartoonist and postcard designer. One major catalogued private collection of Cantle's ornithological paintings exists, the works each annotated and dating between 1887 and 1918 with the majority executed between 1887 and 1895.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Jun-19
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Van Diemen's Land (Tas.)
- Biography
- painter, was born in Van Diemen’s Land on 14 August 1844, daughter of Frederick Le Geyt and Mary Ann Piguenit and youngest sister of William Charles Piguenit . Harriet, probably taught by her mother, first exhibited oil paintings of Tasmanian wildflowers as an amateur with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1876. Her painting of a Tasmanian waratah, for sale at 5 guineas, was exhibited with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1877. The following year she showed oil paintings of flowers at Sydney’s Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition, and twelve of her oil 'sketches from nature’ (on cardboard) of the indigenous flowers of Tasmania were exhibited in the Town Clerk’s Office at Launceston. The latter, displayed in a specially made painted sachet, were considered 'so true as to be startlingly realistic’.
Mrs McKenzie had a series of Miss Piguenit’s oil paintings of native flowers in the 1879 Fine Art Exhibition at Launceston, where Harriet herself exhibited a 'Table painted in Oils, Shells and Seaweed’. Mr Fleming lent more of her botanical paintings to the 1881 Hobart Town Hall art exhibition. Mainly oils, her flower paintings shown in the first exhibition of the Art Society of New South Wales held at the Garden Palace in December 1880 were said to display 'vigour of conception and grace of execution’. One was 'a particularly beautiful group of bush climbing plants, whose hues of vermilion, purple and chrome vie with those of the beautiful butterflies they have attracted’; another was 'a table top, on which is painted a wreath of Tasmanian wild flowers’. Her oil paintings in the following year’s exhibition included Tasmanian Robins and Arbutus and Camellias .
At the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition Piguenit’s work was included in both the New South Wales and Tasmanian courts, Harriet having settled in Sydney (at Warren Road, Marrickville) with her family in 1880. On 3 November 1881 she married Gerald H. Halligan. After her marriage she continued to exhibit with the Art Society of New South Wales, sending two flower pieces to its third exhibition in 1883 from her home, Eugowra, at Hunter’s Hill: a cluster of pelargoniums ('tastefully grouped and exquisitely coloured’) and the more ambitious but critically less well-received The Forest Beauties of New South Wales – Waratahs and Clematis ('the background is decidedly flat’). The latter was nevertheless included in the New South Wales court at the 1883 Calcutta International Exhibition. A watercolour, Pelargoniums , and an oil of wild violets were shown at John Sands’s (commercial) art gallery in January 1884.
The roses and pelargoniums Harriet Halligan showed later that year with the Art Society were considered among the best of all the flower paintings in the exhibition, her 'exquisite colouring’ and 'exquisite taste’ being, as usual, commended. In 1888 she won a silver medal for her flowers 'entered in the amateur artists watercolour section of the Women’s Industries Exhibition’, while in 1892 her 'group of Australian wild flowers in a bowl’ was purchased from the Art Society’s annual exhibition by Lord Jersey – 'the first Governor who has ever honoured the exhibition in the Art Society’s gallery in that way’. (His Excellency also purchased a group of yellow roses by Ethel A. Stephens .) Mrs Halligan won a medal at New York’s Columbian World’s Fair in 1892, while her wallpaper designs were exhibited with the Art Society of Tasmania in 1910. Taken to England by Mrs Henry Dobson, they won a medal at the National Council of Women’s London exhibition. The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery holds examples of her work.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 August 1844
- Summary
- Painter, was born in Van Diemen's Land, the moved to NSW in 1880. She is know primarily for her paintings of flowers and also worked under her married name, Harriet Halligan.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1919
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude54.4832132 Longitude-1.5536174 Start Date1841-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Croft, Darlington, Yorkshire, England
- Biography
- sketcher, collector, explorer and horseman, was born in Croft, near Darlington, Yorkshire, and came to South Australia in the 1860s to join his uncle Edward Stockdale at Lake Hawden Station. Through the racing and steeple-chasing interests he developed at Hawden he became acquainted with Adam Lindsay Gordon and made several sketches of the poet. Gordon’s portrait 'from life’, drawn in 1863, was later issued as a lithograph along with other Stockdale sketches, including Type of Overlander or Old Time Journey Horse Now Extinct , which were possibly lithographed by the Photoline Printing Company of 515 George Street, Sydney, the firm that issued Stockdale’s Racing at the Last Fence (1865) showing Gordon on Cadger and Stockdale on Zetland taking a hurdle side-by-side. A caricature, See our Conquering Hero Comes , depicting Gordon on Cadger is probably also by Stockdale (who finished the race a close second). Another sketch, Ride after Wild Horses with A. L. Gordon and Tom Hales (a famous jockey), is bound with Stockdale’s manuscript notes on Gordon (ML A739). Stockdale had a lifelong interest in racing and finally had his own stable.
An undated collection of very competent sketches by Stockdale (ML A1578) includes drawings of an emu, a kookaburra, Hawk’s Bill Turtle and a wombat, the last annotated by Stockdale: 'De Rougemont says this creature flies/ His readers say De Rougemont lies’. A number of sketches of Aborigines, their implements and weapons, were apparently conceived as illustrations to a proposed publication on the Aboriginal people of Australia, the text of which partly exists in manuscript form (ML A1579), though never published. According to his obituary Stockdale, 'an exceedingly clever draftsman, made innumerable black and white drawings to illustrate this work, but his health gradually failed, and he was unable to see his great work completed.’ He contributed articles on Aborigines (and other subjects) to various periodicals, especially the Town and Country Journal and the Evening News and illustrated some.
Stockdale amassed a large collection of Aboriginal artefacts during his travels into the interior, particularly on his 1884-85 and 1885-86 expeditions through the then unexplored Kimberley region of WA. These trips, he stated, had been made entirely at his own expense, the first costing him in excess of £3,000. In 1891 he travelled to Port Essington and the Alligator River in the Northern Territory. Bush Sketches with Pen and Pencil by Harry Stockdale (ML), a lithograph compiled from twelve small sketches apparently drawn on the 1891 Alligator River expedition, includes N.A. Aborigine (Port Darwin) in Corrobborree [sic] Costume , Creek on the Alligator Plains , Alligator River Native N.A. and Types of Australian Kangaroo .
Stockdale died at his residence, Linacre, at Randwick (a Sydney suburb with a famous racecourse) on 30 January 1919. His collections of artefacts were subsequently sold to Sir William Dixson and to an unknown European museum.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1841
- Summary
- Harry Stockdale was sketcher, collector, explorer and horseman who also contributed articles on Aborigines and other subjects to various periodicals in the late 1800s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Jan-19
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude42.4223183 Longitude-71.1328312 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- West Medford, MA, USA
- Biography
- sketcher, comic illustrator, caricaturist, painter, scene-painter, professional photographer, sailor, theatrical performer and entrepreneur, was born in West Medford, Massachusetts, on 7 October 1840, son of George A. Peirce, a merchant, and Jane, née Nye. Peirce sailed before the mast in the Oriental from New York in September 1859, jumping ship on reaching Port Phillip about the end of the year. Thus began more than 30 years of peripatetic adventuring in Australia, which he later recorded in his picaresque autobiography published posthumously in 1924. At first reading his book, which describes such unlikely career changes as scene-painter to snake-oil salesman and travelling photographer to riverboat captain, seems fantastic and hence unreliable; nevertheless, where Peirce’s information has been able to be verified it has proved basically correct, the major flaws being his idiosyncratic spelling of names and his faulty recall of dates.
Peirce spent very little time in Melbourne, leaving almost straight away for the Victorian goldfields where he tried a variety of jobs. His first recorded artistic attempt was a 'No Smoking’ sign for the Cobb & Co. stable at New Inglewood, he said; his second, a 26-foot (8 m) long canvas sign for the Dunolly Hotel. At the concert room in Ellis’s Hotel, Tarrengower, he 'made quite a success in [his] vaudeville act’ as well as painting two scenes: a garden and an interior. Later, at Dunolly, he 'managed to make a living by painting a few little pictures and assisting Frank Weston, an Alabama man, in hawking his famous “Wizard Oil”’. His undated watercolour, The Myers Creek Rush – near Sandhurst [Bendigo] Victoria (NLA) may have been one of these 'little pictures’.
Back at Melbourne, Peirce painted a picture of the Falls for the Niagara Hotel: 'I had not seen the falls, never having been out of Massachusetts before my sailing on the Oriental , and did not remember ever having seen a picture of them; but as Chisholm’s patrons were in the same boat, the view which I managed to produce was very satisfactory, and old Chisholm, when questioned, would lean across the bar and murmur, “Perfect picture, fellows; almost makes me homesick to look at it!”’ He also did caricatures of the Melbourne Meat Market identities (SLV).
Claiming to have had previous experience in photography with Lay & Hayward in Boston, Peirce joined the Melbourne firm of Batchelder & O’Neill , also hailing from Massachusetts. Peirce recalled in his memoirs: 'I worked for some weeks at their Melbourne studio under the supervision of Johnson [ Charles Johnson ], who later returned to his home in California to gain fame as a landscape painter; and I was then sent to Bendigo to a little branch studio run by the younger brother’, Benjamin Batchelder . At Bendigo he was instructed in scene-painting by John Fry at the Lyceum Theatre. As a result, 'my photographic duties were rather neglected, and Batchelder finally advised me to “move over to the theatre for good”, which advice I immediately followed.’ During his time at the Lyceum his progress and improvement in scene painting was so marked that for the production of the opera Norma he was 'allowed to produce the entire Stonehenge scene unaided’. He also worked at the Theatre Royal, Castlemaine, before becoming a partner in a travelling sideshow, hawking patent medicines. This venture, where he styled himself 'Gus B. Peirce, the great American Delineator and Serio-Comic Lecturer’, was unsuccessful. He subsequently joined the crew of the Otago , sailing to Dunedin, New Zealand.
On returning to Melbourne, Peirce rejoined Batchelder & O’Neill and was once again sent to Bendigo. In order to provide the firm with photographs for the forthcoming London International Exhibition he and a fellow-employee were sent on an excursion 'furnished with a little black push-cart holding the camera and other necessaries’. He illustrated this scene in his published memoirs (where he characteristically misspells the sign on the cart as 'Batcheler’), showing himself as the photographer leading the way while the 'other man’ pushes the cart. On the recommendation of Batchelder, he joined forces with Joseph Creelman in a project to photograph Victorian Aborigines; Peirce tells how initial fear of the camera was overcome when the 'old king’ looked through the lens and saw the Aboriginal women all standing on their heads. Although the whereabouts of the resulting photographs are unknown, Peirce also made sketches of Aboriginal life that are reproduced in his book.
He abandoned this project at Swan Hill, later writing that 'my first view of the Murrary [sic] River… made a great impression on me’ – so great, apparently, that he decided there and then to become a river pilot. To this end he travelled to Adelaide and took up temporary employment with the photographers Anson and Francis . In December 1862 he was reported as having 'executed several well-finished and developed pictures in water colours…taken in the first instance by the apparatus and then coloured’. Soon, on the recommendation of Arthur Blake (one more member of the network of ex-Bostonians upon whom Peirce seems to have relied for his early career in Australia), he was hired to chart the Murray from Albury to Goolwa. He proceeded to make his 1750-mile journey in a 15-foot boat, accompanied by an (unnamed) Aborigine and a 'dancing master named Everest’. Once the chart had been drawn up, Peirce was ordered 'to make a continuous copy in colours on tracing cloth. When completed some two months later, this first chart of the Murray River was nearly an eighth of a mile [200 m] long. It was wound on rollers and placed in a glass-faced box in the wheelhouse of the Lady Daly , to be reeled off as the steamer proceeded.’
In June 1864 Peirce became pilot of the Lady Daly but was laid off on half-pay in September. Once again he worked as a photographer in Adelaide, being employed by the photographer 'Durray’ (ie Townsend Duryea ) to whom, he said, he 'taught the art of making ambrotypes, then a novelty in Australia’. He remained at Duryea’s until May 1865 then was posted to the command of the recommissioned Lady Daly . For the next four years Peirce travelled the Murray-Darling river system as a steamboat-captain, first as master of the Lady Daly , subsequently of the Corowa and the Jane Eliza . During the 'off’ seasons when the river was low, he appeared on the stage of the Theatre Royal, Melbourne.
In September 1869 it was reported in the Albury press that 'Captain Gus Pearce [sic]... is engaged in a new branch of industry, namely, the painting of a series of views or pictures – the whole to form a grand panorama. It is just possible that the captain, if thoroughly going into it, might make the Murray as popular, with the aid of pictures, anecdotes, and songs, as the Mississippi was in the hands of Russell.’ But Peirce was planning nothing so parochial as a voyage down the Murray, painting instead A Voyage round the World , which began with a copy of William Frith’s The Railway Station (Paddington) and ended with a view of Collins Street, Melbourne. Peirce toured this 212 foot (64.6 m) canvas and two drop-scenes so successfully in Victoria during the summer of 1870-71 that he left the river to tour southern and central New South Wales.
On 3 June 1871 Peirce exhibited his panorama at the Royal Assembly Rooms, Bathurst. By this time it had grown (at least according to the advertisements) to 5000 feet and was accompanied by 'all the newest Mechanical, Pyrotechnical, and Dioramic Effects’. For the performance held on 7 June Peirce also 'performed several tricks of legerdemain, and treated those present to some ventriloquism’. Later that month he moved to the Prince of Wales Theatre and added a 'local picture’ to his show: 'a view of George-street, from Howard to Durham-street… the Club House Hotel and other buildings had been brought out by the artist with admirable distinctness’. For the performance on 24 June he promised that 'several “local celebrities” will appear in the foreground [of this scene], whose peculiarities are to be described in an original local song’.
In September he was engaged by a Mr Hamilton who had, somewhat unsuccessfully, started a series of paintings depicting the Franco-Prussian War. Peirce completed the panorama, which was advertised as portraying 'the principal battles and all the most stirring details of the deadliest strife the world has ever seen, covering 6000 feet [1828 m] of canvas’, and it was exhibited at the Prince of Wales until 21 October, then for three weeks in surrounding villages where it was 'received with unequivocal satisfaction’. It returned to Bathurst on 17 November (this time at the Royal Assembly Rooms) with two new scenes by Peirce: A Foraging Party and The Entry of the German Troops into Berlin .
Once again on his own, Peirce painted a series of pictures illustrating the writings of Artemus Ward. He exhibited these, together with his Voyage round the World , at the Bathurst Prince of Wales Theatre on 16 December 1871. In a jocular advertisement he claimed to have received 'a spiritualistic commission from Artemus himself, direct, to go in and make a fortune’; he advised 'Heads of Families [that] should any deaths occur in the crush to get in, a first-class undertaker will be in attendance’ and warned that although children would be admitted at half-price 'none over 12 stone [70 kg] will be considered infants’.
From Bathurst he travelled to Orange where he was forced to leave his paintings as security for his hotel bill. Later they were sent on to him uncovered, in the rain, and were ruined. In late 1872 Peirce painted a life-size portrait of the successful gold prospector Bernardt Holtermann, 'in his shirt-sleeves’ beside the giant nugget he discovered in the night of 19 20 October. Holtermann encouraged him to paint a new panorama, The Mirror of Australia , illustrating the life of miners, pastoralists and Aborigines, and provided him with a coach and horses for touring the surrounding countryside. Peirce spent the next few years travelling in the gold-mining regions of New South Wales.
Later he worked again as a riverboat captain, this time on the Murrumbidgee River. Later still he was a partner in an advertising business at Adelaide, where he provided occasional cartoons for the Lantern and for a short time assumed co-proprietorship of the Figaro . He and his partner extended their business to selling advertising space on railway stations around the country, expanding into Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. When the partnership was dissolved (all available advertising space having been sold) Peirce went to Geelong (Vic.). Here in 1879 he painted a panorama of Victoria, which he exhibited the following year. Tiring perhaps of his peregrinations, he settled in Geelong for the next ten years.
In 1891 Peirce purchased the Rose of Australia Hotel, Melbourne, part of the new Metropolitan Meat Market development. (His watercolour caricatures of Meat Market managers and employees are in the La Trobe Library.) His career as hotelier was short-lived, however; Melbourne’s depression forced the market and its associated properties, including the hotel, to close. Peirce’s wife died soon afterwards. He had met Agnes, daughter of John Carney, a miner, and Eliza, née Hall, at Rutherglen during his Murray River captaincy and they had married at Moama on 19 November 1869. Due to the vagaries of his career, they had spent much of their early married life apart, but she and the children joined him at Bathurst in 1872 and afterwards accompanied him on tour with The Mirror of Australia in Holtermann’s van. Following her death, Peirce returned to the United States and began to write his memoirs. Written for the American market, the resulting text was as sensational as any work of fiction and the author’s exploits were exaggerated to heroic proportions. Peirce died in 1919. His posthumous publication is peppered with his drawings of Australian scenes and incidents, e.g. photographing the Aborigines (ill. DAA) cf Gordon Bennett 's version (ill. Paul Fox article). A favourite subject seems to have been himself – a tall man, with a fine handlebar moustache.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 7 October 1840
- Summary
- Widely travelled Colonial era American-born sketcher, comic illustrator, caricaturist, painter, scene-painter, professional photographer, sailor, theatrical performer and entrepreneur.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1919
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude59.0967308 Longitude10.02192996 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Larvik, Norway
- Biography
- sketcher and squatter, was born on 27 June 1836 in Larvik, Norway. One of 13 children, he was a brother of Alexander and Charles Archer . James’s small sketchbook (c.1861-63, ML) consists mainly of drawings of people, most depicted in profile. A caricature of Alexander is annotated 'Sandy as he appears after a champagne supper’. James lived in Australia for several years and died at Larvik on 10 June 1919.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Macaulay, Bettina
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 June 1836
- Summary
- James Archer kept a small sketchbook (c.1861-63) that consists mainly of drawings of people, most depicted in profile, including his brother, fellow artist Alexander Archer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Jun-19
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Sketcher, amateur photographer, geologist and telegraph operator Horace Burkitt was born 2 March 1836, in Surrey, England. At age 16, because of continuing problems in England and Europe, his family sent him to Australia. In November 1852 he arrived in Melbourne on the sailing ship “Arundle” and worked on odd jobs and as a Shipping Clerk until 1854, when he was appointed Clerk to the Harbour Master, Melbourne.
From 1856 until 1861 he worked for the telegraph service in Geelong and Melbourne and opened offices in Kyneton and Portland. He then moved to Brisbane and in 1862 travelled to the newly explored Mackay in north Queensland where he and a friend opened a slab hut store.
Shortly afterwards his father sent him back to England on family matters. He studied dentistry and married his cousin, Sara Maria Goldsmith in August, 1864. They returned to Australia in January 1865 and went to Ipswich, where Burkitt worked as a dentist and chemist’s assistant.
By September 1865, the couple, with their infant daughter, had left by ship, via Rockhampton, to St. Lawrence. While there Burkitt worked in various government roles from Clerk of Petty Sessions to Shipping Master. In April 1875 Horace was appointed as Magistrate and Sub-Collector of Customs to Bundaberg and spent ten years there. In March 1885, by which time the Burkitts had had 9 children, Horace and his family were transferred to Cooktown, then a very busy port for the Goldfields. His position in Cooktown was Sub-Collector of Customs, Marine Magistrate and Protector of Aboriginals.
In 1895 Horace was transferred to Mackay for one final year of public service. He retired to Brisbane where he built a house at Oxley, “Birkenhead”. He died there at age 83 on 21 August 1919.
Besides painting and photography, Burkitt was skilled in geology. In 1871 he reported to the Collector of Customs, on a copper bearing load near St Lawrence.
Writers:
niknikjw
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 2 March 1836
- Summary
- Burkitt was a prolific watercolourist who made studies of the various Victorian districts in which he was stationed as a telegraph operator. His grandson donated a collection of 21 watercolours to 16 Victorian Municipal councils. He also painted oils and continued painting when he moved to Queensland.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Aug-19
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, U.K.
- Biography
- Ludovico Wolfgang Hart was a professional photographer, photomechanical printer, traveller and a pioneer of photographic education. He was born c.1836 and baptised in London in 1840. His father, Charles Hart, was a music teacher and church organist. Ludovico himself became a fine organist. Hart enlisted as a sapper in the Royal Engineers in about 1854 where he received instruction in wet-plate photography from the noted photographer Charles Thurston Thompson. Also, he was involved in experiments with the use of electric arc lighting in photography. Hart wrote a book of instruction for wet-plate workers, Photography Simplified: A Practical Treatise on the Collodion and Albumen processes, published in 1857. About 1858 he left the army to make photography his career. He obtained a position with the established photographic firm of Disderi et Cie in Paris. In 1860 Hart returned to England and the next year married Clara Page and set up in business as a photographer in Tunstall, Staffordshire. However he soon moved to Paris to take up a position as photographer with Numa Blanc and Co. Then, having been promoted to manage the Baden Baden branch in Germany he gained much valuable experience in portrait photography of famous people. In his spare time he made walking trips in the Black Forest carrying his wet-plate equipment. Perhaps inspired by the Barbizon school of painters he photographed the local inhabitants in their national dress and engaged in their usual work, and made notes concerning the history, geography and economy of the region. Hart became associated with the French publisher Charles Lallemand who had conceived the idea of a series of volumes of photographs under the title Galerie Universelle des Peoples. The two had much in common, as both were interested in recording the lifestyles and dress of peoples beyond the major cities of Europe. Hart left Numa Blanc and went into partnership with Lallemand. They toured the Middle East in the Spring of 1865. A book resulting from the trip contained about 30 of Hart’s images, each 10 by 8 inches in size. The editor of the British Journal of Photography of 1 September 1865, p. 453 in reviewing the book described the photographs as “admirable representations of the ethnological peculiarities of the numerous tribes he visited”. The editor also noted that on the technical side “in the deepest shades there is a transparency through which all the details can be seen” whilst “in the highlights and half-tones there exists a softness and purity rarely met with”. Prints from the trip were also issued as single plates, some examples of which appear on the market from time to time. Lallemand also published books of Hart’s photographs derived from his work in Germany, as well as a book about Syria. Much of Hart’s published work was either unattributed or was attributed to Lallemand, and as a result Hart has remained virtually unknown. No doubt arising from the problems of reproducing photographs for book illustration by the albumen process, Hart became interested in the newly developed methods of photo-mechanical printing, principally the Woodburytype and the carbon processes, which held promise of permanency and speed of production. He became so proficient that he was engaged to install the Woodburytype process in several printing establishments on the Continent. In 1877 Hart was brought to Australia by the New South Wales Government Printing Office in Sydney for the purpose of installing the latest photomechanical technologies. The carbon process was successful but unforseen problems arising from the high atmospheric temperatures which prevail in Sydney over much of the year caused problems with Woodburytype such that after a few short print runs the process was discontinued. Hart was also involved in photography for the NSW Government Printing Office. One assignment was to take photographs of the Fish River [Jenolan] Caves, illuminated for the first time by electric light, to be included in the NSW display at the forthcoming Melbourne Exhibition (1880-81). On leaving the Printing Office Hart went into partnership briefly with printer Ferdinand Roux. It seems that Hart was engaged to take the official photographs the courts at the 1880-81 Melbourne International Exhibition. Albums containing 60 contact prints, each about 12 by 10 inches in size, were presented to Queen Victoria and to local dignitaries. Again, the photographer was not identified, but an editorial published in the Australian Photographic Journal of 20 March 1896 states that “[Hart] settled in Melbourne in 1880, photographing the various courts of the Exhibition in that year, for the Commissioners, on 12 by 10 wet-plates, sixty in number”. Thus there is little doubt that Hart was the photographer. Hart remained in Melbourne for the remainder of his working life. He worked as a professional photographer, first with E.C. Waddington in about 1882 and later in partnership with Lionel Curtis in 1885. After Curtis left the business Hart continued alone and issued stereographic views and mounted prints of Melbourne and suburbs as well as country scenes around Victoria. He also gave public lectures illustrated with lantern slides in Melbourne and country towns. After encountering financial problems in the depression of the late 1880s, Hart obtained a part-time position with the Working Men’s College in Melbourne where he was responsible for establishing a photography department. He wrote the curriculum and was the first, and for a time the sole, lecturer. This was the first formal course of photographic instruction in Australia, if not in the world. The course flourished, and, as more students were enrolled, he was engaged full-time and provided with staff. In 1895 he published Photographic Formulae as used by the Students of the Photographic Classes at the Working Men’s College, Melbourne. In 1891 he founded the Working Men’s College Photographic Club and was esteemed as advisor and problem solver to the members. The club, now the Melbourne Camera Club, is still in existence although no longer associated with the college. A special field of expertise was photomicrography and for this work he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society in 1891. This was his sole formal qualification. Hart was elected to membership of the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1878 and of Royal Society of Victoria in 1891. He gave lectures to both of these societies on various subjects including the history of photography, the rôle of photography in education, and a description of his walking tours of the Black Forest area of Germany. He was a contributor to the photographic press, describing his experiences of photographic travel, and an extended series covering the techniques of photography and the photomechanical processes. In 1891 he lost most of his possessions in a flood. Music was constant interest throughout his life. For a time Hart was Master of the Choir at Christ Church, South Yarra. He wrote several pieces of sacred choral music, some of which has survived in the State Library of Victoria. There is little doubt that Ludovico Hart was highly regarded, both personally and as a teacher, and that on his retirement at the end of 1900 was much missed. His last years were spent in Hawaii where he gave lectures at the university and was given the honorary title of Professor Hart. He died at Waimea in 1919, leaving his estate including his medals and books to Richard Morton of the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. The principal collections of his work are in the State Library of Victoria, Museum Victoria, the Bibiothèque Nationale de France in Paris and Stadtarchiv Reutlingen, Germany.
Writers:
Elliott, Alan FrederickNote:
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2008
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. c.January 1836
- Summary
- Hart was a photographer, a photo-mechanical printer, a public speaker and the founder of the first department of photography in Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Jan-19
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude53.55 Longitude10 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamburg, Germany
- Biography
- painter, lithographer and teacher, was born in Hamburg, Germany, son of Philip Lang, a tailor, and Caroline, née Inzenhöfer. He studied under the noted lithographic artist Wilhelm Heuer of Hamburg and served his apprenticeship at the Hamburg Lithographic Institute. Afterwards he resided at Altona, then returned and set up his own studio in Hamburg. In 1859 he was recruited by Augustus Schuhkrafft to work as a lithographic artist in the Victorian printing and stationery firm of Schuhkrafft & Howell; he arrived at Melbourne in the Great Britain in February 1860.
Lang served with the firm until early 1863 then struck out on his own, continuing to use Schuhkrafft’s as his business address. He opened his own studio at 60 Little Collins Street East in mid 1864 where he taught figure, landscape and ornamental drawing (as well as writing) in addition to his work as a commercial lithographic artist. The business was not successful and Lang joined the printers Fergusson & Mitchell in 1867. He worked there until about 1870 when he set up an Academy of Drawing and Music, first in Dover Street, Richmond (c.1870/1872), then at Prahran. This survived until 1877. Then he joined Sands & McDougall, publishers of the Melbourne Directory , as head lithographic artist. He spent eight years with this firm and some of his most attractive work was done there, in particular his chromolithographic reproductions of watercolour and oil paintings selected for the Art Union of Victoria between 1877 and 1883. Early in 1885 Lang left Sands & McDougall. After a very brief partnership with John Batten in Queen Street, he set up his own studio, also in Queen Street, and subsequently in Little Collins, Elizabeth and Collins streets. From 1901 to 1905 he worked in a temporary capacity as a lithographic artist in the Government Printing Office, then retired from active work. He died on 7 July 1919 at Malvern and was buried in the Brighton Cemetery.
Lang was not involved in any fine art society, nor is he known to have publicly exhibited any independent art work, despite being for a time drawing master at several Melbourne ladies’ colleges. He was foundation president of the Victorian Lithographic Artists and Engravers Club from 1889 to at least 1891 and an active member of the Melbourne Deutsche Liedertafel from its foundation in 1868, then of its successor the Melbourne Liedertafel until 1886. Little original art work is known or recorded, although he was undoubtedly the Mr Lang who painted the 11 × 9 foot (3.35 × 2.49 m) transparency displayed by his employers, Fergusson & Mitchell, during the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Melbourne in 1867. The Argus described it as 'representing Victoria and Great Britain shaking hands, Victoria with left hand holding the Southern Cross, and England holding the Union Jack; in the centre the Galatea coming up the bay; these figures surrounded by flowers, fruit, &c.; at one side the rose, shamrock, and thistle; the whole surmounted by the arms of the Duke’. Two watercolours signed L. Lang are presumably also his: Kerarbury Home Station, Murrumbidgee R., N.S.W. (ML) and Aboriginal Campsite, 1911 (Leonard Joel, November 1979).
In 1872 Lang lithographed and published the sheet music for Victoria March with a decorated title-page. He designed the cover for the Illustrated Australian Family Almanac for 1873 and executed four lithographic portraits (from photographs) for the 1874 Almanac . He lithographed portraits for Rev. James Fenton’s The Life and Work of the Reverend Charles Price First Independent Minister in Australia (Melbourne, 1886) and many of the lithographed portraits in Leavitt & Libburn’s Jubilee History of Victoria and Melbourne (Melbourne, 1888), as well as vignettes on the title-page of H. Thomas’s Guide to Excursionists between Australia and Tasmania (1883, 1884). Lang also produced a large number of illuminated addresses, five examples of which are in the La Trobe Library. That presented to the mayor of Oakleigh in 1891 (purchased 1987) features a highly-coloured bush scene and a vignette of a settlement in muted tones like a sepia photograph. Earlier addresses produced by Lang when he was working for Sands & MacDougall were presumably unsigned – most were – and have not been identified.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1834
- Summary
- A German-born nineteenth-century lithographer based in Melbourne. His lithographs were mostly reproductions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Jul-19
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1919-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, Lancashire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born on 25 June 1825, the most artistically talented of the numerous children of a wealthy merchant of Liverpool, Lancashire. She left Liverpool with her family in 1853, bound for Adelaide, and kept a lively shipboard diary on the voyage out. The Littles first lived at Park Cottage, near the South Australian Company’s mill at Hackney and close to the newly opened Adelaide Botanic Gardens, but most of the family, including Margaret, soon moved to a property near Yankalilla. Some of the sons stayed in Adelaide and went into partnership with Captain William Scott of Brookside; the merchants Scott & Little operated in the Adelaide suburb of Alberton until the 1880s.
Margaret Cochrane Little and her sister Mary Fyfe (1827-1912) had several paintings in the South Australian Society of Arts’ 1859 exhibition. Margaret’s were Runaway Match and Last Resting Place of an Explorer , while Grandfather’s Watch (in a cherrywood frame) and Looking into the Future (blackwood frame) were attributed to Mary. All were lent by Margaret. One of her brothers is also said to have drawn views of Port Lincoln and Port Pirie in the 1850s but did not persist with this interest. In 1861 Margaret Little married David Wylie Scott (1817-87), one of the partners of Scott & Little. For a few years they lived in the Barossa Valley; their only child, Winnifred Julia Purton Scott (1865-1950), was born there. David inherited Brookside when his father died, and this became Margaret’s home until 1893.
All Margaret Scott’s art work appears to have been small in scale and numerous flower studies were painted on green paper only a few centimetres square. Most were in watercolour although a few oils, considered rather sombre, are mentioned by Horsnell. Her earliest subjects were portrait miniatures, of which only one of three recorded examples has been located (p.c.). In the 1870s she is said to have provided humorous cartoons in pen-and-ink for Ephemera , a small Port Adelaide newspaper; the issue for 1874 (ML) contains a badly double-printed view of some country bumpkins visiting an art exhibition titled “The world and his wife visit the Adelaide Institution” and “Where every body may see himself as others see him”.
Scott primarily painted watercolours of South Australian wildflowers. Many of the specimens in her album (Botanic Gardens, Adelaide) were collected in the 1870s around Horsnell’s Gully and she frequently painted the living flower where it grew. Although she seems to have continued to exhibit sporadically with the South Australian Society of Arts (records are incomplete), her public career as a painter did not really begin until after her husband died, when she was 62. Then it continued for almost 30 years.
From 1887 onwards, on the advice of Viscountess Kintore (wife of the governor of South Australia), Scott devoted herself exclusively to painting Australian wildflowers, for which she gained an international reputation. Included in the noted 1898 Australian Art Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in London, her Jarrah Blossom was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald to have been one of the first pictures sold. Lady Kintore purchased several sets of her flowers at the May Club exhibition in 1902. Others, at least some of which had been painted many years earlier, were acquired by the Duchess of Cornwall and York (later Queen Mary) when she visited Adelaide. She is said to be represented in the Glasgow Art Gallery. A hand-painted table top is in a private collection in South Australia, as are the majority of her paintings.
From 1893 until 1904 Margaret Scott lived at Rock Tavern, below Norton Summit, and continued to paint flowers, travelling to them as she had done for many years in a small governess cart. From 1904 until her death in 1919, aged 93, she lived in Rose Cottage at Marryatville with Winnifred, who wrote under the pseudonym 'Magpie’ for the Adelaide Observer and was also a talented watercolour painter.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanStaff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 25 June 1825
- Summary
- Late colonial-era Adelaide painter and cartoonist. Most of her art work appears to have been small in scale with numerous flower studies painted on green paper only a few centimetres square. Despite their size Scott's works were well-regarded and purchasers of her work included the Duchess of Cornwall and York who was later to become Queen Mary.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1919
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-37.3987914 Longitude143.8046546 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ascot, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- china painter, was born in Ascot, Victoria, eldest of the six children of Robert William Cadden, a grain merchant. In about 1907-08 Cadden studied china painting under J.A. Peach at the Sydney Technical College then continued her studies in the Art Department until about 1911. As a student she exhibited in the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne (though not listed in the catalogue of the Sydney preliminary exhibition). From about 1910 she had a studio in the family residence, Ravenshurst, at Beecroft, and between 1912 and 1917 exhibited with the NSW Society of Arts and Crafts. Cadden, a china painter of considerable ability, decorated vases, tea and coffee sets, plates, wall plaques and buttons. She used motifs such as Australian and English garden flowers, peacocks and cranes, but excelled in cicada designs. Her later work shows the influence of Oriental art.
Writers:
Czernis-Ryl, Eva
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1884
- Summary
- China painter and resident of Beecroft, Sydney, NSW.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1918
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1882-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- painter and comic artist, son of the painter Arthur Loureiro , grew up in Melbourne and studied art at the National Gallery of Victoria Schools in 1902-5. In 1905 he exhibited postcard designs and a portrait with the Yarra Sculptors’ Society and pen and ink sketches in Frederick McCubbin 's studio exhibition at South Yarra. His pen and ink drawings were used for comic postcards (see Cook). After moving to Sydney, Loureiro drew postcards and portraits for passengers on the harbour ferries at a shilling a time. Later he pursued the same career in the US, according to Moore. His best Australian postcards are a series of fashionable “tarts”, with captions varied to sell both in Sydney and Melbourne, plus limericks. He died during WWI.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 27 October 1882
- Summary
- Federation period Melbourne and Sydney based painter, picture postcard and comic artist, son of the painter Arthur Loureiro. Loureiro died during WWI.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Aug-18
- Age at death
- 36
Details
Latitude-37.063611 Longitude144.217222 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Castlemaine, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born at Castlemaine, Victoria, on 2 March 1868, fourth daughter of the seven daughters and four sons of Edward Sheens Riggall and Martha, née Gregory.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 March 1868
- Summary
- Riggall was an academic painter who enjoyed early success in her career both in Melbourne and Paris.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1918
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude-32.05423 Longitude115.74763 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fremantle, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Cabinetmaker who was born in Fremantle, WA and apprenticed as a cabinetmaker and undertaker. He became an importer of furniture and lived in Beaconsfield. This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1862
- Summary
- Perth-based cabinetmaker who became an importer of furniture.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1918
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude56.12401225 Longitude15.40220875 Start Date1856-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Blekinge, Sweden
- Biography
- painter, brother of Clas Edvard (Edward) Friström , was born in Sweden, son of Clas August Friström (sometimes spelt Fristrom in Australia and New Zealand), a teacher, and his wife, Christina Carlson. Oscar lived in Queensland from 1884. By 1885 he was a partner in a photographic studio that presumably also included his younger brother, Clas Edvard (known at Edward), who described himself as a photographic artist when he married Margaret Johnson in Brisbane on 11 July 1886. Both brothers appear to have been largely self-taught as artists.
Oscar helped establish the Queensland Art Society.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1856
- Summary
- Federation era Swedish born Brisbane painter. He also worked in a photographic studio presumably with his brother, Clas Edvard.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1918
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- sketcher, daughter of Edmund Blacket.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1854
- Summary
- A sketcher and member of the talented family Blacket family who were each either artists and architects.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1918
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1852-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Valentine Delawarr, landscape painter, worked in New South Wales, Tasmania, New Zealand and Western Australia in the 1880s and 1900s. In the early 1890s Delawarr moved into a studio at 112 Hunter Street, Sydney, after a studio in the same building had been vacated by landscape and portrait painter Gladstone Eyre , whose landscape paintings resemble Delawarr’s in both style and subject matter. Later, Delawarr was working in the 24 Bond Street building where cartoonist Livingston “Hop” Hopkins (and, much later, photographer Max Dupain ) also had a studio.
Some references speculate that Delawarr was Dutch, however, the Dutch influence in his work is likely to have come through Gladstone Eyre’s teacher, Henry van den Houten . Delawarr’s name suggests Belgian, French or Anglo-Huguenot origins.
Writers:
Riddler, Eric
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1 October 1852
- Summary
- Late Victorian to Federation era landscape painter who worked in Sydney, Perth, Tasmania and the South Island of New Zealand.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Jun-18
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude52.408056 Longitude-1.510556 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Coventry, England, UK
- Biography
- Martha Emily Mault (also known as Miss Patty Mault) was born in 1850 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, the second and youngest daughter of Alfred Mault, the Surveyor of The City of Coventry, and Elizabeth nee Lamb. Alfred, who was born in India, was the son of missionaries Charles Mault (1791-1858) & Martha Mead (1794-1870).
Patty was a watercolour painter, illuminator, lace-maker and designer. She was a member of the planning committee for the Tasmanian Lace Exhibition held at Hobart in 1910 and had work in the exhibition. Also a keen amateur painter and accomplished illuminator like her father, Alfred Mault, the two prepared Tasmania’s Jubilee Address to Queen Victoria in 1887. Miss Mault’s solo elaborate Gothic Revival style illumination of the opening verses of St Mark’s Gospel (undated) was formerly in All Saints Church of England, South Hobart (now Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts [ALMFA]). She also contributed an expertly illuminated Celtic interlace title-page to an album 'Presented to Lady Smith by friends in Tasmania’ in 1883 (ALMFA).
Martha died on 6th October 1918 in Hobart. Her will left all her estate to her sister Agnes Mault(1849-1923). Neither sister married.
This record is a stub. You can help by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dufour, MaryKerr, Joan
surreyboy
fishel
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. c.1850
- Summary
- Colonial female lace-maker whose Gothic revival style and Celtic interlacing title pages illuminated the names of Queen Victoria and Lady Smith, before bringing the Tasmanian Lace Exhibition together as a member of the planning committee.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Oct-18
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newington Green, Surrey, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, was born at Newington Green, Surrey, on 10 May 1846, third daughter and youngest of the six children of John and Eliza Thurston . She came to New South Wales with her widowed mother and sisters in 1853. With her mother and sister Eliza West Thurston , she moved to Mudgee to live with her brother Horatio; a card decorated by Emily is inscribed 'Mudgee, 25 December 1865’. Horatio took her photograph in his Mudgee studio about 1867-68. A photograph album decorated by Emily is dated 1871, at which time she and her mother were staying in her sister-in-law’s family home, Fernside at Rylstone.
Emily married Henry Burrows at Cooma in December 1873. All her known art works are floral watercolour decorations in albums and on cards (private collection).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1846
- Summary
- Sketcher and watercolourist, she arrived in NSW in 1853 with her widowed mother and sisters.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1918
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- Wilkinson moved from England to New Zealand in 1880, married Ada Powis and had three children. Moved to Sydney in 1888 where Ada gave birth to a fourth child. In Sydney worked as journalist. Separated from wife in 1898 and moved to Brisbane, Queensland where he commenced his professional artistic career. His paintings include: Early Morning (Winter), Brisbane River (Welsby collection) and Fitz-Grafton and Poseidon (Brisbane Racing Club collection).
This record is a stub. You can help by adding more detail.
Writers:
fishel
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1845
- Summary
- English-born painter and journalist/writer who lived in America in the 1870s then moved to New Zealand where he began professional painting and who moved to Australia in 1885 from New Zealand. Established his professional painting career when he moved to Queensland in 1898 obtaining commissions from the Brisbane Turf Club and Thomas Welsby.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Nov-18
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Cartoonist, illustrator and art critic born in England, 1843. He drew for the Australasian Sketcher, Australian Graphic, Evening World, Adelaide Punch and Melbourne Punch.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
DAAO staff writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 17 November 1843
- Summary
- Prolific late colonial Melbourne cartoonist and art critic.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1918
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, son of George William Francis and Ann, née Hatt, was born in London. He accompanied his parents to South Australia in the Louisa Baillie in 1849. In 1863-68 Francis worked in partnership with H. Anson in Adelaide at the Photographic Institution, Rundle Street. He married Jessie Marian Withers on 12 October 1878, by which time he had his own studio in Adelaide. This continued until 1899. Stereocards and cartes-de-visite survive (Mortlock Library). William Augustus Francis died in Adelaide on 5 June 1918. His younger brother, Arthur, born in South Australia, also worked as a photographer (c. 1879-92).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1842
- Summary
- Professional photographer. Born in London, Francis worked in Adelaide, including in a partnership with H. Anson at the Photographic Institution, Rundle Street.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Jun-18
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- Exhibited [Royal] Art Society of NSW, 1883.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1837
- Summary
- Mrs F. E. Corlette exhibited with the Royal Art Society in 1883.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1918
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude51.06372145 Longitude0.699198877 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tenterden, Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, bookseller and publisher, was born on 4 January 1832 at Tenterden, Kent, son of Harriett and Amos Cole. In 1850 he emigrated to the Cape of Good Hope and tried farming, but two years later set sail for the Victorian goldfields, arriving at Melbourne in the Sebrin on 12 November 1852. Latterly famous in Melbourne for his showmanship in promoting his Book Arcade with its rainbow trademark, and familiar to generations of Australian children for his Funny Picture Book , Cole’s first ten years in the colony were far from successful.
He failed at both gold-prospecting and land speculation. Then, in 1861 at Castlemaine, he met George Burnell who, equally disenchanted with goldfields’ life, was working for poor pay in a hay and corn store. Burnell had recently purchased a camera and chemicals from Mr Golightly , a travelling photographer, and Cole – who in his later career was to demonstrate a keen interest in every form of gadgetry – immediately offered himself as Burnell’s assistant. With a horse and cart bearing the legend 'Cole & Burnell / Photographic Artists / Views and Likenesses taken’, they set off on their new venture. The order of the names 'Cole & Burnell’ perhaps belied their respective inputs to the enterprise; Burnell took the photographs and Cole developed them.
By Christmas (1861) Cole and Burnell had reached Echuca on the Murray River, where they purchased a flat-bottomed boat. Early in the New Year they set out for Adelaide, the journey to Lake Alexandrina taking four months of rowing (and drifting). They photographed the scenery along the way: harsh mallee scrub, bustling river ports, Aboriginal camps, paddle-steamers and the river itself. A suggestion that they use their photographs as the basis of a travelling illustrated lecture came to nothing; Cole’s biographer, Cole Turnley, suggests that they had spent too long together in the cramped conditions of the row-boat to have remained friends. They did, however, market their photographs as stereographs in sets of sixty; the South Australian Register called these the colony’s first views of river scenery. A complete set of their albumen silver Stereoscopic Views of the River Murray 1861 is held at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Cole soon returned to Melbourne. His subsequent career, from itinerant pie-seller to bookseller extraordinaire, has been well documented. His Book Arcade, which offered live music and live monkeys, was as much sideshow as bookshop and became a Melbourne institution. He advertised for a wife in the Herald of 5 July 1875 and married 'the only serious applicant’, Eliza Frances Jorden of Hobart, a month later. Yet, for all his love of gimmicks and naive faith in the benefits of modern technology, Cole seems never to have incorporated photography into the multifarious attractions of the Book Arcade, although he did of course sell photographs and postcards there.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 January 1832
- Summary
- Professional photographer, bookseller and publisher, born in England. A resident of Victoria, he became famous for the showmanship of his promotion of his Book Arcade.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1918
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, sketcher, comic illustrator, amateur photographer and surveyor, was born in London on 5 June 1827, son of James Henderson and Catherine, née Black, and a brother of Euphemia Henderson . The family had large landholdings on the Isle of Guernsey. John Black Henderson studied art in Edinburgh and architecture in London (under Gilbert Scott). Migrating in 1851, he worked on the Ballarat goldfields for several months then joined the Victorian Government Survey Office in Melbourne. On one of his first surveying trips – to the Goulburn River – Henderson was accompanied by Cuthbert Fetherstonhaugh, who later described their first night out when they pitched their tent under a big gum-tree and 'new-chum-like, we made our fire at the foot of the tree’. The burnt-through tree fell on the tent in the early hours of the morning and Henderson 'who was very clever with his pen made a graphic sketch of the scene, which I have lost’. Fetherstonhaugh also remarks that Henderson was 'very musical and used to vamp on the piano and sing amusing songs’.
Moore states that Henderson’s retrospective Eureka Stockade Riot, Ballarat, 1854 (watercolour, Dixson Galleries [DG]) was 'painted from sketches done on the spot a few hours after the event, the dress of the miners and the uniforms of the soldiers being accurate’. Although this worked-up, version has assumed the role of a history painting his surviving sketches made on the diggings (La Trobe) are simply rough impressions of goldfields’ life. A painting Rushcutters Bay [Sydney], initialled 'JBH’ and dated 1860, was offered at Sotheby’s Melbourne on 30 April 2002, lot 182 (est. $4,000-6,000 not ill.), as his work. Henderson exhibited oil and watercolour landscape paintings at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, including Falls on Bunyarramite Creek and Haystack Rock, Western Port Bay , from Phillip Island (where his two sisters lived) and from St Kilda.
A founder member of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870, Henderson showed six landscapes in its inaugural exhibition and two at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition. Three sketches offered for sale in 1979 were Darby Flat and River (ink and wash), Big and Little Nobby, Phillip Island, Seal Rocks in the Distance (w/c) and a comic sketch, Returning from the Melbourne Races, March 1852 (w/c and ink). Tidal River near Yanakie (c.1860, ink and grey wash) is in the Ballarat Fine Arts Gallery, and Sandy Point, Western Port (c.1860, oil) in the La Trobe Library. Also an amateur photographer, Henderson photographed Sheepwashing at Sunville Station, South Gippsland , reproduced in Henry Peck’s Memoirs of a Stockman (Melbourne 1942). (Sunville Station was close to the McHaffies’ Yanakie property.)
By 1877 Henderson was living in Sydney. He worked in the Colonial Architect’s Office until 1903. A watercolour and gouache on paper, Argyle Street, Sydney (Sotheby’s Melb November 1998, lot 77), was a gift from Sir Henry Parkes to Isabella Murray Parkes, wife of the architect Varney Parkes with whom Henderson would have worked in the Col. Architect’s office. At first the family lived in the seaside suburb of Coogee, but after the death of their daughter in an accident on the beach John Black Henderson and his wife moved to Eastwood. In 1906 Henderson began to go blind. He died in July 1918 and was buried in the Field of Mars Cemetery, Ryde.
John Black Henderson has often been confused with John Baillie Henderson (1836-1921), a surveyor and hydraulic engineer who came to Victoria in 1861. It was John Black Henderson who did the separately issued lithograph after Anniversary Regatta, Sydney Harbour – Picnic at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair , an undated oil on canvas painting by an unknown artist (DG, presented by Sir William Dixson in 1935). Ellis notes (p.7) that the painting was also reproduced in the Sydney Mail of 30 January 1897 (when it was in the hands of John C. Lovell, 'furniture, warehousemen and fine art dealers’ of George Street, Sydney) and in the Anchor of 5 October 1911. There is some speculation that it could be much later than is generally believed (ie. c.1855) and be Alfred Clint 's 'pretty and well-painted scene’ Near Mrs Macquarie’s Chair , shown in an 1890 art exhibition. Mahood notes that Clint 'excelled in robust, crowded scenes’, which it certainly is.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 June 1827
- Summary
- Late colonial-era painter, sketcher, comic illustrator, amateur photographer and surveyor. A founding member of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870, Henderson showed six landscapes in its inaugural exhibition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Jul-18
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude54.3518644 Longitude-5.961616475 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1918-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- County Down, Northern Ireland
- Biography
- portrait painter and Baptist minister, was born in County Down, Northern Ireland. His cousin Mitchell Henry, then Home Rule leader, was responsible for sending MacCormac to London to study painting at Leigh’s Academy where he is said to have won a gold medal for portraiture at a London exhibition. Two years later MacCormac decided to try his luck on the Victorian goldfields, coming to Melbourne in the Golden Age , a newly built New York steamship under the command of Captain Porter, whose portrait, painted by MacCormac, was mentioned in the Argus of 8 January 1854.
At the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition (preceding the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855), when living at 92 Collins Street, MacCormac showed Portrait of a Hindoo , framed by the local gilders Benjamin & Marks. Several years later he showed the same work in the 1857 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition, at which time he stated that it had been 'painted from life’ – probably on the trip out, since other sketches drawn on the voyage and a Portrait of a Gentleman in Highland Costume were in the same exhibition.
MacCormac continued to exhibit oil portraits in Melbourne, including a self-portrait in a flowing cape and stylish hat in 1856. In 1857 he showed seven portraits, the subjects being the visiting English actor G.V. Brooke, the sculptor William Lorando Jones , four prominent Melbourne businessmen and Mrs Train, 'the Belle of Melbourne’. Seven portraits, including his self-portrait, were exhibited in 1860, together with a genre painting, Waiting for a Light . When reviewing the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art, the Argus of 18 December placed MacCormac’s Portrait of the Artist among the best portraits, despite some reservations: 'As likenesses Mr McCormac’s pictures are unexceptionable, but as works of art they are open to severe criticism on account of the hardness and rigidity of his style’.
During this period MacCormac changed his address several times, living in both Collins and Swanston Streets. In 1861 he exhibited a scene on the Yarra, his only known example of landscape painting. It was unfavourably reviewed. Victorian Suffering a Recovery , a narrative piece, was thought only marginally better, while the exhibition of an unfinished portrait of Captain Radcliffe was considered to have been an act of questionable judiciousness as far as the painter’s reputation was concerned. In December 1862 he showed The Death of Burke: King’s Last Look at Melbourne, which the Argus critic James Smith called 'crude and immature’. The Herald critic (29 December 1862) observed:
He has evidently laboured with the most commendable industry on his picture. His good intentions are very manifest. But he has not produced the result he wished and which the subject demanded. For Burke does not seem dead, and King does not seem sorry. The impression conveyed is, that Burke has taken more drink than he could carry, and that King is abusing him for having done so.
Soon afterwards MacCormac forsook painting to study law, then became disenchanted with it too and changed to theology. In 1866 he married Emily Mary Johnson, whom he had met on one of his many painting trips to Castlemaine where her father was a purveyor of goods to the goldmines. He was subsequently appointed Baptist pastor of the parish of Newstead on the Loddon River near Castlemaine, his address at the time of the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition where he exhibited A Whiff of the Pipe . This oil painting, depicting a bushman lighting his pipe with a taper, was again shown in Adelaide at the end of 1872 and at the 1873 London International Exhibition. But it probably did not signify a return to painting but was merely another showing of his picture called Waiting for a Light exhibited in 1860.
In 1868 MacCormac was appointed Baptist pastor of Moonta, a copper-mining town in South Australia. Despite his ministerial duties and small, damp manse he did continue to paint there, finding inspiration in the miners at the diggings. Two of the fourteen portraits he exhibited with the South Australian Society of Arts in 1870 were The Digger’s Rest and Old Chum . A Portrait of a South Australian Gold Digger was exhibited in the South Australian court of the London International Exhibition in 1873. Several 'capital characteristic studies of heads’, including 'a South Australian pioneer furnishing a face worth a thousand officials as a subject for an artist’s pencil – a face full of character and individualism’, were included in the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879.
After ten years of struggling with poor conditions, low salary, ill health and the loss of several children from infectious diseases MacCormac relinquished his ministry in 1880 and moved to Adelaide to work professionally as an artist. He opened a studio in Rundle Street where he received many commissions for portraits of civic and parliamentary dignitaries, including that of the explorer John McDouall Stuart (wearing the Founder’s medal of the Royal Geographical Society received for crossing Australia from south to north), which was said to have been the largest painting then in South Australia. Surviving portraits in Parliament House, Adelaide, include those of Sir John Cox Bray, Hon. George Charles Hawker, Sir Samuel Davenport and (Sir) Robert Richard Torrens. The city of Gawler (SA) also owns several MacCormac portraits such as those of Sir George Nott, James Martin and the explorer John McKinley. Others remain in South Australian churches and secular schools. The Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection includes portraits of John Howard Clark (1870s) and Sir Samuel Davenport (1894).
MacCormac continued to exhibit regularly into advanced old age, at intercolonial as well as local exhibitions, although several of the paintings he showed must have been painted years earlier or developed from earlier works. For instance, his portrait of Lady Rubens (Mrs Chevalier) , shown in 1898, clearly belonged to his Melbourne years when she partnered Nicholas Chevalier , as Rubens, to fancy-dress balls held in 1863 and 1867. King, the Survivor of the Burke and Wills Expedition subtitled 'The last look at his dead chief’ shown it at the Society of Arts in 1890 for sale at £150 was simply another showing of his Death of Burke shown in 1890. His portrait of Sir George Kingston for the House of Assembly was completed in June 1881 after Kingston had died at sea in November 1880. On 7 January 1899 the Adelaide Observer referred to MacCormac as 'the grand old man of South Australian art’ and claimed that among his many works he had painted portraits of all the past-presidents of the House of Assembly.
Emily Mary MacCormac died in 1897 and the bereaved Andrew wrote a book of poems, Via Crucis , which he dedicated to his friend Hallam, Lord Tennyson, governor of South Australia. Andrew MacCormac died in 1918 at the age of ninety-three. He was buried in the North Road Church of England Cemetery, Nailsworth. A granddaughter remembers his conversations about his Melbourne painter contemporaries, especially his frequent references to his friends Buvelot and Chevalier. Camroc Avenue in Prospect, South Australia is named after MacCormac – it is the last part of his name spelt backwards.
Writers:
Biven, RachelKerr, JoanNote: Subsequent biographer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1826
- Summary
- Male colonial painter of portraits, a few landscape and genre paintings, who mainly worked in South Australia, portraying the upper classes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1918
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1884-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Metalsmith, silversmith and jeweller was born in London and trained at Sir John Cass Institute. Arthur Cross contracted tuberculosis and immigrated to Western Australia for his health. He had met J. W. R. Linton when the latter was studying at 'The Cass’ in 1908. Cross was technically proficient, having won a travelling scholarship and the City and Guilds Medal while a student. He came out to be Linton’s partner in making silverware and jewellery. Linton continued to teach and Cross was the main fabricator. He arrived in May 1910 and lived with the Lintons. The first Linton and Cross exhibition was held in the Theosophical Society rooms in December 1910. Sixty-three items of metalwork and fourteen watercolours were exhibited. In 1911 they exhibited with the West Australian Society of Arts. This time there were eleven jewels, enamelled landscapes, copper boxes featuring rivets and enamel, a jarrah and silver paper knife and spoons. Cross also exhibited in the “Black & White” section. They exhibited spoons, buttons, jewels, enamels and illustrations with the West Australian Society of Arts in 1913. Their last exhibition “Pictures and Craftwork” was held in Viking House in December 1913 when ten oil paintings, thirty-two watercolours and forty-seven metal exhibits consisting of enamelled jewels, copper and silver, jewellery and boxes and spoons were on display. The work made while Cross was alive included necklaces, pendants, brooches, hat pins, a box or two, spoons and small sculptures. Quite a large proportion was jewellery and, according to Linton’s younger son John, most of the Linton jewellery was made at this time. One of the earliest was a necklace made for the Moore family which bears the mark of Linton and Cross “JWRL&AC”. This is silver, set with Ceylon sapphires and pearls ornamented with touches of gold. The style is very much that of the Birmingham Craft Revival jewellers. A more interesting piece is the one the family refer to as “The Peacock” with opal and carbuncles. The peacock was a familiar motif from the Aesthetic period through to Art Nouveau and as such was featured by a number of jewellers. This is one of the best from the English tradition surpassing that of the Englishman C. R. Ashbee which it is probably a play upon. The design is most likely to be Linton’s and the fabrication Cross’s. Unfortunately the drier climate was not able to prolong Cross’s life and he died of tuberculosis in 1917.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1884
- Summary
- Arthur G. Cross was born around 1884. He was a metalsmith, silversmith and jeweller. Cross trained at the Sir John Cass Institute. He contracted tubercolosis and immigrated to Western Australia for his health. Cross exhibited with J. W. R. Linton.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1917
- Age at death
- 33
Details
Latitude-33.42 Longitude149.577778 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter and political activist, was born in Bathurst (NSW), daughter of Edward Henry Mutton. Emily studied art at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School with Thea Proctor ; her watercolour Flower piece was included in the School’s 1933 Retrospective Exhibition. She married Alfred Paul in 1886; their son was the cartoonist Mick Paul , who drew his mother’s portrait for the Bulletin c.1912
Emily Paul exhibited with the Art Society of NSW (later Royal Art Society of NSW) in 1892-94, showing decorative panels in 1892. From the inaugural exhibition in 1895 onwards, she showed regularly with the NSW Society of Artists. Her Roses and other 'excellent flower paintings’ in oil in the 1896 exhibition were mentioned alongside a Sketch 'abounding in sunny color’. Two of her paintings were included in the Society of Artists’ contribution to the 1898 Grafton Gallery 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’ (cats 195, 196). She had work in the Commonwealth Exhibition organised by the Society of Artists in 1901, for which she was also a committee member. In 1902-3 Emily Paul travelled to Europe and studied art in London, at the Académie Julien in Paris and in the US. Her impressions of London, sent back to the Sydney Morning Herald , were published on 11 October 1904.
Influenced by US Socialists, she later abandoned art and became a leading public speaker for the Socialist Party. In 1914 she contested the Federal seat of Cook as a socialist, predictably unsuccessfully. She died in Sydney on 26 January 1917.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1864
- Summary
- a painter and regular exhibitor with the NSW Society of Artists, Paul studied under Julian Ashton with Thea Proctor. She later abandoned art to pursue politics, supporting the socialist party.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1855-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- From the 1880s, when his first mature work was painted, until just before his death in 1917, Frederick McCubbin painted some of Australia’s most loved landscapes and narrative paintings. Because of his family circumstances he had less freedom than many of his fellow artists, and his subject matter remains distinctly Victorian, and strongly affected by the narrative style of his early teacher, George Folingsby.Frederick McCubbin was born at 165 King Street, Melbourne, the third son of a Scottish baker, and his English wife. His mother encouraged him to draw, as did the pastor from the local church. On leaving school he was first employed by a local solicitor, but lost that job after he was caught constructing model theatres during office hours. He returned to helping in the family bakery, including driving the baker’s cart. From 1867 to 1870 he was an evening student at the Artisans School of Design at Carlton. Here he befriended fellow artists Louis Abrahams and Charles Douglas Richardson. He then enrolled as an evening student at the National Gallery School, where he continued as a student until 1885. From 1871 to 1875 he was apprenticed as a coach painter, but after completing his apprenticeship he had to concentrate on helping the family business. One of the most important influences on McCubbin’s development as an artist came from the Irishman George Folingsby, who succeeded Eugene von Guérard as head of the National Gallery School in 1882. Earlier he had been influenced Julian Rossi Ashton who was based in Melbourne for some years before moving to Sydney. McCubbin first exhibited at the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1876. In 1880 he was one of the group of students who signed a petition to the trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria, requesting bq). higher instructionbq). at the Gallery School. In 1882 he founded, with Louis Abrahams and four others, a Life-Club so that they could draw nude figures. In 1882 he was awarded a silver medal from the Victorian Academy of the Arts and in 1883 was awarded First Prize from the National Gallery School for studies in colour and drawing. His Folingsby inspired painting, Home Again, won a student prize in 1884. His student nickname became bq). The Profbq). for his passion for reading widely and deeply on all manner of subjects, and then telling his fellows what he had learnt.In 1885, after Tom Roberts returned from his European travels, McCubbin joined him and others on painting excursions and established the first artist’s camp at Box Hill. The following year he was both elected to the committee of the Australian Artists Association and appointed Drawing Master at the National Gallery School, a position he would hold for the rest of his life. In March 1889 he married a former student, Anne Moriarty. The same, in August, he joined Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder, Charles Douglas Richardson, R. E. Falls, Louis Abrahams and Herbert Daly in the polemical 9 × 5 Impression Exhibition. His first son, born the following year, was called Louis after Abrahams. While many of his colleagues travelled to Sydney and Europe, McCubbin’s professional and family commitments kept him in Melbourne, although he did send work to Sydney exhibitions. In 1900 he visited Tasmania, and later moved the family to Mount Macedon, which became the subject of many of his later works. He made his first and only journey to Europe, where is was profoundly impressed by Turner’s paintings. This influence permeated the art of his last years.He died of congestive heart failure at his home in South Yarra on 20 December 1917.
Writers:
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 February 1855
- Summary
- From the 1880s, when his first mature work was painted, until just before his death in 1917, Frederick McCubbin painted some of Australia's most loved landscapes and narrative paintings. Because of his family circumstances he had less freedom than many of his fellow artists, and his subject matter remains distinctly Victorian, and strongly affected by the narrative style of his early teacher, George Folingsby.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Dec-17
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude41.3082138 Longitude-72.9250518 Start Date1853-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Haven, Connecticut, USA
- Biography
- cartoonist and illustrator, was born in New Haven, Connecticut, USA on 20 September 1853 and was educated at Yale (graduated 1875). For health reasons he left Chicago on a world tour in 1882. When he arrived at Melbourne from London he remained to work as a cartoonist on various papers, especially Australian Tit-Bits (1884-86) – which he also edited from 19 June 1888 and gave it new life – and Melbourne Punch where he was principal artist in 1888-93 after Tom Carrington retired. His first full-page cartoon in Melbourne Punch was published on 12 January 1888. Mahood says that he turned Carrington’s 'King Working Man’ figure into an ogre and it became his most popular creation; a special issue of Melbourne Punch being devoted to his cartoons on 'King Working Man’ in June 1892. He also contributed cartoons to the Sydney Bulletin .
Bradley returned to America in mid-1893 due to his father’s illness. In 1899 he was appointed art director and cartoonist on the Chicago Daily News where he remained until his death. He died at his home in Wilmette, Illinois, on 9 January 1917, survived by his wife, whom he had married in 1901, and their four children. An album of 100 of his American cartoons was published in the US in March 1917.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 20 September 1853
- Summary
- Late colonial-era American cartoonist and illustrator who spent a decade working in Melbourne. From 1888-1893 he was the principle artist at Melbourne Punch after the retirement of Tom Carrington but he also contributed to the Bulletin and Australian Tit-Bits.
- Gender
- Unspecified
- Died
- 9-Jan-17
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude57.15 Longitude-2.11 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- Born at Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1846, James Taylor arrived in South Australia on the Lady Milton in 1864, and by 1868 was operating a photographic studio in Gawler. His advertisement in the Gawler Mercury for 3 December 1875 said: ‘James Taylor, photographer, Murray Street, Gawler, begs to thank the inhabitants of Gawler and the neighbour-hood for the liberal patronage received during the past seven years, and that having procured instruments and appliances of the newest and most approved construction, his customers may rely upon receiving really good, artistic portraits. The operating room is large and fitted with every appliance for the comfort of visitors.’
In 1880 Goodfellow & Hele of Adelaide published The Gawler Handbook, written by George E. Loyeau, a former resident and prominent citizen of Gawler. Seventeen real carte de visite by James Taylor were individually pasted on separate pages throughout the volume. A review of the book by the Register said the photographic views represented ‘the most important edifices and establishments in the town [and] nearly all of these, though small, are very clear and distinct … The frontispiece is the portrait of the late John McKinlay, the well-known explorer.’
On 8 July 1882 Taylor opened a branch establishment at Port Augusta, in Church Street, near the Church of England. Some of his surviving cartes de visite bear the imprint, in gold on a chocolatecoloured mount, ‘Taylor, Gawler & Pt Augusta’. In September the Port Augusta Dispatch drew attention to samples of Taylor’s work which could be seen at his studio in Church Street and at J.W. Davis’ jewellery and watchmaking shop in Commercial Road. ‘Some are portraits of wellknown residents, which will at once be recognised. For finish and fidelity these photos are firstclass. Mr Taylor has succeeded in taking a capital photograph of the interior of the Church of England, Port Augusta [which is] well deserving of a place in any album.’
Within three months of opening in Port Augusta, James Taylor had erected a new studio in Church Street where he was taking portraits between 9 am and 4 pm. ‘Cricketing, football, and other groups’ were taken by appointment. He also had large panoramic views of Port Augusta for sale which showed ‘the whole extent of the town and surrounding country’. The whole panorama was 74 by 14 inches in size, and when mounted cost £1 2s 6d. A half-size view, 42 by 14 inches, mounted, was 12s 6d, and any single frame could be purchased for ls 6d, unmounted.
At some time between March and November 1883 James Taylor changed his address from Church Street to Commercial Road, and by December 1884 his studio at Gawler had been vacated and taken by Philip Marchant.
Directory entries show that James Taylor had moved from Commercial Road to Chapel Street, Port Augusta, by 1888, and this entry continued to 1903, with a branch studio at Quorn listed from 1897 to 1901. In 1901 his son, Frank Taylor, printed the Port Augusta and Stirling Illustrated News, which ran for just seven issues and contained articles on Port Augusta and Stirling, and illustrated with photographs taken by James Taylor.
By 1904 James Taylor was no longer listed in the directory as a photographer at Port Augusta, or any other place in South Australia, but he re-appeared as ‘artist and photographer’ at 187 Childers Street, North Adelaide, in directories from 1909 to 1912. In the directory for 1907, 187 Childers Street was given as the address of his son, Donald Taylor (q.v.), who founded the Donald Taylor Collotype Company in 1903, and it appears James Taylor was involved with this business in the years he was not listed in the directory.
In an article on James Taylor which appeared in the December 1982 issue of the Australian Cartophilic Society newsletter, Bronte Watts gave details of postcards issued by James Taylor between 1904 and 1908. He also refers to Taylor’s experience as a collotype printer.
In an advertisement in the Advertiser for 28 May 1863, calligraphist J.S. Stacy announced that he was ready to teach any style of writing at 76 Currie Street, which had previously been known as ‘Taylor’s Photographic Rooms’. As James Taylor’s arrival in South Australia has been given as 1864, the photographer at 76 Currie Street must have been an as yet unknown Mr Taylor.
James Taylor died on the same day as his wife, 4 September 1917, aged 71 years.
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, p.294-95.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1846
- Summary
- James Taylor was a professional photographer who emigrated from Scotland to South Australia in 1864. He settled in Gawler, where he operated a photographic studio. He later moved to Port Augusta in the state’s north, where he photographed town and scenic views, as well as Indigenous subjects. His tableau photographs have been compared to those by Thomas Cleary.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Sep-17
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- London born, Ballarat based artist and teacher.
Henry Hall was educated at South Kensington Art School, England.
In the Creswick Grammar School’s 1882 annual report the headmaster, Sammuel Fiddian, reported on the appointment of Hall as art teacher:
'Impressed with the importance of a knowledge of drawing, I have long wished to include it in our regular routine. This year I have been able to accomplish my wish. I have secured the services of Mr. H. J. Hall, of Ballarat, an able teacher; under whom every pupil of the grammar school is instructed in this most useful as well as elegant accomplishment; and I am glad to say that, with a few exceptions, the pupils manifest a qualifying interest in the study.’
Hall was drawing teacher at Creswick Grammar School, Victoria, from 1882 to the mid-1880s. His most famous student there was Percy Lindsay (1870-1952), who under his guidance became a talented art student, receiving many prizes for drawing. Lindsay later became a significant landscape painter, book illustrator and black and white artist who contributed to the Bulletin . From 1885 to 1912 Hall was a teacher in technical and artistic drawing at the Ballarat School of Mines, Victoria.
He was appointed Freehand Model Drawing teacher at the Mechanics Institute School of Design (Ballarat West Art School) in 1885. Henry Hall was appointed Head of the Art Department in 1885, and lectured in freehand and model drawing. He started teaching drawing at the Ballarat School of Mines in 1889. Over many years Hall advertised private tuition, at 'Ferndale’, 25 Eyre Street, Ballarat, in Drawing, Painting and Perspective. Henry Hall became seriously ill in 1917 and was granted two successive months sick leave by the Ballarat School of Mines Council, however he died on 18 May. At the time of Hall’s death the Ballarat School of Mines Annual Report for 1917 noted: “Mr Hall was a conscientious teacher, and had been a member of Staff for 32 years. His loss was keenly felt by every member of the Institution.”
Writers:
Clifford-Smith, Silas
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
Source of info:
Gervasoni, Clare (3 November 2010) 'Information sourced from'.
- Born
- b. 1846
- Summary
- English born artist and teacher, who was active in the Ballarat area of Victoria during the late 19th and early 20th century.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-May-17
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Van Dieman's Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- with Miss Greig , the two were art students who exhibited work in Launceston in 1885 as pupils of Monsieur Maurice . The Examiner (18 December 1885) remarked that Mrs and Miss Greig displayed 'striking exhibits’, especially crayons – studied from objects in the round 'which show that their teacher does not pin his entire faith to copies.’
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 May 1845
- Summary
- Mrs and Miss Greig were art students who exhibited work in Launceston in 1885 as pupils of Monsieur Maurice.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Jun-17
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude-33.8015751 Longitude151.1046043 Start Date1841-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ryde, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and craftworker, was born on 2 June 1841, the first child of Emily Mary Darvall (1817-1909) and Robert Johnston Barton (1809-1863) who came to Sydney in January 1840 as fellow passengers aboard the Alfred and had married on 30 July that year. In partnership with Emily’s uncle Frederick Darvall and another passenger, Joseph Docker, Robert had bought the stock and licence area of Boree Byrang, a property near Molong (NSW) just beyond the official limits of settlement. Emily Mary had come down to her parents’ home, Deniston at Ryde, for her confinement and to be with her seriously ill mother, who died just three weeks before, as Emily put it, her 'sweet little child of affliction came into this sad world’.
Emily Susan was a pretty child with 'white skin, red cheeks, and golden hair’, 'but also very passionate’. Her mother wrote that at the age of eight 'her chief charm [was] her lively intelligent countenance & gentle unaffected manner’. She grew up at Boree Nyrang, educated by her mother who was an intelligent and well-educated woman, an accomplished writer of prose and verse. Although her mother was modest about her own drawing skills, she would have been able to foster her daughter’s talent. Emily’s aunt and godmother Eliza Kater , who lived nearby, was an accomplished artist, while her Uncle Frederick had had drawing lessons and did some sketching.
Family visits to Sydney were rare. When Emily Susan was only five her father suffered a compound fracture of the leg when his gig overturned and was severely crippled for the rest of his life. By the time she was 15 she was helping her mother with a household that included five younger brothers and three sisters. At the age of 19 she was married at Boree Nyrang to John Paterson who, with his brother Andrew, had a property not far away at Buckinbah and who in 1858 had been elected MLA for Lachlan and the Lower Darling. She had the first of her four children at Boree, but the others were all born at Illalong, a property the brothers took up near Yass. John Paterson died suddenly in August 1871, leaving Emily Susan a widow at 30. Family letters indicate she was greatly distressed and took more than a year to recover her health. She moved to Sydney to live with her widowed mother at Rockend Cottage, Gladesville, while Andrew Bogle Paterson, who had married Emily’s sister Rose, took over the management of Illalong. (Their eldest son was the poet, Andrew Barton ('Banjo’) Paterson.)
'E. Paterson of Yass’ had exhibited watercolours of Australian birds and flowers as an amateur at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, including 'Silver Eye’ on Wild Fig for sale at 3 guineas. After moving to Gladesville, she showed her paintings with the NSW Academy of Art in 1872-74 and with the Agricultural Society of NSW in 1872-73. All the work of this 'talented and painstaking amateur’ was highly praised, her Australian Flowers, Trees, Butterflies, and Fruit , shown in 1872, being considered to be 'of very great merit’ by the Sydney Mail critic. Her flowers from Haselden, near Bathurst, were said to have 'elicited universal praise’, while other paintings of Australian flowers and birds shown by Mrs Paterson of Illalong in the open section of the exhibition were admired for their beauty and variety. She exhibited Azaleas in 1873 and paintings of Australian Birds (4 guineas) and Australian Flowers (3 guineas) in the open section of the Academy of Art’s exhibition that year and. 'some excellent water-colour drawings of the flora of Australia’ at a conversazione held by the Academy in October 1874. At the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879 Mrs Paterson, 'amateur of Gladesville’, showed a screen, medals and watercolours of Australian flowers and butterflies; her Australian Orchids was commended by the judges. She was awarded a silver medal at the 1888 Women’s Industries Exhibition for a painted screen entered in the amateur section.
Emily Paterson took increasing responsibility for the management of the busy household at Rockend and remained there with her eldest son for some five years after her mother died in 1909. By 1915 she had moved to Drummoyne. She died there at her home, Nyanza, on 29 March 1917.
Writers:
Long, Jeremy
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 2 June 1841
- Summary
- An accomplished painter and craftworker, Emily Paterson's watercolours of native Australian birds and flowers were exhibited extensively with the NSW Academy of Art. Paterson, the aunt of poet A.B 'Banjo' Paterson, was raised in central western NSW before relocating to Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29-Mar-17
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1841-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Battery Point, Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land (Tas.)
- Biography
- sketcher, was the daughter of Sergeant David Macdouall, who had come to Hobart from Ireland with the 21st Fusiliers in about 1841, and his wife, Margaret Macdouall, from County Galway.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 11 November 1841
- Summary
- Anne Benbow lived her entire life in Oyster Cove, Tasmania, much of it on an old Aboriginal reserve. Despite the fact that many of Benbow's works appear to have been created from idealised childhood memories, they nevertheless provide a unique insight into the kinds of relationships and encounters colonial settlers had with local Indigenous communities.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13-Feb-17
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude50.4950632 Longitude12.1346523 Start Date1839-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Plauen, Saxony, Germany
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Plauen, Saxony, Germany, on 5 June 1839. After the death of his father and two brothers during the political upheavals of the late 1840s, Weger lived in straitened circumstances with his mother. In July 1852 he left Hamburg in the Little Alfred to join his brother Ernst in South Australia, arriving at Port Adelaide on 9 October. Wilhelm worked at Ernst’s blacksmith and wheelwright business in Stanley Street, North Adelaide, until he opened his own business at Nuriootpa. He and Lena, née Rönnfeldt, had seven children, all of whom were born before the family moved to North Adelaide in 1879 and Weger again set up in business as a blacksmith; later he took over Ernst’s Stanley Street shop. He died on 18 October 1917.
Soon after he arrived Wilhelm drew a naive watercolour of Ernst’s Stanley Street business (p.c.). He did not send this to his mother as originally intended because he thought the hills in the background were inaccurate, but presumably other sketches were sent home. Although unsigned, a watercolour of the residence of his father-in-law, Christian Heinrich Rönnfeldt, Poplar Holme (1855), and other stylistically similar views (AGSA and Tanunda Museum) may be attributed to him.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 June 1839
- Summary
- Sketcher and blacksmith of German origin. Wilhelm drew a naive watercolour of Ernst Weger's Stanley Street business, North Adelaide in 1855.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Oct-17
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude51.2715316 Longitude-0.341452351 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Surrey, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and professional photographer, was born in Surrey, England. He was taught to paint and draw by his father, Henry Short , and by attending classes at the Royal Academy School of Design in Somerset House, London. In 1852, aged eighteen, he came to Melbourne with his family in the Bangalore . In July 1856 W.W. Short exhibited his moving canvas Crimean War panorama, The Siege of Sebastopol , at Melbourne’s old Salle de Valentino, now renamed the Victoria Promenade. He first showed oil paintings in Melbourne the same year. At the Victorian Exhibition of Art, he showed Sunset View from Studley Park, Collingwood in the Distance , View of Flemington from Royal Park, with Cattle Grazing and Sundown. View Taken from Studley Park, with Richmond in the Distance (NLA). All were for sale. At this time he was still living at his parents’ home in Madeline Street, North Melbourne.
In 1857 R.F. Norton offered Short’s Studley Punt on the Yarra for sale at the Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition, and that same year William himself showed three landscapes with the Society of Fine Arts in Melbourne. His too were for sale, the most expensive being Dight’s Mill (Royal Historical Society of Victoria) at £50. Reviews were mixed. The Age encouragingly wrote:
That persevering young artist, Mr. W.W. Short, has as usual several oil pictures representing chiefly scenes on the Yarra Yarra beyond which the artist does not seem to rove. Every one of these exhibited is a great improvement upon any former effort, both as regards coloring and general treatment; but his pictures still have too much of the teaboardy aspect, and sadly want boldness of touch and variety of color.
'Christopher Sly’ ( James Neild ) of the Examiner called Sketch, near St. Kilda : 'atrocious rubbish … which, by the way, is not a sketch near St. Kilda, but is a very sorry attempt to paint the falls at Dight’s Mill and in which the rocks are represented as titanic carious teeth’. None of the paintings sold. All reappeared in the window of Joseph Wilkie’s art supplies and music emporium in Collins Street in 1859. Meanwhile Short had painted a 'Grand Moving Panorama of the Indian War’, which he exhibited in July 1858 'at the Assembly Rooms adjoining M’Cowan’s City Hotel, for a few evenings only, prior to its departure for the diggings’.
In June 1860 he applied, unsuccessfully, for the position of artist on the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition (whose leaders were subsequently commemorated in a painting by his father). He was living at 158 Brunswick Street in Collingwood or Fitzroy in 1861, the year he showed two oils in the Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts, The Yarra Bend from Studley Park and Distant View of the Lower Wannon Falls . The Age called the former 'a capital painting’, but the Argus commented: 'this gentleman is too fond of green and bronze. His pictures have a glare and flashiness about them which, if he would correct, he would probably secure more easily the effect he is perpetually seeking after’. The Examiner was even more severe:
Mr. W. Short is eminently painstaking but he is wrong – wrong in colour, wrong in effect, wrong in form. His pictures are very hard, very shiny, very brown, very like each other. If you half shut your eyes, and look at one after the other, you can hardly see any difference between them, so absolute is their mannerism … And yet his pictures are anything but carelessly painted, they are almost painfully elaborated, but they are elaborated in the wrong way. He makes great progress in a mistaken direction.
Short showed two oil paintings (possibly the same ones) at that year’s Victorian Exhibition held in preparation for the 1862 London International Exhibition. The 1861 view of the Yarra River signed 'William Short Jnr’ exhibited by Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne in 1984 is probably his Yarra Bend painting.
He turned to raffling his paintings in art unions to supplement his income and wrote, as his father was to do three years later, to Sir Henry Barkly seeking subscriptions. The Governor took two tickets in his October 1860 art union of two oil paintings, The Barrabool Hills, Geelong and The Yan Yean Reservoir (75 tickets at a guinea each). In February 1862 Barkly purchased two tickets for the 'large oil painting of the Yarra Bend taken from Studley Park in the late exhibition’ and in October took, as usual, two tickets (specifying that he wanted numbers 47 and 48) for a large oil of 'the Botanical Gardens, with a view of Melbourne’ (100 tickets at a guinea). William was suitably grateful.
Yet art unions even with vice-regal patronage did not provide much of a living. In 1863 William opened a photographic studio at 41 Collins Street West, Melbourne and the following year was calling himself 'artist in colors [and] photographic artist’. He exhibited only photographs at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, notably photographic portraits of children produced by an invention he had patented which, he claimed, dramatically reduced exposure time. 'Babies photographed in half a second by W. Short’s patent Electric Process’ was still appearing on the back of his cartes-de-visites in 1877.
Claiming long experience as an artist in drawing and painting as well as photography and offering both cartes-de-visites and vignettes, Short announced the opening of his new photographic studio at 37 Collins Street East in May 1867, having moved from 107 Elizabeth Street – Henry James 's former rooms. In 1870 he was a founding member of the Victorian Academy of Arts and is said to have exhibited Picnic Point, Looking towards Brighton Beach at the academy’s second exhibition in 1872 (catalogue unlocated). Although he was the proprietor of the Melbourne & Berlin Photographic Company at 12 Bourke Street East, Melbourne in 1877-84, Short seems to have spent part of the time at least at Bendigo. It was from an address in Pall Mall, Sandhurst (Bendigo) that an offended Short wrote to the newly formed Victorian Artists’ Society in April 1880 indignantly declining (in the light of his former vice-regal patronage) the committee’s offer to present him to Governor Lock, adding the postscript: 'Be kind enough to erase my name as member of your society’.
In the early 1870s Short’s whereabouts are obscured by the appearance of a namesake artist, possibly one of the Short Brothers . He often signed himself 'William Short junior’ and was listed this way when another William Short (who correspondingly called himself William Short senior in 1871-73), a painter of Bond Street, East Collingwood, appeared in the Melbourne Directory from 1870 to 1873. Any relationship to this older William Short has yet to be determined, but W.W. Short may have been his nephew. Years later, when William’s son William Henry Short began painting and exhibiting professionally the older artist had disappeared and W.W. Short then seems to have called himself 'William Short senior’. Numerous landscape paintings of the 1880s (mainly forest views) are signed this way. The more formulaic examples have the 'teaboardy’ qualities earlier complained of and appear compatible with Short’s youthful views, but the oeuvre of the three William Shorts still needs to be untangled.
There is, however, no questioning the identity of the William Short who exhibited nearly twenty Victorian landscapes at Stevens’s Art Gallery, Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, in 1898 and was reported as 'a pioneer painter, having arrived in the colony in 1852’. They included 'a bush track at Woodend, two moonlight effects, a view of the Yarra at Heidelberg, where the river is seen as its best’ and, 'the most ambitious’, a view of Hanging Rock. All 'vividly portrayed’, according to the Tatler , 'the weird melancholy of the Australian bush’.
William Short died of heart failure on 20 June 1917, just after making a speech at the wedding of a granddaughter at Burwood, his obituary stated. He and his wife had five daughters and five sons.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1833
- Summary
- William Wackenbarth Short was a painter and professional photographer. He came to Melbourne in 1852. Short applied for the position of artist on the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition in 1860. His application was unsuccessful.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Jun-17
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1917-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer, lithographer, editor and chemist, was born in London and came to Port Phillip as tutor to the children of the settler Robert Duff. He worked for the Melbourne Herald in the 1850s and was one of the founders of Melbourne Punch in 1855, moving on to edit the Journal of Australasia in 1856. At the same time he practised as an analytical chemist, published pamphlets in this field and became a founding member of the Victorian Institute for the Advancement of Science (later the Royal Society of Victoria).
In December 1852 Gibbons was awarded a first-class certificate and gold medal for the 'best specimens of lithography, most of them adapted to useful purposes’ at the Victorian Industrial Society Exhibition. He sent magnified photographs of microscopic objects, together with various microscopic preparations, 'Products prepared from Coal Tar’ and 'preparations illustrative of the Composition and Adulteration of Food’ (all his own work), to the 1861 Victorian Exhibition from 5 Collins Street East, Melbourne. At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition he showed a number of educational drawings and received an honourable mention for his magnified photographs of a microscopic structure. Gibbons used five of his magnified photographs to illustrate his book, Air and Water Poisoning in Melbourne (Melbourne 1869). He died at the age of ninety-two, on 23 July 1917, following a railway accident.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1825
- Summary
- William Gibbons was an avid and analytical chemist whose educational drawings were used later to illustrate his book. He also gained a reputation as an editor and founded Melbourne Punch in 1855.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Jul-17
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1896-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and army sergeant, drew a very crude cartoon of a man in undress blowing a trumpet labelled 'The Squeak of the Ballyrats’ and signed it as '5th of 26th Battn’, while serving in it in WWI. The original was presented to the Mitchell Library in 1919 for inclusion in its collection of servicemen’s and women’s diaries of World War I. It was presumably an amateur offering for one of the service annuals or other souvenir publications.
Australian War Memorial and National Archives of Australia records reveal that George Theodore Robertson had been a clerk, aged 19 years, 3 months, of Trevallyn, Launceston, Tasmania, when he enlisted with the A.I.F. (7th Infantry Brigade, 26th Battalion, 5th Reinforcements) on 4 August 1915. Private Robertson was promoted to Corporal in March 1916 and to Sergeant some time afterwards. Sergeant Robertson was killed in action in France on 29 July 1916. His parents were George and Edith Robertson, also of Trevallyn.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Note: PrimaryStaff Writer
Note: Subsequent
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1896
- Summary
- Cartoonist and army sergeant. Australian War Memorial records reveal that George Theodore Robertson had been a clerk, age 19, of Trevallyn, Launceston, Tasmania, when he enlisted with the A.I.F.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Jul-16
- Age at death
- 20
Details
Latitude-37.560833 Longitude143.8475 Start Date1895-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ballarat, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- caricaturist, worked in Ballarat.
Born at Ballarat on 30 July 1895, Ted was the only son of Edwin and Florence Cannon. He enrolled at the Ballarat School of Mines Technical Art School in 1912, where he came under the influence of principal and artist H. H. Smith. Canon displayed a talent for industrial design, but it was his black and white work that 'drew’ most attention. His cartoons and caricatures, heavily influenced by Phil May, were of a particularly high standard. During the Ballarat Exhibition of 1913 Ted’s work was singled out for notice and he was awarded First Prize.
After completing his art course Ted was employed as an assistant teacher at the Ballarat Technical Art School, before working as cartoonist with the Ballarat Star newspaper at the end of 1914. In 1915 Ted was awarded the prestigious Victorian Education Department Senior Technical School Scholarship. Only months into his scholarship, Ted volunteered for the AIF. He embarked from Port Melbourne on 23 November 1915 with reinforcements to the 6th Infantry Battalion bound for Egypt.
During the Battle of Pozieres on the Western Front Ted Cannon worked with the Scout Platoon (under the command of Lieutenant Jack Rogers) sketching the enemy’s gun emplacements proved invaluable to the Brigade and brought Ted to the attention of the Australian High Command. On 13 September 1916 Canon was given a special assignment involving being sent out forward of the Old Mill at Verbrandenmolen (in the Ypres Salient) to draw a panorama of the German lines in the area from Hill 60 to The Bluff. Canon was sniped by an enemy machine-gunner and sustained severe abdominal wounds. He was operated on at the 17th Casualty Clearing Station. He died early in the morning of the 14 September 1916. His body was buried at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery.
As a mark of respect Lieutenant Jack Rogers had the Scouts erect a new Observation Post in the Glide on the summit of The Bluff, which was to be marked on all maps as “Cannon’s Post.”
BFAG has 4 ink and pencil caricatures dated 1915, gift of Vic Greenhalgh 1980.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 30 July 1895
- Summary
- Early 20th century caricaturist, worked in Ballarat.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Sep-16
- Age at death
- 21
Details
Latitude-27.5610193 Longitude151.953351 Start Date1881-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toowoomba, QLD, Australia
- Biography
- Jesse Jewhurst Hilder was born in Toowoomba, Queensland, on 23 July 1881. He was the ninth child (of ten) born to engineer Henry Hilder and his wife Elizabeth Hall. After winning an educational scholarship, Hilder studied at Brisbane Boys’ Grammar School from 1895-97 and while there he began to sketch and paint. After completing his schooling, he joined the Bank of New South Wales in Brisbane. Early in 1901 he was transferred to Goulburn, and in June 1902 he was transferred to Bega on the south coast of New South Wales – while there he is believed to have contracted tuberculosis (TB). In 1904 the Bank moved him to Sydney and it is around this time that he sold his first watercolour for one pound. During his time in Sydney Hilder was sometimes painting under the nom de plume of 'Anthony Hood’, apparently so his employer would not be aware of his interest in art (Hilder, 1966, p. 67). While in Sydney, Hilder met artist Fred Leist, who saw value in his painting, and persuaded Hilder to show his work to Julian Ashton. In 1906 Hilder enrolled in art classes with Julian Ashton at the Sydney Art School; fellow students included Sydney Ure Smith and Harry Julius. Julian Ashton wrote of his talented pupil in his late life memoir, Now Came Still Evening On: 'Hilder was very shy and reserved. He used to come to my classes after four o’clock when the bank in which he worked closed. He had a natural instinct for drawing and a sense of beautiful colour values. In nearly all of his work he conveys the impression of having attempted to express some individual form of beauty both in design and colour’ (1941, pg. 117). Late in 1906, Hilder became increasingly sick, and his chronic illness was finally confirmed as TB. In early 1907 the bank gave him three months leave to seek a cure and he travelled to Stanthorpe in Queensland where he was visited by Julian Ashton. After his medical leave Hilder was transferred to Wyalong, where the climate was considered more suitable for his condition. Despite his illness Hilder kept in contact with his artistic friends and was encouraged to submit work to the first show of the newly revived Society of Artists (SOA) in Sydney. At this exhibition, Hilder was listed as a member of the SOA on the catalogue and he exhibited twenty-one watercolours. The October 1907 issue of Lone Hand reported that Hilder was the 'discovery’ of the August 1907 show (1 October 1907, p. 592). In 1908 Hilder was admitted to the Queen Victoria Home for Consumptives at Wentworth Falls, and in July the bank sent him to the inland town of Young. Later the same year, Hilder exhibited nineteen watercolours at the SOA annual exhibition in Sydney, and sold fourteen works. While in Young, Hilder met probationer nurse Phyllis Meadmore (1886-1951), and they married in early 1909. Upon the urging of his wife, Hilder resigned from the bank in April 1909 and became a full-time artist. For their honeymoon the couple rented a cottage in Lawson in the Blue Mountains for three months and he painted while there. The couple then moved to Parramatta, and in September the first feature on the artist, written by artist D.H. Souter, was published in Art & Architecture magazine. Sadly this article was the only lengthy profile written during the artist’s lifetime. Sales at the November 1909 SOA exhibition were disappointing and the artist ended his first year as a professional artist under financial stress. Early in 1910 Sydney Long persuaded art dealer Adolf Albers to become Hilder’s agent and during the following six years Albers sold two hundred and seventy-three of his paintings. Hilder’s health improved and he bought a pony and trap which he used to travel to painting spots. After a brief stay in Ryde the family moved to a cottage at Hornsby which they named Burrator. Family fortunes improved, especially after the National Art Gallery of New South Wales bought Dry Lagoon for fifty guineas, the highest price achieved during the artist’s lifetime. A sensitive man, Hilder was apt to take offence at seemingly minor slights. This, with the added pressures of making a living and the pain and discomfort of his illness, saw the artist end several friendships, although he remained close to Elioth Gruner and Julian Ashton. After the November 1911 SOA exhibition, Hilder seems to have fallen out with several SOA members including Sydney Ure Smith and Harry Julius. In August 1912, Hilder’s displeasure with the SOA was made clear when he exhibited his watercolours with the Royal Art Society of New South Wales, and he exhibited with the SOA’s rival again in 1913 and 1914. In late October 1913, Hilder and his wife rented a comfortable cottage in Hornsby called Inglewood. Early in 1914 Hilder discovered a nearby working brick pit and from an elevated position above the pit he painted a series of images showing day to day operations below. Some of these images were exhibited at Hilder’s first, and only, one-man show at W.H. Gill’s gallery in Melbourne. The artist exhibited fifty-three works with prices from three to forty guineas at the April 1914 show. Hilder travelled by ship to Melbourne for the opening, but became ill so was unable to sketch while in the Victorian capital. Despite this, he managed to visit the National Gallery of Victoria where he saw The Bent Tree by Corot. During 1915 Hilder twice visited Dora Creek, a tributary of Lake Macquarie on the Central Coast of New South Wales, to draw and paint, and the work of Corot influenced many of these late life images. His illness worsened and on 23 March 1916 Hilder painted Dora Creek, his final work. Hilder died at his Hornsby home, aged thirty-five, on 10 April 1916 and was buried at Rookwood necropolis the following day. He was survived by his wife and two children. Known artistic attendees at his funeral included (among others): Julian Ashton, Elioth Gruner, Harry Julius, Adolf Albers, John Lane Mullins (secretary of the SOA) and the director of the (then National) Art Gallery of New South Wales, G.V.F. Mann (Sydney Morning Herald, 12th April 1916, p. 11). While Hilder is best known for his heavy wash watercolours, he did work in other media. He produced a series of monotype prints as well as several oils. Hilder didn’t persevere with oil painting as the smell was detrimental to his health. He also illustrated for the Lone Hand in 1910 and illustrated poetic works for several other writers. Arguably his most important illustrative commission was for Dorothea Mackellar’s famous poem, My Country (1915), for which he provided watercolour images as well as hand lettering. The Sydney art community was in shock after Hilder’s death, and in July 1916 a memorial exhibition of two hundred and five loaned works was held at the SOA rooms in Sydney. Listed prominent owners included, among others: Howard Hinton, Sir Baldwin Spencer, S.H. Ervin and Nellie Melba. Publication of the first Hilder book, J.J. Hilder, Watercolourist, edited by Sydney Ure Smith and Bertram Stevens, served as a catalogue to this exhibition, and the profits from the limited edition book were given to the artist’s widow. The success of this experimental colour publication encouraged Bertram Stevens, Harry Julius and Sydney Ure Smith to launch Art in Australia later that year, with a review of the Hilder memorial exhibition in the first issue of the magazine. The publication of Hilder’s work in Art in Australia encouraged other artists to follow his example by taking up watercolour painting. This interest in watercolour saw the establishment of the Australian Watercolour Institute in 1923. Brett Hilder summarised the legacy of his father in the catalogue of the 1966 anniversary exhibition: 'From the time of his death, if not before, there grew a Hilder 'legend’ which was established on three aspects: firstly on his work as a watercolourist, secondly on his tragic but gallant life, and thirdly on the inspiration he gave Sydney Ure Smith to begin the publication of fine art books in Australia’ (Hilder, B. in Jesse Jewhurst Hilder Anniversary Exhibition [catalogue] 1966, unpaginated). With the work of Hilder being highly sought after following his death, Art in Australia published a well illustrated monograph titled The Art of J.J. Hilder in 1918. This book included eulogistic articles by Bertram Stevens, Harry Julius and Sydney Ure Smith as well as a list of Hilder’s post 1907 paintings. A smaller version of the memorial exhibition was shown in Melbourne in March 1917. In 1966, Hilder’s son Brett published The Heritage of J.J. Hilder, a work which addressed errors in the first book and included a list of known artworks, including three hundred and ninety-four watercolours, fourteen oils and six monotypes.
Writers:
Silas Clifford-Smith
Note:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 23 July 1881
- Summary
- Hilder's delicate, sensitive landscape watercolours were enthusiastically received when they were first exhibited in the early years of the century. This was in part because of their beauty, but also because he was already suffering from the tuberculosis that eventually killed him.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Apr-16
- Age at death
- 35
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1878-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne
- Biography
- Painter, Alice Emilie Turner, daughter of James Turner of Melbourne married Frederick Norman Adair in Perth in 1898. He also came from Melbourne. They lived in Cottesloe. She painted in oils and water colours and exhibited with the WA Society of Arts c.1898-1912. She was the society’s librarian in 1911.She shared an exhibition with Gordon Holdsworth at the Book Lover’s Library run by Mrs Zabel in 1916 but in November that year when he enlisted her husband was a widower.
Writers:
Staff Writer
erickd
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 1878
- Summary
- Female Federation period painter who exhibited in Western Australia for over a decade with the West Australian Society of Arts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1916
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude40 Longitude-100 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United States of America
- Biography
- Photographer who was born in the United States of America and had arrived in Albany by 1880. He joined the police force from 1881-4 and was then a porter and a clerk. He lived in Highgate and Maylands. DOROTHY TO CHECK NAME SPELLING
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2010
- Born
- b. 1862
- Summary
- Photographer who was also a porter and a clerk.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1916
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1862-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born Francis Mahony (often wrongly spelt 'Mahoney’ – his son’s usual spelling) in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, tenth of the 11 children of an Irish father and a Cornish mother. Later he invariably signed his work 'Frank P. Mahony’, having adopted the middle name 'Prout’ in honour of the Irish priest Father Francis Sylvester Mahony, reputedly a relative, who wrote as 'Father Prout’ in Fraser’s Magazine . At the age of 10 Frank moved to Sydney with his family. He worked in an architect’s office for a brief period after leaving school and attended classes at the NSW Academy of Art under Anivitti. He exhibited paintings in the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition and worked on the Illustrated Sydney News . He was included among the illustrators on the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia (1886), e.g. the spearing of Edmund Kennedy and E.J. Eyre and Wylie exploring. He contributed to the Sydney Mail and the Australian Town and Country Journal . Together with A.H. Fullwood and Julian Ashton (c.1887), he pioneered the Sydney weekend sketching camps.
Mahony became well known for his depictions of bush topics, especially horses and action subjects, in both paintings and cartoons. For a while he was instructor in art at the Royal Art Society (RAS). His oil painting, Rounding up a Straggler (1889), was purchased for the AGNSW when he was barely out of art school, while in 1896 the gallery purchased The Cry of the Mothers (1895), which shows horses and cattle on the banks of a flooded river. By 1899 the AGNSW owned three of his oils, having added the bushranging subject As in the Days of Old (Kerry & Co. photo of it reproduced Bookfellow 25 March 1899, 37). Restive 1902, a pen and ink drawing done in Sydney showing a horse being held by an Aborigine and observed by a caucasian male rider, was purchased by the AGNSW from the Bertram Stevens Memorial Exhibition in 1922 for eight guineas. Six of his paintings and six of his illustrations were included in the NSW Art Gallery’s Loan Exhibition of Australian art in 1918. A&R lent his originals for Boake’s Where Dead Men Lie and his drawings for Ethel C. Pedley’s Dot and the Kangaroo (London, 1899) were also shown (both now ML). In May 2001 Bridget McDonnell Gallery was offering his watercolour and gouache Polo Player 1893 from the estate of Jane Glad, Norman Lindsay 's elder daughter (ill. cat. no.9).
Mahony contributed to the annual Antipodean (no.2, 1893), published in London, and to other papers and journals. He illustrated several books, including Louise Mack’s Teens (Sydney, A&R, 1897), which like Dot and the Kangaroo was printed in black and white from coloured originals. ( Karna Birmingham illustrated the 1920s edition of Teens .) Other commissioned illustrations were for Barcroft Boake’s poems and for Henry Lawson’s While the Billy Boils (A&R, 1896: 2nd series 1914) and On the Track and Over the Sliprails (A&R, 1923). At the 1898 Grafton Gallery Exhibition of Australian Art in London, Frank P. Mahony of The Society of Artists, Sydney, showed: cat. 1, three wash drawings, and cat. 273, 'That Quiet Hack’, lent by the Bulletin Newspaper Co. with originals by other artists.
Mahony was a member of the RAS in 1883-95 and a founding member of the breakaway Society of Artists in 1895 until it rejoined the RAS. He showed The Centaurs with the Society of Artists in 1898 ('on a larger canvas a more ambitious design – two centaurs struggling for mastery on the edge of a cliff, with a bevy of nymphs waiting for the conqueror’). Along with Randolph Bedford, Tom Roberts, W.A. Holman, Henry Lawson and others, he was a 'material’ member of the Dawn and Dusk Club, founded at Sydney in 1899. (The 'spiritual’ members included Shakespeare, Rabelais and Aristophenes, with many other famous names blackballed for lack of humour.) The six 'art Duskers’ held regular sketching evenings. 'F.R. [sic] Mahony’ did a large oil painting of Soldiers of the Queen which, along with three other paintings (by Arthur Collingridge, Joseph Wolinski and Tindall), decorated an arch erected for the Federation procession in Sydney on 1 January 1901 (information Stephen Foster).
He contributed cartoons to the Bulletin from the 1890s. One of his earliest known commissions was to improve a reader’s drawing of a bushie and a dapper monocled gent signed 'B. Strange’ ( Ben Strange ?) entitled The average Mining Report , with the gag, 'Manager (of the Dead Goat Mining Co): “Splendid stone – it averages five ounces to the ton”/ Shareholder. “That’s good, how many tons did you crush?”/ Mine Manager: “Tons? I crushed fourteen pounds.”’ The new version, signed 'Frank P Mahony’ and dated 'P.[Paid?] Jan 14th 1892’, has a slightly altered caption verso and the annotation '£1.10.0’ (ML PXA 2695). Post-mortem Item by Mahony was published 26 August 1893, 8.
Other Bulletin cartoons include 17 originals 1896-1908 (and undated) in the ML Bulletin collection, plus The New School of Duffing 1898, re: stealing bicycles instead of horses because of shorter sentence if caught (ill. Rolfe, 49); men on a park bench 1893 (ill. Rolfe, 96); an illustration to Zef’s 'The Man from Australia’ showing an archetypal homesick Australian bushie asking an English chemist for 'a smell at the eucalyptus bottle’ (25 July 1896, p.11: included in Ross Woodrow’s racial types archive website 2001); a racist sheep and rabbit fable (paralleling them with Chinese Australian immigrants and other foreigners invading a bush hut with a Caucasian woman and baby at the door) 1898 (ill. Rolfe, 97); a boy tying up an old horse 1898 (ill. Rolfe, 98); Steeplechasing up to Date 10 December 1898, 25 (see JK Archive); sharp prickly pear joke 1899 (ill. Rolfe, 112); illustration to poem For Beauty’s Sake by Will Ogilvie, signed 'Frank P. Mahony/ Nov 99’ [knight on horseback with damsel “Beauty” filling his stirrup-cup] (ill. Rolfe, 94); (bushie drawing) 'First tramp: “Say, mate, where did you get the dorgs?”/ Second ditto: “Yer see, they wus born outback here three months ago, and I ain’t found enough water ter drown’d 'em in yet”’ 1900 (ill. Rolfe, 111). An ink wash and white original In the Sale Yards , published Bulletin 30 June 1900, 15 (1st Dealer: “What was all the fuss when you came in just now?”/ 2nd Dealer: “Oh one of my cows didn’t have tuberculosis”’), was offered by Bridget McDonnell Gallery, Melbourne, in July-August 2000 for $1,250.
Mahony and his wife, Mary née Tobin, a barmaid from Yass whom he married on 20 January 1897 at St Patrick’s Catholic Church, Sydney, left Australia for London in late 1901, according to the ADB ; a bush cartoon signed 'London Aug. 1902’ is illustrated in Rolfe, 114. (Mills says he went to London in 1902, while Lindesay and McCulloch say he went in 1904.) At least until 1908 Mahony regularly sent drawings back to the Bulletin and Lone Hand but then disappeared. He, Mary and their son Bill ( Will Mahony/ Mahoney ) lived in poverty in the Portobello Road district. Frank Mahony died in a charitable home on 28 June 1916 after a long illness. (Many give his date of death as 1917, including Bridget McDonnell Gallery May 2001.) His 'Australian admirers’ (in Australia and UK) took up a subscription for a headstone.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1862
- Summary
- Federation-era painter, illustrator and Bulletin cartoonist. He is known for depictions of bush topics, especially horses and action subjects, in both paintings and cartoons.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Jun-16
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude57.4790124 Longitude-4.225739 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Inverness, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 13 May 1850
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1916
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude18.915091 Longitude72.8259691 Start Date1849-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Colaba, Bombay, India
- Biography
- sketcher, writer and grazier, was born in Colaba, Bombay, India, eldest son of Francis William Hopkins RN and Margaret, née McNeil. Educated in England for the Indian Civil Service, he migrated to Victoria instead at the age of 16 and worked for his uncle, John Wilson, at Woodlands, Crowlands, on the Wimmera River. From this address he sent four 'Rough Sketches in Water-Colours, showing the use of body-colour (painted by candle-light)’ to the 1866-67 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition: The Malvern Hills, from Southam Gloucestershire , An Autumn Sunset in the Country (near Cheltenham, England) , Mount Langi-ghiran, Victoria and A Country Cottage (Prestbury England) . All were for sale, priced from three to seven pounds. Two larger, unframed, watercolours of scenes in the bush offered to the commissioners may also have been shown.
Hopkins remained at Woodlands until 1871 then managed properties in Victoria and New South Wales until 1885, when he and Alexander Wilson purchased Errowanbang, near Carcoar, NSW. He acquired other property and was a founder and executive member of the NSW Pastoralists’ Union. His hobby was writing plays for his actor-manager friend Alfred Dampier, who produced five in 1876-82 (with no great success); all derived from stock European melodramatic models. Hopkins also published short stories, essays, the Australian Ladies’ Annual (Melbourne, 1878) and reviewed books for the Australasian Pastoralists’ Review . Rickard notes: 'He also dabbled in water colours and pen-and-ink drawings but his approach to the arts was that of the competent amateur’.
Hopkins died at Errowanbang on 20 July 1916 after a mining accident, survived by his wife, Sarah Jane, née Kennedy, whom he had married at Hawthorn, Melbourne, on 8 January 1884, and their only son. He was buried at Carcoar.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1849
- Summary
- Sketcher, writer and grazier, Hopkins was born in India and educated in England, before migrating to Victoria in 1865. He was an amateur artist and playwright who exhibited in Melbourne in 1866.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Jul-16
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude55.7759095 Longitude-4.033442 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter and etcher, who also worked as a decorator, was born at Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland the son of John Mather,a surveyor, and his wife Margaret (nee Allen. Mater studied art at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts, Glasgow. On 3 January 1878 he arrived at Melbourne, travelling on the Scottish ship, Victoria on board the Loch Long. Because it was not possible to work full time as an artist, he initially worked as a decorator. He painted an overmantel at Mandeville Hall as part of Mr East’s team (completed 1878); he also decorated the pavilion, a cabinet and other furniture for W.H. Rocke at the 1880-81 Melbourne International Exhibition. His major commission, however, was winning the contract to decorate the Exhibition Building itself, which he completed with the assistance of a team of thirty craftsmen led by his compatriot James Paterson of the firm of Paterson Bros (Paterson family scrapbooks, National Library of Australia, manuscript). This apparently enabled Mather to abandon decoration and devote himself 'wholly and solely to an unremitting study of art’ ( Table Talk 2 November 1888, 3: cited Lane), though Lane notes that he was advertising as a decorator in the Age as late as 5 November 1881. Hw worked from his studio at Lilydale, painting oil paintings and watercolours as well as making prints in the the recently revived medium of etching. His tranquil pastoral scenes, painted en plein air, made him an especially popular artist in late 19th century Melbourne.
On 16 September 1882 he married Jessie Pines Best, and they had three children.
Mather was active within the arts community. He was President of the Victorian Artists Society 1893-1900, 1906-8 and 1911. Nevertheless in 1912 he joined with other established Melbourne artists to form the breakaway Australian Art Association. As a trustee for the National Gallery of Victoria and a member of the Felton Bequest Committee he became a strong advocate for Australian art entering the collection.
He died of diabetes at his home in South Yarra, on 18 February 1916. A memorial exhibition of his work was held at the Athaneum Gallery, Melbourne, in August 1916.
.
.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 1848
- Summary
- Glasgow born and educated, John Mather came to Melbourne hoping to pursue a full time career as an artist, but for some years had to work as an interior decorator. He was a foundation member of the Victorian Artists Society and also the Australian Art Association. His own works were very much in the plein air tradition, but he worked separately from Louis Buvelot and his circle.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Mar-16
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude52.2814519 Longitude-1.5815742 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Warwick, England, UK
- Biography
- gold bullion embroiderer, was born in Warwick, England, where both her parents ran businesses. Her mother, Ann Reading, was a Berlin wool dealer and her father was a currier and leather cutter who also stocked glass and china in his shop. Sarah Ann Reading’s uncle, John Fairfax (proprietor of the Sydney Morning Herald ), visited England in the early 1850s and the Reading family accompanied the Fairfax family back to Sydney in 1853, when Sarah Ann was nine. After their initial store in West Maitland was flooded out, the Readings opened an import business in George Street, Sydney in 1856, which continued in Market Street until 1880. They specialised in Berlin woolwork, embroidery silks and braids, lampshades and clocks. After her father died in 1863 Sarah and her mother continued to run the business.
In 1869 Sarah married Lewis Steffanoni , a painter, illuminator and commercial artist who became an inaugural council member of the NSW Academy of Art in 1871. The new partnership of Reading, Son & Steffanoni continued at the Market Street premises. If, as an early business card states, Lewis also did gold bullion embroidery work, then his skills perfectly complemented those of Mrs Reading and Sarah Ann. Many of the most prestigious embroideries of colonial society were designed and executed at the shop. Each new regiment, yachting club, masonic or ecclesiastical organisation needed its regalia, flags, badges, vestments and trappings embroidered in gold bullion. In 1870 Mrs Reading made the Regimental Colour of the Singleton regiment:
This gay flag … finished in the most handsome manner, is made of beautiful red silk, with a blue cross through the same, whilst in the upper corner the union is neatly placed. In the centre, a fine silver star is let in, but, as yet, is not exactly completed, owing to a large crown having to be worked in the same, and underneath the above is a scroll, with the words “Singleton Volunteers”.
Diplomatic coats were worked for Lords Carrington and Northcote, the Earl of Jersey, Sir Robert Duff, the King of Tonga and other dignitaries. Surf clubs at Bondi, Coogee and Clovelly had flags made. Many large departmental stores like David Jones, Anthony Horderns and Farmers used their services for embroidered items for household use. They also supplied country businesses throughout NSW and other states, including Tasmania.
After Lewis died in 1880 Sarah Ann Steffanoni continued the embroidery business from Brighton House, Clarence Street, which she also ran as a boarding house to earn extra income. Supporting five young children was extremely difficult. Generous guests and relatives sent food parcels to help the family survive, and Sarah Ann and her three daughters often worked until midnight.
Many women embroiderers were trained under Mrs Steffanoni. Despite the deaths of the eldest daughter, Essie, in 1889 at the age of nineteen, the second daughter, Sophie , in 1906 and Sarah Ann herself in 1916, the business continued in the hands of Alice Steffanoni until 1924.
Writers:
Butterfield, Annette B.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1844
- Summary
- Sarah Ann Steffanoni was a gold bullion embroiderer, born in Warwick, England, who moved with her family, along with the Fairfax family to Sydney, Australia in 1853. With her artist husband, Steffanoni continued the family embroidery business, in which many prestigious embroideries were designed and executed. Among her accomplishments, Steffanoni designed the Regimental Colour of the Singleton re
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1916
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland
- Biography
- Scottish-born Alexander Sherriff arrived in Sydney in 1884 and and resided at 'Edinville’ at 41 Trafalgar Street, Annandale NSW 2038 (1891)Students at the School of Architecture and Building, UNSW,surveyed Edwinville. See State Library of New south Wales record: Collection 03: Register of Historical Buildings; historical surveys illustrated with measured drawing…by students of the School of Architecture and Building UNSW, Call number PXD 146, v. 1-2. until his death in Paddington. Information on his career and career is limited. Besides the statue of Sir George Grey for the Lands Department Building, Sydney, in 1901, Sherriff also sculpted Tattersals Club, Pitt Street, and is thought to have been commission to contribute sculpture to the Walker convalescent Home, Concord in 1893.
His finest sculpture is on the semicircular front of 'Edwinville’ in Trafalgar Street, Annandale, consisting of nine panels composed of bas-relief sculptures of birds and a kangaroo. The round front has a central window and two either side which have projecting heads marking their centers that would appear to be based on Renaissance artists or Greek mythology. The front is especially impressive not only for its remarkable figurative detail, but also for the use of the curved glass double-hung windows. Allen George Mansfield who lived not far distant at Glebe may had been the architect.See Morton Herman,The Architecture of Victorian Sydney,Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1956, Fig 237, p. 181. the caption reads: “Edwinville, 39 Trafalgar Street, Annandale, has be attributed to George Allan Mansfield.” Herman noted “larger suburban houses ranged from Scotch Baronial as with Loganbrae, on Bellevue Hill (235, 236), through the Mansfield-like classicism of Edwinville, at annandale (237), to the nondescript-Victorian of Gasgoyne, at Burwood (223).” p. 155.
Writers:
Laila Ellmoos
philipdrew
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. c.1 September 1843
- Summary
- Scottish-born Alexander Sherriff was commissioned to carve a statue of Sir George Grey for the Lands Department Building, Sydney, in 1901. He lived and worked at Annandale.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Oct-16
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Aboriginal women and girls from La Perouse, on the north shore of Botany Bay near Sydney, are well known for making shell-work, which involves decorating ornaments with a variety of shells and shell grit collected from local beaches (Individual Heritage Group, 1988). Shell-working has been practised by generations of Aboriginal women at La Perouse for well over a century. Emma Timbery belongs to the early phase in the history of La Perouse shell-work. She was born in the early 1840s at Liverpool, south west of Sydney, the daughter of Hubert Walden and his Aboriginal wife, Betsy. In May 1864, she married George (“Trimmer”) Timbery, who was from the Illawarra area (Nugent, 2005b, pp381-382). By the early 1880s, and probably since the late 1870s, George and Emma were living with their children, along with some other Aboriginal families, at La Perouse. The specific location of their settlement was then called Cooriwal (also spelt Currewol, Koorewal and Gooriwaal), but is today more commonly known as Frenchman’s Beach. George, like other Aboriginal men in the settlement at the time, worked as a fisherman. A report made by the local policeman to the Protector of Aborigines in January 1883 explained that the Aboriginal women contributed to the livelihood of their families by 'making shell baskets, which they sell in Sydney and the suburbs’. Emma Timbery, who became known as 'Queen Emma’ or 'Granny Timbery’, was likely one of those women (Nugent, 2005a). Unfortunately, no known examples of Emma Timbery’s shell-work today survive, or indeed any at all from the late nineteenth century and very early twentieth century period in which she was working. (One of the earliest surviving examples of La Perouse shell-work held in a public collection is a pair of baby shoes in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney which dates from 1918, postdating Emma’s death. See She Sells Seashells, 2007). There are, however, references to Emma’s shell-work in written records dating from the period of its manufacture. For instance, in February 1910, the Australian Aborigines Advocate, the magazine of the United Aborigines Mission, which was the missionary organisation that worked in the Aboriginal settlement at La Perouse, reported on an item in a Sydney newspaper describing 'an exhibition of Australian manufactures in England’. Part of the newspaper article said that: 'On the opening day there was a large attendance of Australian and New Zealanders, who patronised [the missionary organisation’s] stall. The Lady Rachel Byng and the Hon. Mrs. Schonberg Byng, were large purchasers, the latter buying the beautiful New Zealand cot blankets, and shell-work from Sydney, made by Queen Emma at the Aboriginal Camp at La Perouse. Queen Emma’s shell work was almost fought for’. By this time, Emma Timbery was in her late sixties, with possibly more than twenty-five years experience as a shell-worker. She died six years later on 26 November, 1916. That Emma Timbery’s shell-work was displayed on a missionary stall in an exhibition of Australian manufactures in London gives some clues to its uses and meanings in the early part of the twentieth century. Whereas earlier records indicate that shellwork was primarily a local source of income for Aboriginal women, its display within colonial exhibitions in the imperial centre of London indicates that 'the items were read as proof of the worth and “civilisability” of their makers’ (Phillips, 1998, p210). It would have also been used as a missionary marketing tool: its sale would have helped to raise funds for the United Aborigines Mission, and its display would have helped to garner support for the organisation’s missionary work among Aboriginal women in Australia. At the same time, the first decade of the twentieth century marks the rapid expansion of a local market for Aboriginal women’s shellwork at La Perouse (Nugent, 2005a, chapter 3). During that decade, the tramline from Sydney was extended to La Perouse. This brought increased numbers of tourists and daytrippers to the place, which contributed to the development of a local tourist precinct. This local tourist trade, which continued up until the 1960s, provided a very good market for shellwork along with other souvenirs produced by local Aboriginal people. These particular local conditions help to explain the sustained production of shellwork by Aboriginal women at La Perouse. As Ruth B. Phillips notes, in relation to the comparable history of souvenir production among North American indigenous communities, 'the importance of trade ware [souvenir] production was greatest in communities with easy access to cities and tourist sites’ (Phillips, 1995, p103). Emma Timbery was not only a celebrated shellworker in the late nineteenth century. In the 1890s, she was a highly valued informant for the amateur anthropologist R. H. Mathews, providing knowledge about the Dharawal language, which she spoke, and information about other cultural matters (Thomas, 2007, pp3-4). Her information has been essential for the preservation and revival of the Dharawal language. In this respect, Emma Timbery is an Aboriginal woman who both contributed to the preservation of her people’s cultural knowledge and traditions, which was under threat during her lifetime, as well as being an innovator in the development of new cultural traditions and practices, such as shellwork. Although Emma Timbery did not live to see the heyday of shellwork production at La Perouse in the 1930s and 1940s, many of her direct descendants have ensured the continuation of the craft throughout the twentieth century. Today, her great-granddaughter Esme Timbery is a celebrated and award-winning shellworker.
Writers:
Nugent, MariaNote:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. c.1842
- Summary
- Celebrated shellworker, Emma Timbery of La Perouse, NSW, exhibited her shellworks in England in 1910.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Nov-16
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.0743788 Longitude1.1487129 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sandgate, Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born on 18 October 1833 at Sandgate, Kent, England, tenth child and youngest daughter of Commander Charles Tindal RN (1786-1859), governor of the Birmingham branch of the Bank of England, and Anne Sarah, née Grant. Mary’s brother Charles and his family had settled in the Clarence River district of New South Wales by 1851 and it was proposed that Mary should join them. However, in a letter to his father in October, Charles wrote: 'With respect to Mary she certainly cannot come out until we have a fixed home to offer her’. Six years later, in November 1857, Charles wrote to say: 'We shall have plenty of room for Mary. I have put up a wooden house, a temporary residence.’ The following March he advised her to bring out 'a filter and three or four dozen soda water to use on the voyage, also raspberry vinegar’. Mary reached Sydney on 10 November 1858 in The Light of the Age , accompanied by her second cousin Henry Montagu Methold. The following month the Tindals moved into the newly completed stone homestead on Ramornie, the centre of Charles Tindal’s successful cattle-breeding and canned meat manufacturing enterprises.
The Clarence River Historical Society holds sixteen small watercolours by Mary Tindal (on exhibition Schaeffer House, Grafton), all pages from a sketchbook. Seven dated 1862 depict various rural properties: John Shannon’s Glenreagh (a distant view with girls in the foreground, a river on the property with a female figure and some turkeys under the trees), Walker’s Newbold, Ogilvie’s Yulgilbar (the new castellated house in its landscaped setting) and Nymboida (the yard). Nine painted between 1860 and 1863 show Newbold, Ramornie and Geergarrow (Shannon). The Ramornie views are mainly of the homestead or outbuildings (one has Aboriginal workers outside) and, indeed, most of Mary’s views incorporate buildings.
She also made copies of views by her friend Rose Selwyn , wife of the Anglican bishop of Armidale and Grafton. Generally Tindal copied Mrs Selwyn’s views of the town of Grafton (one of her copies of its very modest main street of wooden buildings is labelled The Beautiful Street of Grafton ), while Selwyn copied Tindal’s homestead sketches. Tindal was somewhat the superior sketcher, but both had an informative precision and were equally interested in domestic details. Tindal’s drawings frequently focused on the homestead and family life (especially children) adding an intimate, informal note to what is otherwise undistinguished work.
Mary Tindal later returned to England and may have joined an Anglican sisterhood. She died on 9 June 1916 at Park Glen, Alexandra Road, Parkstone, Dorset. A carte-de-visite photograph of her taken in 1889 is at Schaeffer House.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 October 1833
- Summary
- English born sketcher and watercolourist whose subjects include domestic life, buildings and pastoral scenes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Jun-16
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude53.1823034 Longitude-0.203120854 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lincolnshire, England, UK
- Biography
- art teacher, was born in Lincoln Fens, Lincolnshire. She married the surveyor John Charles Presgrave, probably in 1853, and they came to Adelaide on board the Irene in 1854. Soon after they arrived Mrs Presgrave advertised that she would be happy to receive pupils to instruct in 'Drawing, Landscape and Flower Painting’ at her Adelaide home on the corner of Pulteney and Wakefield Streets. She had eight children, five boys and three girls, and died on 15 April 1916.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1829
- Summary
- Catherine Presgrave was known as an art teacher instructing students in 'Drawing, Landscape and Flower Painting'.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 15-Apr-16
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-33.42 Longitude149.577778 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bathurst, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- watercolourist and diarist, was born near Bathurst, New South Wales, in September 1826, daughter of George Innes and Lorne, née Campbell. She lived with her parents at Glen Alice, Capertee. In 1837 she was taught by a Miss Smith, who, Annabella noted in her journal, was 'young and trained to be a governess, full of theories and her own importance’. Miss Smith despised the Innes’ guitar (encouraging piano lessons), 'as she also did our efforts at drawing from nature. She gave us stiff designs to copy, taught us to shade finely with pencil and to draw from copies, trees rare and wonderful, while our much-loved wild flowers were left unnoticed and our paint boxes set aside’. From 1841 until January 1843 Annabella also had drawing lessons in Parramatta (possibly from William Griffith ) but was obliged to abandon these through illness. Pencil sketches survive of her youthful efforts, including a copy after Le Brun of an expression of human passion labelled 'My first Attempt, Sept 25th [1837]’, a parrot (21 September), English thatched cottages of the picturesque drawing-book type, a crude copy of Chillon Castle (28 July 1837) and a sketch of a Parramatta house. All were intended for her Aunt Lorne (Miss Mackay) in Scotland.
Following her father’s death in 1839 Annabella and her mother moved in 1843 to live with her uncle, the prominent pastoralist Archibald Innes, at Port Macquarie. From 1845 to 1848 she kept a diary (first published in 1965) which vividly evokes her life at Lake Innes House, an extensive building of 22 rooms filled with books and paintings, including a reputed Veronese 'representing Achilles when in hiding at the Court of King Lycomedes, and dressed as a girl’. Annabella’s monochrome watercolour of the house dated 1842 is the earliest known view of this building, subsequently destroyed in bush-fires.
By the time Annabella was living at Lake Innes the previously lavish scale of the establishment had been 'very much reduced’ owing to the general economic depression. There was no longer a governess and, despite her aunt’s attempts to teach the girls, 'we were very much thrown on our own resources … We drew and practised [the piano] by fits and starts, albeit much at our own sweet will. I read greedily such books as we possessed, chiefly the [Waverley novels], which then and always interested me’. Spurred on by female cousinly rivalry, she also sketched.
In November 1843 she wrote: 'About this time some of my former love for drawing began to revive, and Dido [her cousin] and I resolved to paint at least one wild flower every week, beginning with the charming little blue commelina’. (An undated watercolour of one survives in her sketchbook.)
On 29 January 1844 she was painting the local white orchids; the undated painting in her sketchbook of a white dendrobium 'From the back of a tree near the 3rd fence Lake Innes’ is probably one of these. Surviving watercolours include snowdrops and a jonquil from Lake Innes (September 1843), many wildflower specimens and a painting of Sturt’s desert pea – 'a very poor specimen I am told’ – 'Drawn in Mr. Saunders’ Greenhouse in Maitland and finished from memory’ (November 1860?). Locations where the flowers were found, apart from Lake Innes and Port Macquarie, include Mount Rankin (September 1849), Saltram, Bathurst (October-November 1849), St Clair (March and August 1851) and Moreton Bay (undated). She also copied flower paintings and other sketches by the natural history artist Helena Scott .
On 17 June 1856 Annabella Innes married Patrick Charles Douglas-Boswell (b. 1816) at Christ Church Cathedral, Newcastle. Her husband worked for the Bank of New South Wales until 1865, then the Boswells went to live in Scotland. No sketches are known after her marriage.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. September 1826
- Summary
- Annabella Alexandra Campbell Boswell was a diarist and accomplished flower painter who grew up in central west New South Wales before moving to Port Macquarie. Boswell's early attempts at drawing from nature were stymied by her then governess who taught them to draw from copies but she later returned to drawing and painting from nature in the company of her cousin.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1916
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude52.408056 Longitude-1.510556 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1916-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Coventry, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, engraver and teacher, was born in Coventry, England, son of an officer of the King’s Dragoons who had served under Wellington. After being apprenticed to a line engraver at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Hill entered the Newcastle Academy of Fine Arts in 1840. He studied under the well-known painter and printmaker William Bell Scott with whom he prepared prints after paintings by David Scott, an engraving of The Choristers after Barraud (exhibited with the South Australian Society of Arts in 1861) and other works. Hill then worked in London under Samuel William Reynolds the younger whom he assisted in making a popular engraving of the opening of the 1851 Great Exhibition.
Encouraged by Archdeacon Farr to come to South Australia to benefit his health, Hill arrived in 1854 on board the Historia . Unable to find work as a line engraver, he instituted an art school on English principles at his home in Pulteney Street, Adelaide. He was drawing master at various schools, including Dr Farr’s St Peter’s College (from 1 October 1854). In 1856 he called a meeting of 'Friends of the Arts’ at his home which formed itself into the South Australian Society of Arts, aiming to promote the visual arts by means of lectures, conversazioni , a School of Design and a permanent art gallery. Hill was its first chairman. In 1861 the South Australian School of Design was founded; Hill was its art master until 1881.
Miss H.S. Hill, a pupil at the school who was awarded a prize at the Society of Arts’ 1869 exhibition for a freehand scroll drawing copied from the London School of Design’s patterns was probably his daughter Henrietta. Copying such patterns and old master and contemporary British prints made up a large part of the curriculum and his pupils’ work was always included in the annual exhibitions of the society.
Hill himself exhibited regularly in Adelaide. At the first exhibition of the Society of Arts, in 1857, the Adelaide Observer referred to a 'pleasing picture’ by Hill 'painted in the colony, but the subject is not colonial’. In 1861 he showed The Admella Rescue (now known as The Wreck of the Admella , (Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, SA). His most ambitious oil painting, The Proclamation – which took fifteen years to complete (1855-70, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, SA) – depicts the establishment of the Province of South Australia in 1836. It includes carefully researched portraits of nearly 100 people who were present on the occasion. An early Victorian narrative rather than a grand history painting, it emphasises the cheerful domesticity of the gathering rather than the official formalities.
Hill specialised in genre and narrative subjects, a type of painting not then common in Australia. Several paintings include his own family (Hill and his wife had eight children): The Artist’s Wife and Eldest Daughter, Henrietta (1854), Mrs Hill and Children (1857, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, SA), Family Group (c.1870, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, SA) and possibly his large oil (Ayers House, Adelaide) showing Aboriginal hawkers displaying a grand possum-skin rug to a woman, who resembles Mrs Hill, standing outside her solid two-storey colonial home.
Although not known to have produced engravings in South Australia, Hill brought his engraving tools to the colony and wrote a note on the technique of etching there, presumably for teaching purposes. One lithograph made in South Australia is known – that of Sir Robert Richard Torrens. Its source was his own oil painting of Torrens, which won a local prize in 1861 and a medal at the 1881 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition.
As a painter Charles Hill was painstaking and limited. However, his enthusiasm for art and his efforts on its behalf contributed to the establishment of South Australia’s major art institutions. As well as being an important teacher, he played a leading role in various local associations. He was for many years president of the Adelaide Sketch Club, a member of the Old Bohemian Club and an excellent marksman in one of the first Volunteer companies formed in South Australia. Contemporary sources state that his habitual dress was frock coat and high hat.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1824
- Summary
- Painter, engraver and teacher, in, England and arrived in Adelaide in 1854 where he became very influential in the local art scene. Hill specialised in genre and narrative subjects, a type of painting not then common in Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1916
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1887-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, was born in Sydney, daughter of William John Rodd from Worcester and Lissie Marion, née Robertson.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Note: additional information
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. c.1887
- Summary
- Nelle Marion Rodd was a founding member of the Society of Women Painters in 1910. She exhibited with the Royal Queensland Art Society, the Royal Art Society and the Society of Artists before her premature death at the age of 28.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10-Oct-15
- Age at death
- 28
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, TAS, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and painter, was born in Launceston, Tasmania, on 9 February 1874, son of William Thomas Vincent, a groom, and Frances, née Wilks. Aged seventeen, he published Skits: a memento from the Tasmanian Exhibition, Launceston, 1891-92 . He contributed political cartoons to Melbourne Punch from 1895, e.g. Which is the Burning Question? [Cricket or Federation?] 7 February 1895 (ill. Fabian, 9); A Familiar Saying. “After a Painting by Michael Angelo” [cop chasing man carrying painting] from Melbourne Punch Almanac for 1895 (ill. Fabian, 50); and Standing Room Only [in Melbourne Hospital] 11 June 1896 (illus. Fabian, 94). In December 1896, aged 22, Vincent succeeded Tom Carrington on the main cartoon page of Melbourne Punch (Dow, 73). Also attributed with Will She Go to the Poll? 'Yes; and as the WOMAN knows that the man cannot be trusted to look after the home, SHE will take the family with her’, an anti-suffrage cartoon showing woman in bloomers on bike pulling dog, daughter, babies in pram and kitchen stove, Melbourne Punch 12 November 1896 (ill. Fabian, 10, cropped, no signature).
Vincent contributed to the Sydney Bulletin from 1892, e.g. a cartoon signed 'Alf Vin’, published 13 August 1892, 13, entitled SAD MEMORIES . 'TOTTIE (imperfectly schooled – speaking of a rival): “She doesn’t seem to take the least heed of the proprietries.”/ HE (a Broken Hill shareholder): “I wish I hadn’t taken any notice of 'em when they were a tenner.”’ In 1898 he was appointed Melbourne staff artist for the Bulletin , succeeding Tom Durkin ; he worked in a studio on the top floor of a building in Collins Street once occupied by Arthur Streeton . His early work imitates his idol Phil May , as Lionel Lindsay disparagingly commented (quoted Rolfe, p.50, et al.) – although it was not always so very close and always very competently drawn (see file and Dow). He specialised in what Lindesay (1979, 15) calls 'proletarian humour’. A very May-style cartoon is The Modern Mercia, and the Sirens, the Maid and the Mongol , September 1898, clearly for the Bulletin .
Vincent drew about 900 drawings for the Bulletin , according to Dow, e.g. a statue of the Soudan Donkey (obit. 4 July 1898); a poem by 'L.A.’ 30 July 1898 (in file); Australia wrestles with Death for the body of Alcestis (a parody of Leighton’s painting) 1898 (ill. King, 80); a phrenology joke published 13 August 1898, 11; The Prayer of the Righteous (good apocalyptic war/wowser image) 18 November 1899, 17; The Glorious Twenty-Sixth! 1899 (ill. King, 82) re Federation; The Civilising Wave . 'Bible distributor: “Here, my ignorant brother, is a book I have travelled weary, weary miles to give you.”/ Ignorant brother [tall South Sea islander]: “That’s all right, but if you’ve got a new thing by Guyrie Boorelli or some tasty French trifles, I don’t mind looking through your stock”’ 1900 (ill. Rolfe, 79); THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DROUGHT (Aborigine breaks drought after 750 years by smashing enemy’s totem then the parsons take the credit) 4 February 1903, 16; An Election Address [man in evening dress]. '“Fellow Workers” – (great applause)’, pen and ink original Art Gallery of New South Wales, presented by Howard Hinton 1916 (Mr D.Mc.L. Munro was paid for suggesting the gag 5/4/1905).
In 1913 a Bookfellow critic (presumably A.G. Stephens) slated Vincent: 'His promise of considerable accomplishment was lost in a little success; while still a young man he was slain by a salary’. Hence he had never found time for the serious study of nature and his talent 'crystallised into small, smart, smooth superficiality’. The critic backed up his view with select quotes from Hugh McCrae published in the Sydney Newsletter on 12 August 1905 re Vincent’s derivative view of life and lack of humour, then compared him unfavourably with his inspiration and idol, Phil May. 'But, hard as it is, Mr. Vincent’s pen line is nevertheless definite and vigorous.’ He should have gone to Europe fifteen years ago, he concluded. Evidently Vincent was in Europe by then anyway since his article 'A Stroll around London’ was published in Lone Hand 12 (December 1912), 103-10. He also drew some astonishingly late anti-suffrage cartoons, which makes sense if they were done in London, e.g. an anti-suffrage cartoon signed Aλфх (Alfs in Greek alphabet), published Bulletin 10 July 1913, 12, in the form of a penny stamp containing 2 English old maid-suffragettes, one holding a bomb and the other a sign 'Votes for Wimmin [sic]’ seems likely to be Alf’s (or could it be 'Alec’, i.e. Sass?).
Cartoons such as a pro-conscription image of 1915 were evidently done back in Australia (ill. Coleman & Tanner, 125). Taylor illustrates other 1915 images, including Sockitis 16 September 1915, 24. 'His cartoon of 13 May 1915, p.12, just after Gallipoli, shows a young Australian soldier appearing round a doorway saying “Well, Dad” to the portly figure of John Bull. Hop’s The Little Boy at Manly is framed on the wall’, comments Rolfe (p.268), who claims it was the first digger image to appear in the Bulletin: 'Instantly one stereotype was replaced with another’ (though the digger image was chiefly established posthumously in Smith’s Weekly , begun 1919: Joan Kerr).
Vincent was the first visual artist to join the Melbourne Savage Club and he remained an active member from February 1900 until his death. He designed the Club’s crest in 1902 and drew numerous cartoons for its entertainments (see Johnson p.75). He also donated a large collection of his work to the club’s rooms in Bank Place (many ill. Dow). National Library of Australia [NLA] has neg. (405/1) of cartoon for Melbourne Savage Club Smoke Concert 1899 re 'Little George (who has chopped down his father’s favourite missionary): “Father, I cannot tell a lie – I did it with my little hatchet!”’ (N.B. annotated 'In Library Collection’ – original whereabouts unknown). NLA may hold an original cartoon done for the Melbourne Savage Club smoke concert to welcome officers of the US Navy in 1908. In 1918 the Melbourne Savage Club lent original programs to the Art Gallery of New South Wales loan exhibition.
Vincent also painted serious portraits. Portrait of a Lady 1899, oil on canvas with artist’s name on frame plaque and verso, included in Sotheby’s Fine Australian Paintings , Melbourne 28-29 April 1997, cat. 442.
Vincent committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor at his home at Manly, Sydney on the evening of 6 December 1915, after a nervous collapse. The Argus report of his death, which was lukewarm about his art, appeared on 8 December 1915 (reproduced Johnson, 93). He was survived by his wife, Phyllis May, née Potter (d.1916), whom he had married in St James’s Old Cathedral, Melbourne on 5 April 1913, and their daughter.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 9 February 1874
- Summary
- A Federation era Bulletin cartoonist and painter, based mainly in Melbourne, Alfred Vincent was the first visual artist to join the Melbourne Savage Club.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Dec-15
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- Australian painter and teacher, E. Phillips Fox was born in Melbourne on 12 March 1865, the son of a Jewish photographer and an artist mother. His father left home in 1866 and his mother remained central to an exceptionally closely knit family. He studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, from 1878 to 1886, where fellow students included Rupert Bunny , Florence Fuller , John Longstaff, Frederick McCubbin and Tudor St George Tucker . From 1881 to 1887, he taught evening classes at an artisans’ school of design and, from 1885, he joined Tom Roberts on weekend painting excursions around Melbourne.
In 1887 Fox left for Europe, where he studied in Paris from 1887 to 1889 at the Académie Julian and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1889 to 1890 under Jean-Léon Gérôme, supported by his brothers Joel and Philip. In 1889 Fox also joined the afternoon class of the American artist-teacher Alexander Harrison. Fox met up with Bertram Mackennal, John Longstaff, John Peter Russell and Tudor St George Tucker and, in the summers, painted at the artists’ communities at Etaples in Picardy with Tucker and Iso and Alison Rae, and also in Britanny. During 1890 and 1891, he moved to the artists’ colony at St Ives, Cornwall. He copied Velasquez’s works in Madrid in 1891 and visited the countryside near Paris.
Fox returned to Melbourne in 1892, where he chiefly painted portraits and landscapes. In 1893, Fox and Tucker opened the Melbourne School of Art, where they introduced students to French teaching practices and promoted the plein air painting approach at their outdoor summer school, held from about 1894 at Charterisville, near Eaglemont. In 1901, Fox left for London, having been commissioned to paint The landing of Captain Cook at Botany Boy (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), which he was required to paint overseas. He spent time in London and revisited the artists’ colony at St Ives, where he met Ethel Carrick, whom he married in 1905. In London he met up with George Coates , George W. Lambert , Hugh Ramsay, Tom Roberts , Arthur Streeton and Tudor St George Tucker. Fox and Carrick lived in Paris until 1913, and became good friends with Rupert Bunny and his wife. He was elected sociétaire of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1910. Fox and Carrick travelled widely in Europe, and visited Algiers in 1911, where they painted Arab scenes. Fox mainly painted elegant women and family groups, in which he captured sunlight effects and conveyed the graceful languor of the Edwardian era. Fox and Carrick visited Australia in 1908 and again in 1913 when, at the outbreak of war, they cancelled their plans to return to Europe.
E. Phillips Fox died of cancer in hospital in Melbourne on 8 October 1915, aged 50.
Writers:
Gray, Dr Anne Note: Head of Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 March 1865
- Summary
- Painter and husband of fellow artist Ethel Carrick Fox, E. Phillips Fox studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne in the late 19th century with fellow students including Rupert Bunny, Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Tudor St George Tucker.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Oct-15
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- natural history painter, was born in Sydney on 3 November 1860, daughter of Richard Birkett and Elizabeth, née Palmer. During the mid-1870s she lived at Wharf Street, Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, in the home of the naturalist, artist and musician , Silvester Diggles . Being a talented musician himself, Diggles encouraged Rowena to develop her musical ability; she was organist at St Mary’s Anglican Church, Kangaroo Point, at the age of thirteen.
Rowena has been credited with assisting Diggles (whose second wife, Albina, was her aunt) with the illustrations and colouring of some of the 600 plates in his 21-part Ornithology of Australia (1865-70). Indeed, in 1925 A.H. Chisholm stated that 'the late Mrs. Cummings, of Brisbane… was chief artist in respect of the six hundred plates for the big work on Australian birds projected, in the seventies, by her uncle, the late Sylvester Diggles’. It is even more likely that she coloured the lithographs in his later two-volume Companion to Gould’s Handbook (1877) and worked with him on an unpublished (and incomplete) volume, Australian Insects and Their Transformations .
Her engagement to marry a member of Ipswich’s prominent Chubb family ended tragically when her fiancé was drowned at sea. She suffered from asthma and a change of climate was indicated. She took a position as governess with the Lethbridge family near Roma – possibly after the death of Silvester Diggles in March 1880 – then moved to Townsville. On 1 June 1882, she married William Hooper Durant Cumming, an employee of the Queensland National Bank, in St James’s Church of England, Townsville.
William Cumming became an accountant and teller in the bank’s branches in North and Central Queensland, and Rowena followed her husband to postings at Port Douglas (1881) and Bundaberg (1883). Her three children – Albert, Beatrice Louise and Miranda Elsie – were born at the latter. She kept up her interest in art by decorating illuminated addresses for presentation to local dignitaries. William Cumming eventually left the bank and the family moved to Eidsvold, where William became an auctioneer.
When the business failed, Rowena started teaching the piano. She was organist at St Andrew’s Church of England, Eidsvold, for many years. She was also postmistress at Glassford, near Eidsvold, and became a leading light in the formation of the town’s Philharmonic Society. In later life she spent some years at Wolfram, a mining township in North Queensland, where her eldest daughter had settled. In July 1915 she became ill and was moved to a nursing home at Sandgate, near Brisbane, where she died on 17 July 1915 at the age of fifty-four. Her photograph, taken by Albert Lomer of Brisbane (c.1875), is in the John Oxley Library.
A book of 126 drawings of butterflies and moths by Birkett-Cummings and Diggles remains with the family, while prints after her work published in Brisbane in 1866-70 are held in the James Hardie and John Oxley libraries, State Library of Queensland.
Writers:
Byrne, Dianne
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 November 1860
- Summary
- Rowena Birkett was a natural history painter who is credited with assisting naturalist and artist Silvester Diggles with the illustrations and colouring of some of the 600 plates in his 21-part 'Ornithology of Australia'.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-Jul-15
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude49.453872 Longitude11.077298 Start Date1853-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nuremberg, Germany
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born in Nuremberg, Germany, where he trained as a lithographer. He travelled abroad in the 1870s, taking part in the Franco-Prussian War and spending much time in England. He went to South Africa in 1879, founded The South African Illustrated News at Cape Town in 1884, and produced many South African postcards (Greenwall). After the paper folded in the late 1880s he came to Australia where he contributed to the Illustrated Sydney News . It was owned by the Town and Country Journal , for which he also drew. His drawings initialled 'H.E.’ include Mining Life in Victoria – Scenes at a New Rush near Rushworth ( TCJ 17 September 1887, 599) and an illustration portraying a settler shooting two Aborigines at his front door ( TCJ 17 December 1887, 1271).
From about 1889 he contributed cartoons to the Bulletin usually signed 'Heiner Egersdorfer’, including an original drawing for a cartoon published 12 January 1889 entitled An Aboriginality : 'James: “Hello, Charlie, what are you doing up there, paintin’ Hams?”/ Bush Artist (indignant): “Hams be blowed, them’s the Queens Arms” (Mitchell Library Px*D461/10). Other ML originals include a troop inspection gag and a cartoon about selling art 2 November 1889. They Were Afraid . 'Mother-in-law: “In Queensland the blacks that came near us were all afraid of me.”/ Son-in-law: “Of course they were, why should they make an exception?” 7 February 1891, 14; AT A VOLUNTEER SHAMFIGHT . 'SERGEANT [to men in bar drinking]: “Will you fellows just come out an attend to your duty? There’s the fight going on and you are drinking in here.”/ PRIVATE: “Look here, Sergeant, in every fight there must be dead 'uns, ain’t that so?”/ SERGEANT: “Course there must.”/ PRIVATE: “Well, we are the dead 'uns”, 21 February 1891, 17; For Valour (soldiers) 2 May 1891, 9. He exhibited with the Art Society of New South Wales from 1887.
Egersdorfer later lived at Charterisville in Victoria with Lionel and Norman Lindsay . McCulloch suggests that his knowledge of current German black-and-white art may have been the source of this obvious influence on the work of the Lindsay and Dyson brothers, but Egersdorfer’s drawings don’t show much evidence of this. Eventually he returned to live permanently in South Africa. During the Boer War he was artist-correspondent for various overseas publications, including The Graphic , and he drew cartoons for several local publications, including The Owl founded by Charles Penstone and Constance Roth (Mrs Penstone). He was sole cartoonist on The South African Review until close to the end of the war, when a few by Islay appeared. In 1900 The South African Review Book of 50 Famous Cartoons: A Unique Souvenir of the Anglo-Boer War 1899-1900 was published, entirely illustrated with cartoons by Egersdorfer dating from 29 July 1897 to 29 July 1900 (all anti-Boer) (ill. Greenwall, 80). His South African work continued to appear in The Graphic until 1908. He died in England in 1915.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1853
- Summary
- Late colonial era German-born painter, illustrator and cartoonist. Worked in Sydney and Melbourne as well as Cape Town, South Africa. He founded 'The South African Illustrated News' at Cape Town in 1884.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1915
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- sketcher, won a prize for a chalk drawing of a female head at the 1861 Maitland Industrial Exhibition (NSW).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1843
- Summary
- Sketcher, won a prize for a chalk drawing of a female head at the 1861 Maitland Industrial Exhibition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1915
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hanover Square, London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and amateur photographer, was born in Hanover Square, London on 3 August 1842, eldest son of Anne Amelia née Colville and Francis Jack Needham, Viscount Newry and Morne. On his father’s death in 1851 young Francis succeeded to the viscountcy, becoming heir to his grandfather, the Earl of Kilmorey. He was educated at Eton (1855-60) and Christ Church, Oxford (BA 1864, MA 1867). In 1867 Newry and the Hon. Eliot Yorke were chosen as companions to Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh (Queen Victoria’s second son) for a round-the-world voyage in the Galatea . The three young men were soon bored by the endless speech-making and hand-shaking of the Australian leg of the tour and made amends with their after-hours activities: gambling, sexual dalliance, amateur theatricals and schoolboy pranks. The press, though unwilling to criticise Alfred himself, suggested that Newry and Yorke could well have given lessons in 'fast’ behaviour to the most dissolute colonial youth.
Although Prince Alfred is known to have been both a painter and photographer there is no record of any colonial artwork. Newry, however, is known to have sketched and taken photographs while in Australia. When the royal party was in Melbourne in December 1867 he showed Curtis Candler, the city coroner, his sketchbook and photograph album. Candler noted that 'he [Newry] himself took most of the photographs in the book – all those in fact in which he did not appear’, including 'a very good one taken at the Cape’ of the Prince on an elephant hunt. There were also photographs and sketches of 'some pretty girls – a few colonial’, including one whom 'he had photographed and drawn several times – this was his “Muffin” he told me’. Candler was also shown Newry’s 'drawings of women in Naval uniform’ intended as illustrations for 'The Fairy Toothpick’, a story set on board 'a fairy vessel of war in which all the officers and sailors are women’.
Newry was also something of a caricaturist. Candler recorded seeing Newry’s caricature portraits of members of the royal party, including Yorke, Lieutenant Haig and Oswald Brierly , as well as a humorous sketch of an Aboriginal corroboree witnessed in South Australia. When the Galatea was at Hobart Town in January 1868 Newry offended Chief Justice Sir Valentine Fleming by drawing an unflattering caricature of him during a Government House function. (Fleming, a short man, wore spectacles and had only one eye.) Stanley Leighton noted that Fleming was 'much hurt … [and] complained vehemently to the Governor saying that he had not come there to be quizzed. Colonel Gore Browne hardly appeased him by saying, “He did the same of me”’.
The colonial press increasingly commented on Newry’s supercilious manner. Perhaps significantly, Newry labelled some of his Tasmanian sketches sent to Candler Souvenirs d’un Flâneur . At the fancy dress ball held at the Prince of Wales Theatre in Sydney on 10 March 1868, Newry and the Prince disguised themselves as monks and mingled undetected with guests after the royal party had ostensibly left the ball early. Afterwards Newry celebrated this escapade by being photographed in his monk’s costume with three female members of the Deas Thomson family. The photograph (National Library of Australia), attributed to Helen Lambert or to Lady Jocelyn – who was never in Australia – shows the monk’s robe and cowl to have been the perfect disguise; Newry can be identified only from the handwritten caption.
Newry seems not to have accompanied Alfred on the Galatea 's return visit to the Australian colonies in 1869. He was appointed High Sheriff for County Down in 1871 and served as the Tory member for Newry in 1871-74. He succeeded his grandfather as third Earl of Kilmorey in 1880 and married Ellen Constance Baldock the following year. He died in London of pleurisy and pneumonia on 18 July 1915.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 3 August 1842
- Summary
- Newry was a sketcher and photographer who travelled with two friends, including Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, on a round the world voyage in 1868/69. During his time in Australia, Newry completed a series sketches and photographs but his after hours activities and 'fast' behaviour received more attention than his drawings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Jul-15
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude-34.598056 Longitude138.745 Start Date1841-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gawler, SA, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, surveyor and explorer, was born on 15 December 1841 in Gawler, South Australia, only son of the 11 children of the pioneer squatters Stephen King and Martha, née Robinson. Stephen King junior attended school at Gawler and Adelaide, spent two years at Young’s Adelaide Academy in 1857-59, then worked on several of his father’s properties. Determined to follow the footsteps of explorers like Captain Sturt , he was one of the first to volunteer to accompany John McDouall Stuart on his final epic journey, which left Adelaide in October 1861 and successfully crossed Australia from south to north and back again.
The lively, naive expedition drawings in King’s sketchbook (Mortlock Library) include views of the injured Stuart travelling by horse ambulance at the beginning of the journey, the packbags lined up at Central Mt Stuart, Aboriginal visitors to the camp at Howell Ponds, and the ceremony of planting the Union Jack (made by Esther Chambers of Adelaide) at Chambers Bay. The last shows 10 explorers and the survivors from the original 71 horses gathered in front of a hill which was partly cleared to allow a view of the Indian Ocean between the dense mangroves. It presumably was the basis of the background in Stacy 's photograph of Stuart, despite a contemporary attribution of the sketch to Stuart himself (who is not known to have sketched, the only other recorded artist on the expedition being Josef Herrgott ). {King’s pen and wash sketch of the party at Van Diemen’s Gulf in 1862 is one of several in the collection of the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia, SA State Library Building; ill. Community History 8/1 (1997), p.9. In 1863 he drew a 'Rough sketch’ of Stuart on horseback, which he annotated: 'May be of use to the Caledonian Society in designing the proposed statue’ to the 'great South Australian Explorer’.
In December 1877 King married Louisa Barnes, 15 years his junior. They spent the next 10 years travelling around South Australia on field surveys. Some of their nine children were born in a tent, others in their house in Kensington Gardens, Adelaide, called Calta Wurlie (believed to be the Aboriginal name of Kingsford, his childhood home). In 1893 King retired from the field to the position of senior surveyor in the Lands and Survey Department, Adelaide. On 25 July 1912 he was presented with a gold medal by the government on the jubilee 'of that historic day when Stuart and his band of heroes … had hoisted the Union Jack on the top of the highest tree in close proximity to the Indian Ocean’. King retired that year, aged 70. He died three years later, on 7 October 1915, the last survivor of the 11 men in Stuart’s party. His wife died in 1951.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 December 1841
- Summary
- An explorer and sketcher, Stephen King accompanied John McDouall Stuart on his exploration journey across Australia; he later travelled around South Australia on field surveys. His sketches reflect his life as an explorer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Oct-15
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude43.7698712 Longitude11.2555757 Start Date1839-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Florence, Italy
- Biography
- Tomaso Sani was born in Florence, Italy, in 1839. While little is known of his early activities, he was said to have served in Garibaldi’s ‘Expedition of the Thousand’ in 1860. In 1864, Sani was an assistant in the studio of Florentine sculptor, Enrico Pazzi (1819-1899) whose works included a monumental statue of Dante(1865) in the Piazza Santa Croce, Florence.
In 1876, Sani was active in New Zealand, working with fellow Italian Luigi del Vescovo, who exhibited a portrait bust of the recently deceased parliamentarian Dr Isaac Featherstone in Wellington in September.Sani and Vescovo departed New Zealand 20 July 1877, bound for Melbourne, where they hoped to secure a commission for a monument to the Irish patriot, Dan O’Connell. This was the first of several speculative proposals for commemorative sculpture with which Sani was associated, the passage of his career in Australia being marked by designs and maquettes as much as by completed works.
By September 1877, Sani and Vescovo had opened a studio on Swanston Street, Melbourne, where they displayed a maquette of the projected O’Connell monument, along with a portrait bust of Signora Marinucci, the wife of the Italian Consul, and a relief of the Madonna with the infant Christ and St. John.
In 1879, Sani and Vescovo were invited to submit work for the Sydney International Exhibition and modelled an allegorical group, Advance Australia. At the same time, they sought income from the sale of Italian marble mantelpieces and the display of waxworks on Biblical themes at theatres in Sydney and Melbourne.
Sani’s earliest recorded independent work was his Welcome, exhibited at the Melbourne International Exhibition (1 October 1880–30 April 1881) in the Italian sculpture section.
By early 1881, Sani was living in Phillip St, Sydney. Continuing to seek commissions for commemorative sculpture, he presented a bust, modelled from a photograph, of the recently assassinated US President Garfield at a September public meeting honouring the late leader.
Following the death of Garibaldi on 2 June 1882, Sani again presented a bust of the deceased at a public commemorative meeting. A newspaper illustration showed the enormous bust, which Sani executed in six days, towering above the audience at the Garden Palace.
On 8 May 1882, a contract valued at £800 was let for sculpted decoration on the Pitt St facade of the new Sydney General Post Office (GPO), a project under the direction of Government Architect James Barnet. The winner of the contract awarded the work to Sani, his first major sculptural commission in Australia.
In August 1883, Sani’s GPO reliefs were completed. Executed in the anecdotal realist style then common among Italian sculptors, they depicted figures in contemporary costume undertaking everyday tasks such as banking and mail delivery. Objections to the vernacular character of the sculptures were quickly raised and a significant early controversy around public art ensued. In February 1884, the New South Wales Cabinet accepted a Parliamentary Committee report recommending the removal of the sculptures. Barnet submitted detailed objections in May 1884. Citing numerous art works, articles and books as his authorities, Barnet made a case against what he called the ‘pseudo-classical’ style and advocated a realism illustrative of ‘the customs and costumes of the present day’. Word of the controversy spread as far as London, however Sani’s sculptures remained in place.
On 16 August 1884, Sani married Marie Louise Barry, of Melbourne. A daughter was later born to the couple.
With the mixed success of the GPO sculptures behind him, Sani sought further commissions. In July 1884, he submitted a maquette to a competition for a statue of Queen Victoria; it was reported that his proposal elicited laughter from the judges. In August, he designed a figure of Mercury astride a globe emblazoned ‘Advance Australia’ for the new offices of Maitland Mercury newspaper. Sani exhibited in the New South Wales (NSW) court at the 1888 Centennial International Exhibition in Melbourne, presenting a giant bust of Captain Cook.
Sani had by this time caught the attention of politician Henry Parkes, a keen advocate of public sculpture, some of whose terms as Premier of NSW (1878-83, 1887-89, 1889-91) coincided with state-funded commissions to the artist. In 1887, Sani executed a terracotta statuette of Parkes.
In 1888, Sani experienced a significant professional setback; a Supreme Court case which pitted him against a fellow sculptor Angelo Tornaghi. Their dispute centred on the fabrication of a Centennial sculpture (a ‘colonial group’) for the Australian Mutual Fire Insurance Company. Sani sought to recover fees for work he had undertaken, while Tornaghi claimed he had earned the commission fee as Sani was unable to complete the sculpture. Sani’s initial victory was overturned on appeal, leaving him owing damages of over £1328. In spite of a benefit staged for the artist by the Italian Club, Sani declared bankruptcy in May 1889 and in July advertised the sale, without reserve, of a sculpture in Carrara marble, Child at play, ‘suitable for lawn, entrance hall, &c’.
Circumstances soon improved; Sani built a studio in Annandale in 1890 and in 1891 received a commission from Parkes for a bronze statue for Centennial Park. The sculpture, We won!, represents a youthful footballer, atop a pedestal decorated with light-hearted reliefs of putti playing rugby. The sculpture did not excite the controversy of the GPO reliefs, however at least one correspondent to the Sydney Morning Herald lamented the erection of ‘this freak’ in the park. Installed in 1893, overlooking the playing fields, the sculpture is one of only a few of the original 37 sculptures in Centennial Park to have survived the rigors of time, vandalism and changing taste. (The work was removed from the park after damage in 1972 and restored and reinstated in 1988.) While it is predated by modest tabletop sculptures of the motif produced in the England and the US, We won! is possibly the first monumental sculpture of a footballer erected anywhere in the world.
Sani benefited further from the patronage of Barnet and Parkes in the early 1890s. They took a close interest in his work and both visited his studio to view works in progress. Additional carved stone sculptures of NSW pioneers Allan Cunningham, W C Wentworth and Sir John Robertson were commissioned by them for the Lands Building (Bridge St, Sydney), again designed by Barnet. The Government Architect’s impassioned support of the artist during the GPO controversy, and his continued patronage of Sani afterwards, suggests that Barnet saw the sculptor as forging a modern realist style appropriate to a dynamic colonial culture. This period of public patronage was short-lived, however, ending with the retirement of Barnet, a change of state government and the death of Parkes. In 1895, Sani again declared bankruptcy. No records of his activity as a sculptor after this time have been located. On 28 August 1915, Sani died at his home at 5 Brown St, Paddington.
Writers:
Ellmoos, Laila
Chris McAuliffe
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1839
- Summary
- Italian-born sculptor Tomaso Sani, along with Luigi del Vescovo, was responsible for the controversial basso-relievo carvings on Sydney's General Post Office in 1883. He carved statues of Allan Cunningham, Sir John Robertson and William Charles Wentworth for the Lands Department Building in 1892.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Aug-15
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolour painter, photographer(?), architect and engineer John James Clark was born in Liverpool, England, on 23 January 1838. He arrived in Melbourne, Victoria, circa 1852.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 23 January 1838
- Summary
- Watercolour painter, photographer, architect and engineer born in Liverpool, England. Resident of Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia he was responsible for the designs of many public buildings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Jun-15
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude52.666667 Longitude1 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Norfolk, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in London, only daughter of the five children of Henry Norman and his first wife Harriet, née Chapman. She came to Mount Gambier, South Australia, with her father, step-mother and brothers in the 1850s and was helping take photographs at the Normans’ Mount Gambier studio (in her father’s watch and jewellery shop) from the early 1860s. Harriet was listed as the manager of the photography side of the business in 1870-76 and again in 1888-91, and was presumably an active partner in the interim. A sheet of twelve tintype portraits of an unknown woman taken at the Normans’ studio in about 1879 (R.J. Noye Collection, Mortlock Library) may be her work. She died, unmarried, at Mount Gambier on 28 November 1915.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1834
- Summary
- A photographer who worked in her father's photographic studio and watch and jewellery shops in Portland (1854) & Hamilton (1858-1867) in Victoria, and Commercial Street East in Mount Gambier from 1867. She was co-owner and manager this business in Mount Gambier from 1867 to 1872 and the sole owner from 1872 until her death in 1915. It is presumed that twelve tintype portraits of an unknown woman are her work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 28-Nov-15
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude51.0804057 Longitude-4.0600467 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Barnstaple, Devon, England
- Biography
- painter and decorative artist, was born in Barnstaple, Devon, on 15 July 1834, fourth daughter of John Cotton and Susannah, née Edwards. She came to Victoria with her parents and eight brothers and sisters in the Parkfield , arriving at Port Phillip in May 1843. They settled on Doogallook Station in the remote Goulburn River Valley where she grew up in friendly contact with the local Aboriginal people. She and her sister Eliza (see E. Cotton ) were sent to Mrs Gilbert’s school in Melbourne for six months in 1846 where they would have had drawing lessons from George Alexander Gilbert , the headmistress’s husband.
In 1853 Caroline Cotton married Albert Alexander Cochrane Le Souëf, an Englishman of Huguenot descent, fourth son of William Le Souëf, protector of the Aborigines on the Goulburn River. Albert had spent three years at the Aboriginal Protectorate before becoming overseer on various Victorian properties and the Le Souëfs, like their parents, took a continued and informed interest in Aboriginal life and customs. At the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition the Le Souëfs exhibited a set of miniature Aboriginal weapons, carved by Albert and arranged in a wooden case decorated by Caroline with etched and inked (pokerwork) views titled Natives Forming a New Camp on the Murray River , Corroboree and Stealing on Game (National Museum of Victoria). They lent two gum-leaf paintings by A.W. Eustace , 'a shepherd’, to the same exhibition.
Albert was appointed foundation director of the Melbourne Zoological Gardens in 1880. Before taking up the appointment he and Caroline briefly toured Europe and England, collecting animals and inspecting zoological gardens in London, Amsterdam, Antwerp, The Hague, Rotterdam, Cologne and Paris, largely at their own expense. Caroline’s illustrated journal (LT) of an undated voyage on board the Superb from Melbourne around Cape Horn to London possibly belongs to this tour. Accompanying Albert’s report of his travels, presented to the president and council of the Tropical and Acclimatization Society of Victoria later that year, was a booklet containing numerous pencil sketches drawn by Caroline of the animal cages and zoo buildings they had inspected (BL). Some inspired the design of animal cages for the Melbourne and, subsequently, South Perth zoos (where a son became the director). Her illustrations include 'The New Carnivore house [at Antwerp] recently erected at a cost of £12 000 … the finest building of the kind in Europe, it is 210 feet long 50 round and nearly 20 feet in height, the floor is tessellated pavement, and down the centre 25 feet apart are two handsome rows of columns. The Cages 14 in number are on the left hand side of the principal entrance, they are constructed of solid oak and varnished, four of them are double and there are doors of communication throughout … Another of the Costly buildings is built and painted to represent an ancient Egyptian temple. It is devoted to Giraffes, Elephants, Camels etc.’. The drawings, unfortunately, do not match these splendours, being hurried outline elevations which occasionally include the animal.
Late in life Caroline took up oil painting, chiefly of Aboriginal subjects – reminiscences of her youth. Native Corroboree by Moonlight , Natives Stalking Emus and Natives Hunting Kangaroos (all probably 1890s) survive in private collection. Home Life of the Victorian Aborigines, Goulburn River (c.1895, o/c) and Coroborree (1895, o/c) are said to be held by the National Museum of Victoria. Her non-indigenous subjects include Listening to the Lyre Birds , a portrait of her granddaughter, Madge Backhouse, on a log in the bush. However, she was chiefly remembered as an artist by one of her grandsons for the spattrie work texts, inscribed 'Rest in the Lord’, 'Jesus Loves Me’ etc., which she made and regularly presented to the grandchildren. A devout Christian with rigid moral standards she died at Royal Park, Melbourne on 8 March 1915, survived by her five daughters and four of her five sons. Three of her sons – William Henry Dudley, Ernest Albert and Albert Sherbourne – were zoologists. As well as being an active member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union her daughter, Una Caroline (Mrs Otway Rothwell Falkiner of Boonoke North Station, Riverina), attended the National Gallery Schools and, after her marriage, illustrated Alice Grimwade’s Once Upon a Time (1911) with Violet Teague .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1834
- Summary
- Painter and decorative artist, after arriving in Australia her family settled in the Goulburn River Valley where her friendly contact with the local Aboriginal people formed had a lasting affect on her work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1915
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in London on 17 May 1833, eldest of the six children of Ralph Thomas, a barrister, and Ann, née Mallett. As Florence later recollected, she learnt much from the child prodigy John Everett Millais (1829-1896) in about 1845 when he was employed for £100 a year by her father-Millais’s first patron-to draw pictures and paint in figures and backgrounds on old oil paintings that Thomas sold. Both had short tempers and Millais abruptly broke the contract after a year, only too conscious that the work was beneath his talents. While he was employed, however, Florence ('Pobby’), aged about twelve, regularly saw 'Johnny’ at work at her home and was taken to visit him in his studio. He drew in her sketchbook and corrected her drawings. Her first oil painting, a copy after 'a small Collins’ (probably Charles Collins, another Pre-Raphaelite), was done with Johnny’s paints. He made her a model stage with a front depicting Apollo in his chariot flanked by the muses of Comedy and Tragedy for which she made the scenery and costumed a tiny articulated wooden lay figure he gave her (which she kept all her life).
Many years later, J.G. Millais claimed in his biography of his father (1899) that the young artist had been exploited by his greedy, ignorant patron 'Serjeant Thomas’. But 'Serjeant’ was then a title for a senior barrister, Florence pointed out when she joined battle to defend her long-dead father. She contributed 'Recollections of Johnny Millais by an early friend’ and a commentary on the biography to Serjeant Thomas and Sir J.E. Millais (London 1901), a pamphlet published privately in brother Ralph’s name. As well as recording her childhood memories, she mentioned that the Thomas and Millais families remained on intimate terms and that she visited Millais’s studio to see Ophelia and A Huguenot before they were sent to the Royal Academy in 1852.
Apart from these lessons Florence had little art training, yet she was painting and selling oil paintings and exhibiting at the Royal Academy [RA] while still in her teens, showing Goat in an Orchard at the RA from 68 Wimpole Street, London in 1852. The following year she showed Juliet and Leonora with the Royal Society of British Artists (Suffolk Street) and Rosa.- Vide Bleak House at the British Institution [BI], the latter for sale at five pounds. From 1 Sergeant’s Inn in 1854 she showed two fruit paintings at the BI, one for sale at five pounds the other at ten, while the following year from 19 Arundel Street she showed at Suffolk Street “Who can have sent me these flowers?” (2 guineas) and A Farm Yard, Westbrook (6 guineas). That year a fruit painting was on offer at the BI for the extremely high price of thirty-five guineas. In 1856, from 36 Norfolk Street, The Strand, another fruit picture was sent to the BI for sale at twenty guineas, along with A Labourer’s Shed, Westbrook , more modestly price at six guineas, and she also had an untitled painting at Suffolk Street for sale at five guineas. At the same venue in 1857 she had A study from nature (six guineas) and Dressed Up (six guineas). She continued to exhibit with the Society of British Artists until 1868, although Dessert (6 guineas) in 1858 was her last exhibit at the British Institution.
On 13 September 1862, Florence Elizabeth Williams married the civil engineer Alfred Williams, a son of (Sir) Edward Leader Williams, an eminent English engineer and member of the well-known Williams family of painters [see F. Reynolds, The Williams Family of Painters , 1975], in St George’s, Leicester Square. They had two children – Edith Florence, known as Edie (1863-1943), and Reginald (1877-1942) – and adopted Minnie (Rozzie) Philpotts (1874-1956). Florence continued to paint after her marriage. In 1863 Mrs Alfred Williams (as she was henceforth catalogued) of Ponfield Villa, Bristol Road, Gloucester showed Lie still, sailor at Suffolk Street for sale at fifteen guineas (the mind boggles, but it was presumably a child admonishing a toy or pet in the light of her other works). She showed The Pets at the Royal Academy in 1864. In 1865 the family came to NSW, Alfred having been put in charge of erecting the Nepean River railway bridge at Penrith after a design by John Whitton, chief engineer of the NSW Railways, who wrote a testimonial for him on 18 January 1867 praising the completed work. Florence Williams’s undated oil view of the Penrith railway bridge (Mitchell Library) was evidently done at this time, since the family returned to England soon after the bridge was completed.
They settled at Farncombe Villa, Godalming, Surrey, from which address Mrs Alfred Williams sent three paintings to Suffolk Street in 1868: Flowers and Parrot (15 guineas), The new book (15 guineas) and A peep at Australia (10 guineas). The last may have been the conventionally composed but vibrantly coloured watercolour view of Sydney Harbour from Hyde Park, initialled 'F.E.W.’ and dated June 1866, auctioned by Deutscher-Menzies in Melbourne on 24 November 1999 (lot 44). It was the last time Florence was to exhibit in London; henceforth she showed her paintings in Sydney and Hobart. The Williams came back to Australia in 1873, this time to Tasmania.
From their home at New Town, outside Hobart, Mrs Alfred Williams sent two oils to the 1874 exhibition of the NSW Academy of Art. Both were for sale when they were included among the Academy exhibits at the Agricultural Society of NSW’s Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition at Sydney in April 1875. The Dessert (cat.31), a 'well grouped fruit piece, harmonious in colour, clear and juicy’ (which may have been the work shown with the BI in 1858, although she did different versions of the same subject), won a silver medal and was reported as making the mouth of every fruit-loving visitor water at the sight of it. The other (cat.18), The Lory at Home (1874, private collection, Hobart, initialled 'F.E. W.’) was a new version of Flowers and Parrot shown in 1868 (which was destroyed in a family fire and is known only from a photograph). It had the same brightly painted bird and local wildflowers in the foreground with an added view of Hobart’s Mount Wellington behind. Praised by the Sydney Mail critic, it was nevertheless considered inferior to the still life: 'The parrot, perched on a twig, is however wanting in “life” although most carefully painted. The wildflowers in the foreground (Epacris, &c.) are very well done.’ That year at Hood’s Picture Gallery, a commercial gallery in Hobart, 'an acknowledged connoisseur’, the lawyer and amateur photographer Morton Allport (son of Mary Morton Allport ), purchased a pair of Mrs Williams’s flower paintings, Primroses and Roses .
In 1875 the family returned to Sydney, Alfred having been appointed engineer with the Harbours and Rivers Department. Mrs A. Williams’s Waratah , The Laughing Jackass , The Dessert which won only a certificate of merit this time, Fruit , Love in the Bush and The Doll’s House were among the oil paintings from the NSW Academy of Art shown in the Fine Arts section of the Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition organised by the Agricultural Society of NSW that opened in Sydney on 6 April 1875. All were for sale except The Doll’s House (family collection), which also was awarded a certificate of merit. The subject of this 'charming little composition’, Edie Williams playing with her doll’s house, was possibly inspired by Millais’s etching, The Baby House 1872 (ill. Josef Lebovic Collectors’ List 1997, no.66, cat. 87), although Mrs Williams’s version is far more personal, detailed and – ironically – early Pre-Raphaelite (perhaps even Bedemeier) in treatment. The early Pre-Raphaelite features of The Doll’s House and a complementary painting, The Story Teller (family collection), an equally detailed, rather frozen oil of Edie reading to her doll, are the purple, blue and acid green colours, the fidelity to nature at the expense of conventional ideas of beauty and, especially, the meticulous detail.
Florence’s paintings seem unique for Australia at the time when domestic genre paintings are almost unknown, the closest equivalents being a few oil paintings of women and children (known only in reproduction) done in Melbourne in the 1870s by the locally-trained Mary Livingstone – who mainly worked as a copyist – and old-fashioned, rather overblown figure paintings produced in Melbourne from the 1860s to the 1880s by the semi-professional painter Chester Earles .
Three more fruit paintings by Mrs. A. Williams followed in 1876, as well as The Pets. One of the fruit pictures collected another certificate of merit, although the Sydney Mail critic now considered such oil studies merely 'good enough in their way’ and pointed out that they needed to be 'exceedingly well painted to be attractive’. Yet the previous year the same newspaper (though not necessarily the same anonymous critic) had called her fruit pieces admirable and far more successful than those by J. H. Adamson . Mrs Williams’s fruit painting hung in the 1879 loan exhibition celebrating the opening of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales was later presented to the Sydney Technical College 'for the benefit of art students’, according to her granddaughter Florence Hope Williams, but it has since disappeared.
In 1880 F.E. Williams was a founding member of the Art Society of NSW (an association for professional artists that had broken away from the more inclusive Academy) and henceforth exhibited regularly with it. At its first exhibition her 'most attractive and original design’ Ophelia had the highest asking price in the show (£75) and was extravagantly praised by the Bulletin 's art critic:
The accuracy of the willows, the realistic painting and elegant arrangement of the flowers, and the chilly depth of the water in which is reflected grass so real that it almost seems to spring upon the banks before the eye, are proofs of the strict adherence both to nature and art, so strikingly manifested in this most attractive and original design.
Again Williams chose a subject made famous by Millais, but her Ophelia (unlocated) was shown 'standing upon the “envious silver”, the breaking of which is so soon to precipitate her into the cold dark water beneath’, not floating in the stream.
As one of the very few figure paintings in the exhibition Ophelia gained most attention, but her four other oils, predictably 'charming groups of flowers and one fruit picture’, were also admired, the 'transparent lusciousness’ of the plums in the latter being especially noted. Primroses and Violets was exhibited in 1880 and 1881 (when it was stated to be a repeat showing from the previous year) and in 1881 she also showed 'a rather large picture’, On the Brook , 'a charming tangle of pale primroses, splendid violets, and delicate moss’. More flowers and fruit followed in succeeding years as well as extravagantly praised groups of rabbits (1883) and guinea pigs (1885). James Green ('De Libra’) called her fruit paintings 'perfect of their kind’, not unworthy of the popular English still-life painter William Henry ('Birds’ Nest’) Hunt, while a pair of paintings of peaches she exhibited in 1884 could have been taken 'for real but for the frames’.
Late in life the Williams lived at Bowral, NSW. Alfred died there in 1913, Florence two years later.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 17 May 1833
- Summary
- Although Florence received little formal training she was exhibiting at the Royal Academy, London, by her late teens. Migrating permanently in 1873, Florence's paintings seem unique for Australia at the time when domestic genre paintings are almost unknown.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1915
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and lithographer, was born in London, son of John Mason, an upholsterer, and Jane Eliza, née Browning. In 1840 he was apprenticed for seven years to Waterlow & Sons, a well-known London firm of lithographers. On completion of his articles he went to Paris for a year, spending part of this time teaching in a boys’ school. On his return, he started in business on his own account. In 1852 he wrote and published a little book called The Practical Lithographer . Early the following year he migrated to Melbourne, arriving in June in the James L. Bogart . There he was engaged by Thomas Ham to carry out the production of his 'settled districts’ map. In October Mason took over Ham’s business, in partnership with F. Stringer , as Stringer, Mason & Co. of 35 Swanston Street, Melbourne. The partnership was dissolved early in 1854 and Mason continued on his own.
In addition to standard commercial lithographic and engraving work, the firm – later Mason’s alone – produced many prints, either as engravings or lithographs, from sketches by David Tulloch , George Strafford , Edmund Thomas , Henry Heath Glover and probably Mason himself. At the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition Mason was awarded a bronze medal for his lithographic specimens and at the 1855 Victorian Industrial Society Exhibition he received a silver medal for lithography. In September 1855 he issued an illustrated weekly newspaper, the Illustrated Family News , with lithographic illustrations in the letterpress text. It ran to about four issues. In September 1856 he joined the Engineer-in-Chief’s Department of the Victorian Railways as a lithographic draughtsman and set up its lithographic printing branch.
Mason left the Victorian Railways in 1864 and went to Woods Point in Gippsland, setting up in Bridge Street as a mining agent and sharebroker. He became insolvent in September 1867 after guaranteeing debts of the local Anglican Church and Common School and being unable to collect money owed to him as legal manager of several mining companies. He returned to Melbourne and secured employment as draughtsman and chain-man with Doyne, Major & Villet, who were to survey the Launceston to Deloraine railway in Tasmania. On completion of the line Mason started The Building Times in Melbourne, an architectural and engineering journal modelled on the London Building News , which was illustrated with lithographic plans and drawings. It was published from October to December 1869.
Following the failure of this venture Mason undertook freelance work, during which time his sketch of the new Melbourne Town Hall, which he lithographed himself, was published by De Gruchy & Co. He wrote and illustrated a small children’s book, The Australian Christmas Story Book , published in Melbourne in December 1871 (republished National Library of Australia, 1988). This was so successful that he produced a second number in December 1872. He attended art classes at the National Gallery School in 1871. In October 1872 he was reappointed draughtsman in the Engineer-in-Chief’s Office of the Victorian Railways, a position he held until retiring on 15 October 1889, having reached the age of sixty.
Most of Mason’s known original art dates from the 1870s. In 1870 he exhibited two watercolours with the Victorian Academy of Arts, Red Bluff and Half Moon Bay and Sundown from Windmill Hill, Launceston . He joined the academy in August 1873, was elected to its council in December 1874 and served until 1878, but was struck off the membership roll in 1880 for non-payment of subscription, presumably after losing interest. He exhibited at the academy from 1874 to 1877. He joined the newly formed Victorian Artists’ Society in March 1888 but was also removed from the roll of that body in November 1890. In addition to these activities, Mason was involved in the formation of the Melbourne Musical Union. He was secretary of the Art Union of Victoria, formed to promote the work of Australian artists, until October 1876 when he resigned owing to pressure of business. At the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, Mason showed 'Sketches of the Bridges over the Yarra Yarra River, Melbourne 1884’; his sketches were also included in the 1888 Centennial International Exhibition in Melbourne.
During the 1870s Mason gave three public lectures. The first, at the Technological Museum in May 1871, was on the techniques of printing illustrations, titled 'The Multiplying Art’, while the second, illustrated with his own drawings, at the Mechanics Institute in September 1871 was on 'Railways’. The third, at the Athenaeum in April 1873, 'Sketching from Nature – Ruskin applied to Australia’, was widely acclaimed and is alleged to have influenced the young Frederick McCubbin to take up art. In May 1883 he founded the Buonarotti Club for the 'cultivation and practice of Art, Literature and Music among its members’ and was its president until its demise in September 1887. His influence on Melbourne cultural life through his club has been largely overlooked, yet it numbered among its members Elizabeth Parsons , John Longstaff , John Mather , E. Phillips Fox , Tom Roberts , Walter Withers , Fred McCubbin and Alex Sutherland .
Following his retirement, Mason moved to Tynong in Gippsland and spent much of his time sketching. He returned to Melbourne in about 1900 and lived at Mentone. His wife Jessie, née Campbell, widow of George Conway Montague, whom he had married in Melbourne in 1853, died on 29 November 1909. Mason died at East Melbourne on 8 August 1915.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1829
- Summary
- English colonial male lithographer, watercolourist, and draughtsman. His diverse career included writing and illustrating children's books, teaching, publishing newspapers, public speaking and founding music and art societies.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Aug-15
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude51.6082881 Longitude-0.6571233 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
- Biography
- natural history painter and lithographer, was born in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, on 23 July 1828, one of the five daughters of John Charsley, coroner for South Buckinghamshire.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 July 1828
- Summary
- Natural history painter and lithographer born in England. A resident of Melbourne for 10 years, Charsley published a book of 13 hand-coloured lithographs of wildflowers in the area. The wildflower Helipterum charsleyae is named after her.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Dec-15
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude50.5463385 Longitude-3.4957798 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1915-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Teignmouth, Devonshire, England, UK
- Biography
- portrait and history painter, was born in Teignmouth, Devonshire, England, on 3 July 1825, the second son of William Thomas Strutt, a nonconformist preacher and clerk with the Bank of England, and his second wife Mary Ann, née Price.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 3 July 1825
- Summary
- Strutt was a productive and versatile painter and a founding member of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts. His most famous painting is undoubtedly 'Black Thursday' which was inspired by the bushfires that ravaged large parts of Victoria on 6 February 1851.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Jan-15
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude52.3744779 Longitude9.7385532 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hanover, Germany
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1874
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Mar-14
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude-33.88477 Longitude151.22621 Start Date1867-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paddington, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Paddington, Sydney, on 28 September 1867 (according to his grand-daughter Joan Michell and his birth certificate – on 22 September according SMH notice and 1866 according McCulloch 1994, 1865 according Ingram), the first son of Albert George Hanson and Marie Ann, née Hill.
In 1889 Hanson exhibited at the 10th annual exhibition of the Art Society of NSW (later the Royal Art Society or RAS): see Sydney Mail 19 October 1889, 868, 875. The SMH (5 October 1889, 9) noted his watercolour Bray’s Bay was 'a cold and quiet thing’. He was awarded first prize for painting at the 1890 Art Society Exhibition; the SMH critic (12 July 1890, 5) noted that he had
distinguished himself by some pretty landscapes which have been thought worthy of a special prize. Mr. Hanson has evidently a fine perception and he displays capital technical knowledge. One or two of his skies are particularly praiseworthy.
Hanson also had ambitions as an architect and designed a house for Robert Louis Stevenson during the author’s visit to Sydney in 1890, although Stevenson finally built a less imposing residence (T. Ingram). At the Art Society’s 1891 exhibition, the Sydney Morning Herald (4 September 1891, 3) noted that among the works with 'claims to special attention as exceptionally good’ was In the Golden Gleam of a [sic] Summer Sun (signed and dated 1891, cat. No. 182 , 83 × 156 cm, now owned by Col Fullagar 2001) and was by Albert J. Hanson, 'a young artist who now makes his first success’.
Mr. Albert J Hanson, who has done well in No.157, “After the Toil of the Day”, comes quite to the front in “The Golden Gleam of a Summer Sun”. The subject furnishes a wide foreground of stubblefield whilst in the distance we see figures, a wagon, and horses, sheaves still standing like praying-hands in a corner of a field, and two workers, a man and a woman, in idle converse in the middle distance. All this – and the composition is good in the first place – is painted with force and sympathetic feeling, and the young Australian artist may be congratulated upon his work.
A line drawing was reproduced in the catalogue. Terry Ingram describes it as a respectable addition to a popular theme in Australian art – toil in the fields. The principle figures, a woman and man, pause from their labour in the heat of the summer sun. To the left other workers lift bales of hay onto a wagon and in the far right a village can be observed. The high horizon line and the spindly grass in the foreground leading the eye into the composition invoke the work of the Heidelberg School painters. According to Ingram, the painting could easily have been a candidate for the watershed Golden Summers exhibition that toured Australian public galleries in 1989.
Contemporary reviewers were even more glowing. The Bulletin critic (12 September 1891, 20) declared: 'The most striking picture in the room is, in the opinion of the writer, Albert J. Hanson’s “In the golden gleam of a summer sun”.’ The Illustrated Sydney News of 12 September 1891, 11, commented on the painting in the Art Society of NSW Exhibition: 'Mr. Hanson’s “Cornfield” in which a girl and a young man are exchanging some words (vows, perhaps), at the close of their day’s work, shows an advance on previous efforts by this artist, whose smaller works are also worthy of notice.’ Christie’s auctioned the painting, catalogued by David Thomas as The Harvest , at Sydney on 17 August 1999 (lot 77) and identified as one of Hanson’s English works: 'This is confirmed by the costumes of the harvest workers and the spire of the village church in the background’. Subsequent research by the buyer Col Fullagar, however, showed that Hanson was still in Sydney in 1891 and could not have left for England until 1892 {he did a drawing of fellow artist Percy Spence in January 1892 (ML) – although Spence was also in England later}. Moreover, Hanson showed studies of the Richmond NSW area at an exhibition held in 1891 by H.C. Callan, a Sydney dealer, according to Fullagar.
The Herald 's second notice of the Art Society’s exhibition (5 September 1891, 5) commented that 'Mr. Albert J. Hanson, who furnishes a sympathetic piece of work in “Beneath the Willows,” is even better represented in No.47, “In the Orchard”. In its review of the year’s art (31 December 1891, 4), it noted: 'The Art Society’s Annual Exhibition…reached a high average excellence, and was of greater interest than in 1890, inasmuch as it included five or six first rate works. Mrs. Mary Stoddard , Miss Lilla P. Creed , and Messrs … Albert J. Hanson… were amongst those who especially distinguished themselves.’ In the 1891 competition held by the National Gallery of NSW for watercolours illustrating 'Picturesque NSW’, the ISN (5 December 1891, p.12) noted: 'Mr. Hanson’s “Billabong on the Tumut” does him great credit. Some rushes in marshy ground from the right foreground; between them and the wooded banks opposite lies the river, over which some cattle are crossing, while Mt. Talbingo makes an effective background. The second view of Tumut also deserves praise.’
Hanson was in England in 1892 and showed both English and Australian landscapes with the Royal Society of British Artists that year. He continued to exhibit with the society for the next two years and was elected a member. He also sent back watercolours to the Art Society exhibitions. Two of 1892 were much admired, as the Sydney Morning Herald reported: 'In the water-colour section two of the best pictures (by Mr Hanson and by Mr Bevan [ Edward Bevan ]) have been purchased by the trustees of the Art Gallery’ ( SMH 2 September 1892, 2: info. Ingrid Anderson). The following day (3 September 1892, 6), the Herald commented:
There are, however, two paintings [watercolours] of supreme merit. The first of these, from the brush of Mr. Albert J. Hanson, the young artist now pursuing his studies in Europe, has been purchased for the Art Gallery. “The Low Lispings of the Silvery Sea” is the jingling title of this beautiful work (No.206), which discloses a view of waves rippling greenly upon a shore of sand and rocks, beneath a dull grey sky. The picture has atmosphere and is full of feeling.
The Bulletin critic (10 September 1892, 5) also thought purchase of the two was 'perhaps the best choice that could have been made’. The Low Lispings of the Silvery Sea was reviewed and reproduced in the Illustrated Sydney News on 10 September 1892, 6-7, and included in the loan collection of paintings exhibited by the AGNSW Trustees at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the Chicago World’s Fair (see revised catalogue: NSW section, 402-10). He also showed paintings at London’s Royal Academy, Royal Institute and Royal Institute of Oil Painters (David Thomas, lot 77, Christie’s catalogue 17-18 August 1999).
The Illustrated Sydney News accompanied its review of the 1893 Art Society of NSW Exhibition (2 September 1893, 3) with a sketch of Hanson’s Nature in Silence bade the World Repose (cat 234), and the following day (p.4) commented: 'With Albert J. Hanson and Minns we divide the “honours” for watercolours’. The Bulletin (9 September 1893, 14) was also fulsome:
How marvellously Albert Hanson has improved since he began his European studies. His method is a complete antithesis to Streeton’s, and he appears to systematically adopt a sombre tone. Of his two oil paintings, the better is that entitled “Nature in Silence bade the World Repose” (234), a truly poetical picture representing an English river by-wash in twilight… [also did] “The Mirthful Day of the Mightly Sea” (165)…
This portion of the show [watercolours] is indeed only raised above mediocrity by the presence of a charming series of English sketches sent out by Albert Hanson. Of these the most successful is a dainty sketch of a cottage-farm, Surrey (85) in which the red brick house and the flower-garden, with geese in the foreground, are treated with extreme skill and delicacy.
A photo-engraving accompanied a discussion of his success in England in the ISN (17 June 1893, 7: see file) and on 2 September 1893, 3, when the ISN praised his oils and watercolours in a critique of the 14th annual Art Society exhibition, an engraving of Nature in Silence bade the World Repose was featured on page 1. The SMH (28 September 1894, 3) included Kynance Cove among the 10 best works in the 1894 Art Society exhibition, noting that Hanson had also had a work in the previous year’s selection. The Herald 's 'Second Notice’ of the Art Society exhibition (29 September 1894, p.7) stated:
In “Kynance Cove – South Cornwall” (315), Mr. Albert J. Hanson furnished one of the several fine works which will make this year’s exhibition memorable. The glorious colouring of the calm blue sea that ripples at the foot of gigantic rocks, and the idea of freedom, space and irregularity which pervades the whole – and in which the myriad white-winged sea-fowl play their part – win acceptance for “Kynance Cove.”
The water-colour section…owes such strength as it possesses chiefly to Messrs. Minns, Ashton, Spong and Hanson. Mr. Albert J. Hanson sends nine pictures. Amongst these will be noticed several little works in the style which was so admired last year – as in “Church, Amberley, Sussex” (92), at close of day, or “On the Surrey Downs” (147), in which the minutest details are wrought with a certain breadth of effect. In this way the apparent extent of the distance in 147 is achieved. Mr. Hanson’s more important water-colours are “And All was Silence save the Seabird’s Cry”(107)…[and] “The South End of Lake George” (152)… more English than Australian in its effect.
Hanson sent more 'charmingly idyllic drawings of country villages’ to the 1894 Art Society Exhibition ( Bulletin 6 October 1894, 8). In 1895, still from England, he sent 'some charming bits of rustic scenery tenderly painted’ in watercolour ( SMH 28 September 1895, 7), including An Idyll – mermaids in a sheltered cavern of the sea whose 'tame domestic faces’, however, were thought to have accorded 'little with their finny extremities’ – and 'a softly painted seascape, and the dark interior of a country smithy’ entitled The Blacksmith . The Bulletin (5 October 1895, p.20) thought this was the first time Hanson had appeared as a figure painter, but still preferred the 'English country subjects – perfect gems of their kind – in addition to an exquisitely painted coast scene, full of tender greys and browns, “The Seabirds’ Cry – the Music of the Sea”.’
In 1896, the SMH noted (10 October 1896, 7) that the Art Society’s exhibition had 'the advantage…of the return from England of Messrs. Percy Spence and Albert J. Hanson’.
Mr. Albert J. Hanson’s contributions form one of the mainstays of the watercolour section. “The Close of Day” (no. 144) is a tenderly treated idyllic scene – the sky faintly suffused with hues of rose and purple, a shepherd driving home his sheep among the grassy edge of some old chalk-pit, and all dimly revealed in the sleepy dusk. The trustees also purchased the delicately softly coloured “Maiden Meditiation” (no.173), the head of a girl who gazes upwards. Mr. Hanson shows several charming bits of English landscape, in nearly all of which there is poetry, and his “Cidermaking in Herefordshire” (no.202) is a good piece of work with well-drawn figures. Mr. Hanson’s oil painting, “An Idyll” (no.63) is an enlargement from a smaller watercolour exhibited last year. It is an imaginative work, showing mermaids feeding seagulls as they lounge within the shelter of a cave facing the sea, with cliffs beyond flooded with crimson and purple light. This forms a clever composition, though the mermaids have a tame domesticated look, which can only be excused on the supposition that the artist painted them from life.
The AGNSW purchased The Close of Day for £52 10s and Maiden Meditation for £21.
By 1896 Hanson was a member of the Council of the Art Society. In 1897 he had a solo exhibition of pictures and sketches in his Bridge Street studio 'full of examples of his dexterous art as a colourist’, stated the Bulletin (29 May 1897, Red Page):
His pleasant little pieces such as “The Land of Egypt” and “In the Gulf of Suez” seem to have achieved exactly the right quality of light and atmosphere. Through all Mr. Hanson’s work indeed, runs a vein of natural charm which needs only a little addition of intensity and power to make his pictures really fine. And his black-and-white work is quite admirable.
The black and white work included 'ingeniously designed book plates’, which were also shown at the Art Society’s exhibition later in the year, along with several of these paintings. (Hanson was a member of the Art Society’s hanging committee that year.) On 25 August 1897, 7, the Herald reported:
Some of the leading painters are now receiving visitors… Mr. Albert J. Hanson received many visitors in his Bridge-street studio yesterday, where he had on view several paintings which will probably figure prominently at the Art Society’s Show. Mr. Hanson has painted “A Station Smithy”, a fine landscape with winding stream in the middle distance, and a beautiful harvesting scene, the last few sheaves still gilded by the declining rays of the sun, with the pale harvest moon rising slowly behind. Amongst Mr. Hanson’s watercolours are a rustic English scene, a nude figure with gossamy wings round which butterflies hover, mermaids at talk in ocean depths, and several landscape subjects.
The Herald 's 'First Notice’ of the Art Society Exhibition (9 September 1897, 5) began:
At the opening of last year’s exhibition by the Art Society an advance was noticeable, which was partly due to the accession of strength gained by the arrival of Mr. Gordon Coutts, the return of Messrs. Hanson and Spence, and the importance of the intercolonial contributions… The first work catalogued is a landscape by Mr. Albert Hanson, a typical Australian view of grassy land and winding stream, the technical merit of which is due to the felicitous expression of a hazy atmosphere. Mr Hanson is quite at his best in his “Station Smithy” (no.19), the rough interior dimly lighted from the open door, and the blazing forge, the figures of a man at the bellows and of the smith with the glowing pickhead on the anvil full of life and character. “In the Mellow Season of the Year” (no.108) with the harvest moon rising above the stubble, and the last few sheaves gilded by the beams of the departing sun, is marked by poetic sentiment.
Its 'Second Notice’ (10 September 1897, 2) focused on the watercolour section of the exhibition, which 'derives its strength chiefly from Messrs. Lister, Hanson, Fullwood, and Spence who have all sent in work of distinguished excellence’.
Mr. Albert Hanson is well and numerously represented in this section. “Changing Paddocks” (no.199) is an important work illustrating the more sombre aspect of the Australian bush, with its blue-grey tones and lonely life. “At the Village Smithy” (no.206) is a charming old-world subject, remarkable for its suggestion of the soft, blurring effects of the tender English twilight. “Twilight with the Rising Moon” (no. 145) furnishes a little landscape half-hidden by the same {?} romantic veil. Mr. Hanson has also the courage needed to explore the regions of the fantastical. “The Bather’s Discovery” (no. 127), in which a little red-haired boy gazes down upon a sleeping mermaid, has value for the delicacy of the tones of the cavernous retreat, but the drawing of the mermaid is decidedly “fishy”. No.135 “Where the Butterfly Takes Wing”, is a sweet little picture of a nude, winged slyph, as ethereal in her grace as the gaudy insects that hover around her, or the rainbow… In “Under the Sea” (no.168), the effect of objects seen through intervening paces of clear green water is wonderfully well achieved… painter may be congratulated.
Hanson was included in the 1898 Australian Art in London show at Grosvenor House, was praised by the Pall Mall Gazette (reprinted SMH 12 May 1898, 2) and had the gratification of seeing his Among the Swamp Oaks among the few works sold. That year he was re-elected a member of the Art Society Council, serving 1898-1900. In 1903 he was again elected a member of the Art Society (now Royal Art Society) Council. In 1905 he won the AGNSW’s Wynne prize for landscape painting.
Albert Hanson married Frances Lanly Appleford at Burwood in 1896; they had several children. He died at his residence Buckthorpe, Stanton Rd, Haberfield on 11 July 1914 and was buried in Rookwood Cemetery Anglican Section C, grave no.1012 (death certificate no.10540/1914). An exhibition of his paintings was held at Anthony Horderns Fine Art Gallery in September-October 1914 (ML PAM file 759.29/H).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 28 September 1867
- Summary
- Albert John Hanson was a prolific painter. His splendid artistic career started about 1889 when he exhibited at the 10th annual exhibition of the Art Society of NSW (later the Royal Art Society). Hanson was a member of the Council of the Art Society. He won the Wynne prize for landscape painting in 1905.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Jul-14
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born in Melbourne, daughter of John Catto Meston. She received most of her artistic training at Melbourne’s National Gallery School in 1882 and 1885-88, moving to Sydney in the early 1890s, where she exhibited with the Art Society of NSW. In 1897-98 she held art classes in her studio in Vickery’s Chambers, where in 1897 she had a portrait on view by Tom Roberts , apparently a good friend. She became well known in Sydney for her own oil portraits, her subjects including Colonel Goodlet, Rev. G. McInnes, Mr and Mrs A.B. Piddington, Sir George Reid (exhibited 1896), James Ashton MLC, Signor Hazon and Professor Sir Thomas Anderson Stuart (painted for Sydney University, where it remains). All her known surviving work is in oils.
The Sydney Morning Herald 's art critic sneered at the portrait Meston showed with the Art Society in 1894 and praised her still-life: 'With the wrathful ravings of the rejected ringing through the town, one wonders how Miss Emily Meston’s portrait … passed the selection committee, especially as this artist was already represented by flower-studies, for which she has a decided talent.’ At the inaugural Society of Artists’ exhibition in 1895, however, Meston’s portrait of Rev. G. McInnes, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, was called 'the strongest portrait, so far as The Bulletin knows, yet painted in Australia by a woman’. Reviewing the exhibition in the Sydney monthly magazine Cosmos (Vol.2, no.1, 30 September 1895, p.79), 'an Amateur Critic’ – probably a woman (s/he especially praised the strength of the 'lady artists’) – noted that the trustees of the National Gallery [of NSW] had purchased Meston’s Study of Grapes from the show –
and very beautiful it is’; but the same lady’s portrait of the Rev. G. McInnes, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Assemby, astonishes all by its wonderful art. There is no mass of paint in the picture; you can see the canvas through the flesh tints, but the result is one to be proud of, and is a prophecy of great things in the future.
Still, clergymen were not normally hung in the National Art Gallery. In any case, the Bulletin 's review was published on 5 October and Cosmos on 30 September, both after the purchase had been made. Although the Bulletin critic also endorsed the trustees’ selection calling Study of Grapes 'exceptionally fine’, the Herald critic had now changed his mind. He thought this particular still life 'of inferior merit’ to either of her portraits (McInnes and Sasha ), both of which were noted as 'a great advance’ on her previous work.
In 1896 the Daily Telegraph commented that Meston had 'achieved a marked success’ with the two portraits shown that year and also praised her figure study of a young girl with 'floating flaxen hair’. The following year the Bulletin stated that one of her exhibits was 'the strongest portrait … yet painted in Australia by a woman’. When all unsold sketches and studies were auctioned by Lawson’s from the Society’s 1897 exhibition Meston’s Chrysanthemums (along with Roses by Ethel Stephens ) received the second top price of three guineas, slightly less than Julian Ashton 's Morning , which sold for three and a quarter guineas. Grapes was included in the ambitious Exhibition of Australian Art at London’s Grafton Gallery in 1898 and Meston was mentioned by name by R.A.M. Stevenson in the Pall Mall Gazette (4 April 1898) among the also-rans ('all the good things’). Her reputation-in this limited direction-was made. Although the portrait of a grey-headed man she showed in the 1898 Society of Artists’ annual exhibition was said to 'not quite maintain the high standard’ she had previously set, the Herald critic praised her two flower paintings ('seldom has finer flower painting been seen in Sydney’). She continued to show both portrait and still life paintings with the Society of Artists until 1907, when she showed a pastel of an Aboriginal girl and two oils of flowers.
Meston’s exhibits in the 1907 Women’s Work Exhibition at Melbourne, all shown competitively, included an Australian landscape Rain on the Coast (3 gns), a seascape After the Storm (5 gns), An Aboriginal Boy and two flower paintings: Study of Roses (20 gns) and Jonquils and Wallflowers (8 gns). In 1908 she showed mainly decorative flower and still life works in the Women Painters’ exhibition at Bradley’s Rooms, Sydney – an exhibition that led to the formation of the NSW Society of Women Painters, which elected Meston Hon. Treasurer. At its inaugural exhibition in 1910 she showed flower paintings priced at five and six guineas and a new study of grapes for which she was asking ten (the study of grapes donated to the Queensland Art Gallery in 1920 may be this work).
Her emphasis on modest still life rather than portraits (clearly for economic survival) led critics to complain that Meston failed to live up to her early promise. In 1908 D.H. Souter was complaining that her work in the women painters’ show at Bradley’s rooms was 'mainly inferior to that of previous years’. Today, we have little chance of knowing. Our public art collections hold only bunches of grapes. She was clearly more significant as a portrait than still-life painter in her lifetime, but 'national’ art galleries rarely acquired large oil portraits, especially if they were by women, preferring small still life studies that conformed to the 'decorative’ stereotype attached to women’s art and were considerably cheaper. Meston could get fifty guineas for a portrait but her average price for a still life was five, her top price twenty.
Emily Meston remained a prominent member of the Society of Women Painters until her death on 7 October 1914, when she was said to be aged 48. She was buried in the family plot in the Independent section of Rookwood Cemetery (section 4B, grave no.5604: Note the grave appears to be in Section 2B; however, cemetery records show it as 4B; Death Certificate No. 14297)
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1866
- Summary
- Meston showed early promise as a portrait painter, however her remaining work is mostly still life. Her subject choice was compromised by the art world's preoccupation with conformity of women artists to the 'decorative' stereotype'.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Oct-14
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude52.634444 Longitude-1.131944 Start Date1860-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leicester, England
- Biography
- painter, was born in Leicester and studied at the Manchester School of Art. He visited NSW in 1888, coming out to Sydney on the sailing ship Thomas Stevens . In April 1999 Christie’s auctioned his oil on canvas Morning aboard Ship believed to have been executed en route (est. $18,000-$20,000). In 1889 the National Art Gallery of NSW purchased his watercolour Dinner in the Fo’castle from the NSW Art Society. 'A big, genial Bohemian who could sing and tell a yarn with the best’, Lister Lister recalled in his memoirs (quoted by Moore), he 'did much to enliven the depressed art climate of New South Wales’. The late 1880s in Sydney, said Lister Lister, 'was a great time for black and white artists but a poor one for painters. The arrival of H.S. Hopwood from England in 1888 brought a welcome change, and later on when Streeton and Roberts came over from Victoria, things seemed to go ahead’ (Moore, quoted Christie’s catalogue). During the 2-3 years Hopwood was in Sydney he exhibited many watercolours of Sydney Harbour and the NSW countryside with the Art Society and became a prominent member of its sketch club.
Hopwood returned to England in 1890. In 1891 he studied under Bougereau and Ferrier at Julien’s Atelier in Paris. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1892 {et al.}, as well as with the Fine Arts Society, primarily showing genre scenes. The Chantrey Bequest trustees purchased his Industry for London’s Tate Gallery in 1894. He was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) and an Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society (ARWS).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1860
- Summary
- Henry Silkstone Hopwood was known as a painter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1914
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-33.42 Longitude149.577778 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bathurst, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Clara Bate (nee Hughes) was born in 1859 to John and Annie Hughes. John Hughes was farmer who originally resided in the Bathurst region, but later moved to Ginkin.
Clara married Frank Picton Bate in 1884 and moved to his property, 'Frankfort’. The couple established a guesthouse which was located close to the Jenolan Caves.
Bate apparently worked on a quilt throughout her life. It is thought that after Clara’s death in 1914 her sister Emma completed the quilt. The double size quilt was passed on through generations of the Hughes family.
The quilt was donated to the Powerhouse Museum.
This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- Clara Bate (née Hughes), 1859-1914, was born in Bathurst, NSW. Created a double sized quilt, which she worked on throughout her life. The quilt was finished in 1915 by her sister and has been passed on through generations of the Hughes family.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1914
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude49.3837621 Longitude3.327613 Start Date1847-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Soissons, France
- Biography
- French-born, British-based caricaturist, did a not very exaggerated caricature of one time Auditor General of Victoria, the Right Hon. F.C. Childers (NLA U6154), a colour lithograph for London Figaro signed 'FAUSTIN’. The National Library of Australia dates it as 1860s but it looks much later – in English 'Spy’ mode. Faustin also drew a caricature of Charles Darwin as a monkey (NPG UK).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanStaff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1847
- Summary
- Franco-British, Victorian-era cartoonist who portrayed the Right Hon. F.C. Childers, one time Auditor General of Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1914
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude-33.816667 Longitude151 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- Embroiderer, worked a sampler at Adelaide in 1851 and sent it to her English grandmother, Jane Lawrance, wife of Benjamin Lawrance, who lived in Mylor Churchtown, near Falmouth, Cornwall. The sampler starts with their names, then the names of their six children, including Elizabeth’s father Joseph Lawrance. Elizabeth, born at Parramatta NSW, married Job Clark of Kalangadoo at Mount Gambier, South Australia, when she was twenty (the groom was 24). They lived at Mount Gambier and vicinity and had eleven children (10 registered in SA). The sampler was at Witney Antiques, Oxfordshire, England in 2001, presumably for sale.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1844
- Summary
- Embroiderer, worked a sampler at Adelaide in 1851 and sent it to her English grandparents, which includes their names, and their six children. She lived at Mount Gambier and vicinity and had eleven children.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1914
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude53.8 Longitude-2.6 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lancashire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, professional photographer and carver, was born in Lancashire. In 1863-64 he was working as a photographer in Auburn Street, Goulburn, New South Wales. A posthumous photograph he took of Lowy on 29 August 1863, a few hours after the bushranger had 'received the fatal wound’, was subsequently reproduced in the Illustrated Melbourne Post .
In 1883 George Gregory opened a photographic studio in Auckland. A keen painter of still-life and landscape subjects, he exhibited with the Auckland Society of Arts in 1885-1913. He was also a prolific wood-carver, carving pew ends for St Aidan’s and the altar of All Saints’ churches in Auckland, among other examples. Some of his New Zealand work was reproduced in the 1897 New Zealand Graphic .
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1843
- Summary
- Gregory worked in Auckland where he opened a photographic studio, painted landscapes and still lifes and carved pew ends and altars for New Zealand churches.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1914
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude51.2800275 Longitude1.0802533 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Canterbury, Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, the eldest daughter of Charles Benham and Mary Ann, née Hoare, was born at Canterbury, Kent, on 2 May 1837. She came to South Australia with her parents in the Tiberias in 1855. At the South Australian Society of Arts’ 1859 exhibition Miss Benham exhibited two of her drawings, The Gleaner and Russia in 1812 . She sent eight works to the January 1863 exhibition, the artist being identified only as 'Benham’ and the media unspecified. A design for the society’s medal – for which Hill , Berger , Weidenbach , Minchin and Schramm were also competing – and a head (possibly a sculpture) were possibly by her brother, William Hoare Benham (1833-1919), who won a prize for sculpture in 1868. The rest, mainly copies, were undoubtedly her work: The Princess Helena (Peace) , The Naughty Boy , The Late Prince Consort (after 'Mayall’), The Convent Shrine , Sly Boots (after 'Weyall’) and The Child’s Prayer . According to Ambrus, Miss A.M. Benham, an Adelaide bird painter, gave the noted botanical artist Rosa Fiveash (1855-1938) her first art lessons.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 2 May 1837
- Summary
- Ann Maria Benham migrated to South Australia as a child and later began exhibiting her paintings with the South Australian Society of Arts. She is reported to have given the noted botanical artist Rosa Fiveash her first art lessons.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1914
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Claremont House, Newtown Road and Warwick Street, Hobart Town, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- landscape painter, amateur photographer, draughtsman and explorer, was born in Claremont House on the corner of Newtown Road and Warwick Street, Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, (where Elizabeth Matriculation College now stands), on 27 August 1836. The family can be traced back to Pons, in the province of Saintonge, France, from which, as Huguenots, they escaped after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 to settle in Bristol, Somerset. Over the years involvement in the wool trade and the pharmacy business brought wealth and respect to the English branch of the family but this came to an end on 27 March 1830 at the Warwick Assizes when Piguenit’s father, Frederick Le Geyt Piguenit, then of Chatham, Kent, was convicted of having in his possession 'King’s Stores marked with the Government mark’. Transported for fourteen years, he arrived at Hobart Town on 18 October 1830, closely followed by his fiancée, Mary Ann Igglesden ( Piguenit ), whom he married on 18 February 1833. Two of their six children, William Charles and his youngest sister, Harriet , were to become painters.
William Charles (known as Bill to his friends) attended Cambridge House Academy, Brisbane Street; a school report of 18 December 1849 praises his 'mapping, particularly that of Van Diemen’s Land’. In September 1850, as an assistant draughtsman, he joined the Tasmanian Lands and Survey Department where much of his time was spent preparing maps of Tasmania. The lithographers Robin Vaughan Hood , Alfred Randall and, later, the Scottish painter-engraver Frank Dunnett assisted in the production of the maps, and Piguenit would have learned a great deal from them. Hood had a well-known picture gallery in Hobart Town while Randall, who worked as a draughtsman in the Lands and Survey Department from 1854, became a close friend of Piguenit’s and a strong promoter of his works. Later, Randall married Piguenit’s sister Agnes.
After Thomas Bock died in 1855 his step-son Alfred Bock , a year older than Piguenit, took over the Bock daguerreotype business and it is probable that Piguenit learned of the wet-plate process after Alfred Bock began experimenting with it in the late 1850s or early 1860s. In any event, Piguenit became involved, entering a selection of his photographs in the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition alongside examples by Docker , Freeman , Clifford and others. Although not mentioned in the awards list, this did not deter him from continuing to take photographs, both as an aid to his landscape painting and as a means of recording his increasing production of paintings. Landscape photographs are included in one of his sketchbooks (Mitchell Library).
When Piguenit exhibited at Melbourne in 1870, showing a watercolour sketch of Mount Wellington from the Huon Road, the Daily Telegraph of 20 July called him 'a young artist who gives promise of better things’. His love for the Tasmanian landscape and his improved artistic ability led to his being invited to accompany James R. Scott’s expedition to Arthur Plains and Port Davey in March 1871 as official artist. The results of the trip formed the basis for later illustrations in the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia and in R.M. Johnston’s Systematic Account of the Geology of Tasmania .
Piguenit resigned from the Lands and Survey Department in 1873 after being refused leave to travel to England. By then his ability with the brush was bearing fruit; he had received favourable reviews for his first significant oil, A Summer Afternoon . His association with Randall also helped him professionally. In 1870 the Mercury praised his illustrations of the Derwent, near New Norfolk and Shannon, near Mount Pleasant , both chromolithographed by Randall. In 1873 he again accompanied Scott on an expedition, this time to Lake St Clair and Lake Petrarch. For the first two weeks he recorded making various sketches, then spent the final eleven days taking photographs. In 1874, still as an amateur, he sent his painting Bream Creek, Adventure Bay… to the New South Wales Academy of Art, for sale at 15 guineas. It won Piguenit a silver medal. Later that year he joined R.M. Johnston’s party to Lake Pedder.
Having won another silver medal from the academy in 1875 for Mount Olympus, Lake St Clair, Tasmania (Art Gallery of New South Wales [AGNSW]), for sale at 50 guineas, Piguenit was invited to be principal guest artist at the second of the artists’ and photographers’ camps in the Grose Valley, New South Wales, organised by Eccleston Du Faur and sponsored by the New South Wales Academy of Art and the colony’s Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition Commission. On this occasion Piguenit devoted his time to sketching, the photographer Joseph Bischoff having been commissioned by Du Faur to produce large format photographs of the valley. Piguenit sent five of his Grose Valley oil landscapes to the academy’s 1876 exhibition and was awarded a certificate of merit for one, though the Sydney Mail critic was tepid in his praise: 'It would be enough to say that they are all very nicely painted and that all have about the same colour and tone’. The following year, however, the Mail critic thought Piguenit’s Scene on the Upper Huon (Tasmania) the best picture in the exhibition.
Piguenit also showed Tasmanian views with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1877. Ten of his landscapes were included in the 1879 Launceston Fine Art Exhibition and five were shown at the Hobart Town Hall in 1881, by which time Piguenit was living in Sydney, having moved there with his family in 1880. His paintings shown at the first exhibition of the Art Society of New South Wales in December 1880 were reviewed at length, all being considered 'more or less interesting in subject and skilful in treatment’. Trinity Fall, Govett’s Leap Valley , one of the fruits of his earlier excursion, was 'an elegant little picture’ with 'a graceful lyre bird standing on the stones over which flow cascades of water’. The largest, Sydney Harbour from the North Shore (private collection), was thought 'a fine painting, bold and forcible in colour, but the effect of the whole picture would have been considerably heightened by deeper and more varied tints in the sky’. It was one of two paintings shown at the 1883 Calcutta International Exhibition, retitled Sydney in 1882, Taken from North Shore, Showing Garden Palace, in Which the International Exhibition in 1879 Was Held, Destroyed by Fire 22nd September 1882 . It appeared again in the 1886 Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London.
A lifelong enthusiasm for exploring the wilderness brought Piguenit back to Tasmania in 1887 to accompany Charles P. Sprent’s party aiming to explore the west coast. Unfortunately, he suffered exhaustion and blistered feet and had to turn back after 26 miles. He took no part in further expeditions but spent the rest of his life painting the New South Wales landscape, with visits to Tasmania to paint in 1884, 1893 and 1895. On the last occasion he was given a free railway pass to travel the colony. In 1898 he visited England as a participant in the Australian Art in London exhibition at the Grafton Galleries. Four of his seven paintings were sold (two, on loan from AGNSW and Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery [TMAG], were not for sale) and North Lagoon obtained the top price (175 guineas). In England he met the romantic landscape painter Benjamin Williams Leader whose work offers close parallels and who was undoubtedly an early influence. He paid a second visit to Britain in 1900 in order to paint in Wales.
Regarded as the leading Australian-born landscape painter in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Piguenit was a founding committee member of the Art Society of New South Wales (elected Vice President in 1886) and regularly showed work in its exhibitions. He was represented in many major exhibitions, such as the 1880 Melbourne International, and he received many awards, including silver medals in 1874 and 1875 from the NSW Academy of Art, two second prizes at the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition and gold medals from the 1883 Calcutta International and the 1888 Queensland Art Society and Tasmanian Juvenile Industries exhibitions. He was hung in the Paris Salon in 1893 and at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1894 ( Scene on the Upper Nepean River , now AGNSW). A Tasmanian view near Prince of Wales Bay was presented by the Government House Literary Society to their founder and patron, Lady Hamilton, on her departure in 1892.
From the 1880s onwards Piguenit’s paintings were reproduced in various publications, especially the Illustrated Sydney News . His highly praised In the Grose Valley, Blue Mountains (1882) was destroyed in the 1882 Garden Palace fire, together with the rest of the exhibits in that year’s Art Society exhibition, and is known only from an engraving by Charles Turner . The prize-winning monochrome Forest Life, Tasmania (1881) was issued as a photograph – taken by Thomas Boyd for presentation to subscribers in the Art Society’s 1882 art union – while photographs of his 'celebrated picture of Port Esperance, showing the islands of Faith, Hope and Charity’ (TMAG), then hanging in the Tasmanian Agent-General’s London office, accompanied the painting to the Grafton Galleries in 1890.
In 1875 Piguenit had been the first Australian artist to have work purchased by public subscription for the proposed National Art Gallery of New South Wales ( Mount Olympus, Lake St. Clair, Tasmania ). The Tasmanian government purchased six of his paintings of the Western Highlands in 1887 and many others were subsequently acquired or gifted to hang in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. His Mount Kosciusko, and the Valley of the Upper Murray (1883) 'was considered to be of such merit that it was purchased by the [Art Society’s] committee for 25 guineas and will be produced by photography for presentation at the next Art Union’. In 1902 he was commissioned (for a total of £200) to paint Mount Kosciusko for the Art Gallery of New South Wales – one of Piguenit’s few major subjects without water in the foreground.
His passion for planes of translucent, reflective water under dramatic skies is epitomised in his Flood in the Darling, 1890 (AGNSW, exhibited 1895), another version of 'Out West’. During the Flood of 1890, the Gunda Booka Range , winner of Richard Wynne’s inaugural 1890-91 prize for the best landscape in oils of New South Wales scenery as judged by the trustees of the gallery from entries in the Art Society’s eleventh annual exhibition. When the Wynne Prize was reconstituted under broader rules at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1897, Piguenit won it in 1901 for A Thunderstorm on the Darling .
On 17 July 1914 at Saintonge, the Randalls’ Hunter’s Hill home on the Lane Cove River where he had lived for many years, Piguenit died from complications following appendicitis. He was buried in the Field of Mars Cemetery. It has been reported that his will stipulated that all his unsold works were to be destroyed, but no mention of this appears in the official copy.
Writers:
Gaskins, BillStaff Writer
Note: secondary biographer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 27 August 1836
- Summary
- Influential and widely exhibited late Colonial era Hobart and Sydney landscape painter, amateur photographer, draughtsman and explorer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Jul-14
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude53.5227681 Longitude-1.1335312 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Doncaster, England, UK
- Biography
- model maker, was a daughter of Michael and Elizabeth Rushby who came to New South Wales in 1840 as free settlers from Doncaster, England on board the Champion ; their four children included Charlotte, then aged seven. Granted forty acres at McDonald’s Creek, near Mudgee, her father established a farm and built a slab hut, the family settlement being known as Kaludibah, or Cloudy Bay. Michael Rushby died of a stroke in 1857 and his wife later married the manager of the property.
Charlotte Rushby was about nineteen when she made the model cottage, now in the Powerhouse Museum. She also made a model of an Aboriginal camp near the settlement. According to the family, both travelled to England in 1900 for display in an exhibition. Later, she married James Harrington, a musician, and had six children; after her husband’s death, she lived with a widowed daughter. It is not known if she made models after her marriage.
Writers:
Mitchell, Louise
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1833
- Summary
- Charlotte Rushby was about nineteen when she made the model cottage, now in the Powerhouse Museum. She also made a model of an Aboriginal camp near the settlement. According to the family, both travelled to England in 1900 for display in an exhibition.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1914
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and merchant, was born in London. In 1840 he came to Hobart Town aboard the Roxburgh Castle , with his mother and sister, and was educated at the Melville Street School in Hobart and at a private boarding-school in Kempton. He also studied drawing under Thomas Evans Chapman . In 1856 he became a partner in his uncle’s wool and grain store. He brought his son Charles into the firm in 1879 and it continued to prosper and expand under the name of A.G. Webster & Son Ltd. Webster held many public offices, being a member of the council of the Royal Society of Tasmania and a trustee of both the Tasmanian Museum and the Botanical Gardens. He died of chronic bronchitis on 4 December 1914, predeceased by his wife Louisa Harriet Turnley, whom he married in 1859, and survived by five of their eight children.
Webster was a subscriber to the 1858 Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition, although he was not listed among the exhibitors. Chapman, however, states that he later exhibited watercolour and pencil views of Tasmanian landscapes. One is in the Allport Library, while an early pencil sketch, Derwent River, Van Diemen’s Land , signed and dated 31 May 1847, was sold at Sotheby’s (Sydney) in October 1986.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- Wool and grain merchant. Produced watercolour and pencil views of Tasmanian landscapes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Dec-14
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- professional photographer, grew up in New South Wales, the eldest of three children of Henry William and Mary Burgin (née Gowen). Henry William junior was working as a photographer at Parramatta in 1860-64. He married Grace E. Curtis at the Presbyterian Church in Parramatta in 1851. Carte-de-visite studio portraits and views of the Hawkesbury River dating from this period are held by the Mitchell Library, as is his wet-plate negative collection of 'Portraits taken at Parramatta’. The latter include Miss Curtis (presumably an in-law), Mr Pouer, Mrs Chapman and Mrs Howard of Sevenhills.
Some details of the life of Burgin’s son, also called Henry William Burgin (1852-1887), are included among those of Burgin himself in the Dictionary of Australian Artists (1992).
This exhibition is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- Henry worked at a photographic studio in Parramatta in 1860-1864. Carte-de-visite studio portraits and views of the Hawkesbury River dating from this period are held by the Mitchell Library, as is his wet-plate negative collection of 'Portraits taken at Parramatta'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1914
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude52.0401524 Longitude0.7299495 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sudbury, Suffolk, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer, lithographer, journalist, newspaper editor, publisher and author, was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, on 22 March 1829, third of the ten children of Thomas Button and Harriett, née Lloyd.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 March 1829
- Summary
- Colonial photographer connected to the artist John Glover through his wife, he published two albums containing some reproductions of his photographs, Memories of Fifty Years of Courtship and Wedded Life and Flotsam and Jetsam. As a proprietor of the newspaper Launceston Examiner he was also active in the field of sciences and mechanics in his community.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-May-14
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude51.1364714 Longitude-2.993782692 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1914-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bristol, Somerset, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and letter-writer, was born on 29 April 1826 in Bristol, Somerset, eldest child of Rev. Charles Wansbrough Henning and Rachel Lydia, née Biddulph. With her sister, Amy, she left for Sydney on board the Calcutta in 1854 to join another sister, Annie, and their brother, Biddulph, who had leased a farm at Appin, New South Wales, the previous year. They soon moved to Biddulph’s farm on the Bulli Mountain. The Dwelling at Mount Keira (private collection), a conventionally picturesque view of the cottage in the Illawarra rainforest, has been attributed to her. Homesick and unhappy, Rachel returned to England in 1856 but came back to New South Wales in 1861, joining Biddulph in Queensland the following year on his run, Exmoor, in the South Kennedy district. Somewhat to her surprise, she discovered that she loved station life.
Rachel Henning is now known for her letters, many of which were written to another sister, Etta Boyce, who had remained in England; others were to Amy after her marriage to Thomas Sloman. The Letters of Rachel Henning were first published in the Bulletin in 1951-52 (with illustrations by Norman Lindsay) and subsequently in several book editions. They give a personal and very lively view of rural life in Australia, particularly that on her brother’s Queensland property. They also reveal that like many well-bred Victorian girls Rachel learned to sketch in youth and pursued this activity in Australia.
Unfortunately, sketching activities are recorded only in her early years when Henning was convinced that anything colonial was inferior. One of a pair of locally 'finished’ young ladies who visited her from Melbourne produced an album 'filled with her own and her schoolfellows’ drawings … utterly below criticism. The worst of our “Mount” drawings in the earliest days of learning were works of art compared to them’, she wrote in 1863. When she mentioned her own sketching activities in 1861 she noted that she preferred to copy and enlarge vignettes from a Thomas Creswick illustrated edition of Tennyson rather than draw local landscapes. These she found 'very curious, being so utterly un-English [and] not exactly beautiful’; yet soon she was enamoured of the bush landscape and its flowers.
Henning’s Queensland years seem to have allowed little time for painting. After her marriage on 3 March 1866 to her brother’s overseer, Deighton Taylor, she records enjoying poetry and music but no sketching is mentioned. Nevertheless, a grey wash view of Biddulph’s Exmoor homestead (c.1862-67, (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney), 'a long low building, built of dark-coloured slabs of wood with a veranda in front, and the doors and windows opening on to it’, and a watercolour of a group dining under canvas by a river in the bush (Bowen Historical Society) have been attributed to her, the latter possibly a view near her home on the Myall River where her husband managed a timber-logging business.
Rachel Henning was especially fond of gardening and is said to have created gardens wherever she lived. She died at Biddulph’s home, Passy, Hunter’s Hill, Sydney, on 23 August 1914. Deighton Taylor predeceased her in 1900 and they had no children.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 April 1826
- Summary
- Sketcher and letter-writer, she is primarily known for her letters which describe rural life in Australia, particularly that on her brother's Queensland property, in the 1860s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29-Aug-14
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1913-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Sydney, NSW?
- Biography
- cartoonist and illustrator, was born in Sydney on 15 March 1879 (according to David Cook: Alec C. Chisholm says he was a New Zealander). Later he moved to Perth and did cartoons and illustrations for a number of local journals, including Clare’s Weekly , the Argonaut , the Western Mail and the Sunday Times (c.1899-1908). A Federation cartoon published in the Western Argus on 26 July 1900 (FA slide library University of Sydney) is presumably that in NLA neg. of an allegorical female tied to a tree ('Isolation’) being cut free with a sword ('Federation’) wielded by a knight with mining tools ('W.A. Miner’) dated 1900 – a parody of J.G. Millais’s Andromache recorded as by Fred 'Boote’.
In 1901-3 Booty was political cartoonist on the Spectator {WA?}. By 1906 he was in Melbourne, where he became part owner of a lithographic plant while also doing comic drawings for the Adelaide Gadfly . A.H. Chisholm (p.28) tells the story of 'a New Zealand artist named Fred Booty’ flipping a sovereign to editor C.J. Dennis – who had a reputation for standoffishness – at the Gadfly office (c.1906-7) with the comment: 'Would this suffice to gain speech with thee?’
Booty drew many comic postcards (see Cook reference) and bookplates (Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia, has a collection of his bookplates, donated 2000). He contributed to the Sydney Bulletin from c.1900. He left for the USA in about 1909 and remained there until he died, in Boston in 1913.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 15 March 1879
- Summary
- Federation-era cartoonist, Booty was a regular contributor to a number of Western Australian journals and newspapers. Born in Sydney, he spent time in Melbourne and also contributed work to the Bulletin and South Australian publication Gadfly before moving permanently to the United States c.1909.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1913
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude-37.823 Longitude144.998 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1913-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Richmond, Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- artist.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 January 1869
- Summary
- At the time of his early and tragic death, David Stewart Carlton had a growing reputation as an artist and poet in Western Australia, and had recently left his job as a customs agent in Fremantle to pursue these activities full time. Before he arrived in Western Australia he had been an Art Master at Geelong Art School, and before that, was a pupil of Frederick McCubbin at the National Gallery school, Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1868-01-01 End Date1913-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia
- Biography
- embroiderer, was born on 11 January 1868, one of the thirteen children of Robert and Joanna Barr Smith. The Barr Smiths were a rich South Australian family, major patrons of William Morris’s firm, Morris & Co., in England. Erlistoun developed an interest in music and in 1889 was taken to Germany with her mother so she could further her studies. Unfortunately, due to growing deafness she was forced to abandon this career.
Like other female members of her family, Erlistoun learned to embroider no doubt encouraged by her parents’ passion for Morris & Co. furnishings, many of which were embroideries. By the mid-1890s, possibly earlier, she was working Morris kits. She may have learned the stitching techniques in London from the firm; her family visited London frequently and personally ordered furnishings, including embroideries.
Erlistoun’s deafness with its enforced solitude gave her ample time for embroidery and she produced many works after Morris & Co. designs, including table covers, a screen, mantel borders and a splendid portière. An embroidered silk shoe bag and workbox (c.1900, AGSA) appear to be to her own designs.
In 1898 Erlistoun Barr Smith married William Mitchell (1861-1962), an academic; they had two children. They lived on Fitzroy Terrace, Adelaide, in a house now known as Mitchell House. She died as a result of tuberculosis on 3 August 1913.
Writers:
Menz, Christopher
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 11 January 1868
- Summary
- Embroiderer, South Australia, produced many works after Morris & Co. designs, including table covers, a screen, mantel borders and a splendid portière.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3-Aug-13
- Age at death
- 45
Details
Latitude50.7241405 Longitude-3.660778816 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1913-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Devonshire, England, UK
- Biography
- costume maker and nanny born in Devonshire, England, in about 1850. She arrived in Sydney circa.1878.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
DAAO staff writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. c.1850
- Summary
- An English costume maker and nanny living and working in Sydney from about 1878.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 28-Jun-13
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1913-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter and cartoonist, was born in Edinburgh, where he had a successful career painting landscapes (acc. Moore) before migrating to Brisbane in 1887. Unable to make a living as a painter, he turned to commercial work and cartooning. He pioneered the collotype process in Queensland and was the first cartoonist on the Brisbane Boomerang , founded 1887, eg “For Heaven’s sake, hide our past!” 21 January 1888, 14; The “Noble” British Lion 28 July 1888. Others include several anti-Chinese, anti-imperial ones like “Australia wakes!” 25 February 1888. He was succeeded on the Boomerang by Monte Scott and A.J. Fischer from Sydney. Later, Murray drew cartoons for the Queensland Worker , e.g. What we want 1893 with a little girl (Queensland) walking on a raft (Labour Platform) with 'equal opportunity for all’ on her dress (ill King, 74). Mr. Speaker to the Rescue on the deadlock over the NSW/Qld border tariff, published 15 July 1893, frontispiece (signed 'E.H. Murray’).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1848
- Summary
- Late colonial era Scottish born Brisbane painter and cartoonist. Murray was born in Edinburgh, where he had a successful career painting landscapes before migrating to Brisbane in 1887.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1913
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1839-01-01 End Date1913-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Melbourne on 25 November 1839, eighth of the 10 children of Sylvester John Brown, master mariner and entrepreneur, and Eliza Angell, née Alexander.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 25 November 1839
- Summary
- A 'lady of great culture', a prominent figure and a 'grande dame', Lady Darley developed a talent for 'spirit drawing'. Working intuitively she developed psychic portraits, a popular practice in the late 1800's.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 8-Apr-13
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1913-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Van Diemen's Land , Hobart, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer and lawyer, was born on 9 June 1838 in Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, son of Thomas Young, a lawyer, and Janet, née Campbell. In 1855 Master Russell Young won a prize at the Hobart Town Academy for his drawing of the Cascades, Launceston. Articled to his father in 1857, Young was called to the Bar in March 1862 and practised as Russell Young & Butler in Hobart Town. On 3 December 1863, at Sunbury, Victoria, the home of (Sir) William John ('Big’) Clarke and his first wife Mary, Young married Sarah Hopkins Walker, Mary’s sister. They had three sons and a daughter. By the 1860s Young had become an enthusiastic amateur photographer. Descendants still hold many of his photographs, including one of William Clarke.
Young had a distinguished public career. The various public offices he held included being a trustee of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. He was member for Hobart Town in the Tasmanian House of Assembly in 1871 and for Franklin in 1872-77. He died at Hobart on 29 June 1913.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 9 June 1838
- Summary
- Mid 19th century painter, amateur photographer and lawyer of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Jun-13
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude51.29484 Longitude18.38093 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1913-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Walichnowy, Poland
- Biography
- painter and ornithologist, was born at Walichnowy, near Wielun, Poland, on 7 March 1837, son of Gracius (Gracjan) Brojnowski, a landowner and former military officer of the Polish nobility, and Alicia, née Nieszkowska. He studied art, classics and languages at Munich University. To avoid conscription into the Russian Imperial Army he roamed around Europe and London in poverty, his possessions having been stolen earlier in Germany. Hearing tales of the Australian goldfields, he boarded a windjammer bound for Victoria as a deck-hand in 1857 and swam ashore at Portland after an exceedingly unpleasant six months’ voyage. He then walked from one Victorian rural settlement to another, working as a shepherd, stockman and independent farmer.
A few years later Broinowski returned to Melbourne. He married Jane Smith, daughter of a whaling captain (perhaps James Smith ), at Richmond on 17 August 1864. To support his growing family he found a canvassing job with the Melbourne printsellers and publishers Hamel & Ferguson, selling numerous copies of von Gu é rard 's Australian Landscapes (Melbourne 1866-67) for them.
Broinowski’s major interest was painting, so he decided to attempt to gain a livelihood from this through art unions, conceived on a far grander scale than ever previously attempted. He travelled throughout Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland as far north as Cooktown (in August 1875), existing by painting views of the towns and countryside as he went and selling tickets at his various stops in grand art unions of his pictures held in the capital cities. He spent several years doing this but no paintings he produced have been located, largely because he used the pseudonym G.J. Browne (commonly cited as 'Brown’). He is possibly the 'Browne’ who signed two extant sketches of the gold-diggings (Royal Commonwealth Society, London) and almost certainly the 'George J. Browne’ listed as a Sydney artist in 1871.
He was undoubtedly the 'G.J. Browne’ who was holding an exhibition at the Brisbane Town Hall in April 1875 before disposing of his pictures by means of an art union. He stated that the proceeds would be used to enable him to travel through Queensland 'to take sketches of the scenery, for publication in England’. The Telegraph reported that Browne was 'a really talented’ artist of whom the press of Victoria and South Australia had spoken in the most flattering terms, and identified his exhibits as being mainly oil and watercolour views of alpine scenery from Italy, Switzerland and around the Wimmera River, Victoria. From Brisbane, the artist went to Ipswich, then made his way to Charters Towers.
By September 'Gracius J. Browne’ was at Gympie, again displaying his collection of 'chromo-lithographs, oleographs, and original oil paintings’ (all his own work) at the School of Arts 'previous to their disposal on the principle of the London Art Union’. The Gympie Times thought the whole collection good 'and the oil paintings of a very high order of artistic merit’. He then returned to Brisbane. The draw for his 400 pictures was held in the Town Hall on 29 October 1875. The problems of distribution are overwhelming, but he seems to have remained in Brisbane in 1876, possibly doing this.
G. J. Browne exhibited in Tasmania as a “visiting artist”, who had matriculated at Munich and was called a pupil of the 'great Colbach’. In 1877 he held an exhibition of his work in the Launceston Town Hall. ( Tasmanian 21 April 1877, 10). 'He has received several commissions to paint pictures of some of our most picturesque localities’ ( Tasmanian 2 June 1877, 10).
Gracius J. Browne was listed as a resident Sydney artist in 1878-81, but throughout these itinerant years he regularly returned to his family in Melbourne. He was listed among the artists and portrait painters working there in 1878 and 1880. At Melbourne in 1879, still as G.J. Browne, he published a facsimile of Wenceslaus Hollar’s famous 1647 engraving of London before the Great Fire. The following year all the Brojnowskis – now spelt Broinowski (although Gracius continued to use Browne professionally until about 1882) – moved to Sydney. There Gracius taught painting privately and at various boys’ schools – Riverview, St Aloysius and Newington College.
In 1880 'Mr. Gracius C. Brown…after traversing Victoria, South Australia, and Queensland in search of the picturesque and lovely in the way of scenery’, organised another art union of his paintings. Included were: 'a view on the Thompson River, Gippsland, showing the road from Walhalla to the Flourbag Hill … [and] a scene in the Bullo Ranges, in the north-east district of Victoria – a study in grays and browns, which when its present crudeness has worn off, will be a most attractive picture’. Wauphool Lake, Gleneslay Station, in the Grampians was said to resemble Buvelot 's Waterpool at Coleraine in its composition and golden Claudean glow. Other paintings cited were a view on Stockyard Creek (a fern gully landscape) and On the Ovens with the snow-capped Buffalo Ranges in the distance. Elaine , 'where the “Lily Maid of Astolat” is seen laid out in bridal splendour on a stately barge’, was mentioned as one of the few figure paintings on view in his Elizabeth Street, Sydney, studio.
Broinowski also gave lectures on art. 'The Art of Design’, a plea for the perfect imitation of 'the best nature’, was delivered in the Sydney School of Arts on 26 November 1880. 'Art’ (which argued the superiority of the visual to the written throughout the ages) was the subject of another at the Ashfield School of Arts on 30 June 1882. He showed paintings in the Art Society of New South Wales’s annual exhibitions in 1881-84. A sketch of a 'drunken carouse’ in a bush shanty titled The Shearer’s Home was one of his exhibits, but most were views. One of the Herbert River, North Queensland, shown early in 1883, was said to depict 'the rich afterglow of sunset brightening the river and the mists of approaching night beginning to make themselves visible’. It was accompanied by a view on the Mitchell River, Gippsland, Victoria, and a view on the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales. 'Mr. B. seems to flit about the rivers of all the colonies with great impartiality’, commented the Sydney Morning Herald .
At the society’s fourth exhibition at the end of 1883, Broinowski showed three paintings: a view of Lake Albert, Gippsland ('in which the composition is good, and the water especially well painted’), a portrait of an old woman looking into the future ('every line and wrinkle in her expressive face brought into relief by the light of the candle placed at her right hand’) and another view on the Hawkesbury. The following year his Valley of the Grose was the most prominent painting in the exhibition, the Herald commenting that it was 'an enormous picture, almost large enough for a panorama’. It was not much admired. The Herald dismissed it with the comment that it was 'a faithful reproduction of this oft-painted and photographed spot’, while the Bulletin curtly stated: 'Some persons might like it’. Bondi Lagoon , on the other hand, was considered 'a picturesque bit of Australian scenery’.
Early in 1884 Broinowski submitted eight watercolours of Australian birds to the minister for education with the recommendation that a complete series should be published and supplied to all New South Wales schools. Surprisingly, the proposal was accepted, and Broinowski’s prints of Australian birds and mammals were mounted, varnished and hung in classrooms throughout the colony. Even so, only 500 sets were sold to the Education Department instead of the 1000 Broinowski had prepared, so he turned some of the remainder into a book, Birds and Mammals of Australia , bound with appropriate text and published in 1884 -5. The Cockatoos and Nestors of Australia and New Zealand followed in 1888, but his greatest achievement was The Birds of Australia , published in forty monthly parts at 10s each (for subscribers only) in 1889-91. It finally comprised six folio volumes with 303 full-page illustrations lithographed in colour and notes on over 700 species. Limited to 1000 copies, the edition soon sold out. Chisholm states that the plates are considered of little scientific value but also rightly remarks that they are much prized by collectors for their aesthetic qualities. Original drawings for The Birds are in the Dixson Library.
Broinowski was naturalised on 19 April 1886. The family moved to Campbelltown about 1890, Gracius having decided, with the help of his sons, to become a farmer. This was not a success and he returned to Sydney and to teaching in 1896. Although intending to publish a new volume, The Avi-Fauna of Australia – a close emulation of John Gould 's Birds – nothing eventuated except three attractive prospectuses (one in 1897 and two in 1910). Broinowski died at Mosman, Sydney, on 12 April 1913, survived by his wife, a daughter and six sons (the seventh son died as an infant).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 7 March 1837
- Summary
- Peripatetic artist who produced copious landscape images and sold them off inventively (through art unions). Finally settling down in Sydney, he taught in various private schools and is perhaps best known for his 'Birds' series sold to the Department of Education.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12-Apr-13
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1913-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- artist and teacher, lived and worked in NZ from 1860 until 1879, when he moved to Sydney with his family. Apart from a brief residence in Melbourne in 1888-92, Hoyte lived and painted in Sydney for the rest of his life. Two watercolours of Sydney Harbour purchased from Christie’s 3 January 1973 were included in the Sotheby’s auction of 'The Fairfax Corporate Collection of Australian Paintings’, 17 November 2002, lots 29 and 30 (est. $4,000-6,000 and $3,000-5,000).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1835
- Summary
- An artist and a teacher, originally from England, via New Zealand. Two watercolours were purchased by Christie's and auctioned at Sotheby's,17 November 2002.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21-Feb-13
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.8290589 Longitude151.0873578 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1913-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rhodes, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- botanical painter, was born at Rhodes (now Concord) on the Parramatta River, New South Wales, third daughter of Thomas Walker and Anna, neé Blaxland. In 1832 Thomas Walker moved the family to his property in Van Diemen’s Land, near Longford, which he had also named Rhodes after his mother’s home near Leeds, Yorkshire. When he died in 1861 the family returned to the Sydney property. Annie Walker also spent some time (c.1850) with her Blaxland grandparents at their property, Newington, near Parramatta, and often recalled these idyllic days. Her grandmother, she said, used to encourage an interest in nature in her children and grandchildren by taking them on walks in the bush. The girls would collect (and later draw and preserve) flowers and plants, while the boys shot birds and had them stuffed. Annie also received instruction in watercolour painting from Henry Curzon Allport there: 'he was a pupil of Glover’s [ John Glover ] and the best to be had in Sydney. The Breakfast room was on that morning given up for our use and such pleasant mornings they were for 2 hours. He was also a delightful companion, having such a good library of his own.’ About this time she painted a watercolour of her Longford home (ML) and possibly other extant sketches, for she rarely dated her work.
The botanist Ferdinand von Mueller , with whom Walker corresponded, described her as 'a genial floral artist’. She was certainly prolific. The Mitchell Library holds eight volumes of her botanical watercolours done in Tasmania and New South Wales between 1875 and 1910 and a series of five lithographs from drawings she made of views around Longford. She exhibited with the New South Wales Academy of Arts from 1873. Ten of her Tasmanian flower drawings were included among the Academy’s exhibits at that year’s Agricultural Society Show, while her flower paintings forwarded to the 1873 London International Exhibition were awarded a gold medal. She received a certificate of merit from the NSW Academy in 1876 for her watercolours of Tasmanian flowers.
At the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition four of Miss A.F. Walker’s watercolours of Australian flowers in the New South Wales Court were highly commended, while her large collection of flower pictures and fifteen panoramic landscapes in the Ladies Court were awarded a first degree of merit. The judges reported that such a very large collection was 'evidently better suited for an album than as pictures, but the delineations are faithful’. With her sister Marion, she showed 'Two Songs set to Music by Exhibitors’ and albums of ferns. The latter received another honourable mention. Seven groups of flower paintings were sent to the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition together with a copy of her gold medal. The 'Flower Pictures, and Fifteen Panoramas’ she showed in the NSW Ladies’ Court at the same exhibition were awarded a first prize. She won many awards for her flower paintings, although always proudly remaining an amateur gentlewoman. An enormous surviving watercolour panorama of Wentworth Bay , Ryde 1884 (Powerhouse Museum: exhibited Sydney by Ferry , MoS 2002) has a separately framed base inscribed with the Walker family’s connections with the place, apparently in protest at a compulsory cut about to be made through the family land for the railway line.
The paintings Miss Walker presented to Queen Victoria on the occasion of Her Majesty’s Jubilee (which also included a genealogy) were apparently acknowledged with some warmth. In 1887 she privately published Flowers in New South Wales in Sydney, which contained only ten poorly coloured chromolithographic plates (by Turner & Henderson) accompanied by short descriptions. In 1890 she published a small pamphlet on the origin of the name Blaxland. Her unpublished reminiscences contain vivid anecdotes, an inordinate pride in her colonial ancestry and a sentimental and ignorant, although often novel, understanding of the natural world.
Writers:
Fahy, Kevin
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. c.1830
- Summary
- A prolific botanical painter, Anna Frances Walker won many awards for her flower paintings, although always proudly remaining an amateur gentlewoman.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1913
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1913-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and wood-engraver, was born in Brixton, London, on 21 November 1828, the third son and fourth child of the renowned engraver Edward Calvert, and Mary née Bennell. Brought up in a family circle dedicated to art, Samuel was taught painting, designing, etching and engraving by his father. His older brothers John and William migrated to South Australia in 1843 and, influenced by them, Samuel left his job as clerk in a London East India Company house and sailed for Adelaide aboard the Symmetry , arriving on 9 November 1848. He secured employment at George Dehane’s printery in King William Street and by February 1850 was providing illustrations for the short-lived Monthly Almanac and Illustrated Commentator , of which he was co-proprietor. By July 1850 Calvert had set up an Artists’ Repository in King William Street. In 1851 he was in partnership with the printer Alfred Waddy (who remained a printer and publisher in Adelaide long after Calvert moved to Melbourne). As well as illustrative work for the Almanac , Calvert produced wood engravings for billheads and advertisements, and lithographed views such as The Old Spot, Gawler Town and Railway Hotel Port Adelaide . The original watercolour for his lithograph City of Adelaide S.A. Looking South East , issued as a free supplement in the April issue of the Almanac , is in the Art Gallery of South Australia, which also holds his wash drawing, Port Adelaide Regatta and the North Arm … December 24th, 1850 .
On 24 January 1852 Calvert left for Melbourne in the Asia . There he again worked as a wood-engraver, providing illustrations for books and advertisements and for the illustrated monthly magazine The Armchair (1853-54). His first recorded work in Melbourne is a frontispiece, Diggers , and a map, Routes to the Victoria Diggings , for James Bonwick’s Notes of a Gold Digger and Gold Diggers’ Guide (Melbourne 1852). In March 1853 the Argus reported that he had published an engraving of the horse Ballaarat, winner of the Melbourne Town Plate for 1853. In 1854 he was in partnership with his older brother, William. As engravers, lithographers and draughtsmen, they produced the short-lived illustrated periodicals Victoria Illustrated (a broadsheet) and Australian Home Companion and Illustrated Weekly Magazine . The firm also printed the illustrated periodicals Australian Builder and Weekly Remembrancer and local almanacs, until 1857 when the partnership seems to have been dissolved.
In 1854, 1856 and 1857 Calvert had successfully tendered for the engraving and printing of Victorian postage stamps, but difficulties in securing progress payments from the government resulted in financial difficulties. Having pawned stamps to raise money to assist in the development of a stamp-perforating machine, he was convicted of fraud on the Post Office and sentenced to three months’ gaol, but successfully appealed on a legal point. He declared himself bankrupt in May 1858 and was discharged in July 1859. In the interim he seems to have been lessee of the Fitzroy Hotel.
For some years Calvert continued as a wood-engraver, working either from home or as an employee of a printing firm, possibly his brother’s. In 1865 he had a two-storey studio building constructed at the rear of his home, 41 George Street, Fitzroy, notable for the generous provision of south lighting on the upper floor (in 1873 it became the studio of the painter Louis Buvelot ). In 1867 he again set up commercially as a wood-engraver, at 87 Little Collins Street East, close to William’s printery in the same street. He remained there until 1886, then moved to 85 (192) Little Collins Street East with his son, William Samuel Calvert , who carried on the business as an engraver while Samuel listed himself as an artist.
Samuel Calvert seems to have retired to England in 1888 where he wrote A Memoir of Edward Calvert, Artist, by his Third Son (published London 1893 in an edition of 250 copies). Returning to Melbourne shortly afterwards, he opened the Burlington Gallery at 90-92 Collins Street in November 1894. It was destroyed by fire the following May but rapidly rebuilt. He remained at this address as a working artist until 1898 then moved to Bank Place. In 1904 or ’05 he again returned to England, where he remained until his death.
Calvert took every opportunity to exhibit examples of his engraved work: with the Victorian Fine Arts’ Society in August 1853, at the Melbourne Exhibition in 1854 and the Victorian Exhibition of Art in December 1856; with the Victorian Industrial Society in February 1858 (certificate of merit); at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial (silver medal), the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition, the 1872 Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition (silver medal), the 1873 London International, the 1874 Sydney Metropolitan Intercolonial (highly commended), the 1875 Victorian Intercolonial (medal), the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial, the second National, Agricultural and Industrial Association Exhibition at Brisbane in 1877, the 1879 Sydney International, the 1880 Melbourne International, the 1886 London Colonial and Indian Exhibition and the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition.
As well as engravings, including a portrait of Sir John Manners-Sutton and a view of a Fancy Dress Ball, Calvert showed an oil painting titled Aboriginals Camping near the Murray, South Australia (NLA?) at the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition (it was also shown at the 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition). The Black Ranges , an oil painting depicting the Pyrenees from the Grampians, was shown with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1875, while a watercolour, Musidora (with a quote from Thomson’s Seasons ), was included in the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition that same year. The latter reappeared at the 1879 Sydney International along with his other original paintings, I am Ready and Light in Shadow , eight theatrical designs for a burlesque of Alfred the Great (written by Marcus Clarke) and a proof impression of an engraving after a picture by Buvelot. His wood engraving of I am Ready was shown at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition along with reproductive engravings after Buvelot, Carse and others.
Calvert was a prolific worker and engraved illustrations for nearly all the Melbourne illustrated papers and periodicals from 1855 to the 1880s as well as for publications in other colonies. Examples can be found in Melbourne Punch , the Illustrated Journal of Australasia , Illustrated Newsletter of Australasia , Illustrated Melbourne Post , Australasian Sketcher , Illustrated Australian News and Illustrated New Zealand Herald . Clifford Craig has identified numerous Calvert prints in the Tasmanian illustrated press dating from the 1860s. Of course not all were from his own designs and many would have been executed by his employees. Reproductive engravings after sketches by Chevalier , von Gué rard , Albert C. Cooke and others, as well as from photographs, are common. He engraved Edward Bateman 's Australian flora initial headings, tailpieces and titles for Melbourne Public Library catalogues from 1861. (A scrapbook in SLV includes a complete set of proofs for the catalogues, unusually printed in colour, while a partial set of the woodblocks is held, uncatalogued, in the SLV with 10 more finished examples in the NGV, discovered by Anne Neale).
Some prints were undoubtedly Calvert’s own in both design and execution. He was elected to membership of the Victorian Academy of Arts on 1 November 1871 and to its council on 11 April 1872, serving until 1887 and continuing his membership until the Victorian Artists’ Society was formed. He exhibited watercolours and oil paintings — mostly bush scenes — at the Academy’s exhibitions of 1875, 1877, 1878, 1880, 1882 and 1883. He died at Crowthorne, Berkshire, England, on 1 January 1913, survived by his son, William Samuel of Melbourne, and his two daughters, Miss E.F. Calvert and Mrs F.J. Epsom of London. His wife Emma né e Lake predeceased him.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 November 1828
- Summary
- A prolific painter and wood-engraver published in nearly all the Melbourne illustrated papers and periodicals. Taught painting, designing, etching and engraving by his father.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Jan-13
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1874-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and cartoonist, was born in London but came to Brisbane as a baby. [Possibly related to James Hingston, who wrote The Australian Abroad: Branches from the Main Routes Round the World [including Japan]. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1879].
He studied art at the Brisbane Technical College under Godfrey Rivers and became an illustrator and cartoonist on Brisbane Truth (c.1901-12) and the Worker (1901). The first Worker cartoon signed 'A.J. Hingston’ is Home They Brought Their Warrior Dead (mourning politicians with a dead Australian South Pacific Islander labourer) published 6 April 1901. Other cartoons signed 'A.J.H.’ include The Workers’ Design for a Triumphal Arch 12 January 1900 (Labour supporting capitalism, the imperial army and the police, included in McCracken 2001), Wheels Within Wheels (anti-imperialism vignettes) 19 January 1901, Food for Powder and Fever (skeletons leading men to a ship bound for South Africa) 19 March 1901 (ill. Harris, p.141), a cartoon in the form of a fake stained-glass window showing a British soldier bayonetting a Boer, cover 1 June 1901, and The Prosperous Kanaka 31 August 1901 (affluent Australian South Pacific Islander on a bike).
As political caricaturist for the United Empire Trade League, Hingston went to London and worked for the Daily Mail (1902-3) and John Bull (1903). He was still 'cartooning in the interests of Protection’ and illustrating books in London in 1904, according to Steele Rudd’s Magazine 1 (p.22). After returning to Brisbane c.1908 he contributed to the weekly Comic Australian (Sydney 1911-13), e.g. Brisbane by the Week 14 October 1911, as well as Truth .
Hingston also painted in oils, watercolours and pastels. He exhibited his pictures, along with an occasional illustrative work, with the QAS in 1901 ( Afternoon , oil l/s ill. in cat. & A Study oil), 1902 (six oil & two w/c l/s and b/w 'sketches’), 1908 (oil view of Surbiton in Surrey and six w/c views of local & poetic subjects), 1909 (oils Maternity & A Guiding Light , Brummagem Merchant, Ceylon and A Byway, Kingston on Thames , four English & Aust w/cs and many paintings for sale in 'old work and on loan’ section, including views of the Thames, Weymouth, Surbiton, Moreton Bay, 'old bridge’, 'bush road’ 'summer’, 'Flower sellers, London’, Cleveland, Ormiston, et al.), 1910 (oil l/s & lots of local w/c views), 1911 (Ormiston, 'bay’, Albion Hill, Kingston oils & w/c The Sugar Bag 'for book illustration’).
Later Hingston spent much time at Cleveland and Ormiston with his great friend the painter Richard Randall , who lived in the area. He died in Brisbane on 13 September 1912, aged 37. An exhibition of his cartoons and caricatures was held at the Hall of the Muses in 1928. The SLQ published a small catalogue of his work in its collections 'some years ago’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1874
- Summary
- Federation era Brisbane painter, illustrator and political cartoonist. Hingston contributed to publications including Truth and Worker and from 1902-1903 he worked for the Daily Mail in London as the political caricaturist for the United Empire Trade League.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Sep-12
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude39.7990175 Longitude-89.6439575 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Springfield, Ilinois, USA
- Biography
- Photographer Chester Melvin Vaniman was born on 30 December 1866 at Virden, Illinois, USA, into a family of German Baptist Brethren known as the Dunkards. Vaniman was the eldest of four sons. During the course of his life he resided in many cities all over the world: Virden, Honolulu, Auckland, Sydney, Paris and Atlantic City. At a time in which ships were the main international form of transport, it was unusual that someone would have lived in so many different places, but Vaniman was adventurous and packed an extraordinarily fast-paced life into his forty-six years. His artistic endeavours included opera singing and photography and he was talented in aeronautics, engineering, and mechanics.Vaniman’s early life was spent in Illinois where he attended Mt. Morris College, run by the Brethren, before commencing music studies in the mid 1880s at Valparaiso University in Indiana, another religious institution. Finally he enrolled in Dexter College, Iowa, after which he made a living as a music teacher. He then toured as an opera singer from 1887 to c.1900 until a plague hit the company while they were in Hawaii. Stranded there, Vaniman contacted Ida Loud, an old friend from Virden, who joined him. They married soon after in around 1900 (Tierney, 2000). It was in Hawaii that he started experimenting with photography, especially panoramas. The Oceanic Steamship Company (which ran services from USA to Australia and New Zealand and had an office in Europe) noticed his photographic endeavours and decided to hire him to take photos in Australasia in the hope that his photos would encourage tourism in those areas (Schwartzkoff, 2009). A book titled Views of Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia was published but no copy has been located.Thus from 1902-04 Vaniman and Ida toured New Zealand and Australia. The steamship company took them first to Auckland, New Zealand, where Vaniman took photos of New Zealand cities (Tierney, 2000). Then in February of 1903 he went to Australia and took panoramic photos of Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and Perth, and the New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australian countrysides (Tierney, 2000). To take the panoramic photos, Vaniman designed a camera able to use film 2 metres in length, and an elevated viewpoint by making use of tall buildings, ships’ masts, on two occasions a 30-metre tall pole devised by himself, and once a gas-filled balloon (Tierney, 2000). Alan Tierney, who has pioneered research on Vaniman, has recorded that Vaniman took 25 photos in New Zealand, 26 in New South Wales, mostly in Sydney, 40 in the five other states of Australia, and seven Honolulu, totaling about 100 photos in all (pers. comm., 2009; also Davies, 2009).Of the hundred or so images taken by Vaniman, only 83 survive, with the largest collections being in the in the State Libraries of New South Wales (28) and of Western Australia (11) and the National Library of New Zealand (17). Some of these photos were exhibited at the Katoomba School of Arts in 1904 and over a hundred years later there were exhibitions at the State Library of New South Wales in 2001 and 2009-1010. However, it seems that Vaniman’s extraordinary photos are relatively unknown even though he made great advances in panoramic photography. Some of Vaniman’s best known photos are Sydney from a balloon (1904), Bennelong Point (1904) and Sydney Town Hall (1904) (State Library of New South Wales). Vaniman also wrote enthusiastically about Australia and especially Sydney, as he believed that Sydney had “a splendid light…and beautiful clouds: no question about that” (SLNSW).Vaniman set sail for Europe from Western Australia in mid 1904 and arrived in Paris around August of the same year. He settled there with Ida and attempted to continue his career as a photographer but was ultimately forced to take up new endeavours due to poor atmospheric conditions (SLNSW). As Vaniman had interests in aeroplanes and engineering, he took up constructing planes in Paris. He built and tested his own triplane in 1906 and then in 1908 he achieved the first recorded successful triplane flight (SLNSW). During this time, an American journalist named Walter Wellman became acquainted with Vaniman. Wellman dreamt of becoming the first to reach the North Pole and Vaniman became interested in Wellman’s quest. From 1907 to 1910, Vaniman constructed two dirigibles but the pair were unsuccessful after two attempts to reach the North Pole.After their failures in reaching the North Pole, Wellman and Vaniman sailed back to America to pursue their new dream of being the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air. They arrived back in America in July, 1910 and began constructing another dirigible. Their first attempt on 15 October 1910 failed, but with the help of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company of Akron, Ohio, Vaniman was funded to construct another dirigible, which he named the Akron (Tierney, 2000). The Akron had a trial run on 14 November 1911. After the trial Vaniman and four crew members took off from Atlantic City, New Jersey, on 2 July 1912 and the dirigible immediately exploded over the ocean. Vaniman died with his crew members (Tierney).Chester Melvin Vaniman lived a short but adventurous life. His photographic endeavours were technically innovative and it is fortunate that most of his photos have survived. Vaniman’s aeronautic achievements did end up costing his life, but the records that he set for triplane flights and dirigible construction were unmatched during that time. His panoramic achievements are unknown in the USA, however his advancements in balloon construction are celebrated (Tierney, 2000). Through the efforts of Alan Tierney and Alan Davies, the latter at the State Library of New South Wales, the achievements of the man from rural Illinois who travelled the world and lived courageously have been celebrated.
Writers:
Date written:
Last updated:
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 30 December 1866
- Summary
- Melvin Vaniman (1866-1912) was an opera singer, photographer, and aviator and is now best known for his panoramic photos of Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Jul-12
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude52.5310214 Longitude-1.2649062 Start Date1855-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England
- Biography
- natural history painter, sketcher, botanist and Anglican clergyman, was born and bred in England. He came to Australia on the Southern Cross ,sent out by the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel as Anglican missionary to the Clarence River Aborigines in northern NSW. C.W. Dicker’s watercolour and pencil Part of Blacks’ Burial Ground, Milmeridien c.1870 (which is highly reminiscent of Thomas Mitchell 's Tombs of Mileridien , drawn 1835 and published 1839) is in the National Library of Australia, along with Dicker’s A funeral, Clarence River Blacks c.1870, a crude watercolour and pencil drawing of a procession of Aboriginal Australians carrying a dead person tied onto a pole (see website and file).
In Melbourne, Dicker met Baron von Mueller and became one of von Mueller’s army of botanical 'spotters’. He travelled widely throughout mainland Australia and Tasmania, sketching places, flowers and insects from Brisbane to Victoria. He sent von Mueller two copies of many of his drawings of the wildflowers of Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and NSW annotated with what he believed to be their botanical names. At the age of 32 (c.1887) Dicker was appointed rector of the parish of Hamilton, Tasmania. He and von Mueller made an excursion on foot and horseback searching for botanical specimens in one of the wildest parts of the north Tasmanian bush. One of Dicker’s most vivid sketches, Swaggers (lot 338, Christies April 1996, ill.), shows von Mueller and himself with packs on their backs – the only known portrait of von Mueller in the field. His undated watercolour, Boathouse Bay, Lake St Clair, Tasmania , offered as lot 332 in Deutscher-Menzies Australian and International Fine Art Auction at Melbourne on 28-29 August 2002 (estimate $650-850), was presumably also made around this time (previously cat. 93 in the Maas sale of Dicker drawings).
Dicker later returned to Dorset, became a country vicar and published his Australian botanical research in a local scientific journal. In 1971 the Dicker sketchbooks were found in an English country house by the London art dealer Jeremy Maas.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1855
- Summary
- Nineteenth-century natural history painter. He travelled widely throughout mainland Australia and Tasmania, sketching landscapes, flowers and insects.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1912
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1855-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist, caricaturist, engraver, wood-carver and guitarist, was born in Hobart. As the Tasmanian Mail and Critic 's artist, Midwood is said to have caricatured every well-known person [man?] in the city, as well as engraving scenes of Hobart. A cartoon attributed to Midwood, said to be of William Crowther robbing Lanne’s grave, is illustrated in Intellect and Emotion: Essays in Honour of Michael Roe ed. David Walker and Michael Bennett. The only known print (or is it an ink original?) is in Crowther Album vol.1, 1817-85, SLT. Why was it done?
ALMFA (181, cabinet 7 drawer 5) has Midwood’s pen and ink originals, Scene of the Late Railway Accident (at the Ring Culvert) T.M.L.R . and Tasmanian Timber Trophy , the latter inscribed 'illustrated by T. Midwood and E.W.N. Butcher from a design by G.S. Perrin Esq. F.L.S. Conservator of Forests/ Melbourne Centennial Exhibition 1888’. The enormous drawing, which shows both the trophy (like a fountain made of wood) and a vignette 'Portions of interior of promenade’ (with rustic chairs en route), is signed only by Midwood so appears to be the cover design for an illustrated booklet on this major Tasmanian exhibit, which is known to have been published at least when the trophy was shown at the 1894-95 Tasmanian International Exhibition, though no copy is known. (For the Bellerive drinking fountain lithograph see THRA vol 41/4 (December 1994) – info. Gillian Winter.)
ALMFA and the Tasmaniana Collection, SLT, hold numerous original caricatures of local male notables by Midwood. ALMFA also has A Fashionable Night and a Big Treat , a lithograph showing lots of women each labelled 'Sorell’ flanking a large caricature of a man holding 'Juvenile Exhibition Ticket for 50’ (Launceston 1891-92). ALMFA has a photograph of a lithograph by Midwood comprising lots of cards, each containing a caricature of a well-known Tasmanian man and a single woman – a fat lady labelled 'A Tasmanian beauty’. Nevin Hirst of Masterpiece Gallery apparently has – or had – the original lithograph, acc. Heather Curnow. Midwood himself, a tall thin man, appears third from left in the top row, captioned:
“Oh yes, Oh yes. Here I am,
An Artist True and Smart
And with my Brush will fight the World
For I am a BONEY-PART”
A collection of Midwood’s caricatures was presented to Narryna, the VDL Folk Museum, by the artist’s son, E. Midwood. Included are some splendid large wooden sculptures of caricatured Tasmanian types as well as individuals. William Moore states that Midwood later toured America as a guitarist with a travelling musical show.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1855
- Summary
- Colonial period Hobart cartoonist, caricaturist, engraver, wood-carver and guitarist
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1912
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1851-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- Born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1851, John Ford Paterson studied at the Royal Scottish Academy Schools, Edinburgh, and exhibited at the Academy (c. 1869-71). He migrated to Australia and arrived in Melbourne in 1872. Paterson was based in Melbourne for a period of three years, during which time he developed a friendship with Louis Buvelot. Paterson was influenced by Buvelot’s practice and adopted the plein air method of working that the Swiss artist is credited with introducing to Australia.
John Ford Paterson returned to Edinburgh in 1875 where he studied landscape painting. He remained in Great Britain for nine years and returned to Australia in 1884 to live permanently. In Melbourne, Paterson renewed his friendship with Buvelot and focused his artistic practice on the depiction of Australian landscapes. He also worked with members of the Heidelberg School. In the 1890s, Paterson encountered financial difficulties and turned to poultry farming at Ringwood, east of Melbourne. It is likely that 'Evening at Croydon’ was painted during this period.
Paterson was an exhibiting member of the Victorian Academy of Arts and a founding member (1886) and treasurer (1887) of the Australian Artists’ Association. He was also actively involved with the Victorian Artists’ Society as a founding member (1888), president (1902) and regular exhibitor until his death. He was a trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria from 1903-12 and a member of the Melbourne Savage Club from 1900-12. John Ford Paterson died in Melbourne in 1912.
Writers:
Sullivan, LisaThe Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1851
- Summary
- John Ford Paterson was a painter. He was born in 1851 and died in 1912.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Jun-12
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in Dublin on 12 November 1838.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 12 November 1838
- Summary
- Barcroft Capel Boake was one of the most well-known and successful professional photographers of the second half of the 19th century but beset by economic difficulties and a series of personal tragedies, Boake spent the last three decades of his life in relative obscurity.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1912
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Middlesex, England, UK, Middlesex (Greater London), England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and businessman, was born in Middlesex, England 12 June 1838 and died St Kilda 1912. According to descendants Robert Stewart originally trained as an architect in which field he anticipated working on immigration to Sydney circa 1858, but decided photography was more promising. He sent for his camera in England suggesting he was an amateur photographer. Stewart first worked in partnership with Charles Pickering in George Street, Sydney, from about 1859 to 1861. He had his own studio at 267 Pitt Street from May 1862 when he advertised that 'Superior Collodiotype Portraits, artistically coloured and enamelled in elegant morocco cases from 3s.6d’ were available at his new photographic rooms. He was willing to photograph children between 9am. and 2pm. and offered to copy portraits. Three cartes-de-visite for 10s and ambrotype portraits in a case from 2s 6d were advertised in March and July 1863.
In 1867-68 Robert Stewart was at 396 George Street. In April 1868 he advertised that he had four views of Clontarf for a shilling each, souvenirs of the site of the recent assassination attempt on the Duke of Edinburgh. Two were cartes-de-visites and two were 6 × 4 inch (15 × 10 cm) cabinet photographs. 'They are clear and distinct in size, especially the smaller ones. The belt of trees near the water’s edge under which so many people were congregated on the eventful day … appears in three of these views: in the other, the hilly background’. That month Stewart was offering a Dallmeyer carte-de-visite lens for sale 'cheap’ and the sale of photographic equipment became a major part of his business.
Although removing to 'larger and more suitable portrait rooms’ at 348 George Street in July 1868, Robert Stewart soon transferred his business to Melbourne. He was listed at 83 Russell Street in the Melbourne Directory for 1870 and 1871. He established Stewart& Co in 1871 and seems to have made Andrew Barrie manager by the early 1880s and to have sold out to the latter by 1886 to follow business interests.
According to Cato, Robert 'conducted a small business in the city as a photographic dealer’ while his brother Richard set up the enormously successful firm of Stewart & Co. in Bourke Street a few years later. If there were two brothers Robert soon disappeared, but Richard’s firm expanded from two employees in 1871 (when owned by William Roberts ) to 50 employees, four studios and six operators by 1887. Cato’s account is incorrect Robert Stewart did not disappear nor did he have a brother Richard. He had an older brother Arthur Whitehead born 1831 who became a photographer and a younger William Salter Stewart born 1842. It is believed by descendants that Robert Stewart worked with his older brother in Australia.
The young Tom Roberts was a studio assistant at Stewart & Co’s Bourke Street studio in 1877-1881 then part-time from 1885-1889. Stewart is said by Jack Cato to have given Roberts a cheque on his departure for London in 1881. He was Robert Stewart was kindly remembered by Roberts as a supporter and known to have purchased an early painting by the artist.Robert Stewart died in St Kilda 18 July 1912.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 12 June 1838
- Summary
- Professional photographer, who owned a studio in Sydney's CBD in the late nineteenth century, selling his photographs and photographic equipment, before moving to Melbourne in 1870 where he established Stewart & Co a long running city studio.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Jun-12
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and public servant, was born and died in Western Australia, son of Alfred Hawes Stone and Sarah, née Helms. From 1855 he was a government clerk in Perth and Fremantle. He worked for the Liverpool, London & Globe Insurance Company in 1870-76, then as a clerk in Governor Robinson’s office. His first wife, Emily Elizabeth Ashton, whom he married at Fremantle on 29 January 1863, was the daughter of the assistant commissary-general. After her death he married Emily Amelia Troode at Fremantle on 5 January 1887. There were six children of the first marriage, one of the second.
William Stone drew crude cartoons of local topics and people during the 1860s, such as Diggers, W. Australia, in 1867 of two men dining, one demanding at gunpoint 'Pass the mustard’, and the other, armed with a knife, replying 'Help yer sel’ man can’t yer, damn yer!!!’ His view of two convict stone-breakers on the roads is the only known drawing of convicts in Western Australia, according to Reece and Pascoe. Copies of his cartoons are in the Battye Library, Perth.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1836
- Summary
- Colonial Western Australian cartoonist and public servant.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1912
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude52.9770408 Longitude-0.0239836 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Boston, Lincolnshire, England
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1835
- Summary
- Thomas Stephen Small was in partnership with George Wills Priston between c.1864 and 1867. Their company was called Priston and Small, and manufactured and distributed photographic goods, including chemicals.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Aug-12
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Loughton, Essex,Greater London, England, U.K.
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer and salesman, was born in Loughton, Essex, on 1 March 1833, son of Thomas John Morris. He lived at Loughton until 1855 and was, he said, 'practising a little photography’ in nearby Leystone. Morris mentions that he sketched on board the mail-clipper Boomerang which brought him to Hobson’s Bay, Victoria, on 11 May 1855, and some undated, rough sketches of ships are clearly youthful efforts. Eleven days later he left for Hobart Town in the steamship City of Hobart , disembarking on 24 May. In 1860 he travelled to Sydney and Newcastle then up to Queensland, stopping at Gayndah before going on to Maryborough. He returned to Hobart via Brisbane and Sydney. Notes made on his Queensland trip include a description of a 'Corroboree of the Blacks at Gayndah’ which he witnessed on 14 October 1860. In 1862 he tried his luck on various New South Wales goldfields, mainly Lambing Flat (Young) and Yass, returning to Tasmania later that year. After working in Hobart Town, Launceston and other places, he settled in Fingal and opened a general store.
Morris’s small notebook containing items dating from 1854 to 1906 survives in family possession. In it are newscuttings and notes on various matters, mainly records of the births, marriages and deaths of the Morris and other Tasmanian families. Included are scattered references to the talbotype, electrotype and collodion photographic processes, various chemical formulae for photographic work and a newspaper cutting about collodiotype portraits as produced in Sydney by Edwin Dalton in the 1850s. Earlier notes mention Fox Talbot’s 'Improvements in Photography’ and 'Preparing Photographic Paper and Copying by the Sun’s Rays’. A small paper print of a young woman holding a baby pasted inside the back cover must be Morris’s wife Sarah Rebecca, eldest daughter of John Rothwell, under-sheriff of Hobart Town, whom he married at Hobart on 11 January 1869, and their first child, Percy. It looks like a salted paper print but it would have been taken about 1871 by which time the process was virtually obsolete. It may be an example of the 'dry tannin process’ known to have been used by S. Clifford in 1866 and presumably sold from his Hobart Town sho
Morris retained an interest in photography all his life. Another photograph held by the family is of James Blackburn’s Glenorchy Presbyterian Church, which must date from the 1880s; it is stamped verso 'W.K. Morris, Hobart’. At the Hobart Photo and Art Association Exhibition in 1893 he showed 'a number of very nice finished opalines as well as an ingenious polariscope’. As late as 9 March 1903 he was noting that he had sent a clergyman friend in New Zealand a photograph of the Hobart Baptist Tabernacle, together with a copy of the lecture programme of the Ebenezer Band of Hope Church and Congregational Temperance Society (founded in 1854), to which he seems to have been attached. He also continued to draw, a plan of his garden at Fingal being dated 1869.
Morris sold his store and left Fingal with his family on 29 June 1877 to settle in Hobart Town where he spent some years working for the merchant L. Susman, then for the Hobart Mutual Benefit Society (1885-1901). He died on 6 January 1912, survived by several children, including his younger son, Robert James Morris (1880-1963), a well-known bookseller in Hobart.
Writers:
Morris, John RothwellKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 March 1833
- Summary
- Sketcher, amateur photographer and salesman from Tasmania. Morris retained an interest in photography all his life.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-41.4790606 Longitude147.3388476 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North Esk River , Van Diemen's Land
- Biography
- painter, sketcher and surveyor, was born on 20 September 1833 at North Esk, Van Diemen’s Land where his father, George Hemming Stuart, had 640 acres on the North Esk River which he called Barrowville. His mother, Elizabeth, was a sister of the painter Frederick Garling . By 1834 the family had moved to Sydney. In 1838 his father was killed in a carriage accident while travelling to Windsor from Richmond where he had been attending a ball, leaving Elizabeth Stuart with the job of raising Clarendon and his younger brother and sister. Financial assistance to supplement her own small inheritance would probably have been provided by the Garling grandfather. It allowed young Stuart to attend St James’s Church of England School in Sydney, together with his cousin Frederick Augustus Garling .
Stuart joined the General Post Office as a clerk in 1852 but resigned on 30 October 1855 to take up a temporary draughting position with the Surveyor-General’s Department. He was appointed a second-class surveyor in 1858 and proceeded, with A.F. Wood and I. Rowland, to carry out surveys in the Rockhampton and Port Curtis (Gladstone) areas of Queensland, assisting District Surveyor Wood with feature surveys, road locations and the laying out of towns. He married Sophia Elvina Poingdestre on 24 August 1859 in Sydney. A year later their only child, Louisa Eleanor Maria, was born in Rockhampton.
In March 1861 Stuart was sent to Port Denison in the Jeanie Dove with instructions from Queensland’s Surveyor-General A.C. Gregory to lay out a town there; it was named Bowen after Queensland’s first governor, Sir George Fergusson Bowen. In January 1863, while shooting ducks near his survey camp, Stuart’s gun exploded blowing away part of his left hand. Six weeks later he was back at work. In 1864 he laid out the town of Wickham at the mouth of the Burdekin River. He took an active part in community affairs, serving on the Bowen Hospital Committee and reading the lessons at Church of England services. Later in 1864 he surveyed the town of Dalrymple, and the following year he was sent to survey a town at Cleveland Bay.
Due to prevailing economic conditions Stuart and other senior surveyors of the Survey Department were retrenched in 1867. The following year he was declared insolvent and returned to Sydney. After a short stay he came back to Queensland, this time to the newly-discovered Upper Mary River goldfield at Gympie, where he was appointed gold commissioner in June 1868, a position he did not keep for long partly because his lordly manner annoyed the local miners. He carried out numerous surveys, both land and mining, and at one time was a member of the local mining court. He showed much interest in the Mining Regulation and Education Bill of 1873, as evidenced by articles in the Gympie Times . While in Gympie he was instrumental in the formation of the Gympie Museum and Scientific Institute. The Gympie sojourn, however, was fraught with conflict and in 1875 Stuart returned to Sydney and practised for a time as a private surveyor. He continued his scientific interests and was a member of the Royal Geographical Society of NSW for some years. In 1878 he became founding chairman of the English Church Union in Sydney and over the years wrote many well-informed articles on church doctrine. By 1887 cutbacks in the Survey Department had forced him to join the staff at Bathurst Gaol as a clerk and schoolmaster. His final position, from which he retired in 1892, was that of clerk at the Sydney Gaol.
Stuart’s early survey plans for the Rockhampton, Bowen, Burdekin and Gympie areas are frequently decorated with fine views of the places he was surveying, often including Aboriginal tribal groups (Surveying Museum, Department of Mapping and Surveying, Brisbane). For instance, his Plan of the Town of Bowen, Port Denison, District of Kennedy 1861 has a vignette of Port Denison at the base, with annotated landmark features and four silhouetted figures of Aborigines hunting in the foreground. More elaborate drawings include Expidition [sic] Range from Mt McIntosh and Landing Place Noosa River (July 1870). He was awarded a certificate of merit for a watercolour of the Noosa area shown at the 1874 Gympie Exhibition. Most of his work depicts scenes from locations close to his surveys, eg two pencil sketches of Bowen dated 1861 in a scrapbook held at the Oxley Library.
Back at Sydney Stuart exhibited with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1876 and later (1883-84) with the Art Society of New South Wales. Govett’s Gorge , shown in the society’s exhibition at the Town Hall in 1883, was commended by the Sydney Morning Herald . Even the Bulletin 's art critic, who rarely had a good word for any painting, called it a noble picture despite joking about the subject which 'consists mostly of abyss. This is the Abyss-inian school’. Later that year Stuart showed A Bit of Salisbury, England at the society’s annual exhibition; the following year he was represented by a watercolour view of Salisbury Cathedral Close and a sketch of Durham Cathedral – possibly copies rather than the result of a trip. All were favourably reviewed. He had two works in the society’s Black and White Exhibition held in April 1884. While the view of Government House and Fort Macquarie was thought 'well-drawn and fairly coloured’, his other subject, The Outlaw’s Sister ', was far less liked by the Herald 's critic:
The sister of the Kellys, the Victorian bushrangers, is shown on a spindle-shanked horse and watching with considerable intensity the movements of some troopers … The scenery is characteristically typical of the Australian bush, but the depth of colouring is deficient and one cannot help deploring that the artist has attempted to immortalize so undesirable a character.
Stuart died at his Sydney home, Rockwood, in 1912 and was buried beside his mother in Waverley Cemetery.
Writers:
Kitson, W. S.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 September 1833
- Summary
- Stuart's artistic endeavours seem to have been borne out of his position as a surveyor. Some of his plans were decorated with the places he surveyed and often included Aboriginal tribal groups.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1912
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude51.1364714 Longitude-2.993782692 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bristol, Somerset, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, illuminator, lithographer, draughtsman, surveyor and civil engineer, was born in Bristol, Somerset, a nephew of Mary Ann Piguenit . He migrated to Van Diemen’s Land before December 1853 and lodged with the Piguenits in Lansdowne Crescent, Hobart Town. In March 1854 Randall was appointed draughtsman to the Land and Survey Department where his cousin William Charles Piguenit
was already employed; he remained there until 1863. During this period he made at least one intercolonial trip – to visit the Victorian goldfields. There he executed a rather primitive watercolour sketch of the Newstead Hotel (1855, Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum).
Randall also visited New Zealand. Then, after leaving his employment, he and his first wife Mary, née Green, whom he had married in St John’s Church of England, Hobart Town, in July 1854, spent some time there. After Mary died in 1865 Randall returned to Hobart and had a second career in the Tasmanian Public Service. He was director when the splendid picturesquely landscaped new waterworks in the hills above Hobart Town ornamented with classical buildings were opened in February 1875, and he exhibited his Chart of the Hobart Town Water Works at the 1875 Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition.
Randall’s other artistic activities during these years included drawing the title page to an album of Tasmanian photographs presented to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1867-68. In October 1867 he designed the vote of thanks 'beautifully emblazoned on vellum’ to be sent to Lady Franklin for the gift of Franklin Island. Another of his illuminated addresses, decorated with a 'border [which] represents trellis work through which is entwined a variety of flowers’, was presented by the Hobart Town City Council to Hon. James Milne Wilson in 1869. He lithographed the music cover of Tomorrow: A Farewell Song after a design by Louisa Anne Meredith and made chromolithographs after at least two of Piguenit’s Tasmanian views, The Derwent, near New Norfolk and The Shannon, near Mount Pleasant , described in the Argus of 12 February 1870 as the work of Piguenit alone: 'considering that these are the first Chromo-Lithographs ever produced in Tasmania, and that their execution must have been surrounded with many difficulties, Mr Piguenit is to be congratulated on his success’. At the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, however, Randall was officially commended for his sample book of chromolithographs.
After Randall retired from the Tasmanian Public Service in 1877 he married Agnes Louise Piguenit, the eldest of William Charles’ sisters, and they moved to Sydney. For a time he was employed as a government surveyor and engineer by the Department of Railways, based at Dubbo. In 1883 he purchased land on the Lane Cove River at Hunter’s Hill from D.N. Joubert 's son and built a house, Saintonge, where W.C. Piguenit also lived. Later they moved next door to a new house with a stone studio at the back designed for Piguenit.
Alfred Randall died at Hunter’s Hill on 15 January 1912, aged eighty. Piguenit died there two years later. Agnes Randall remained at the house until her death in 1930.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1831
- Summary
- Alfred Randall was a watercolourist, illuminator, lithographer, draughtsman, surveyor and civil engineer. He drew the title page to an album of Tasmanian photographs presented to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1867-68.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Jan-12
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, was born in Scotland in 1819 and came to Australia in 1853. He exhibited at the 1871 Emerald Hill Mechanics’ Institute Industrial and Fine Art Exhibition: 'There were … also some capital water colour and crayon drawings. One of the most interesting of which latter is The Discovery of Gipps Land, by Bowman’ ( Age 9 June 1871, 3). He established an art studio and school in Russell Street, Melbourne. One of his pupils in 1872 was his daughter, Zenobia Bowman .
J.S. Bowman sent 10 paintings to the 1873 London International Exhibition: see Art Journal December 1873. At the 1872 Victorian Exhibition preparatory to the 1873 London Exhibition: Water-colour drawings, &c. – Bowman, J.S., 42 Russell-street – no.102 'View on Merri Creek’ (in crayons), by Frederick Straw ; no.103 'Ford on the Upper Yarra’ (in crayons), by J.S. Bowman; no.104 'A Quiet Pool on the Upper Yarra’ (in crayons), by J.S. Bowman; no.105 'Mount Kosciusko, in the Alps’ (in crayons), by J.S. Bowman; no.106 'Falls on the Crackenback River’ (in crayons), by J.S. Bowman; no.107 'Portrait of Mr J.S. Bowman’ (in crayons), by J.S. Bowman; no.114 Case of Victorian Crayons, made principally from Victorian Earths and Clays. He also exhibited nos 108-113, most of which appear to have been the work of his students. 'The only exhibitor of any note in crayons is Mr J.S. Bowman, who has several large pictures, all studies from nature’ ( Sydney Mail , 16 November 1872, p.615).
Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition 1875: Bowman, J.S., 31 Russell-street, Melbourne [teacher] – no.3039 Vignette of the Sisters , crayon, Miss Baillie; no.3063 Lagoon in Survey Paddock , crayon, W. Baillie. Bowman exhibited 40 works by various artists – his pupils – nos3027-3053 and 3058-3070. He also exhibited four works by an unspecified artist (presumably himself): no.3054 'View near Elephant Bridge’, oil sketch; no.3055 'Mouth of Gardiner’s Creek’, oil sketch; no.3056 'Portrait Study’, oil sketch; no.3057 'Portrait Study’, oil sketch. “Mr J. Bowman exhibits a portrait of Dr Blair, the likeness being exceedingly good” ( Age , 6 November 1872).
Exhibited at the fifth annual exhibition of the NSW Academy of Art in 1876: J.S. Bowman – Artist – Victoria – no.8 oil painting – 'Sketch in Australian Alps’ – £5.5.0; no.157 'Portrait of Chas Dickens’ – Colnl Crayons – from woodcut – £12.12.0; no.158 'On Blackall Creek, Gippsland’ – Colnl Crayons – original – £12.0.0.; no.159 'Pool near Source of Snowy River, NSW’ – Colnl Crayons – original – £31.10.0.; no.160 'Coast of Tasmania, Bass’s Straits’ – Colnl Crayons – original – £12.12.0; no.161 'Valley in Australian Alps, near Manaro Plains’ – Colnl Crayons – original – £21.0.0; no.162 'Sketch in Gippsland’ – Colnl Crayons – original – £2.2.0. Certificates of merit – oil paintings -“Mr Bowman and his pupils have a certificate of merit for a sketch in the Australian Alps” ( Sydney Mail , 22 April 1876). “Silver Medal [for] Crayons, no.159, crayon landscape, J.S. Bowman, NSW” ( Sydney Mail , 22 April 1876) “A silver medal was awarded to Mr J.S. Bowman for a picture in coloured crayons, no.159; and a certificate of merit to the same artist for a coloured crayon portrait of Charles Dickens, no.157” ( Sydney Mail , 22 April 1876). “The hon. secretary [of the NSW Academy of Art] reported that Mr J.S. Bowman had presented to the Council the admirable portrait of Charles Dickens, executed by him in colonial crayons, exhibited at this year’s exhibition” ( Sydney Mail , 20 May 1876). In 1883 the AGNSW held J.S. Bowman’s Portrait of Charles Dickens , presented by the artist: “The only crayon drawing in the Gallery. An admirable likeness, and possessing great merit as a work of art. It may be remarked that the chalks were prepared by the artist himself from Australian earths” (A.E. Greenwood & H.W.H. Stephen, Catalogue (Descriptive and Critical) of the Art Gallery with Sydney Art Notes , Sydney, 1883, p.35).
NSW Academy of Art Exhibition 1877: “It may be remembered that in last year’s exhibition Mr Bowman, of Victoria, had several specimens of this class of picture which attracted considerable attention. Those shown this year are we understand chiefly the work of his pupils, and they show three things, how good the colours are, how readily and rapidly the crayons may be worked, and how useful they will be for sketching” ( Sydney Mail , 14 April 1877). “Prizes: To art students, not pupils of the Academy: – Certificate of merit – Miss Mafra Jones [q.v.] (pupil of Mr J.S. Bowman, of Melbourne), 'M’Millan’s Discovery of Gippsland’, no.137; Miss Rita Jones [q.v.] (pupil of Mr J.S. Bowman, Melbourne) 'Fall on Skeleton Creek’, no.139” ( Sydney Mail , 28 April 1877).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1819
- Summary
- John Shearer Bowman was a Scottish immigrant to Australia. Being both a painter and an art teacher and a regular exhibitor to exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne, there is some confusion over which paintings were Bowman's and which of them were by his students.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1912
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude56.7114295 Longitude-2.4681544 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1912-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Montrose, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, merchant and stockman, was born on 30 June 1818 in Montrose, Scotland, son of a merchant. At the age of about fourteen he was sent to Glasgow to work for a chemical manufacturer. He attended lectures on chemistry and natural philosophy and won prizes for drawing which, he later wrote, he learnt from a German. On 23 August 1838 he sailed in the Portland for Sydney and soon secured a job at Glenlee, a cattle station 250 miles away. In October 1839 when overlanding 800 cattle to Adelaide, he started a butterfly collection. Returning to Glenlee via Sydney, he purchased a box of watercolours so he could sketch his butterflies and sent the paintings back to England. On a second droving expedition from Glenlee in August 1840, Webster continued to add to his collection. He then used his box of watercolours to record the butterflies on the spot.
In April 1841 Webster joined his eldest brother at William’s sawmill on the Hokianga River, New Zealand. He fought in the Maori Wars and for several years acted as an agent for Brown & Campbell, trading with the Maoris. When gold was discovered in California in 1849 he sailed in the Noble to San Francisco. In 1851 he sailed with Benjamin Boyd in his armed yacht the Wanderer to the Pacific Islands where Boyd hoped to establish a 'Papuan Republic or Confederation’. After Boyd was killed by natives of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands on 15 October, Webster took command, still under attack by war canoes. The Wanderer set sail for Sydney, but was wrecked on 12 December near Port Macquarie. When he finally reached Sydney, Webster presented the collections made on the Wanderer 's 'last and fatal cruise’ to the Australian Museum. By September 1853 his sketches made on the voyage had been worked up by George French Angas into twenty-five watercolours, intended as illustrations to Webster’s book of the voyage: 'Five of these drawings are of birds and fish; the latter distinguished, like the coral groves among which they wander, by the most brilliant hues’. Other illustrations were of the islanders and scenes in various parts of Polynesia. Three of Angas’s watercolours were exhibited at the 1854 Australian Museum Exhibition.
After visiting the Turon (NSW) and Victorian goldfields, Webster returned to England late in 1853 to arrange publication of his book and to raise finance for a gold-mining venture. He showed his Wanderer illustrations at a meeting of the Royal Society and, at the request of Queen Victoria, at Buckingham Palace. (Whether these were his own sketches or Angas’s watercolours is unknown but the latter seems the more likely.) Yet no London publisher was interested; The Last Cruise of the Wanderer was eventually published in Sydney in 1863 by F. Cunningham. It had only ten illustrations. The Auckland Institute and Museum holds seventeen of Webster’s watercolours, fifteen signed and dated 1851. A further nineteen are attributed to Angas, three signed and some showing evidence of the signature having been erased. Seven of the ten Angas watercolours used as illustrations in The Last Cruise of the Wanderer are in this collection; they are faithful to Webster’s original sketches.
After returning to New Zealand in 1855 Webster married Emily Russell and went into partnership with his brother A.S. Webster in the timber business. In 1874 he retired to his 700-acre property at Opanani, near Hokianga Heads. When Webster published his Reminiscences in 1908 he made no mention of Angas. He died at his son’s residence in Devonport aged ninety-four; his wife and five of his eleven children had predeceased him.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 30 June 1818
- Summary
- Webster produced sketches during the voyage of the 'Wanderer' in 1851. These were later worked up by George French Angas into twenty-five watercolours, intended as illustrations to Webster's book of the voyage.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1912
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude52.0579324 Longitude1.1528095 Start Date1872-01-01 End Date1911-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ipswich, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, born Ipswich UK; studied horse painting in England and worked at Julian’s, Paris. Came to Sydney in 1899 and from 1905 was a member of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales. In 1907 Fry was a founding exhibitor with the newly re-instated New South Wales Society of Artists, where he exhibited sporting pictures (in the 1907 exhibition he collaborated with Sydney Long on “The Valley” [catalogue number 234], a large canvas: Long painted the landscape and Fry painted the horse and horseman). A keen horseman himself (he taught Norman Lindsay to ride), his drawings of horses were admired by Julian Ashton . He was called 'the best painter of the horse we have yet seen in Australia’, when he exhibited at the 1909 annual exhibition of the Society of Artists, Sydney. '[He] has never done a better piece of work than in his head of “Mountain King”. His drawing is always careful and recondite, but in this “portrait” he has surpassed himself in the treatment of surfaces. His big composition, “How the Chestnut Horse Came Home,” [ill. p.668] is a fine representation of a blood horse standing at the slip-rails in an attitude that expresses a condition of high nervous excitement’: 'The Art of the Year’, Lone Hand , 1 April 1910, pp. 663-664 [by the magazine’s 'art correspondents’]. Fry also illustrated a horsey story in the 1909-10 volume of the Lone Hand , a very painterly work. Also contributed to the Sydney Mail and other magazines and was a popular painter of race horses.
According to Conor Macleod, in Macleod of the Bulletin (Sydney, 1931, p.34), Fry was 'a tall, lean, monosyllabic Englishman who had an intensely conservative mind and a pronounced Oxford accent, and looked as if he had been poured into his riding pants and boots (which he always wore). He was a great friend of Norman Lindsay.’
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1872
- Summary
- Federation English-born Sydney equestrian painter and magazine illustrator. Fry taught Norman Lindsay to ride.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.July 1911
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1911-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New South Wales
- Biography
- Walter S. Syer illustrator, is best known for his pencil portraits of prominent figures in Sydney and was active from the 1880s until the early years of the 20th century. He appears to have spent all his life living on Sydney’s lower north shore. He was born and died at St Leonards, but lived for some years in the 1890s at Alfred Street, North Sydney.The earliest record of his work is a strange little ink drawing of four views of Quong Tart held in the Mitchell Library. This is dated ‘8.1.88, 10.9.87 (12), 8.1.87 (7) and 'Sup. 87’’. He was on sufficiently friendly terms with David Scott Mitchell to be the author of the drawings later used by Lionel Lindsay as a source for his posthumous portrait of the great collector. Syer was also on confidential terms with the publisher George Robertson and in 1895 may have been involved in the decisive move that initiated fully professional literary publishing in Australia on a profit-sharing or royalties basis. He may have helped in some way with the production of A. B. Paterson’s collection The Man from Snowy River (1895): the Dixson Library, SLNSW copy (89/568) is inscribed: ‘To Walter Syer, with the Publishers’ compliments & thanks’.Syer assisted in the early stage of selection of contents for Henry Lawson’s _While the Billy Boils _(Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1896). His 1896 drawing of Henry Lawson is in the Dixson collection of the State Library of New South Wales. Sir William Dixson commissioned Syer in 1902 to illustrate his copy of the luxury issue of Lawson’s verse collection of 1896, In the Days When the World Was Wide (no. 27 of 50 copies). This copy, now in the Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales(DL 89/571), has about 50 pencil drawings by Syer, mostly sketches of bush characters. He also began to illustrate his own copy (no. 12 of 25) of the luxury issue of the Paterson volume; this copy passed to Dixson (as DL 89/568). Syer illustrated Charles White’s History of Australian Bushranging (1900) published by Angus & Robertson. His photographs, ‘Sidelights of old Sydney in the nineties’, were reproduced in James R. Tyrrell, Old Books, Old Friends, Old Sydney: The Fascinating Reminiscences of a Sydney Bookseller.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Eggert
Joanna Mendelssohn
fishel
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1854
- Summary
- Sydney illustrator, active from the early 1890s until shortly after Federation.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1911
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude55.9448634 Longitude-4.5360955 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1911-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Milton, Dumbarton, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- photographer, cartoonist, illustrator, postcard, genre and military artist, was born in Milton, near Dumbarton, Scotland. He came to Victoria during the goldrush, probably in 1854. A pair of illustrations after his sketches called Christmas in Australia and individually titled Home, Sweet Home and Pudding Time appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1870. Marcus Clarke sent a second pair of Ralston’s drawings to London, Great Bourke Street, Melbourne and Disputing a Claim , when Clarke was working for the Melbourne Argus ; they were reproduced in the Graphic in 1872. A third pair, Christmas Day at the Australian Gold-Diggings – 100° in the Shade and Australian Diggers Keeping Christmas Eve , appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1873. The accompanying text referred to the subjects as 'this party of sturdy good fellows, whom our artist has represented as he may often have seen them when he lived in Australia’. By then Ralston was working in London as an illustrator for Punch . He showed four of his Punch illustrations at London exhibitions between 1875 and 1881. Nine of his Victorian sketches appeared in the Australasian Sketcher (Melbourne) in 1879 as Digging Life 25 Years Ago .
A biography in the Graphic stated:
“Mr. William Ralston was born in 1841 [sic] and reared in Glasgow. Leaving school at the age of 12 he was in turn a warehouse boy, a gold digger in Australia, a photographer’s assistant and a labourer in a vineyard, finally returning home to settle down seriously as a photographer in which capacity he has been employed by Her Majesty. When about thirty after doing some ill paid work for publishers he was introduced to The Graphic for which he has worked ever since.”
He drew African topics for the Graphic from 1896, including Boer War ones from 1900-1902 (see Greenwall). A sketch submitted to the paper by Captain J. McB. Ronald was the basis for his illustration published 27 July 1901 entitled The Delight of Campaigning in South Africa. The Tale of a Piece of Soap and one by a soldier 'W.B.D.’ was the basis of An Incident of Camp Life in South Africa published 30 August 1902.
Caw in Scottish Painters Past and Present (quoted Greenwall) says Ralston was 'primarily a comic man’. In 1902 he published some of his pen and ink sketches as postcards, and his company William Ralston Ltd continued to publish postcards until the 1930s. He often signed work with his initials 'WR’. He died in Glasgow on 2 October 1911.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1848
- Summary
- Colonial-era visiting Scottish photographer, cartoonist, illustrator, postcard, genre and military artist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Oct-11
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude-34.0878287 Longitude150.6867485 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1911-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Camden Park, Camden, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, watercolourist and pastoralist, was born on 8 May 1840 at Camden Park, New South Wales, only child of James and Emily Macarthur . Their home, Camden Park, which attracted people from all walks of life, was a fertile scene for the young Elizabeth and no efforts were spared in her education. In painting and drawing she had extensive formal training, copying at first from her mother’s drawing books then being tutored by various governesses. At sixteen she studied with Conrad Martens and later, in London, attended the Normal Central School of Art (South Kensington Museum) and had private tuition from William Collingwood Smith, a founder member of the Royal Watercolour Society who at one time had the largest teaching practice in London. The stages of her development can be traced through the Camden Park sketchbooks, from childhood efforts to later self-assurance, particularly in landscape.
From 1860 to 1864 Elizabeth Macarthur lived abroad with her parents. Based in London, they toured the British Isles and the Continent. In 1867, shortly before her father’s death, she married Captain Arthur Onslow RN ; they had eight children. After the deaths, within the space of two years, of her mother, her husband and her uncle, Sir William Macarthur , Elizabeth became sole owner of Camden Park in 1882. To perpetuate the Macarthur name she prefixed it by deed poll to that of Onslow in 1892.
To further their education, Elizabeth took her six surviving children to England in 1887 to the home of her husband’s family, appointing a young relative, A.J. Onslow Thompson, as manager of the estate in 1889. She later made successive trips from Australia to Europe, studying British methods of dairy farming and the French Métayage system of share-farming which she applied to her own home scene. In 1899 she formed a company, Camden Park Estate Ltd, with her six children as shareholders. She died at Campden Hill in London during a visit, on 6 August 1911, and is buried at Sendgrove in Surrey.
Macarthur-Onslow’s art work, like that of her mother, comprises sketches in pen, pencil and watercolour, mainly of landscapes and records of travels. Apart from the large collection of sketchbooks at Camden Park, there are facsimiles of work attributed to her on display at Elizabeth Farm, Parramatta, New South Wales, e.g. Elizabeth Farm, July 1st. 1865 . Her work changes enormously from crude youthful attacks on paper to fine and sensitive watercolour landscapes, notable examples being the various landscapes sketched en route to Braidwood in 1868. From evidence in family correspondence an interior view of the library at Camden Park previously attributed to Elizabeth and dated c.1865 now seems likely to have been painted much earlier by her mother.
Writers:
Macarthur-Onslow, Annette
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 May 1840
- Summary
- Well-trained colonial artist of the famous Macarthur Family who drew and painted landscapes and interiors throughout her life in Australia and London. She also improved farming techniques and turned the family home, Camden Park, into a business.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Aug-11
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude-32.728465 Longitude151.9380101 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1911-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Port Stephens, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Port Stephens, New South Wales, only daughter of James Edward Ebsworth, accountant and assistant commissioner of the Australian Agricultural Company, and Anne, née Coryndon. Her father worked for the company at Port Stephens in various capacities from 1828 to 1851 and Marion sketched several views of its properties (Mitchell Library): Booral House on AA Comp Estate, Stroud Port Stephens where Prof. Huxley Stayed between Years 1846 and 1849 (pencil), Booral Estate, Booral House on Hill (pencil) and The Peach Trees, near Stroud, Port Stephens (1868, monotone watercolours). Other known sketches (ML) include a pen-and-ink Distant view of Parramatta (c.1848) and Near Boolaydeelah (now Bulahdelah, on the north coast of New South Wales), a monotone watercolour of about 1846.
When Miss Ebsworth exhibited a copy of a river scene with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1877, it was called 'good and promising work’ although she was then aged about forty-four. She died, unmarried, on 11 July 1911 at Alverton, Hunter’s Hill, Sydney.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1833
- Summary
- Marion Ebsworth made landscape sketches of the north coast region of New South Wales. She exhibited with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1877.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Jul-11
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude18.1850507 Longitude-77.3947693 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1911-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Jamaica
- Biography
- Interior designer and author, Lady Barker was born in Jamaica. She was the daughter of Walter George Stewart. She married and had a successful career as an interior designer and author in England. She arrived in Western Australia in 1883 as the wife of the Governor Frederick Napier Broome, her second husband. As he did not have a title she kept her previous husband’s name. She put some of the local ladies’ 'noses out of joint’ with her Aesthetic Movement revision of the interior of Government House. Lady Barker, an established authoress on interior design, took an interest in the education of the daughters of her circle. Sewing classes were undertaken at Government House whilst she read modern history aloud. The classes were designed to assist the intellectual pursuits rather than cultivate manual dexterity. It is perhaps not surprising that the girls were some of the earliest to win universal suffrage. Photographs of the interior of Government House show her taste ran to an interest in the orient and the Aesthetic Movement. This appears typical of many families in that circle.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1831
- Summary
- Interior designer and author who married Governor Frederick Napier Broome.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1911
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1911-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- sketcher, fifth of the six daughters of Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur and Anna Macarthur, née King, and a sister of Anna , Charles and James , was named after her cousin Emmeline Emily Macarthur ( Parker ). She spent her childhood at the family home, The Vineyard, on the Parramatta River, New South Wales. In her 'Recollections and letters 1860-1894’ written in old age (1909), Emmeline relates a story about a particularly bad bush-fire which she and her younger sister Emma Jane witnessed and which Emmeline subsequently drew: '[we] dragged our mattresses on to the Upper Colonnade, and spent the night of Easter Eve, watching the most splendid fireworks at a distance … The trees on the right of my watercolour presented our spectacle on the safe side of the stream’. The whereabouts of this or any other of her sketches is not known.
On 2 December 1860, in All Saints’ Church of England, Parramatta, Emmeline married George Farquhar Leslie. After his death she married Vigant de Falbe, a commander in the Royal Danish Navy, with whom she had two sons. She died at Elm Cottage, Cheltenham, England, on 23 December 1911, aged eighty-three.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1828
- Summary
- Colonial female painter and drawer of the famous Macarthur family who documented her life in pictures that are now missing. Fortunately she refers to these works in her memoirs of a life that included two husbands.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 23-Dec-11
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-34.5291019 Longitude150.3158824 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1911-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Oldbury, Sutton Forest, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, was born at Oldbury, Sutton Forest, New South Wales, on 22 July 1828, eldest child of James Atkinson and his wife Charlotte . Both her parents were writers and her mother was also an accomplished watercolour painter and amateur naturalist. Her sister Caroline Louisa Atkinson , known as Louisa, became well known as a botanist, writer and artist. At first Charlotte Elizabeth was educated mainly by her mother, then for some time attended the Sydney College High School where she won 'the first medal for young ladies’ in drawing and other prizes (including a first and a second for ornamental needlework) in 1842. Attributed to her are four rather crude watercolour profile portraits of the members of her family at about this time (ML): her mother, her brother John, and her sisters Emily and Louisa.
In 1847 Charlotte Elizabeth eloped with an illiterate Irish Catholic coachman who worked on the estate, Thomas McNeilly. Although disapproving of the match, her mother insisted they return and be properly married at Oldbury, which was done on 22 July by the Berrima Catholic priest. The McNeillys continued to live at Oldbury until Mrs Atkinson (then Mrs Charlotte Barton ) died. Then they moved to Orange (NSW), where for a time Charlotte operated a private school. According to her daughter, Flora Garlick, Charlotte was also a regular contributor to various journals and newspapers. She and Thomas had 11 children – the last born in 1867 after Flora was married – although when Charlotte Elizabeth died, on 17 March 1911, only three were still living.
McNeilly’s watercolour sketch Cockatoo Island from Balmain near the Coal Mine (ML) was painted in 1864. Its bright smooth washes and precise outlines resemble Louisa’s style of landscape painting except that it lacks Louisa’s topographical accuracy. (Charlotte may have copied it from an illustration.) Her scene of the Canobolas Mountains near Orange (p.c.) is similar in style to (her mother’s reputed drawing master) John Glover 's English work. Church of England and Parsonage. Orange. 1868. Opened January 3rd, 1858. Revd R.H. Mayne, Minister (p.c.), a watercolour annotated 'Drawn by C.E. McNeilly’, is the most attractive and detailed of her few known works. Obviously drawn from nature, it shows the original Holy Trinity Church at Orange, now called the Bluestone Hall and owned by the National Trust (NSW). Other drawings she is known to have made during her years at Orange have not been located.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 July 1828
- Summary
- Charlotte McNeilly scandalised her family in 1847 by eloping with an illiterate Irish Catholic coachman who worked on the family estate. They were, however, convinced to return and be respectfully married at her home in Oldbury. They eventually moved to Orange in country NSW where Charlotte ran a school for a time and contributed to various newspapers and journals. She was an adept watercolour art
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17-Mar-11
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude51.8527674 Longitude-2.2553694 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1911-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, watchmaker and jeweller, was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire. He and his wife Mary Ann came to Victoria with their son Henry and possibly a daughter in the late 1850s. Henry senior was listed in 1859 as a daguerrean and photographic artist of 107 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne and is recorded by Davies and Stanbury as taking pannotypes (photographs on leather to send through the post) when working from John Noone 's former rooms at 41 Collins Street West in 1860. The following year, he moved to 8 Bourke Street East, formerly J.W. Baume 's studio. Jones was back in his Elizabeth Street rooms in 1863-65, with a branch studio at 17 James Street, Williamstown. The latter continued into 1866, when the Melbourne studio was relocated to 19 Collins Street East. Later that year Jones moved to South Australia and became a camera operator for Townsend Duryea in Adelaide. He ran his own photographic studio in King William Street in 1870-79 in conjunction with a watchmaking and jewellery business. He was at Wakefield Street in 1880-84 then opened a studio called The Children’s Photographic Company on the corner of King William and Hindley Streets, presumably run by the family.
Eight of Jones’s untouched full-length carte-de-visite portraits shown with the South Australian Society of Arts in 1871 won a guinea prize. That same year Jones produced his best-known works: photographs of the 500 South Australian pioneer couples who attended Solomon’s 'Banquet to the Pioneers’ made up into two mosaics, one of the men and one of the women (Mortlock Library).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1826
- Summary
- Nineteenth-century professional photographer, watchmaker and jeweller, he worked in Melbourne and Adelaide, producing pannotypes (photographs on leather to send through the post) and full-length carte-de-visite portraits.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Oct-11
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude55.861111 Longitude-4.25 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1911-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- art printer and lithographer, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on 20 February 1822. In London he worked with John Penman, printing plans during 'the railway mania’, as Galbraith many years later described the experience. He commented that he seemed to have 'worked nearly the whole of the year 1847 at the rate of nine days a week’. Galbraith and Penman both read John Stephens’s pamphlet on South Australia (1838) and decided to migrate. They arrived at Adelaide in the Hooghly on 5 December 1848.
Soon afterwards they met George Hamilton, at that time a clerk in the Treasury, and purchased his lithographic press. Galbraith recalled the occasion thus: '[Hamilton] had dabbled a little in lithography. He could, however, make nothing of it, and was quite ready to sell to the first purchaser what printing material he had, so I bought it, and I am sorry now that I did not preserve it as a curiosity to show the present generation how little we required in the old days to make a living’. With Hamilton’s equipment the two set up the printing business of Penman & Galbraith in Grenfell Street. Galbraith noted: 'As the one who did it, I may add that the first large job in lithography in South Australia was an octavo circular for Mr. Platts, a well-known stationer of the day, who occupied a shop in Hindley Street’.
Galbraith married Janet, née Davies, on 28 January 1852 and remained in Adelaide for the rest of his life. Penman & Galbraith became South Australia’s longest-running and most important art-printing establishment before the partnership broke up in 1883. Among hundreds of other items, they published S.T. Gill’s two series, Heads of the People and Views in Adelaide , and Gill’s Old Colonists’ Festival Dinner print. They also published the original sheet music of Caroline Carleton’s Song of Australia , with music by Carl Linger, winner of a prize of 20 guineas offered by the Gawler Mechanics Institute in 1859 (a contender for the position of official Australian national song in a referendum held in 1974); a view of the Gawler Institute building appears on the cover. In 1854 they lithographed The Emu: An elegant and brilliant Polka composed by O.F.V. Reyher [of] Adelaide , priced at 2/6 (Miss R. Barnard’s copy from Rev. J.E.M. Myer(?) is in ML SV*BIRD – AUS/11), decorated with a crude but charming lithograph of two emus in the landscape. With his son, another William, he produced a view of The First Congregational Church in South Australia , and other work.
After the firm was dissolved, Galbraith worked for Mr Varden for some years until increasing deafness (from which he suffered most of his life) forced him into retirement soon after he turned seventy. After his wife died, he continued to live at his home in Charles Street, Norwood, with his two unmarried daughters, always taking an active interest in politics and in the public life of the colony. He was 'an omnivorous reader, and very fond of poetry, and sometimes he wrote topical rhymes’, stated his obituary. A lifelong member of the Caledonian Society, he occasionally sent 'verses of a reminiscent and patriotic character’ to its St Andrew’s Day gatherings. William Galbraith died at home on 16 February 1911, survived by his three daughters and three sons.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 February 1822
- Summary
- Starting their business with a single lithographic press, the partnership Penman & Galbraith became South Australia's longest-running and most important art-printing establishment.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16-Feb-11
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1911-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and botanist, was born in England on 30 June 1817, son of the eminent botanist Sir William Jackson Hooker and Maria, née Turner. After studying classics and medicine at Glasgow University, Joseph was appointed naturalist and assistant surgeon to the Erebus , one of the two ships on (Sir) James Clark Ross’s expedition to the Antarctic. Robert McCormick in the Terror was chief surgeon to the expedition. The voyage lasted from 1839 to 1843 and Hooker visited Van Diemen’s Land on two occasions, from August to October 1840 and from March to May 1841. Port Jackson (Sydney) was visited briefly. As there was no professional draughtsman with the expedition (the second officer J.E. Davis was the major artist on board) Hooker drew and painted landscapes and natural history illustrations: animals, plants and fish. Even so, the three books on the botany of the Antarctic, New Zealand and Tasmania that Hooker published in the 1840s and 1850s were illustrated by Walter Hood Fitch, an English botanical artist, not by Hooker himself. His sketches were very probably used, however, together with the specimens he had collected.
After a career of exploring in India and Tibet, the Middle East and North America, as well as serving as assistant director, then director, of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Sir Joseph Hooker retired in 1885. He died on 10 December 1911, having married twice and fathered nine children.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 30 June 1817
- Summary
- Sketcher and botanist, he was naturalist and assistant surgeon on tan expedition to the Antarctic, 1839-1843. He visited Van Diemen's Land twice and sketched, landscapes, natural history illustrations and wildlife.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Dec-11
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude-33.283333 Longitude149.1 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Orange, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and painter, was born at Orange, NSW and studied art at Orange Technical College under Arthur Collingridge . While still a student he won local prizes and showed an oil painting at the Royal Art Society’s 1894 exhibition. Moving to Sydney in 1895 [aged 20, acc. Renniks?], he supported himself as a solicitor’s clerk while studying with George [or Arthur?] Collingridge, Frank Mahony and J.S. Watkins and attending Julian Ashton 's evening art classes in 1895-98. He was a member of the Royal Art Society until his death, apart from four years with the rival Society of Artists from 1897. His work was included in the 1898 Australian art exhibition at Grafton Gallery, London.
Garlick drew illustrations for the Town and Country Journal (e.g. 26 April 1902, 40) and All About Australians ( AAA ) and was a regular Bulletin contributor. Norman Lindsay wrote that this 'lugubrious lantern-jawed minor artist’, the butt of Hugh McCrae’s jokes, 'lodged at a dismal little stone house [called Asrahma] half-way up on the McMahon’s Point steps’ (N. Lindsay, Bohemians , p.119). Joke blocks by this 'dolourous and humourless youth’, he sneered, were devoted solely to 'monkeys and dray horses… He had so to speak taken out patent rights to them, and any one criminally encroaching on his patent was instantly excluded from the category of respectable human beings.’ ML has an original 1900 drawing by Garlick of two broken-down horses being led to the boiling-down works (SV* HORS/7).
Although he clearly specialised in gags using birds and animals, monkeys and cart-horses are not really as conspicuous as Lindsay suggested: e.g. (two birds) THE SYDNEY WATER FAMINE.—BAD TIME FOR THE BIRDS. 'THE INVALID: “I’d like a sauté of worms to-day, father.”/ THE OTHER: “Worms, me boy, worms! Why it’s a month since I saw one, an’ then I 'ad ter fight ole Bobtail for it”, Bulletin 7 March 1903, 17. Not all his animals were anthropomorphised. One of his Bulletin cartoons is of a 'newchum’ wrestling with a kangaroo, DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS LOADED . 'NEWCHUM (as the roo kicks him below the belt): “Bai Jove! The familiarity of these beastly Austwalian plague rats is astounding. Perhaps the poor brute is-aw-delirious.”’ It was apparently not particularly favoured by the editor; the large and impressive original (ML Px*D466/42) appearing in a single column on the 'Aboriginalities’ page during 1903 {#1}. Other cartoons on the 'newchum’ and animal theme also appeared in 1903, e.g. THAT GAME CHICKEN . 'NEWLY-IMPORTED MAJOR (looking at pet emu): “Bai Jove! What a wonderful place this Australia is for growing things. Fancy producing poultry that size!”’ 25 March 1903, 16. His competent series featuring Australian animals of all kinds in comic attitudes and situations include a set published in All About Australians and Garlick’s Roos ' postcards published by Harding & Billings. His postcard A Jolly Christmas , featuring two kangaroos on a bench and a verse, was published by Harding and Billings in 1904. Included in the NMA’s Josef Lebovic collection of over 2000 postcards, it was used by the NMA as its 1999 Christmas card. Like most of his b/w work it is signed 'H.G.’, although he sometimes used 'H. Garlick’.
According to the NMA, Garlick taught animal and landscape painting in Sydney. Examples of his oil animal paintings, especially horses, are in the Hinton Collection, NERAM. He also painted impressionistic landscapes. The Last Furrow , with its macabre figure of Death as the ploughman, created a stir when shown with the NSW Society of Artists in 1909 (acc. McCulloch). He died in Sydney a few months later.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1876
- Summary
- Federation-era Sydney cartoonist who was born in Central West NSW and studied at Orange Technical College before moving to Sydney and studying under Julian Ashton. Garlick was a cartoonist and painter who also designed postcards, many of which are held in the National Museum of Australia's collection.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1910
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1856-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, son of James and Mary Bath, was born in North Adelaide on 16 July 1856. He won a guinea prize for 'the best Drawing, Pencil Landscape of Colonial Scenery for Competitors not over 12 years of age, original or copy’ at the South Australian Society of Arts’ 1867 exhibition. In adult life, he was a clerk in the Post Office then a customs officer. He married Sarah Goodeth Bottrill on 28 September 1878 at Glenelg and he died at Woodville on Christmas Eve 1910.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 July 1856
- Summary
- Hubert William Bath's only known artistic accomplishment came before the age of 12 when he won a prize in the 1867 South Australian Society of Arts exhibition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Dec-10
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, was born Elizabeth Perry in Birmingham. Arrived Tasmania 1880.
Tasmanian Juvenile Industrial Exhibition 1883, Adult section: “The oil painting of native flowers and fine art crockery, by Mrs E.S. Bradford, Sandy Bay, is very tasteful, the grouping and colouring of the flowers being thoroughly natural. A similar design has been painted by Mrs Bradford in watercolours” ( Mercury , 3 March 1883, p.3).
Re Fine Arts Exhibition, Parliament House, Hobart: “ Fallen Timber in Scottsdale , by Mrs E.S. Bradford, is a very characteristic piece of the Scottsdale district faithfully executed and makes a pleasing little picture” ( Mercury 16 February 1887, 3).
Advertised to teach Drawing and painting at the Hobert Girls High School, 28 Davey Street, in 1892 ( Mercury , 16 July 1892, p.1); taught at Hobart Ladies’ College 1891-94.
Exhibited in the Old Hobart Exhibition 1896: Members’ [of the Art Society of Tasmania] Work – Miscellaneous – no.231 View from 'Hillside’, Sandy Bay – £2.2.o. – Mrs E.S. Bradford.
Exhibited with Art Society of Tasmania 1907.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1846
- Summary
- Elizabeth Sarah Bradford exhibited compositions from nature and also taught art in Hobart in the late 1800s/early 1900s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1910
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude50.70205785 Longitude-3.104958513 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Beer, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, eldest son of John Adams Marchant (1820-1906), a miller and baker, and Thomazine née Board, was born on 18 December 1846 at Beer, Devon. He arrived with his parents in the Harwick in 1861 and began his photographic career in Weymouth Street, Adelaide, South Australia, in 1864, aged seventeen. Although ostensibly in partnership with his father at first, John Marchant appears to have taken no active part in the studio. Philip produced a very clever double self-portrait in about 1865 in which, still looking extremely youthful and wearing two different outfits, he presents himself as both photographer and client. As was noted at the time, no line of separation indicating the two negatives used is visible. In 1869 he was advertising carte-de-visite portraits at 12s a dozen, as well as moderate charges for photographs of 'Private & Public Buildings, Views &c.’
According to R.J. Noye, Marchant was probably Australia’s first commercial dry-plate manufacturer. He enjoyed considerable commercial success with the 'Adelaide Instantaneous Dry-Plate’ he began marketing about 1881. George Freeman of the Melbourne Photographic Company, Rundle Street, gave Marchant’s dry-plates a testimonial in the Evening Journal of August 1881 and they were well established by 1882 when Marchant was advertising them on the back of his photographic mounts, together with the boast that he took babies’ portraits in 'ONE SECOND’.
Marchant’s Adelaide studio remained at Weymouth Street until 1882, then he moved to Gawler. He lived in a luxurious residence at Mars Hill, above the town, and continued to take dry-plate photographs. In 1887-97 he worked at Latrobe, Tasmania, after which he returned to Gawler. He had married Mary Bowering in Adelaide on 1 January 1869; they had eight surviving children. After his death on 7 August 1910 the Marchant photographic business continued through his eldest surviving son, Samuel Bowering Marchant, up to the present-day Adelaide firm. From the late 1870s, Philip’s brother Edwin was also practising as a photographer in South Australia.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 December 1846
- Summary
- Philip Marchant was a colonial photographer in South Australia. Skilled in various photographic processes, he produced a double portrait of himself while showing no signs of how he did it, in order to advertise his business which claimed to take portraits of squirming infants in one second.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Aug-10
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude-32.4026969 Longitude151.9674197 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stroud, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born on 2 July 1846 at Stroud, New South Wales, second son of the Hon. Philip Gidley King and Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur. His great-grandfather Philip Gidley King had been Governor of New South Wales. Several of George’s pencil sketches are held in the Dixson Galleries (State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW), including a portrait of an unnamed child, a view of a house dated 20 April 1861, and a scene at Goonoo Goonoo near Tamworth (NSW).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 July 1846
- Summary
- Sketcher George King was a member of the well-known pioneer King family - his great-grandfather had been Governor of NSW. King's only known work is dated from the early 1860s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1910
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in Birmingham, England, on 10 August 1842, son of William Millington Nixon and brother of Joseph and Samuel Nixon . He was one of the Nixon Brothers who operated a photographic gallery at Kapunda, South Australia in 1862, which was in his name alone by 1867, the year he produced a special album of photographs (Mortlock Library) to commemorate the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to South Australia. In the early 1870s he worked in the copper-mining towns of Moonta and Kadina, calling his firm the Yorke Peninsula Photographic Company, then was probably the Nixon partner of John Blood ( see Matthew Blood ). In November 1875 Stephen Nixon purchased Townsend Duryea 's photographic business in King William Street, Adelaide, his father’s old firm, inheriting Charles H. Manning as manager. Manning soon became a partner; he bought Nixon out in about 1880.
After a short period at Yorketown, Nixon returned to Kadina in 1881 for four years. During this period he renamed his firm the South Australian Photographic Association. He then moved back to Kapunda and took his son, Charles M. Nixon, into partnership. They operated a second studio at Tanunda from 1886 until Charles moved to Fremantle, Western Australia, in 1893. Nixon’s cartes-de-visite proclaim that his business had been established in 1855, so he obviously identified himself with his father’s firm (owned by Duryea Brothers until 1858).
Stephen Nixon married Mary Ann Ellis at Macclesfield on 2 April 1863. They had ten children, of whom only Charles appears to have taken up photography professionally. He died at Fremantle on 5 February 1910, presumably having joined Charles after retiring from photography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 August 1842
- Summary
- Stephen Nixon was primarily a portrait photographer, based in South Australia during the nineteenth century. For some time he was considered Kapunda’s resident photographer, where he built up a large collection of registered negatives. His known work includes a special album of photographs that he created, commemorating the Duke of Edinburgh's visit to South Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Feb-10
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude53.3913965 Longitude-2.1527479 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Davenport, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, surveyor and shipping agent, was born in Davenport, England, and came to South Australia with his parents in 1857.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1840
- Summary
- A watercolourist who mainly painted the surroundings of South Australia. He exhibited several landscapes in South Australia and was commissioned in the 1880s to produce a publication of the Murray River Irrigation Scheme. This included 18 detailed drawings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1910
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England
- Biography
- Mary Ann Armstrong née Newey (17 June 1838 – 2 July 1910), botanical fern artist, was the daughter of William and Margaret Newey of Birmingham, England. After the death of her mother, she emigrated with her father, brothers, and stepsister to Victoria in January 1853, arriving aboard the S.S. Wandsworth and eventually settling at the goldfields in Bendigo. On 11 February 1858 at Sandhurst she wed Charles Clark Armstrong (1835-1923), a coach runner and storekeeper who was also a native of Birmingham and who had arrived in Victoria on the S.S. Thorwaldsen in November 1852 (Daffey, pg 14). In the early 1860s, the couple relocated to New Zealand, most likely in search of more lucrative business opportunities. Shipping records indicate a “C Armstrong” arrived on the Oscar in December 1861, while Mary Ann arrived on the Western in March 1862 with William and Charles Clark, their two sons born in the Bendigo-Sandhurst region (Daffey, pg 24). They resided in New Zealand for the next two decades, taking up a permanent residence in Dunedin, where their remaining eleven children were born. From 1862-78 the growing family rented a property in High Street (Daffey, pg 54). Newspaper records indicate that Charles Clark and his brother-in-law, Henry Newey, opened an establishment in 1863 in the Arcade where they were employed as “Fruiterers/ General Storekeepers” and “Dealers in Colonial Produce”. Charles Clark opened a second branch of the business in Oamaru in 1867 (North Otago Times, 20 December 1867). In addition, in 1864 he purchased the Star and Garter Hotel in Oamaru for 3,000 pounds in partnership with Henry Newey and Richard Payne (North Otago Times, 3 March 1864). It appears that extensive refurbishments and remodelling of the hotel conducted in 1868 brought financial trouble and Charles Clark declared bankruptcy more than once over the next few years (Otago Witness, 4 September 1869 and 22 April 1871). It is likely that this would have been a difficult period for Mary Ann and the children, with a portion of Charles Clark’s revenue diverted to the creditors of the Star and Garter (Daffey, pg 28). In June 1878, he took over the license for the Union Hotel on Stafford Street, Dunedin (New Zealand Tablet, 21 June 1878). The family moved into the hotel and remained there until Charles Clark withdrew his application for the license in June 1884. At this time, they relocated to 'Fern Grove’, a private residence on the same street (Daffey, pg 54). Afforded little leisure time due to work and family, Mary Ann nonetheless developed a keen interest in the collection and arrangement of fern specimens. Active from roughly the late 1870s to the 1890s, her body of work revolves around the artistic arrangement and scientific notation of ferns in albums and framed compositions, sometimes composed into decorative, collage-like landscapes. A label from a late 19th century album compiled by Mary Ann, entitled Ferns of Australasia, specifically designates her as a “botanic fern artist” suggesting that she considered herself a legitimate artist in her field. Ornamental and handcrafted, her fern work reflects the domestic tradition of 19th century women’s decorative arts. In addition to botanical watercolours, miniature painting and needlework, natural objects such as ferns, seaweeds, shells, and seeds were arranged in decorative compositions and displayed in the parlour as emblems of taste and feminine accomplishment. Such creations featured regularly in the Ladies’ Courts of international exhibitions and in bazaars, where they were often sold to raise money for charity (Sear 2000). Mary Ann’s botanical art, however, is distinct from this feminine tradition in that it was displayed alongside the work of men at a series of international and intercolonial exhibitions from 1879-89. Moreover, her work was unabashedly commercial: unlike the domestic arts which were largely created and displayed within the home, Mary Ann marketed and sold her fern compositions to the general public. As an entrepreneur, she relied upon the reputation she established through her commendable exhibition record. One of her earliest known exhibition works is a small collection of dried New Zealand Ferns “in Natural Colours” which she displayed under her husband’s name in the horticulture department at the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879. Her submission received special commendation and is described as “artistically arranged” in the Official Record, a noteworthy report considering that other judicial commentary tended to focus on the scientific accuracy of the botanical exhibits (Richards 1881, pg 1008). At the Melbourne International Exhibition the following year, Mary Ann exhibited under her own name and was awarded a first order of merit for her “collection of Victorian wild flowers and New Zealand ferns, in natural colours” (Wanganui Herald, 21 March 1881). She subsequently presented at the 'New Zealand International Exhibition’ in Christchurch, 1882, and again received favourable feedback from the judging committee: “Mrs. C.C. Armstrong, of Dunedin, has some well-mounted ferns and flowers framed in various devices; some arranged to represent scenery with Helen’s babies playing about. She also shows photographs of New Zealand scenery, and of Maoris, mounted with ferns; and books of ferns and flowers, botanically named.” (Mosley 1882, pg lxx).Given the apparent decorative nature of her entry, it is significant that she was included in the general New Zealand Court instead of being relegated to the women’s section. Nevertheless, it appears her work was difficult to categorise. Rather than wholly succumbing to decoration, a majority of Mary Ann’s compositions retained a strong scientific element that was firmly grounded in the systematic notation of each specimen. The classificatory fluctuation of her entries from horticulture to fancy goods at international exhibitions reflects this duality, indicating that her compositions straddled the divide between art and science. This oscillating pattern continued at the 'Colonial and Indian Exhibition’ in London, 1886, where her submission was catalogued in the general “Fancy Articles” division (Clowes & Sons 1886, pg 59), and at the 'Centennial Exhibition’ in Melbourne, 1888, where her entry was once again shown with the “Flowers and Ornamental Plants.” This exhibition at Melbourne represents Mary Ann’s last known participation on the international exhibition circuit. Her “collection of 150 dried specimens of ferns, and ferns in presentation form” was awarded a bronze medal in addition to a first order of merit (Sands & McDougall 1890, pg 1061).Outside the exhibitionary realm, Mary Ann developed a reputation by selling artistically arranged and botanically named fern fronds. The scientific accuracy and quality of her specimens appealed to amateur botanists, while their decorative arrangement attracted a genteel audience caught up in the fad of collecting natural history. The taste-decreed vogue for decoratively displayed shells, seaweeds, and ferns developed out of the tradition of grotto-work and its associations with Romanticism and the Gothic Revival. Ferns, in particular, gripped the imagination of the public, and Pteridomania, or fern mania, peaked around mid-century in Britain spreading to the colonies where it remained a firm fixture of visual culture through 1900. “Few” there are “who do not admire ferns,” wrote Louisa Atkinson in the Sydney Morning Herald (1863, pg 2), and by the turn of the century ferns had become a commonplace decorative device within both domestic and public spaces.Providing a form of popular rational amusement that was intimately linked to scientific progress and colonisation, the collection and display of ferns held special significance for the colonies where the plethora of local species became a symbol of proto-nationalistic pride. The artist Nicholas Chevalier decreed that ferns were “emblematic of Australia,”(Bonyhady 2000, pg 104) and Eugene Von Guerard’s painting Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges, 1857, drew immense contemporary acclaim and featured at the Victorian Court at the London International Exhibition of 1862. By the late 1860s, tourist excursions to Ferntree Gully became a popular pastime for locals and visitors alike (Horne 2005, pg 263). Mary Ann’s commercial fern work capitalised on the popular appeal of the fern as a tourist icon and nationalist symbol. While it is clear that her entrepreneurship arose out of her enthusiasm for ferns, it is also possible that the sale of her compositions supplemented the family income. Several copies of fern albums compiled by Mary Ann in the mid-to-late 1880s exist in public institutions and private collections. Entitled New Zealand Ferns, they typically bear a printed label inside the front or back cover stating that the enclosed specimens were “Mounted and Botanically Named by Mrs. C.C. Armstrong, Dunedin.” These albums contain eight pages of pressed specimens accompanied by their Latin names delineated in a bold, handwritten script. The specimens are generally grouped three to a page and are artistically arranged in a fluid, non-linear manner, often connected to each other by a central sphere composed of dried moss. The decorative sensibilities of this display technique create a sense of alluded landscape and, in doing so, contrast with the emerging scientific aesthetic of the period which emphasized the isolation and standardised representation of specimens.By the mid-1880s it appears that Mary Ann had established a reputation within the industry and was selling her work at local booksellers and dealers in fancy goods. For instance, a notice for W. Fraser, Watchmaker and Jeweller, Gisborne, advertises a collection of pressed ferns “by Mrs. Armstrong of Dunedin, whose name is a household word in the Colonies” (Poverty Bay Herald, 12 November 1885). While inventory records describing the stock and sale of such items have not yet been located, it is evident that in addition to albums, Mary Ann’s fern work included decorative stationery. The Hocken Library in Dunedin, for example, contains a set entitled The New Zealand Native Fern, A Novelty for Friends at Home and Abroad, which consists of notepaper with ornamental monograms composed of arranged fern leaves. Furthermore, it is also recorded that she “earned pin money” by making post cards consisting of “pressed ferns transferred to paper” (Malone, pg 3). Such items would have catered to the tourist market as suggested in an advertisement for the retailer Adams on Gladstone Road, Gisborne in 1884:“FERNS! FERNS! FERNS!To the admirers of the Beautiful in Nature, and all those who are desirous of sending to their Home friends a really Beautiful and Suitable Present!!Just arrived, a Choice Assortment of BEAUTIFUL FERNS,ARRANGEDby Mrs. C.C. Armstrong, of Dunedin, who has gained Prizes at the Sydney, Paris, Dunedin and Christchurch Exhibitions.These FERNS ARE ARRANGED IN BOOKS, and BOTANICALLY NAMED in albums and in Photo Frames.” (Poverty Bay Herald, 29 March 1884).Despite the apparent success of her fern work in Dunedin, in 1887 Mary Ann and her husband as well as a number of their children moved back to Australia where they settled in rented accommodation in Melbourne. It appears that the family was still somewhat burdened financially; Charles Clark’s main source of income was from a second-hand stall at the Victoria Market and Mary Ann was required to take in a number of gentlemen boarders (Malone, pg 3). She continued her fern work during this period, relying upon specimens imported from New Zealand by her son Charles Clark, Jr, who had remained in Dunedin and had developed an interest in ferns from his mother: “An export from Gisborne that is noteworthy is that of fernery. For a long time past Mr C. Armstrong has been engaged gathering and shipping ferns to Victoria, where they find a ready market. During the last quarter Mr Armstrong shipped ferns hence to Australia valued at L110” (Poverty Bay Herald, 1 October 1889).Prompted by the success of the fern industry, Mary Ann embarked upon a new commercial project involving the production of a series of professionally published albums on the ferns of Australasia. Entitled The South Pacific Fern Album, the project was very much a family affair, driven by Mary Ann. Charles Clark, Jr. was responsible for the collection and exportation of fern specimens from New Zealand to Melbourne, while Mary Ann’s son-in-law, Jeremiah Twomey, a journalist and publisher, was largely responsible for the editing, printing, and marketing of the album. Furthermore, according to Daffey, Mary Ann established “The New Zealand Fern Company” with Twomey in order to create a professional arena in which to promote and sell the album (pg 57).At the time of its production, The South Pacific Fern Album garnered a fair amount of publicity both in Australia and New Zealand, as revealed in an article from the Melbourne Argus that was reprinted in several New Zealand newspapers: “A project which deserves encouragement is the gathering of the different varieties of ferns of Australasia and New Zealand in a systematic manner in order to place interesting collections upon the markets. The work has been taken in hand by the New Zealand Fern Company, who have secured the services of Mrs. C.C. Armstrong, formerly of Dunedin, for the preparation and arrangement of samples, and also a staff of fern-gatherers, who are at present in Auckland, New Zealand, where there are extensive fern districts. The company intend [sic] to devote their attention principally to the issue of the 'South Pacific Fern Album’, which, in addition to a complete collection of the ferns, will contain descriptions of the ferns and the localities in which they are to be found, as well as illustrations by means of the photolithographic process.” (The Otago Witness, 31 October 1889).Published in approximately 1889, this lavish album displays a particularly rich example of late 19th-century visual culture characterised by a sophisticated aesthetic vocabulary that merges art, science, and media. Combining handmade imagery with print technology and industrial production, the album is divided into three parts, the first two of which encompass the letterpress section, overseen by Jeremiah Twomey, and the third of which is dedicated to pressed fern specimens compiled, arranged, and scientifically labelled by Mary Ann. Intended “for those who admire the beauty of nature’s productions than for those skilled in botany,” the album targeted a popular audience as is reflected in the language and subject matter of its text (pg 1). Divided into two principal sections, Part I contains general information for the lay reader on ferns and their specific localities within New Zealand, their economic and medicinal properties, their role in local and historical folklore, as well as a detailed history of their collection, with a prominent section devoted to indigenous culture and customs. Part II is more concise and is devoted to the “Description, distribution, and full particulars of each genus and species” of New Zealand ferns (Part II Index).The language used, particularly in Part I, is that of the picturesque: the text leads the reader through a perambulating visual landscape, following the route of “the tourist – whose path would generally be that of the botanist.” (pg 16). This form of armchair travel is enhanced by the inclusion of several photolithographs of ferns and general New Zealand scenery, some of which are presumably based on photographs taken by Charles Clark, Jr., an avid photographer (Daffey, pg 57). In addition to supplementing the picturesque text, the integration of such images contributes to a scrapbook aesthetic that governs the visual language of the print section, and to a certain extent, of the album as a whole. Interspersed with various anecdotal episodes and snippets of poetry devoted to ferns, the illustrations are arranged on the page to create a collage-like effect that emulates the personalised nature of handmade scrapbooks from the period. This aesthetic is further realised in the final section of the album which features Mary Ann’s decorative arrangements of pressed fern specimens, the configuration of which more closely resembles the layout of a presentation scrapbook than that of a scientific reference book. The fern plates are devoid of text or illustration, with the exception of simple, cut-out labels bearing the Latin name of each represented species. The arrangements are indicative of Mary Ann’s earlier album compositions, revealing a combination of different specimens on a single, blank page, and are assembled in a flowering, sometimes gently overlapping, organic fashion which references the plant in nature. In addition, they feature the use of decorative framing and anchoring devices. Certain plates display borders composed of long slender ferns, and throughout, Mary Ann has employed delicate roundels of dried moss to create an artificial base for the specimens that not only anchors them to the page, but also creates the illusion of soil and earth. Moreover, as an ornamental flourish, she has occasionally placed diminutive fern bouquets around central specimens. It is clear that such groupings are meant to be solely decorative in nature as they lack scientific labels. In addition to these specimen plates, a number of copies of The South Pacific Fern Album also contain decorated printed illustrations. The Sydney Herbarium edition, for example, features two hand-coloured lithographs of unidentified local scenery that have been enclosed in collage-like fern borders created by Mary Ann (illus. Stacey and Hay 2000, pg 144). The juxtaposition of specimens with images of landscapes from whence they potentially originated reflects a multifaceted sense of vision that embraces the particular and the general, the rational and the romantic, while providing an interesting example of the intersection of industry and craft.As a hybrid creation combining industrial production with artistic personalisation, the album can be attributed to a small genre of mid-to-late 19th-century natural history gift albums. According to Roger Butler, such “giftbooks” were luxurious affairs, “printed in lithography, and often self-published or subsidized” (2007, pg 195). Carol Armstrong (of no relation to Mary Ann) has also shown how such works were characterised by a strong handmade and ornamental component, citing Anna Atkins’ Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns, 1854, as the archetypal gift album model (pg 157). Costly and time-consuming to make, such albums were necessarily produced in limited numbers and typically operated within a culture of gift giving and exchange.The South Pacific Fern Album clearly belongs to this category: its production was mainly a familial enterprise and, as was common with other gift albums of the era, it demonstrates a subtle blend of science and art, in which aesthetic value is given equal status to scientific import. Moreover, in terms of its arrangement, it combines professionally produced lithography and letterpress with hand-assembled specimen plates, the incorporation of which transforms the album into a lavish commercial scrapbook that retains an air of personalisation and uniqueness. Finally, there is evidence that it operated within a culture of exchange: the Sydney Herbarium copy contains an inscription which states that the album was given as “a token of esteem to E. Dixon from his sincere friend Mina Ellis 6 November 1895”.Given the popularity and pervasiveness of the natural history movement, numerous gift albums specifically devoted to New Zealand ferns were produced in the colonies, the most notable of which are those compiled by Thomas Cranwell and Eric Craig who were active in Auckland in the late 1870s and 1880s. Like The South Pacific Fern Album, their albums combine commercialisation and artistry, displaying the professional labels of their makers and featuring decoratively arranged pressed fronds in juxtaposed groupings that are anchored to the page by tufts of moss. Time-intensive and laborious to make, the creation of such albums was a mammoth project. As stated in the introduction of The South Pacific Fern Album: “The collection of the immense quantity of ferns required for the production of these Albums entailed much expense and trouble” (pg 13). Moreover, the preservation and arrangement of the fronds would have been a difficult and finicky process. Professor George Thomson, the author of The Ferns and Fern Allies of New Zealand, 1882, is quoted in the album as stating:“Mrs. Armstrong has overcome the difficulty of preserving those ferns, so as to make them retain all their native freshness and beauty. I have seen specimens of her work which would only require the dew upon the fronds to convince one that they had just been gathered from their native haunts though they were at the time thousands of miles away from where they had been gathered.” (pg 9).Regardless of her skill, it is unlikely that Mary Ann alone could have compiled a large number of the albums. Nevertheless, numerous copies are held in public and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, The United Kingdom, and North America, suggesting that a fair number indeed were published. Moreover, sales advertisements indicate that it was available both in the colonies and in Britain. The publishing firm of Sampson, Low, Marston & Co, Limited in London, for instance, lists the album in both its 1894 and 1895 catalogue for 63 shillings, a reasonably expensive sum (Groom 1895, pg 1).There is little information on Mary Ann’s artistic output after the publication of The South Pacific Fern Album. It appears that she continued to engage in fern work to a certain extent in Melbourne, compiling an album entitled Ferns of Australasia, c.1900. Despite her prolific collection and production over a twenty-year period, there is no evidence of Mary Ann discovering any new species. However, she did potentially contribute to an increase in knowledge on the particulars of existing species. For example, the description of Phyloglossum Drummondii in the album maintains that the fern “grows in the Northern Island in grassy places and clayey banks” and that “Mrs. Armstrong has [also] found it in the Canterbury districts” of the South Island (pg 7).In 1904, Mary Ann travelled with her husband to West Australia to care for some of their grandchildren after the sudden death of their daughter, Nellie. They eventually returned to the Melbourne area and settled with their daughter Jennie’s family. According to Malone “they brought little but Ma’s parrot in a cage and their personal belongings in two suitcases” (pg 1). This family recollection perhaps best encapsulates Mary Ann’s life as a woman of supreme common sense who did not believe greatly in personal wealth. On 2 July 1910, Mary Ann passed away in Flemington, her later years marred by a slight stroke (Malone, pg 4). She is buried in Melbourne General Cemetery where her headstone, inscribed with decorative fronds, reflects her passion for ferns (Daffey).Mary Ann’s son, Charles Clark, Jr., carried on the family fern enterprise. In 1895 he established a photography studio in Dunedin where he also engaged in fern work. The Cyclopaedia of New Zealand: Otago & Southland Provincial Districts, 1905, lists him as a “fern artist and photographer” who specialised in “artificial fern work, the different varieties being artistically arranged and reproduced on panels, brackets, and articles of furniture, as well as in album form (Cyclopaedia online). While the natural history craze for ferns was on the decline by 1900, it was replaced by the ascendency of the fern as the emblem of New Zealand.
Writers:
Duggins, Molly
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 17 June 1838
- Summary
- Mary Ann Armstrong (1838-1910) was a botanical fern artist who participated in a number of international and intercolonial exhibitions. She compiled and artistically arranged fern specimens for a number of albums devoted to the ferns of Australasia, including a series of professional gift books entitled 'The South Pacific Fern Album'.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2-Jul-10
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Clement's Dane parish, London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and professional photographer, was born in St Clement’s Dane parish, London, on 8 October 1836. He was only three when came to South Australia; his parents later sent him back to London for training at the Royal Academy Schools, a family legend being that his uncle carried his painting materials up the steps since he was too small to manage them himself. He also learnt photography in London. He was back home by 1853, when he accompanied his father on a visit to the Victorian goldfields where he is said to have both sketched and taken photographs of mining scenes. Two watercolours in the National Library, Eagle Hawk Gully, Bendigo (1853) and Mt. Alexander Gold Diggings (1853), attributed to Bentley by his daughter (who donated them in 1965), appear to be copies of prints by G.F. Angas , although perhaps Angas was the copyist. McCulloch states that Angas’s father commissioned Bentley to take photographs of South Australian views and therefore considers it likely that the common source of virtually identical views of the Mt Alexander (Castlemaine) diggings by Bentley, Angas and John Saddington Plush was a Bentley photograph.
William continued to live with his parents at Burra Burra, where his father worked for the copper mines. He was paid £5 for a watercolour of the Burra mine in May 1858 (National Trust SA). Another sketch of the mine done in June 1857 was illustrated in The Burra Mine: Reminiscences of its Rise and Fall, 1845-1877 (reproduced by Ian Auhl in 1975). After he married, Bentley worked professionally as a painter and photographer at Kooringa and in other parts of South Australia. His painting Kangarooing was lent by its owner, Mr Bruce, to the South Australian Society of Arts’ exhibition at Adelaide in January 1863. His wife, Louisa, died that year aged 26; on 11 January 1864 he married Elizabeth Bold of Burra. The two children of his first marriage predeceased their mother and only five of his and Elizabeth’s four sons and seven daughters survived infancy.
Bentley was taking photographs at the rival copper-mining town of Moonta in 1868-71 but finally returned to Redruth (the Burra mining town) and opened a shop, also used by him as a school and painting and photography studio, according to a daughter. As a painter he worked in oils, watercolours and chalk, his subjects being landscapes, townscapes, historical pictures and portraits. He was commissioned to paint the portraits of several of Burra’s mayors. Most of his surviving photographs are views of Burra taken at the turn of the century, including one of his own shop (c.1902). He remained at 'the Burra’ until he died in June 1910. He was buried in the Wesleyan section of the local cemetery.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 October 1836
- Summary
- William Bentley was said to have been too small to even carry his own painting materials he was that young when his parents sent him to London to study at the Royal Academy of Art. Back in Burra Burra, South Australia by 17, where he remained for the rest of his life, Bentley worked as a photographer while painting and drawing local landscapes, townscapes, historical pictures and portraits.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Jun-10
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, surveyor and settler, was born in Sydney on 29 June 1833, eldest son of the painter Frederick Garling and Elizabeth, née Ward. Educated at St James’s Grammar School in Phillip Street under Rev. Thomas Bodenham, he left school at an early age to work for the wine and spirits merchant Harold Selwyn Smith. After some dramatic experiences at sea as a cabin boy, in 1861 he joined up with a survey party to Queensland led by his cousin Clarendon Stuart . According to his obituary, it was the illustrations of S.T. Gill that decided him on pursuing a life in the bush. Since his younger brothers William and Clarence had art lessons in Sydney with Gill, it is probable that Frederick Augustus was also Gill’s pupil.
Garling settled in Queensland. In 1863 he joined a survey expedition seeking country suitable for stock in northern Queensland. In 1866, as a member of Frederick Walker’s survey to the Gulf of Carpentaria preparing the route for the overland telegraph, he kept a journal (now lost) and drew many sketches, one of which shows Walker’s grave on the Leichhardt River. It was drawn on 19 November 1866, just after the expedition’s leader was buried, and is one of his two known surviving works (both p.c.), apart from a number of informative but rather crude sketches he made as a surveyor (Qld Archives?). The remainder of Frederick Augustus Garling’s life was spent on the land. He played an active role in civic affairs in the township of Bowen, where he died, unmarried, on 5 March 1910.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 June 1833
- Summary
- Sketcher and surveyor, Garling drew many sketches in a journal (now lost) on an expedition to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Mar-10
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, lithographer and natural history collector, was born in Sydney on 11 April 1832, to Harriet Calcott and Alexander Walker Scott and her cousins included the reformer Rose Scott and David Scott Mitchell, founder of the Mitchell Library.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 11 April 1832
- Summary
- Like her elder sister Harriet, Helena was a professional artist and natural science collector and illustrator. She was an accomplished natural history artist and both she and her sister received commissions from the leading colonial and international natural scientists of the day to illustrate their work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Nov-10
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Van Diemen's Land, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Van Diemen’s Land, sixth of the seven children of George Meredith and his second wife Mary, née Evans, and a youthful cousin (and step-sister-in-law) of Louisa Anne Meredith who encouraged her in music, sketching and painting. Fanny grew up at Cambria, Swan Port, near Swansea, and drew local scenes in pencil and watercolour during her teenage years. Her sketches lack any personal character and are rather crude; nevertheless some have been claimed as Louisa’s work. Wineglass Bay 1853 (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery [QVMAG]) appears to be a copy of an 1852 sketch by Bishop F.R. Nixon , despite the fact that the bay itself was a well-known picturesque spot close to Fanny’s home. Another (undated panoramic) view of Wineglass Bay (QVMAG), in pencil and grey wash heightened with white, is comparable with extant views by both Nixon and Meredith if not a precise copy.
Some of Fanny’s watercolour and pencil views of the Great Swanport district are at the Glamorgan Community Centre, Swansea. Her watercolour of Swansea dated 14 September 1852, Swan River and Port, October 7th 1852 (w/c and pencil) and Adventure Bay, Nov. 22 1852 (watercolour) are in the Meredith Collection (Van Diemen’s Land Folk Museum) along with Risdon (watercolour, not dated), a pencil copy of a sketch by Sarah Poynter of The Old Cottage at Red Banks , which Fanny made in 1846 as a gift for John Meredith. Initialled 'F.M.’, they were donated in 1958 by Miss Violet Mace , a Meredith descendant.
As a girl Fanny Meredith appeared to be fond of her 'Aunt Charles’, regularly visiting the Merediths when they lived nearby and staying with them in 1847 after they had moved to Poyston, Port Sorell. But she turned against Louisa after a family feud in 1853 and subsequently sneered at 'Mrs Bang Bang’, her new nickname for her cousin. Any interest in art seems to have been abandoned at about the same time. Later she married, as his second wife, Major Francis Seymour Gaynor of the 99th Regiment, Hong Kong. They had one son.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1831
- Summary
- Sketcher and watercolourist, born in Van Diemen's Land, known for her depictions of local landscapes. She was the cousin (and step-sister-in-law) of prominent author and artist Louisa Anne Meredith.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1910
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude55.9560901 Longitude-3.4019208 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kirkliston, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- craftworker, was born in Kirkliston, Scotland, daughter of Matthew Linn, a farmer, and Ann, née Dick. She came to South Australia with her parents and five brothers and sisters in 1839 and they settled in the Bugle Ranges, then Macclesfield. On 26 November 1846 at Hindmarsh, Adelaide, Christina married a fellow Scot, David Kennedy (1814-1904) from Ayr, a wheelwright, carpenter and farmer. They lived at Strathalbyn, Mannanarie and Bundaleer and had two sons and seven daughters.
Christina Kennedy’s Tripod Table (c.1880) of gum nuts and pine cones, embroidery on pine support, h.71 cm (National Trust Museum, Strathalbyn) was exhibited in Crafts of South Australia , Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide exhibition, Adelaide 1986; she also made a Grotto with her daughters (ill. Heritage ). Inspired by Christina, who made a variety of complex works, her husband and the five daughters who lived to maturity all appear to have been involved in craft production. Christina died on 4 June 1910. Many of the items she and other family members made are now in the Strathalbyn National Trust Museum.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 December 1827
- Summary
- Christina Kennedy lived and worked in South Australia where she and her family were all involved in craft production. Her 'Tripod Table' (c.1880), made of gum nuts and pine cones was included in an exhibition of SA craft at the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1986.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 4-Jun-10
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude51.3081527 Longitude-2.8260293 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bridgewater, Somerset, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, was in South Australia by 1856 when he made a pencil drawing, The Residence of E. Castle Esq. Hackham, Morphett Vale (Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide). The artist was probably William, the son of William and Martha Acraman, who was born in Bridgewater, Somerset on 24 October 1824 and had come to South Australia in 1845 aboard the Isabella Watson . William Acraman worked as a watchmaker, married Carolyn, née Odgers, on 8 August 1861, and died on 1 May 1910. The Miss Acraman who showed a view of Lake Maggiore in the first exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts at Adelaide in 1857 was presumably a relative.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 October 1824
- Summary
- This English artist arrived in South Australia in the mid nineteenth century. A watchmaker and sketcher, he is known for a pencil drawing held in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-May-10
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.816667 Longitude151 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parramatta, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher and gold commissioner, was born on 8 September 1821 at Parramatta, NSW, third son of Phillip Parker King and Harriet, née Lethbridge. In May 1851 he joined the gold-rush to Ophir, but instead of trying his luck on the diggings found an alternative way of striking it rich – buying gold from the diggers and reselling it in Sydney at a healthy profit. This seems to have qualified him in the eyes of the government for the appointment of assistant gold commissioner at Turon in August 1851. The following year he was promoted, becoming commissioner for the Southern Goldfields at Braidwood. King’s first residence at Braidwood was a tent, albeit a substantial one with wooden floorboards. My Tent at Major’s Creek, Braidwood, 1852 , drawn in pencil on buff paper, shows a comfortable if cluttered interior where a handsome loo-table gives the lie to the makeshift effect of camp-stool and stretcher-bed. This is King’s only signed sketch, but Bells Paddock 1858 , another pencil drawing, is undoubtedly his. It shows the house at Braidwood where he lived after his marriage on 27 April 1854 to Christiana Sarah, eldest daughter of William Edward Riley , and is annotated with a line from a popular song, ''Twas not for its splendour, that dwelling was dear’. Resigning his commission at Braidwood in 1859, King and his wife moved to Victoria. He died at Armadale, Melbourne, on 20 November 1910.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 September 1821
- Summary
- Like his father and four siblings William King sketched. His pencil drawing 'My Tent at Major's Creek, Braidwood, 1852' shows the interior of his tent when he was gold commissioner at the Braidwood goldfields.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Nov-10
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude50.1055002 Longitude8.7610698 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Offenbach, Germany
- Biography
- painter, scene-painter and professional photographer, was born in Offenbach, Germany. The family claimed he was a cousin of the composer Richard Wagner. Conrad Wagner and his wife Katherine Wilhelmina, née Theut {or Thent? See Clarence River Historical Society, who had married at Frankfurt, came to New South Wales aboard the Ceasar Goddefroy [sic acc. Clarence River Hist Socy], arriving at Grafton on 31 March 1856. At the 1861 Industrial Exhibition at the Maitland School of Arts he showed a pencil sketch of the Bank of New South Wales at Tinbarra Tableland (drawn that year) and was criticised for depicting a building 'more like an old gunyah than a bank’. For ten years from the early 1860s Wagner worked as a painter and photographer at a studio in Prince Street, Grafton, advertising cartes-de-visite 'tastefully shaded off around’ and portraits: 'if large size really artistically finished’. He also claimed that 'being in constant communication with his relations some of whom are notorious in Photography on the continent – he is enabled to keep steps with the latest improvements in this science’ – advertisements that suggest he never fully came to terms with the English language. He always retained strong ties with the German community, was Secretary of the Grafton German Club and a member of the Glen Innes committee formed to assist German victims of the Franco-Prussian War.
Wagner’s oil copy of Murillo’s Ascension was judged to have 'merit of a character rarely seen from the brush of an artist sojourning in a provincial portion of Australia’ when it was shown in Sydney. He lived in Sydney and worked with the photographer Henry Goodes from at least June to October 1863, being cited in the Sydney Morning Herald in October as the designer, with Goodes the photographer, of a Royal Marriage souvenir containing portraits of the Prince and Princess of Wales surmounted by the arms of the Prince and the maiden escutcheon of the Princess. In the same month it was reported that Wagner had painted a watercolour copy of Lessing’s picture of Ezzelin da Romana, the Tyrant of Padua, after the original seen in the Frankfurt Gallery before his migration.
Presumably the apprentice Wagner had taken on in 1863, John William Lindt , was temporarily looking after the Grafton studio. In the early 1870s the studio won a considerable reputation for photographs of the Aborigines of the Clarence River district, which Wagner sold both locally and abroad, but these were taken by Lindt, by then a partner and soon sole proprietor. Wagner moved to Glen Innes about 1872 soon after Lindt had married his daughter, Anna Maria Dorothea, and moved to Melbourne.
Always more interested in painting than photography, Wagner produced watercolours, pastels and oil paintings as well as painting over enlarged photographs. His speciality was posthumous portraits. In 1866 a letter from Henry Pinchin of Singleton thanked Wagner for the oil portrait of his late son, James, which 'pleased his mother very much … and during the week numerous friends and acquaintances have called to see the work and have one and all pronounced it to be a thorough life-like portrait of him’. A painted photograph of 'the departed child of a well-known [Grafton] townsman’ was celebrated as 'an indisputable triumph of the artist’s ability’. Yet in 1875 an article in the Grafton Argus which praised his posthumous portrait of a townsman, Maurice O’Keefe, stated that 'it is a matter of wonder that the wealthier classes of our community do not avail themselves of Mr. Wagner’s skill’, and his art obviously appealed mainly to the working and lower middle classes.
Few extant works have been identified but his pair of gouache portraits apparently painted over photographic enlargements of Johann Georg and Magdalena Lollbach (both 1869, Mitchell Library) and a portrait of Rev. A.E. Selwyn (1867, Clarence River Historical Society) are primitive and wooden likenesses that do nothing to confirm Wagner’s contemporary reputation. Cornwall Park, Grafton, Residence of S. Avery Esq. (1859, private collection), showing the newly-wed Mrs Harry Smith, née Mary Ann Avery , aged seventeen, leaving her parents’ home with her husband, is more stylish, though equally naïve. His portrait of the then Colonial Secretary, John Robertson (later Sir John, Premier of New South Wales), was commissioned by a group of free selectors on the Clarence, Richmond and Tweed rivers and presented to Mrs Robertson by the mayor of Grafton on behalf of the subscribers on 5 May 1871. It depicted Robertson 'in an easy, sitting posture’ holding a copy of his much-admired Land Act (the reason for the tribute). The frame was by Benjamin Waters of Pitt Street.
Wagner continued to work as a photographer after he moved to Glen Innes until 1875 when he was declared bankrupt, his liabilities being assessed as £63 16s, his assets at £15 (including £10 for his photographic apparatus which sold, alas, for £2). 'I have been following the business of photographic art in Glen Innes aforesaid for some years past’, he declared, 'but have been unable to earn more than was barely necessary for my maintenance and support’. He was again listed as a photographer – of Grey Street, Glen Innes – in 1883-91, having apparently worked as a portrait and scene painter in the interim.
He was celebrated in Glen Innes as 'our local Raphael’, but his success both as a painter and painter-photographer remained provincical (he was never Lindt’s equal as a photographer) despite a couple of illustrious admirers: Marcus Clarke and Henry Kendall. The Mitchell Library’s copy of Kendall’s Poems and Songs , published by J. R. Clarke at Sydney in 1862, is inscribed to Wagner 'From his Friend, The Author’, and the library also holds a copy of Kendall’s manuscript poem, 'Waiting on the raft. Suggested by a scene in the great Clarence flood [February] 1863 painted by Conrad Wagner Esq.’ in which Wagner is invoked as 'Painter-Poet’. The oil painting that inspired Kendall’s tribute, which shows a family stranded on a raft at the height of the flood (Clarence River Historical Society), was his best-known painting, being reproduced in the Illustrated Melbourne Post on 24 October 1863.
Many years later Wagner returned the compliment, flanking the central allegorical figures of Britannia and Australia in his proscenium decoration for a newly erected theatre beside Tattersall’s Hotel in Glen Innes with portraits of Shakespeare, Byron, Macready, Creswick, Marcus Clarke and Kendall. The drop-scene had more local heroes – members of the local regiment to the Sudan Wars and the drill instructor of the Glen Innes Volunteers – although the rest of the scenery was more conventional European landscapes and interiors. He also painted scenery for the Scone School of Arts and for a local Masonic Hall (date and location unknown). Indeed, he seems to have catered for theatrical productions throughout the district. He spent two months on scenery for a new Oxford Music Hall in a neighbouring town, choosing a series of Swiss landscape and genre scenes as his subjects along with a group representing 'the artist’s ideal – an English and German officer arm-in-arm’.
Wagner died on 1 August 1910, said to be aged ninety-two, and was interred in the Church of England Cemetery at Waverley, Sydney. Described as a genial artist, 'the quintessence of politeness [who] wears the orthodox cap, and smokes the equally orthodox long-stem pipe’, his son remarked that he was the epitome of Kendall’s painter-poet, and an impractical businessman.
Writers:
Lennon, Jane
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1818
- Summary
- Painter, scene-painter and professional photographer of German origin. Always more interested in painting than photography, Wagner produced watercolours, pastels and oil paintings as well as painting over enlarged photographs. His speciality was posthumous portraits.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1-Aug-10
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude50.67108245 Longitude-1.33280428 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1910-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Isle of Wight, UK
- Biography
- painter, photographer and public servant, fourth son of Dr William Elyard and Sarah, née Gilbert, was born on the Isle of Wight on 9 May 1817. The family arrived at Sydney on 18 December 1821 aboard the convict ship John Bull , on which William Elyard was surgeon-superintendent. Samuel was sent to Mr Gilchrist’s school in about 1826 where he was taught drawing by Edmund Edgar . He then attended John Dunmore Lang’s Australian College and studied miniature and oil painting under J.B. East , becoming sufficiently competent to receive commissions and to hold his own drawing classes at the college when aged nineteen. He became acquainted with Conrad Martens , painted his portrait and purchased a number of his landscapes. Elyard took more lessons from William Nicholas at about this time, then attempted to earn his living as a portrait painter in watercolour, pencil and chalk. His sitters early in 1837 included Mr Wrightman, Mr H. Morgan, Mrs Carmichael (the headmaster’s wife), Mr Gurner 'in his gown and wig’, Miss Kirk and Mrs Radford (later Mrs A.B. Spark). He was not, however, very successful, and on 15 April he became a clerk in the Colonial Secretary’s Office on 5s a day. 'There is not so much anxiety about this kind of life as there is in the Profession of Painting alone – consequently more of happiness’, he wrote: 'It is however an everyday sort of life’. He continued to execute commissions in his spare time and for a while continued teaching at the college.
Presumably influenced by Martens, Elyard subsequently took up landscape painting and devoted much of his leisure time to it, making a great number of sketches in and around Sydney. In the early 1840s he was taught by John Skinner Prout , probably the most significant influence on his pupil’s future artistic career. Prout’s watercolour Miller’s Point, Sydney 1841 (with gasworks stack in the distance) auctioned by Christie’s in Sydney on 14-15 August 1994, lot 32, was once owned by Elyard. Like Prout, Elyard favoured picturesque buildings, street scenes and landscapes. His paintings were shown with the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in 1847 and at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts in 1857. Two of his sketches of Botany Bay were engraved and reproduced in the Illustrated London News of December 1865. At the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition he showed five watercolours as an amateur artist.
In addition to painting, Elyard’s life in Sydney was not uneventful. On 10 April 1849 he went through a form of marriage with Angelina Mary Hughes Hallett, née Scott, an alleged prostitute later gaoled for robbery and child-stealing. Elyard quickly repudiated the marriage and printed posters and pamphlets explaining his insanity at the time due to her systematic and malicious administration of drugs. However, the insanity did not simply disappear when they separated, for within a few years he was claiming another strange marital relationship. He was apparently convinced of his being 'Samuel Rex, King of Australia’, reigning with Phebe Hilly, 'Empress of Australia’. Their partnership was also dissolved, probably by 1860. Elyard cut a controversial figure in local ecclesiastical circles. For a number of years he believed he was, among other biblical characters, the prophet Elijah sent by God to herald the second coming of Christ. The Church of England refused him permission to preach, but he was more seriously entertained by Herman Hoelzel of the Sydney Synagogue, who signed a petition supporting Elyard’s outlandish claims. When the Synagogue Board discovered this, Hoelzel was forced to resign.
On 18 August 1868, at the age of fifty-one, Elyard retired from his position as second-class clerk in the public service on the grounds of ill-health and was given a pension. Sands Sydney Directory for 1867 lists him as living in Cleveland Street, Surry Hills, but by March 1869 he was living permanently on the south coast at Nowra and occasionally returning to Sydney, usually for brief visits to members of his family. He became less eccentric and settled down to a relatively quiet life of painting. Several of his watercolours and oil paintings, mainly of scenery around Nowra, were exhibited with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and 1873. Later he participated in local shows and exhibitions, being awarded a silver medal by the Shoalhaven Agricultural and Horticultural Association in 1890 for his continuing artistic activity.
He also advertised and exhibited as a photographer from the 1890s, using many skills and conventions derived from his experience as a painter. He was well acquainted with photography, having purchased a daguerreotype camera from Freeman Brothers as early as 1856, and he sometimes combined his media with interesting results. For example, his Cabbage Tree Creek is a photograph of a scene composed of several overpainted photographs, a collage of images which slightly modifies the actual landscape. Not all the photographs he overpainted, however, were his own. Some were undoubtedly purchased from Sydney photographers such as Edwin Dalton and Albert Lomer , or from the Sydney booksellers who sold their work. In 1877 he 'bought photographs of coast scenes at Clarke’s’. In 1892, with the assistance of the photographer M.D. Hussey, Elyard published Scenery of Shoalhaven in Sydney, a book containing photographic facsimiles of his watercolours.
Elyard’s move to Nowra isolated him from developments within the larger art world. His contact with other artists was mainly restricted to Louis Frank , who was in the Shoalhaven district during the 1880s, and to amateur painters such as Mr Marrack and William Lovegrove. His artistic influence was negligible. He gave lessons to only a few children, including his nephew, Walter Raleigh Elyard. Such an isolated, provincial life, however artistically detrimental, was undoubtedly physically beneficial. Samuel Elyard died at Nowra on 23 October 1910, aged ninety-three. A photograph of him in extreme old age (Mitchell Library) – looking like an Old Testament prophet – was possibly taken in Albert Lomer’s Sydney studio.
Writers:
Watkins, Jonathan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 9 May 1817
- Summary
- Influenced by his teacher John Skinner Prout and by Conrad Martens, Elyard favoured picturesque buildings, street scenes and landscapes. He was a colourful figure who at various times claimed to be the biblical Elijah and the King of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Oct-10
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter and sketcher, was born in Sydney, elder daughter of the painter Conrad Martens and Jane, née Carter. Taught by her father, her work is a pallid reflection of his. Few of the drawings in the three albums attributed to her (DL) are signed or dated, but most appear to be youthful works or undeveloped sketches. Several can be attributed on stylistic grounds either partially or completely to her father and some are exact copies of his originals.
She exhibited sporadically with the NSW Academy of Art in the 1870s ( Bowenfels , for sale at 4 guineas, was shown in 1877) and with the Art Society of NSW in the 1880s ( View at the North Shore in 1883) and enjoyed mildly favourable reviews. She showed two watercolours, Sawpit Gully, near Rydal and View on the Parramatta River at the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879. Mostly she painted Sydney seascapes or landscapes in watercolour, occasionally in oils, but she also did plant studies, sketches of the family home, Rockleigh Grange at St Leonards, and other Sydney houses, views in the Bathurst and Lithgow areas and copies of Conrad Martens’s Beagle drawings. She also made copies of works by other artists, presenting her oil copy of a head of a girl after Greuze to the National Gallery of New South Wales (now AGNSW) in 1904. Active between 1851 and about 1890, she died on 9 July 1909 at Rockleigh Grange.
Writers:
Jones, Shar
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1838
- Summary
- Sydney-born female artist who used watercolour, pencil and ink to depict a variety of subjects in her work from landscapes, houses, plant studies and even copies of her father's drawings.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 9-Jul-09
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, professional photographer, illustrator and cartoonist, was born in London, one of the several artist children of the painter William Walter Scott and Sarah, née Myers, of Sussex Cottage, Park Village East.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Note: in correspondence with Joan Kerr
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1835
- Summary
- An incredibly diverse artist who demonstrated skills in a wide array of materials and styles. After arriving in Victoria from New Zealand, Scott flirted with life on the Victorian goldfields, but finding it less glamorous than he hoped, he turned to artistic photography. He contributed many drawings to the local papers and was also successful as an artist in the mediums of oil, watercolour and pastel.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-May-09
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, scene-painter, professional photographer, actor and entrepreneur, was born in London on 24 December 1833, son of William A. Wilson, a painter of landscapes and architectural subjects and a scene-painter. His grandfather, John H. (Jock) Wilson, was a Scottish marine and landscape painter who also worked as a scene-painter, while his uncle John Wilson was a landscape and marine painter. At the age of twelve Wilson accompanied his father to Edinburgh and painted his first scene, for a production of Macbeth . On their return to London he assisted his father at the Drury Lane Theatre. He then worked for various provincial pleasure-gardens, painting 'such al fresco subjects as Napoleon crossing the Alps, Delhi, the Storming of Algiers, and other colossal panoramic views’. He exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists (of which his grandfather was a founding member) between 1849 and 1854, showing mainly marine works. Although said to have exhibited at the Royal Academy from the age of sixteen, only one work, Calais Pier , is listed under his name by Graves and that in 1853.
Wilson left London in November 1854, arriving at Melbourne on 6 March 1855 in the Ivanhoe . It is possible that his decision to migrate was influenced by George Coppin, who had visited London from Australia in 1854, for soon after his arrival he was engaged at Coppin’s Queen’s Theatre, then the only such venue in Melbourne. He was a founding member of the Melbourne Garrick Club, formed in the year of his arrival. On tour with the company soon afterwards, he was injured by the point of a bayonet at Geelong and blinded in one eye for three months. When he applied to paint the act-drop for the new Theatre Royal he found that his eyes were not strong enough to undertake the job so he worked for several months as assistant to William Pitt at Coppin’s new Olympic Theatre.
On hearing of the planned Cremorne Gardens at Richmond, outside Melbourne, Wilson recollected many years later: 'I interviewed the manager, proposed a large picture, signed a contract, made a model to scale, superintended the building, painted the whole of it (nearly 400 feet long by 50 feet high [122 × 15 m]) in less than four weeks and the Storming of Sebastopol was on view with a pyrotechnic display at the opening of the gardens … on the evening of December 24th, 1855 (my twenty-second birthday)’. At the end of the Cremorne season he constructed a 16-foot (4.87 m) long model of Sebastopol which he exhibited with his panorama at the Salle de Valentino; this later toured the country. After Coppin took over the Cremorne Gardens Wilson painted a new subject annually in collaboration with Melbourne’s other leading scene-painters, including Pitt, Hennings , Tannett , Arragoni and Alexander Habbe . He also painted scenery for the Royal Pantheon Theatre, which Coppin had erected in the gardens, and for Coppin’s other theatres, the Olympic and the Royal. In 1859 Wilson performed in the comedy Extremes at the Olympic and a contemporary reviewer described him as 'a very deserving member of the corps dramatique’.
Wilson moved to Sydney in 1861 on being engaged by the Lyceum Theatre. His first major scenery was for Azael, the Prodigal Son , a play for which he had helped provide the scenery at Drury Lane under his father’s supervision. In June 1862, when the Lyceum re-opened after redecoration, Wilson had painted the new act-drop curtain with a view of the ruins at Philae, Egypt: 'The painting is exhibited as in the oval centre of an elaborately finished gilt frame … On the panels of the dress boxes are eight medallions, representing views taken from different points in the harbour of Port Jackson, and other fancy paintings’. The following year Wilson and Alexander Habbe formed a partnership at the rebuilt Prince of Wales 'to stock the new theatre with scenery etc. ... the act drop (as were most of the scenes) was painted by both, under the style, by agreement, of Messrs Wilson and Habbe’.
Wilson and Habbe’s transparency designs were used as part of the local celebrations for the marriage of the Prince of Wales in June 1863. They painted that on the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts. Wilson sustained extensive injuries at the Prince of Wales in July when he fell while painting a scene 25 feet above the stage but was evidently back at work by December; the 'splendid transformation and last scene, more magnificent than any other ever given in this country’ in the Christmas pantomime was acknowledged as his work.
Wilson also painted backcloths for photographic studios. In January 1866 he advertised photographic backgrounds for sale 'cheap’ at the Prince of Wales Theatre; in February he was advertising cartes-de-visite backgrounds. Later that year he opened his own photographic studio, W.J. Wilson & Co. of 267 Pitt Street. In January 1867 the firm was offering a small self-acting panorama of thirty-six views painted by Wilson and throughout the year he was also chief scene-painter at both the Victoria and Prince of Wales theatres. The following June he left Sydney to take up a six-month engagement at Hokitika, New Zealand. When his contract was renewed, his wife and two children joined him from Sydney.
The family returned to Sydney after twelve months and by November 1869 Wilson had taken on an entrepreneurial role and re-opened the old Lyceum as the Adelphi; Alexander Habbe was one of his partners. In August 1870 they re-opened the Victoria, giving it a new act-drop with a central scene depicting Circular Quay. Wilson worked as a scene-painter at the new Theatre Royal from 1876, painting the scenery for Mrs Scott-Siddons’s season in 1878. The Sydney Morning Herald reported of her Midsummer Night’s Dream , 'No finer scenery has ever been produced upon any Colonial stage within our recollection’. His realistic ice effects in Uncle Tom’s Cabin led the audience to demand the appearance of the artist.
During the 1880s Wilson leased back the Opera House in Sydney and the Bijou in Melbourne. In December 1890 he opened the Garrick Theatre in Castlereagh Street, Sydney. Although he had retired from theatrical management by 1903 he continued to prepare scenery for private theatricals, country town halls, schools of arts and the like. In April 1903, when interviewed by Old Times , Wilson recalled that in the early 1860s Sir John Young had commissioned him to paint scenery for private theatricals at Government House. He spoke of the difficulties of scenic artists in the days before electricity: 'In many cases, indeed, we had no gas, and had to be content with oil lamps. Flake white was then almost unknown in a theatre – we used whiting. Green lakes, carnation paste, and other such bright and expensive colours were out of the question. At Christmas time we might venture on half a pound of crimson lake, but it was a luxury. Stock scenes were often painted on backs in order to keep them as long as possible, a piece sometimes being put up at a day’s notice. I fancy few of the present day artists would care to paint an horizon over a number of battens and braces’.
Also an easel painter, Wilson won third prize for four seascapes at the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition. However, the seven oil paintings he submitted to the Art Society of New South Wales in 1894 were not hung, leading him to complain to the Sydney Morning Herald that he had 'never before had a picture rejected’. From 1892 Wilson held his own exhibitions of small landscape paintings at Roseville, his Dowling Street residence, the last in 1908. Like his scene-paintings, the subjects were both European and colonial: Australian coastal scenes, rural English landscapes and views in Venice and on the Thames. The Mitchell Library holds his oil Entrance to Sydney Harbour , painted on a cigar-box lid in 1892. A large collection of Wilson’s stage designs, watercolours, working drawings and notes, including watercolour proscenium cut-outs designed to be assembled into miniature stage sets, was offered by Sotheby’s at Sydney in November 1986. Included were studies for scenic backdrops of the Jenolan Caves which Wilson executed for the New South Wales government’s display in the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition at Dunedin in December 1889.
The last survivor of the Australian scenic artists of the 1850s (as Table Talk pointed out in 1901), Wilson died on 20 June 1909. His eldest son, Willie, who was to have pursued the same career, had died in 1893, aged thirty; his two surviving sons, Frank Hawthorne and Carden Wilson, were comic actors.
Writers:
Lennon, Jane
dougbutler
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 24 December 1833
- Summary
- Scene painter and stage designer for various London and Sydney based theatre companies. Wilson also painted Australian coastal scenes, rural English landscapes and views in Venice and on the Thames.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Jun-09
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude51 Longitude9 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Germany
- Biography
- painter, was born and educated in Germany. He arrived at Melbourne on 17 December 1876 on board the Kent . Soon afterwards he was commissioned to paint 'The Apparition of the Virgin at Lourdes’ for St Ignatius, Richmond. In 1877 he was admitted as a member of the Victorian Academy of Arts, where he exhibited three paintings in 1878-79. In 1880 he was appointed first painting master at the Adelaide School of Design (later the South Australia School of Art). He became first curator of the National Gallery of South Australia in 1882. His oil on canvas In the Garden was offered for auction at Sotheby’s 'Fine Australian and European Paintings’, Melbourne, 28-29 April 1998, lot 209.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1833
- Summary
- A painter, who was born and educated in Germany. Not long after arriving to Australian shores he become curator of the National Gallery of South Australia in 1882
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1909
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- professional photographer, saddler and pharmacist, was born and educated in Sydney. In 1856-61 he worked as a professional photographer at Windsor, New South Wales, next door to the Post Office. He is listed at Richmond, Wilberforce, Castlereagh, St Mary’s, Penrith and smaller towns in 1859, the year he advertised that he would take portraits (guaranteed not to fade) and views 'anywhere in the district’. In 1861 he was offering to take photographs of animals as well as people from 5s upwards. Millington also sold saddlery at his Windsor shop, and this may have taken over as his major business for a few years. No photographic activities seem to have been advertised in 1862-64, despite later advertisements that imply continuous occupation of the Windsor premises as a photographic studio.
In partnership with D.F. Metcalfe , Millington became a travelling photographer over vaster territory in 1865. As agents of Thomas Glaister 's Sydney studio, they made a lengthy photographic tour down to Queanbeyan and across to the south coast of New South Wales; a carte-de-visite of James B. Thompson was taken then (1865, Mitchell Library). On 4 August 1866 Millington announced in the Sydney Morning Herald that he had returned from the southern districts and would again be operating his Windsor gallery, but only for thirty days. He was still there taking portraits until 22 October, then he and Metcalfe announced that 'the celebrated Gallery’ would close on Saturday, 27 October. As Millington himself noted, ten years was a proud record for a modest photographic studio in rural Australia (even with an occasional hiatus).
Millington and Metcalfe then left on a northern tour, but neither proved suited to a further long itinerant existence. In 1868, somewhere around Armidale, they separated. Metcalfe went on to Brisbane while Millington remained in the New England district. He settled at Inverell with his family in 1871 (he and his wife had seven children) and opened a shop which served both as a photographic studio and pharmacy. By 1875 the Inverell photographers were R.S. Millington & Son. For a short time (1886-87) R.S. Millington was in partnership with E.L. Sands as a photographer, but the chemist shop became his major business. Renowned in the district for his horsemanship, he was said to be able to ride 10 miles in thirty-three minutes, 15 miles in fifty minutes, 20 miles in eighty minutes and 40 miles within three and a half hours when delivering medicines in cases of life or death. His hobby was botany and his plant collection was well known. Millington was still running his pharmacy at the corner of Byron and Lawrence streets in 1904, Inverell’s oldest businessman.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1833
- Summary
- Professional photographer, saddler and pharmacist, he owned a photographic studios at Windsor, NSW, and later Inverell, NSW and worked as a travelling photographer throughout regional NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1909
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK, England, UK?
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, lithographer, writer and traveller, is said to have been born in England and studied art in Paris, although little is known of his origins. An indefatigable traveller, Roper’s first recorded voyage was made in 1847 when, aged 15, he went to Canada with his father. He claimed Canada had been his home 'nearly ever since’ in a book published by his 'Graphotyping Company’ and presented to the Deptford Emigration Society on 8 February 1870, What Emigration Really Is, By a Resident in Canada and Australia with Illustrations by the Author (London 1870). However, he certainly visited Australia in c.1857, was in Victoria in 1866-1868 and returned in 1870-1873 (and possibly again in the late 1880s if he was also C. Roper – which is most likely, due perhaps to an initial misreading of his signature being continued in subsequent engraving work [Note: this has been questioned]). Edward Roper did 'Graphotype’ cartoons in Graphic News of Australasia circa 1873.
Edward Roper was in Victoria by 1857. A surviving watercolour over pencil drawing titled Water Fowling , signed 'E. ROPER Septr. 26(?) 1857’, was apparently made there as was an ink sketch on linen, The Quartz Reef Pleasant Creek [Stawell] from the Hill back of Messrs. Blunder Wainwright and Cos. Camp , clearly initialled 'E.R.’ and dated 1857. Four undated watercolours of Victorian scenes accompanied by a trial proof of a print taken from one, Wilson’s Promontory Most Southerly Pt. of Australia , were presumably other souvenirs of this visit. Although all are far cruder than the oil paintings for which Edward Roper is known, it seems that all his oils were not worked up from earlier sketches until the 1880s, even though several, including a large-scale view of the gold-diggings at Ararat (Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW), incorporate an 1850s date below the signature and location.
Edward Roper took 'A Voyage round the World in the Ship “Newcastle” 1870-1871’, commemorated in an album of this title containing photographs of Australian scenes (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW). When he reached London, he published his lecture with his 'Graphotyping Company’, then returned to Melbourne. In 1871-1872 Edward Roper established the Melbourne Graphotype Engraving Company, claiming that his process cut the time of plate-making in comparison with wood-engraving from a week to two hours. Obviously, he was then producing prints as well as sketches, but his illustrations, together with various articles he is said to have written about Victoria and New Zealand, are still, as they were in 1927, 'buried in the periodical magazines of the time’.
His private residence was 138 Church Street, Richmond, from which address Mrs Edward Roper sent 'Ornamental Wood, formed of Cones, Seeds and of Australian Trees and Plants’ to the 1872 Victorian Intercolonial and the following London International exhibitions, while Roper himself showed a collection of materials exemplifying 'the Art of Graphotype Engraving’ from his business address, 19 Little Collins Street West. After the business failed, Roper, his wife and daughter left the colony in 1873. Evidence of any subsequent visit to Australia is slight. An annotation attached to an 1886 catalogue entry of a New Zealand view implies that he was here in 1883, and in 1927 descendants claimed that Edward Roper had 'stayed in the colony [of Victoria] for a long time’, then lived in New Zealand 'for nearly three years’ immediately afterwards (which chiefly suggests he was C. Roper).
Instead of making another lengthy visit in the 1880s, however, it is more likely that paintings, drawings and engravings made on earlier trips to Australia, such as a kangaroo-hunting scene in the Grampians (Victoria), were the sources of the Australian subjects among the 50 oil and watercolour paintings he exhibited at the Burlington Gallery, Old Bond Street, London, in 1886. It is these London works, together with others made afterwards, which comprise the bulk of his known work. A large family collection of Roper’s Victorian and New Zealand oil and watercolour paintings sold from London’s Museum Book Store in 1927, all with attributed dates of c.1888-1890 though undoubtedly based on earlier sketches, and the vast majority were of the same Australian, New Zealand, South Sea Island and Canadian subjects shown in the 1886 London group exhibition. Roper was by far the largest single Australasian contribution and seems to have produced replicas for years afterwards.
Some of the works in Roper’s posthumous sale were certainly copies (a favourite activity causing headaches in dating when several identical pictures exist). An oil entitled Chasing an Emu, Plains near Ararat, Victoria , for instance, was said to be inscribed by the artist verso as representing a scene in Victoria about 1855 – but not painted then – and other undated watercolours of the same subject survive (Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW; private collections). Also shown in London in 1886 was A Run after Emu, on the Plains near the Wimmera and Wallaby Point, the Grampians, Victoria ('showing one way of getting a shot at Emu, the hunter envelopes himself in a red blanket in the haunt of the Birds, they, from curiosity, approach near enough for a shot…’). Cutting down a Giant Australian Gum Tree, State Forest, Dandenong Range (dated c.1888 in 1927, oil, 46 × 32 inches – 107 × 81 cm) had a description said to have been taken from the catalogue 'when the painting was exhibited’ stating: 'This tree was drawn in the Dandenong Ranges, not far from Melbourne… Baron von Mueller [q.v.], the Government Botanist, states that they are met with 480 feet high, and are believed often to attain the altitude of 500 feet … the method adopted for felling a big one is shown’. Five men are starting to cut this one down and there is a felled tree, equally large, lying beside it. This is also the subject of one of a large collection of oil sketches of Australian bush and gold-digging scenes painted by Roper as Christmas cards, which undoubtedly date from the 1870s or 1880s (National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT). Cutting down and Cutting up the Australian Giants, Dandenong Ranges, Victoria was the title given to an oil in the 1886 catalogue with a similar caption except that Baron von Mueller is not mentioned.
Other subjects exhibited in 1886 and sold in 1927 include Caffraes Swamp, Now Called Lake Lonsdale, near Stawell, Victoria – another watercolour annotated as representing an 1855 scene (private collection, WA?) – A Kangaroo Chase in Gippsland, Victoria and its companion An Emu Hunt (watercolours, Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW), two Fern Tree Gully paintings (a watercolour done in Gippsland and an oil of the Dandenongs) and several other kangaroo-hunt pictures and bush scenes set among the splitters’ huts. A Kangaroo Hunt under Mount Zero, the Grampians, Victoria (1880, oil on canvas) is probably the work now in the National Library although again there are replicas in private collections. Bringing down the Wool from a Murray Station (oil, dated c.1888 when sold in 1927) was described as showing two ox-drawn waggons passing two shepherds’ huts with a flagstaff flying a red shirt in front of them, a description applicable to two known oil paintings (National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT & ICI House, Melbourne, Vic).
The Mitchell Library holds some black and white works by Roper but the vast majority of his comic illustrations were watercolours. Five watercolours painted in the late 1880s (private collection), including a kangaroo and an emu hunt, are inscribed verso, 'Copyright reserved, Edward Roper’, suggesting that they were intended for publication as a set. One gives Roper’s address as Sutton Valence, Staplehurst (UK). Roper’s New Zealand paintings exhibited in 1886 and sold in 1927 included scenes at Dunedin, Nelson, Mount Cook and Dusky Sound as well as North Island bush views. The National Library holds an oil sketch of a pioneer farmer’s home in northern New Zealand which precisely fits the description of one stated in 1927 to be an illustration of a scene in Delisle Hay’s Brighter Britain (vol.1, ch. 5) and is inscribed thus verso.
In 1883, 1887 and again in 1890 Roper was in Canada, afterwards publishing an illustrated book, By Track and Trail through Canada (London 1891). He followed it with three more travel books, none held by Australian libraries. By then he had (more or less) settled in England where he produced bookplates, ink sketches and comical illustrations as well as paintings. In 1889 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, London, and was described in their records as an artist living at The Limes, Sutton Valence, Staplehurst, Kent. He remained a member until 1902, living at Ontario, The Newlands, Bexhill-on-Sea in 1898, then at Lincoln Lodge, Grange Road, Lewes. He died in 1909.
Writers:
Jones, SharKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1832
- Summary
- Edward Roper, painter, illustrator, publisher, lithographer, writer and traveller, was inspired by Australian, New Zealand, South Sea Island and Canadian subjects as shown in the 1886 London group exhibition. Roper was by far the largest single Australasian art contributor and seems to have produced replicas for many years.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1909
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-32.187039 Longitude150.86386 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dart Brook, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Sarah Cross Little née Bingle (1832-1909), botanical artist, craftworker, and family historian, was the youngest daughter of John Bingle (1796-1882), a merchant and landholder from Gillingham, Kent, England, and Mary Cross of London. Her father arrived at Port Jackson as a settler on 16 December 1821 and established the first regular trading service between Sydney and Newcastle. He acquired 1800 acres of land at Dart Brook, in the Upper Hunter district, on which he settled and named Puen Buen. It was presumably at this property where Sarah Cross was born in 1832. In 1837 she returned with her family to England to live, but they returned to Australia in 1842 and again settled at Puen Buen. Her father played a significant role in the development of the Scone district, serving on the bench of magistrates and subscribing generously to church and hospital funds. Due to several poor seasons, John Bingle was forced to sell Puen Buen and became a business agent in Newcastle where he relocated with his family. Sarah Cross Bingle was married to William Little (1832-1882) of Invermien, Scone, NSW at Christ Church, Newcastle by the Reverend Charles Pleydell Wilton, on the 3rd February, 1858. She and William lived at his father’s property, Belmont, North Richmond, NSW, for two years after their marriage, before moving to Invermien, Scone, when William’s father, Francis Little passed away. They remained at Invermien for several years until a period of drought forced her husband to sell the property, much as her father had done with Puen Buen years before. As noted by Sarah Little in her diary (Mitchell Library), “The continuous dry seasons and losses therefrom, and the pressure of the Bank of New South Wales necessitated the selling of 'Invermien’, which was a great trial to my dear husband, and his health never was the same afterwards and began to decline.” William Little died in 1882, the same year that her father passed away. Sarah and William Little had four sons and four daughters, of which four survived, Francis Archibald, William Maxwell, Mary Emma and Jessie Carlyle. Among Sarah Cross Little’s artistic output, the Bingle Family scrap album (ML) is of particular note for its collages of seaweed, leaves, and emu feathers collected and arranged by Little in 1857, the year before she married William. A collage in the shape of a lyre displays manipulated seaweeds of various colours, in addition to miniscule animal shells and calcified coralline red algae which accent the lyre’s base and frame. Assembled in the form of a bouquet, Little’s emu feather arrangement is composed of gathered plumes that are secured throughout the composition by adhesive and gold thread. The inscription below the arrangement reads, “Emu Feathers from an Emu Captured on the Downs in front of 'Invermien’ house by 'Smuggler’ William Little’s Kangaroo Dog, Arranged by Sarah C. Bingle 1857.” In addition to representing an appropriation of native flora and fauna, Little’s seaweed and feather compositions display a fusion of natural history, arts and crafts typical of the second half of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, her work belongs to a strong tradition of album-making, a popular pastime of middle-class families throughout this period, the practice of which was facilitated by the commercial production of blank albums made readily available in local shops. Of additional note, are several amateur photographs in the album taken by Joseph Docker (1802-1884), who owned Thornthwaite, the neighboring estate to Puen Buen. An amateur photographer as well as a surgeon and politician, Joseph Docker was well acquainted with the Bingle and Little families, as is evident Sarah Little’s diary, “The Honorable Joseph Docker of 'Thornthwaite’, Scone, was a great friend of W. Little – also my father. The former used to spend three days every week at Puen Buen, drive (sic) down to attend the Courts in Scone.” The collected album photographs are all calotypes, a form with which Docker was one of the earliest in Australia to experiment, and feature his property Thornthwaite between the years 1850 and 1855.
Writers:
Duggins, MollyNote:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 1832
- Summary
- Sarah Cross Little née Bingle (1832-1909) was a botanical artist, craftworker, and family historian active in Dart Brook and Scone, NSW from the 1850s to the 1890s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1909
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- sketcher, lithographer, architect, engineer and clergyman, son of His Excellency Manoel Joachim Soares, Knight Commander of the Order of the Cross of Christ, Portugal, and Camilla Mary Basset, née Lodington, of London, was educated as an engineer in England, Portugal and Paris. He came to New South Wales in the Formosa in 1852 with his brother Gualter, the two having a wildcat scheme to connect Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide by a railway system centred on a new inland city to be called Alberto Town. When the Sydney Railway Company proved disinclined to employ him on the project, Soares briefly became a tutor with a family at Edensor Park, Liverpool then decided to study theology. On 30 June 1855 he was appointed deacon under Rev. Robert Cartwright at Collector.
Soares married Catherine Tom Lane of Orton Park, Bathurst in 1857 and, immediately after being ordained in May, was appointed parish priest at Queanbeyan. He began building Christ Church of England there in 1859 to his own design. His cardboard scale model and his sketch of the building survive in the church; a lithograph after his drawing of the building, published by J. Degotardi (q.v.) in Sydney about 1859, was also put on the stone by Soares (ML, NLA).
Other architectural designs followed. During his twenty years’ incumbency at least fourteen buildings were erected for which Soares, as Diocesan Architect, was directly responsible for the design. They include St Philip’s, Bungendore, St Thomas’s, Molonglo (Carwoola); St Mark’s, Hoskingtown (c.1872), Christ Church Rectory, Queanbeyan, and a new rectory and extensions to the church of St John, Canberra. In true ecumenical spirit he designed St Stephen’s Presbyterian Church and the Protestant Hall (1876-77) at Queanbeyan and (with Marrianne Campbell q.v. ) appears to have been involved in the Gothic Revival extensions to the Campbells’ Duntroon House, Canberra. Most of his designs were in a Gothic Revival style of some competence and occasional eccentricity, e.g. his 'crown of thorns’ ceiling trusses in St John’s, Canberra. He drew other views of his buildings which were published as lithographs.
Appointed canon of St Saviour’s Cathedral, Goulburn, in September 1876, Soares and his family moved there the following year. He remained in the Goulburn area as incumbent of West Goulburn and diocesan registrar until retiring to Bondi, Sydney, in 1897. He died on 27 April 1909, aged seventy-nine.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- Arriving with his brother Gualter in 1852 with a wildcat idea for a railway system which was subsequently turned down by the Sydney Rail Company, Soares decided to channel his youthful energies towards the scriptures. A sound career in theology paved the way for the formally trained engineer to indulge in his artistic side; he was the mastermind behind many of the church buildings in Queanbeyan an
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Apr-09
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude52.333333 Longitude0.083333 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cambridgeshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, designer, illuminator and decorator, was born in Cambridgeshire, England, where he seems to have learnt the craft of marbling and graining. In 1851 he showed examples of this work at the Great Exhibition in London, giving his address as March, Cambridgeshire, his profession as designer. He migrated to Melbourne soon afterwards. There he went into partnership with Henry Davies as a decorator and signwriter. Smith won medals at the 1854 Melbourne and the 1856 Victorian Industrial Society’s exhibitions for examples of his faux marbling and wood graining. In about 1855 he moved to Williamstown and formed a partnership with William Fisher as paperhangers, glaziers and decorators; this was dissolved about 1861. Smith then spent a short time as a clerk in the Victorian Railways, resigning in April 1864. He was town clerk of Williamstown for the next thirty years.
Smith received many commissions for illuminated addresses from the mid 1850s onwards. At the 1861 Victorian Exhibition he was awarded a first-class certificate for his illuminated penmanship. He undertook the illumination of the municipal statistics for both the Footscray and Williamstown borough councils, shown by the commissioners at the 1861 Exhibition (now La Trobe Library). At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition his illuminated writing was awarded a medal. Smith’s pen sketches of buildings drawn in the 1860s were used for advertisements in Melbourne street directories as well as for illustrations in local journals.
George Smith married Anne Marie, daughter of Mary and Captain Thomas Hawke Sutton (a Port Phillip pilot) and step-daughter of Thomas Mason, a well-known Williamstown citizen. She died on 12 February 1874. He died on 30 March 1909 and was buried in the Williamstown Cemetery.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
staffcontributor
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1828
- Summary
- Sketcher, designer, illuminator and decorator George Frederick Smith was awarded a variety of medals for his illuminations, imitation marbling and wood graining. Smith's pen sketches of buildings drawn in the 1860s were used for advertisements in Melbourne street directories.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Mar-09
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude51.6892068 Longitude-0.0009449 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waltham Abbey, Essex, England
- Biography
- Watercolourist, designer and settler, John Carter was born in Waltham Abbey, England where he was a designer of printing and weaving. He emigrated to Australia on the S.S. Great Britain with his wife and family in 1861 and later went to New Zealand for about 7 years where two more children were born before returning to Australia. In 1867 he painted two transparencies to decorate local business premises for the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Melbourne. The first, 12 × 6 feet (3.6 × 1.8 m), for Messrs Greig & Murray, depicted the Victorian coat of arms; the second, 20 × 12 feet (6.1 × 3.7 m), for the Southern Insurance Company, was altogether more elaborate. In it Carter painted the Duke seated beside Neptune in his chariot drawn by sea-horses and followed by mermaids leading the Duke’s ship, the Galatea , across the ocean.
When his watercolour Sketches from Nature, New Zealand were shown at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute in 1869, Carter himself was probably in New Zealand. His name appears in the Dunedin trade directory for the following year. Then he returned to Melbourne, being listed as a drawing teacher of Rathdowne Street, Carlton, in 1872-73. He showed A Panel in Pencil , A Panel with Victorian Birds, for Decoration , A Design for Paper and a watercolour of fruit at the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition in preparation for the 1873 London International Exhibition in 1872, while another Fruit watercolour was shown non-competitively at the preparatory exhibition to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Mr Carter of Victoria showed 'some nice pictures of still life’ with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1877; the Sydney Mail critic thought that Oysters would 'probably deceive a good many casual observers’.
More natural history subjects were included in the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition from 23 Drummond Street, Carlton (Vic.): Fruit , Bird’s Nest , Redbreast’s Retreat and Belladonna Lily . In 1880 four of his watercolours (including New Caledonian Pigeon ) and two oil paintings (both Fruit ) were sent to the Melbourne International Exhibition by the Victorian Academy of Arts of which he apparently remained a stalwart member. Some of his landscape and natural history drawings, both of Australian and New Zealand subjects, are in a family collection. Many others are held privately.
Writers:
Staff Writer
tolmih
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 28 August 1821
- Summary
- John Carter was a Master Designer of Printing and Weaving in Crayford, Kent,England before migrating in 1861 to Victoria Australia. He moved to Dunedin, New Zealand for 7 years before returning to Victoria, Australia.He was a Watercolourist of Still Life, Teacher of Drawing and Designr of Wallpaper until his death in 1909. His Grandson was the noted Australian Portrait Painter and Stained Glass Artist Norman St Clair Carter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Apr-09
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hadley, Barnet, Essex, England, UK, Hadley, Barnet, Essex (Greater London), England, UK
- Biography
- sporting and livestock painter, was born in Hadley near Barnet, Essex, on 26 December 1820. Both his father, Samuel Woodhouse, and his uncle, John Thomas Woodhouse, were painters as was Frederick, although as a young man he spent some time in the Essex Yeomanry Cavalry. He married Mary Bysouth in 1846 and they came to Victoria as assisted migrants in the Parsee , arriving at Melbourne in May 1858 with their four sons. Two other sons were born in Australia. Woodhouse was soon successful as an equine artist; Bell’s Life in Victoria (of which he was one of the founders) details commissions in October and November 1858. He painted and engraved Flying Buck , winner of the first Champion Stakes in 1859.
The pre-eminent sporting artist of his time, Woodhouse became best known for painting every Melbourne Cup winner for more than thirty years, from the first in 1861. During a long, successful and prolific career, he visited New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia and documented much Australian racing and rural history. He worked mainly in oils, usually on canvas but quite often on board. He painted champion racehorses, show-horses, Clydesdales, trotters, hunters, greyhounds, cattle and sheep as well as hunting, coursing and fishing scenes, landscapes and narrative works.
His obituarist in Table Talk claimed that Woodhouse had started the first life classes in Melbourne with the sculptor Charles Summers, for whom he later drew the horses and camels in the bas reliefs on the Burke and Wills monument. He certainly exhibited at the Victorian Fine Arts’ exhibitions held in Summers’s studio in 1860 and 1861, on the latter occasion showing a historical painting, Buckley Discovered by the First Settlers (also known as The First Settlers Discover Buckley and Batman’s First Meeting with Buckley and the Natives , oil on canvas, La Trobe Library). It won the prize offered by the Art Union of Victoria for the best painting on a historical theme and was reproduced as a photolithograph by Batchelder & O’Neill for distribution to art union subscribers in 1861 (copy Dixson Galleries V2 B/3). The painting was shown again at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition together with others including The Start and Portrait of a Bull . In 1866 he won the prize for the best painting of a group of horses in the South Australian Society of Arts’ annual exhibition, Adelaide. In 1869 he was represented in both the Melbourne Public Library and the Geelong Mechanics Institute exhibitions.
A foundation member and councillor of the Victorian Academy of Arts, Woodhouse exhibited with it in 1870, 1872 and 1873; he resigned as a member in 1877. His oil painting The Smithy , for sale at 25 guineas, was included in the category of 'Historical Picture, or Tableau de Genre’ at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition. During the 1870s illustrations after Woodhouse’s paintings were reproduced as both engravings and photographs in horse and cattle sale catalogues and early stud-books. He contributed to illustrated newspapers such as the Australasian Sketcher and the Town and Country Journal and initiated a series of Australian sporting prints, Woodhouse’s Australasian [sometimes Australian] Winners , which continued until 1900, most of the lithographs being drawn by his son Frederick junior and one by another son, Edwin. He also designed racing, steeplechasing, coursing and other sporting trophies (some made by Fischer of Geelong), including the Victoria Gold Cup awarded for the principal race at the first meeting of the Victoria Amateur Turf Club in 1876. He had five paintings in the London Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 1886. With his son Herbert , he wrote, illustrated and published A Record of the Melbourne Cup in 1889; in December 1892 they held a joint exhibition at Scott’s Hotel, Collins Street, Melbourne.
Frederick Woodhouse continued to paint until his death at the age of eighty-nine, sending paintings to the Yarra Sculptors’ Society exhibitions in 1904, 1906 and 1908. He died at Melbourne on 29 December 1909, survived by his second wife and five of the six sons from his first marriage, four of whom were also painters.
Writers:
Laverty, Colin
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 26 December 1820
- Summary
- Woodhouse became best known for painting every Melbourne Cup winner for more than thirty years, from 1861. During a long, successful and prolific career, he documented much Australian racing and rural history.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Dec-09
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude53.9590555 Longitude-1.0815361 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- York, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was one of the seven children of Major Edward Darvall (d.1869) and his first wife Emily Godshall Johnson (d.1840), with whom Edward had eloped in 1805. Major Darvall retired from the army and after 1806 was resident at various locations in Yorkshire; Eliza was born in York on 29 December 1819. In the 1830s the family moved to France and lived in the Château de Capécure at Boulogne, described by the teenage Eliza in indifferent verse. There she acquired a good knowledge of French, and since her elder sister Emily Mary ( Barton ) was tutored in Greek and Latin, probably some classical education also.
In 1839 the Darvall family migrated to New South Wales. Eliza’s brother Sir John Darvall and his wife arrived in August 1839; Eliza, her parents, two other brothers and two sisters reached Sydney in the Alfred early in January 1840. Eighteen days earlier, on 20 December 1839, Henry Herman Kater, a friend of the family, arrived in his chartered ship the Euphrates , bringing substantial capital, stallions, mares and cattle, having previously flirted with Sandhurst and the medical school at Cambridge. Six months later, on 30 July 1840, Eliza Darvall and H.H. Kater were married. Eliza’s mother died the following year; her father settled at Ryedale and lived on until 1869
Henry and Eliza initially lived at the fine estate of Bungarribee, between Parramatta and Penrith, but in 1842 Henry was 'all but ruined’, sold his stock and moved to Caleula beyond Orange, where in 1843 he built a steam flour-mill. By 1846 he had diversified into cloth-making. In 1856, the year the cloth-mill closed, Eliza Kater completed a fine oil painting of the homestead and mill building beside Caleula Creek (p.c.). By this time the Katers had had six children, three still living: Henry Edward, Edward Harvey and Emily Mary. There were three subsequent children: Laura Georgina, Mary Frances (who also painted) and Alice Eliza. In addition to assisting in the running of the property and the woollen-mill, where she tailored at least one suit for her husband, Eliza Kater seems to have given the children their initial education. She took a wide and intelligent interest in literature, in French and English, in Darwinism and in botany. Her only other painting known to survive is a watercolour floral decoration probably painted in 1864 (National Library of Australia).
Her husband died in 1881, but Eliza lived on until 1909. Like her father and her two married sisters, Mrs Robert Barton of Boree Nyrang and Mrs Arthur Templer of Narrambla (both properties near Orange), she died in extreme old age.
Writers:
Jack, R. Ian
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 December 1819
- Summary
- Eliza Kater emigrated to Australia with her family in 1840 at the age of 20. She married later that year and with her husband Henry Kater ran a property and cloth mill at Caleula, NSW. Two of her paintings are known to have survived.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1909
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude51.3729007 Longitude0.550312058 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Chatham, Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- amateur photographer and customs officer, was born on 16 May 1819 in Chatham, Kent, son of John Henry Sandrock and Charlotte n ée Spanton. Between 1834 and 1837 he worked in Barbados as assistant to Francis Mallalieu supervising the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. Afterwards Sandrock returned to England and worked as a clerk for a variety of commercial businesses until he was appointed relieving officer at Greenwich in 1843. Two years later, he married Sarah Maria Pain; they had five daughters. Sandrock resigned his Greenwich appointment in 1853 and sailed with his family for New South Wales on board the Princess Sophia . He had a number of clerical jobs in Sydney until 1863, then was posted to the Customs House, Rockhampton, Queensland. As an officer of the Church of England Aide Society, Sandrock helped raise funds for the erection of a new Anglican church at Rockhampton. Six years later he moved to Sweers Island, then was transferred to Bowen as sub-collector of customs (1873-85). In 1895 he left Bowen for Rockhampton. He died there on 7 June 1909.
Sandrock was a keen photographer, taking view photographs in the West Indies, Palmerston (Darwin), Bowen, Cardwell and Rockhampton. The Darwin photographs, taken between 1867 and 1873, show the area where the cable from Java and the overland telegraph line from Adelaide were to be joined. A photograph of Sandrock and his family standing under the Investigator tree, taken by Captain Sweet , is in a family collection.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 May 1819
- Summary
- Sandrock was a keen photographer, taking view photographs in the West Indies, Palmerston (Darwin), Bowen, Cardwell and Rockhampton. He was a customs officer, held a number of clerical jobs and had a large family.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Jun-09
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1909-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- portrait painter and poet, was born in England and received a classical education in England and France, learning both Greek and Latin from a tutor. She came to New South Wales in 1839 with her parents Major Edward Darvall and his first wife, Emily Godshall, née Johnson, two of her three brothers, sister Eliza ( Kater ) and another sister. The following year she married Robert Johnstone Barton in a dual ceremony, Eliza marrying Herman Henry Kater. Emily and Robert spent the next 30 years on their 66,000-acre property, Boree Nyrang, near Molong, with their children. After her husband died in 1863, she sold Boree Nyrang and moved to 'Rockend’ at Gladesville, Sydney.
Emily Barton is best known as a poet. She published poems in the Illustrated Sydney News from 1853, including several prize-winning poems during the 1880s. Her earliest known poem, 'Song of Christmas to the Australian Emigrant’, dated 1839, was published posthumously (Sydney 1910). The anonymous preface to this collection of 89 works stated: 'French and Italian were as familiar to her as her mother tongue; she was a fair Latin scholar and knew enough Greek and German to teach the rudiments [to her sons]’. She was also said to be an accomplished portrait painter, although no works in any public collections are known. In 1870, as an amateur, Mrs Barton exhibited a watercolour Half Figure at the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition. She died on 24 August 1909, aged 91.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1817
- Summary
- Emigrating to Australia in 1839 with her parents, Emily Mary Barton married soon after and lived in rural New South Wales during which time she published poetry. She was said to be an accomplished portrait painter, although no works survive.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24-Aug-09
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-36.8590029 Longitude143.7337931 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunolly, Central Goldfields Shire, VIC, Australia
- Biography
- Elizabeth Ison Baker was born in Goldsborough, Victoria, 28th May 1864, the youngest daughter of Euphemia and Captain Henry Evans Baker, a master mariner turned successful mining investor, inventor and self-taught astronomer. Captain Baker was first superintendent of Ballarat Municipal Observatory from 1886-1890 which he helped found and equip with principal funder businessman James Oddie (1824 – 1911).Captain Baker constructed a 26” Great Equatorial Telescope still held by the Ballarat Observatory.
Captain Baker seems to have encourage technical expertise in his children, his eldest Euphemia born 1853 (nb not the niece Euphemia Eleanor aka Effie Baker of Baháʼí faith (q.v.) was the first female to matriculate in Victoria, became a teacher and assisted in the Observatory at night. Euphemia took on the management of the Observatory on Captain Baker’s death in 1890. Elizabeth must have assisted Euphemia to be skilled enough to take over in turn from her elder sister at some point. By the early 1890s Elizabeth now in her thirties, had developed her own skills as an amateur photographer and become expert at astronomical and lunar photography. She was very active in photographic competitions from 1893 on.
'Miss E.I.Baker’ was winning prizes in the Ballarat Amateur Photographic Association competitions in 1894 and had a picture published in the Melbourne Sun 'Amateur Photographers Competition for women’ on 1 November. The _Ballarat Star _of 13 July noted Baker was showing photographs of phases of the moon and the issue of 16 July 1894 reported that she had won the quarter-plate camera prize for the best print from an untouched negative. That year Baker also a gold medal at the 1895 International Photographic Exhibition and first prize at the Sydney Exhibition. By August 1895 Baker was treasurer of the Ballarat Amateur Photographic Society one of the earliest women to hold such positions in flourishing colonial photographic societies. In these years Baker may have had a friendship with Miss Margaret Oddie (q.v.) also active in Ballarat as an amateur and an office bearer in the Ballarat Photographic Society.
In 1896 Elizabeth won an astronomical photography prize in the Inter-colonial Photographic Exhibition and Exhibition of Paintings.She was by then in charge of the Baker Observatory and undertook complex observations for the acting Victorian Government astronomer Pietro Baracchi, earning her a profile, 'Valuable Scientific Work. Miss Ison Baker’s Successful Researches’ in the Ballarat Star 9 July 1896, p.1. She received an award from the Royal Geographical Society for a photograph of the moon made using her late father’s telescope. The range of Baker’s work in the photographic salons included an ambitious two part tableau of a young woman choosing to become a nun which won second prize in the_ Australasian_ newspaper’s third photographic competition published on 28 November November 1896. By 1898 she was on the committee of the Ballarat Amateur Photographic Association.
In 1902 Elizabeth Baker married John Hammerton Jr of Geelong, son of a jeweller, also an amateur photographer and member of the Gordon College Amateur Potographic Association since the late 1890s. The reception for over a hundred guests, was held at the Ballarat Observatory and the Geelong _Advertiser 14 April 1902, page 2, reporting on teh occasion,commented on her role at the Observatory, 'To the large number of visitors who frequented the Observatory she was ever ready to entertain and explain the wonders of the heavens, with the aid of the powerful telescope at her command’. Here astronomical work was recognised in 1903 when a report by John Brittain, 'Science Notes’ in the Ballarat Star_ of 5 December,1903, p.3, 'Commendation to Mrs Hammerton for splendid photographs of the moon in all its phases, for which she received praise and gold medal from the Royal Society’.
Along with her husband Elizabeth Hammerton remained active in photographic societies and experimental in her personal photography until her premature death in 1908 after a six month illness from breast cancer. Mrs Hammerton’s death was noted in the _Australian Photographic Journal_of 20 September 1909 (p.313)and reference made to her recent photographic work with flowers, clouds and colour (autochome at this date) and activity with the Gordon College Amateur Photography Society.
No original prints by this quite remarkable woman have been located but lunar photographs in the Ballarat or or Melbourne Observatory archives may be her work.
Writers:
newtog
Date written:
2022
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 28 May 1864
- Summary
- amateur photographer and astronomical assistant, youngest daughter of Captain Henry Evans Baker, meteorologist of the Ballarat Observatory and aunt of amateur photographer, Euphemia Eleanor (Effie) Baker (1880-1968) q.v. first Australian female Baháʼí
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Sep-08
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 2 February 1850
- Summary
- Charles Allen Brown was the pre-eminent manufacturing jeweller active in Brisbane during the last Quarter of the nineteenth century. An apprentice of Christian Ludwig Qwist, Brown's boutique produced important jewels and testimonials for Queensland's discerning clientele.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1908
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude52.0579324 Longitude1.1528095 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ipswich, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Ipswich, England. He was in Auckland in 1865. Sketchbooks, including Australian scenes dated 1880s are in the Turnbull Library.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1845
- Summary
- England-born sketcher who spent time in New Zealand and Australia. Sketchbooks from the 1880s held in New Zealand's Turnbull Library hold various Australian scenes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1908
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude47.3900474 Longitude0.6889268 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tours, France
- Biography
- caricaturist, engraver, editor and businessman, was born in Tours, France, son of a prosperous merchant; he was baptised Louis Marcellin Martin-Cremière. Educated at a Jesuit seminary, Martin (who reversed the order of his baptismal names in Australia and dropped the second half of his surname) had a good knowledge of the classics and spoke several European languages. Conscripted into the French Army, he found this so uncongenial that his family purchased a substitute (killed in the Franco-Prussian War); Martin became a merchant in New Caledonia. After his firm closed in the mid-1860s Martin came to Brisbane then moved to Rockhampton where he opened the Cigar Divan, a tobacconist shop. Subsequently, he was a commission agent, moneylender, sharebroker and teacher of languages.
Martin’s most notable venture was the founding in 1881 of a satirical weekly journal, The Rockhampton Laughing Jackass . It survived only a year, during which time its occasional lithographer was H.G. Eaton . Martin himself provided the illustrations in the early months when wood engravings were used while the very tardy delivery of a lithographic press was awaited then frequently drew lithographs (less successfully) when the promised Eaton effort did not eventuate. He produced the Jackass virtually single-handed. Its earliest, rather crude cover includes a jackass and a snake in a tree watched by a frog (Martin’s persona). When the lithographic cover finally appeared, it was more elaborately detailed and professionally drawn but lacked the sparkle of Martin’s original effort. Although his later drawings in the Jackass are sometimes rough (and obviously hurried), Martin was a skilled as well as prolific artist. He produced caricatures, cartoons and illustrations for over thirty years, beginning with those in Rockhampton 'Punch’ and 'Mosquito’, magazines he founded as well as illustrated although they apparently existed only as one or two manuscript copies, privately circulated and/or displayed at Martin’s clubby Cigar Divan in East Street. No issue of either is known.
Albums and numerous loose sheets of caricatures by Martin from the 1870s to the early 1890s are held by the University of Central Queensland (donated by the Rockhampton District Historical Society). The sole complete copy of the Jackass , with numerous interleaved original illustrations in watercolour and wash, is in the Rockhampton City Library. His original brush watercolour drawings include a cartoon of a crowd of men swimming and preparing to enter the water titled Rockhampton Baths… Frequented by the Best Society Only – Cost £15.0.0 (the men’s exclusive bathing pool in Murray Lagoon at the Botanic Gardens), Tom the Bellman (a caricature of Tom Bevis , town crier and scene-painter of Rockhampton, dated 1878), St Peter (the Rockhampton gaoler carrying the keys of the gaol), Le Quart d’Heure de Rabelais (a mysterious haunted townsman, sheeted ghost and fleeing animals), No Singhalese, No Sugar (a naked fearful Pandora on an opening box observed by an astonished gentleman in tropical dress – a reference to the importation of Pacific and Asian labour for the North Queensland cane-fields) and The Major’s New Recruits: Plenty More at Dan Briss’s (Albrecht Feez, the police commissioner, mounted on a hobby-horse among a collection of soldiers from the local toyshop).
Laying the Foundation Stone for the Girls’ Grammar School, Rockhampton (c.1890) depicts the school’s chief benefactor, the Scotsman John Ferguson, seated in triumph on top of the stone with a squashed, bearded, bespectacled man underneath – evidently the editor of the local newspaper who was opposed to the chosen site. They are being observed by Martin – a frog in academic dress – one of the school’s trustees. The local figures remain full of life even when the allusions are no longer comprehensible and it is easy to see why his good-humoured, witty drawings were so admired. In 1882 W.T. Bennett produced at least two cabinet photographs, each containing about twelve of Martin’s single caricatures of local men (Capricornia Institute).
Drawing books full of original caricatures were produced at least from 1868, the year Martin raffled two books of cartoons showing what everyone got up to during the Queen’s Birthday picnic at Stanwel (unlocated). They were offered at the Presbyterian Bazaar to assist the church’s fund-raising efforts, even though Martin himself was a practising Roman Catholic who sang in the church choir. Three Martin albums donated to the fledgling Rockhampton and District Historical Society were lost in the 1951 fire. Mr T.A. Dunlop, a former Mayor, donated an album of 1878 caricatures by Martin to help replace them – now one of the Society’s most treasured items. Some framed Martin caricatures given to the School of Arts by Myriel Walker’s grandfather, George Silas Curtis, were salvaged from the Council’s dispersal of the collection (under Mayor Rex Pilbeam) in 1955.
Martin offered his talents as singer and sportsman as well as artist to numerous fund-raising events for charity and was involved with the local School of Arts. Although he remained so quintessentially French that his contemporaries considered him unlikely ever to accept British institutions and customs completely, he was eventually naturalised. He died in 1908, survived by his wife and two daughters. Two sons had died in childhood.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 7 December 1837
- Summary
- French-born, Colonial era Queensland caricaturist, engraver, editor and businessman
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31-May-08
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude51.6195955 Longitude-3.9459248 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Swansea, Wales (Abertawe, Cymru), UK
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, came to Sydney late in 1865 from Bristol, Somerset, bringing with him paintings of English and Welsh landscapes and studies of fruit and birds. Cawker claimed to have studied at the Royal Academy and to have been a pupil of the English genre and historical painter Francis Stephen Cary (1808-80). He also stated that he had recently been elected an associate of the Bristol Academy of Arts. He exhibited A Study from Nature (4 guineas) at the Royal Society of British Artists in 1857 and Primrose Bank – Study (4 guineas) the following year, his address then being 2 Tavistock Street, Bedford Square, London.
The paintings Cawker brought to NSW, described as 'romantic scenes in Wales and the West of England’, were displayed at his Sydney residence, 24 O’Connell Street. The Sydney Morning Herald praised his detail, particularly 'the elaborate finish of every part of the pictures; each object is brought out with admirable distinctness, and the foliage would seem to have been drawn leaf for leaf from nature’. He offered to give lessons in oil and watercolour painting when living at 282 Palmer Street and was listed as an artist in both Sands Sydney Directory and the Post Office Directory for 1867.
L. G. Cawker drew the capture of the bushranger Dunn for the Illustrated Sydney News 16 February 1866, p.4. No other Australian work is known.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1834
- Summary
- Painter and art teacher from Wales. His work was described as 'romantic scenes in Wales and the West of England'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1908
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- history, landscape and scene-painter and professional photographer, was born in Becksley Heath near London.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1831
- Summary
- Landscape painter who resided in Melbourne and Adelaide from the late 1850s to the late 1880s. Stone exhibited on many occasions with the South Australian Society of Arts where he was awarded many prizes for his oil paintings of local scenes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9-Jul-08
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude52.9534193 Longitude-1.1496461 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nottingham, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer, writer, explorer, scientist and public servant, was born on 17 April 1830 in Nottingham, England, eldest surviving son of two Quaker authors, William Howitt and Mary, née Botham. Educated largely in Heidelberg, Germany, and at University College, London, Alfred came to Melbourne with his father and brother, Charlton, aboard the Kent in 1852. They spent two years on the goldfields and travelling around the Victorian countryside.
Alfred elected to remain in Victoria when his father and brother returned to England. His familiarity with the bush was partly responsible for his appointment as leader of the 1861 relief expedition to locate the Burke and Wills party (it found King) and of the following expedition to bring back the remains of Burke and Wills. He made drawings on these journeys and at least two scenes in Thomas Chuck 's Grand Moving Diorama of the Victorian Exploring Expedition (1862-63) were said to be painted from Howitt’s sketches: Death of Burke , in which 'the golden tints of the setting sun cast their shadows over the scene’, and Burke’s Grave at Cooper’s Creek .
In 1863 Howitt was appointed police magistrate and warden on the Omeo goldfields, thus beginning a long career of public service. In his official capacity he made extensive journeys of exploration, becoming an authority on the geology and botany of Victoria and later on Aboriginal culture. With Lorimer Fison he published Kamilaroi and Kurnai in 1880, a landmark in anthropological studies. He wrote many scientific papers and books; his last, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia , was published in 1904. As an internationally renowned scientist he received many honours in both Australia and England towards the end of his life.
Several expeditions were made with artist friends. With Bateman , Chevalier and von Gu é rard Howitt explored the Baw Baw plateau in 1858, in 1860 von Guérard joined him on a prospecting expedition in Gippsland. He was a competent amateur artist and obviously stimulated, if not specifically influenced, by association with these accomplished professionals. Six drawings are reproduced in Walker’s biography: a sketch of Cooper’s Creek, three line drawings of the Omeo district, a pencil sketch of the hut in the Dandenongs where he camped with Bateman in 1858 and a view of Dr Godfrey Howitt’s homestead at Cape Schanck. He also took daguerreotypes and was planning to make a photographic river voyage with his young cousin Edward Howitt in 1853. No surviving photographs, however, have been identified.
Howitt died at Lucknow, Victoria, on 7 March 1908 and was buried in Bairnsdale Cemetery beside his wife, Maria Robinson, née Boothby, whom he had married in 1864. Two sons and three daughters survived them.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 April 1830
- Summary
- Sketcher, amateur photographer, writer, explorer, scientist and public servant, was born in England and came to Victoria in 1852. He became an authority on the geology, botany and Aboriginal culture of Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Mar-08
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Sydney, NSW?
- Biography
- Exhibition of Women’s Work, Sydney 1892: Group VI – Class F – no.117 Belisario, Mrs – Hyde Park – Wreath of Flowers made of Native Birds’ Feathers (on loan).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1829
- Summary
- Mrs. Belisario exhibited a wreath of flowers made from native bird feathers at Sydney's 1892 Exhibition of Women's Work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1908
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude54.3448538 Longitude-7.6389365 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher and civil engineer, was born on 18 August 1828 near Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Ireland. Trained as a field surveyor and draughtsman in 1842-44 under his father, a surveyor on the Title Commutation Survey in England, he too worked on railway surveys and rail construction in England until he emigrated to Sydney in 1850, there to become a draughtsman with the newly formed Sydney Railway Company. He resigned at the beginning of 1851 and left for Melbourne where he carried out surveys and prepared drawings for the Yan Yean water supply scheme under the city surveyor and architect, James Blackburn. Brady’s two known watercolour sketches, Bonney, a Port Phillip Black (1850) and Melbourne from the Yarra 1851 (Mitchell Library), were drawn during this period.
Brady returned to Sydney as assistant engineer with the railway company at the end of July 1851 and worked on the Sydney-Parramatta and Sydney-Mittagong lines. He resigned in 1857 and returned to Victoria where he was engineer to the Sandhurst (Bendigo) Waterworks (1858-63). He worked on both water supply schemes and railway projects for Victoria, then went to Queensland where he became engineer to the Brisbane Board of Water Works and manager in charge of constructing the Brisbane-Dalby railway line. Back at Victoria in 1869 Brady continued to be involved in major civil engineering works, especially as engineer to the new Melbourne Harbour Trust (1877-91). He died on 8 July 1908 at his home, Allawah, Staniland Grove, Elsternwick. At Sydney in 1854 he had married Adelaide Sarah, the daughter of Henry Keck, governor of Darlinghurst Gaol; they had seven (surviving) children.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 August 1828
- Summary
- Mainly a surveyor and civil engineer, Brady is known for two watercolour sketches that were executed in Melbourne shortly after his arrival in Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Jul-08
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude53.9825271 Longitude-1.385249993 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, worked as the partner of Roberts in King William Street, Adelaide, in 1868. The photographer was probably Robert Fawcett (1828-1908), a chemist from Yorkshire who came to South Australia in 1853 and later had a pharmacy at Kapunda, or a member of his family.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1828
- Summary
- Probably Robert Fawcett, worked as a professional photographer in South Australia during the 1860s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1908
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and wood-carver, was born in England. In 1855 he came to Sydney, where he worked as a photographer. Although advertising in October 1858 that he would 'dispose of a Photographic Business, cheap’, two months later customers could still have their portraits ('highly coloured and enamelled, in cases, 3s 6d’) taken at the same premises in Riley Street, opposite the pump south of South Head Road. By November 1860, however, Pickering had opened a new studio at 612 George Street South, Brickfield Hill, and was offering coloured and 'enamelled’ cased portraits for 2s 6d. Initially called the United Volunteer Portrait Gallery, the name was soon abandoned. The studio became so well known that its sole address was 'Pickering, Brickfield Hill’.
As Cato points out, Pickering was 'The Family Photographer’, and it was to his studio that Sydney’s middle classes flocked. He also provided souvenir photographs of the famous and infamous, the latter including the bushrangers Frank Gardiner with two colleagues (c. 1860, Mitchell Library) and John Gilbert. At his recently improved and extended gallery in 1862 he was producing both cartes-de-visite ('printed off on paper in a rich brown tint’) and ambrotypes ('coloured in a finished style … which evinces an intimate acquaintance with all the elegant mysteries of the pictorial art’). He subsequently opened a second studio at 432 George Street. Both places were offering three cartes-de-visite for 5s or eight for 10s in 1864. The George Street branch was extensively damaged by fire in December 1865 when Samuel Hebblewhite’s shop next door burnt down and, although Pickering advertised the following February that the damage had been repaired and the rooms rebuilt 'on the most approved plan’, John Yates had taken over within a few weeks. Pickering continued at Brickfield Hill.
In June 1864 he was reported as having produced a 'remarkably faithful and animated’ life-size self-portrait, the outline, enlarged by the solar process, being 'afterwards filled up and completed by the pencil [paint] of the artist’. As well as such large overpainted portraits, Pickering produced untouched solar camera enlargements 'universally pronounced to be characteristic portraits and good pictures, without being in any way touched up by the pencil’. Said to have had the appearance of 'mezzotinto or sepia’, these could be purchased as 'an outline and basis for portraits to be finished off in oil’ if desired, cited examples of untouched likenesses he had sold from his studio being of Mr Dalgleish, Mr Westcot, Mr Waterford and Mr Edward Reeve. Freeman’s Journal described this solar enlarging process in 1868 and pronounced the coloured examples on display at Pickering’s studio 'equal to any oil painting’.
In 1865 Pickering’s cartes-de-visite cost 7s 6d a dozen and he was also advertising diamond cameo portraits ('four different views of the face on one card’). He travelled around the countryside in a van, taking views and portraits 'In order to accommodate gentlemen who wish their country residence to be photographed, or for the convenience of invalids who are unable to leave home’. In August 1870 the Illustrated Sydney News reproduced a panorama of Sydney reported to have been 'taken expressly’ for the paper by Pickering, the original photograph being 5 feet (1.52 m) long. A month later he was appointed official photographer to the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition.
Under the direction of Colonial Architect James Barnet, Pickering was commissioned by the New South Wales government in January 1871 to prepare 'a number of photographic views of Sydney and its suburbs’ for the forthcoming London International Exhibition. The government printer published 166 of the resulting photographs in a large folio volume, Photographs of Public and Other Buildings, &c. Taken by Authority of the Government of New South Wales, at the Request of the Secretary of State for the Colonies (Sydney 1872). It was shown at the exhibition and copies were presented to distinguished visitors as proof that Sydney’s architectural splendours were no whit inferior to those increasingly filling the skyline of 'Marvellous Melbourne’. Gratifyingly, some were reproduced in the London Graphic in 1879-80.
Most are rather austere, uninhabited images, although Pickering’s view of Sydney’s Government House Stables (designed by Francis Greenway ) includes his travelling photographic van, an informal and modestly self-promotional detail. The Sydney Mail (27 April 1872) considered that most of the buildings he had photographed 'would be an ornament to any city’, although 'People at a distance turning over the leaves of the book may, perhaps, be somewhat puzzled to ascertain why the refreshment room [in Parliament House] should be on a scale so much larger than the Halls of Legislation’. A few of the photographs were considered 'not very successfully taken’, but the album as a whole was thought likely to be beneficial to the colony: 'Most of the pictures are beautiful specimens of photographic art’.
However prestigious, government work (as so often) proved a mistake. Six months after receiving his first commission in June 1871, Charles Percy Pickering of Crown Street was declared bankrupt. He was forced to abandon the portraiture side of his business altogether and his gallery and (reputedly) 20,000 glass negatives were sold. In February 1875, when living in Palmer Street, Woolloomooloo (profession unstated), he was again declared insolvent. At the time of his third bankruptcy that September, he was working as a wood-carver. He lived at Manly where, his obituary noted, for several years his spare time had been occupied in designing and carving a large sandstone kangaroo set above the town on 'Kangaroo Hill’. Minus its ears ( see Thomas Newall ), this primitive animal survives.
C.P. Pickering died in September 1908 at his residence, Berowra, in James Street, Leichhardt, survived by his wife and seven children, including his photographer son Alfred . He was said to have been 'an old member of the Masonic craft, having joined the Lodge Woolloomooloo, Sydney, as far back as 1867’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1825
- Summary
- Professional photographer with several different studios in Sydney. Commissioned by NSW government in 1871 but was later bankrupt, then twice after retiring from photography in 1875.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Sep-08
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Van Diemen's Land, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- painter and sketcher, was the second of the six surviving children, all daughters, of Eliza Urquhart of Dundee and William Paton, a surgeon, who had settled in Van Diemen’s Land in 1823.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1824
- Summary
- a painter and sketcher who lived in Tasmania, Paton had two sisters, Eliza and Harriet, who also sketched. With only four known works to her name, Paton's most complex sketch is of the three Anglican churches in Longford, one of which, St Augustine's, she was baptised in at the age of 18.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6-Mar-08
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.8333313 Longitude-2.1666674 Start Date1823-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gloucestershire, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, botanist and businessman, was born in Gloucestershire, England, on 20 July 1832. He came to Sydney in 1843. Listed as a photographer at 246 George Street in 1857 and at 341 George Street in 1858-59, Haviland specialised in coloured collodiotype portraits which, he advertised in 1857, 'for beauty of finish, colouring and durability are acknowledged to stand unrivalled’. His process, comparable to that of the sennotype, involved finishing hand-coloured photographs to make them look like painted miniatures on ivory. He described his techniques in an article, 'Process for a Hot Climate’, published in the London Photographic and Fine Art Journal in October 1857, where he was identified as a member of the London Photographic Society. In May 1859 Haviland was declared insolvent and the contents of his photographic studio were auctioned. This seems to mark the end of his professional photographic career. He re-established himself as a merchant and became known for his interest in botany, becoming a fellow of the British Linnaean Society and a council member of the New South Wales branch. He published papers on botany in the 1880s. Haviland died in Sydney on 22 May 1908.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 July 1823
- Summary
- Professional photographer, botanist and businessman, he ran a photographic business in Sydney, 1857-1859. He specialised in coloured collodiotype portraits which resembled painted miniatures on ivory.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-May-08
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude51.2 Longitude0.7 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1908-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and singer, was born in Kent in June 1819, seventh of the twelve children of an allegedly eccentric Chatham chemist called Turner and his second wife, formerly a Miss Hetley. In 1827 the family moved to London. Elizabeth first learnt singing and pianoforte by listening in on an older sister’s lessons. She taught herself French and German. Later she studied drawing under Chastellan and Pistrucci, then attended classes at the British Museum and National Gallery. Elizabeth and her sister Mary became concert singers and Elizabeth also worked as a book illustrator, being sub-contracted for instance to provide all the illustrations for a work on Italian antiquities (mainly vases) for which one Campanari had been commissioned. She received 8 guineas (and no acknowledgement) for her work.
In February 1850 Elizabeth Turner married Thomas Testar and in June they left for Victoria in the Northumberland , arriving on 26 October. Thomas was appointed paymaster in the Education Department and Elizabeth became one of Melbourne’s principal singers, taking the soprano part at weekly concerts held at the Mechanics Institute for several years. Making her colonial debut in the Mechanics Hall on 5 December 1850, she was greeted with the greatest possible enthusiasm and repeatedly recalled, the Argus reported. She assisted in the formation of the Melbourne Philharmonic Society and sang at their concerts. Other engagements included singing at the opening of the Theatre Royal, then regularly at the Princess Theatre. She held solo concerts in Melbourne and Geelong and appeared in association with the visiting English prima donnas Catherine Hayes and Anna Bishop. She was the leading soprano in the St Francis’s Catholic Church choir (which paid their singers) from her arrival until she bowed to pressure from her husband and retired from professional singing in April 1858. Her final public appearance was as an amateur at the music festival held to celebrate the opening of the University of Sydney’s newly completed Main Building in July 1859.
Testar exhibited three paintings with the Victorian Fine Arts Society at Melbourne in 1853: The Assumption of the Virgin (after Murillo) , a miniature of Lady Hamilton, and Robinetta . Reviewing the exhibition, the Argus noted 'one or two’ miniatures by Mrs Testar 'which however we believe are copies’. A portrait of Mrs Testar herself was shown at the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition by the painter Henry Holmes . In the early 1870s she studied at the National Gallery School under von Gu érard . Her Fern Gatherer (a watercolour after the painting by Robert Herdman) and Rachel at the Well (after F. Goodall) were included with copies by other National Gallery students at the 1872 Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition, then at the 1873 London International Exhibition. At the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition in 1888 she exhibited The World, the Flesh, and the Devil and The Writing Lesson , apparently still copies.
In later years Testar served at various times as president of the Children’s Hospital, vice-president of the Infant Asylum and vice-president of the St Kilda Ladies’ Benevolent Society. After her death on 20 March 1908, her obituarist in the Argus stated that she had become best-known for her charity work but added, 'many old colonists will remember with pleasure her artistic powers, both as a painter and a singer’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1819
- Summary
- Elizabeth Testar (née Turner) was a painter and singer. In 1850 she arrived with her husband Thomas in Victoria. Testar became one of Melbourne's principal singers, taking the soprano part at weekly concerts held at the Mechanics Institute. Her obituarist in the Argus stated that she had become best-known for her charity work but added, 'many old colonists will remember with pleasure her artistic
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 20-Mar-08
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude51.833333 Longitude-1.25 Start Date1853-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Oxfordshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, was one of several sons in an old Catholic family from Godington Manor, Oxfordshire. Like his brother George , he mostly dropped the 'de Tourcey’ in Australia. Arthur worked on the London Graphic and the Illustrated London News before coming to Sydney in 1879 (there is some speculation however that he may have arrived earlier) where he drew illustrations for the Sydney Mail , the Town and Country Journal e.g. 'The Child Murder Case in Sydney’ 11 March 1882, 456. He contributed to the Centennial Magazine e.g. (woman looking at a canvas being painted by a female artist) '“It’s just like him,” said Beatrice, standing and looking at it’ – an illustration to a story by Francis Adams, 'Thunderbolt, an Australian Romance’ May 1889, 712. In particular, he was staff artist on the Illustrated Sydney News e.g. he drew a capsized yacht, 14 February 1885, 20. He also drew for the Commonwealth , an annual of Australian art and literature 1 2 (1901-02). Moore (ii, p.111) states that his 'A Kangaroo Hunt’, reproduced in Le Monde Illustré , was the first Australian sketch to appear in a French journal.
Arthur Collingridge designed a fountain erected in Ryde to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1888 and is said to have also designed a life-size statue of St Joseph (for which George was the model) for the facade of St Joseph’s, Hunters Hill; though this is unconfirmed. His best-known painting is his large oil of the departure of the NSW contingent to the Sudan (now Australian War Memorial) for which another brother, Charles, was chaplain. He was a trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1900-1907.
Sydney International Exhibition 1879-80: “Mr A. Collingridge 'Ryde, on the Parramatta River’... require[s] considerable distance to see to advantage, for the colours are somewhat crude, and the skies very hard, especially in th[is] latter picture. Still there is evidence of careful painting about [it]” ( Sydney Mail 10 January 1880, 69).
Melbourne International Exhibition 1880: NSW Court – Class 1 – Oil Paintings – no.4 Collingridge, A. & G., Ryde, Parramatta River – 1.Manly Beach from Shell Bay; 2.Wattles; 3.Sunset, Ryde; 4.Kissing Point, Parramatta; Class 5 – Engravings and Lithographs – no.66 Collingridge, A. & G., Ryde, Parramatta River – Engravings of NSW and other scenery.
“Five oil paintings by Arthur Collingridge, an artist who is well known by the sketches of his which have been published in Le Monde Illustré and the Illustrated Sydney News , are shortly to be disposed of [by an art union]. The largest is a landscape 'Parramatta River and the Blue Mountains’ and next to it in size, and much superior to it in artistic merit, is a picture of 'Devils Pulpit, Fish River Caves’, where vast precipices and curious rock formations presenting sombre shades of olive green, russet brown, and gray, are shown under a sky whose lurid tints indicate an approaching storm. The other pictures are 'A Flower Piece’, 'Nature Morte’ and 'A View on the Lane Cove River’ and of these the second piece, where a dead bird is shown, is the most attractive. These pictures were shown at the Sydney International Exhibition and won a first extra prize” ( Sydney Morning Herald 6 July 1880, p.7).
Arthur and his brother George founded the [Royal] Art Society of NSW and showed work in its first exhibition held at the Garden Palace in 1880:
Mr A. Collingridge has sent in nine pictures: – No.10 'Making Herself at Home’; No.65 'Flowers’; No.83 'View on the Parramatta’; No.84 'Katie’s Creek, Lane Cove’; Nos.85, 88, 89 'Australian Birds’; No.86 'Leg of Mutton’; and No.87 'A Swim for Life’. The best of these is No.84, where one sees a reach of still water, pierced by reeds and flecked with waterlilies, embosomed among gentle wooded slopes and suffused with the pale yellow glow, which follows sunset. A few ships flit over the creek, and impart life to what would otherwise seem 'charmed stillness’. No.10 represents a pretty black and white kitten, coiled up in a gaudy bonnet and the little intruder looks very life-like. Her gaze is intelligent, the anatomy of the figure is perfect, and the rich softness of the fur is very well reproduced. No.83 was shown at the International Exhibition, and took a first prize there; but the water in it is not painted nearly so well as that in No.84. No.86 is a painting on marble, but the subject is scarcely worthy of the treatment and 87, an effective picture, might well be termed a la Whistler 'an arrangement in blue’, since deep blue is its pervading tint. Probably Mr Collingridge, mentally placing himself in the situation of the imperilled sailor, felt that blue was the only tint in which he could express the story. There is nothing in this artist’s other pictures to call for special mention ( Sydney Morning Herald 8 December 1880, 3).
“No.38 [sic, cf. Sydney Morning Herald 's number] 'Katie’s Creek, Lane Cove’, the work of Mr A. Collingridge, is remarkably natural, a clump of water plants in the foreground being especially good” ( Bulletin 1 January 1881, 2).
Exhibited at the second annual exhibition of the Art Society of NSW in 1881 ( Sydney Morning Herald 5 October 1881, 6). “No.174 is a clever picture in black and white by Arthur Collingridge of a creek 600 ft underground, at the Fish River Caves; and 176, 177, and 183 show engravings by the Brothers Collingridge [Arthur and George] which are admirable in their delicate finish” ( Sydney Morning Herald 17 October 1881, 6).
Entered Gibbs Shallard & Co.'s competition in 1882: “Mr Arthur Collingridge is represented by a graphic and vigorous sketch, showing how the first locomotive was built at the Atlas works, Sydney” ( Sydney Morning Herald 28 April 1882, 3). “Mr A. Collingridge…send[s] some very creditable paintings, as is usual… [He] is represented by a forcible painting of 'A Spot in Victoria’” ( Daily Telegraph 29 April 1882, quoted Sydney Morning Herald 13 May 1882, 2).
Arthur was awarded a 20 guinea premium for his design 'Her Majesty’s Mail – Stuck Up’, which he entered in the Art Society of NSW competition for a picture in black and white watercolour, suitable for reproduction as a presentation picture to subscribers to the Society’s next art union ( Sydney Morning Herald 21 July 1882, 3). He lost a number of paintings in the Garden Palace fire, including 'Her Majesty’s Mail – Stuck Up’, intended for the forthcoming Art Society exhibition. Fortunately, the painting had already been engraved by the artist ( Sydney Morning Herald 23 September 1882, 7).
Re-elected to committee of the Art Society of NSW in 1882 ( Sydney Morning Herald 21 July 1882, 3) and again in August 1883 and August 1884.
Exhibited Art Society 1883.
“Collingridge, A. – Landscape, with figures, oil and water-colour. Draughtsman and engraver on wood, of rising merit” (A.E. Greenwood & H.W.H. Stephen, Catalogue (Descriptive and Critical) of the Art Gallery with Sydney Art Notes , Sydney, 1883, 41).
John Sands Art Gallery 1884: “Mr A. Collingridge shows a spirited little sketch in oils of 'An Emu Hunt on the Old Maid Plains’” ( Sydney Morning Herald 8 January 1884, 8).
Art Society’s Black and White Exhibition, Royal Arcade, Sydney: 'Mr A. Collingridge, an artist evidently swift in his work, exhibits a view of the Imperial Cave, Fish River Caves, with its stalactites glistening under the rays of the limelight’ ( Sydney Morning Herald 14 April 1884, 3).
Art Society of NSW 5th annual exhibition, 1884: “Mr A. Collingridge’s 'Dead of Thirst’ (72) is perfect in its graphic pourtrayal of a subject almost too solemnly painful for pictorial treatment” ( Sydney Morning Herald 26 July 1884, 179). “Mr Collingridge, who has worked so hard to make the society something more than a mere pocket affair, is represented by several clever specimens of his brush, notably that of the dead bushman, who has cut the telegraph wire as 'dernier ressort’” ( Illustrated Sydney News 2 August 1884, 2). George Collingridge engraved Arthur Collingridge’s Berowra Creek (no.33 in Art Society 5th annual exhibition) as the cover illustration of Illustrated Sydney News 2 August 1884.
Art Society of NSW 6th annual exhibition, 1885: “Mr Arthur Collingridge has made a most praiseworthy attempt to commemorate the ever-to-be-remembered scene at the departure of our troops on the 3rd March last…this picture should not be finally judged in its present unfinished condition. The trustees of the Art Gallery…[should] recognize in it the germ of possibilty, of suitable commemoration and if they regard it as giving proof of the artist’s power to complete it in style worthy of a place within the gallery, they might deem it their duty to make such representations to the Government as may lead to its some day becoming a national possession” (Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald 2 April 1885, 9).
Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London 1886: NSW exhibits – no.2 Collingridge, Arthur, Ryde, Parramatta River, near Sydney: Oil Painting, 'The Nepean River’, Price £20; Oil Painting, 'A Crossing on the Balonne River’, Queensland, price £15; Oil Painting, 'Making First Locomotive at Sydney’, £15; Water Colour Drawing, 'A Tributary of the Hawkesburty River’, price, £10; no.25 Collingridge, Arthur, Ryse, Parramatta River, near Sydney – Wood engravings – 'On the Patterson River’; 'A Creek 600 feet underground, at the Fish River Caves’.
Exhibited Art Society of NSW in 1887.
Art Society Exhibition 1889: “A large work, by Mr A. Collingridge, possesses an historical interest as it depicts the discovery of the Hawkesbury River by Captain Hunter in 1789, just a century ago. The boat is entering the river, near the place now known as Peat’s Ferry, as the morning mists still hang over the low-rounded hills, which are mirrored in the still water at their base. The picture is an impressive one, and, apart from the interest with which it will be regarded by Australians, it is painted with breadth and rigour” ( Sydney Morning Herald 21 September 1889, 7).
“Mr Arthur Collingridge sends four [watercolours] of which 128, 'An Old Cottage at Ryde’, and 161, 'In a Vineyard at Parramatta’, are the best, the former has been purchased so has 151, 'A Bit from the Hawkesbury’ ... the devotion of both brothers to the cause of art entitles their work to most favourable consideration” ( Sydney Mail 19 October 1889, 868, 875).
New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition, Dunedin 1889-90: NSW Court – no.212 Art Society of New South Wales, Collection of Paintings – 'On the Darling’, A. Collingridge; 'Discovery of the Hawkesbury River; ditto; 'Kissing Point Road, Ryde’, ditto; 'Wood engraving’, ditto.
“'The Discovery of the Hawkesbury River by Captain Phillip’ by Arthur Collingridge… all this does not of itself constitute creating an Australian art” (De Libra, letter to editor, Sydney Morning Herald 4 April 1890, 4).
Ain’t It Sickening 1893, a watercolour of a young woman who has been picking wattle catching her dress on a post and rail fence, shown in the Art Society Spring Exhibition 1893, cat.27, was offered Sotheby’s 27-28 August 2001, lot 132.
Art Society Exhibition 1897: “There are some attractive views of the Hawkesbury district by Mr Arthur Collingridge” ( Sydney Morning Herald 10 September 1897, 2).
Arthur Collingridge did a large oil painting of Captain Cook which, along with three other paintings (by Mahony, Wolinski and Tindall), decorated an arch erected for the Federation procession in Sydney on 1 January 1901.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1853
- Summary
- Painter and illustrator of Australian scenes 1879-1901 who exhibited widely, mainly in NSW. Founding member of the Royal Art Society of NSW 1880.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1907
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude51.5882332 Longitude-2.9974967 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, UK
- Biography
- taxidermist, was born in Newport, Monmouthshire. Among her various talents, she was a musician and music teacher, a member of the Royal Academy of Music (she participated in concerts when living in Sydney). She married John Wintle, a 'wine, spirit, ale, porter and cigar merchant’ as well as a photographer, furrier and dentist. Eliza’s expertise in taxidermy was presumably acquired as a result of the fur business. The Wintles had thirteen children, eight of whom survived infancy. The family arrived at Adelaide on 14 November 1874 on board the Kirkham ; in 1879 they moved to Sydney. In the 1890s Eliza went to live in WA, dying at West Perth in 1907.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Sear, Martha
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1848
- Summary
- Welsh born taxidermist who arrived in Australia on board the Kirkham in 1874.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1907
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- watercolour painter, was an Englishman who came to Sydney about 1883 and remained for ten years. He exhibited with the Art Society of NSW (subsequently the Royal Art Society) from 1883 and was elected to its committee in 1884. Reviewing its 4th annual exhibition, the Sydney Morning Herald (5 October 1883, p.8) noted that this new and welcome contributor had sent in some 'powerful’ works, including Evening at Falaise, Normandy ('a striking picture’) and Egyptian war-tugs waiting transports (with 'a peculiar lurid sunset light which is very telling’). He also showed three drawings of parts of Westminster Abbey and a view of the interior of the Henry VII Chapel depicting the tomb and the Dean Stanley window in which the many cross lights, the shading of the pendant banners and the drawing of the whole picture were considered 'masterly in the extreme’ and 'one of the very best things in the exhibition’.
The following year the Art Society held a 'monochrome exhibition’ in which Fletcher Watson (regularly also called Fletcher-Watson in the press) showed Concord . It introduced to Sydney another favourite subject in his repertoire – river scenery. The Herald (17 April 1884, p.7) admired the artist’s 'firm, decisive hand, and a faculty for drawing fairly’, but considered his colour was 'not pleasing to the eye, and he has failed to produce any startling effects. The picture has a burnt appearance and one comes away from it with the impression of having looked at a chocolate boat liquefying in a pond of coffee streaked with stale milk. Mr. Watson’s misty, dreamy sunset at Windermere is a far more artistic production.’ At the Art Socety’s annual exhibition in July, he showed local subjects – Orange Grove, Middle Harbour (an 'effective sketch with a nice little bit of sky in it’, wrote the Herald critic on 17 July 1884, p.5), 'two attractive harbour studies’, a couple of Pittwater views and 'a beautiful morning effect on Lane Cove River’ – as well as a couple of English marine studies, another Westminster Abbey view and Searching the Register ('one of those picturesque church interiors which Mr. P. Fletcher Watson paints so well’).
Having set up an open air sketching class as well as teaching the principles of perspective and colouring, Fletcher Watson exhibited more plein-air watercolour views in the annual exhibitions of 1884 and 1885, which the Herald critic considered (11 April 1885, p.9) had benefitted from his own teaching; he now knew 'how to represent out-of-door light and atmosphere’ with 'dash and vigour and originality’. The Sydney Mail critic (11 April 1885, p.765), however, complained that his work was 'of the “slap-dash” sort, bold and occasionally effective, but never possessing that finish requisite for gallery exhibits.’ He showed 12 works in the 7th annual Art Society of NSW exhibition, some local subjects such as The Gap ('the spot where the Dunbar was wrecked’) and some English architectural views, including Lincoln’s Inn Gateway and St Mary’s Porch, Oxford .
The sketches he showed at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition at London in 1886 were not well received ('ambitious striving after effect to the disparagement of honest drawing’) though his use of colour was praised. At the 1887 Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition P. Fletcher Watson, 'F.R.S., Sketching Institute of New South Wales, Bond-street, Sydney’, showed two Narrabeen views – On Narrabeen Lagoon, New South Wales and Road to Narrabeen – as well as Roslyn Abbey , Melrose Abbey and Andernach on the Rhine . He also showed his watercolours with the Victorian Artists’ Society (VAS) in 1889-99. In November 1987 Trevor Bussell Gallery (cat. 23) illustrated a watercolour landscape, Lane Cove River 1888, and called him 'an accomplished tonal impressionist’. Similar Lane Cove watercolours, dated 1887 and 1892 respectively, were offered by Deutscher in April 1985 (cat.41) and Sotheby’s on 17 November 1988 (lot 118, Lane Cove River, Early Spring Morning , estimate $2,500-3,500).
Fletcher Watson founded 'the Sketching Institute of New South Wales’ at the beginning of 1886 and held sketching nights in his studio in Foy’s Chambers, Bond Street, as well as regular daytime open-air classes. A lengthy review of his work in the Bulletin of 27 February 1886 (p.22) especially emphasised his sketching parties. In 1888 he offered classes in Tasmania. On 29 February 1888, the Hobart Mercury noted that Mr Fletcher Watson, 'President of the Sketching Institute of N.S.W., and President of the Australian Academy of Arts’, was proposing to visit Hobart in late March 'for sketching purposes’ and was inviting interested persons to contact him at 29 Bligh Street, Sydney.
He was foundation president of the Australian Academy of Arts, which held its first exhibition at Sydney in December 1887, then reformed in 1891. According to the Mercury , he also held 'the position of commissioner of Fine Arts at the Centenary Universal exhibition held in Sydney recently’, though this probably meant he was a NSW commissioner for the Centennial International Exhibition in Melbourne. At the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition P. Fletcher Watson, 'President of the Australian Academy’, showed a large collection of watercolour views, winning two 2nd prizes for Interior of Toledo Cathedral and Melrose Abbey and a 3rd prize for a group of 5 watercolours: Entrance to the Convent of St. Gregory ; St. Wolfran’s Cathedral, Abbeville ; The Temple of Philae ; An Oratory, Palestine ; and The Summer Pulpit, Jerusalem . Such subjects appear to have been worked up in Sydney from sketches made before he came to Australia.
P. Fletcher Watson was also secretary of the Institute of Architects of NSW (now Royal Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter), and he continued to paint architectural subjects. In 1889 he was commissioned to do a watercolour drawing of the tomb of Bishop Broughton in St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral, Sydney , by the bishop’s descendants. Such work, opined the Herald (17 July 1889, p.5) was 'conventional but it is correct, and sometimes delicate’. The Bulletin critic (16 July 1892, p.10), on the other hand, much preferred his architectural pictures to his landscape sketches. In 1891 he entered the competition held by the National Art Gallery of NSW for watercolours illustrating picturesque New South Wales, offering 'a clever sketch at Twofold Bay, the clump of dark trees to the left contrasting well with the white beach’ ( Illustrated Sydney News 5 December 1891, p.12).
By 1894 Fletcher Watson was living in Manchester, England. Three drawings of European cathedal interiors he exhibited at London’s Dudley Gallery in 1895 were praised in the Sydney Morning Herald (16 March 1895, p.5). He also exhibited his watercolours in major exhibition venues at Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Dublin (Royal Hibernian Academy) as well as at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists and the Dudley and New Galleries, London. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1903. The following year he was living in Paignton, Devon.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1842
- Summary
- Watercolour painter, was an Englishman who came to Sydney about 1883 and remained for ten years. During his stay he became involved in a number of art societies and received a variety of praises from art critics in the press.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1907
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and professional photographer, was born in Birmingham, England. He studied art under a number of private teachers and at the Birmingham School of Design then joined his father’s photographic firm. In 1853 he came to the Victorian goldfields, where he prospected until 1856. In 1862 H.J. Johnstone, in partnership with Miss E.F.K. O’Shaughnessy , had a photographic studio at 3 Bourke Street, Melbourne, called Johnstone & Co. The name was most confusing because Charles Johnson 's longer established Melbourne firm was Johnson & Co. (often misspelt as Johnston) and it was probably because of this, rather than in any unconventional interest in acknowledging a woman partner, that the firm became Johnstone, O’Shannessy (sic) & Co. in 1864. Until 1886 their studio was located next door to the Melbourne Post Office in rooms previously occupied by Duryea & McDonald . In 1903 the firm claimed to date from 1862. Although Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co. was one of Melbourne’s most fashionable (and expensive) photographic firms until the early twentieth century, H.J. Johnstone had long been in England by then. In 1866, however, he and O’Shannessy were awarded a medal for the 'special excellence’ of the coloured and plain portraits they showed in the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition.
Johnstone, however, wanted to be a painter. Having attended life classes conducted by the sculptor Charles Summers (according to Bonyhady), he sent an oil painting, The Death of Burke , to the same exhibition. It won no award. The following year he began private landscape painting classes with Louis Buvelot , Cato states. During the Duke of Edinburgh’s 1867-68 tour of the Australian colonies 'Messrs’ (sic) Johnstone and O’Shannessy took several photographs finished in watercolour for Prince Alfred, with whom Johnstone toured Victoria. By then Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co. was Melbourne’s leading firm for carte de visite portraits of celebrities, such as the Eureka Stockade hero Peter Lalor, the mayor of Melbourne John Thomas Smith, the writer Marcus Clarke, Freeman Cobb of Cobb & Co. and the various governors of Victoria and their wives. All, with the possible exception of the wives, were undoubtedly taken by Johnstone or one of the firm’s male managers and/or operators, including G.H. Hasler and Charles H. Manning.
A flamboyant personality, Johnstone (unlike O’Shannessy) was highly visible in Melbourne society. At the mayor of Melbourne’s Fancy Dress Ball in 1870 he went as Faust, and at the return ball given to the mayor two weeks later was dressed as Tybalt (from Romeo and Juliet ). That year Johnstone became a student at the newly formed National Gallery School of Painting under Thomas Clark . He began to exhibit his paintings with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1872, including Near Lilydale , A Farm at Dandenong and Cottage near Dromana , subjects owing more to Buvelot than to Clark. Indeed, he was called 'a rising artist… [who] follows in the footsteps of Mr. Buvelot’ when he showed a painting of a sunset at the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition Preparatory to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial International Exhibition.
A Bush Cottage near Mulgrave, the Property of Mr. T. Walsh and a view of a creek near Seymour were shown with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1873. Along with other paintings, Sundown, Stringy Bark Creek followed in 1874, Summer Sunset in 1875, After Sunset in 1876 and Sunset on the Goulburn in 1877. Critical enthusiasm had not dimmed in 1877 even though it was acknowledged that this last sunset repeated 'the characteristics of one of his best pictures last year’.
At the same time Johnstone and O’Shannessy continued to exhibit examples of their 'highly-wrought Artistic Photography’ extensively. In 1872 the firm opened an art gallery in their studio where paintings from both Europe and Australia were exhibited before being raffled through the Academy’s Art Union of Victoria. James Smith of the Argus applauded the move as an alternative to the incongruity of showing paintings side by side with sheet music, as was necessary in Wilkie & Webster’s shop. Soon the collection was sent on to South Australia in search of further subscribers, and Johnstone established useful connections with the photographer George Freeman and E.J. Wivell, the latter apparently his old photography partner. The firm also sold photographs of paintings for the Victorian Academy of Arts. In 1872 they produced a set of six photographs of drawings by members of the Academy to be distributed to subscribers in that year’s Art Union: a sketch of a cottage in Richmond Paddock by Buvelot, The Stock Rider by Chester Earles , A Scene at Yarra by van den Houten , J.W. Curtis 's Evening , W. Ford 's Loading Up and Johnstone’s own Twilight Reflections . Sets of photographs of drawings by members of the academy continued to be offered to subscribers in subsequent art unions. Johnstone’s sketch, Old Mates (a prosperous former digger visiting a miserably unsuccessful old mate), was included in the 1875 collection.
In 1874 Johnstone was listed solely as a professional artist (i.e. painter) in the Melbourne Directory . His oil paintings, By-Road at Seymour and Sketch of the Yarraman, on the Dandenong Creek , were praised for their naturalism when shown with the academy in 1875. By then, Johnstone was away 'taking sketches of South Australian scenery’ and holding an exhibition of his landscape paintings and coloured photographic portraits in Freeman’s Adelaide studio. Sunset, Dromana, Victoria ('the most beautiful’) and Old Mates were both included in this exhibition. Several South Australian subjects dated 1876-78 are known, including Valley of the Sturt, Craigeburn, South Australia 1878 and Cox’s Creek, Bridgewater, South Australia 1878 . Later works are more likely to have been done from photographs (probably taken by Freeman) than from sketches made on the spot in the 1870s.
Adelaide proved particularly appreciative of Johnstone’s talents. 13 of his landscape paintings borrowed from seven private collectors were sent to the 1878 Paris Universal Exhibition from South Australia. A Backwater of the River Murray, South Australia 1881 (offered at Christie’s Melbourne auction 1-2 May 2000) has a plaque affixed to the reverse: 'Presented by British exhibitors to Colonel Sir Herbert Sandford R.A. official representative Royal British Commission in recognition of his valuable services’. Christie’s suggested it may have been purchased from the 1880-81 Melbourne International Exhibition, but the discrepancy in dates suggests a later exhibition. H.Y.S. Sparks, manager of the Mortgate Company of Australia, presented another version of this picture, the renowned Evening Shadows (1880, oil), to the National Gallery of South Australia. It too is commonly said to have been acquired from the Melbourne Exhibition, although the family believe it was specially commissioned for the opening of the South Australian National Art Gallery. Many other versions of the picture survive; in 1999 they were the subject of a special exhibition at the AGSA. At the 1880-81 Melbourne International Exhibition G. A Farr of Adelaide showed two paintings by H.J. Johnston [sic] in the SA section of class 1, oil paintings (p.526) – Old Mates and Fireside Reflections – while Hon. W. Morgan of Netherby Park lent H.J. Johnston’s Waterfall Gully . More dominant at the exhibition, however, were photographs, proofs and apparatus for portraits from the Melbourne firm of Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co. Ltd. At the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition the AGNSW exhibited Johnstone’s Off the Track and On the Wallaby Track and Boiling the Billy were included in the SA Court, while On the Murray , lent by W.K. Thomson, was in the Victorian Loan Collection. At the same time a group of proofs and apparatus from Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Co. was awarded a first order of merit.
By then Johnstone had nothing to do with the firm, having quitted the antipodes in the late 1870s. He was reported 'now in California’ when four of his paintings were shown with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1879. In 1881 he sent By the River (probably an Australian subject) to the Royal Academy from a London address, then apparently retired to the country. When elected a member of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1886 he was living in Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire. He exhibited at the RBA’s Suffolk Street gallery from 1886 ( Weary , a watercolour priced at £35) until 1888-89 ( A Fisher Lassie , 12 guineas) but was not hung at the Royal Academy again until 1887. Then he continued to exhibit there almost annually until 1900. Apart from By the River , none of the 32 paintings he showed in the major London exhibitions in this period appears to have been an Australian subject. Titles such as A Wood Nymph (1890), Woodland Flowers (1892), Far-Away Thoughts (RA 1892), Homeward (RA 1892 and 1899), A Maiden’s Thoughts (1893), Love’s Rosy Morn (1893) and other stock subjects don’t suggest Australian subjects.
The many Australian landscapes Johnstone continued to paint were primarily directed at the Australian market. His only known display of his colonial past in London was as a member of a group of mainly expatriate artists with distant Australian, New Zealand and North American connections who held a 'Colonial Fine Art Exhibition’ at the Burlington Gallery in 1886 with the aim of exploiting the market created by the gigantic Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London that year (to which W.K. Thomson of Kamesburgh, Brighton, Victoria, lent Johnstone’s On the Murray and View at Tallarook ). Johnstone had 10 paintings in the Burlington Gallery show, including On the Goulburn River, Victoria ; On the Watts River ; In the Macedon Ranges ; A Bush Track ; Western Port, Victoria ; At Woodlands, South Australia ; and A Swamp near Dromana, Victoria . Some, like the last, may have been old paintings or replicas, but many were new. All were directed at visiting colonials, the exhibition being either ignored by British art critics or dismissed as 'trade’ painting, although Johnstone’s Australian views appear to have sold well to the Americans too.
By 1891 Johnstone was living at Bath Road, Chiswick. Six years later he was at Wadhurst, Sussex but still maintaining a London studio. He died in the latter in 1907 reputedly while working on a painting. Despite – or rather because of – his expatriate status, his work remained popular in Australia until early in the twentieth century. Then his reputation faded. Even in 1913 Mather was cryptically labelling Evening Shadows 'A picture that contains no art problems to give the spectator pause’, although he could not deny it was (and has remained) one of the most popular paintings in the South Australian gallery. The National Art Gallery of New South Wales’s purchase of Johnstone’s Off the Track had been a similar success with critics and public alike in 1883, but its popularity fluctuated even more wildly. The subject, a dead horse and a lost rider dying of thirst beside a dry river bed in the Australian bush, appealed to the late Victorian taste for a pathetic narrative and its reproduction as a chromolithograph in a supplement to the Illustrated Sydney News ensured it a place on the wall of many an Australian home. This star of the New South Wales Court at the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition (exhibited by the AGNSW) was deaccessioned in 1962 then repurchased in 1988.
Less nationalistic but even more sentimental Johnstone paintings, Tired Out , Please Buy and Who Comes , were issued as supplements to the Illustrated Australian News in 1887-88. A Billabong on the Goulburn , acquired by the AGNSW in 1884, was considered by critic Sidney Dickinson in 1889 to describe 'with much beauty a scene that in topography, atmospheric effect, and sentiment is purely Australian’. Indeed, until the 'national pictures’ of Roberts, Streeton and others erupted onto public gallery walls and Hans Heysen inherited the gumtree, Johnstone above all others was thought to have captured the 'true’ Australia. As Mather sniffed, he 'played a conspicuous part as a delineator of the typical tree of which Australians are pardonably proud’. The Sydney Bulletin of 24 December 1887 expressed the same notion far more fulsomely, while simultaneously managing to encapsulate the crass provincialism of local art criticism: 'Of all Australian artists, Johnstone alone ranks as a genuine interpreter of Australian incident and scenery, and his pictures command in America hundreds of guineas’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1835
- Summary
- A popular painter and professional photographer who was highly visible in Melbourne society in the late Victorian period thanks in large part to his flamboyant personality.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1907
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and storekeeper, was born in London on 12 July 1831, the eldest son of Francis Farndell and Mary, née Shorteu. He came to Adelaide in the Sea Queen in 1855 and set up a general store. From 1865 he was listed as photographer at Rundle Street East, Adelaide, advertising six cartes-de-visite for 8s 6d in 1869. When he moved to Paradise, South Australia, he was again primarily a storekeeper, but he was offering to take photographs from his shop in 1895-96. Francis’s younger brother, Edward , was also a photographer but the two are not known to have worked together and appear to have been on unfriendly terms. Francis Farndell died, unmarried, at Highbury, on 29 January 1907.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 July 1831
- Summary
- Francis Farndell was a professional photographer and storekeeper. He was older brother of Edward Farndell, also a photographer. The two are not known to have worked together and appear to have been on unfriendly terms. Francis, born six years before Edward, outlived him by more than thirty.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Jan-07
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude51 Longitude9 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Germany
- Biography
- professional photographer, botanist and journalist, was born in Germany, and migrated to Victoria in about 1856.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1831
- Summary
- Charles Walter was possibly Australia's first photojournalist. His early photographic work recorded local Aboriginal people at government stations.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Oct-07
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, lithographer and natural history collector, was born on 22 March 1830 in Sydney, to Harriet Calcott, a seamstress, and Alexander Walker Scott, a grazier, entomologist and entrepreneur, half-sister to Frances Murdoch Kirschner and elder sister of Helena Scott .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 22 March 1830
- Summary
- Painter, illustrator, lithographer and natural history collector during the mid to late 1800s. At one point Harriet and her sister, Helena, executed almost all the artwork for the scientific literature produced in Sydney.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Aug-07
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist and police magistrate, was born in Scotland. He came to New South Wales in 1842 with his father, a New South Wales commissioner of Crown lands. Shortly after his arrival, young Robertson expressed his opinion of the colony in a letter to his brother in Scotland; it was written on Easter Monday 1842 from Muswellbrook: 'New South Wales! Umph! Horrible, what opinion will I give you, the scenery is an interminable wood of wretched stumps of gum trees, rivers O! O! who would call them rivers, stagnant pools in summer, and inundate the country when any shower of rain falls which happens very seldomly … [It is] not a country but a wretched hole, and I would advise anyone not to put their foot on a ship bound for New South Wales, particularly those who practise the arts and sciences’.
Robertson must have revised these opinions when he moved to Victoria for he lived there for the rest of his life, spending many of his adult years as a police magistrate at Castlemaine. At the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition he showed Mackerel Boats , The Raft and Coast Scene , all presumably watercolours. It was at Robertson’s St Kilda (Melbourne) residence, Ashburton Cottage in Blessington Street, that the Victorian Academy of Arts was formed on 10 January 1870, and Robertson exhibited a number of works at the first exhibition. The Argus noted: 'two very large watercolour drawings by Mr. James Robertson, the secretary of the Academy … represent H.M. ship Nelson under two aspects – the one a saffron sunset, and the other a sombre squall. In each instance the artist has been highly successful, whether as regards the central object, flushed with amber light which streams upon its huge bulk from the declining sun, or looking grim and sullen under the gloom of the rising storm, or as regards all its surroundings – the steam tug, the boats, the distant pier and the various vessels lying at anchor’.
His other exhibits, the Argus stated, evinced 'an artistic perception of the picturesque combined with the capacity to convey a good deal of meaning by the employment of very simple agencies’. James Robertson is said to have exhibited with the Royal Institute, Manchester (UK), in 1871, presumably on a visit home. He was back in Melbourne the following year when he showed The Wreckers with the academy. It depicted a dismasted hulk being approached by luggers and it too was praised, as was his 'charming marine sketch’ On the Saltwater River . These marine subjects suggest a connection with the older painter, Thomas Robertson .
After his retirement in 1873 Robertson continued to exhibit with the Victorian Academy of Arts until it amalgamated with the Australian Artists’ Association to form the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1888, then with the society until 1905. For most of these years he resided at Studholm (or Homewood) in Fellows Street, Kew. Many of his watercolour paintings, including Thatched Cottage, Heidelberg and a folio of Hawthorn and St Kilda street scenes dating from the 1860s remain with the Robertson family. Grace Park, Hawthorn (1872) was sold at Christie’s (Australia) in March 1977.
Writers:
Mackie, Elizabeth
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1829
- Summary
- James Robertson was a watercolourist and police magistrate. He came to New South Wales in 1842 with his father and at first did not seem to like the place much. He wrote to his brother in Scotland, "[It is] not a country but a wretched hole". He did, though, spend the rest of his life in Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1907
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude52.707755 Longitude-2.7540658 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Shrewsbury, England, UK
- Biography
- portrait and house painter and building contractor, was born in Shrewsbury, England. In May 1858 he and his family sailed to New South Wales as assisted emigrants aboard the David M’Ivor . One of the children died on the voyage out; the rest of the family reached Sydney on 30 September where Wellings worked as a house painter and builder, not from choice but necessity. According to his obituary, he 'followed the occupation of contractor, but was by profession an artist’. He lived in Darling Street, Balmain, and was one of the founders of the Balmain Working Man’s Institute, for which he painted a portrait of Sir Henry Parkes.
Wellings died at Eden on the south coast of New South Wales in 1907. A speaker at his graveside remarked on his 'varied gifts of no mean order – musician, artist, and ripe Shakespearean actor’.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1827
- Summary
- Portrait painter of Balmain, Sydney. Described as 'musician, artist, and ripe Shakespearean actor'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1907
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude46.9895828 Longitude6.9292641 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Neuchâtel, Switzerland
- Biography
- painter, landowner and viticulturalist, was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland on 27 March 1825, eldest son of Dr Jean François Paul de Castella, landowner, and his second wife Eleonore, née de Riaz. Always known as Hubert, de Castella received a Jesuit education at Fribourg then went to Germany; in 1843 he began architectural studies in France. During the next decade he was naturalised and served with the French Army. Deciding to join his brother Paul in Victoria, he reached Melbourne aboard the Marlborough on 23 March 1854. His decision was influenced by reports from earlier Swiss emigrants, including Sophie, wife of the colony’s Lieutenant-Governor Charles Joseph La Trobe .
After acquiring a property adjacent to his brother at Yering, Hubert de Castella ran cattle and developed his many cultural interests. He was a frequent visitor to the Café Estaminet Français in Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, run by Anton Fauchery . In 1856 de Castella returned to Switzerland for family reasons. Later he studied art at Nazon’s studio in Paris with his Victorian friend Joseph Panton , finally returning to Melbourne after an absence of six years on 9 September 1865. Soon afterwards, he married Alice Frances, daughter of the New South Wales Legislative Councillor Robert Pitt Jenkins and his wife Louisa . The couple had five sons and five daughters. Stanley Leighton visited Yering in June 1868 and wrote in his illustrated memoir 'Australia’ (vol. 1, NLA, p.176) that Mrs de Castella was 'a striking woman, with features of almost Grecian regularity, softened by a sweet expression; she was an heiress and Sydney was her home. Both she and her husband were Romanists. Their little house consisted of a drawing-room, a dining-room, and a small hall, all hung with pictures in oils, nicely painted by Mr. De Castella himself.’
De Castella is chiefly remembered as a pioneer of Victorian viticulture. He developed vineyards at Yering and Ivanhoe and wrote [and illustrated] several books on the subject, including Notes d’un Vigneron Australien (1882) and John Bull’s Vineyard: Australian Sketches (1886; reprint Melbourne, 1981). Another, Les Squatters Australiens (Paris 1861), presents a spirited defence of his adopted country. Contemporaries considered him a talented painter and he was an active supporter of the Melbourne art establishment. Engravings after some of his original drawings appeared in the first volume of Le Tour du Monde (1861) and in 1864 he showed View on the Yarra Plains (Yering) and three related sketches at Melbourne’s annual exhibition of Fine Arts. These were described in the Argus of 2 March 1864 as 'amongst the best of the amateur productions in the exhibition’. De Castella contributed 'one beautiful little [oil] sketch’, View on the Upper Yarra , to the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition and two of his paintings were lent by their owners to the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition. He exhibited with the Victorian Academy of Arts from its foundation in 1870 and served on its council. Later, de Castella spent some years in Switzerland, leasing his Ivanhoe property, Charterisville, to artists Walter Withers , E. Phillips Fox and Tudor St George Tucker . The memory of the Australian sunshine brought him back to Victoria in 1906 and he died at Ivanhoe on 30 October 1907.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 March 1825
- Summary
- Painter, landowner and viticulturalist born in Switzerland. Resident of Yering and Ivanhoe, Vic. for many years. De Castella is credited as being both a talented painter and a pioneer of Victorian viticulture.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Oct-07
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude46.603354 Longitude1.8883335 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- France
- Biography
- art and language teacher, exhibition organiser, theatrical entrepreneur and property developer, was born in Angoulême, France on 31 July 1824, third son of Auguste Alexis and Rose Elizabeth Joubert and a younger brother of Didier Numa Joubert . Educated at a school in Bordeaux and at the College Bourbon in Paris, he left France for New Zealand in May 1839 then came to Sydney in the Martha at the end of the year. After working as an interpreter in the corvette Aube , he returned to Sydney in 1841. In January 1844 he was advertising from Lower George Street (the Rocks) as a 'French and Drawing’ teacher 'desirous of obtaining a few pupils’. No drawings, however, are known. After his marriage to Florence Clara Imlac Owen in St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral on 27 April 1848, Joubert became a property developer in Adelaide – where his wife, son and daughter died of typhoid fever and he went to prison for debt. Having re-established himself on the Victorian goldfields in 1852, then as a victualler to the French forces in New Caledonia and a trader to Madagascar, he married Adelaide Levi in Christ Church, North Adelaide, on 27 February 1855 then joined his brother at Hunter’s Hill, Sydney. Together they developed the peninsula, Jules apparently initiating various grandiose schemes and Didier completing or continuing them after the inevitable financial collapse, e.g. when Jules was declared bankrupt in 1866.
As honorary and subsequently, paid, secretary of the Agricultural Society of NSW from 1867, Jules was largely responsible for moving the society’s modest annual show from Parramatta to Sydney and enlarging it to include an intercolonial art exhibition and other non-agricultural features (the foundation of the continuing Royal Easter Show). He also edited the society’s Journal . Exhibition organisation proved to be his forte. He played a major part in expanding colonial Australian representation in the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial and the 1878 Paris international exhibitions. Arranging the French participation in the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition led to the award of chevalier of the Legion of Honour from France – and to a political scandal in Sydney (for shipping private property to France as returning exhibits), culminating in his dismissal by the Agricultural Society.
Quitting Sydney for a wider sphere Joubert arranged international exhibitions for Perth (1881) and Christchurch, New Zealand (1882) – both with R.E.N. Twopeny. He spent the rest of 1882 and 1883 organising the Calcutta International Exhibition. After a brief Melbourne career as a theatrical agent, during which he erected the Alexandra Theatre and again went bankrupt, he was in charge of New South Wales exhibits to the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition. Then he organised international exhibitions for Dunedin (NZ) in 1889-90 and for the two Tasmanian centres, Launceston (1891-92) and Hobart (1894-95). At none of these, however, is he known to have shown any art of his own. He died at Carlton, Melbourne on 24 August 1907, survived by his second wife, eight sons and two daughters. His published reminiscences, Shavings and Scrapes in Many Parts (Dunedin, 1890), make no mention of his brother.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 July 1824
- Summary
- Nineteenth century art and language teacher, exhibition organiser, theatrical entrepreneur and property developer he played a major part in expanding colonial Australian representation in international exhibitions and formed the foundation of the continuing Royal Easter Show.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Aug-07
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude51.4534889 Longitude-1.031872959 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, taxidermist, musician and shepherd, began his working life as gamekeeper for the Earl of Craven at Ashdown Park, Berkshire, like his father. In 1847 Alfred married Sarah Anne Collins; they had two sons and four daughters. After arriving at Melbourne in the Ballangeich on 20 August 1851, Eustace was employed by his brother-in-law’s brother, Jason Withers, as a shepherd on the El Dorado and Ullina squatting runs at Black Dog Creek near Chiltern, Victoria. There he always carried a small box of oils or watercolours in his swag so that from his camp he could experiment with colour and techniques in his painting. Said to have been self-taught, he must have had some previous art training as his endeavours to capture the spirit and moods of the Australian bush were in a most competent European academic style.
Both watercolours and oils are known. His oil painting of the 1856 Woolshed gold rush is one of only two known pictures of this significant field (Burke Memorial Museum). He also recorded the arrival of the first Murray River steamboat to reach Albury. These paintings, together with others of important goldmines and town views he executed, are of great value to the history of North-East Victoria.
Canvas and board not being readily available, Eustace turned to using the large eucalyptus leaves that grew in the district up to 15 cm wide by 10 cm long. In a later letter to the editor of the Argus , he wrote that he first substituted flat leaves for canvas when tending sheep in the Ovens district during the goldrush of 1851-52. A report in the Sydney press in 1863 described several of his works in this medium:
They are painted on the leaves of a description of eucalyptus, unknown in this part of Australia, but which we are told is common in many parts of the south-western interior. The leaves are nearly circular and are a little more than three inches [7.6 cm] in diameter. The scenes depicted on them are all descriptive of Australian bush life, and are apparently in watercolour, highly varnished … The leaves before being painted have evidently been carefully dried and flattened, so that the surface is as smooth and even as card board. With the exception that the colours, from the brightness of the varnish, are somewhat “loud”, the effect produced is of the very highest order.
In adopting the Australian bush as his central theme and in using gum leaves Eustace earned himself the title 'Bush Artist’, although during the 1850s and 1860s he worked as a house decorator and signwriter at Albury, NSW. He taught music, played the cornet, violin and guitar and supplied the music for early Albury dances. He wrote poetry and practised taxidermy as well as painting. Most of his best works are signed and they often contain two or more birds on the wing against the sky. He also painted oils on board, canvas and card. In 1969 Christie’s (South Kensington) offered for sale a set of four landscapes by Eustace painted on metal.
In January 1857 the Argus reprinted an extract from the Albury Border Post discussing four paintings by Eustace: Roper’s Point , Camping Out , A Group of Australian Trees and The First Glimpse of Albury . In 1863 Eustace held an art union at Field’s Horse and Jockey Inn at Albury to dispose of a number of his oil paintings. A large painting of the Reid’s Creek Falls near Beechworth, a scene on the Murray River Flats with the river in flood, a landscape on a sheep-run, and a roadside public house with travellers camping nearby were among the prizes. Other large oils on canvas survive, but it was his gum leaves that brought him fame. In 1866 he showed a number of oil paintings on gum leaves at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. (His oil painting of a Murray River landscape was shown at the same time by the Beechworth bank manager A.K. Shepherd.) His 1892 oil on canvas painting of a colonial bark-roofed bush cottage with family and poultry in front of it was offered at Sotheby’s Melbourne on 30 April 2002, lot115 (colour ill. est. $4,000-6,000).
Albert and Caroline le Souëf lent two of Eustace’s gum leaves decorated with Australian scenes to the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition. At both the 1872 Victorian Intercolonial and the 1873 London International exhibitions George Bancroft showed 'a case containing a stuffed opossum, with bush sketches in oil on gum leaves, painted by Mr Eustace, a shepherd near Albury’. His treatment of sky and clouds brought praise from critics of his day. The Melbourne Age reported in 1876: 'Eustace’s celebrated paintings on gum-leaves are again attracting attention … Mr. Eustace is an elegant artist … he seems without effort to catch the colour and spirit of Australian scenery’. Six of his oil on gumleaf landscapes of the Albury district were sent to the 1886 London Colonial and Indian Exhibition.
Eustace held another art union at Ballarat in 1884 to dispose of nine of his paintings. In 1893 he held a solo exhibition of gumleaf paintings at Stevens’s Gallery, Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. That year Queen Victoria, through the Secretary of State for the Colonies, thanked him for the 'interesting paintings with which Her Majesty has been much pleased’. By 1896 he was receiving orders for gumleaf paintings from nearly all the capitals of Europe, and examples of his work were acknowledged by the Emperor Frederick of Germany and the Tsar of Russia as well as by the Governors of NSW and Victoria. The renowned 'Bush Artist’ died on 29 May 1907 and was buried in Chiltern New Cemetery.
Writers:
Ashley, Robert W. P.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1820
- Summary
- The multi-talented Eustace painted scenes of historically important events in north-eastern Victoria. His landscape paintings on gum leaves earned him the title 'Bush Artist' and by 1896 he was receiving orders for them from Europe.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-May-07
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude43.7698712 Longitude11.2555757 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Florence, Italy
- Biography
- Architect, was born in Florence but reputedly left Italy when quite young and travelled extensively in Europe. He then spent some years in South Africa, where he owned a quarry. At Cape Town he married Jane (Jean [sic]) Francis Miles, a merchant/farmer’s daughter aged fifteen, on 5 November 1849. The discovery of gold drew Stombuco to Victoria; he, Jane and their infant daughter Marie came to the Eaglehawk diggings near Bendigo. Then he turned to sculpture, monumental masonry, building and architecture in Melbourne, around Kyneton, then to Goulburn (NSW) in 1869, where he was appointed Catholic diocesan architect by Bishop Lanigan. He carried out a number of projects there but is best known for the first part of the nave of the new cathedral of St Peter & Paul in 1871-72. He lived in Victoria and NSW for 25 years, designing and superintending private and public buildings until moving to Queensland in 1875 on the advice of Rev. Patrick Dunne of Goulburn.
Bishop James Quinn (from Dublin) treated Stombuco as Brisbane diocesan architect in deed if not in title. Among his earliest commissions (late 1870s) was a series of ecclesiastical buildings for Ipswich parish in collaboration with Father Andrew Horan, the bishop’s nephew. He also began designing schools, churches and convents in and around Brisbane, including St Joseph’s Christian Brothers College, Gregory Terrace in 1875-76. Also did designs for other denominations as well as private mansions (see Watson and McKay). With the depression he moved to WA in December 1891 but failed to redeem his fortunes in Perth. He died in Fremantle Asylum as a senile pauper aged 86 in 1907.
Stombuco designed 54 public, educational, ecclesiastical, commercial and residential buildings in every state except South Australia. At least 20 survive in southeast Queensland.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1820
- Summary
- An industrious architect, monumental mason, sculptor and builder who designed 54 public buildings in every Australian state except South Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1907
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lewisham, England, UK, Lewisham (Greater London), England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer and surveyor, was born on 16 December 1819 at Lewisham, near London, son of Lieutenant-Colonel Cornelius Mann R.E., and Sarah, née Fyers. Educated at Gibraltar, then at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, John abandoned a military career in 1838 in favour of surveying and was employed on the Trigonometrical Survey of Britain. He joined his elder brother, Gother Kerr Mann , at Sydney on 6 March 1842, arriving on board the Palestine . In October 1846 Mann was second-in-command on Ludwig Leichhardt 's second exploring expedition (aborted after eight months). The ink and pencil sketches he drew on the expedition, as well as views of Sydney in the 1840s and 1850s, are in the Dixson Library. A memoir, Eight Months with Dr. Leichhardt, in the years 1846-47 , published by Mann in 1888, revealed the extremely low opinion of Leichhardt held by many of those serving under him (including Mann). Mann’s lively ink sketch of Leichhardt in the bush with a bottle-tree in the background, however, though something of a caricature (as was, by all accounts, Leichhardt himself), is far more good-natured than the text.
Mann joined the Surveyor-General’s Department under Thomas Mitchell in March 1848. On 16 April 1857, at St Mark’s Church of England, Darling Point, he married Camilla Victoria, Mitchell’s third daughter. On 24 August 1858, Camilla’s younger sister, Blanche, wrote in her diary: 'Walked out to Milly’s… Watched John prepare his photographic apparatus, making the bath solution, which is composed of distilled water, nitrate of silver and alcohol … Thurs 6th September [1858] ... Saw John taking views with his camera. At present they are not very good owing to defective collodion, but time will improve it much’. No surviving photographs are known.
Mann resigned from permanent employment as a NSW government surveyor after Camilla’s death in childbirth in 1863 but worked on contract until the late 1870s. He continued sketching well into old age. In 1884 he went to New Guinea for the proclamation of the Australian Protectorate as a representative of the Geographical Society of Australasia, reporting on the country in the society’s Proceedings (1889 and 1894). He also published occasional articles in the Sydney press.
Mann died on 7 September 1907 at his Neutral Bay home, Carthona (named after the Mitchell home at Darling Point), and was buried in St Thomas’s Anglican Cemetery, North Sydney. He had never remarried, raising his two sons and one daughter with the aid of an English nurse. All three children survived him. His architect and planner son, Gother Victor Fyers Mann (1863-1948), later became the Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The Mann family papers are in the Mitchell Library.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 December 1819
- Summary
- Colonial era NSW sketcher, amateur photographer and surveyor. In 1846 Mann was second-in-command on Ludwig Leichhardt's second exploring expedition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Sep-07
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1907-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, lithographer, draughtsman and surveyor, was born in England. He came to Western Australia on board HMS Sterling , arriving on 14 March 1841 in the company of one of his two Western Australian uncles, Lionel Samson, a well-known Fremantle wine and spirits’ merchant. From about 1844 to 1854 he worked as a draughtsman and lithographer with the Lands and Surveys Department in Perth, visiting South Australia in 1845 46. He married Ann Butler on 10 March 1849 and they had three children.
When the government decided to sell Henry Reveley 's former house and mill in December 1851, Samson was employed to sketch the mill’s layout. Surviving views, more personal in character and motivation, include View of the Tunnel under the Round House and Whaling Jetty at Fremantle (1840s, pen, ink and wash, p.c.) and View of Fremantle from South Jetty (1840s, pencil, p.c.), the jetty being that rented by Lionel Samson from 1840 after the Fremantle Whaling Company had ceased operations. Samson also drew Sketch from Nature, the Swan River Colony (c.1842, pencil and wash, Robert Holmes á Court), Perth in 1847 (pen, ink, watercolour and gouache, AGWA) and made a pair of lithographs: Perth. Western Australia. From Mount Eliza (1852, AGWA, ML) and Fremantle, South Bay (c.1852, AGWA).
Later he moved to Melbourne and was appointed a draughtsman in the Victorian civil service on 30 October 1854. In January 1866 he was licensed as a surveyor in New South Wales. Returning to Victoria, he became chief draughtsman and surveyor at the Land Titles Office. In 1881 he was appointed Registrar of Titles at the Victorian Crown Law Office and eventually Deputy Registrar-General. Samson went back to England after he retired, where he died at the age of eighty-nine. No drawings made outside Western Australia have been identified.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1818
- Summary
- Horace Samson migrated from England and was employed as a sketcher, lithographer, draughtsman throughout his career in Western Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1907
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude55.861111 Longitude-4.25 Start Date1877-01-01 End Date1906-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glasgow, Scotland
- Biography
- The artist Hugh Ramsay was born in Glasgow on 25 May 1877, the sixth of nine children of John Ramsay and Margaret, née Thomson. The Ramsays migrated to Melbourne in 1878, settling the next year into the large family house 'Clydebank’ at Essendon in 1888. Ramsay attended the National Gallery School between 1894 and 1899, studying under the drawing master Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, who had recently been appointed head of the Gallery and Gallery School in 1892. Ramsay’s fellow students included George Coates, Dora Meeson, Violet Teague, Norman MacGeorge, Max Meldrum, George Bell, Rose MacPherson (later Preston) and Norman Carter. Between 1895 and 1899 Ramsay won numerous prizes for both his drawings and paintings; in 1898 he received first place in the categories of 'drawing from the nude’ and 'half nude painting’. He supplemented the money and tuition fees he received in prizes by teaching at his studio at 312 Flinders Street, which he rented from the arts patron Carl Pinschof from 1897. Outside his Gallery School training, Ramsay attended Emanuel Phillips Fox and Tudor St. George Tucker's summer school at Charterisville in 1897. Further, in 1898 he, Norman Carter and Harley Griffiths rented a shack in Eltham, Victoria. Seeking to venture further abroad, Ramsay submitted entries for the National Gallery of Victoria travelling scholarships of 1896 and 1899, which were awarded to Coates and Meldrum respectively. John Longstaff supported Ramsay’s determination to travel, aiding him in raising funds through the organisation of an art union in 1899. (Art unions, popular in the late nineteenth century, were lotteries designed to distribute artworks to subscribers, with the proceeds aiding artists who had works that remained unsold or were struggling financially.) In 1899, Longstaff enlisted the important art patron Baldwin Spencer to help compile a subscribers list and also to solicit contributions. With proceeds from the art union, Ramsay departed Melbourne on 14 September 1900 on the SS Persic. He was unofficially engaged to his German student Lischen Muller. On the voyage, he met George W. Lambert, who had won the inaugural NSW Travelling Scholarship. Ramsay became close friends with Lambert and his new wife Amy. After arriving in London on 11 November 1900, Ramsay visited his cousins in Scotland, staying with Mima and John Lennie. In January 1901 he reached Paris, where he moved in with J.S. MacDonald at 51 Boulevard St. Jacques in Montparnasse. This series of apartments above a soda water factory also housed the American artists Frederick Frieseke and Henry Ossawa Tanner, and from mid 1902 the Australian Ambrose Patterson. In February 1901 George and Amy Lambert moved in across the road at number 31. These artists socialised together, sharing meals and playing music, and worked together, assessing and learning from each other’s art. The men often invited other Australian expatriates to their studios, including Edward Officer, Rupert Bunny and Max Meldrum. They also used each other as models; for instance Ramsay painted Patterson in A Student of the Latin Quarter. Following the advice of Longstaff, Ramsay entered the Atelier Colarossi in February 1901, and in a few months moved to the Atelier Delecluse, along with Lambert and Patterson. In Paris, Ramsay was surrounded by art; he viewed contemporary artists in the Palais du Luxembourg and like most students, he continually visited the Louvre, studying the Old Masters, including Van Dyck, Titian, Rembrandt, Michelangelo and especially Velasquez. As his style developed, his preference for portraiture emerged. In 1901, after only three months in Paris, Ramsay had his Portrait of James S. MacDonald hung at the Old Salon. Ramsay’s talent was confirmed when in April 1902 he had four of the five works he submitted to the New Salon accepted and hung together on the line: Jeanne, Rene Puaux, Still life – books, mask and lamp and A Lady of Cleveland. Lambert had his portrait of Amy, La Guitariste accepted, whilst both Patterson and MacDonald’s works were rejected. Ramsay’s burgeoning reputation was further enhanced by his introduction to Nellie Melba by Patterson, whose brother Tom had married her sister Belle. Melba was known for supporting promising young Australians, including Patterson himself. In early 1902, Melba and Haddon Chambers visited Ramsay’s studio, and she suggested that he come to London to paint her portrait. Accordingly, Ramsay went to London, where he stayed with Longstaff at St Johns Wood. He had four works accepted for the British Colonial Art exhibition at the Royal Institute Galleries, including Lady in Blue, the portrait of Mr and Mrs MacDonald. However, in London Ramsay’s health declined; he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and so with 100 pounds from Melba he returned to Melbourne in September 1902. Melba herself soon visited Australia, and in December held an exhibition of 38 of Ramsay’s works at Myoora, the house she rented at Toorak. She also commissioned him to paint her niece and also her father, David Mitchell. However, Ramsay’s portrait of Melba herself was never completed. In 1903 Ramsay exhibited several works with the Victorian Artists Society, including his largest painting An Equestrian Portrait. Significantly, he was invited by Hall to be a judge for the 1903 National Gallery of Victoria travelling scholarship and also the student exhibition, along with Walter Withers and Girolamo Nerli. In July 1904 he was on the panel of the Victorian Artists Society exhibition, where he showed one of his best known works Two Girls in White, better known as The Sisters. With his health increasingly weak, Ramsay went to the country in August 1904, where he stayed at Barnawatha with the MacKenzie family. He ended his five year engagement with Lischen. After returning to Clydebank, at age 28, he died on 5 March 1906. Hugh Ramsay influenced many artists during his decade of active work, especially Patterson and Lambert. A memorial exhibition was held in 1918 at the Fine Art Society, Melbourne, and retrospectives were held at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1943 and then 50 years later in 1992.
Writers:
Robertson, KateNote:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 25 May 1877
- Summary
- Hugh Ramsay was one of the many Australian artists who travelled to Europe to enhance their artistic training, producing a remarkable number of works in Australia and abroad between 1894 and 1906, primarily portraits.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Mar-06
- Age at death
- 29
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1876-01-01 End Date1906-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia
- Biography
- Painter of wildflowers who was born in South Australia, the daughter of James Houston Craig (1846-1915) and Alma Janet Foster Laurie (1847-1946). She was one of four children and had flaming red hair. Her aunt married Albany Bell of the successful Western Australian teashop chain. It is probable that Craig studied art in South Australia before she came to Western Australia with her family. She joined the West Australia Society of Arts and in 1902 was listed in the catalogue of the annual exhibition held 19-31 May in the Hamburg Chambers as a 'Working Member’ and a committee member. Working members were those who had had work accepted for exhibition. Honorary members were those who joined as such or had failed to exhibit in two consecutive exhibitions. Austral Press, located at 9 Wellington Street, Perth (1902-1910) published Janie Craig’s paintings as a booklet of eight colour plates of grouped wildflowers, numbered 1-6 and 9, including a front cover of a picture of an old Aboriginal man in shirt, trousers and humpy flanked by kangaroo and emu within a frame of wildflowers. It bore the legend “The Austral Series of West Australian Wildflowers as painted from Nature by Miss Janie Craig.” In 1903 her studio was at 79 Adelaide Street, Fremantle where she taught painting. Craig left Western Australia but returned in 1905 to marry William Stanley Webster, son of William Schneider Webster, the Chief Warder at the Prison in Fremantle. They were both thirty. He was an accountant of The Terrace Fremantle. In 1906 Craig studied Art Needlework at Perth Technical School under South Australian Loui Benham. In October 1906 she gave birth to a son, Arnold Tennyson Stewart Stanley Webster. Craig died four weeks later. When the Tourist Bureau was started in Western Australia, c.1910, it obtained the rights to publish some or all of her ten paintings. Seven were in a Tourist Bureau Booklet and printed on cards. One at least was printed in England. The Government Printer also published them to attract visitors to Western Australia. There is an example in the collection of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society (No 1). On the verso is printed, “[i]ssued by Government Tourist Bureau, 62 Barrack Street, for the Tourist, advertising Holiday and Health Resorts Unlimited. Government Printer Perth “Western Australian Products that have won Universal Admiration. Westralian Wildflowers, Plaistowes Chocolates and Confectionery & Metters.”
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1876
- Summary
- Painter who was both a working member and a committee member of the West Australia Society of Arts in the early 1900s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1906
- Age at death
- 30
Details
Latitude52.5847651 Longitude-2.127567 Start Date1852-01-01 End Date1906-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wolverhampton, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and scene-painter, exhibited paintings in the 1870s and 1880s.
William Alfred Clarson, son of William Clarson and his first wife Sarah nee Barratt, was born at Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England in 1852. Although named William after his father and grandfather, he was called Alfred by his family, and styled himself W.A. Clarson apparently to distinguish himself from his father, whose name was also William.
Alfred arrived at Port Phillip, Australia from London as an infant with his parents on the “Caroline Chisholm” in May 1853 (source: Index to Unassisted Inward Passenger Lists to Victoria 1852-1923,http://proarchives.imagineering.com.au/index_search.asp?searchid=23). His mother died from dysentery in March 1854 (source: Victorian death certificate), and his father married Caroline Stabback in July 1855 (source: Victorian marriage certificate).
Alfred joined Clarson, Massina & Co, a printing firm part-owned by his father, in 1867 when he was 15 years old (source: “First Ninety Years, the printing house of Massina”, by Ronald G Campbell (Ronald Grayson or Rex Grayson, his pen name), Melbourne, 1949).
When he was just 20 years old, Alfred accompanied a scientific expedition to Cape Sidmouth (far north Queensland) in 1871 to observe a total eclipse of the sun, organised by the Government Astronomers for Victoria and NSW (source: The Brisbane Courier, 21 Dec 1871, page 2).
At the 1872 Victorian Exhibition: Water-Colour Drawings, &c. – Clarson, W.A., 72 Little Collins Street east – no.42 'Eastern End of Dandenong Ranges’.
After a scandalous court case involving his step-mother and Dr John Blair in Melbourne during 1872, the Clarson family left for England, and did not return to Melbourne until 1877 (source: “The Argus” newspaper, February and March 1872). While in England, Alfred visited his father’s relations in Tamworth, Staffordshire (source: family knowledge).
Sydney International Exhibition, Garden Palace, 1879-80: NSW Court – Oils – Clarson, W.A., artist, Pitt-street – no.48 Still Life. “Mr W.A. Clarson’s picture of 'Still Life’ is really very good. ... thoughtfully and cleverly painted ( Sydney Mail 10 January 1880, 69).
He exhibited with the [Royal] Art Society of NSW in 1881.
The Brisbane Courier of 19 January 1881, page 3, reported that “Mr Alfred Clarson, artist for the Illustrated Sydney News, and son of Mr William Clarson, the well-known printer of Melbourne” who had been reported as missing while on a trip to Queensland three or four months previously, had been found safe and well. He had been marooned on Russell Island. “During his enforced stay Mr Alfred Clarson took a large number of sketches on the island, which will no doubt be published in due course”.
Alfred foolishly married two women within two weeks at Sydney in December 1881 (source: NSW marriage certificates). He then took up a teaching post on Lord Howe Island with his first wife and was arrested there in April 1882 for bigamy (source: Thomas Bryant Wilson, – Diary written at Lord Howe Island, 1882, online at http://image.sl.nsw.gov.au/Ebind/safe1_10/a1158/a1158169.html). Alfred was photographed while at Darlinghurst Gaol in May 1882, and the file provides a physical description, ie he was 5’ 8” tall, weighed 134 pounds, had brown hair and blue eyes (source: Index to Goal Photographs, http://srwww.records.nsw.gov.au/indexes/keyname_search.asp). Following his conviction in May 1882 Alfred was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment with hard labour on the roads, and was transferred to Berrima Gaol on 30 June. After serving his sentence, and being divorced by his first wife Martha (nee Payne) (source: Index to Divorces, http://srwww.records.nsw.gov.au/indexes/keyname_search.asp), Alfred married Susan Parkinson again in 1886. Their two sons Arthur and Sidney were born in 1882 and 1887 (source: NSW marriage and birth certificates).
Alfred was an artist, using the name W A Clarson. The National Library of Australia, Canberra holds a coloured lithograph entitled “Brisbane, 1888” (source: http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/). This lithograph was offered for sale on the Internet in 2001 for $6,000. It was described as:
“Signed and dated in the plate lower left 'W.A. Clarson 1888’. Pale foxing, very good condition. Rare. The first Brisbane panorama of this style and one of the finest printed colonial images ofBrisbane. Drawn (apparently from a balloon above Brisbane) by William Clarson who was the first Secretary of the Art Society of New South Wales. … Susanna Evans ('Historic Brisbane and Its Early Artists’, 1981, pp. 112-3) gives a detailed account of the content of the image, identifying many of the buildings.“
Evans says “W Clarson was the first secretary of the Art Society of NSW when Julian Ashton was the Society’s President. He specialised in the highly-detailed 'balloon’s eye’ panoramas, and was also the author and illustrator of a work on Colonial horticulture, entitled 'The Flower Garden and Shrubbery’, published in Sydney in 1885” [actually this was most likely Alfred’s father’s publication, as his father was a horticulturalist and journalist as well as a printer]. Evans continues: “His life was otherwise uneventful and little was written about him. There appears to be no reference in any contemporary newspapers or letters as to how he achieved the accuracy of an aerial photograph for his lithographed drawing, which presents a fascinating survey of Brisbane’s urban development up to this period. Suggestions have been made that he hovered above Brisbane in a hot-air balloon. However had this happened the 'Supplement to the Illustrated Sydney News’ of 30th August 1888, in which this appeared as a lithograph, would have undoubtedly accompanied the picture with a printed story of such a sensational event. and no such story appeared with it … It is more likely that he climbed the bell-tower of St John’s Pro-Cathedral to obtain this view.”
The National Library of Australia, Canberra also holds the following paintings by Alfred, which are all described as “drawn on stone by W. Clarsen [sic] from paintings by J.C. Hoyte”, circa 1880s (source: http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/):
View from Gladesville
View from Berry’s Bay
Iron Cove
Parramatta River & Lane Cove
View from Ball’s Head
View from Biloela
Lane Cove River.
According to the catalogue of the Art Society of New South Wales Exhibition in October 1881, Alfred exhibited the following: “Still life study”, “Waratah coal pit near Newcastle”, and “Old humpy, Carragalla, Moreton Bay” (source: Catalogue in NLA, http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/).
Alfred Clarson’s death was registered in Queensland in 1906 “aged about 57 years” (in fact he was 54), parents not named (source: Queensland Government index to births, deaths and marriages,https://www.bdm.qld.gov.au/IndexSearch/BirIndexQry.m). He was survived by his son Sidney Clarson, who was also an artist.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1852
- Summary
- Painter and scene-painter, resident of Melbourne, Victoria, he exhibited paintings in the 1870s and 1880s. First Secretary of the Art Society of New South Wales, 1880.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1906
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1849-01-01 End Date1906-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, elder daughter of James Manning and Jane, née Yeldham, was born in England shortly before her family came to Western Australia in 1850. A sister of James Manning junior , in 1868-69 the youthful Miss Manning was proprietor of the Yeldham Photographic Gallery at Cantonment Road, Fremantle, while her brother was a travelling rural photographer. (Her studio was obviously named after their mother’s family and perhaps Jane senior was also involved in it.) Although she presumably worked with James Manning afterwards, Miss Manning was never again professionally listed as a photographer. Later she married William Raine; they had one daughter, born at Melbourne (Vic.) in 1888.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1849
- Summary
- Female colonial photographer who briefly owned a photographic business. Afterwards she worked with her brother and without professional recognition, until she got married.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1906
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1906-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Van Diemens Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- watercolourist, was born in Tasmania, third daughter of John Dobson and first daughter of his second wife Kate, née Willis. She painted a still-life of flowers, fruit and berries on 4 March 1858 (Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania. Hobart). Ten years later, she married George Patten Adams, Registrar of the Supreme Court of Tasmania.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1843
- Summary
- Was born in Tasmania and married George Patten Adams, Registrar of the Supreme Court of Tasmania. Dobson is famous for a still-life watercolour.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1906
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude53.55 Longitude10 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1906-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamburg, Germany
- Biography
- lithographer and printer, was born in Hamburg, Germany, son of Carl Auguste Trüdel, a lithographer, and Maria, née Buck.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1835
- Summary
- Described in his obituary as 'leading exponent of the lithographic branch of the printing trade', Troedel, founder of the legacy of what eventually became the long lasting firm Troedel & Cooper, collaborated with many notable individuals such as Nicholas Chevalier and Arthur Streeton to produce high quality chromolithographs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1906
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude53.5227681 Longitude-1.1335312 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1906-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, medical practitioner, journalist, critic and poet, was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, son of James Neild and Sarah, née Bilton. He was educated in a large private school at Leeds run by a liberal principal, Richard Hiley. The art teacher, Richard Lucas, gave him a thorough grounding in the elements of drawing, both in technique and theory, which 'inspired him with a love of the beautiful’ and a desire to 'make art of some kind the business of his life’. To oblige his mother, however, he adopted medicine as a career and the next eleven years were spent in training and general practice.
After migrating to Melbourne in 1853, Neild worked on the goldfields for a time before joining the chemist D.R. Long . In 1855 he began writing for several Melbourne journals under various pseudonyms. As 'Christopher Sly’, he wrote reviews in the Examiner and Melbourne Weekly News . As 'I’, he wrote dramatic, musical, literary and artistic criticism for My Note Book , which he is said to have edited for a time. He also wrote for the Argus and at one stage appears to have been simultaneously contributing articles to five newspapers, one of them French. His reviews were mostly written in the first person singular, an original style that distinguishes him from his colleagues.
Often satirical and almost always outspoken, Neild made many enemies. One such case in July 1858, involving the showman and magician 'Professor’ Anderson who styled himself 'The Wizard of the North’, resulted in a leading article in the Argus and in the Wizard publicly attacking Neild in the dress circle of the Theatre Royal. The incident became the subject of a cartoon in My Note Book , which depicted Christopher Sly, quill on one side and mortar and pestle on the other, being dismembered by the sword-wielding and armour-clad Wizard. Soon afterwards, the visiting German violinist Miska Hauser wrote that Neild fought a duel with a lover of the performer Lola Montez after reviewing her notorious 'Spider-dance’ unfavourably; he was wounded in the left arm.
An adherent of Ruskinian naturalism, Neild always favoured an independent Australian school of painting over mere imitation of foreign styles, encouraging readers to approach differences in the Australian landscape without prejudice and calling on artists and writers to put behind them irrelevant traditions of the Old World. He was the first to criticise (many years before his contemporary, James Smith) the work of von Gué rard for 'photographic exactness’ at the expense of poetic feeling, while almost single-handedly he made the career of the now little-known watercolourist Henry Davies , whom he called a 'poet-painter’: 'Skies, trees, rocks and cataracts, he scatters upon the paper with a force and an intensity which prove the active workings of his imagination; his sunsets tell a story and his clouds are a poem; a tree of his reveals a history and each dark fissure in the mountain is suggestive of caverns full of mystery’.
On the other hand, Neild could be scathing about artists he thought should be nowhere near a canvas and expressed himself vividly. For instance, he once wrote almost an entire review using culinary ingredients to describe palettes: 'no. 12, “Valley of the El Dorado” by J. Murphy [q.v.] ... has made ingenious use of pickled cabbage, burnt crust and yolk of egg’. His victims included William Dexter , George Peacock and Eleanor Davitt . Frequently his own poetry, much of it comical, was published in journals alongside his prose.
In 1857 Neild married Susannah, daughter of his pharmacy partner Daniel Long. Between 1865 and 1890 he contributed articles to the Australasian , the Herald and its off-shoot Bell’s Life , the Weekly Review and the Victorian under the pseudonyms 'The Grumbler’, 'Jaques’, 'Tahite’ and 'Cleofas’. Concurrently with his literary career he established himself as a forensic specialist, lecturing at the University of Melbourne from 1865 to 1904 while also participating in the medical and cultural communities of Melbourne. An important member of the Melbourne bohemian clique that included Marcus Clarke, Henry Kendall, R.H. 'Orion’ Horne and others, he frequently entertained actors, artists and writers at his home in Spring Street on Sunday afternoons. Described by Gandevia as 'keen-eyed and beetle-browed’, with an alert look 'suggestive of a terrier saying “who said cats?”’, Neild died on 17 August 1906 survived by his wife and nine children.
When attending the theatre, Neild made pencil sketches in the margins of his libretto books: La Traviata (1859), I Puritani (1864), L’Africaine and Roberto il Diavolo (1866), and The Bohemian Girl (1867) are privately owned. His libretto from Garnet Walch’s 1873 pantomime Australia Felix (Moir Collection, SLV), which he reviewed for the Australasian , contains a few rough sketches of the scenery and costumes, including the costume of Mirth (played by Lydia Howard en travestie in short jerkin, trunks and tights), which he thought 'pretty elegant dress’. Otherwise he was a weekend sketcher, mainly drawing places around Melbourne. One of his sketchbooks was sold at auction in Melbourne in 1971. His album of 179 cartes-de-visites collected between 1862 and 1883 (LT) includes photographs of litt?rateur Caroline Dexter and fellow-critic James Smith. A medallion profile portrait of Neild by Charles Summers is held by the Australian Medical Association.
Writers:
Bruce, Candice
corinnefs
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1824
- Summary
- Neild was mainly a weekend sketcher whose sketchbooks predominantly included drawings of places around Melbourne. He is most renowned as a journalist and critic writing under various pseudonyms.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Aug-06
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1906-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, diarist and naval officer, was born in London on 26 May 1819, son of John Augustus Francis Simpkinson (later Sir Francis Simpkinson QC), barrister and sometime treasurer of Lincoln’s Inn, and Mary, née Griffin, a sister of Jane Franklin, second wife of Sir John Franklin, governor of Van Diemen’s Land.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 May 1819
- Summary
- Francis Guillemard Simpkinson was a painter, diarist and naval officer. In 1845 at the Hobart Town Art Exhibition, (the first major fine arts exhibition in any of the Australian colonies), Simpkinson showed one watercolour.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Dec-06
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude50.6642063 Longitude-4.7526181 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1906-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tintagel, Cornwall, England, UK
- Biography
- oil painter and dressmaker, was born on 30 December, 1817 at Tintagel, Cornwall.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 30 December 1817
- Summary
- Oil painter and dressmaker, arrived in Sydney 1840 and ran a dressmaking/tailoring business with her husband in various NSW locations. She painted portraits in oils.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 20-Jun-06
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1906-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK, UK?
- Biography
- painter, was a sister of Benjamin Travers Solly , who said of her in a family paper written in 1856 that 'her chief talent is in drawing’. A number of her watercolour paintings are in the possession of descendants of her brother. Benjamin also referred to a sister 'evidencing considerable talent as an Artist in oils’ and an oil painting St Francis , lent by her brother to the Hobart Town Art-Treasures exhibitions of 1858 and 1862 as the work of Miss Solly, is attributed to Amelia though two other sisters also painted. Amelia died on 26 July 1906, aged ninety-five, and is buried in the Cornelian Bay Cemetery outside Hobart.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1811
- Summary
- Late 19th century Tasmanian artist, working in oils, watercolour and drawing. Sister to Benjamin Travers Solly.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26-Jul-06
- Age at death
- 95
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, naval officer and politician, was born on 7 November 1846, son of Francis John Savile Foljambe, third Earl of Liverpool, and Selina Charlotte, Viscountess Milton. He served as lieutenant under Sir William Saltonstall Wiseman on HMS Curaçoa when the ship was in the Pacific in 1864-67. His Three Years on the Australian Station (privately published, London 1868) has a preface by his mother, who wrote: 'In order to obtain a small fund towards purchasing an organ for St John’s Church at Worksop, I have allowed some copies of my son’s Log, or Diary in Australia and New Zealand, &c. to be sold, as I venture to hope that there are some in this neighbourhood [Osberton] who, from their acquaintance with him and his family, will readily purchase it, and may derive some pleasure in reading the perils and adventures he met with as well as in possessing his maps and drawings’.
The book contains six full-page plates after Foljambe’s drawings, among them Sydney Harbour. Homeward Bound which depicts the Curaçoa about to leave Port Jackson on the afternoon of 24 August 1867 when, wrote Foljambe, they departed 'in fine style for a “Homeward Bounder”, amidst Cheers from everybody, crowds assembled on every Battery, and every point to see us go, and the harbour was covered with boats of all sizes’. A number of Foljambe’s vignettes were re-used as illustrations to Julius L. Brenchley’s Jottings during the Cruise of H.M.S. Curaçoa among the South Sea Islands in 1865 (London 1873), while sketches sent back from New Zealand were engraved in 1866 for the Illustrated London News . The Mitchell Library holds his small booklet, bound in linen with an ink profile drawing of Curaçoa on the cover, full of pencil, watercolour and ink sketches of naval signals. Mostly coloured thirty-eight pages of signals in use in Australia and New Zealand are included.
On 22 July 1869 Foljambe married Louisa Blanche Howard; they had two sons before she died in 1871. Susan Louisa Cavendish became his second wife in 1877 and there were five children of this marriage. Foljambe represented North Nottinghamshire in the British Parliament in 1880-85 and Nottinghamshire (Mansfield Division) in 1885-92. The following year he was created Baron Hawkesbury of Haselbech, County of Nottingham. He was lord-in-waiting to the Queen until 1895.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 November 1846
- Summary
- A naval officer who served in the Pacific 1864-1867 and published an account of the perils and adventures he faced complete with maps and drawings. He was later made a Baron and served as lord-in-waiting to Queen Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1905
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, UK
- Biography
- Henry Rielly was born in Clerkenwell, London in 1845, the son of John Rielly, a builder/architect, and Sarah Hinson (née Beverly). He came to Australia with his family at age seven but nothing is known of his early training or experiences. It is likely that Rielly was a foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts which was instituted in 1870 by Melbourne artists to promote their work as he exhibited oils and watercolours there between 1870 and 1895. Rielly was on the Council of the Academy 1875-84. He is recorded as living on Eastbourne Street, Windsor, with his sister Isabella (Isa) between 1870-84. Rielly also contributed to the display at the Melbourne Exhibition Building in 1872 (which was exhibited in London the following year), the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1874 and 1876, the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879, and the Calcutta Exhibition in 1883-84. He later exhibited with the Queensland Art Society between 1892 and 1902 and acted as a Council member in 1894.
Rielly had two sisters who were also artists. Louisa (c.1843-1929) married Oliver Dyson Aplin (c.1822-79) in Victoria in 1871 and came to live in Queensland around that time. Her husband and Dr John Pearce Lane (1815-1903) established the Severn River Tin Mining Company which was one of the earliest and longest running mining ventures in the Stanthorpe area of south-eastern Queensland. (The township of Glen Aplin is named after him.)
Isa (c.1855-96) appears to be the more significant artist of the two sisters as a substantial oil painting by her, Water-fall at Mount Macedon 1880, is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria. She moved to Stanthorpe c.1884 and married the local doctor James Waldengrave Lane (c.1855-1942) at Warwick in 1888. Henry Rielly probably came to Queensland with her as both Henry and Isa gave their address as Queensland when they exhibited at the Victorian Academy of Arts from 1885. The magazine Once a month, dated 15 March 1885, reported that Henry and Isa had received medals at a Queensland exhibition (the exhibition was probably that held by the Stanthorpe Agricultural Society which was established in 1875). According to an article in the Border Post dated 8 July 1887, examples of Henry Rielly’s watercolours, the subjects of which included the local landscape features Red Rock and Two Brothers, were on view in the window of Mr Barton’s shop that same month. In 1888 Rielly sent a landscape painting of Ballandean, a settlement just outside Stanthorpe, to the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition. Rielly was certainly painting in Brisbane by 1887 as a painting in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection Enoggera Water Reserve is so dated. It is surprising, then, that the first time Rielly exhibited in the Queensland Art Society was as late as 1892 with a painting titled Kelvin Grove (now an inner suburb of Brisbane).
It is thought Rielly may have suffered from tuberculosis and moved to Stanthorpe because of his health, as according to Jean Harslett of the Stanthorpe and District Historical Society, the town was known as 'the sanatorium of Queensland’. Henry Rielly moved to Brisbane in 1904 because his health had deteriorated further and he died there on 7 April 1905 aged 60 years. Like the other members of his family, Rielly was buried in Stanthorpe.
In the years that Rielly exhibited at the Queensland Art Society there were three works which were valued at the (then) considerable amount of 52 pounds 10 shillings each: Ghost Gully evening (1894), By channels of coolness … (1896) and Purple, green and gold-at the foot of the Stirling Hill (1897). These works would be amongst his most substantial productions in Queensland.
However, it has not proved possible to locate a description of Ghost Gully evening in contemporary reviews. This work, together with oil paintings by Isaac Walter Jenner I (such as The towing away of the old 'Dreadnought £105 pounds) and Godfrey Rivers ( Brisbane from Bowen Terrace £80), were the highest priced paintings in the 1894 exhibition. It is clear Rielly thought highly of this painting as he presented it to the nascent Queensland Art Gallery in 1897.
In his book Images in opposition: Australian landscape painting 1801-1890 , Tim Bonyhady discusses Rielly’s work in terms of the “melancholy landscape”, a term used by the author Marcus Clarke between the late 1860s and mid 1870s to characterise the Australian bush. Clarke’s writings on the melancholic were widely distributed during the nineteenth century. In reference to painters such as H.J. Johnstone, J.W. Curtis and Rielly, Bonyhady writes,
“Whether these artists were influenced by Clarke in their perception of the landscape is not conveniently documented, but their paintings sometimes appear almost as illustrations to Clarke’s ideas.” These artists offer an alternative view of Australia to Louis Buvelot’s sun-filled landscapes and also provide a link between contemporary literature and art. Bonyhady, quite fairly, places these three artists in the second rank of colonial artists but Rielly’s importance in the considerably less advanced artistic environment of Queensland took on an added significance.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1845
- Summary
- Henry Rielly established his career and reputation in Victoria but his work took on an added signficiance when he came to live in regional Queensland and began to exhibit in the Queensland Art Society.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Apr-05
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude52.3744779 Longitude9.7385532 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hanover, Germany
- Biography
- professional photographer, jeweller, publican and farmer, was born of German parents in London on 29 December 1838. At the age of ten he came to South Australia with his father, Christian Ernest Moser, his mother having died while Herman was still a baby. They settled in Hindley Street, Adelaide, where Christian Moser established himself in business as a goldsmith. In the 1850s they returned to Germany, but Herman soon came back to Australia, choosing Victoria, obviously because of the discovery of gold, and establishing himself as a jeweller at Clunes, near Ballarat. On 18 October 1859 he married Jane Gill of Melbourne, giving his occupation on his son’s birth certificate the following year as hotelkeeper of the Burnt Bridge Hotel, Bunninyong. He was both a jeweller and publican at Clunes when his second son was born in 1864. In 1867 the family were living at nearby Creswick and Herman had opened a photographic studio. This quickly built up an excellent reputation.
In 1866 Moser was chosen by the Creswick shire and borough councils to photograph local views to be exhibited at Ballarat, then at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition; they were then sent on to the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition. After this success Moser was appointed official photographer for the Ballarat leg of the Duke of Edinburgh’s 1867 68 Australian tour. By then he was maintaining two portrait studios, one at Creswick and one at Daylesford (open Saturdays and Mondays only). After the royal tour he renamed his Daylesford premises in Burke Square the Royal Alfred Studio. He moved to Daylesford about 1871 and continued to take views for local councils throughout the district. In 1873 his photographs were shown at the Vienna Universal Exhibition. Sets of photographs he took for the Daylesford and Mount Franklin shire councils to send to the 1873 London International Exhibition were each awarded a gold medal.
Jane Moser had given birth to seven children before she died on 7 February 1873. After his remarriage later that year, to 17-year-old Elizabeth White, Moser’s family continued to grow. Altogether he had twenty or twenty-one children. Probably because of the need to support such a large family (at least fifteen children appear to have survived infancy), Moser turned to farming, an appropriate way of employing such a plentiful labour force. The last time his photographic studio at Daylesford is mentioned in council rate books is 1876. Soon afterwards the family moved to Echuca, then to a sheep station near Deniliquin, New South Wales. With the move to the land Moser seems to have abandoned professional photography; the photographer J.C. Moser who was working in the Deniliquin area in 1880-84 must have been a son.
The dairy and sheep property Moser ran for some years on Coobool Island in the Riverina, not far from Swan Hill, appears to have been a success. Shortly before his death he leased Coobool and purchased an orchard at Tyntynder South, naming this property Winterfold. Moser died at Tyntynder from tetanus following an accident to his hand on 31 August 1905. His obituary stated that he had been 'a man of straight and clean character, ever a true friend and generous opponent, large and warm-hearted and totally without guile … Genial and hearty to a degree, he was held in the highest esteem by a very large circle of friends’.
Writers:
Bruce, Candice
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 December 1838
- Summary
- Professional photographer, jeweller, publican and farmer worked in NSW and Victoria. Moser died at Tyntynder from tetanus following an accident to his hand on 31 August 1905.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31-Aug-05
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude52.666667 Longitude1 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Norfolk, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, watchmaker and jeweller, was born in London, third child and second son of Henry Norman and his first wife, Harriet. He came to Mount Gambier, South Australia, with his family in the 1850s and subsequently went into his father’s watchmaking, jewellery and photography business. In 1864 he manned the family photographic studio in partnership with his brother Abraham , becoming sole proprietor in 1865-70. Then his sister Harriet took over and William resumed work as a watchmaker and jeweller. He lived at Naracoorte, Mount Gambier, until his death on 6 July 1905.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1837
- Summary
- A photographer, watchmaker, jeweller, flour miller and sawyer who worked in his father's business in Portland and Hamilton in Victoria and later in Mount Gambier in South Australia from about 1860 until he moved to Naracoorte. He was a photographer in Naracoorte from at least 1878 until his death in 1905.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Jul-05
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, illuminator, photographer, lithographer, carver, printer and stationery manufacturer, was born in Dublin, son of Ninian Niven and Agnes, née Gray, both Scots. Despite a good education in Dublin he ran away to sea at the age of 13, partly because of an unkind stepmother, he later claimed. He remained a sailor for five years and was promoted chief mate. In his leisure hours he made models of ships and on one voyage to Calcutta provided illustrations to sea stories told by some elderly whalers on board. He came to Melbourne in search of gold in 1852 and spent seven years at the Ballarat diggings during which time he married and began a family. Having had only limited financial success on the goldfields, Niven purchased a lithographic press from Alfred Ronalds for £40 – said to be the first such press in Victoria. Having no practical knowledge of printing, he taught himself from books. His first commercial productions were billheads, which he drew and printed himself. In 1855 this neophyte lithographer is said to have produced the first issues of Ballarat Punch (unlocated) on this crude press. (The second series of 1857-70, of which he was proprietor, had more sophisticated equipment.)
Aware of his own deficiencies, Niven apprenticed himself c.1862 to the Ballarat lithographer Herman Deutsch , but according to his biography in the Cyclopedia of Victoria (a book published by Niven) soon found that Deutsch knew even less of lithography than he did. Niven was responsible for designing and putting on stone a popular lithograph of the Welcome Nugget and a view of the place where it was discovered. Hundreds of copies were sold at a shilling each to Deutsch’s rather than Niven’s advantage, he stated. Purchasing the business from Deutsch in 1863, he subsequently published numerous views of gold claims and their underground workings. The large range of modern machinery he imported, including the first steam lithographic press in the colony (in 1873), contributed greatly to the firm’s immense success.
Some idea of the range of services Niven provided may be gathered from two advertisements published in his Ballarat District Directory for 1882. One offered 'Chromo Views of Ballarat, Mining Views, maps, plans etc. on sale, coloured ground plans for land sales, views of villas &c., lithographed with neatness and despatch’, while the other reads: 'F.W. Niven, mining and general stationer, bookbinding &c., complimentary addresses tastefully executed (a variety of hand painted borders to choose from)’. By 1900 the business was so extensive that a branch office was opened in Melbourne. The extent of Niven’s involvement in the production of the original art work cannot be estimated, for he naturally employed a large number of artists and engravers such as Edward Gilks and engaged in a great variety of work.
The firm illuminated the address delivered at the opening of the 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition by the governor of Victoria, John Manners-Sutton: the 'body was in French round-hand, the address in an illuminated ornamented heading, and the whole was surrounded by an illuminated mosaic border’. Niven’s 'very neat and generally admired design’ was chosen for the award certificates at the 1878 Ballarat Juvenile Industries Exhibition and his firm printed the catalogues. Niven was one of the judges for 'Illuminating, ornamental penmanship and pen and ink sketches’ (with L.S. Christie ) and donated a special prize of £1 for the 'cleanest and best work printing from either type or stone’ in the printing, lithography and engraving section. At the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition F.W. Niven of Hunt Street, Ballarat, showed frames of lithographs, both frames and prints apparently being his own handiwork, together with two statuettes Rembrandt and Musidor .
For a time he was president of the Ballarat Amateur Photographic Society and his knowledge of photography helped him develop, with his employee Henry Crisp , the Crisp Photo Process of chromolithography (or 'Nature-printing’). The firm sometimes produced original photographs in their publications; an original photograph of Richard H. Hart by F.W. Niven & Co. forms the frontispiece to a memoir of Hart, Assiduity , published by Niven in 1886. He was also president of the Ballarat Chamber of Commerce and a member of the local Art Gallery committee. Late in life he appointed his eldest son, H.N. Niven, partner and manager of the firm. F.W. Niven died in Melbourne on 3 December 1905.
Niven is said by the Museum of Victoria to have designed the certificate for the Australian Natives Association. MoV has copy (no. 90 789).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1831
- Summary
- A sketcher, photographer, lithographer, carver, printer and stationary manufacturer. Upon arriving in Ballarat, Niven purchased a lithographic press from Alfred Ronalds for £40 - said to be the first such press in Victoria. Despite having no practical knowledge of printing, he taught himself from books and his business went on to enjoy great commercial success.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Dec-05
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude52.5959832 Longitude-1.8693023 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Little Aston, Staffordshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, was born at Little Aston, Staffordshire, the son of William Leigh, a wealthy convert to Roman Catholicism who had acquired a large parcel of land in Adelaide as a speculative venture in 1837, part of which he gave first to the Anglican then, after his conversion, to the Catholic Church (c.1845). Leigh senior also invested in mining ventures in South Australia (copper) and South Africa. Young William – 'Willy’ his father called him – had been ordered to take a restorative sea voyage in 1852, so Leigh senior sent him to Australasia accompanied by the steward from his Woodchester (Gloucestershire) estate, Edward Peake . William Leigh junior’s first known Australian sketch was made while passing Kangaroo Island, South Australia, on 9 October 1852 – the site of dreary incarceration for W.H. Leigh , an earlier visiting sketcher who appears to have been no relation. It was subsequently to prove almost fatal for his namesake. Returning to South Australia from Melbourne with Peake at the end of November 1853 on board the coastal steamer Osmanli , the ship was wrecked on the rocks off the island but all passengers and crew were landed safely and soon rescued. Leigh and Peake recuperated with Bishop Francis Murphy, with whom they had stayed on their former brief visit. Murphy wrote to Leigh senior of William’s 'providential escape’, noting that he was indeed 'wonderfully improved in his looks since he came from New Zealand’.
Leigh’s colonial itinerary can be traced through his watercolour drawings. Altogether he spent about eighteen months in Australasia, mainly South Australia where he drew dozens of views, including Residence of the Rt. Revd. Dr Murphy Adelaide Nov.20 1852 (the proposed cathedral on his father’s land having not yet proceeded beyond the foundations) and Lunatic Asylum Adelaide Dec 16/53 . River Onkaparinga Nr Clarendon Jany 27/54 , Adelaide from the Lead Mine Glen Osmond Dec 26/53 , Kapunda Mine Jany 22/54 and Burra Burra Mine (8 December 1852 and 21 January 1854) obviously related to his father’s mining interests. In New South Wales, another major stop where his father had advised various members of the Catholic hierarchy of his son’s coming, the places William depicted include Lyndhurst [Catholic] College from Balmain, Oct 19/53 , The High Altar St Marie’s [St Mary’s Cathedral] Sydney, Oct 17/53 , Near Denham Court Campbell Town Road, Oct 1/53 and View from My Bedroom Window. Horbury Terrace Sydney. March 14/53 . He also visited Queensland and drew views of properties and places near Brisbane: Woogaroo nr Brisbane M.B. the Residence of S. Simpson Esq. Aug 12/53 and Sheep Station on the Bremer, Novr 10.1852 . He went to the Victorian goldfields ( Melbourne from the Road to Sandridge, Nov 22/53 ) and to Wellington and Akaroa, New Zealand. Returning to England at the end of 1854 via Cape Town, he sketched the South African mines.
Three of Leigh’s sketchbooks are in the Mitchell Library, while sketchbooks in the National Museum at Wellington and in the Canterbury (NZ) Museum record his New Zealand travels. Another album of watercolours of the voyage (private collection, Cape Town) contains a view of the interior of his cabin in the Australia together with mainly South African sketches. Althoughhe was extremely prolific his drawings are rather pedestrian, conventionally picturesque in both style and subject. There are no large figures or incidents of the kind his namesake had earlier depicted with such gross exuberance. This Leigh’s major interests were landscape and architecture. For instance, his Interior of Legislative Council Chamber Sydney, Nov 9/53 contains no politicians. Neither views nor buildings are rendered with any expertise and the few botanical drawings are merely rough souvenirs. Nevertheless, Leigh’s geographical range, catholic (and Roman Catholic) tastes and prodigious output have left a competent and generally reliable visual record of numerous Australian places, many not otherwise recorded. His father must surely have been pleased with his diligence, as with his improved health. Young Willy lived on for over fifty years.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1829
- Summary
- Sketcher and watercolourist who spent about eighteen months in Australasia from 1852. Three of his sketchbooks are in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-May-05
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude39.9527237 Longitude-75.1635262 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
- Biography
- landscape and scene-painter and actor, was born on 2 February 1829 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, son of Joseph Jefferson, an actor, and Cornelia, née Thomas, a French refugee actress from Santo Domingo, West Indies. Joseph was only four years old when he made his stage debut. When his father died in 1842 he was obliged to support his mother, and he pursued a career in the theatre throughout the United States and Europe, working both as an actor and assistant scene-painter. In 1850 he married Margaret Clements Lockyer; in March 1861 she died, leaving him with four children. Jefferson put the three youngest into boarding-school, and in November he and his elder son set out for Australia.
On 7 January 1862 they arrived at Sydney aboard the Nimrod from San Francisco. As part of a short theatrical season in Sydney Joseph Jefferson appeared for the impresario W.S. Lyster in The Octoroon , for which the scenery was prepared from Jefferson’s own Mississippi sketches. Jefferson then moved to Melbourne, and this became his base for almost three years. His first stage appearance was at the Princess Theatre, but later he changed to the new Haymarket. He was extremely popular in a variety of comic and occasionally serious roles, the general favourite being Rip Van Winkle. He performed in the provincial centres of Ballarat, Bendigo and Castlemaine and travelled widely in Victoria as a tourist, even venturing up to the Murray River. In 1863 he had a season in Adelaide. The following year he performed in New Zealand and twice toured Tasmania. He left for Britain early in 1865. In Chicago (USA) in December 1867 he married Sarah Warren of the McVicker’s Theatre. After a most successful acting career in Britain and the United States, he died at Palm Beach, Florida, on 23 April 1905.
Jefferson’s father and paternal grandfather had both been scene-painters and it seems that this influence and his own early work as a scene-painter stimulated his interest in easel painting. Predominantly a landscape painter, he was heavily influenced by the Barbizon School, especially Corot and Daubigny. Being inhibited by his lack of formal training, he rarely painted human figures or animals. He owned a large collection of paintings, mainly nineteenth-century Dutch and French works, although Reynolds and Gainsborough were also represented. His own paintings were shown at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1868 and at the National Academy, Washington DC, in 1890. In 1899, and again in 1900, he exhibited with the Fisher Gallery, Washington DC.
Jefferson does not seem to have exhibited while living in Australia but some of his paintings were subsequently shown in the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition. The collector Dr John Blair lent a watercolour, Scene in Victoria , the bookseller J.W. Hines lent 'seven Funny Sketches’ in one frame and other drawings were stated in the catalogue to have been lent (as well as drawn) by 'J. Jefferson’. In 1875 two of Jefferson’s watercolours of Tasmanian scenery were shown by Dr Blair in the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition Preparatory to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, and Jefferson’s exhibitions at the Fisher Gallery included at least one painting with an Australian subject. The H. Hobill Cole Collection, auctioned in 1923, included his South Head, Sydney .
Jefferson was described by the Melbourne critic James Smith as 'slight and consumptive, with a small, sharp eager face, one of the most unassuming men, charming companions and most finished comedians I ever met with’. Smith added that he was 'fond of hunting, fishing and sketching’. John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Jefferson is in the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC.
Writers:
Watson, Michael J.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 February 1829
- Summary
- Joseph Jefferson was a landscape and scene-painter and an actor. He was born in 1829 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Jefferson made his stage debut when he was only four years old. He came to Sydney in 1862 with his elder son. Jefferson performed in Melbourne, Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Tasmania and New Zealand. In 1869 his works were shown at the Melbourne Public Library Exhibition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Apr-05
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude47.31874 Longitude7.6698284 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Solothurn, Switzerland
- Biography
- wood engraver, was a native of Solothurn, Switzerland who came to Victoria about 1855. Details of his early career are unknown, but at least by 1861 he appears to have been employed as a wood-engraver by Frederick Grosse at 62 Collins Street East, Melbourne. A patent for printing line drawings by a technique called Bismuthography was granted to Frederick Grosse and Rudolph Jenny on 16 February that year. Jenny succeeded to Grosse’s business following the latter’s appointment to the Government Printing Office in June 1868.
Jenny engraved for most of the illustrated periodicals published in Melbourne as well as illustrating several books. He also engraved cartoons (many after Thomas Carrington ) for Melbourne Punch and Tasmanian Punch , including the lithographic cover used on the latter from 1/4 (25 August 1877) and reused by Craig (1980) as the cover of his history. Jenny received awards for his wood engravings at the 1880 and 1888 Melbourne International Exhibitions. Although admitted to membership of the Victorian Artists’ Society in November 1888, he never exhibited there and resigned in January 1899. Apart from his reputation as a reproductive wood-engraver, Jenny is best known for a series of fine engravings of Melbourne suburbs published as supplements to the Australasian Sketcher in the 1870s. Some bear the initials of Albert C. Cooke , who may have drawn them all.
Jenny was the last of the classical European-trained wood-engravers in Melbourne. The advent of photochemical reproduction of line drawings in the 1890s eventually rendered their work commercially obsolete. He died at 20 Berry Street, East Melbourne on 22 January 1905 and was buried in the Boroondarra Cemetery, Kew. His estate was sworn at £11,280, the bulk of which was willed to various charitable institutions.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1826
- Summary
- Colonial-era newspaper wood engraver, he was the last of the classical European-trained wood-engravers in Melbourne. His estate was sworn at £11,280, the bulk of which was willed to various charitable institutions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Jan-05
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude51.77046785 Longitude0.464669774 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Essex, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and surveyor, was born in Essex, England, elder son of James Gardner Austin, an architect, and Mary Ann, née Pole. John Gardner Austin was presumably his uncle. Robert Austin arrived at Port Leschenault, WA, aboard the Island Queen in December 1840 with his parents and younger brother, James junior. Their father had been appointed chief surveyor of the WA Coy’s new settlement at Australind then superintendent of works at Perth until 1853, when he resigned to become a farmer. Robert Austin was also employed in the government service at Perth. He was acting assistant surveyor in 1847. In 1854 he led an exploring party north-east of Perth. His published Journal of the expedition contains lithographs by A. Hillman of Perth, mainly executed from sketches by J. Tatton B. Fraser , with some being worked up by W.A. Sanford . A page of contour profiles of Mt Kenneth and the surrounding country was, however, by Sanford after 'sketches by Robt. Austin’, while Crow’s Nest and a sectional view beneath it was 'sketched by R. Austin’.
Austin later went to Singapore, where he collected a rare night parrot subsequently described by John Gould . In 1860 he moved to Queensland to take up the position of government surveyor. He was appointed a commissioner of Crown lands the following year. He married Sophia Douglas in Queensland in 1862; they had 10 children. In 1891 Robert Austin became sergeant-at-arms of the Queensland Parliament, Brisbane. He died in Brisbane in February 1905.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1825
- Summary
- Surveyor, Austin led an exploring party north-east of Perth in 1854 and consequently published a journal of the expedition which included a couple of his sketches. He was later to become the Segeant-at-Arms of the Queensland Parliament.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Feb-05
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- portrait and narrative painter, was born on 18 August 1821 at precisely 6.30 a.m. according to the family bible. He was the third son, one of fifteen children of William Earles, who worked in a London bank, and Elizabeth née Chester, of Hackney, London. After some initial training as a miniature portrait painter – at the London National Gallery, according to the family – Earles entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1842 then studied at Paris in 1846. He exhibited with the Royal Academy from 1844 to 1863 (56 works) and with the Society of British Artists (Suffolk Street) between 1842 and 1863 (55 watercolours and oils). Altogether Graves lists 130 works shown by him in the major London exhibition centres during this period, though some were repeats. Most were portraits, but several were narrative and religious paintings. One, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849 and at Suffolk Street in 1850, entitled A Letter from Australia; A Family Group , shows the Earles family gathered at afternoon tea listening to Charles Earles reading a letter from their sister Penelope who had migrated to Australia with her husband, George Selby, in 1840; Chester himself is standing behind Charles.
Chester’s letters to Penelope (La Trobe Collection) discuss his early struggles to make a living as an artist in London. Although Penelope died in 1851, another married sister, Mary Lemann, came out to Victoria that year, and in 1857 the widower George Selby married his younger sister, Susanne. In June 1858, a Melbourne periodical noted that Mr Selby was 'endeavouring to dispose of a series of six clever pictures by Earle [sic] R.A. [sic]’ by means of an art union, the paintings being on view at Joseph Wilkie’s music shop. Earles had exhibited portraits of Mrs James Selby, G.W. Selby and Miss Selby at the Royal Academy, and the family connection was doubtless instrumental in bringing him to Victoria early in 1864, although his failure to sell portraits due to the increasing popularity of photography was the major impetus.
In 1866 Earles exhibited At the Foot of the Cross and An Awkward Pause (shown Suffolk Street 1859) at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. The jury noted that the former was “one of the few figure pictures in the Exhibition” and considered it remarkable “for its feeling and careful execution”, while a subsequent reviewer considered it “bold, careful and correct…despite some coldness of colouring”. In 1869 Earles contributed fifteen paintings to the Melbourne Public Library Exhibition. Most were biblical subjects or portraits; and Mary Magdalen at the Cross , at least, had previously been shown at the Royal Academy. Adam and Eve , described in the catalogue as on ivory, must have been a miniature. Six were shown again later that year at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition.
On 6 August 1866, Earles married a widow, Caroline Elder, at Christ Church, South Yarra, Melbourne. With the three children from her first marriage – Augusta, Ellen and Charles Elder – the Earles moved into Rokeby Cottage in Murphy Street, South Yarra, where they remained until 1878. Earles worked as an inspector at the Bankers’ Clearing House and continued to paint in his spare time. Interior with Figures (1872, Queensland Art Gallery) includes a self portrait, possibly with Caroline and a step-daughter, or perhaps his two step-daughters.
When the Victorian Academy of Arts was formed in 1870 with O.R. Campbell as president and James Robertson as secretary, Earles was elected treasurer. Three years later he succeeded Campbell as president, a position he held until the Academy merged with the Australian Artists’ Association in 1888. At the Academy’s first exhibition he showed paintings inspired by Milton ( L’Allegro and Il Penseroso ) and Fletcher, as well as a handful of portraits. The Argus thought the twin Milton subjects 'unusually happy’ for Earles:
The former is not the Euphrosyne of Westall or Stothard but a blond young beauty of the nineteenth century, more “fair” than “free”, with hair which does not owe its tint to any auricomous compound, and a face very pleasant to look upon.
He appears to have taken a small studio in Flinders Street at about this time. His painting Feather Pickers, A Pause in the Work 1876, exhibited with the VAA in 1876 as 'Stripping Feathers’, was included in the Sotheby’s auction of 'The Fairfax Corporate Collection of Australian Paintings’, 17 November 2002, lot 57 (est. $7,000-10,000). In 1878 Earles moved his private residence to Homegarth in Motherwell Street, South Yarra, where he remained until his death.
Earles continued to exhibit with the VAA until 1884 and contributed to various intercolonial and international exhibitions held throughout the 1870s and 1880s. Bianca and Katharina , shown at the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition, were sent on to the 1873 London International Exhibition. Other paintings were sent to the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872, 1873, 1875 and 1876. He won medals at the first two for L’Allegro ('Cheerfulness personified as a young intellectual-looking girl of “sweet sixteen”’) and Bianca and Katharina (again). He won a certificate of merit in 1875 for Ophelia , an oil also shown in Melbourne before being sent to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition together with portraits of two other Shakespearian women, possibly Bianca and Katharina once more. The Sydney Mail critic thought Ophelia 'very pretty, very unnatural and strangely colourless’, while The Latest News from England was judged 'commonplace’. Depicting two girls looking over the latest fashions in the Home News ('the faces of both are stony’), it was expressly designed to be photographed by Johnstone , O’Shannessy & Co. as one of a series for subscribers to the Art Union of Victoria but was deemed to be 'scarcely worthy of the rest of the series’.
Earles’s output declined in the 1880s. Since he continued to work at the Bankers’ Clearing House until at least 1881 (his address in the annual report of the Art Union of Victoria that year), pressure of work was possibly a contributing factor. Other possibilities are ill-health (he was now in his mid-sixties) or a realisation that his style was outmoded. In 1882 he exhibited designs for a reredos 'in course of erection’ at Christ Church, South Yarra, and he showed a stained-glass window design for St Martin’s, Hawksburn, in 1883. A self-portrait shown at the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition (unlocated) and a painting simply titled Portrait shown with the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1892 (both of which may have been painted years earlier) are the only exhibition works known after 1884.
Throughout his career Earles’s subject matter was either portraiture or subject paintings inspired by Keats, Milton, Spenser, Tennyson, Shakespeare and the Bible. The latter were little more than elevated portraits with little narrative content, Earles being one of the few painters working in Australia at the time who painted figure subjects almost exclusively. He showed little interest in Australian themes, exhibiting only two works, Young Australia (in 1876) and Third Day of a Hot Wind – No Change Yet (in 1877, 1879 and 1880), with Australian-sounding titles. Both would have been figure subjects. The latter (known only from a rather coarse black and white engraving in the Australasian Sketcher and a drawing after the painting in the Illustrated Australian News of 25 January 1882, 8, entitled 'A hot wind day’) depicts a little girl drooped on the lap of 'a youthful matron in a state of languor and limpness, on the evening of a third hot wind day which has committed such terrible ravages upon her complexion as almost to defy the power of cosmetics to remedy them’. His most Australian subject, The Stockrider (unlocated), was issued as a photograph by the Art Union of Victoria in 1873.
On stylistic evidence, he may also have drawn Father Christmas in Australia (sitting on a verandah being fanned by a woman who looks far more African than Aboriginal), which was used on the cover of the Australasian Sketcher of 25 December 1875, and he possibly illustrated a story in the Australasian Sketcher 25 December 1875 (coloured supplement, 150): 'Our artist has sought to illustrate a curious phase of the relations of the departing aboriginals to the growing masterful race of invaders which was once described in a country paper…’ – on the friendship of a young white woman and an old Aboriginal one (see Australasian Sketcher file).
Earles carried through to his larger works the highly detailed and finished style of his miniature training. Coupled with an absence of local content, this meant that by the late 1880s his work had little relevance for a younger generation of artists such as Roberts and Streeton . He remained a totally Victorian painter of sentimental genre subjects. He died on 15 June 1905 in Melbourne, aged eighty-three. The La Trobe Library has a fine plaster portrait head of him by the sculptor John Simpson Mackennal , which shows a man about forty with a thin, refined face and a small pointed beard.
Writers:
Bruce, Candice
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 August 1821
- Summary
- Earles painted portraits and figures inspired by literature and the Bible. He exhibited widely in his lifetime.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Jun-05
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude50.725556 Longitude-3.526944 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Exeter, England
- Biography
- painter and public servant, was born in Exeter, England. In 1832 he accompanied his parents to Sydney where his father, William Woolcott, set up as a bootmaker. Charles began work with the City Corporation in 1843 and served successively as clerk, draughtsman, mayor’s secretary and assistant town clerk. In 1857 he was appointed Town Clerk, succeeding John Rae , and remained in the position for thirty years. He married a daughter of Jack Inder and they lived at Ivy Cliffe, Berry’s Bay (North Sydney); Woolcott was said to have rowed across the harbour to work every day. He died at home on 23 August 1905.
Although Woolcott apparently painted throughout his life, few works are known. An engraving titled Government House in 1841 , taken from an original sketch by Woolcott, is very similar to one by J. S. Prout differing only in details, although it is difficult to determine which, if either, is the copy. Prout is known to have worked from sketches by his pupils (see Ellen Burgess and Simpkinson ); he also often took them on excursions when all would paint virtually identical subjects. A watercolour, Busby’s Bore (ML), is also attributed to Woolcott, as is an oil painting initialled 'C.H.W.’, Rocky Point (Sans Souci) 1854 , offered at auction in 1986 together with another attributed watercolour of Sydney Cove (c.1893).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1821
- Summary
- Painter and public servant, was born in Exeter, England. In 1832 he accompanied his parents to Sydney, where he began to work with the City Corporation. Woolcott was said to have rowed across the harbour to work every day. Very few of his works are known.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Aug-05
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude50.725556 Longitude-3.526944 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1905-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Exeter, England, UK
- Biography
- diarist and sketcher, was born in Exeter on 24 November 1816, daughter of James Hadden, an English army officer. She married Lieutenant Andrew Baxter of the 50th Regiment in England on 8 February 1834, and soon afterwards travelled with him to Van Diemen’s Land on board the convict ship Augusta Jessie . The marriage was not happy, as Annie confided in great detail to her journal. This was begun on embarkation in 1834 and finally extended to at least 36 volumes of which 32 survive (DL). They give a very full and intimate picture of Baxter’s life in three Australian colonies up to 1865. About 30 pages destroyed by her husband covered her affair with Robert Massie, a Crown lands commissioner, from July 1841 to July 1843.
Written by a 'Rustic sister’ (identified as Baxter by Lucy Frost), drafts of carefully composed, descriptive monthly letters dated January-May 1840, survive in a sketchbook (NLA). This also contains her only known drawings: pencil sketches of landscapes and houses, several of views of the property in the Macleay River district of New South Wales where the Baxters settled in August 1839. Baxter’s regiment had been transferred to Sydney in September 1838, then to Port Macquarie, and after about two months at the latter he sold his commission to take up land near Kempsey. The prospect of pioneer rural life did not please Annie who had found even Sydney crude in comparison with Launceston: 'I suppose that about the end of next week we shall have to leave Sydney for the bush—what I shall do there God only knows! I shall be so miserable—no books to read! or any person near me that I care about’.
The Baxter home, Yesabba, was a bark hut, occupied 'when only half the bark roof was on – and to add to our discomfiture, it rained almost incessantly for the first three weeks – It certainly was most ludicrous to see the Opossum skin rug nailed up to a rafter, to keep out the rain. We had two rooms – separated by a large Meg Merrilies shawl – The one was our bedroom – the other sitting-room, kitchen & all – We might almost have done without the kitchen – as you will say when I tell you what we had to cook’ (cornmeal and rice).
These sketches of bush huts and picturesque views are undated and often unidentified but Yesabba and its outbuildings appear to be there. There is also a view of an L-shaped bush cottage with an incongruous knight on horseback in the foreground, the only evidence in her sketches of the romantic disposition so lavishly displayed in the journals. Otherwise hers are typical amateur drawings, informative but quite conventional, and not particularly accomplished technically despite the inclusion in the sketchbook of a lengthy tribute by one of her admirers (both sketchbook and journal were shown to favoured male friends) who, admittedly, tactfully concentrated on the beauties of the artist rather than the art.
In 1844 Andrew Baxter decided to sell out and move to Port Fairy, a journey that took two months and was fully recorded by Annie. There they established themselves on Yambuck Station and built a more substantial colonial homestead – also recorded in the sketchbook along with views of Lake Yambuck, which Annie thought 'one of the most picturesque scenes on the coast’. Life with Baxter became intolerable and Annie finally left him on 15 June 1849, moving to Hobart Town where she kept house for her recently widowed brother, Captain William Hadden, and his children, until they all returned to England in the Calcutta in January 1851. There she lived with her sister, Harriet Woodward, in Staffordshire and with her brother and friends in Ireland, London and France.
On 17 January 1857 Annie Baxter returned to Melbourne on board the Anne Royden to wind up her husband’s affairs, Andrew having committed suicide in 1855. She met Robert Dawbin on board and soon after arriving in Melbourne they were married. They lived on various stations in the Western District of Victoria until Dawbin became bankrupt, then lived in Melbourne on Annie’s small income until returning to England, he in 1863 and she in 1865. In January 1868 the Dawbins left for New Zealand. They were at Waiwera until 1870 when Dawbin was dismissed, then they moved back to Melbourne. There, in 1873, Annie published Memories of the Past by a Lady in Australia , drawn from her early diaries. It was not illustrated. She died on her small farm at South Yan Yean on 22 November 1905.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 November 1816
- Summary
- Annie Maria Baxter was a prolific writer who kept meticulous diaries of her life in Australia. Her few surviving drawings are now held at the National Library of Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 22-Nov-05
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude-35.295938 Longitude139.0364451 Start Date1879-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Langhorne Creek, South Australia, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 13 March 1879
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-Aug-04
- Age at death
- 25
Details
Latitude-27.6160323 Longitude152.7608348 Start Date1866-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ipswich, Qld, Australia
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in Ipswich, Queensland, son of John and Elizabeth Rowe. Attracted by the North Queensland gold discoveries, the family moved north when William was a child and his father eventually found employment as a miner at Charters Towers. Gibson-Wilde noted in 1987:
About 1883 William entered the studio of Deazeley and Blake, photographers in Townsville and Charters Towers (and possibly also Brisbane). In 1886 he took over the business. The Townsville shop was located in Flinders Street between Stokes Street and Stanley Street, roughly on the site of the present Katies Store. By 1887 he was well established as one of Townsville’s leading photographers, his main rivals being John Tilse & Co. and the Elite Photographic Gallery. The Aldine History of Queensland (1888) described him as “an excellent photographer, his work being in point of artistic excellence equal to anything of the kind turned out of the best establishments in Sydney and Brisbane”.
By 1888 Rowe had also purchased the business of one of his rivals, John Tilse & Co., though Tilse appears to have continued in business in partnership with A.B. Clinton and later formed the Imperial Photographic Company.
In 1890 he married Lissie Elsner (called Elsie on Rowe’s death certificate). She was the daughter of one of Townsville’s early German settlers; her sister married Robert McKimmin, one of the founders of the retailing business McKimmin & Richardson, later McKimmin’s and now David Jones. Within four months of their marriage, Lizzie died suddenly aged only 19; Rowe did not marry again. He remained in Townsville for three more years. Perhaps he suffered financial difficulties during the 1893 depression. Whatever the cause, he appears never to have returned to Townsville. After working in Hughenden for a time he seems to have returned to Charters Towers where he died in June 1904 at the home of his brother, Walter Richard Rowe.
A number of Rowe’s photographs are still in existence. All are of excellent quality, revealing the photographer’s keen eye for composition. In an introduction to the supplement elseswhere in the Townsville Herald of 24 December 1887, the problems confronting him in producing good quality photographs in bright sunlight at that time are discussed. Clearly he met the challenge admirably.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1866
- Summary
- Queensland based photographer. A number of his photographs are still in existence. In 1883 Rowe entered the studio of Deazeley and Blake, photographers in Townsville and Charters Towers and in 1886 he took over the business.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1904
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude55.861111 Longitude-4.25 Start Date1859-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1859
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1904
- Age at death
- 45
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist, illustrator, journalist and politician, was born in King William Street, Adelaide in February 1848. In the early 1850s he and his family moved to Victoria; he was educated at Geelong National Grammar School. He returned to South Australia in 1868 and joined the literary staff of the Adelaide Register in 1875-80, where he was drama critic. He assisted in the Shakespearean revival at Adelaide’s Theatre Royal. In 1880 he became proprietor and editor of Adelaide Punch and often contributed comic and satiric drawings to it. His black and white sketches were highly regarded and he was considered a keen judge of pictures. Johnson also did naïve paintings in South Australia. His Euchre in the Bush (oil on canvas 43.2 × 63.7 cm, signed lower left with title inscribed lower centre) was included in Australian Colonial Art (Melbourne: Deutscher Fine Art Gallery 1980, cat.63), purchased by the BFAG and included in the Australian Regional Galleries’ official bicentennial exhibition The Face of Australia (1988), where it was dated c.1875. He exhibited paintings, drawings and cartoons in the SA Court at the 1880-81 Melbourne International Exhibition (Class 2, various paintings and drawings p.526, cartoons, etc).
Johnson was especially keen on promoting viticulture and mining interests in SA. He published numerous works on the latter subject, including On the Wallaby, or Tales from the Men’s Hut . In 1880 he rode to the Mount Browne Diggings, resulting in Moses and Me and To Mount Browne and Back . In 1884 he entered Parliament as Member for Onkaparinga and became Minister for Education in 1887-89. In London in 1895 he presented his collection of gold nuggets to the British Museum, and to Queen Victoria who gave him a large and handsomely framed portrait. He purchased Charles Stuart’s Golden Autumn in London, which he presented to the SA National Gallery.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 12 February 1848
- Summary
- Late Colonial-era South Australian painter, cartoonist, illustrator, journalist and politician. In 1884 he entered Parliament as Member for Onkaparinga and became Minister for Education in 1887-89.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18-Jun-04
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist, lithographer, architect and surveyor, was born in London, son of the artist and architect Samuel Charles Brees and his wife Ann Taylor, née Jones. After living in New Zealand and revisiting London, Brees came to Sydney in 1858. There, according to the architect J.J. Davey, he was employed for a time in the NSW Public Works and Lands Departments as an architectural draughtsman, simultaneously managing 'a little private work as they all did’ – and a considerable amount of watercolour painting. Harold Brees was advertising his willingness to execute a wide range of work, including lithographic billheads, plans and drawings, in the Sydney Morning Herald on 8 January 1859, his address being 125 Prince Street, Church Hill. Within twelve months he had moved to Cook’s River Road and was advertising 'Artistic Drawings of Residences and Views, taken for England’ for 5 guineas. On 28 August 1861, he advertised 'truly reasonable’ architectural drawing classes at his rooms in the Commercial Chambers, New Pitt Street, opposite the Sydney Exchange.
Harold Brees was practicing as an independent professional architect and surveyor in the Commercial Chambers at least by 26 November 1862 when he invited the public to inspect a villa he had just completed in Ocean Street, Woollahra, opposite Mr Mort’s. On 27 December he promised a saving of 50 per cent if clients employed him when building his (or his father’s?) designs, then on display in the Architectural Gallery he had opened in his rooms. By March 1862 he was displaying 100 new model plans for houses, churches and public buildings, all apparently designed by S.C. Brees. Nevertheless, Harold was clearly the active, resident architect of the firm; he took over both the promotion and authorship of the model plans when his father reverted to travelling and painting.
Harold was calling tenders for Villa Tuscana at Hunter’s Hill on 25 April 1863. By April 1865 his office was at Mort’s Passage in George Street; in July he was again offering savings of 50 per cent in building costs and was still advertising his large collection of varied designs for villas in all styles in November. Late in 1866 Harold published Rural Architecture , a portfolio of thirteen 'Modern Designs for Villas and residences complete, for gentlemen building without the assistance of an architect’, which cost 2 guineas. He separately offered designs for market buildings.
Having thus relieved the gentleman-builder of the necessity of his presence, Brees appears to have spent some time travelling. A review in the Sydney Morning Herald on 20 April 1868 noted:
A very spirited representation, in watercolours, of the town of Rockhampton is on view at Messrs F. & E. Cole’s book warehouse in George Street. We are informed that it is from the pencil of Mr Harold Brees, a gentleman favourably known in professional circles as an architect and artist of no mean skill. The present example of his aptitude for drawing shows that he has a keen eye for all the peculiarities of our scenery, as well as a happy method of committing his impressions to canvas or paper. The Messrs Cole have several other sketches by Mr Brees, including a clever cartoon of Rushcutter’s Bay.
A panoramic watercolour view of Rockhampton bearing his initials (James Cook University) may be a souvenir of this visit.
At the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition Brees – as both a painter and architect of Hunter Street – showed a collection of architectural drawings and three watercolours: Bondi Bay (7 guineas), Botany Bay and Port Jackson (both 6 guineas). The jury commended the third and his architectural designs were awarded a bronze medal. Although primarily listed as an architect in Sydney between 1865 and 1900, Brees retained a great interest in painting, exhibiting with the NSW Academy of Art from 1871. In 1872 he showed an oil painting, Near the Araluen , 'a pretty bit of light and shade’ which was awarded an honourable mention. The Sydney Mail stated that this 'dashing little picture’ was 'in curious contrast to the style of the same artist in water-colours’ and added, 'most people think it is greatly superior’. Sponge Valley, Bondi , another oil, was also shown, along with several watercolours. His oil Sugarloaf, Middle Harbour was lent by E. Stack to the Academy’s 1874 exhibition. The three watercolours he showed in 1876 were for sale at prices ranging from 2 to 6 guineas. He showed Inward Bound (w/c, 3 guineas) in 1877.
Brees was actively involved with the Art Society of NSW from its foundation in 1880. He showed work at its annual exhibitions until 1886 and was honorary auditor from August 1881 until 1892. The paintings he showed at the society’s first exhibition were not, however, well received: 'Mr H. Brees has a number of pictures, of which those representing Mount Alexander and its vicinity are at least like the scenes they were painted from’, drily commented the Sydney Morning Herald (23 December 1880). The following year’s offerings fared somewhat better. Narrabeen Heads was damned with faint praise, only the ship being considered 'well painted’; Blackwall Cave, Lane Cove River had merit, 'but the group of campers which the artist has shown is short of its fair allowance of legs’. Rounding the Point , however, was judged a good yachting picture, one of the artist’s best: 'he evidently knows his subject thoroughly, and his boats really look as if they were going’. At the third exhibition Brees’s three landscapes, including one of Pitcairn Island, were considered 'a decided advance in his style’ and two paintings shown the following year, Unexpected Visitors (a party of troopers at an Aboriginal camp) and another view of Mount Alexander, Victoria , were judged Brees 'at his best’.
As well as designing and supervising the erection of buildings such as St Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons in Clarence Street (1874), Brees did the sort of commercial work that helped keep artists alive in Sydney. In 1880 a pamphlet promoting 'the beauties and attractions of Newport, Pittwater and the celebrated Hawkesbury lakes’ was published as a real estate promotional venture with nine lithographs by S.T. Leigh & Co. after watercolours by Brees. The 'plan and local sketch of the new marine township of Newport’ appended was presumably also his work.
Brees won seventh prize (£5) in a competition held by the printers and stationers Gibbs, Shallard & Co. in 1882 for a set of three paintings: Hiding from Pursuit , Boundary Rider and Cattle Drovers . Again they were not popular with the critics. According to the Daily Telegraph (29 April 1882), the former was 'not a success, being forced both in conception and execution’, while the other two were 'of equal merit’. Brees disposed of a large collection of his paintings by art union about this time 'together with those of other well-known artists’. Nevertheless, he was still producing watercolours in 1895 – the date on a pair of sketches of a shepherd and his sheep (p.c.).
Harold Brees died at his home, 7 Ormond Street, Paddington, on 28 April 1904, aged sixty-six. He was survived by his wife Rosanna Mary née Connor whom he had married in Sydney and three of his seven sons. A daughter also predeceased him. He was buried in the Church of England Cemetery at Waverley. In 1909 his widow presented one of his watercolours, Old Entrance to the Botanical Gardens and Site of the First Art Gallery Building , to the Art Gallery of NSW. In 1911 it was transferred to the Mitchell Library, which holds other of his sketches. He is also represented in the National Library of Australia. Yet he is largely forgotten both as a painter and an architect and his work rarely appears at auction (one of his watercolour views of Sydney Harbour was sold by Deutscher Fine Art in 1985). The unsigned drawing of a 'Proposed Captain Cook Statue’ on Sow & Pigs Island published in Colonial Society in 1869 is attributed to him.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1838
- Summary
- Harold Brees shared his father's interest in the Antipodes and he worked as a painter and architect of some interest.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Apr-04
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude53.1908873 Longitude-2.8908955 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Chester, Cheshire, England
- Biography
- watercolour painter and sketcher, was born in Chester, Cheshire on 6 January 1830 at 3 p.m., according to family records, the third (but eldest surviving) son of Lieutenant Henry Lloyd of the 36th Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry, and Charlotte, née Williams. He was baptised in St John’s Church of England the following day. Having visited Van Diemen’s Land on a year’s sick leave in 1825 his father, now Captain Lloyd, returned to Hobart Town in the Brothers on 22 February 1841 on two years’ sick leave with his wife, Henry Grant, another son and a servant. Captain Lloyd served a final two years in India, then retired in July 1844 to a large property at New Norfolk, Van Diemen’s Land, which he named Bryn Estyn after the family home in Wales. Henry Grant Lloyd spent his childhood there.
In 1849 Lloyd became a divinity student at Christ’s College, Bishopsbourne. Two sketches of this institution survive dated 2 November 1849 (NLA) and 24 December 1849 (ALMFA). By 1851, however, it was clear that he was unsuited to a career in the church (evidently because he was homosexual) and Bishop F.R. Nixon refused to ordain him. Perhaps as a result of this disappointment 'Harry’ Lloyd was shingle-splitting in the Huon Valley in 1853, according to an entry in the diary of Mary Morton Allport – who thought it shameful for his mother. It did not last long. Lloyd’s chief occupation between 1846 and 1857 appears to have been sketching landscape scenery all over Tasmania, his earliest known sketch being dated 27 January 1846 (DL) when he was probably a student of John Skinner Prout . In a later advertisement Lloyd claimed to have been taught by Prout, an artist who provided an undemanding, picturesque grounding for a large number of Van Diemen’s Land amateur artists. In 1874 he announced the fulfilment of a long-cherished ambition to publish a book called 'Tasmania Illustrated’ in imitation of Prout, but it failed to materialise.
A coloured lithograph after one of Lloyd’s drawings, Hobart Town from the New Wharf , was published by M. & N. Hanhart of London about 1859, but its effectiveness was as much due to the skill of the lithographer W.L. Walton as to Lloyd, whose draughtsmanship was never strong. By the time it was published Lloyd was living in Sydney, where he took drawing lessons from Conrad Martens , an influence which encouraged, as Evans notes, his 'distinctive hard pencil style overlaid with clear pale washes’.
Described by Moore as 'Australia’s peripatetic artist’, Lloyd travelled indefatigably throughout his long life, obsessed with recording every landscape he saw. Despite some delicate drawing showing the influence of Martens, the majority of his works are rough field sketches rather than finished paintings. Their chief value lies in their interest as historical documents, for Lloyd was meticulous about naming, dating and signing his sketches; many even have compass directions. He was more successful with close focus than distant views, even though the latter far outnumber the former, and he certainly visited and drew places recorded by few other artists. At a conversazione held by the New South Wales Academy of Art on 9 November 1875, Eccleston du Faur was reported as urging the beauties of the Hawkesbury River, 'the Rhine of Australia’ Anthony Trollope had named it. Yet, du Faur stated, 'how many in this room have ever seen it below Windsor? ... Has it ever been illustrated, except, I think, at Wiseman’s Ferry by Mr C. Martens, and near its mouth by Mr. Slade [q.v.], and roughly sketched by Mr. Grant Lloyd of Tasmania.’
Other New South Wales and Queensland views were sketched in 1858-64 and 1875-80. In between Lloyd revisited Britain and went on a sketching tour of Wales, returning to Tasmania in 1872-75. He revisited the Grose Valley (NSW) for a few days in 1875, joining the painting and photography camps which Eccleston du Faur had established for members of the NSW Academy of Art and 'other gentlemen’, the chief guest being Lloyd’s fellow Tasmanian, W.C. Piguenit .
A private income meant that Lloyd had no need to sell his work, though he did find a market for some of his watercolours. More important to him was the status and exposure gained through local and international exhibitions, at which he won several medals. He exhibited at the 1875 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition and the following year was included in the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Except for an Australian sojourn in 1887-89, he lived in Dunedin from 1881 to 1899 and travelled throughout New Zealand; his watercolour, The Terraces, Rotamahana, New Zealand , is dated 1881 (Sotheby’s Fine Australian and European Paintings’ auction 28-29 April 1998, lot 388). He exhibited with the Otago Art Society at Dunedin in 1882, 1884, 1886 88, 1890 95, 1898 99 and 1900 03, showed paintings with the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in 1896 and was included in the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition of 1889 90. He also showed work at the 1891-92 Tasmanian Exhibition in Launceston and the 1894-95 Hobart International Exhibition.
In 1900 Lloyd returned to Tasmania to take over the management of Bryn Estyn. At the end of 1903 this compulsive traveller was preparing for yet another tour of Tasmania when he was seized with paralysis. He died on 31 May 1904 and was buried in the New Norfolk Cemetery. His last known sketch is dated August 1903. Surviving drawings are numbered in the thousands. There are over 1,500 in the Mitchell and Dixson Library collections alone, admittedly the two repositories holding the bulk of his work. The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts also has a substantial collection, while the National Library holds a sample thirteen watercolours.
Writers:
Turpin, JenniferKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 6 January 1830
- Summary
- A prolific watercolourist painter and sketcher, Lloyd is known as 'Australia's peripatetic artist'. He travelled indefatigably throughout his long life, recording many landscapes in Australia, New Zealand and Britain.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31-May-04
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- sketcher, was born on 3 December 1828, eldest of the four children of Captain Andrew Wauch of the 48th Regiment of Foot and Mary Makin, née Gillot, Scottish settlers who came to New South Wales aboard the North Briton , arriving on 15 March 1836. The family settled at Wauchope near Port Macquarie, now the name of the entire area. In the 1840s Anna was acquainted with Annabella Innes ( Annabella Boswell ) who wrote that Anna’s sketches were 'clever and spirited’ but considered that 'the likenesses are not good’. 'A.S.R. Wauch’ signed a crude pencil view of the house and garden in 1854 (Hastings District Historical Society). On 6 February 1855, Anna married Spencer Collard, a settler from the New England area, in St Peter’s Church of England, Armidale. Presumably after her husband died in 1878, she moved to Carcoar.
A collection of lively watercolour scenes located by their present owner as 'near Port Macquarie’ (p.c.; five photographic reproductions ML) was attributed in 1971 to 'Mrs Collett [sic], the daughter of Major Waugh [sic] after whom Wauchope was named’. Subjects include a dismounted trooper fighting a tribal Aborigine, three mounted bushmen mustering horses and two troopers and their Aboriginal guide travelling through the mountains. A watercolour by the same artist showing three horses, a dismounted rider and his Aboriginal guide at the edge of a river was offered at Sotheby’s (Australia) in 1984 from the Cowlishaw Collection. All are lively and competent pictures, a great advance on the crude homestead view, though also said to date from the 1850s. Her art evidently improved after her marriage, as evidenced by the fact that Mrs Collard of Carcoar won second prize in an art competition held in 1881 co-sponsored by the stationers Gibbs, Shallard & Co. and the Illustrated Sydney News . Mistakenly reported as 'Miss’ Collard, her 'spirited’ picture of 'a duel between two horses engaged in deathly combat’ was reputedly later exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 December 1828
- Summary
- Painted watercolour scenes around the Port Macquarie area. Her work, described as 'spirited' and 'lively', depicted subjects such as a dismounted trooper fighting a tribal Aborigine, three mounted bushmen mustering horses and two troopers and their Aboriginal guide.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16-Jun-04
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- painter, showed View of George’s River, Liverpool, New South Wales in the second exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia at Sydney in 1849. She was the sister of Miss R. J. Bray . Henry Curzon Allport painted a view, On Goulburn Plains , after a sketch by one of the Misses Bray, most likely his pupil. The 'Miss Bray’, who showed three works in 1847 at the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia Exhibition ( Spaniels , Head and an untitled pen-and-ink drawing) could be either artist, presumably Mary A. C., the elder of the two Bray sisters.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1828
- Summary
- Nineteenth-century painter, known for a view of George's River, Liverpool, NSW, sister of Miss R.J. Bray.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1904
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude54.98 Longitude-1.61 Start Date1823-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland, England, UK
- Biography
- natural history painter and pastoralist, was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland, on 5 October 1823, a younger brother of George French Angas . Educated by tutors, at various schools and, briefly, at the University of London, he joined his father’s company in 1841. Sent to South Australia to manage the family properties, he arrived at Adelaide in the Madras in September 1843. After 10 years hard and successful work, he returned to England in 1854. On 10 May 1855 he married Susanna Collins; they sailed for South Australia later that year. From 1856 Angas established prosperous stations in the Barossa area and became a prominent prize-winning stud-breeder, raising cattle, horses, sheep, pigs and donkeys. A new house at Angaston, called Collingrove, was designed by his brother-in-law, Henry Evans, in the mid 1850s. Over the following 30 years the family made frequent visits to England; their two children were born there in the early 1860s. Angas was elected member for the Barossa district in 1871 but resigned from the House of Assembly in 1876. He was a Member of the Legislative Council from 1887 to 1894. A strict Congregationalist, he gave much to charity, including £44,000 to Dr Barnardo’s Homes. He died at Collingrove on 17 May 1904, leaving an estate worth £800,000.
According to Moore, John Howard Angas 'was skilful in painting the forms of birds, insects, and flowers’, but no surviving work is known. Under the pen-name 'Agricola’, it is probable that he wrote the text for his brother’s book, Description of the Barossa Range … (London 1849).
Exhibited in the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition 1888-89, South Australian Court, Class 2 [Various paintings and drawings] cat. no.22 Four water-colour drawings of cattle, horses and shee
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 5 October 1823
- Summary
- Pastoralist and member of parliament, John Howard Angas was also a natural history painter. He painted birds, insects, and flowers, but no surviving work is known. His brother George French Angas was also a painter.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17-May-04
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter, art teacher and surveyor, was born in England, nephew and son-in-law of the painter John Linnell. In 1850 he arrived at Lyttleton, New Zealand aboard the Sir John Seymour giving his occupation as surveyor. Initially, however, he taught art at Lyttleton School, then at Christchurch and Sydney. In 1866-67 he was in the UK as well as NSW. He was again in NZ in 1867-72. He held solo exhibitions of his watercolours at Christchurch in 1871 and 1873, in between holding an exhibition of over 200 paintings in Melbourne and Sydney in 1872. He exhibited late romantic watercolours with the NSW Academy of Art in 1873 and was awarded a silver medal for best watercolour. In 1874-79 he was again in NZ, exhibiting with the Otago Art Society in 1876-78. In 1879-83 he was in NSW and Tasmania, then revisited England in 1883-84 where he held at least one successful solo exhibition. He apparently settled in Sydney in 1885, although he again lived in Victoria before 1891 – perhaps in 1888-89 when he showed work at the Melbourne Centennial Exhibition – and may also have been in the Middle East (?) for a year.
Raworth’s peregrinations continued until he died. He exhibited with the Christchurch (NZ) Society of the Arts in 1891, was back in NSW and Victoria in 1891-98, in New Zealand 1898-99, NSW in 1899-1900, UK in 1900-1901 and NSW and Tasmania from 1901 until his death.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1821
- Summary
- Raworth could never stay still, his migrations were frequent and his residence anywhere rarely exceeded three years. He shifted between New Zealand, Australia and England throughout his career, and may have also lived in the Middle East for a year. He was never without notice and work as a painter though, and held regular solo exhibitions and taught art in both New Zealand and Australia. Whether h
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1904
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in England, seventh of the fifteen children of Marshall Waller Clifton and Elinor, née Bell. She came to Western Australia with her family in March 1841 as one of the founders of the Western Australian Company’s settlement at Australind, her father having been appointed commissioner. In July she made some pencil drawings of the cottages there (p.c.).
A very competent view, sent to Mrs Whiteside in London on 10 July 1841, shows The Commissioner’s Cottage in Koombanah Gardens below Koombanah Crescent, Australia (a wood and thatched hut with Gothick windows surrounded by tents and a wooden hut behind). It is annotated: 'The marquee to the left was our dining room and is now used by the Surveyors to draw in. The building in the left hand corner is the W.A. Co. Store House with the pantry bell tent near it. The walled tent is Pearce’s [ William Pearce Clifton ], formerly Robert’s and Christina’s. The tents and huts of the work people are placed beyond the Store to the left and those of the settlers and officers of the establishment to the right of this sketch’.
Elinor was postmistress at Australind from 1845 to 1862. With Lady Bunbury she started the British and Foreign Bible Society at nearby Bunbury. She died, unmarried, at Australind on 21 March 1904.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1820
- Summary
- Sketcher born in England. Resident of Western Australia and founder of Australind.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21-Mar-04
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fulham, London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, lithographer, gold-miner and farmer, was born in Fulham, London, on 2 February 1818, sixth of the seven children of Mary and Daniel Hulme, a sailor who served under Nelson.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 February 1818
- Summary
- Edward Hulme was a painter, lithographer, art teacher, gold-miner and farmer who came to Melbourne with his family in 1856. On arriving he was soon employed to assist in the decoration of the Legislative Chambers in Kerr & Knight's Victorian Parliament House. He also exhibited at many exhibitions including the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Sep-04
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.816667 Longitude151 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parramatta, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, sailor and station manager, was born at Parramatta, New South Wales, on 31 October 1817, son of Phillip Parker King and Harriet, née Lethbridge. He returned to England with his father in 1823 then sailed with him in the Adventure to survey the southern coast of South America in 1826 30. In 1831 P.G. King joined the Beagle as a midshipman and again travelled to South America before leaving the ship at Sydney in 1836. On board he formed a life-long friendship with Charles Darwin. Arriving at Sydney, King made his way to the Bridge Street studio of another former ship-mate, Conrad Martens , with whom his father had left directions for reaching the family property, Dunheved at St Mary’s, between Parramatta and Penrith. There King was employed transcribing his father’s notes made on the Adventure voyage and preparing them for publication. He also made tours around the countryside; four watercolours dated 1837 show Views in the Cavan Caves near Yass (DG).
After fulfilling the role of amanuensis, King tried a 'squatting life’ which he later described as 'one of great privations’. He also did some surveying work before his father found him a job with the Australian Agricultural Company at Stroud in 1842. Ten years later he became manager of a newly formed offshoot of the company in which the family had a major interest, the Peel River Land and Mineral Company, with headquarters at Goonoo Goonoo, near Tamworth. He remained there until 1881. Then his son took over as manager while King served as an appointed member of the Legislative Council of the New South Wales Parliament.
Engravings after drawings made by King while the Beagle was in the Galapagos Islands appeared in the second volume of the Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle (London 1839). Original sketches and watercolours are in the King family sketchbooks and papers (DG; ML), although many are unsigned and difficult to attribute. Signed works include the ink and wash drawing Williamstown from Hobson’s Bay (ML), the watercolour (1847, p.c.), and a pen, ink and wash portrait of Captain FitzRoy of the Beagle (ML) made when FitzRoy revisited Sydney in 1838. Watercolours painted on the Beagle voyage (ML) include a drawing of a butterfly (1834) and studies of fish (1833, 1834). In 1890 at the behest of the London publisher Hallam Murray, King reworked 'old drawings and recollections’ of the Beagle expedition for an illustrated edition of Darwin’s Naturalist’s Voyage . His sketches are usually rather crude and he was aware of his limitations, stating that his father 'used to encourage me to draw but [I] never made much progress’.
King had married his cousin Elizabeth, daughter of Hannibal and Anna Maria Macarthur, in St John’s, Parramatta in 1843; they had four children. He died in Sydney on 5 August 1904.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 October 1817
- Summary
- Philip Gidley King became friends with Charles Darwin and his illustrations were used in an edition of the Naturalist's Voyage.
- Gender
- Unspecified
- Died
- 5-Aug-04
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude55.0049436 Longitude-3.0627342 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gretna Green, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- watercolour painter, art teacher and settler, son of Captain Francis Blower Gibbes and Elizabeth Sarah, née Saffery, was born in Gretna Green, Scotland.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- Gibbes's paintings were watercolours of well-known scenery in Victoria although he also showed views of picturesque places in NSW, New Zealand and Scotland. He was secretary of the Victorian Academy of Arts for 16 years.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Mar-04
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- watercolourist and squatter, was a son of Major-General George Cooper of the Bengal Army and his wife Jane, née Munn, of Little Chart, Kent.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1813
- Summary
- Watercolourist and squatter. Resident of Tasmania, Sydney, Western Australia and Victoria. Cooper was a modest artist, bequeathing his 'book of Sketches by John Glover [q.v.]' to the British Museum while undervaluing his own work.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Nov-04
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1904-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, came to Sydney from Ireland in the Maidstone in 1854 with her husband Thomas, an employee of the first Commercial Bank. She brought her album with her. This contains sketches and watercolours of flowers, birds and landscapes of Ireland together with favourite pieces of poetry and some coloured cut-outs. It also includes her drawing of the Maidstone in a squall off Cape Horn, dated 20 March 1854. Frances gave the album to her sister-in-law Eliza Dickinson (now Mitchell Library). No Australian sketches are known but perhaps may be presumed from this evidence.
At first Frances and Thomas McComb lived in Macquarie Street, Sydney, in a house owned by John Fairfax, but later in 1854 Mrs McComb set up a boarding-house in William Street, probably as a result of her husband’s death. Eventually she went to live with her daughter Harriette and her son-in-law Henry Wallace on their property in the Cooma district. She died there at the age of ninety-three. The Mitchell Library has a miniature of her in her wedding dress. Painted on ivory by an unknown artist, it shows a thin, pretty woman in her mid-twenties.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1811
- Summary
- A sketcher who brought with her favourite views of Ireland and watercolours of its native birds and flowers. No drawings done in Australia have been found, but the legacy of her album, passed on to her daughter, show a woman interested in poetry, beauty and the pleasure found in nurturing one's private life.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1904
- Age at death
- 93
Details
Latitude-36.75 Longitude144.266667 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bendigo, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- cartoonist and anarchist, was born at Bendigo in October 1865, He described himself as being English, French, Spanish, Arabian and African on his father’s side and English, German, Scandanavian, Hebrew and Greek on his mother’s, and grandson of a baronet who suppressed his title when he came to Australia. This mild, middle-aged leader of a very small band of Sydney Anarchists in the 1890s had been a clerk in the Victorian public service, but left after a dispute with the public service commissioner and turned to journalism, poetry and oratory. He preached and published broadsheets and pamphlets advocating civil disobedience in the face of perceived unfair laws and authorities, and the overthrow of capitalists by unionists. His publications included chunky woodblock prints done for his anarchist 'magazine’ (often just a pamphlet), Revolt: The Monthly Magazine of Anarchy , now bound together as part of the Andrews’s 'Anarchist Papers’ 1893-97 (SLNSW DG and DL) with a little novella in the style of William Morris.
The images include three sleeping muses (Truth, Justice and Virtue) captioned 'The Unemployed’, a capitalist manipulating headless workers with printed exhortations to revolt ('Freedom … Slaves Obey’ c.1893), a man advocating revolution, a simple and successful graphic of boss raised on the shoulders of a circle of workers and several prints of words about anarchy and revolt only (cut letter by letter to make a woodblock 'poster’). Most have been repeatedly inserted throughout the bound Anarchist volume, much of which is hand-written. His magazine Revolt (issues mainly undated) was the main evidence produced by the police when Andrews was successfully prosecuted for sedition in 1895. (Coleman, pp.78-79, claims he had previously been sentenced to three months gaol — being unable to pay the alternative fine of £20 — in June 1894 for distributing his A Handbook of Anarchy without a proper imprint, i.e. a printer’s, although it did bear the words 'Issued by J.A. Andrews, late of Mudgee, and now of 491 Elizabeth Street, Sydney’. Andrews gave his version of the case in the Bulletin , 3 November 1894.) Cuttings in the SLNSW collection of Anarchy Pamphlets (DG Q335.8) are:
'The conviction of Andrews’, Daily Telegraph 22 February 1895:
The trial, conviction, and sentence of the anarchist Andrews yesterday is the first case of its kind which has ever been carried to that extreme [word missing in photocopy] in this colony. In view of that fact, together with the apparently earnest fanaticism of the culprit, a mitigated punishment was inflicted… [jury found him guilty upon 2 separate counts of having violated the law; question is whether “seditious language” is unfair in law]... “In a pamphlet the accused argued that from the Chief Justice’s remarks union workmen whose liberty was threatened by employers refusing to accept the terms of the unionists were entitled to commit incendiarism, pillage, assault, and even murder… The document in question was headed “Revolt: The Monthly Magazine of Anarchy.” ... Accused further on in the article said, “I am, therefore, an advocate for pillage, incendiarism and murder if the freedom of the labourer cannot otherwise be maintained. The real criminals are the plutocracy and their minions, including the Chief Justice, and if the unionists had killed the squatters and the troopers who terrorised them their killing would be justifiable.” Would not, he asked, this have the desired effect of producing discontent and insurrection? The first count charged the accused with attempting to encourage murder, the second with libelling the administration of justice, and the third with attempting to create riots and tumults…
Accused…said his sole idea in publishing the article was to draw the attention of the public to the present unequal social conditions. He denied the construction put upon it by the Crown…
Found not guilty on the first count but guilty of the other two: see 'An Anarchist Sentenced. Trial of J.A. Andrews. His Honor’s Impressions of the Accused. “Prejudicial Doctrines” — “A Kink in the Brain” — Andrews’s Startling Speech’, Star 21 February 1895, which reported that when sentenced by Justice Simpson yesterday, the Prisoner said (before being stopped) that he was 'quite prepared in case of necessity, and I feel is my duty to everyone to say so, that in the event of a civil struggle being precipitated I should feel it my duty to take part in such struggle on the side of the labouring classes.’
[sub-title within article, 'AN ALLEGED ANARCHIST. J.A. Andrews on Trial. Charge of Seditious Libel.’]
'Accused is a middle-aged man, and his long hair, pallid face and restless eyes, that continually wandered about the court, combined to give him a decidedly weird appearance… Andrews had in his possession in the dock a number of documents, including several red-colored pamphlets or posters.’ When sentencing him, the judge took into account 'the obvious probability of the man having “a kink in his brain”... Every criminal is a more or less abnormal man… It is because “one fool makes many” that crime-preaching fanatics are a danger to the community.’
'An Anarchist Conference. Their Mysterious Lair. Interpretation of Terms’, Daily Telegraph 13 January 1897:
For alley-ways that are dark, and passages that puzzle, the Sydney anarchist is peculiar. If he were a cunning, dangerous customer, one would expect mystery as to his haunts, but he actually provokes publicity, and walks forth into the light — a mild and normal youth. There were half-a-dozen of him altogether last night, when our reporter arrived on the scene. They met in a small, stuffy, ill-lit room down the Haymarket way. The origin of the gathering is set down in a letter which was forwarded to this office some days ago. It states that “at a meeting of persons interested in the principles of anarchism, held in the Active Service Brigade committee-room, a conference was arranged for Wednesday, when among other matters for discussion will be the advisableness or otherwise of a distinct and separate anarchist party, etc., to be followed in the evening by a public social gathering, at which the proceedings will consist of speeches, interspersed with anarchist songs.” So ran the letter. [signed by Mr. Andrews]
... In front of the room where the anarchists met a 'wooden finger-post is labelled, “Isis Lodge, Theosophical Society, meets here”’. Another states 'that “Mr. Dwyer(?) of the Active Service Brigade, attends between 2 and 5.” Crossing the yard you mount another flight of steps and enter a dingy, uncarpeted room. Stretched against the wall is a huge red flag, and alongside a life-size framed head of of William Q. Judge, the American theosophist. The furniture consists mainly of a row of bookshelves, a deal table, and several ditto forms, a music-stool minus one leg, and an amateurish-looking chair. These are the anarchist headquarters [more likely the Theosophist ones, in fact]. At the table sat Mr. Andrews — as mild a mannered man as ever scuttled ship [rest missing or not photocopied by Craig].’
Later Andrews became editor of the Melbourne socialist journal Tocsin for which he wrote a series of articles in May-June 1900 about Sydney’s 'reign of terror’ in the 1890s.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. October 1865
- Summary
- Late Colonial/Federation era cartoonist and anarchist. Andrews preached and published broadsheets and pamphlets advocating civil disobedience in the face of perceived unfair laws and authorities that featured his cartoons and illustrations.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1903
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude53.7939576 Longitude-1.5770966 Start Date1864-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New Wortley, Leeds, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in New Wortley, a suburb of Leeds, Yorkshire, on 22 [27, acc. McCulloch] April 1864, of a large family. His father died when he was nine and Phil went to work when aged about 12. He said he wanted to be a jockey, but no stable would take him. Later he claimed to have worked in an estate agent’s office until he spilt ink over a plan and ran away, then dusted pianos for 2/6 a week, been a timekeeper in an iron-foundry and a clerk in a solicitor’s office. He began to sketch actors for a few pennies while employed at the Leeds Grand Theatre mixing paint for the scenery, painting scenery and playing Dick Whittington’s cat in a pantomime. His first published drawings appeared in the Yorkshire Gossip in 1878.
He went to London to try his luck in 1882 but met with bitter hardship and returned home in 1884. He began to sell drawings to London magazines from Leeds, his first successful sale being a caricature of Henry Irving, Bancroft and Toole reeling after a Garrick Club supper, which was published as a print by a London bookseller. The Prince of Wales purchased a copy, and May’s success led to introductions to London editors. (According to Caban, p.34, his bad luck in London changed when a drawing of three well-known actors was passed onto the editor of London Society. ) He was offered a job doing the cover and illustrations for the Christmas issue of the St Stephen’s Review and was soon regularly employed on that paper. When W.H. Traill arrived in England in October 1885 May was earning £8 to £10 a week, mainly illustrating for the St Stephen’s Review . He was the first artist to take advantage of process engraving on zinc. Traill offered him £15 to join the Bulletin after the alcoholic W.G. Baxter, the creator of the immensely popular 'Aly Sloper’, refused. Although only 21, May was already consumptive, frail and almost toothless, so was interested in going to Australia for health reasons. Even so, he held out for £20, i.e. £1000 p.a.
May and his wife arrived at Sydney in 1886 (Rolfe, 47-48). He remained at the Bulletin for three years, mostly in Sydney and briefly in Melbourne (included in c.1930s list of Bulletin Artists, ML Px*D557 pt 5, '14’). During this short period, he was immensely prolific. Thorpe estimates that the Bulletin published approximately 256 of his drawings in 1886, 361 in 1887 and 232 in 1888. At the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition the 'Sydney Bulletin’, along with other newspapers and publishers like the Picturesque Atlas Company, exhibited original drawings at the entrance to the NSW Court; they included a group by May and another by Hop (cat.58, p.492 in Official Record ). That year May drew a popular series of portraits of local identities entitled Things we see when we come out without our gun for the Bulletin : SLNSW has two undated originals, one of a very tall and a very short man (ML). The other, a flashily dressed man in a checked suit published 18 February 1888, p.7 (DL original Pd 721), has a verso note stating that it was shown at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
Three of May’s Australian drawings were shown in the 1898 Grafton Gallery 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’, by which time he was working for London Punch : cat.6 The Old and New Year , cat.366 Balance of Power , and cat.367 Which is to Stand in Front? all lent by the Bulletin Newspaper Company. Other cartoons from the Bulletin are illustrated in Rolfe (52-54, et al.), e.g. two dandies in the park 22 May 1886, 13. He drew several strong anti-Chinese images in Sydney, e.g. 14 April 1888 (Chinese immigrant men ruining young Caucasian women with opium).
In 1888, financially assisted by the Melbourne lawyer and land-boomer Theodore Fink, May left to study art in France. He returned to England accompanied by the American painter and illustrator Frederick B. Schell . May never achieved his ambition to be a painter but instead became an internationally renowned cartoonist. He continued to send back drawings for the Bulletin , though fewer as his fame grew in London: Thorpe lists 47 published in 1889, 26 in 1890, one in 1891, eight in 1892 and one in 1893 (some may have been old stock or repeats). An (unsigned) cover, Queensland offers to join the convention, an unpleasant preliminary (“You Dirty Boy”) , published in the Bulletin on 3 April 1897 [ sic ], attacks Queensland’s use of South Pacific Islander labour by parodying the well-known Pears Soap advertisement and statuette. Thorpe estimates that he made about 933 Bulletin drawings altogether.
May joined London Punch in February 1895 and was soon the most popular English illustrator of the day, a rival to Charles Keene as England’s greatest cartoonist ever. Phil May annuals were produced from 1892 (in Sydney) to 1903, sometimes twice yearly. QAG has two English originals, one about a gullible man (who looks like Gladstone) buying fake busts in Pompeii. The Art Institute of Chicago has Arry and Arriet c.1884-1903 (pen and black ink over traces of graphite, 3304 × 240mm, Acc. no. 1927.4329) drawn for Punch Almanac , as well as drawings of Whistler ( Whistler and Phil May 1894, AIC #1933.238, and Sketch of Whistler’s Head n.d., AIC #1933.238A). His most admired collection of drawings, acc. Lindesay (p.32), has always been Guttersnipes (1896). Mainly depicting the low life and poor children of London, the figures had their genesis in May’s Sydney 'Push’ drawings, e.g. (woman with bruised face) Q.E.D. ': '“What’s up wi’ Sal?”/ “Ain’t yer 'erd? She’s Married agin!”’ reproduced in Humorists of the Pencil , London 1908, 12. AGNSW has an original group of Cockney Girls. Other London periodicals to which he contributed include the Graphic (Caban 34 & Dorothy Hopkins 97) and the Sketch (Dorothy Hopkins, 97). The Art Institute of Chicago’s drawing Blind Beggar and Dog 1894 (278 × 223mm: acc. no. 1927.6174) is noted in the catalogue as probably being for The Sketch .
In English Humour the author J.B. Priestly considers that May represents 'The Nineties’ more than any other single person. Whistler stated: “Black and white, its name is Phil May” (quoted, perhaps not precisely, by Rolfe, 48). Although suffering from phthisis (TB) and cirrhosis of the liver – Caban (33) quotes an unsourced contemporary journalist’s description of his 'cadaverous looking face, almost ghastly in its pallor, gums nearly toothless from ruined digestion in his starving days…’ – he nevertheless had to be regularly dragged away from pubs to finish assignments (Caban, 33). He died on 5 August 1903, aged 39, while Hop was en route to visit him, and was buried in St Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green.
Terry Ingram ('Sales of the century’, Art & Australia 37/2 1999, 271) states that at Walter Bradley’s sale of Phil May drawings for the Bulletin at Sydney in September 1903, 'Nothing – not even the slightest sketch – sold under a guinea and several ran into double figures’ ( Daily Telegraph 19 September 1903). 140 of May’s Melbourne drawings were sold at Gemmell & Tuckett’s gallery in 1903, following a Sydney sale-exhibition of almost 500 drawings and a London exhibition at the Leicester Galleries of English Punch drawings (see review by J. Lake, 'Phil May, his Australian sketches: their value examined’, Melbourne Herald 28 October 1903, Hop Scrapbook ML, p.741 H). In 1904 the Bulletin published a collection of his early Sydney work, Phil May in Australia , with an appreciation by A.G. Stephens. Theo Fink lent a large collection of May’s originals to the 1918 AGNSW loan exhibition.
May sketched from life then reduced the drawing down to its essential line, he explained in an interview in 1896 (Rolfe, 49, Caban 1983, 30) and in the foreword to Phil May’s Sketch Book: Fifty Cartoons (London: Chatto & Windus, 1895: popular edition 1897):
“What reputation I have made I ascribe to very careful preparation of sketches. First of all, I get the rough idea of the picture. Sometimes it is suggested by a story I have heard, or by something I have seen. Sometimes it occurs to me spontaneously. I sketch a rough outline of the picture I want to draw, and from the general idea of this rough outline I never depart. Then I make several studies from the model in the poses which the picture requires and re-draw my figures from these studies. The next step is to draw the picture completely carefully putting in every line necessary to fulness [sic] of detail; and the last, to select the particular lines that are essential to the effect I want to produce, and take all the others out. That is how it is done.
“My types are all individuals. I am constantly on the look-out for the individual who embodies a type. When I am drawing a picture with several figures in it I often go out into the street to look for types. But I am collecting them at all times and in all places, more particularly in trains and omnibuses. I collected fifty or so in a recent visit to Battle, and a lot more, of a different sort when I was on the Riviera last spring. They will all come in useful some day. Australia has supplied me with any number. A quaint old Sydney clergyman whom I know figured very usefully not so long ago in an allegorical and 'up-to-date’ presentment of 'The Temptation of St. Anthony,’ and a well-known Australian curate was the original of the parson in 'Parson and Painter’. I am told that when the book came to be circulated in Great Britain this gentleman’s sermons acquired a sudden and enormous popularity, with the result that he unexpectedly found himself addressing his exhortations to many persons who had previously been far too negligent of their religious privileges.”
The illustrations (all dated 1894) include plate 1:
ARTIST. 'My good man, may I have the honour of sketching your likeness? I am Mr. Phil May.’
RUSTIC. 'Oh! are yer? Then, this time you’ll be Mr. Phil Mayn’t.’
and
DANBY, A.R.A. (to lady Art-Student). 'Yes, Miss Smith, the Old Masters used to mix their colours with brains in those days.’
MISS SMITH. 'Oh! How cruel!’
May allegedly once told Archibald that his salary should be inversely proportional to the number of lines used. Although he briefly drew political cartoons in Australia, he was never interested in politics and always had to have the entire scene and idea laid out for him (acc Lindesay, Overland , 30). He had no political loyalties and worked for conservative publications in England as well as for the then radical Bulletin in Sydney. It was Archibald, not May, who believed that the convict years explained much that was brutish and unattractive in the Australian character and that worthwhile history began with Eureka, although May illustrated both themes outstandingly. The History of Botany Bay by “Arthur Gayl” (the former monk Frank Donohoe), illustrated by Hop and May, appeared in the Bulletin in 1888. Put together in modest book form it sold more than 20,000 copies and was reprinted.
Key images include: A Curiosity In Her Own Country , published Bulletin 3 March 1888, 18 (ill. Rolfe, 197), reappeared in Phil May in Australia and was also reproduced as a postcard (see David Cook). Cf. May’s own comic inversion of it The Mother of Civilisation 18 February 1888 – an Indigenous mother with an Indigenous baby who is Henry Parkes. Its influence extended as far as New Zealand where a local cartoonist drew a Maori man looking into a shop window with Pakeha gazing at him with astonishment (see Grant).
May’s The Same Old Tune (And a Bad One at That) [1788 versus 1888], Bulletin 2 January 1888 (see Joan Kerr Archive file) cf his The Day We Celebrate? : 'New South Wales (indignantly): “My centenary, you dare to call it! Are these the things of which you wish me to remind the world? Are these the memorials of the day you would have me celebrate?” – (See page 4)’, showing a statue of a convict labelled 'Our Founder’ and a relief of the Backhouse/Bruce image on the plinth, Bulletin 11 September 1886, 10. SLNSW originals include the large Any Port in a Storm (V*CART/10) depicting Bulletin readers and politicians sheltering under the umbrella of young woman (Federation?} against 'Republicanism’.
Numerous portraits and self-portraits exist, including a very large Hop original for a serial story about May (ML, reproduced Kerr 1999): ’1. This is a Comic Artist (who shall be nameless), and who is in the habit of picking up characters during his walks abroad, drawing upon his shirt-cuffs—anything’, surrounded by six vignettes telling story of May’s washerwoman and her husband who, angry at his wife being drawn, goes to protest and gets talked into posing himself (ML *D431/13, annotated published 6 February 1886, p.11). Also Hop portrait of May dated 24 January 1886, pen & ink, AGNSW, original for Bulletin portrait published 6 February 1886 surrounded by six smaller drawings.
Series of self portraits in a serial drawing The man who would not be sketched about May pursuing his quarry, a judge, and being constantly foiled until finally capturing him by peering in a window when he is in bed asleep, undated Bulletin original (ML SV*CART 23).
That’s me when I’m old , plaster/clay (?) model in Melbourne Savage Club; also reproduced as a postcard. (There is some speculation that this is the same as Phil May , clay mask, illus. Caban 1983, 29), Self Portrait (That’s me when I’m Old) from Phil May in Australia , reproduced Caban 1983, 25, et al. Profile self-portrait with cigar 1898, pen & brown ink, AGNSW.
Phil May, A New-Chum’s Benevolence. 'Our Artist (who is very charitable) to little Sydney street urchin whom he has just picked up: “Now, my little man, if you come in every morning for an hour and stand for me as a model, I will give you six shillings a week. Think of that.”/ Boy: “Six bob a week? Oh, I make six bob a day selling the Bulletin.”/ (Studio to LET.)’ Bulletin 19 June 1886, 7.
Phil May in Sydney (Sketched by himself) , reproduced from the Bulletin in Our Swag—Christmas Number 22 December 1905, 18 (in article on May); Phil May by Himself , reproduced from The History of Punch by kind permission of Mr M.H. Spielmann, the owner of the original drawing’, in L Raven Hill, Humorists of the Pencil (London: Punch Office 1908), 2.
Sketch of Phil May by R.W n..d., pencil BFAG (gift of Valerie Albiston and Yvonne Cohen, 1977).
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 22 April 1864
- Summary
- Significant English cartoonist who worked in Sydney and Melbourne for three years in the late Colonial period: "a rival to Charles Keene as England's greatest cartoonist ever". He drew several strong anti-Chinese images in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5-Aug-03
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude52.6285576 Longitude1.2923954 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Norwich, Norfolk, England, UK
- Biography
- bird painter, was born in England. He signed his work 'Neville Cayley’, whereas his son Neville William Cayley, also a bird painter, signed 'Neville W. Cayley’. In 1881 Neville Cayley senior exhibited at the second annual exhibition of the Art Society of NSW. At the last he displayed 'some exquisitely painted birds’ ( Sydney Mail , 8 October 1881, 609). 'No.195 by N. Cayley is a watercolour picture of a dead canary hanging against a panel. The plumage is painted with that unusual care which all Cayley’s work shows, and altogether the study is of its kind, a gem. And no.196, which comes from the same brush, a picture showing a pair of blue wrens, is an exquisitely finished bit, which proves that this artist’s forte lies in the delineation of birds’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 17 October 1881, p.6).
'Cayley, N. Birds, animals, &c., water-colour. Works marked by scrupulous fidelity to nature’ (A.E. Greenwood & H.W.H. Stephen, Catalogue (Descriptive and Critical) of the Art Gallery with Sydney Art Noted , Sydney, 1883).
At the sixth annual exhibition of the Art Society of NSW in 1885 the Sydney Morning Herald critic noted: 'no.192 “Dignity and Impudence” by Neville Cayley is a rather comical bird picture. A pompous looking kookaburra (or laughing jackass) is perched upon an old fence, and close at hand surveying him with a jaunty self-complacent air, is a little blue wren, whose whole body is not as large as {...?} fighting over a bone and Mr Cayley has other bird-pictures in the exhibition. The artist has evidently thoroughly studied his subjects and the skill with which the colours and texture of the plumage of the different birds are painted is certainly very great’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 11 April 1885, p.9). 'Mr N. Cayley, in his types of native fauna, has dashed in a considerable degree of humour. “Dignity and Imprudence [sic]” and “Bone of Contention” are cleverly drawn’ ( Illustrated Sydney News , 9 May 1885, p.14). 'Mr Neville Cayley has a field all of his own in the painting of Australian birds. He has painted better birds than he shows here; but he never paints birds otherwise than well, and might well be put in commission by those who have charge of the youth of the colony, to supply them with fair copies of all the charming feathered creatures they only want to destroy’ ( Sydney Mail , 11 April 1885, p.767).
Centennial International Exhibition, Melbourne, 1888-89: NSW Court – no.20 – Water-colour Paintings from life, by Neville Cayley – exhibited by William Aldenhoven, 74 Hunter-street, Sydney (77 natural history paintings); Art Loan Collection – no.1406 watercolour 'Tiger’, by Neville Cayley – exhibited by W. Aldenhoven, 74 Hunter Street. Listed as “Cazley, Neville” of N.S.W., Cayley won a Jury award (Oil and Watercolour painting) for his collection of drawings of Australian Birds (2nd order of merit). Also catalogued in NSW Court (no. 41) as “N. Cazeley”.
A description of 'Herr’ [William] Aldenhoven’s establishment in Hunter Street, Sydney, included: 'Neville Cayley’s paintings of birds are also to be seen at this shop. Mr Cayley has been very fortunate with his work. He has had the good fortune to sell a great many of his oils and watercolours and the Christmas cards now being sold by Herr Aldenhoven, produced from his paintings of lyre-birds, the laughing-jackasses, the wild ducks, the landgrails etc. are as pleasant as they are characteristic’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 16 November 1889, 7).
Re acquisitions made by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1890: 'In another picture by N. Cayley, a duck is shown at the moment it is shot. It is poised in air and the small feathers struck from it break the outline. It is a good bit of work’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 26 April 1890, p.7). 'The water-colours purchased are ten in number, and are as follows: – ... “Duck” by N. Cayley’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 31 December 1890, pp.10-11).( Fred Williams is said to have been commissioned to do a version of this painting.)
Awarded a gold medal at the 1892 Chicago International Exhibition.
Report from Argus (republished Sydney Morning Herald , 12 May 1894, 5):
the publication of the still more important folios devoted to illustrating the ornithology of this continent by Mr Aldenhoven, of Sydney. An exhibition of the original watercolour drawings, 130 in number, which have been made for it by Mr Neville Cayley, has been opened for a few days in the ground floor of the Federal Coffee Palace, Melbourne, and is sure to attract considerable attention. The artist, ... [who] commenced his studies in Gippsland, possesses an innate knowledge of the portraiture of birds, whether in motion or repose, alive or dead; delineating their plumage with singular fidelity and conscientious case, while proving himself at the same time a skilful colourist. Some of the drawings are life-sized, and close observation has evidently familiarised Mr Cayley with the characteristic habits and attitudes of his subjects, their modes of flight, and their particular habitat, so that each picture is to some xtent a page of natural history. The whole of the drawings are to be faithfully reproduced on stone, and then coloured by hand, under the immediate supervision and with the final touches of the artist himself. The undertaking is a very bold and costly one on the part of the publishers, and it is certainly deserving of support by the lovers of art, by sportsmen, and by students of ornithology.
Exhibited Society of Artists 1895.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1854
- Summary
- Ornithological artist, especially of Australian game-birds. Born in England, lived mainly in New South Wales, and exhibited widely in Australia and internationally.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1903
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1852-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Late colonial era Melbourne businessman and painter: the wood panels for the 1889 9×5 Impressionists exhibition in Melbourne came from his family’s cigar factory.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1852
- Summary
- Late colonial era Melbourne businessman and painter: the wood panels for the 1889 9x5 Impressionists exhibition in Melbourne came from his family's cigar factory.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1903
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Photographer who was born in England and arrived in 1852 on the Will Watch with his parents. He went to Victoria in 1873 where he practiced as a photographer but returned to England in 1893. He became a farmer at Greenough then practiced as a photographer in Mingenew. This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1842
- Summary
- Arrived in Victoria in 1873 where he practiced as a photographer but returned to England in 1893.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1903
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1841-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- professional woodcarver, was born at 1 Coleharbour Street, Hackney Road, London, on 31 October 1841, son of Samuel Cunningham, a sawmill owner, and Sophia Lanham, and evidently served his apprenticeship as a woodcarver in London. On 12 July 1862, aged twenty and working as a 'looking glass frame maker’ from his father’s sawmill at Bethnal Green, he married dressmaker Ann Maria Jarvis, four years his senior, at Ebenezer Chapel, Bethnal Green. The couple migrated to New Zealand soon after their marriage; their first child, Alice, was born in the Auckland suburb of Parnell on 10 May 1863 (she died just after Christmas 1882). When the Waikato War broke out in July, the Cunninghams decided they would be safer in Australia and sailed for Sydney later that year.
James’s first commission in NSW was carving a Royal Coat of Arms for Hartley Court House, signed and dated 1863. A second daughter, Clara, was born in their home in Druitt Street, Sydney on 15 July 1864 but died the following April. Arthur was born on 4 September 1865, followed two years later by William (died March 1868). By then, the family were living in rented premises and moving regularly. Another short-lived son was born in 1869. James became increasingly committed to the Baptist Church, including the Ashfield Baptist 'Life Boat’ and 'Band of Hope’. He was deacon at Ashfield Church from 1884.
According to Sands’ Directory for 1869, James Cunningham was then established as a woodcarver in partnership with William Quill at 117 Liverpool Street, Sydney. By 1870 he was in business for himself at 101 Liverpool Street, where he remained until moving to 368 Pitt Street (c.1883-92) and finally to 85 Goulburn Street (c.1893-1903). The Liverpool Street business, housed on the ground floor of a two-storey terrace with the family living upstairs in three rooms over the workshop (seen in a cdv by Beaufoy Merlin 's American and Australasian Photographic Company, c.1870, ill. Wade and Conroy, p.162) was a continuation of the business started by Edward Oram ). In 1874 the Cunninghams rented a separate private residence in Elizabeth Street, Waterloo, where their last child, Mabel, was born in 1876.
In about 1879 the Cunninghams moved into their own home, 'Milton Villa’, Prospect (now Cromwell) Street, Ashfield, recorded in a cdv by F. Stubbs & Co American Photo Company dated 15 June 1882. They owned another weatherboard house next door, which they rented out. Both are extant, the family home at no.24 being richly decorated, with timber Corinthian capitals topping the verandah posts, leafy curved bargeboards on the side gables, fretwork canopies over the second-storey windows and attic vent, and carved brackets under the sills. The interior carving includes double acanthus brackets in the hallway. James also made most of the furniture, much of which is now owned by one of his granddaughters. This includes a wardrobe, davenport desk, medicine chest (c.1890), art nouveau picture frames (c.1900) – one incorporating native flannel flowers – a drawing-room sofa and two armchairs, a sideboard (c.1880-90), wall brackets, at least six balloon-back chairs and an occasional table, all in cedar, and boards for playing Chinese chequers.
Cunningham advertised in the 1885 Sands’ Directory as an 'Architectural and General Wood Carver’. He carried out many architectural commissions, though few can be identified now. He is known to have carved three official coats-of-arms in cedar for court houses at Hartley, Sydney (c.1870) and Kempsey (c.1897). The Sydney Royal Coat of Arms was removed to the Chief Justice’s chambers in a new office block in Macquarie Street in the late 1970s when the original Supreme Court building was demolished. Descendants believe he also did carvings at Sydney Town Hall.
Given his strong religious commitment, Cunningham inevitably did much eccesiatical work, notably the carved decoration and furniture for the Baptist churches at Ashfield and Stanmore, including the pulpit decoration and a Gothic Revival screen for the former (erected 1885). When this building was demolished, his pulpit (c.1886) was re-erected in the present church in Holden Street, Ashfield, along with a small table he had carved. His lectern for All Saints’ Anglican Cathedral, Bathurst (c.1872), is now in Karingal Village. His descendants state that he also did carvings for St Saviour’s Anglican Cathedral, Goulburn and for St Mary’s Catholic and St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedrals in Sydney. An oak eagle lectern in the last is of the same design as Cunningham’s Bathurst lectern, so was clearly by his firm. He did the carving and turnings on the cases housing organs by William Davidson at Bathurst, Cobbity, Morpeth, the Wesleyan church at Parramatta, and Yass (revealed in Davidson’s insolvency application). His best known work today is probably the case of the Strasburg Clock model, built by R.B. Smith in 1887-89 and acquired for Sydney’s Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse Museum) in 1890. Working from a photograph, he mistakenly incorporated a curved staircase into his replica, which is actually part of the church.
In 1902, after the children had grown up, James, Ann Maria and the unmarried Lilly moved into a new brick semi-detached house at 28 Temple Street, Stanmore. From there, James commuted by train to his city business. He died suddenly on 8 December 1903, aged sixty-two, and was buried in the plot in the Baptist (now Independent) section of Rookwood Cemetery (lot no 249), where his daughter Alice had been buried nineteen years earlier. His fellow Baptist and Mason, Rev. Frederick Hibbard, wrote his obituary.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 October 1841
- Summary
- Professional woodcarver born in London, England, UK. Resident of Sydney, NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8-Dec-03
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1841-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and architect, was born in Sydney on 4 March 1841, son of Samuel Smedley, a house painter and decorator, and Margaret Mathieson (also known as Brown). He was a cousin and pupil of artist William Dexter . In 1856, when only 14 years old, Smedley submitted a designs for a gold cup to be presented to William Randle, the engineer responsible for the Sydney to Parramatta railway; so did his much older cousin. Dexter was awarded first prize and young Smedley came second. He had also worked on Dexter’s winning design, drawing the panoramic view of the station buildings between Sydney and Parramatta encircling the cup (reproduced NSW Railway Budget 1905). At the presentation ceremony in Sydney’s Royal Hotel the subscribers were so impressed with the design and youth of the co-designer that 'they placed him on the table in order to get a better view of him. A purse of thirty sovereigns was subscribed in the room and presented to young Smedley as a mark of their appreciation of his ability.’
In 1858 Smedley painted an oil copy of Dexter’s Fire at Kent Brewery (MAAS). He provided an oil transparency on W. H. Aldis 's tobacco warehouse as part of Sydney’s celebrations of the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1863, which showed
the combined arms of the Prince of Wales and the Royal Arms of Denmark emblazoned on oval shields overlapping each other … encircled by the garter and rose of England. The supporters are the lion and unicorn, with the motto “Dieu et mon Droit”. At the base of the design are two ornamental scrolls within which are introduced groups of cupids smoking their pipes of peace and happiness, lighted by the torch of Hymen. The whole is surmounted by the plume of his Royal Highness within a golden coronet, and the motto “Ich dien”, over which there is a circlet of bright stars.
The painting was praised for its 'well-developed colours’ – a significant comment in the light of Smedley’s later work. In 1866 his father said he had made a large watercolour of 'the Burning of St Mary’s Cathedral [June 1865] from which Photographs were taken’ (evidently that now in the archives of St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney).
After serving his articles with Sydney architect George Allen Mansfield, Smedley travelled to Hong Kong in 1866 and became junior partner in the firm of Storey & Son, architects and civil engineers. He continued to employ his artistic talents, painting scenery for the theatre of the Club de Lusitana and producing an easel painting showing the ball given at the inauguration of the club. He made a panoramic view of Hong Kong from the deck of the John Adams . On 8 October 1869 he visited Shanghai for the first time, then holidayed at Yokohama.
He made sketches at Kobe soon after it was opened. Attracted to Japan, he began to practise in Yokohama as an architect and civil engineer in 1872. He was commissioned to provide the pavilions and decorations for the state opening of the first railway in Japan and sketched the opening ceremony – with some trepidation as it marked the first public appearance of the sacred figure of the Mikado. He subsequently provided decorations for the ceremonial review of the fleet by the Mikado at Yokohama. In his role as architect, he supervised the erection of the Imperial Russian Legation in Tokyo (1874-77) and designed the Catholic Church in the foreign quarters of the city.
Smedley left Japan at the end of 1876 and returned via Hong Kong to Sydney. The following year he organised a section of Japanese paintings and craft goods for the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition. He became actively involved with the Sydney School of Arts, where he exhibited his Japanese drawings. He also exhibited with the New South Wales Academy of Art (two watercolours of Nikko, Japan – Burial Place of the Emperors [ Shoguns ]). He married Annie Maria Casement in Sydney and they left for Japan towards the end of the year. Annie noted in her memoirs that the town of Kobe had 'great interest’ for her as 'the greater part of the European portion of it had been built up by my husband during his residence there, in the early days, soon after the opening of the port’, and that 'the whole place was already familiar to me, through the medium of my husband’s sketch book’. She also records their visit to the Japan Exhibition in December 1877.
From October 1878 [his contract dates from 1876 acc. Clark] to March 1979, Smedley taught architecture and drawing at the Technical University ('Daigakko’) in Tokyo. On 13 April 1880 [elsewhere 'April 1878’] the painter Goseda Yoshimatsu met his former master, cartoonist Charles Wirgman, and was taken to Smedley’s house too see the artist at work, including his oil painting; he recorded that Smedley was copying Hokusai’s Manga and Famous Sights in the Yamato-e manner.
An earthquake at Yokohama in February 1880 and a generally depressed economy caused the Smedleys to leave Japan and return to Sydney. Initially in partnership with Ambrose Thornley, Smedley soon set up his own architectural practice at 263 George Street; his private residence was 'Uyeno’ in Addison Road, Manly. He was Honorary Secretary of the New South Wales Institute of Architects in 1885-88 and a committee member of the Art Society of New South Wales in 1882-90. He exhibited with the Art Society in 1880 and 1881, when he was mentioned 'as one of the few new members’, showing numerous 'rather large oil paintings rich with the splendour and the havoc of the East in their blending of grotesque figures, uncouth architecture and brilliant colouring’.
The Sydney Morning Herald commented that his painting of a Japanese temple was 'a good study of architecture and curious figure drawing’, but that best of all was a view of Mount Fuji. He also showed an English scene and a view of Mississippi Bay – 'proof of Smedley’s versatility’ (and travels). At the 1883 exhibition he showed watercolours as well as oils and introduced local subjects alongside Japanese ones, e.g. Fishing Boat, North Head and View from North Head, towards Broken Bay . A pair of Illawarra scenes exhibited in 1884 were considered 'gems’ by the Bulletin but the Herald critic had some problems with his unusual bright colours and impressionistic technique. Fig Tree, North Harbour was 'painted in such a slapdash style that it must be looked at from a little distance’, said the critic (conceding that then it looked very good), while his view of Bradley’s Head shown in 1888 had 'some extraordinary effects of colour’.
(In one of John Horbury Hunt’s cutting books (SLNSW Q720.8, p.10) there is a cutting 'Smedley versus Anthony Horderns’ in which the architect J.J. Davey gave evidence, probably from a law report in the SMH 8 January 1887)
Smedley participated in the 1888 Centennial International Exhibition at Melbourne where his oil painting Temple Grounds, Nikko, Japan was awarded an honourable mention. Architectural drawings as well as oil paintings were shown in the NSW Art Society’s autumn exhibition, with 'a correct and quaint representation of a Japanese Theatre’ being noted the following year. In 1889 all his 'bold and sketchy’ oils were views of local buildings, including St. Ignatius College, Lane Cove and St. Patrick’s College, Manly (the latter sold at James Lawson’s in August 1980).
His architectural career, however, remained paramount. He designed many buildings in the 1880s, including banks in Toowoomba and Townsville (Qld) for the Bank of NSW, and the Wesleyan Church at Stanmore and the Waterloo and Liverpool Town Halls in suburban Sydney. His best-known building, the Sydney Trades Hall, was won in competition and begun in January 1888; it comprises the corner section and most of the Goulburn Street frontage of the extant building. Engaged to redesign the accommodation of the Sydney School of Arts and Mechanics Institute in Pitt Street, by September 1887 he had completed a ladies’ reading room, a smoking room and a stage in the hall – twenty-seven years after sketching Laying the Foundation Stone of the Mechanics School of Arts 1860 (photograph ML).
In 1891 the Smedleys returned to Yokohama. There John made a series of watercolour sketches in the company of the English watercolourist Alfred Parsons (said to have been 1891 in Parsons’ obituary, but an error for 1892 according to John Clark). In 1894-96 they lived at Hankow, China while John surveyed the British, German and Russian concessions and carried out the city’s major drainage and sewerage works. Apart from a brief trip to England for a medical examination in 1903, he spent most of his last six years as an architect and civil engineer in Shanghai and regularly painted scenery for an amateur drama company there. His Sydney obituary in A.A.A. stated that he was employed as adviser to the Chinese Imperial Government on the remodelling of Peking 'according to Western ideas’ at the time of his death in 1903. A memorial service was held in Holy Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 March 1841
- Summary
- Late 19th century Sydney born painter and architect whose work was influenced greatly by East Asian modes of painting and drawing. He travelled and lived much of his life throughout Japan, Hong Kong and China, learning from and contributing to these communities through his artistic and architectural practice.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1903
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- near Croydon, Surrey, England, UK, near Croydon, Surrey (Greater London), England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born near Croydon, London on 14 October 1835, of an old Scottish family, according to his obituary in the British Journal Photographic Almanac 1904 . Already an innovative (although apparently not well-paid) photographer at the age of fifteen, he left England for Australia in search of gold. His prospecting was unsuccessful, so he set up as a photographer in rural New South Wales. Although no extant photographs have been identified, he was advertising his availability to take portrait photographs in the Yass Courier on 18 December 1858. Co-incidentally, that same month a series of his stereoscopic photographs showing 'the sacking of a Jew’s house’ were mentioned in the London Art Journal : 'These works are thus novelties to the art as a consecutive series which tell a story’. The set was also noted in the Photographic News (24 December 1858).
After returning to England in 1859, Elliott married a sister of Clarence E. Fry, a professional photographer who had learned his trade from George Washington Wilson. The two men founded the firm of Elliott & Fry in 1863. It was very successful. Elliott was said to have had the business skills while Fry was the chief camera operator. They manufactured and sold their own plates and paper and in 1886 opened a South Kensington (London) branch operated by Fry. Both were wealthy men before the partnership was dissolved in 1893.
Elliott continued to travel widely and was also a noted art collector. He died in London on 30 March 1903.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 October 1835
- Summary
- An innovative photographer by the age of fifteen, Elliot came to Australia in search of gold. When that proved fruitless, he set up as a photographer in rural NSW in the 1850s. He also ran a successful photographic business in London after returning in 1859. Elliot was also a noted art collector.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30-Mar-03
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude51.3788171 Longitude-2.3695986 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Westmoreland, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, editor and estate agent, was born in Westmoreland, England. He arrived at Ballarat, Victoria, in 1854, where he set up as a photographer. Cowley and Wilson took over Julius Rochlitz 's photographic studio in Lydiard Street in 1856, but Rochlitz stayed on as studio assistant and chief camera operator and the daguerreotypes of Lola Montez, A.M. Quinn, and other celebrities of the day on view at the shop were possibly all taken by Rochlitz. In August 1857 Wilson produced the first number of the Corn Stalk , a monthly quarto of four pages of which he was editor. It lasted only until the following year.
Wilson may then have left Ballarat for a few years and worked as a travelling photographer. An 'artist’ called Wilson, resident in the Beechworth district, appeared as a witness in a Supreme Court hearing in 1860. He seems to have been the Wilson who took over Batchelder & Co.'s name and stock at Melbourne in 1866-67 in partnership with Frederick Dunn and John Botterill but then sold out his interest. The rest of his life, spent in Ballarat, was apparently unconnected with photography. Manager, with T.D. Wanliss, of the Ballarat Star (which he eventually owned) and subsequently a successful land and estate agent, he played an active role in local affairs. An elected councillor from 1877, he served a term as mayor in 1881-82. As founder and managing director of the Ballarat Trustees, Executors and Agency Company, he was one of the executors of J.R. Thompson’s estate which provided £3000 for the city to purchase statues for the Botanic Gardens. He was chairman of the reconstructed Ballarat Water Commission from 1880 until he died from 'paralysis’ at his home, Rosgill, in Mair Street, Ballarat, on 2 April 1903.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1832
- Summary
- Wilson worked as a photographer in Ballarat from 1854. It is thought that he may have spent a year or two as a travelling photographer. Wilson served a term as Mayor of Ballarat in 1881-82.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2-Apr-03
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude54.98 Longitude-1.61 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
- Biography
- painter, art teacher, poet and coal-miner, was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, where, his obituarist claimed, he studied art under William Bell Scott and H.H. Emmerson then practised as a painter in various (unspecified) parts of England until he, his wife Mary, née Watson, and their young child, migrated to New South Wales in 1861. Reay discovered that no artistic patronage awaited him and he was soon working as a coal-miner in Newcastle, New South Wales. His large oil painting which toured to Newcastle, Maitland and Sydney, Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise (unlocated), was, his obituarist implied, painted as an allegory of the Reays’ colonial situation; however, if it was the same painting as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden 'at noon, when they were called upon by the voice of the Deity’, attributed to a self-taught painter and long-term Newcastle resident called 'Bedford’ in the Sydney Morning Herald of 18 November 1863, then Reay may have sent it out to the colonies before deciding to join it. A painting of a similar subject was touring the New South Wales goldfields in 1855. If not the same person, the two painters certainly appear to have been conflated by Reay’s obituarist, who also stated that the success of Reay’s Expulsion picture in Sydney led to a commission to paint the portrait of Governor Sir John Young (later Lord Lisgar), for which purpose Reay was granted several sittings at Government House.
Reay undoubtedly received this commission, but when the portrait was displayed at a dinner given in the governor’s honour by the Hunter River Valley Vineyard Association in 1868, Sir John told rather a different story. As reported by the Maitland Mercury , Young believed that Reay was a self-taught artist and stated that the portrait had been painted under the following circumstances: 'It appears that Reay is a working coal miner by trade, but, having a natural talent for drawing, has contrived in his leisure hours to attain a very creditable proficiency in the art. Some time ago, Mr. Reay instituted a portrait club amongst his fellow miners; he painted their portraits … they remunerating him by certain weekly subscriptions. Some of these portraits were seen by Mr. Keene [the manager], who, struck by their fidelity and the talent displayed in their execution, mentioned the circumstance to Sir John Young, and at the same time requested his Excellency to encourage this self-taught genius by having his portrait taken’.
Despite the unqualified praise of Sir John and Lady Young as to the portrait’s fidelity, Reay returned to the mines. The Mercury concluded: 'It is a great pity that so much promising talent should be buried in obscurity’. Reprinted in the Sydney Morning Herald on 29 May 1868, the story ultimately led to commissions from Mayor Walter Renny and other public men of Sydney, the novelty of being a painter-miner proving Reay’s major asset. Even when his oil View of Waratah Colliery was lent to the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition by D.N. Joubert and Reay was wrongly catalogued as 'W. Bray’, his essential identification—that he was a miner at the Waratah Colliery—was there under the misspelt name.
Whether Reay was really self-taught or had been trained by two leading North of England painters is not clear either. Ironically, the latter seems the more likely: that it was the colonial success of his Adam and Eve which encouraged him to migrate. But at this stage Reay had more hopes of emerging from a colonial coal-mine through tales of 'self-help’ and natural working-class genius than by confessing to any professional training. Although undoubtedly a coal-miner by trade (his painting in England would, at best, have been a part-time activity), he may well have attended art classes for working men at the government Schools of Design, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, taught by Scott from 1842 to 1864 and by Scott’s erstwhile pupil Emmerson. Many years later, when employed as an art teacher, Reay’s artistic background was an obvious asset. Then the past could be reclaimed, even embellished.
Reay became art master at Newcastle Grammar School for nineteen years and visiting art teacher at Miss Dowling’s Young Ladies Seminary in West Maitland and at Mr Theobald’s Collegiate School. As such, he was responsible for the art education of a great number of children in the Hunter Valley. He also painted portraits of local residents such as Mr and Mrs Hannay (recorded in the 1880s) and/or a pair of unidentified sitters (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney). His large oil painting of a bushranging incident was purchased by a Newcastle police officer. When Mr R.B. Theobald included his own poetic tribute to Reay in Poems and Lyrics by William Reay, Artist (West Maitland 1886), he affirmed with true poetic licence (if not rhyme) that the portrait Reay had painted of him, now hanging in his home, was 'done so well / That 'twould credit be to Rembrandt or Raphael’.
In old age Reay was respected as Newcastle’s 'painter-poet’ and the painter-miner was forgotten. Of a somewhat higher standard than Theobald’s, his poems are equally archaic in language and even more stereotypical in content and style, his mentors being the inevitable Robert Burns and Shakespeare. He wrote as an exile from a beloved 'North Countree … the Borderland – its Battlefields, its meadows, its foaming torrents, its rippling brooks’, understandably rejecting the local content provided by the rather depressing mining town of Waratah, outside Newcastle, where he continued to live. His poem 'To an English primrose growing in Australia’ includes references to his 'banishment’. He died at Waratah in May 1903, survived by his wife, four sons and two daughters.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- William Reay, painter, art teacher, poet and coal-miner, migrated to Australia in response to the colonial success of his painting, 'Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise'. However, Reay's poetry lamented his exile from England, the beloved 'North Countree ..its meadows,foaming torrents, and rippling brooks'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- May-03
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude51.8896903 Longitude0.8994651 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Colchester, England, UK
- Biography
- Amateur artist, engineer and author was born in Colchester, England, UK. He entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich receiving a commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers in 1848. Du Cane volunteered to superintend works at the convict establishment in Western Australia and arrived in 1851. He was placed in charge of the Eastern Districts comprising Toodyay and York. Du Cane took up residence in Guildford in 1852. Promoted to first lieutenant in 1854 he married Mary Dorothea Molloy, daughter of Georgiana (qv) and Jack, in 1855. They returned to England in 1856 where he became Chairman of Directors of Convict Prisons in 1869 and made KGB in 1877. Du Cane’s major work The Punishment and Prevention of Crime was published in 1885.
Writers:
Erickson, Dorothy (Dr)
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- Amateur artist, engineer and author was born in Colchester, England, UK.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1903
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude51.8896903 Longitude0.8994651 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Colchester, Essex, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, architect, engineer and penal reformer, was born on 23 March 1830 at Colchester, Essex, the youngest child of Major Richard Du Cane of the 20th Light Dragoons who had fought in the Peninsular Wars.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Hasluck, Alexandra
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 March 1830
- Summary
- Engaged as a Royal Engineer to superintend the works for the proposed convict establishment in Western Australia. Du Cane's sketches and paintings of exploratory expeditions, colonial life and Aborigines engaged in traditional pursuits and communicating with colonialists are valued for being some of the earliest recordings of the penal colony. In 1877, after returning to England, he was knighted f
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7-Jun-03
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Ireland. She accompanied her father Captain Walter Synnot to Van Diemen’s Land in 1836. On 11 February 1851 she married Rev. Montague Williams, an Anglican clergyman, in Holy Trinity Church, Launceston. There were two sons. As was the fashion, Synnot kept a diary over many years, although only one volume is known to survive (p.c.). It covers the period 1859-63 when she was resident at Westbury, Tasmania. Its borders are filled with sketches and in it she mentions completing watercolours for various members of the family and friends (unlocated). In November 1862 she joined Robert Proctor Beauchamp 's painting class, paying 2 guineas a quarter.
Mary Ann remained at Westbury until the 1870s when the family moved to Ballan, Victoria. She died at Toorak on 11 November 1903 and is buried in the St Kilda Cemetery.
Writers:
Harris, Helen Doxford
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1828
- Summary
- Colonial sketcher, wife of an Anglican clergyman. Sketched in her journal in which she also mentions watercolour works for family members and friends.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11-Nov-03
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, engraver and lithographer, was born in Bermondsey, London, on 28 February 1828, twelfth child of Thomas Knight, a wool-stapler of Amersham and London, and Charlotte, née Brooker.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 28 February 1828
- Summary
- William Knight arrived in Melbourne in 1853 and worked as a Survey Engraver. He produced some lithographic work as well as photographs and sketches.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Jul-03
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude57.15 Longitude-2.11 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1903-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, photographer, engineer and explorer, was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on 15 October 1821. His father, Lieutenant-Colonel George Henderson, had served with the Royal Engineers in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and under the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsular Wars then was a director of the London and South Western Railway Company. James, one of a large family of children, studied railway engineering under E. Dixon, a resident engineer with the company. When it was decided he should travel to Australia for health reasons, James joined a party of sappers and miners of the Royal Engineers under Captain Charles Edward Frome . The group was to continue the extensive survey work still needed in South Australia, where the demand for land continued to outstrip the rate of government surveying.
The party sailed from England on board the Recovery and arrived in November 1839 after a voyage of five months. Young Henderson spent his eighteenth birthday on board. At Adelaide the group was based in the sappers and miners’ barracks a few hundred yards east of Government House. Most of their time, however, was spent making forays into the country beyond settlement, such as to the shores of Lakes Albert and Alexandrina. In December 1840 Henderson led a measuring and surveying party along the Murray River towards North-West Bend. The future of settlement in South Australia depended largely on the success of such surveys; in 1840 alone 491,984 acres were covered.
In February 1841 Henderson resigned his commission and was appointed clerk of Public Works. It was a year of changes. Captain George Grey arrived to take over from Governor Gawler with instructions to reduce government spending. By 1842, owing to the depressed state of the whole country, intensive surveying was seen as less urgent than exploring regions beyond the immediate confines of settlement. Early in 1843 Frome formed a party to examine the country north of Adelaide to the east of the Flinders Ranges; James Henderson was one of the group that set out in July. Thomas Grey, the governor’s half-brother, was another, and the governor himself accompanied the men as far as Hawker’s Station on the Hutt River. It is the paintings and pencil sketches made during this expedition that establish Henderson’s artistic significance. They record numerous facets of the journey, from busy camp scenes to desolate plains and grand mountain passes. In his journal account of 17 July 1843, Henderson writes of his on-the-spot sketching after the party had climbed an elevation 800 feet (244 m) above their camp near Godfrey Creek: 'We could see distant hills in the direction we proposed to go, apparently about 50 miles off. Captain Frome and I made several sketches as we descended. It would afford employment for an artist for a week in making sketches of all the beautiful spots amongst the Blackrock Hills’. Pencil drawings in Henderson’s sketchbook (Mortlock Library of South Australiana, State Library of South Australia, Adelaide, SA) include observations on colour from which finished watercolours, such as Pass in Rowe’s Creek , could be worked up later. Six surviving watercolours record a surveying expedition to the Rapid Bay area.
In order to enter into partnership with the Adelaide merchant James Hamilton, Henderson gave up his government position in 1844. In June the following year he married Anna Maria Clarissa, third daughter of C.B. Newenham, sheriff of South Australia. The couple built a house, Netherby, on part of the 80-acre holding given to them by Anna’s father. Here their two sons were born. In December 1850, because of the death of James’s elder brother, the Hendersons returned to England. Two daughters were born there. Left behind in Australia were the Netherby property and a flourishing business: Hamilton & Henderson, Wine and Spirit Merchants. Henderson revisited Adelaide in 1852, wound up his affairs and returned to settle permanently in Truro, Cornwall. He became mayor in 1902 and died on 13 April 1903.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 October 1821
- Summary
- Sketcher, photographer, engineer and explorer, he came to Adelaide in 1840 as a surveyor. The drawings and paintings Henderson made on an 1843 expedition to examine the country north of Adelaide to the east of the Flinders Ranges established his artistic significance.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13-Apr-03
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1869-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter, NSW. Exhibited [Royal] Art Society of NSW, 1891. Art Society of NSW annual exhibition 1892: 'No.3 is a study by Lily Carter, whose work and drawing is far better in her little study entitled “Dead Nature”’ ( Illustrated Sydney News , 3 September 1892, p.4).
Art Society of NSW annual exhibition 1893: 'Miss Lily Carter’s view of “Bronte Waverley” (166), exhibits a breadth of effect, and an appreciation of the subtleties of form that are seldom found in a woman’s work’ ( Bulletin , 9 September 1893, p.14).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1869
- Summary
- Painter in New South Wales. Participated at the Art Society of New South Wales annual exhibition in 1892.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1902
- Age at death
- 33
Details
Latitude-36.5986096 Longitude144.6780052 Start Date1853-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Victoria
- Biography
- cartoonist and inventor, was born at sea near Victoria aboard the West Wind en route to Australia. According to Randolph Bedford (quoted Rolfe, 50), he learned to draw in his spare time from dairy farming: 'He could never draw a hand, nor a policeman’s helmet. A simple soul; the one thing that made him shy and bored was talk on art’. This must have been in extreme youth for after training at the Williamstown School of Design, he was apprenticed to an engraver and became a jeweller’s journeyman in Melbourne. He left this trade to edit the Trumpeter , a Williamstown paper of which he was co-proprietor and in which his first cartoons were published. From it, he transferred to the Tomahawk , then to Hayne’s Weekly in Sydney. He returned to Melbourne to work on Life , remaining for three years. He also worked as an artist for Sam Slick in Victoria (1879), Queensland Punch (c.1880) and Bull-Ant (Melbourne, 1890) – where he was sole cartoonist (examples ill. M. Anderson et al., When Australia Was A Woman , Western Australian Museum 1998) – Champion (1895-97) and Arena , e.g. 'The Debutante – 1901’ (Hopetoun: Madam, the people wait./ Australia: “Presently. (To herself) – and to think that I was that ugly little girl!” 29 December 1900. Some cartoons are signed 'Tom’ but most 'Tom Durkin’.
Durkin was contributing to the Bulletin by 1889. In 1893 he succeeded G.R. Ashton as its political cartoonist in Melbourne. Until 1898 he drew the weekly Melbourne political full-page cartoon, as well as caricatures and occasional joke drawings. Lindesay thinks the last are better drawn than his political cartoons, which had to be produced fast. They include: 'On the Wrong Lock’ (Customs presenting Lady Lock with a parcel on chain) 19 October 1889; 'Nemesis’ 1896: Mrs Murphy: “And sure ye lost all yer money in thim thavin’ companies!”/ Mrs Rooney: “Yes, I did! But God’s good. I have one consolation – my son Mick is a warder in Pentridge” (ill. Rolfe, 246). He drew some 'In Push Society’ cartoons with Ambrose Dyson and Phil May .
Durkin’s cartoons in Bull-Ant 1890-92 (its lifetime), of which he was part-owner with Edward Dyson and J.H. Smith (the latter replaced by Conrad Smith, its printer and publisher, after a year), included full-page cartoons and cover illustrations. Examples include: 'The Proper Attitude of Australia’ (man grovelling with head on ground and bum in air to 'English [actually Jewish] money’) 3 March 1892 (ill. Lindesay The Way We Were [ WWW ], 42); an extremely racist image that combines anti-Chinese and anti-Jewish sentiments and White Australia policy 17 May 1891 (from Juliet Peers, see file); and (political) 'Hanging to Office’ ('A remarkable Gymnastic Feat Recently Performed by Premier Munro’) 19 September 1891 (Lindesay WWW , 44).
A cartoon of Durkin’s in an issue of October 1890 [of Ant ] has been described [Mahood, p 230] as the most revolutionary cartoon yet seen in any Australian paper. It concerned the infamous Colonel Tom Price ordering armed troops to turn their rifles on striking labourers and to “Fire low and lay them out!” The implication in the cartoon is that the troops will fire on their officers. (Lindesay, 45, not illustrated but, according to Joan Kerr’s notes, “not at all striking as an image and if it conveys this message then it is most oblique.”)
Durkin gave drawing lessons to Ambrose and Will Dyson . He invented a weighing machine c.1900. Lindesay states that he also worked on Melbourne Punch before leaving for England. He died at Newport, Victoria, on 10 May 1902.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1853
- Summary
- Colonial political cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-May-02
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born on 28 December 1843 in Aldridge Lodge, Hobart Town, the third (surviving?) son of Joseph and Mary Morton Allport . His mother taught him to draw from infancy and preserved examples of his work in her Book of Treasures (Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts). These include a pencil sketch of a head done in 1847 and sketches and watercolours of flowers made 'from nature’ between 1850 and 1852. Evett’s large scrapbook made jointly by mother and son survives (Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts), but it is more valuable as evidence of his mother’s tastes and abilities than Evett’s – who never seems to have developed any distinctive artistic skills.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 28 December 1843
- Summary
- Francis Allport was the son and pupil of sketcher Mary Morton Allport. Examples of his work are preserved in Mary's 'Book of Treasures' which is held in the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Art in Hobart.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1902
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- amateur photographer, journalist and politician, was born on 7 May 1842 in Launceston, Van Diemen’s Land, son of Jane and James Aikenhead . He worked in northern Tasmania for most of his life, mainly as a journalist on the Launceston Examiner . After succeeding his father as editor and proprietor in 1869, William took another keen amateur photographer, Henry Button , into partnership and sold his interest in the paper to Button in 1887. According to Alfred Abbott , he was taking photographs as early as 1860, and he remained an active photographer until his death. At the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition, William Aikenhead of Formby, Tasmania exhibited photographs in the Tasmanian Court: Class 12 Photographic proofs and apparatus, cat.44. In 1889 he helped found the Northern Tasmanian Camera Club.
Like his father, Aikenhead held many public positions in both Launceston and Devonport, being co-founder and chairman of the Launceston Stock Exchange, co-founder and president of the Devonport Public Library, president of the Australian Natives Association (Devonport branch) and president of the Devonport Chamber of Commerce. He was elected member of the House of Assembly for Devonport in June 1898, but the election was declared void. From October 1898 until his death he represented Latrobe, although he lived at Devonport from his retirement until he died, on 3 April 1902.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 7 May 1842
- Summary
- An avid amateur photographer and professional journalist. Aikenhead held many public offices and was active in local Tasmanian politics until his death.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3-Apr-02
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude39.9527237 Longitude-75.1635262 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Biography
- illustrator, was an American employed as senior ilustrator on The Picturesque Atlas of Australasia . He arrived in Sydney with two other Yankee illustrators, W.T. Smedley (who did views and occasional street scenes like Schell) and W. C. Fitler, plus engravers including Horace Baker. An original watercolour by Schell, Mrs.Todd’s Family Home , Easter 1888, which was offered for sale by Masterpiece Fine Art Gallery in September 2000, cat.38 ($2,500), looks like a Picturesque Atlas drawing. So does his undated watercolour and gouache, Circular Quay with Campbell’s Wharf , that was offered at Christie’s Australia, Melbourne, 7 May 2003, lot 375 (est. $1,800-2,500).
When Phil May returned to England in 1888 Schell accompanied him. The Grafton Gallery 'Exhibition of Australian Art in London’ 1898 included F.B. Schell (no address), cat.250, 'Junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers, N.S.W.’, cat.254, 'Hamilton Reach, Brisbane’, cat. 255, 'Sydney Harbour, N.S.W.’ in a section of original drawings for “The Picturesque Atlas” of Australasia, lent by the Trustees of Sydney Gallery.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1838
- Summary
- Frederic B. Schell was an illustrator for the American publications Harper's Weekly & Frank Leslie's Illustrated News. He was recruited to be the Superintendent of the Art Department for the Picturesque Atlas of Australia (1888). While in Australia, he wrote ‘How books are illustrated’, Centennial Magazine. His albums of photographs collected while in Australia now reside in the Yale University Art Gallery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1902
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter, engraver, cartoonist (?), illustrator and draughtsman, was born in England. After studying with James Duffield Harding (1797-1863), a watercolourist and lithographer who also taught John Ruskin, Cooke migrated to Victoria in 1854. He apparently tried his luck on the goldfields then reverted to art. His large pencil drawing of the city of Melbourne in 1858 (La Trobe Library [LT]) is a minute and delicate view of the city looking west. The Harbour of Warrnambool. Light-house and Middle Island , engraved by Pett from a drawing by Cooke, was published in the Colonial Mining Journal of Victoria (1858-59); a wood engraving signed 'A. Cook’, Ballarat from Black Hill , was produced in 1868. He depicted two Bendigo quartz miners, The Ballerstedt Brothers (LT), in an oil painting executed some time in the 1860s, evidently a commission.
A.C. Cooke was listed in Melbourne directories as a 'draughtsman-artist’ in St Kilda between 1865 and 1869, first at Robe Street and later at the Esplanade, as well as at 103 Bourke Street West in the city. He did a considerable amount of work as an architectural draughtsman and was subsequently made a fellow of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects despite the lack of any formal architectural training. His architectural ('geometric’) view of Hobart Town, published in the Australasian Sketcher , was described in detail in the Hobart Town Mercury on 9 May 1879.
He may also have been 'A.C.’, the chief cartoonist on Ballarat Punch in the late 1860s, ed. C.A. Abbott et al., but this is far more likely to have been Alfred Clint . Although Cooke worked as an illustrator for newspapers such as the Illustrated Australian News and the Leader , the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia (c.1883-88) and for books such as the Illustrated Handbook of Victoria (1886) throughout his career, he was a serious 'high artist’ and seems unlikely to have done such coarse cartoons as this 'A.C’ did. Clifford Craig, however, has identified his prints of Tasmanian interest – which are initialled 'A.C.’ – published in the Illustrated Melbourne Post , Illustrated Tasmanian News and Illustrated Sydney News between 1867 and 1875.
A member of the Council of the Victorian Academy of Arts from its foundation in 1870 until 1873, Cooke exhibited with its annually until 1879. A drawing of Dunedin in 1875 was engraved in Melbourne and issued as a supplement to the Illustrated New Zealand News on 2 July. Cooke moved to Western Australia about 1890, where he produced watercolours of local scenes (e.g. Figures on the Beach, Sorrento, 1890 , Leonard Joel, May 1977) and at least one chromo-lithographic view, Fremantle (1894). He retired to Melbourne and died in his residence at Albert Park in April 1902. Several watercolour paintings of Tasmanian scenes were offered for sale at Sotheby’s The Colonial Sale , Hobart, 7 September 1997.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1836
- Summary
- Late colonial era painter, engraver, cartoonist (attributed), illustrator and draughtsman.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Apr-02
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude51.2715316 Longitude-0.341452351 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Surrey, England, UK
- Biography
- Painter, was born in Surrey, England. He took up painting after retiring from the British Navy with which he served during the Crimean War. Understandably, ships were a popular subject as were marine subjects. His undated oil on board Sunset on the Shore and Beachy Head, Sussex were sold at Christie’s 27 November 1996 auction, part 2, lots 283, 338 (ill.). Jenner came to Brisbane in 1883 and in October was writing to the government suggesting the need for a public art gallery. He and R. Godfrey Rivers founded the Royal Queensland Art Society with which Jenner exhibited from 1884 to 1913 [posthumously from 1902 onwards]. He died in Melbourne in 1895 according to Adlington, 1902 according to Cooke. His oil on wood panel Shipwreck 1891 was offered at Sotheby’s 27-28 August 2001 auction, lot 212 (est. $2,000-3,000, not ill.).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1836
- Summary
- Painter, was born in Surrey, England. He took up painting after retiring from the British Navy. Due to this, ships and marine scenes were popular subjects of his. Along with R. Godfrey Rivers, he founded the Royal Queensland Art Society, with whom he exhibited.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1902
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude59.938732 Longitude30.316229 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Petersburg, Russia
- Biography
- Nicholas Chevalier, painter, lithographer and illustrator, was born in St Petersburg on 9 May 1828, son of a Russian mother, Tatiana Onufrieva, and a Swiss father, Louis. His artistic training commenced at the Arlaud Academy, Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1845, followed by an architecture degree at the Academy of Munich (1848-50). In 1851 Chevalier travelled to London where he worked as a lithographer, and in 1852 he exhibited at the Royal Academy. He completed additional studies in Rome (1853-54).
In late 1854, Nicholas Chevalier was sent to Australia by his father to attend to family investments in a Victorian gold-mine. Soon after his arrival in Melbourne in February 1855, he travelled to the Bendigo gold-fields where he attended to business matters and completed several paintings and sketches. Chevalier returned to Melbourne and worked as an artist and cartoonist on the weekly journal Melbourne Punch. His cartoons appeared in the first edition in August 1855 and he remained in this position until 1861. He also contributed illustrations to The Australian Journal and Victoria Illustrated.
Nicholas Chevalier completed numerous sketching trips to Victorian locations and in 1862 he was appointed as the official artist on a three-month geological tour of Victoria. It is likely that he completed Buffalo Range from the west (1862, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne) during this tour. In 1864, Chevalier’s The Buffalo Ranges (1864) became the first Australian work to enter the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria when it was purchased for £200. Chevalier travelled extensively in the following decades. He settled in England in 1871 and exhibited annually at the Royal Academy from 1871-87 and in 1895. He died in England in 1902.
Writers:
Staff WriterSullivan, LisaThe Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 9 May 1828
- Summary
- Painter, lithographer and illustrator born in St Petersburg, Russia. Resident of Melbourne, New Zealand and England. Chevalier was a leading and somewhat flamboyant figure in Melbourne art circles in the late 19th century. He was a founder member of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15-Mar-02
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude54.4765508 Longitude-7.2326471 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cork, Ireland, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, lithographer and inventor, was born in Cork, Ireland, on 20 February 1828. After a classical education, he worked as an engineer experimenting with electricity; among his inventions was a vibratory cure for nervous diseases. Osborne and his 21-year-old wife Anne arrived at Melbourne in the Peru on 25 December 1852.
While working as a photographer for the Victorian government in the Crown Lands Department, Osborne invented the world’s first commercially viable photolithographic process. The invention was a direct response to specific economic and state needs; there was a huge demand for land from the enlarged post-gold-rush population and the government could not print catalogues showing newly subdivided Crown land quickly enough. Surveyors’ large plans had to be scaled down by hand before they could be printed and this time-consuming work delayed the weekly land auctions. So in 1859 the surveyor-general commissioned Osborne to invent a process which enabled large plans to be photographically reduced and then transferred directly onto the printing block. Osborne rapidly solved the problem. A patent application was lodged with the chief secretary on 1 September 1859 and booklets of plans of 'country lots, parishes of Ravenswood and Mandurang’ were being sold to the public two days later for 1s each.
Many lithographers opposed Osborne’s invention, as they believed it threatened their livelihoods, so a Parliamentary Board was appointed to investigate the process on 10 August 1860. This sat for nine days altogether, concluding in January 1861. The board unanimously decided to adopt the invention and Osborne was given a salary increase, £1000 reward and was elected to the council of the Royal Society of Victoria. His assistant, Duncan McHutchinson, received £200. Osborne and his photolithographic experiments were publicised in British, American and French photographic journals from 11 June 1861, when the British Journal of Photography announced his invention, and, after showing some examples at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition, Osborne left Melbourne for England in March 1862. There he found that photolithography had already been patented. Nevertheless, he read a paper to the British Association, 'Details of a photolithographic process, as adopted by the Government of Victoria, for the publication of maps’ (published on 15 November 1862) in the American Journal of Photography and the Allied Arts and Sciences , a journal to which he contributed subsequent articles, and he won a medal at the 1862 London International Exhibition for his process.
On 27 October 1864 the Melbourne Argus announced that it had just received some photolithographs from Osborne, who had been living in Berlin. He had shown these reproductions of sketches, which the artist Berg had made on an expedition, at a meeting of the Geographical Society of Berlin in May 1862. The Argus commented: 'We believe that while Mr Osborne was in Germany he very materially altered and improved his process as there cannot be the slightest doubt that these are incomparably superior to anything he had accomplished before. Amongst them are two excellent chromo photo-lithographs, a branch which, if we remember rightly, he did not touch upon here’. Berg himself, in a letter to Osborne published in a Berlin scientific periodical and reproduced by the Argus , wrote enthusiastically: 'You have solved the most difficult problem which exists in this branch of the art—a problem the solution of which I myself have frequently doubted until I had the result before my eyes. The question, then, whether the photolithographic reproduction of pen-and-ink sketches be possible, and of any value to the artist, has been finally decided by your labours’.
Osborne visited the United States in 1864 to publicise his process. By 1867 he had a photographic studio at the corner of Tenth Street and Third Avenue, South Brooklyn, New York. He became involved in the American Photolithographic Company, formed to exploit his process. He proved successful with other inventions and was employed as a patent expert for a legal firm. Attracted by the cultural environment of Stanford University, he retired to Palo Alto, California, where he died on 20 November 1902.
Writers:
Willis, Anne-Marie
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 February 1828
- Summary
- Photographer and inventor of world's first commercially viable photolithographic process, adopted by Government of Victoria in 1861. Osborne's invention proved successful in England, Germany and USA.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20-Nov-02
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in the north of England, son of George Nettleton.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1825
- Summary
- A professional photographer, he is generally regarded as the major photographic recorder of Melbourne's growth from settlement to great city. Working as the official photographer to the Victorian government and to the City of Melbourne Corporation, Nettleton's most famous photograph is a portrait of Ned Kelly taken the day before he was hanged.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-Jan-02
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Van Diemen's Land, Launceston, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- miniature painter and sketcher, is said to have been born in Launceston, Van Diemen’s Land, on 5 July 1825, although she was presumably related to the family of John de Little who arrived at Hobart Town in 1830. After marrying Alfred Douglass in Van Diemen’s Land, she accompanied him to Geelong, Victoria where she lived from 1850 until her death on 25 December 1902. Of her seven children, only two survived infancy.
Elizabeth Douglass’s work, which included miniature portraits on ivory, chalk drawings and local watercolour views, was exhibited at the Geelong Mechanics Institute in 1857 and 1869. As well, her arrangement of Skeleton Leaves and Flowers was exhibited there in 1862; her scrapbook (Mitchell Library) contains the certificate of merit she was awarded for this. The book also contains Douglass’s extensive collection of English and European engravings as well as a small number of competent copies, mostly in oil. All are unsigned but are presumably her work. The most striking of these is a watercolour portrait on ivory of Amy Robsart, copied from the engraving by J. Hayter.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 5 July 1825
- Summary
- Elizabeth Douglass worked mainly in miniature portraits on ivory, chalk drawings, watercolour, engraving and oil colour. Her work received recognition at the Geelong Mechanics Institute, where she exhibited in the 1850's and early 1860's.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 25-Dec-02
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude50.6434912 Longitude11.69120861 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Posen, Germany
- Biography
- engraver, lithographer and grocer, was a native of Posen, Germany (now Poznan, Poland) who arrived at Melbourne in the Wappaus in March 1849 and set up an engraving and lithography business in Swanston Street with Maurice Helm . The partnership was dissolved on 15 July 1850 and both continued alone, Hentschel remaining in Swanston Street until late 1853 or early 1854. Later he was listed in Melbourne directories as a grocer in Brunswick where he died aged 81 on 19 February 1902. No pictorial engravings have been located.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1821
- Summary
- Engraver, lithographer and grocer, Hentschel arrived in Melbourne in 1849 where he ran engraving and lithography businesses until 1854. No examples of his work seem to have survived.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19-Feb-02
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, wrote Scenes during a Passage from England which describes in verse the events of the voyage to Australia and is illustrated with watercolour drawings, including views of Sydney Harbour and Sydney Heads. The manuscript, intended for Miss Hindmarsh, the author’s aunt in England, was apparently begun in 1853 but following the death of a parent Hindmarsh abandoned it until the following year. It would seem that J.H.S. Hindmarsh was John (1820-1902), only son of John Hindmarsh, first governor of South Australia, and Susannah, née Edmeades, who came to Adelaide with his parents in 1836, left with them in 1838 and returned to South Australia in the mid 1850s. Neither parent, however, appears to have died at the appropriate time; Lady Hindmarsh died in 1858, Sir John in 1860. The present location of Hindmarsh’s illustrated poem is unknown and it is possible that the date was incorrectly cited when it was sold in 1927.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1820
- Summary
- Watercolourist, wrote 'Scenes during a Passage from England' which describes in verse the events of the voyage to Australia and is illustrated with watercolour drawings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1902
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Walthamstow, Essex England, UK, Walthamstow, Essex (Greater London), England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist and public servant, was born on 24 August 1820 at Walthamstow, England, son of Thomas Solly and Mary, née Travers. After being educated at Dr Knox’s Tonbridge School, Solly joined the East India Company as a midshipman. He remained only a short period because of events that seriously affected his health, then joined the Alliance Assurance Company. In 1837-38 he spent some time in Madeira for health reasons. After returning to England, his continuing poor health led to a decision to migrate to South Australia. He arrived at Adelaide in December 1840.
Having engaged for some time in sheep farming then mining, Solly joined the Customs Department in 1850. In 1855 he was offered the position of private secretary to Sir Henry Fox Young, the new Governor of Tasmania. Shortly before taking up the appointment, Solly took a voyage to Sydney and Newcastle, staying for some months in Sydney. On 13 March 1856 he married Jane Watts, youngest daughter of the postmaster-general of South Australia and former aide-de-camp to Governor Macquarie Captain John Watts , and Jane, née Campbell, a niece of Mrs Macquarie. After two years as private secretary to Governor Young, Solly was appointed assistant colonial secretary (an office later called under-secretary). He held the post from 1857 until 1894, a period of thirty-seven years. He was very active in many other official as well as unofficial positions until he retired aged seventy-four. He died on 14 August 1902, aged nearly eighty-two.
No information survives of Solly’s training as an artist, but in his 1856 account of his family he refers to the artistic talents of his three sisters. As he was the youngest child, it is possible that they influenced his artistic development. He may also have been taught to draw at Hove and Tonbridge. His earliest drawings date from the late 1830s, when he was aged about nineteen, and continue until about 1894 when he was seventy-four. They are mainly landscapes, in pen, pencil or watercolour, although at least one self-portrait is known. The pen-and-ink drawings he showed at the St David’s Cathedral Art Exhibition in Hobart in 1892 – Lover’s Leap, East Coast , Southland Falls, N.Z. and George’s River Falls – were praised for their 'delicate manner’ by the Mercury reviewer who thought they looked 'more like engravings’ than sketches.
Writers:
Dodson, H. L.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 August 1820
- Summary
- A well-connected colonial official for most of his life, Solly was an accomplished sketcher and watercolourist with representation in significant collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14-Aug-02
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, left Liverpool, England on 5 July 1855 on board the Champion of the Seas , with her elderly widowed mother, her younger brother William Augustus Wilkinson, his wife Anne Jane, née Byrne, and their daughter and infant son.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1819
- Summary
- Irish colonial female artist who turned from exhibiting her oils, watercolours, pencil and crayon drawings of biblical themes towards teaching. Between 1864 and 1875, she exhibited only once with the Victorian Academy of Art.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1902
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, carver, architect and civil servant, was born on 2 December 1818, eldest son of Edward Ayshford and Henrietta n ée Langham. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, Sanford was appointed colonial secretary of Western Australia; he arrived in the Anna Robertson on 18 December 1851. Du Cane , who was also on board, summarised his fellow passengers in a letter to his mother. Sandford’s entry reads: 'Colonial Secretary – light complexion – weak – gentlemanly – clever, 35 – Magistrate – S.of England – Trin. Coll. Cam.’
Sanford remained Colonial Secretary until July 1855 and he was also Chairman of the Board of Education. An amateur architect committed to the Gothic Revival through membership of the Cambridge Camden (later Ecclesiological) Society, he designed Perth Boys School on St George’s Terrace (1853: extant as National Trust Centre). Archdeacon John Ramsden Wollaston , a 'broad’ rather than 'high’ churchman, considered Sanford eccentric presumably because of personal traits. It was not because 'architecture is his hobby, on which he lectured last night at the Mechanics’ Institute’ (it was Wollaston’s too), nor because of the font he was then carving that he had invited Wollaston to inspect. Both were perfectly respectable hobbies for English gentlemen.
Sanford also had expertise in the even more fashionable pastime of natural history, in particular zoology. As a result, Robert Austin invited him to classify the animals collected on Austin’s 1854 exploring expedition to Shark Bay (Murchison). Sanford wrote to Austin in July 1855: 'As you request, I send you a list of the mammalia and birds, the skins of which you have forwarded me, as far as I am acquainted with them, with a few reservations on the distribution of the species’. His drawings after Austin’s and J. Tatton B. Fraser 's sketches were used for most of the plates in Austin’s published Journal ; the remainder appear to have been lithographed directly from the explorers’ original, less skilled sketches.
After returning home to Nynehead Court, Somerset, Sanford married Sarah Ellen Seymour on 14 May 1857; they had at least two sons. Sarah Elizabeth Harriett Hervey, daughter of the bishop of Bath and Wells, became his second wife on 5 December 1874. He died on 28 October 1902.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 December 1818
- Summary
- Sketcher, carver, architect and civil servant. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was appointed colonial secretary of Western Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Oct-02
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.833333 Longitude-1.25 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Oxfordshire, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and labourer(?), was working as a photographer in Smith Street, Kempsey, New South Wales, in 1867. He moved to Sydney the following year and established C. Drinkwater’s Chromo Gallery at 621 George Street South, advertising lowest prices for cartes-de-visite. In 1870 he was listed at 410 George Street. Soon afterwards he appears to have travelled around New South Wales country towns taking photographs, being noted at Wallabadah in 1874. Between 1886 and 1889 he worked at Peel Street, Tamworth, and at 69 Hunter Street, Newcastle, in 1889-90. Fifty-three of his photographs of Tamworth and surrounding districts were included in the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London, among the New South Wales exhibits; two frames, each containing twenty-eight photographs of Tamworth and other places ('from the Imperial Jubilee Institute’), were hung in the 1887 Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition.
Drinkwater is listed as a photographer of 111 Hunter Street, Newcastle in 1896-97. The Charles Drinkwater who died at Watson Street, Wickham, near Newcastle, on 29 January 1902, aged eighty-three, sounds like the same person, except that his daughter, Jane Farrer, gave his occupation as 'labourer’. He had come from Oxfordshire to New South Wales with his wife Harriet, née Gascoigne, in about 1859 and they had a family of twelve children; perhaps the photographer Charles Drinkwater worked primarily as a labourer to support them.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1818
- Summary
- Charles Drinkwater was a professional photographer. In 1868 he established C. Drinkwater's Chromo Gallery in Sydney. The person with the same name and surname who died at Watson Street, Wickham, near Newcastle in 1902, could be him, except that his daughter gave his occupation as 'labourer'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29-Jan-02
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude7.87739585 Longitude80.66247852 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1902-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ceylon, Sri Lanka
- Biography
- watercolourist, was born in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), second of the seven children of Ann and William Thomas Lyttleton and sister of Thomas and Westcote Lyttleton . She came to Van Diemen’s Land with her parents when they returned in October 1825. On 26 February 1833 she married Rev. Rowland Robert Davies (1805-80) and went to live at Pinefield, a house erected by her father near the family estate of Hagley which had been purchased by the government in 1830 as the Longford parsonage. Ill, she and her husband went to England to seek medical advice in January 1840, returning to Van Diemen’s Land in July 1841. They moved to Hobart Town in 1850 when her husband was appointed dean of St David’s Cathedral and, later, archdeacon of Hobart Town.
A competent but conventional blue and grey wash of a mountain landscape (Anglican Diocesan Registry, Hobart) is accompanied by an extract from a catalogue which identifies it as an exhibition piece: 'Mt Wellington from Brighton (not for sale)’. The location has been corrected to Brooksby (Pontville, Tasmania) and the inscription on the back of the watercolour has also been emended. Originally inscribed 'By Captain Littleton [sic]’, this has been crossed out and 'by Maria Davies née Lyttleton’ added below. Although stylistically similar to her father’s views, the subject lacks the life and atmosphere he was able to impart. A small, undated watercolour and pencil view in the same collection, also attributed to Maria, is more attractive and personal, being a view of her own church, St Augustine’s Church of England, Longford.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1816
- Summary
- Nineteenth-century amateur watercolourist. She is known from her sketch of Mt Wellington from Brighton, later identified as Brooksby (Pontville, Tasmania).
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1902
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1865-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1865
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7-Jun-01
- Age at death
- 36
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1852-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Edinburgh, one of the three daughters of the miniature painter and later photographer Peter Devine, and Catherine, née Rae. She and her sisters studied drawing and painting under their father and from the age of fifteen Mary exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy. In 1875 she married Frederick Wahab Stoddard, a medical student, son of General Stoddard. They settled near Auckland (NZ) about 1878, aiming to farm. In 1880 they moved to Sydney and Stoddard resumed the career that had been interrupted by her marriage, exhibiting with the Art Society of NSW that same year. Lady Darley, noted 'A.B.’ in Cosmos , was among the first to recognise her ability and commissioned a watercolour portrait of her daughter, Sylvia, who was just out of babyhood. Mary’s sister Catherine (Katie) Devine , who lived with the Stoddards in Sydney for a time before returning to work in London, was also a painter (Stephen Sheding used to own a work by her); so was the eldest sister, who died aged 27.
In 1881 Stoddard won first prize of 15 guineas in John Sands Christmas card competition that had attracted 661 entries, judged by E. Combes, E.L. Montefiore and E du Faur, with her watercolour A Fairy Boat with Fairies (a night scene of a gondolier filled with fairies and elves). An allegorical painting, Spring , was engraved for the Sydney Mail in September 1883, and in 1884 Gathering Wattle was engraved for the Xmas supplement of the Illustrated Sydney News . In 1886 she won the £100 prize for a design for a coloured supplement to the Sydney Mail 's Christmas issue with Christmas Bells (a child of 4-5 seated on a log with an armful). She won various gold, silver and bronze medals for oil and watercolour paintings at the 1884-85 Wealth and Industrial Exhibition and at the 1888 Women’s Industries Exhibition, Sydney. (At the latter, she won 3 first prizes, one gold medal and two silver ones for 'Best Water Colour’, 'Best Portrait in Oils’, 'Best Flowers in Oil’ and the Hunters Hill Prize for 'Best Flower Painting’ She was also a member of the committee organising the exhibition, which resulted in £6,000 being handed to the Queen’s Fund.) In 1888 she also won the 100-guinea design competition for the award certificate for the Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition. Hers also was the prize design for the £1 postage stamp in the Centennial series.
Oil paintings by Stoddard include Annabel Lee (1881, unlocated) and portraits of Sir Henry Parkes (Parliament House, Sydney) – considered 'one of the best extant’, according to Cosmos in 1896 – and of E.C. Merewether (Australian Club), although she was thought 'unrivalled as a painter of women and children’. From Earth and Ocean (1889), a still life, was purchased by the National Gallery of NSW. In 1896 Cosmos noted that she had shown work in almost every art exhibition for more than sixteen years (1881 to 1896). She was best known in her lifetime for The Lorelei (unlocated), a nude shown with the Art Society of NSW in 1889 for sale at £120, which received much favourable comment (and was illustrated with a line drawing in the catalogue). She also painted seascapes and landscapes.
Stoddard was on the Council of the Art Society of NSW – one of only two women – and was recognised as one of the most accomplished painters in Sydney. She taught art and had completed a large body of work, mainly portraits and miniatures, when her health failed in 1888. 'I have been so prostrate as to be unable to keep appointments on which a great portion of our income has to depend’, she wrote to Henry Parkes, asking him to appoint her husband, a clerk in the Colonial Secretary’s Office, to the Agent General’s Office in London, in which city she hoped both to regain her health and achieve artistic recognition. Although this did not eventuate, she finally settled there with her daughters in 1900 but died on 10 June 1901 after surgery. She was survived by her husband, still employed in Sydney, their son and three daughters: Edith, Mary Irene and Enid .
A watercolour portrait of Mrs E.E. Martin and a watercolour address presented to Earl Beauchamp (Governor of NSW) by the Art Society of NSW in 1899 are in the Mitchell Library.
While the mount of this painting bears the name `Miss Devine’ in pencil and the title Coming Home from the Bush , it is undoubtedly the work of the same title by Catherine Devine’s sister, Mary Stoddard (née Devine), described by the Sydney Morning Herald art critic as ' Two prettily-featured girls, one carrying a pet dog, face the observer, and are pleasingly set off by the greenery in the background.’ It was entered in a competition for paintings on Australian themes held by the Sydney printer and publisher John Sands in 1881 and won Stoddard first prize in the second division (for paintings incorporating both figures and animals). The misattribution is likely to have arisen through confusion with Catherine Devine’s painting Off the Track , which showed two girls laden with wild flowers who have strayed from their path and are peering into the darkening bush. Off the Track , which appears to have been influenced by Coming Home from the Bush , won Devine ninth prize in a similar competition held by the rival Sydney printing and publishing firm, Gibbs, Shallard & Co., in 1882.
In Coming Home from the Bush the painstaking delineation of such features as the dogs’ coats and the broderie anglaise of the girls’ dresses and the combination of fine brushwork with stippling in the background doubtless reflect techniques Stoddard learnt from her father, the Edinburgh miniaturist Peter Devine. The subject reflects the nationalistic mood of the 1880s and the associated passion for wildflowers. Wildflower exhibitions, organised largely by women, were annual events in some Sydney suburbs in the 1880s and 1890s and wildflower gathering became a popular subject with local painters and black-and-white artists. Such pictures were usually of a quasi-allegorical nature, both expressing nationalism and idealising female beauty. Stoddard’s watercolour, Gathering Wildflowers , exhibited with the Art Society in 1885 and published as the colour supplement to the Illustrated Sydney News of 18 December 1886, was one such work; it shows a woman among a profusion of native bush and flowers. In Coming Home from the Bush the children are used as an image of youthful female beauty and innocence. The two girls stand with interlinked arms, one carrying a small dog and bearing a handful of boronia, the other beside an Irish wolfhound, her arms laden with bottle-brush and other native flowers. The background shows the greenery of the Australian bush and the yellow tints of a blossoming wattle. The figures occupy almost the entire foreground of the picture but are not confrontational; their gazes are respectfully wistful and demure.
Stoddard frequently depicted children sentimentally, both in portrait and genre works-'turning children into angels’ as was commented of her child portraits. Her sentimental child genre scenes included Cornstalks and Waratahs , a boy and a girl with wildflowers engraved for the Illustrated Sydney News in December 1884, and a prize-winning design of a child holding Christmas bells engraved for the Sydney Mail 's Christmas issue in 1886. Her success in competitions was not just the result of her considerable talent but of a formula, the separate ingredients of which-native floral imagery and idealised and sentimental portrayals of women and children-had wide contemporary appeal.
Writers:
Lennon, Jane
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1852
- Summary
- Stoddard was regarded as one of Sydney's most accomplished artists. Her watercolours and oil paintings of wildflowers, children and adults, won her many awards and medals.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1901
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude-36.0737304 Longitude146.9135396 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Albury, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- The artist Yakaduna, better known as Tommy McCrae, through his art and actions, involved his community in the entrepreneurial management of indigenous-settler affairs. Looking back, it seems as if his career was a major crossing-place between the previous era of Aboriginal visual expression and the post 1970s era of Aboriginal art in a global context. His art was not locked in the past but reviewed past events with present ideologies and events in mind. This became very apparent when, at the centenary of colonisation, indigenes and settlers gave thought to the future. Colonists envisaged a wholly white future whereas McCrae, with truth and prescience, told the story of William Buckley, a white blackfellow.McCrae was born c.1842 at Albury, NSW. One of his parents was from the Albury district and the other was from Yarrawonga, eighty kilometres downstream. His 'nationality’ was Wiradjuri, judging from a vocabulary recorded by a patron, and from information supplied by his brother Billy. His clan was the Warra-euea, or Whroo, of the southernmost Wiradjuri, sometimes referred to collectively as the Waveroo. His father may have been Berinmberinm, alias 'Old McCrae’, born c.1806, who, with Billy (native name Tarranill), was listed among the Aborigines gathered at the Acheron, and later at the Coranderrk Aboriginal Stations (VIC) in the 1860s. Unlike his brother Billy (ten years younger) Tommy remained close to home throughout his lifetime. From birth to the mid 1860s he alternated between Albury and the Yackandandah River south of his birthplace. The Aboriginal name by which he was known in his youth was Yakaduna and his European name, McCrae, was that of an early settler on the western side of the Yackandandah River, for whom he worked as a youth, or on whose land he lived. In 1862 the land on the other side of the river from McCrae and Cobham’s Murra-Murran-bong station became the Aboriginal Reserve of Tangambalanga. While living on the Yackandandah, young McCrae produced the handful of drawings, collected by an artist neighbour Theresa Walker (Mrs Poole) by which he made a first impact on European audiences. By 1866 he had moved to Lake Moodemere in Victoria near Wahgunyah, on the Murray between Albury and Yarrawonga, where he remained until he died. A traditional camping place, Lake Moodemere had been recorded in 1849 as flourishing and in 1861 numbered around 30 Aboriginals. McCrae’s first wife, Tilly (Matilda) was first recorded at Wahgunyah in 1866. His second wife, Lily Davis, was a Wiradjuri from Tubbo station on the south bank of the Murrumbidgee, due north of Wahgunyah; her presence at Wahgunyah was first recorded in 1877. Unlike Tommy, Lily had a western education and could read and write. Though no children are recorded from McCrae’s first marriage, he and Lily had two by 1885, of whom the elder, Sarah (named after the wife of Roderick Kilborn, a neighbour and staunch patron) was born c.1883, and the younger, named Alexander (after Kilborn’s eldest son) was born c.1885. A third child, Henry, was born in 1888 and a fourth, George (after Kilborn’s son George) died on 22 April 1898. (Note that the spelling of McCrae changed to McRae in the next generation). McCrae’s art and actions make clear that he was aware of the three-way politics between the regions’ three peoples: Europeans, Chinese, and Aborigines. If through his community he was closely involved in the politics of living adjacent to two other culturally distinct communities, he was equally well informed about Aboriginal affairs across the southeast of Australia. During the later decades of the nineteenth-century, Aboriginal messengers including Tommy Smyth, Tommy 'Punch’ Banfield, John Friday and Neddy Wheeler came and went from McCrae’s camp, bringing indigenous news from other parts of Victoria and southern New South Wales, proffering advice and, on their own authority, extending the patronage of the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines (BPA). McCrae assessed the merits of their advice, and quietly deflected some over-enthusiastic intervention on his behalf. When threatened by unprincipled settlers, he took the step of using white man’s law. His successful defence of Lily Davis in court in 1896; the court action he and John Friday brought against photographer Thomas Cleary; and his success in 1892 in avoiding entrapment by the policemen deputed to remove his children show that he had a shrewd grasp of tactics. His patrons Kilborn and Lang (who were magistrates) and a sympathetic policeman, John Hewitt, supported his efforts to maintain a family way of life independent of government interference. They did so presumably because McCrae persuaded them of the rightfulness of his cause and his ability to care for and protect his family. McCrae, a shrewd tactician, asked no more than would pass unnoticed by those able to benefit him. The granting of Lake Moodemere as an Aboriginal reserve is one instance of his tact. The idea of the reserve was at first opposed by local residents, however the piece of land was, at eight acres, too small to attract subsequent attention from greedy neighbours; and in later years Lake Moodemere was the only reserve that was not targeted for closure by the penny-pinching member of the BPA.In his drawings McCrae revealed himself on the subject of race relations; he showed Aboriginal people in charge of events, their every action graceful and assured, by comparison with which the colonists and the Chinese were inferior, slightly comic types. Remarkably for an artist who was well acquainted with western culture and supplied works of art to a settler audience, the European influence on his art was minimal, confined to the materials of his art – store bought ink (black or blue, and sometimes he included details drawn in red ink), pen and sketchbook – and a few European motifs. The borrowings included a sailing ship (taken from the sign at the head of a newspaper’s daily sailing news), a courting scene of a man proffering a bunch of flowers to a young woman (McCrae made this an occasion for cross-cultural ribaldry), and the caricature of a Chinese man as pigtailed, pyjama-suited and shouldering a pole with a bucket suspended at either end. Although dependent on a white market, McCrae ignored all efforts to influence his choice of subject matter. When, for instance, the Corowa doctor, William Lang, commissioned him to make drawings of birds in 1886, only four of the completed drawings included birds (admittedly of various kinds) and they were incorporated into usual hunting scenes. Corroboree, the subject most popular with McCrae, is the theme of one of the region’s few surviving rock paintings; and designs similar to those that adorned the bodies of his dancers were carved on trees for Wiradjuri ceremonies. McCrae’s subjects were predominantly Aboriginal.Likewise his compositions, patterned manner of drawing and limited vocabulary of motifs were Aboriginal. Composition is perhaps the most culture-bound aspect of visual language. Unlike much European art, a drawing in a sketchbook by McCrae is not independent of other drawings in the book. Some pages have more than one drawing; others have one narrative that is split into two stages, one above the other; and a majority of images occur in several variations across the pages of a sketchbook, so that the sum of any one drawing is more than a single page but, instead, resonates across the sketchbook in the manner of drawings on a rock wall. McCrae was observed to earn a reasonable living through his entrepreneurial activities, sufficient to have a cart and horse, and pay doctor’s fees. Drawing was but one aspect of his work of selling produce and entertainments. His family participated in making and selling artefacts such as painted emu-eggs and gum-leaves, which were traded about the region from McCrae’s spring van. The wider Aboriginal community was brought together for commercial corroboree entertainments and displays of martial arts. McCrae and the other men at Lake Moodemere made weapons for sale and, at local public events, for a fee, demonstrated how to throw a boomerang. Lily made possum skin rugs. In 1897 the camp as a whole engaged in a major photography project arranged with an itinerant photographer, Thomas Cleary, and a local patron by the name of Gourlay. The scale and pace of these shared activities increased after the early 1890s as McCrae’s artistic talent became more widely known within Victoria and NSW. One indication of the growing appreciation for his art was a letter published in the Bulletin in 1893: 'Why don’t the Australian Art Exhibitions get hold of some of the works of “Tommy McCrae”, the aboriginal artist, well-known to all Riverine people.’ Three years later a sketchbook sent by Dr Lang to his brother in Great Britain was used to illustrate a volume in a famous series of 'fairy’ books – Langloh Parker’s Australian Legendary Tales (London: David Nutt, 1896). The said Andrew Lang was both a well-known British folklorist and something of a style leader. In the range of his ideas, dress, personal mannerisms and provocative style of writing, he was an aesthete of the Aesthetic 1880s, consequently in a good position to recognise the contemporaneous stylishness of McCrae’s black and white art. Mark Twain was only slightly facetious when he claimed two years later that the corroboree drawings were high art: 'To be exact, his place is between Botticelli and Du Maurier. That is to say, he could not draw as well as Du Maurier, but better than Botticelli. In feeling he resembles both; also in grouping, and in his preferences in the matter of subject. His “corroboree” of the Australian wilds reappears in Du Maurier’s Belgravian ballrooms, with clothes and the smirk of civilization added; Botticelli’s “Spring” is the corroboree further idealised, but with fewer clothes and more smirk.’
In March 1899, two years before McCrae’s death, an exhibition of four of his drawings went on display in the window of a Rutherglen shop in Victoria. Supported by his two local communities, McCrae was one prophet who was honoured in his own country.
Writers:
Eagle, Mary Dr
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1842
- Summary
- The artist Yakaduna, better known as Tommy McCrae, through his art and actions, involved his community in the entrepreneurial management of indigenous-settler affairs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1901
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude50.7241405 Longitude-3.660778816 Start Date1839-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Devonshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator and photographic colourist, was born in Devonshire. He had worked on the London Graphic and Sketcher before coming to Victoria, probably with the goldrush. In Melbourne he worked first as a colourist for Johnstone, O’Shannessy and Co., then as an illustrator on the Illustrated Australian News succeeding O.R. Campbell. His oil paintings are mainly landscapes, eg Roadside Stall, 1876 , 1888 (NLA) and Summertime 1887 (ill. Sotheby’s Fine Australian Paintings 22-23 April 1996, cat.283), and his illustrations seem all to be topographical. Cattle Grazing 1885, a b/w wash painting, was offered for sale at $1,500 by Bridget McDonnell Gallery in July-August 2000 (not illustrated). McDonnell notes that he was a regular exhibitor at the Black and White exhibitions held by the Victorian Academy of Arts in the 1880s.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1839
- Summary
- Painter, illustrator and photographic colourist. A regular exhibitor at the Black and White exhibitions, Victorian Academy of Arts, in the 1880s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28-Sep-01
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude52.726213 Longitude-2.953758951 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Loton Park, Shropshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, barrister and politician, was born on 13 October 1837, second son of Sir Baldwin Leighton, 7th Baronet of Loton Park, Shropshire. Educated at Harrow and at Balliol College, Oxford, he was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1861 but retired from practice in order to make a tour of the Empire from December 1867 to 1869. He visited India with a friend Louis Buxton; 54 Indian drawings and his Indian journals are in the India Office Library, presented by his daughter Rachel and Mrs Parker Leighton in 1953.
The book of his extensive travels within Australia, Sketches of Australia with Journal Extracts (London 1868), includes a print after his watercolour of Albany – the sole Western Australia view – drawn on 19 September 1868 on his way home. The original is in one of his two large 'Australia’ albums (National Library of Australia), which include photographs as well as watercolours, all unsigned. There is no evidence that any of the photographs were taken by Leighton (many are souvenir cartes-de-visite of his hosts), but the fifty-five sketches are certainly his work and justify The Dictionary of National Biography 's description, 'an accomplished amateur artist’.
Leighton arranged his sketches thematically rather than chronologically and accompanied them with lengthy texts that formed the basis of his book. His subject divisions were:
The capitals of the different colonies and their neighbourhoods…[and] The houses of the landowners, or those who live in places belonging to themselves and not held under lease from the Government. These are the men who form the highest and wealthiest class in Australia [vol. 1]...The Squattages…An Australian coach and a little account of Australian coaching… A Queensland sugar plantation… A number of sketches of Australian scenery [vol. 2].
The lively, opinionated and extremely class-conscious narrative describes the politicians and squatters he met, their families, social origins and properties in Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania.
Of particular interest are the rural tours. After spending a week at Mount Gambier (SA), Leighton and his companion, Rees-Davies, 'prepared to start across country to Melbourne intending to stop on our way as often as we could at the houses of squatters’. From Melbourne they made a three-week tour to the Riverina, via Echuca and Deniliquin, visiting his friends the Severnes who had been in Australia since 1864 and had taken up sheep farming. He drew all the properties, usually including a view of the homestead such as Echuca on the Murray and Andrew Learmonth 's 'Groongal’ (both watercolour). Together his drawings and notes provide, as Burmester notes, 'a very full still-life of Australia in 1868 – at least, from a conservative point of view’. His albums were presented to the National Library in 1954 by his daughter, Rachel Leighton.
In 1873 Leighton married Jessie Marie Wynn. He was Conservative MP for North Shropshire in 1876-85 and for West Shropshire from 1885 until his death on 4 May 1901. He remained interested in colonial matters and was honorary commissioner for South Australia at the 1878 Paris Universal Exhibition. He also published several books on the history and archaeology of his native Shropshire, illustrated after his own drawings.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 October 1837
- Summary
- Barrister, politician and 'an accomplished amateur artist'. Leighton also published several books on the history and archaeology of his native Shropshire, illustrated after his own drawings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4-May-01
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
ecwubben
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 1835
- Summary
- A London-born photographer who arrived in Melbourne in 1886. He had a studio in Little Collins Street, 1888-1897; Johnston Street, Fitzroy, 1898-1900; and Elgin Street, Carlton, 1900-1901.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Jul-01
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Sydney, one of the children of William James Dumaresq, a brother of Henry , Eliza and Edward Dumaresq, and his wife Christiana Susan, a sister of Fanny Macleay . The family lived at Tivoli, Rose Bay, and probably most of them sketched (her father’s drawing abilities were mentioned in 1829). Susan’s sketchbook view, Newcastle, Australia (ML), was apparently drawn about 1850, not long after she had taken lessons from Conrad Martens with two other 'Misses Dumaresq’. It is very much in Martens’ style.
On 12 October 1859 Susan Dumaresq married Louis Hope, the seventh son of the Earl of Hopetoun, and went to live in Queensland. There her husband developed some of the first sugar plantations in Australia with the help of South Pacific Islander labour: at Ormiston (Cleveland, near Brisbane), on the Coomera River (Hope Island) and at Kilcoy. Ormiston House at Cleveland, where the family lived, still stands. Susan apparently continued to sketch after her marriage. Attributed to her by descendants are a pair of unsigned and undated watercolours, apparently of Sydney houses, one – perhaps of Tivoli (Historic Houses Trust) – being thought to date from the 1860s. No Queensland views are known. The Hopes departed for England in 1882 and settled at The Knowle, Hazelwood, Derbyshire. Survived by three sons and five daughters, Louis died in 1894, Susan on 4 December 1901.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1832
- Summary
- A nineteenth-century amateur sketcher and member of the well-known Dumaresq family. She trained with Conrad Martens before marrying the son of the Earl of Hopetoun who went on to develop some of the first sugar plantations in Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 4-Dec-01
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- sketcher, diarist and author, was born on 10 April 1830, the elder son of George and Anna Maria Bunn . As well as copying prints from Whittock’s Drawing Book and The Illustrated London News William (as he was called) studied drawing for two or three years in the 1840s. After completing his studies he 'could take likenesses fairly’, though no extant examples are known. At his home, Woden Station NSW (now ACT), he kept a journal from March 1845 to June 1848 illustrated with crude pencil sketches, including some of the homestead and district. They are among the earliest known views of Canberra, e.g. Canberry [sic] Church . An interior view of Woden showing The Parlour Window, 3 July , appears in his journal for 1846-7 (Mitchell Library).
In 1862-63 William drew pencil views of local residences for Gertrude Clara Woodhouse’s album of poems, including one of the Woodhouse home Schuldam Hall dated July 1863. His Woollongowah, the Residence of the Late Commissioner of Crown Lands Henry Bingham – Murrumbidgee District Tumut appears in E.H. Woodhouse’s album (National Library of Australia). His autobiography entitled 'The Life of an Unsuccessful Man’ (c.1879) was never published. After his mother’s death in 1889 he contested her will and won, gaining St Omer which had been left to his niece. He died there twelve years later.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 10 April 1830
- Summary
- Some crude pencil sketches of his homestead and the district of St. Omer are among the earliest known views of Canberra. Bunn contested his mother's will -which had bequeathed the family property to her niece -and won, remaining at St. Omer until his death.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1901
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer(?), surveyor and cricketer, was born in England, second of the four sons of the future NSW Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis , and Elizabeth, née Clements. His parents came to Sydney in March 1830 with their daughter and three sons, Mortimer William junior, Tom and Oswald Hoddle; a fourth son was born in the colony. Tom Lewis joined the Surveyor-General’s Department in 1849 and worked there as a surveyor for many years though best known as a cricketer who played for New South Wales against Victoria and England. His only known painting, Hyde Park – The Old Days of Merry Cricket Club Matches (watercolour, Mitchell Library [ML]), depicts a match played at Hyde Park on 27 October 1843 between a local Sydney team and a team representing an Imperial regiment then stationed in Sydney. As the title indicates, it was painted considerably after the event, possibly as late as the 1870s.
Lewis was also a member of the Sydney Volunteer Rifle Corps and a hand-coloured photograph, First Volunteers, Government House (ML), with Lewis himself featuring in the image (fourth from left), has been attributed to him. Dated by the Mitchell Library from soon after the Volunteers had been formed in 1854, he may not have been the photographer although he probably coloured it.
Tom Lewis died at Sydney early in July 1901.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1828
- Summary
- Surveyor and cricketer. Only known painting, Hyde Park - The Old Days of Merry Cricket Club Matches, depicts a match played at Hyde Park on 27 October 1843 between a local Sydney team and a team representing an Imperial regiment then stationed in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- Jul-01
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude53.04768555 Longitude-6.683051969 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunlavin, County Wicklow, Ireland
- Biography
- illustrator and settler, was born on 20 November 1820 at Dunlavin, County Wicklow, Ireland, son of James Fenton. He arrived at Hobart Town on board the Othello in February 1834 with his siblings and widowed mother, his father having died on the outward voyage. In 1840 he settled in the heavily timbered region of the Forth River estuary on the north coast of Van Diemen’s Land and began to clear the forest by ringbarking, supposedly being the first Australian to apply this technique. During the Victorian goldrush, Fenton found a ready market for his timber in Melbourne’s canvas townshi
As well as developing a thriving timber export industry, Fenton found time for sketching. Some of his Tasmanian views were reproduced in the Illustrated Melbourne Post in the mid-1860s: Devil’s Punch Bowl, Tasmania (18 October 1864), Torquay, Tasmania (25 January 1865, engraved by F. Cubitt), The Estuary of the Forth, Tasmania (18 February 1866, engraved by S. Calvert ), and View on the Forth, Tasmania (20 July 1866, engraved by R. Bruce). Later, after his retirement, Fenton wrote A History of Tasmania (Hobart 1884) and Bush Life in Tasmania Fifty Years Ago (Hobart 1891). He died on 24 June 1901. His wife Helena Mary Monds, whom he had married in 1846, had died in 1892; they had three daughters and one son.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 November 1820
- Summary
- As well as developing a thriving timber export industry, Fenton found time for sketching and producing views of Tasmania which were published in Melbourne newspapers in the 1860s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Jun-01
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter and sketcher, was born in England and came to Sydney in 1828, accompanying her father, Judge Sir James Dowling, later Chief Justice of New South Wales. Eliza grew up at Broughton House, the Dowlings’ family home on the border of Woolloomooloo and Surry Hills. She was taught to draw and paint in watercolour by Conrad Martens , then the most fashionable artist in Sydney.
After a society wedding in St James’s Church on 30 March 1842, Eliza spent her honeymoon bringing sheep to the Darling Downs (Queensland) from her husband’s property, Cashiobury, in New South Wales. She and her husband Arthur, the young Oxford-educated squatter son of an English clergyman, spent the first year of their marriage in a slab hut on his recently established property, Eton Vale, near Toowoomba, often in danger of attack from Aborigines. In a speech her husband made to the Royal Commonwealth Society, Eliza was called 'the first white woman to settle on the Darling Downs’. With her energetic participation Eton Vale became one of Queensland’s largest and most successful wool properties of the 1850s. In December 1851 Martens visited and made three signed and dated pencil sketches which served as the basis for several watercolours subsequently purchased by the Hodgsons.
Eliza Hodgson was one of the earliest artists to sketch the town of Brisbane and the pastoral properties of the Darling Downs. Her delicate pencil sketches with their meticulous attention to detail and accurate observation of foliage and cloud effects show the influence of Martens. Her drawings and paintings were never exhibited or sold for she painted solely as a relaxation and escape from her arduous life as wife of an ambitious pastoralist and politician and mother of eleven children. Three children died in childhood, one allegedly killed by Aborigines. Her husband frequently visited Brisbane as member of the Legislative Assembly for Warrego and she then ran the property single-handed.
Arthur Hodgson became colonial secretary and acting premier of Queensland for a brief period in 1869. He was Queensland commissioner for various international exhibitions held in Europe and Britain, and the Hodgsons made eleven voyages overseas during their Queensland years. In December 1869 Eliza Hodgson returned to England to arrange the purchase of their final home, Clopton House, near Stratford-upon-Avon. She took many of her sketchbooks and views with her. These remain in family possession in England; a large watercolour panorama, Brisbane from Toorak, Hamilton, July 1869 , is in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW.
In 1886 Sir Arthur became high sheriff for Warwickshire and Knight Commander of St Michael and St George. After a long and happy life, Lady Hodgson died at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1901. Her husband died six months later. Their son Edward remained in Queensland to run Eton Vale, sold after his death.
Writers:
de Vries-Evans, Susanna
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1820
- Summary
- Painter and sketcher, was born in England and came to Sydney in 1828. In 1842 she moved to Queensland with her husband where she became one of the earliest artists to sketch the town of Brisbane and the pastoral properties of the Darling Downs.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1901
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and pastoralist, was born in England, a son of Joseph Harris MD and Lucy, née Strelley. The family reached Western Australia in the Cygnet on 27 January 1833; William’s father was colonial surgeon from 1844 until his death four years later. W.E.S. Harris worked on properties owned by his father and brother Joseph Strelley Harris, a pastoralist and district magistrate. In 1852-53 William visited the Victorian goldfields. Returning to Guildford, he married Mary Gregory of Rainsworth, sister of the explorers H.C. and A.C. Gregory.
Harris leased Rainsworth in 1859, then purchased it in 1863. His naive watercolours (Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth), Floods at Guildford and Hamersleys’ Preston Homestead near Guildford , record rescue scenes during the floods of 1872. In the 1890s he revisited England where in 1896 Emily Ann Jones became his second wife. He died at Midland (WA) on 22 March 1901, survived by Emily and their only child, Herbert Robey Strelley Harris (born the previous year to a father aged eighty-two), who lived only until the following year.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1818
- Summary
- Sketcher and pastoralist, was born in England and settled in Western Australia in 1833. His watercolours record rescue scenes during the floods of 1872.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22-Mar-01
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude48.2083537 Longitude16.3725042 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1901-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- landscape painter, was born in Vienna at number 5 Goldne Birn adjacent to the Palais Auersperg, on 17 November 1811. His father, Bernhard, was one of Austria’s most successful miniature painters and through the patronage of Emperor Franz I had many royal sitters. By the time Eugene was 15, however, his father was having greater difficulty in attracting commissions, so the two set off together for Italy, travelling through Venice, Milan and Turin. They arrived at Rome in 1830, where Bernhard held an exhibition of his work and where they remained for two years while Eugen attended an art school run by Giovani Battista Bassi (1784-1852), a painter in the classical tradition of Rosa, Poussin and Claude. In Rome Eugene made contact with the group of expatriate German painters later known as the Nazarenes.
In 1832 Eugene and his father went to Naples where Bernhard succeeded in establishing himself at the court of Ferdinand II, King of the Two Sicilies. For the next four years father and son travelled throughout southern Italy and Sicily. In 1836 Bernhard died in a cholera epidemic, and 18 months later Eugene decided to go to Düsseldorf, his father’s birthplace, to study at the academy. Possibly his previous contact with Overbeck and his group in Rome also influenced this choice. Von Schadow, the director, had appointed Johann Wilhelm Schirmer master of the new landscape department (one of the first in Europe) and he and Karl Friedrich Lessing taught a 'naturgetreue Wiedergabe’ ('a response true to nature’). Consequently, long sketching trips into the Rhineland and Westphalia were encouraged.
Von Guérard remained in Düsseldorf until 1852. For a short time he was employed as drawing master to the son of an Englishman, Augustus Tulk, later the first librarian of the Melbourne Public Library, and it was possibly Tulk who persuaded him to emigrate to Victoria in August 1852. After spending 13 fruitless months on the goldfields near Ballarat, von Guérard resumed his painting career in Melbourne in April 1854. On 15 July he married Louise Arnz, daughter of a Düsseldorf publisher whom he had known in Europe. Their only child, Victoria Elizabeth, was born on 4 December 1857. In Australia the artist used the French version of his first name, signing his letters 'Eugène von Guérard’ and sometimes being addressed as 'monsieur de Guérard’.
Von Guérard participated in his first Melbourne art exhibition in 1854 showing eight paintings: portraits, landscapes and genre. He quickly gained popularity and by the following year had completed The Farm of Mr Perry on the Yarra (1855), the first of many commissions from prosperous landowners in Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales and South Australia. Henceforth he relied on two basic landscape subjects, the homestead and the wilderness view. To both ends he travelled extensively through south-eastern Australia, going to the Western District in 1856-57 and to Cape Schanck and the Baw Baw Plateau with Nicholas Chevalier in 1858.
Von Guérard was awarded a gold medal at the 1858 Victorian Industrial Exhibition for A Native Camp in the Stony Rises, near Lake Timboon . The next year he visited Cape Otway and Gippsland as well as Sydney, Lake Illawarra and the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. He returned to Gippsland in 1860, went to Cape Otway and the Australian Alps in 1862, to Cape Schanck again in 1863, and revisited the Western District in 1864 and 1868.
Von Guérard’s first work to enter a public collection was Spring in the Valley of the Mitta Mitta , a painting commissioned by Archibald Michie, who presented it to the National Gallery of Victoria in 1866. At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition his large book of views, Australian Landscapes , won a prize, although the artist later expressed reservations about the quality of the lithographs. In 1870 von Guérard was awarded the Cross of the Order of Franz Joseph by the Austrian Emperor. That year he sold Mount Kosciusko to the National Gallery of Victoria, his first such sale. In June he was chosen over Abram Louis Buvelot and other applicants as Master of the Painting School and Curator of the Victorian National Gallery. Although this ended all financial uncertainty, the gallery position also curtailed his sketching and painting. The last Victorian homestead commission was in 1869. During his decade as painting master he managed only two summer sketching tours – to Tasmania in 1875 and New Zealand in 1876. Although criticised for his antiquated teaching methods, he remained at the gallery until the end of 1881. Then he sailed via Suez to Italy and travelled north to settle in Düsseldorf. Throughout the 1880s he still painted, occasionally sending pictures to Australia. His daughter had married an Englishman and moved to London and he and his wife joined them in 1891. He died of influenza at Chelsea in 1901.
Von Guérard is considered to have painted over 200 oil paintings, of which about two-thirds are known. He was a charter member of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts (1857), the Royal Society (1860) and the Victorian Academy of Arts (1870) and had exhibited in Leipzig, Düsseldorf and Berlin before he came to Australia. After his arrival, he exhibited widely in Sydney and Melbourne as well as participating in international exhibitions in Paris, London, and Philadelphia. Australia’s most important romantic landscape painter during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, von Guérard clearly worked within the German romantic tradition (not the English as his contemporary James Smith, art critic for the Melbourne Argus , maintained). Yet his influence on his students was slight and he attracted no followers; his almost pantheistic vision of the Australian landscape remains unique.
His best paintings, like Mount William from Mount Dryden (1857) or Pulpit Rock, Cape Schanck (1865), illustrate the German romantic belief that divine power is present in nature. By physically and spiritually immersing himself in the natural world he was able to produce landscapes which were a means of expressing his personal religious feelings. Whether depicting Aborigines in an antipodean Eden or transplanted Europeans surrounded by their material success, von Guérard included in these carefully balanced and meticulously detailed compositions that cosmic awareness so familiar to the German romantic imagination.
Writers:
Comstock, EdwardBruce, Candice
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 November 1811
- Summary
- Arguably Australia's most important romantic landscape painter during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, von Guérard is considered to have painted over 200 works, most within the German romantic tradition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1901
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia
- Biography
- painter, illuminator, draughtsman and agent, was born in South Australia, only son of Sarah Jane and William Joseph Joyner, clerk of the Adelaide Council. In 1867 he won a prize for his drawing of HMS Galatea (the Duke of Edinburgh’s ship) at the South Australian Society of Arts’ eleventh annual exhibition. The following year he won two prizes for his drawings, one a watercolour landscape and the other the best pencil landscape (original or copy) by an amateur. The critic on the Adelaide Observer , however, considered that Mrs Benham had produced the best pencil drawings, even if Joyner’s were 'not far behind in manipulative skill’, commenting that Joyner’s Near Penshurst and Miss Benham’s Ivy Bridge were both 'admirably finished’ copies. At the 1869 exhibition Joyner won three more prizes, once again including that for the best watercolour landscape by an amateur as well as one for an original perspective view of the Adelaide Government Offices. In 1870 he came second in the amateur landscape section and won a guinea prize for a pencil landscape touched up with white on coloured paper.
An illuminated address signed 'Joyner’, presented to Walter Boyd Tait Andrews, Registrar-General of South Australia, 'on the eve of your departure for England’ from the officers of his department, the Lands Titles Office, Adelaide, is dated 1 July 1882. The address (quoted Treloar) is inscribed on a sheet of vellum, with the recipient’s name and the initial letter of text highly decorative and all other capitals ornamental. Running the full length of the l.h.s. is a standard with a twirled ribbon, captioned 'The Deeds Themselves, Though Mute, Speak Loud the Doer’, topped by a banner illustrated with a cloaked Aborigine, spear in one hand and partially unrolled deed in the other. Encased in its Morocco folder, it was offered for sale at $1,000 by Michael Treloar in 1993.
Joyner had married Janet Bowman in 1877 and they had nine children. He died at Semaphore, South Australia, on 27 December 1900.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1848
- Summary
- Nineteenth century painter, illuminator, draughtsman and agent, lived his entire life in South Australia and exhibited regularly with the South Australian Society of Arts. He produced pencil and watercolour landscapes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Dec-00
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1846-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, trained at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh before coming to Australia for his health in 1863. An Australian oil landscape signed and dated 'Lockhart 1865’ was offered for sale by Christie’s (lot 32, Australian and European Paintings, Drawings and Prints, Part 1 & 2 , Melbourne 25-26 November 1997, estimate $15,000-20,000). According to Christie’s he returned to Scotland some time after 1867.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1846
- Summary
- painted an Australian oil landscape in 1865
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1900
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1841-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, bank manager and Church of England clergyman, was born in Adelaide on 2 October 1841, son of John Pitcher and Deborah, née Watts. In 1859 he had two drawings, Morning and Clytie , shown at the third annual exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts. The latter, copied from a bust, was the only entry in the category of best drawing from the round so Pitcher was reluctantly awarded the Hon. Charles Davies’s prize of 3 guineas, the donor announcing in the press that he considered the artist had 'no natural taste or genius whatever, the more especially when his advanced age is considered’. In reply Pitcher sent an angry letter to the Adelaide Observer declining the prize: 'I consider the remarks advanced as to my artistic abilities and natural genius to be uncalled for and indelicate, more especially as I do not aspire to any eminence in the art … I scorn to receive ill-earned honours’. A subsequent correspondent, also objecting to Davies’s intemperate outburst, clarified Pitcher’s age, the youth then being about eighteen – old for a student but hardly senile.
The controversy apparently destroyed Pitcher’s artistic aspirations. He became a bank manager, then was ordained and served as incumbent of the Anglican parishes of Kapunda, Adelaide, Clare and elsewhere. On 7 November 1867 he married Elizabeth Charlotte Catherine Smyth-Blood in Kapunda; they had three children. He died at Adelaide on 27 September 1900.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 October 1841
- Summary
- Sketcher, bank manager and Church of England clergyman, whose artistic aspirations were utterly destroyed by Hon. Charles Davies' sardonic remarks in the press in 1859.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27-Sep-00
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- amateur photographer and public servant, was born at Perth (WA) on 5 March 1836, son of John Randall Phillips and his first wife. He was employed as a clerk in the Colonial Secretary’s Office in 1852 and was one of the party sent to rendezvous with the explorer Robert Austin at Shark Bay in 1854. He was appointed assistant colonial secretary in 1880 and commissioner of police in 1887. He was also an amateur photographer. His albumen silver photograph of a group of Aborigines in ragged European dress (c. 1861) survives in the disassembled album (p.c., Perth) of Alfred H. Stone . Newton suggests that Phillips and Stone learned photography together.
Phillips was married three times: to Ruth Rachel Perry on 14 September 1848, to Annie Emma Hare on 22 July 1869, and to Vittoria Ellen Jane Burges on 16 February 1886. He died at East Perth on 26 March 1900.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 March 1836
- Summary
- Thrice married George Braithwaite Phillips was an amateur photographer who, in 1852, was appointed as a clerk in the Colonial Secretary's Office. In 1880 Phillips was made assistant colonial secretary and in 1887 he became commissioner of police.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26-Mar-00
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, explorer, journalist, miner and politician, was born in England on 31 March 1835. He had a varied career which encompassed sailing, gold prospecting, participation in the Burke and Wills relief expedition and exploration throughout South Australia, central Australia and Queensland. As a member of the South Australian expedition dispatched for the attempted relief of Burke and Wills, Hodgkinson produced a number of sketches for the Commission of Crown Lands at Adelaide, four of which were subsequently engraved and reproduced in the Illustrated London News . He edited several newspapers in the 1860s and was a member of the Queensland parliament in 1874-75 and 1887-93. Involved in mining ventures in Western Australia and Queensland, he filled an album with pencil and wash views of northern and western Queensland (Dixson Library, SLNSW). Hodgkinson married Kate Robertson, fathered four children, and died on 23 July 1900.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 March 1835
- Summary
- Sketcher, explorer, journalist, miner and politician. Hodgkinson had a varied career encompassing sailing, gold prospecting, participation in the Burke and Wills relief expedition and exploration throughout South Australia, central Australia and Queensland.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23-Jul-00
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude53.1115513 Longitude-3.3052405 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ruthin, Denbighshire, Wales, UK
- Biography
- lithographer, painter and engineer, was born in Ruthin, Denbighshire, Wales, son of Daniel Jones, a builder, and his wife, Mary. Trained in the provinces, Jones gained knowledge of surveying, engineering, and drafting plans, particularly railway sections. After coming to Melbourne he was employed for a time by Thomas Ham as a lithographer. Early in 1853 he did some lithographic work for the Department of Public Lands and in June was placed in charge of the lithographic branch of the Surveyor General’s Department. Difficulties arose with the supervision of older and more experienced staff, and Jones was dismissed in October 1857 for a breach of discipline following an exchange of blows with a staff member. He then acted as a freelance draughtsman and was briefly in an architectural partnership with John O’Flanagan at 49 Collins Street West, until appointed lithographic draughtsman in the Railways Department in January 1859. He transferred to the Water Supply Department in December 1865.
In 1870 Jones spent a short time in Fiji before returning to Melbourne. In the early 1870s he attended lectures in engineering at Melbourne University and passed the examinations for municipal surveyor. He returned to the Railways Department as a draughtsman in January 1872, a position he held until his appointment as city engineer to the City of Sydney in February 1879. This period with the Sydney City Council was unhappy; he was suspended in October 1886, reinstated in December and suspended again in March 1888. Since he had just gained the appointment of engineer with the Metropolitan Board of Works, he then resigned from the council staff. At the end of 1893 Jones resigned from this last position too, owing to failing eyesight; he had lost the sight of one eye some years earlier. He had married Harriet, eldest daughter of James Goldie, at Richmond, Victoria, on 11 April 1861. She predeceased him on 17 January 1900 and he is believed to have died at North Sydney a short time later.
Little is known of Jones as an artist. His earliest recorded work is a lithograph dated 1858 of the District Survey Office, Taradale. His sojourn in Fiji resulted in the publication of at least one lithographic view of the island of Ovalau (Mitchell Library) annotated 'sketched on board the Jas. Patterson, Str 1870’ and 'Printed for private distribution only, 22 April 1875’. In November 1875 two of his watercolours of the Victorian waterworks at Clunes were sent to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition and he lithographed the accompanying plans. That March he had been elected a member of the Victorian Academy of Arts. At the academy’s exhibitions of 1875, 1876 and 1878 he exhibited a total of eight watercolours and one oil painting, mostly of rural scenery. He resigned his membership in July 1879 following his move to Sydney. Throughout the 1870s he gave lectures on behalf of worthy causes and illustrated them with extempore drawings. At Sydney in 1884 'some spirited sketches’ by Mr Trevor Jones were exhibited at the gallery of John Sands, the printer.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- A lithographer, painter, engineer, and a civil servant, Jones worked for a number of government bureaus. He exhibited eight watercolours and one oil painting with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1875, 1876 and 1878.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1900
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, architect and Royal Engineer, was born in England on 1 January 1826 and educated at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Commissioned second lieutenant in December 1843, he then attended the Royal Engineers’ establishment at Chatham for a course of professional instruction. After service in Ireland he was posted to Gibraltar in 1846 where he made his mark as a competent officer and an innovative engineer. Shortly after his return to England in 1850 Wray, together with lieutenants Crossman and Du Cane , was selected to command a company of Royal Engineers who were being sent out to Western Australia to assist with the construction of the new convict establishment.
They arrived at Fremantle in the Anna Robertson on 18 December 1851 and Captain Wray was put in charge of the construction of the prison which had been begun by the comptroller-general of convicts, Captain E.Y.W. Henderson . The whole complex, which could accommodate 853 men, was not finished until 1858 and Wray undoubtedly designed many of its details and felt a proprietorial interest in it. Two of his watercolour views of the completed building, Convict Prison, Fremantle and Officers Quarters and Guard Room. Convict Prison Fremantle W Australia , dated 26 March 1859 on the back, are in the National Library.
Although his superior appears to have designed the major buildings, many of the minor architectural and engineering works were designed by Wray, including roads, bridges, jetties and a recycled sewage system, based on a model advocated by Prince Albert, which fertilised the prison gardens. In February 1856 Henderson was given leave to return to England and Wray was installed as acting comptroller-general until his return in January 1858. The design of the lunatic asylum associated with the prison and that for a new Government House at Perth were drawn up in the Royal Engineers’ Office at this time and Wray apparently assisted Henderson with both, Richard Roach Jewell being responsible for the design of the interior fittings for Government House in the early 1860s after they had left the colony.
An ink and watercolour drawing previously attributed to Du Cane, Bridge over the River Swan at Guildford, Western Australia (1 March 1859, NLA), has been re-attributed to Wray by Chapman. He also developed drawings after sketches by an otherwise unknown naval surgeon, Robert Ward Clark. Wray’s signed Fremantle, from Gage’s Road (NLA) – a topographical drawing which labels its buildings and major landscape features ('Commissariat Store’, 'Convict Prison’, 'The Entrance to the River’, and so on) – is inscribed 'from a sketch by Dr. R.W. Clarke RN’. So is the unsigned pencil drawing Government House, Perth, Western Australia (NLA), convincingly attributed to Wray since, like the Fremantle prison and landscape views, it carries a verso inscription and the date, 26 March 1859. All must have been done in England. Preceded by his wife (Mary?) and their only surviving child, Wray left the colony in the Nile on 4 February 1858.
Following a tour of duty with a boundary surveying commission in Central America in 1859-61, Wray returned to England and became involved in the design and construction of the Royal Engineers’ camp buildings at Hythe. He was attached to the Royal Marines and sent to Japan in 1863 where he did survey and reconnaissance work for the navy. In Yokohama he produced designs for the legislative and consular buildings. Back at England in 1866 he was appointed superintendent of the architectural course of instruction at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. He held the position for eight years, during which time he compiled The Theory and Practice of Construction , a standard text for Royal Engineer officers for the next twenty years.
From Chatham Lieutenant-Colonel Wray was posted to Malta, in command of the Royal Engineers who were rebuilding the defences of the island, and once again became involved in a diverse programme of public works, including camp and barrack accommodation, water supply and sewerage works. In recognition of his achievements in Malta he was promoted and awarded the CMG. Colonel Wray was transferred to Ireland in 1879, where his work was largely administrative – experience which led to his appointment as lieutenant-governor of Jersey after he retired from the army in 1887. He was said to have filled this final five-year role with distinction, not only because he was a successful administrator but also because of the 'warm informality’ which he and his wife brought to the social aspects of the position. Lieutenant-General Wray died at Bournemouth on 6 April 1900, aged seventy-four.
Writers:
Staff WriterNote: Accredited to Robert Campbell in DAA. Campbell denies this (pers. comm. w RK, Nov 15, 2006).
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 January 1826
- Summary
- Sketcher, architect and Royal Engineer born in England. Resident of Ireland, Gibraltar, Western Australia, Malta and Japan.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6-Apr-00
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- professional photographer, worked in Melbourne in 1854-97. He sold photographic apparatus and taught photography at his 5 Collins Street studio where, he advertised in 1856, portraits were produced using the daguerreotype, collodion and paper processes. In April he announced that he was opening at 'the Portrait Rooms formerly occupied by Messrs Duryea and McDonald , 9 Collins-st west’ and would be providing portraits 'on glass by the new collodion process’ – albumen paper prints from glass-plate negatives as well as ambrotypes. He promised that 'an inspection will convince the most sceptical of the superiority of the above process to the Daguerreotype’. Perry’s New Portrait Rooms on 'The Block’ became one of the most fashionable studios in Melbourne for society portraits. A photograph of it in 1860 shows its plate-glass ground floor windows packed with examples of the firm’s work. Perry employed the young Ebenezer Wake Cook for several years as a technical assistant, mainly to colour photographs and paint miniatures. Portraits were still taken at no. 5 and both establishments had for sale in April 1856 'Panoramic Views of the City of Melbourne and Suburbs, taken from the summit of the chimney of the Gas Works’. A paper print of this five-part collodiotype (wet-plate) panorama taken from the gasometer behind Batman’s Hill is owned by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria; another is in a Victorian private collection.
Perry participated in many Melbourne exhibitions. At the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art he showed a collection of tinted photographs (daguerreotypes) which were thought 'so life-like and highly finished that I question whether they could be surpassed’ as well as 'a number of sun-pictures taken by what the artist terms the paper process from the material on which they are impressed’ (salted paper prints). At the Victorian Industrial Society’s eighth annual exhibition in 1858 he was awarded a certificate of merit for various glass collodion positive portraits (ambrotypes). He exhibited in the Victorian exhibitions of Fine Arts in 1860-61, receiving a first-class certificate for his single portraits at the latter. His other 1861 exhibit, 'Photographs produced by the Photographic Society of Victoria; [and] Photographic Chemicals’, was also catalogued as the work of the exhibitor but seems more likely to have been a group work. The Photographic Society of Victoria, the first such professional union in the Australian colonies, had been formed in 1860 at Batchelder & O’Neill 's rooms in Collins Street East and presumably Perry was exhibiting on behalf of the members.
In 1863 Browne & Reid showed Perry’s photograph The Naughty Boy at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition. At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition Perry showed plain and coloured portraits taken in his studio at 49 Elizabeth Street (on the corner of Collins Street) where he had moved in about 1863. He received a medal for his tinted photographs, the untouched examples being considered 'too few in number to enable the jurors to form a proper judgement of the Exhibitor’s merits in this respect’. In 1869 he exhibited twelve photographs at the Melbourne Public Library Exhibition.
The La Trobe Library has the best public collection of Perry’s photographs but many examples survive from this long-lived, prolific studio. Cato illustrates his carte-de-visite of Mrs Warrender, the Shakespearian actress, and a portrait of James O’Farrell, taken when O’Farrell was a man about town in Melbourne some years before he attempted to assassinate the Duke of Edinburgh at Clontarf, Sydney, on 12 March 1868 and was hanged. Simon, an Australian Aboriginee [sic] of the Yarra Yarra Tribe Which Opposed the Landing of Batman 1835 is known only in the form of a hand-coloured lithograph executed by William Gould after Perry’s photograph (1860s, National Gallery of Australia [NGA]; Mitchell Library). Ironically, when Perry appeared before the Victorian Parliamentary Committee inquiring into J.W. Osborne 's invention of photolithography in August 1860, he objected to the process on the grounds that it was prejudicial to photographers. He also formed one of the group of photographers – the others being Batchelder and O’Neill, Frith and Crawford – who opposed the granting of a Victorian patent for the sennotype process to Charles Wilson in 1863, on the legally successful grounds that this was just a new name for a process they had all been using for years, normally called an ivorytype.
Perry himself applied for a patent for a new process to stabilise photographs in 1864. Called the Perry-o-type, it was, he claimed, an original 'combination and adaption … [of] the new method of carbon printing recently initiated by Mr Swan of London’. Three years later he was advertising that he had made another important discovery – the 'Abolition of Torture in Photography’ – and was now enabled through 'his researches in the Chemistry of Photography’ to dispense with the head-rest or clam
By 1867 Perry was sharing his premises at 49 Elizabeth Street with J. McKean & S. Gillott, solicitors, and Crouch & Wilson , architects. All the tenants combined forces to present 'a grand display of the electric light’ in honour of the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh in 1867. According to the Argus , 'The batteries were prepared by Mr. G.W. Perry, and the affair passed off most successfully. The light was exhibited from the roof of the house, and, notwithstanding the brilliancy of the other illuminations, the light could be distinctly seen as far as the Treasury on the one hand, and Latrobe-street on the other’.
In 1872 Perry moved to 135 Bourke Street, East Melbourne, calling his new studio The East End Portrait Gallery. Here he offered to print from negatives taken at either of his branches, 'in the Royal Arcade, and at 49 Elizabeth-street’. Cartes-de-visite cost 7s 6d a dozen and he advertised 'Solar Enlargements and other Photographs finished off in Oil or Water Colours’. His claim to be able to provide colour photographs of bank notes was published in the United States ( Anthony’s Photographic Bulletin , June 1874) in an article on 'Photographing Colours, and Forgery’.
Perry’s firm also did some work for the Victorian government, producing a series of telescopic photographs of the moon for the government astronomer, Robert Lewis John Ellery, at the Melbourne Observatory in April 1872. Taken by attaching the special photographic apparatus Ellery had ordered in 1871 to the notorious Thomas Grubb of Dublin telescope – which with its 48-inch (121 cm) reflector remained the largest in the world from its purchase in 1865 until 1908, although not the most efficient – Perry’s 'Thoroughly satisfactory’ photographs were believed to be 'the largest primary pictures of the moon ever taken in the world, being three inches in diameter on the plate used’. Enlarged to 13 inches (33 cm) diameter, they were sent to the chief secretary with the promise of publishing a more perfect set. All may have been taken by an employee, Joseph Turner , for Newton notes that the surviving, widely exhibited photographs of the moon (Mount Stromlo Observatory; NGA) were produced under Ellery’s supervision after Turner became a full-time public servant in 1873.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1824
- Summary
- Professional photographer, exhibited and well-recognised. Achievements include 'Perry-o-type' process, 1864; and telescopic photographs of 'the largest primary pictures of the moon', 1872.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25-Aug-00
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- amateur photographer and Anglican clergyman, was born in London, third son of John George Henry Pownall. He graduated BA from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1845, was ordained in 1847, and came to Western Australia in the Australian on 9 August 1852 where he was appointed to the parish of York and Beverley. He occupied the newly-completed parsonage at York and finished building the church there – buildings depicted in a watercolour by the wife of a later incumbent, Janet Millett . About a year after his arrival Pownall married Jane Slade; they had eleven children.
In 1855 Pownall was transferred to Perth, succeeding the late Rev. J. B. Wittenoom as colonial chaplain. Bishop Hale appointed him first dean of Perth Cathedral in 1862. A member of the High Church Cambridge Camden (later Ecclesiological) Society, he was active in the cultural life of the colony, his particular interest being church architecture. The design of the Gothic Revival deanery at Perth has been attributed to him, with the architect Richard Roach Jewell being thought to have assisted in its erection.
In 1856 Pownall was elected vice-president of the Perth Mechanics Institute. There, in September 1858, he gave a demonstration of photography at a conversazione , the Perth Gazette reporting that he had introduced 'the whole of the apparatus and chemicals together with a selection of very beautiful specimens—stereos and microscopic’.
Pownall returned to England in the Tartar in 6 January 1863, with his wife, four children and sister-in-law, Agnes Slade. He became chaplain at Isleworth, Middlesex (1863-64), vicar of St John’s, Horton (1864-98) and rural dean of Shoreditch (1870-90). He died at Buxted, Sussex, on 11 February 1900.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1822
- Summary
- George Purvis Pownall was an amateur photographer and Anglican clergyman. He was active in Perth before returning to England.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11-Feb-00
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, a son of Alexander Carse ('Old Carse’), a painter of popular Scottish genre scenes active between 1802 and 1838. He was undoubtedly named after the Scottish animal painter, James Howe, a contemporary of Alexander’s. James Howe Carse was variously reported as being 81 or 82 years old when he died, which puts his year of birth at 1818 or 1819 although neither his birth certificate nor other family details have been located. Another son of Alexander’s, William Carse (1815?-53), was educated at the Royal Academy Schools in London where he took a first prize for drawing, but J.H. Carse was trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of which his father had been a founding member. From 1860 to 1862, according to Graves, he exhibited landscape paintings in London, including An Old Mill on the Avon near Bathgate, Looking towards the Firth of Forth (for sale at £15) at Suffolk Street in 1860 when he was living at 24 Edward Terrace, Caledonian Road North, London.
Carse’s date of arrival in Australia is uncertain but was probably 1867, when he is known to have been in South Australia; a sketchy, signed watercolour of the Kapunda copper mines (ML) bears this date. He had evidently moved to Victoria and visited New Zealand before 1869, when seven of his landscape paintings — some Victorian and some New Zealand subjects — were shown at the Melbourne Public Library Exhibition. That same year J. Twycross was offering for sale at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition the three oils by Carse he had previously shown in Melbourne: Farmyard (DL?), Falls of the Campaspe , and an unidentified landscape. In June 1869 the Colonial Monthly noted that there were 'At Mr Hind’s, three pictures of great merit by Mr Carse’ – two 'charming landscape drawings’ of Riddell’s Creek and a swamp near Clunes, and a view of Mount Beckwith. His painting Riddell’s Creek, Mount Macedon (1869, LT), formed the basis of a wood-engraving which appeared in the Illustrated Melbourne Post on 27 December 1869. Not long afterwards Carse was apparently working on drawings for Edwin Carton Booth’s Australia Illustrated . The engravings in this publication ascribed to 'J. Carr’ are almost certainly by him and suggest that he travelled widely. The subjects include King George Sound (WA), Townsville and Gladstone (Qld) and Port Darwin (NT). Similarly, he may be credited with two New Zealand views catalogued at the 1869 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition as being by 'J.G. Carr’.
A foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts at Melbourne in 1870, Carse was in New South Wales the following year. Again he appeared under a variety of accidental aliases: Sands Sydney Directory lists J.H. Carr (1877), James Carr (1880), J. Cars (1882) and J.A. Carse (1883). He became a foundation member of the New South Wales Academy of Art too and was awarded a certificate of merit at its first exhibition (1872) for his large oil, Weatherboard Falls :
one of the best things in the exhibition … there being a wildness and sublimity in those deep valleys, where the mist floats in the air, as yet uninfluenced by the rays of the sun when they have just begun to gild the distant mountains.
At the second exhibition in 1873, competing against oil paintings by Chester Earles , H. van den Houten , E. Montagu Scott , E. Wake Cook and others, Carse won the Hon. John Campbell 's prize of £25 for Loch Oich and Inverary Castle, Scotland . It had a repeat showing that year with the NSW Agricultural Society, together with three other oil landscapes. When next he exhibited with the Academy of Art, in 1875, he received a further certificate of merit for Bega Swamps . ('Dr. E. Gerard’, the painter von Gué rard , loaned two of his six oils shown.) The same year, two of several oils shown at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, Creek Scene, Tilba Tilba and Wallaga Lake, near Bega, New South Wales , were awarded first class certificates and forwarded to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition; two paintings shown with the Agricultural Society of New South Wales were highly commended; and an oil in the Academy of Art exhibition won a certificate of merit.
In 1876 Carse showed eight paintings with the Academy and was awarded a gold medal for another view of Weatherboard Falls and a group of landscapes. A pair of unusual genre scenes — The Morning Herald (p.c.) and The Evening News (unlocated) — were also included, each for sale at 30 guineas. Later that year Carse was labelled 'perhaps the best painter in the colony’ and awarded a prize for Wallaga Lake by the Agricultural Society of New South Wales despite a detail of light in the picture being judged 'unnatural’. Nine oil landscapes were shown with the academy in 1877, the best being a view of the waterfall at Duck Creek, according to the Sydney Mail : 'In all the others he has used too much of the usual green and brown and treated them in too conventional a style’. When he exhibited The Jump-Up, Road into Burragorang (1879, o/c, AGNSW) and Island at Junction of Cox and Burragorang Rivers at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition, his style was again criticised. The Sydney Morning Herald 's critic noted: 'That persevering artist, Mr J.H. Carse, sends two landscapes, both from the neighbourhood of Burragorang, in this colony, and both treated in his well-known style. Mr Carse copies faithfully, but he has too great a tendency to spoil his pictures by excess of bright greens unattended by cool shadows, and from that fault these two works are not exempt, though it is not so perceptible in these instances as in some other pictures by the same artist.’ His View at Marrickville near Cooks River (offered for sale by Bridget McDonnell in 2001, via the Cowlishaw Collection) is also dated 1879.
He was a foundation member of the Art Society of New South Wales, formed in 1880 by a group of professional artists seceding from the Academy of Art. His paintings shown at the society’s exhibitions in 1880-85 were mainly views of the south coast of New South Wales. Reviewing the inaugural exhibition, the Sydney Morning Herald listed 10 oils by Carse, including a triptych, Wallaga Lake , Scene at Wogonga , Scene at Tilba Tilba , deemed 'in his best style’.
From then on the number of paintings he entered in the Art Society’s exhibitions decreased. The Sydney Morning Herald noted that he had 'only sent three pictures’ to the third exhibition: a view of cattle crossing a bridge in North Wales, Riddell’s Creek, Mount Macedon and Coast Scene, near Bermagui . All were familiar subjects. He entered just one painting, Wallaga Lake, Mount Dromedary , in the society’s fifth exhibition, described in the Sydney Morning Herald as 'a charming palette-knife sketch, admirable in colour and perspective’ (except that 'the water on the left seems to have a downhill tendency, but this may be because the picture was not properly framed’). His three paintings in the sixth annual exhibition were most favourably reviewed by the Herald and the Illustrated Sydney News , especially a moonlight view of Bushrangers’ Bay, Bass Point, Shellharbour (Illawarra) 'done with the palette knife’. But the Sydney Mail lamented: 'Mr J.H. Carse seldom paints up to his best now. There are works of this veteran artist in many salerooms and stores of the city which some day will be prized as gems of colonial collections; but they are of a different order from those he places in this exhibition.’ Three of his New South Wales landscapes were included in the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition; he showed two Victorian views, On the Yarra and Waterfall , at the 1884 Victorian Jubilee Exhibition.
Carse worked on both a large and a small scale, using cigar-box lids for plein air oil sketches from the 1870s onwards, a decade before these became identified with the Heidelberg School’s 1889 9 × 5 Impression Exhibition. During the latter part of his long life he lived at Mosman Bay, probably with his long-time friend, the painter George Podmore. He died in 1900 from the effects of continued alcoholism. His work, predominantly in oils, is quietly romantic and rarely rises to the grandiose heights of a Piguenit . Nor was he overly preoccupied with metaphysical concerns like von Guérard, although the interrelationship of humans and nature is a recurrent theme. His reverence for nature appears especially evident in his paintings of lonely backwaters and stormy coastal scenes. Children become symbols of innocence in the bush, while Aborigines are presented as an integral part of their unspoilt surroundings. His early paintings were quite detailed, but in the 1880s they appear to have been more loosely painted and less laboured than those by most of his contemporaries. Unfortunately, by the late 1880s they had also become varied in quality and often repetitive, with stock subjects recurring.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanScheding, Stephen
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1818
- Summary
- A well travelled painter, in 1876 Carse was regarded as 'perhaps the best painter in the colony' with his landscapes, depicting locations from all around Australia, receiving recognition and awards at numerous exhibitions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1900
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude53.58646755 Longitude9.777669727 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Altona, Germany
- Biography
- amateur photographer, Sydney 1872
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- Allerding was a jeweller and amateur photographer known to be in Sydney, NSW in 1872.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24-Dec-00
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, scene-painter, decorator, art teacher, actor, fireman and entrepreneur, was born in London on 26 September 1814, reputedly the son of a Danish sea captain.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 September 1814
- Summary
- 'Ballet dancer, pantomimist, gymnast, actor, scene painter, interior decorator, artist, theatre lessee, founder of a fire brigade and its first captain, and Deacon of the Pitt Street Congregational Church, Sydney', so described Eric Irvin about Andrew Torning, the multi-talented colonial artist. Particularly skilled at decorating, he was commissioned to design parts of buildings such as St Mary's.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1900
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude57.15 Longitude-2.11 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, amateur photographer, author and public servant, was born and educated in Aberdeen, Scotland. After receiving his MA from Aberdeen University in 1832, Rae studied law at Aberdeen and Edinburgh. He came to Sydney on 8 December 1839 as secretary and accountant to the short-lived North British Australasian Loan and Investment Company. In 1843 he was appointed Sydney’s first full-time town clerk, thus beginning a public service career that was to last fifty years. During this period he was, variously, city commissioner, secretary and accountant to the Sydney Railway Company, under-secretary for the Department of Works, commissioner for railways, chairman of the Board of Public Works and a member of the Civil Service Board, retiring from the last position in 1893.
Despite the demands of his busy professional life, Rae took a prominent part in Sydney’s cultural activities. In the 1840s he was vice-president of the Sydney Debating Society and a lecturer and committee member of the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts. In 1845 the Sydney Morning Herald published 'The fancy ball’, his serio-comic description in verse of the Mayor’s Ball held at the Royal Victoria Theatre on 21 August 1844. Other literary works, which Rae printed and bound himself, include a blank-verse version of The Book of the Prophet Isaiah (1853) and Gleanings from My Scrap Book (1869-74). He wrote the text for John Skinner Prout 's two-volume Sydney Illustrated (1842-44), which was highly praised at the time as 'faithful in explanation, eloquent and graceful in its style’. He also drew its title-page illustrations: figure-studies of Aborigines which, like Rae’s other Aboriginal subjects, border on caricature.
As both an artist and patron of the arts Rae helped institute and organise the first exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in 1847 and lent several of his own paintings to it. Three oil portraits ( A Gentleman , A Lady , and A Young Lady ) attributed to Rae in the catalogue were stated to have been 'by Forbes’ in the Sydney Morning Herald 's review. Of Rae’s other loans, the Herald described View of the Domain and Macquarie-Street, Sydney as 'sketches from nature’, Sunset and Landscape as 'after Prout’, The Porteus Mob, from Sir Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian as 'from a print’, and attributed Willoughby Falls to Prout. Rae owned a large collection of Prout’s drawings, lending seventeen to the 1847 and 1849 Sydney exhibitions. He also owned and exhibited paintings by G.E. Peacock , Lucy Havens , Conrad Martens and William Nicholas .
In the 1850s Rae became a keen amateur photographer; a large album of his calotypes (salted paper prints) is held privately. In a lecture on photographic techniques delivered at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts in 1855, he said: 'I am anxious to make some of you amateurs like myself’. In 1870 he was one of the photography judges at the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition. His technological and artistic interests were combined in the large panoramic watercolour sketches – from 6 to 13 feet (1.82 to 3.96 m) long – that he produced of Newcastle (1847), Wollongong (1851), Valley of the Upper Murray from Welaregang [sic] Station (1857) and Sydney Harbour from the Macquarie Light House (1859). To ensure 'absolute fidelity’ to nature all were made with the aid of a camera obscura he had constructed. These views were displayed at the Calcutta International Exhibition in 1883 and again at the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition. The Turning of the First Turf of the Railway in New South Wales, at Redfern (1850), accompanied by W.M. Cooper’s drawing of the same spot thirty-three years later ('marvellous progress’), was also in both exhibitions, together with contemporary photographs of Newcastle ('wonderful advance’) and Wollongong ('not very marked’).
To accompany Rae’s views sent to the Melbourne International Centennial Exhibition the New South Wales commissioners published a booklet of extracts from laudatory reviews of 1883, Mr. Rae’s Sketches of Colonial Scenes in the Olden Time (Government Printer, Sydney 1888). A selection from his hundreds of watercolour views of Sydney in the 1840s was photographed and issued as an album in 1893. His regular use of the camera obscura gives them an impersonal, almost mechanical, character, a quality praised as evidence of his reliability as a faithful recorder of 'the olden time’ before photography. By 1883 Rae’s panoramas were considered to be 'well worth preserving among the pictures in our Art Gallery, not only for their excellence, but as records of our colonial life and progress’.
Writers:
Webby, Elizabeth
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1813
- Summary
- "I am anxious to make some of you amateurs like myself" was Rae's plea to students at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts in 1855. He was referring to his experiments in photography, yet the word amateur hardly applies. Anything he turned his hand to he seemed to master and his interests encompassed both the business and cultural worlds. In his artmaking he was most concerned with "fidelity to nat
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1900
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1900-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kennington Common, London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer, etcher, lithographer, carver, architect and surveyor, was born on 13 February 1808 near Kennington Common, London, son of Robert Russell, a merchant and keen sketcher, and Margaret, née Leslie. Robert junior received his early architectural training in the office of the popular Edinburgh architect William Burn in 1823-28, then worked for a time with Abraham & Donthorne in London. In 1830-31 he was with the Ordnance Survey at Drogheda, Ireland, and through this experience became intrigued with surveying. His final architectural position in England (in 1832-33) was in the office of the most eminent architect of the Regency period, the ageing John Nash, then working on Buckingham Palace.
Russell migrated to Sydney in 1833, arriving on 24 September in the Sir John Rae Reid . He brought letters of introduction to Surveyor General T.L. Mitchell , among others, and by 20 October had been appointed to the Survey Department as acting assistant to the town surveyor of Sydney, Felton Matthew. However, his work was criticised for being slow and even inaccurate. Despite this, he became assistant town surveyor at the beginning of 1835 and from this position was appointed senior assistant surveyor to the new Port Phillip District settlement (Melbourne) on 10 September 1836. While in Sydney Russell became one of the first pupils of Conrad Martens and drew a series of views 'in the style of Martens’ – presumably those lithographed by J.G. Austin and published (with no acknowledgement to Russell) as Lithographic Drawings of Sydney and its Environs in 1836 . Original pencil sketches in one of Russell’s sketchbooks (DL) clearly identify him as the original artist for at least some of these.
After criticism of his work in Melbourne and the appointment of Robert Hoddle to take charge of the survey, Russell returned to Sydney. His difficulties continued there and he was dismissed on 7 June 1837. He managed to be re-employed by the government, however, and returned to Melbourne in March 1838 as clerk of works to the Port Phillip District. His return distressed the administrator, William Lonsdale, and Russell held the position only until 18 June 1839 when Governor Gipps directed from Sydney that he be removed from office; Lonsdale had accused him of neglecting his duties and of being insubordinate.
During his fifteen months as clerk of works, Russell was engaged on many small projects, supervising building and repair work. He sent copies of drawings for seven small buildings to the colonial architect in Sydney and must have been responsible for the design of some of them. These were a guard room, a store for government tools and the Clerk of Works’ Office (which he probably designed), all on the Government Block; the Mounted Police Barracks near Richmond (started before he arrived), a watch-house (most likely to his design) built on the Market Reserve, and a house for the superintendent of native police together with a wooden barracks for the Aboriginal troops at Narre Warren near Dandenong. Among the buildings whose repairs he supervised were the Military Barracks, the temporary hospital and prisoners’ barracks, and the Surveyor’s Office – all on the Government Block and built before Russell became clerk of works. He also supervised repairs to the police magistrate’s residence, known today as Lonsdale’s Cottage.
After his dismissal Russell remained at the Melbourne settlement and entered into private practice as an architect and surveyor. He married Mary Ann Collis, a daughter of James Smith, on 19 December 1939. His surveying took him far afield and included work at Port Albert and Wilson’s Promontory early in 1843 among many other commissions. His most substantial design as a private architect was St James’s Church of England near the corner of Collins and Williams Streets, now altered and relocated to King Street. Even this was marred by a dispute over his design for the spire, and he was replaced in 1841 by the accomplished architect Charles Laing. He also designed the first Bank of Australasia in Melbourne (1840-41), a two-storey stone building that stood on the north side of Collins Street just west of the Queen Street intersection.
In June 1856 Russell and his family went to England for four years. There he acted as a guide to art exhibitions for visiting colonial friends, but no drawings are known from these years. In February 1860 the family returned to Melbourne aboard the Norfolk .
Russell was noted for his drawing skills. He remained in regular contact with Martens, who as late as 1867 was helping him sell his drawings. He made numerous sketches of the Melbourne settlement and, whatever judgement might be passed on his poor performance as surveyor and clerk of works, left later generations the clearest indication of what early Melbourne looked like. Surviving works suggest his working method. He first sketched the scene in pencil and ink, noting colours and materials. Then he prepared a watercolour (perhaps more than one) based on the sketch, refining the subject matter of the view. Each sketch and watercolour was usually dated, although some of the sketches can be attributed to Russell only on the basis of a developed watercolour.
In the later 1880s he reworked some of his earlier sketches and care must be taken in distinguishing these from the early drawings. Later versions, such as his watercolour View from Batman’s Hill February 8, 1844, Looking North-West (22 November 1884, LT), were doubtless stimulated by the pioneering nostalgia associated with the 1888 centenary of white settlement in Australia and the fiftieth anniversary of the Melbourne settlement on the Yarra. His artistic endeavours encompassed poetry and a novel, The Heart , an unpublished romance annotated as having been written in May 1849 (NLA).
About ninety drawings by Russell are now in the Dixson Library while the National Library owns about sixty. The La Trobe Library also has a large collection of his work, including versions of Melbourne from the Falls dating from 30 June 1837 to 1893 and late watercolours after sketches by Phillip Parker King (done in 1886) and Charles Joseph La Trobe , together with a few oddities such as 'Birds painted on marble’ and a cameo carved on stone from Dight’s Falls (1890). Preston notes that he was a pioneer etcher and lithographer in Victoria and he was certainly interested in printmaking and experimenting with photography and glass-prints; others, however, may have undertaken the technical side of this work. Russell was introduced to photography by the geologist and explorer Paul Strzelecki about June 1840. He wrote in retrospect that Strzelecki 'first brought information of the discovery of photographic impressions and told me all that was then known of the methods as practised by Daguerr? [sic] on silvered plates of copper’. He is then said to have experimented with daguerreotypes and later with heliogravure and in 1872 was awarded a bronze medal at the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition for 'excellence in etchings on glass, printed by means of light’, the photolithographer in this case being Troedel . Reproductive etchings after Rembrandt survive in family possession. Etchings on paper after Russell’s early sketches of Melbourne were executed by Eliezer Montefiore .
Russell died on 10 April 1900, aged ninety-two, perhaps in financial difficulties as he was granted a small government pension several months before his death. In his early years at Port Phillip he had been one of the founding members of the Melbourne Club and the Melbourne Cricket Club. His portrait by Alice Panton , a daughter of Joseph Anderson Panton , is in the National Gallery of Victoria.
Writers:
Tibbits, George
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1808
- Summary
- Despite Russell's extensive work as a sketcher, amateur photographer, etcher, lithographer, carver, architect and surveyor, he is still better known for his work ethic and attitude. He spent the good part of thirty years shuffling between Sydney and Melbourne, at logger heads with colleague and superiors.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10-Apr-00
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude-36.75 Longitude144.266667 Start Date1871-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bendigo, Vic, Australia
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, musician and scholar, was born in Bendigo, Victoria. He was one of the second group of artists at Charterisville. A close friend of Norman and Lionel Lindsay , he too worked in pen and ink and made etchings; he also showed watercolour views of Melbourne at the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1893-98. A member of the Cannibal Club, it was he who 'discovered’ Fasoli’s Cafe, subsequently a celebrated Bohemian rendezvous. He designed the title page for Marshall Hall’s Hymn to Sydney 1897. An 1890s cartoon sketch of Marshall Hall is in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection of the artist’s ephemera. Was he related to the cartoonist Herbert Moffitt ?
Ernest Moffitt died young; the memorial book published in his honour was of art-historical significance.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1871
- Summary
- Melbourne artist/young man about town, who died early - memorial book could well be the first monograph written on an Australian artist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1899
- Age at death
- 28
Details
Latitude-34.7523871 Longitude149.7198009 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Goulburn, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- A.E. Martyn, Springfield n.d., line engraving of a house in Goulburn, NSW, 29.5 × 43 cm, NLA Pictorial Collection. Reproduced in Sue Rickard, 'The Springfield Collection: Suitable Sunday Reading and The Golden Fleece ', NLA News , June 1992, 10. Possibly related to sketcher James J. Martyn .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- Unknown artist whose line engraving has been printed in the National Library of Australia News.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1899
- Age at death
- 36
Details
Latitude-36.90125 Longitude174.855573 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Panmure, Auckland, New Zealand
- Biography
- Professional photographer, was born on 1 April 1854, one of the six children of Catherine Cleary (d.1897, aged 78), née Hickey, and James Cleary (d.1865), a Royal NZ Fencible, formerly a Sergeant in the 98th Regiment of Foot. The Cleary’s were Irish migrants who had come to Auckland in February 1848 and lived at Panmure, a small bayside settlement 20 km from Auckland. Thomas came to Australia in 1891 and spent 10 years in rural Victoria and NSW as a professional photographer, although previous photographic activities in NZ are not known.
Usually alone, but in some cases with a partner, Cleary operated studios in Charlton (opened October 1891, sold to Henry Lancaster in 1893), Donald (which he operated as dual studio with Charlton, with the aid of a local employee), Echuca (where he moved from Donald in 1893 and took on more employees for his expanded studio; photos included river views of Murray and its transport), Rochester, Benalla (where he moved in 1895 from Echuca and advertised as an 'art’ photographer for the first time) and Shepparton (branch studio of Benalla), which was operated by two former Echuca employees, now partners. The Shepparton partnership was dissolved in 1896 and the business was taken over by J. Duncan Pierce. Cleary continued in Benalla until the end of the year, then sold the studio to H.G. Boon and moved to Corowa (1897), where he began to show more interest in his 'art’ photography, which he advertised in local papers, than in his commercial business. Simultaneously at Wahgunyah and finally at Tumut, where he arrived in 1898. Local newspaper for 1898 has been destroyed but clear from 1899 report that he was so ill in the latter part of year that he was unable to practice; indeed, his 1899 commercial activities were even more erratic than at Corowa; several rival photographers (H. Stewart, Donald McRea and R. Pumprey) arrived in 1899 and took over the business.
Having spent no more than 18 months in any town, Cleary closed his Tumut studio in mid-1899 and moved to Hay, evidently solely for health reasons as he is not known to have worked there as a photographer. Died in Hay of a heart attack on 25 November 1899, aged 45. No obituary in local newspaper; the two witnesses on his death certificate (which is unclear about his marital status but other details are correct) were a local boarding house proprietress and a machine agent called James Cleary (no relation). His body lies in an unmarked grave in the RC section of Hay cemetery.
The bulk of Cleary’s work was standard 19th century photography, i.e. mainly portraiture. He did a mosaic composite photograph of the office-bearing Echucan masons in 1894 as well as photographing their families (photographs held Millewa Lodge, Echuca). His photographs of the river and wharf life at Echuca are still on sale in tourist kiosks there (undated and with no photographer acknowledged, although he copyrighted them in 1893). In particular he set up and photographed extraordinary tableaux of Aboriginal subjects, most of which included two Aboriginal models called John and Kate Friday and there is some speculation that they were relatives or associates of Tommy McRae . A group of Aboriginal people who had appeared in Cleary’s photographs, notably Mr and Mrs John Friday ('constant participants in his photographs over a period of 4 years’), took a complaint to the Corowa Small Debts Court in 1897 in which the defendants were represented by Tommy McRae (report Corowa Free Press 2 June 1897, quoted Donnelly).
Donnelly illustrations, all taken from dry plate negatives:
(plate 1) Disowned (Australian copyright title) or Divorced (British copyright title), Benalla 1896 wet plate, family group of five Aboriginals with very white child on 'lubra’s’ lap being pointed at an disowned by her husband (John Friday), the mother (Kate Friday) in defense pointing at a cake of Pears soap and declaring that its constant use washed the child white. Pears Soap box prominent in the foreground.
(plate 2) Untitled , Benalla, 1896: Kate Friday with two pestilential children and box of Beecham’s Pills.
(plate 3) No 2 Hunting , Wahgunyah, Vic. 1897: man, two women and little boy.
(plate 4) No 4 Struggling for Grace , Wahgunyah 1897: Kate Friday in corset and grass skirt, the former being pulled by her (almost naked) husband, with naked child beside her in bush setting.
(plate 5) No.4 Revenge , Wahgunyah, Vic. 1897; three Aboriginal men, with apparently dead Aboriginal woman on ground and Caucasian man tied to tree behind (possibly the photographer James Oliver Le Fairve, whom Cleary used as a witness on his copyright application form including this one).
(plate 6) Sentence of Death , Wahgunyah 1897; dead Aboriginal man on ground, Caucasian captive male surrounded by four(?) Aboriginal men (including John Friday), three woman (including Kate Friday) and one Aboriginal and one Caucasian boy.
(plate 7) Untitled (Aboriginal man and woman on bicycle: called Fijian in MoV collection according to Nic Petersen).
(plate 8) Woman on bicycle, apparently taken at the same time as plate 7.
(plate 9) group of Aborigines looking at child asleep or dead on the ground in the bush.
(plate 10) “Chief arrives before death sentence is carried out and abuses the member of the tribe who has usurped his (the Chief’s) authority, and threatened the ill-treatment. He releases the white woman and orders the culprit to death instead.” date and location unknown; caption first appeared in 1927 publication, Back to Wagga , which published a set of three photographs titled 'An Aboriginal Drama’, the first (unsighted) being captioned 'Squatter’s daughter whilst out riding stumbles on Black’s camp. The Blackfellow denouces the white race as interlopers and threatens her death.’
(plate 11) untitled view of tied up Caucasian woman watched by a group of Aborigines which did not appear in the centenary publication but appears to be part of the 'squatter’s daughter’ series, although the position of the props, the clothes and the log used to tether the Caucasian woman are different to those in plate 10.
(plate 12) 'Execution has been carried out by beheading the offender’; head of Aborigine on ground about to be presented to Caucasian woman in dark dress who has covered her face.
Cleary also wrote articles on photography under the pseudonym 'Planotype’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 April 1854
- Summary
- Professional photographer who operated studios in rural Victoria and NSW in 1891-1899. Cleary set up and photographed extraordinary tableaux of Aboriginal subjects, regularly using two Aboriginal models, Mr John and Mrs Kate Friday.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25 November 1899
- Age at death
- 45
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer and solicitor, was born in Hobart Town on 23 February 1837, the second (surviving?) son of Joseph and Mary Morton Allport . His mother taught him to sketch from infancy and preserved in her Book of Treasures his watercolour flower 'painted from nature when four years and five months old’ along with other drawings dating from 1842 to 1855. Curzon became a competent amateur sketcher and photographer. He drew his home in Melbourne (Aldridge Lodge), views in Tasmania, and views and portraits around Parramatta when visiting his Sydney cousins. Examples of his watercolours and sketches, such as View of Battery Point, Hobart (1855, w/c), are in the Allport Library and Museum. He exhibited in the 1858 Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition and was secretary of its committee of management.
Admitted to the Hobart Town Bar in 1860, Allport practised as a solicitor in Melbourne, then in Hobart in partnership with John Roberts from 1878. He continued to sketch at least until returning to Hobart Town. He was a keen member of the Acclimatization Societies of Victoria and Tasmania in the 1860s and 1870s and was commissioner for fisheries of the former during the 1890s. A keen amateur photographer, in July 1887 he was elected first president of the Tasmanian Photographic, Science and Art Association, an amateur group which seems to have been Tasmania’s first photographers’ organisation. It was apparently defunct by the mid-1890s. Curzon Allport died in Hobart on 16 September 1899.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 February 1837
- Summary
- Sketcher, amateur photographer and solicitor. Son of artist Mary Morton Allport. Allport was the first president of the Tasmanian Photographic, Science and Art Association, elected in July 1887.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 September 1899
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude57.6882638 Longitude-4.1721447 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ross-shire, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, watchmaker and jeweller, was born in Ross-shire, Scotland. He came to Victoria in 1855 and commenced business at Tarraville, Gippsland, as the town’s first watchmaker and jeweller. In 1862 he advertised in the Gippsland Times that he would commence taking photographic likenesses on Monday, 12 May, 'in the premises lately occupied by Mr. Vize, Foster St., Sale’. Business was reported as brisk, despite the room proving 'utterly unsuited to the process’. In May 1863 Ross married Catherine McIntosh at Glenmaggie and the following year they moved to Bairnsdale, where he again became the town’s first watchmaker and jeweller though apparently no longer practising photography.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biograpy.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1834
- Summary
- William Bain Ross was a professional photographer who also worked as a watchmaker and jeweller. He came to Victoria in 1855.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1899
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- He was born in London and had been in the colony 45 years, 38 of which he had spent in Goulburn. On first arriving in New South Wales he was employed in the mint, but left there to go on a goldfield. After an interval of a few years he made his home in Goulburn, where he carried on a fancy goods shop. He combined photographing with his other business, but relinquished it after some years. Mr. Gregory was a prominent member of the Church of England. He occupied a seat in the Synod, and was a member of the committee of the Church Society and of the Cathedral Council. He was chairman of the Southern Building Company and a director of the Gas Company.
Writers:
emelanie
Date written:
2014
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 19 October 1832
- Summary
- Gregory is known for a posthumous photograph that he took of the bushranger Lowry in 1863 that was reproduced in the Illustrated Melbourne Post. He was born in London and lived in Australia for 45 years, 38 of which he spent in Goulburn. On making his home in Goulburn, he first opened a photographic studio which he carried on alongside his fancy goods shop in the 1860s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13 October 1899
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, journalist and politician, was born on 1 July 1830 in Birmingham, England. He came to Melbourne about 1854 and subsequently had a most successful career in South Australia as a journalist and, later, member of the House of Assembly. He was also an amateur oil painter. Three surviving landscapes and one portrait are known (private collection). He died on 14 October 1899.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 July 1830
- Summary
- Edwin Henry Derrington was a painter, journalist and politician. He came to Melbourne around 1854. Derrington was a member of the House of Assembly and as a journalist had a most successful career in South Australia. His artworks are held in private collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 October 1899
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- wood-engraver, painter, art and music teacher and theatrical entrepreneur, son of Abraham Mason and brother of Walter and George Mason , was born in London.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1827
- Summary
- English colonial male wood engraver and painter who taught music and set up Brisbane's first theatre. Apart from being bankrupted twice, he advertised as an art teacher, ran a hotel and illustrated newspapers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1899
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, U.K.
- Biography
- sketcher, engineer and pioneer pastoralist, was born in London on 22 October 1817, the eldest child of Henry Jeffreys, surgeon, and Juliana, née Towers.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 October 1817
- Summary
- Sketcher, engineer and pioneer pastoralist, known for his pencil and watercolour sketches of which most are sepia washes heightened with white, depicting rural landscapes. His drawings reflect his training as a civil engineer in their delicacy and fine sense of scale and perspective.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 July 1899
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude50.8510325 Longitude-1.0165502 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Portsea, Hampshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and clergyman, son of Richard and Elizabeth Medland, was baptised on 6 March 1817 in St John’s, Portsea, Hampshire, and educated locally at Exeter Grammar School.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1817
- Summary
- Painter and clergyman. Sent to Tasmania as a Church of England religious instructor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 February 1899
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- professional photographer, optician and jeweller, came from Dublin to New South Wales apparently as a trained optician. He accompanied George Baron Goodman to Van Diemen’s Land in 1842-44 as photographic assistant. Purchasing a camera and photographic chemicals from Goodman, Flavelle opened his own daguerreotype portrait studio in St John Street, Launceston, after Goodman left the island, but this seems to have ceased operations a few weeks later when he ran out of chemicals and/or plates.
Flavelle returned to Sydney, arriving in the brig William on 17 May 1844. By 1846, in partnership with Samuel Brush, he was an optician at King Street, transferring to George Street about the middle of 1848. The partnership was dissolved in 1850 and Flavelle set up as Flavelle Brothers at George Street, the other half of the partnership being his elder brother Henry, who became the firm’s London supplier. John Flavelle was now primarily a jeweller, but he also worked as a watchmaker and general supplier, importing photographic apparatus, dental equipment and mathematical instruments, as well as with watches, jewellery and silver. Both imported and local stereoscopic views (with viewers) were sold in the shop, but Flavelle is not known to have continued to practise photography himself. Instead, the firm occasionally made its own plate, presentation silver and jewellery: a few locally-made pieces survive.
Flavelle retired from the business in 1891. He died in June 1899 at his home, Wellbank, in the Sydney suburb of Concord. Continued by his nephews Henry and William, the Flavelle jewellery firm survived (with various branches and name variations) until after the first World War.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1816
- Summary
- Although he trained as an optician, John Flavelle apparently had the aptitude to earn his living as a photographer, watchmaker, jeweller and general importer. Flavelle appears to have continued working until well into his seventies in his jewellery business, which survived him in the care of his nephews.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- June 1899
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude52.6071742 Longitude1.7314845 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, U.K.
- Biography
- sketcher, penman and designer, was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. He came to Australia in 1838, possibly to New South Wales though by 1847 he was working as a fisherman in the Melbourne area. Four years later he went to Ballarat as one of its first gold-diggers. As well as mining, Meek ran a (rather unsuccessful) general store and soda-water factory, which he depicted in a drawing, Meek’s Store, Ballarat 1851 (RHSV). Sadleir, who owned this and another sketch in 1908 – others originally in his collection having by then been mislaid – stated that Meek’s building was undoubtedly the first substantial structure erected at Ballarat, even though only a slab hut with a bark roof. His other drawing, also dating from 1851-52, showed the police camp and stables at Ballarat with a policeman standing guard over some prisoners chained to a large gum-tree in the centre of the compound since no lock-up had yet been erected. These two survivors, the latter unlocated, are thought to be the earliest drawings made on the Ballarat goldfields.
When living at 131 Johnston Street, Fitzroy Meek won a second-class certificate at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition for his pen-and-ink Map of Australia . In May the Ladies’ Benevolent Asylum committee had organised an exhibition at which he showed sketches of Melbourne’s major buildings and a Tablet of Victoria , 7 feet x 4 feet 6 inches (213 × 137 cm), containing a large amount of information on the progress of the colony and said to have taken eleven weeks to complete. Meek’s subsequent Chronological Tree of the History of Victoria 1836-1872 (LT) was photolithographed by John Noone in the Victorian Crown Lands Office and printed and published by John Paten. Noone also photolithographed Meek’s Poster Commemorating the Separation of Victoria from New South Wales (LT), printed by Hamel & Co.
Meek visited Sydney in February 1863 and exhibited several works at the Fords’ shop in Hunter Street. They included a lithograph of his Historical and Descriptive Atlas of the British Colonies in Continental and Insular Australia , a general map of Australia and a Shaksperian Memorial . The original pen-and-ink Atlas , which won Meek a gold medal when shown in the 1862 London International Exhibition, consisted of maps of each colony together with information about their 'history, geography, institutions and resources’, and a general map which showed the routes of the explorers and useful information such as steamer routes. The lithographed atlas was 6 feet (182 cm) long, 'one third the size of the original’, while the photolithographed general map was 'a convenient size’. The Shaksperian Memorial contained quotations from the 'immortal bard’, views of his house at Stratford-on-Avon and the names of all his plays; it was described as 'a masterpiece of penmanship, being remarkable as much for the originality of design as for skill and delicacy in execution’. After producing Ballarat Historical Gumtree , Meek was labelled 'the best penman in Australia’. Later Meek settled in New Zealand, where he died.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- Sketcher, penman and designer, Meek produced what are thought to be the earliest drawings made on the Ballarat goldfields. He was also well known for producing maps and information about the 'history, geography, institutions and resources' of each colony.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9 June 1899
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.4149818 Longitude-2.5006001 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Keynsham, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born at Keynsham near Bath, England, on 18 August 1813, younger daughter of William Chauncy and Theresa, née Lamothe. Martha’s mother died in 1818 and her father remarried, taking the family to live in the south of France in 1820. Believing French schools 'injurious to both faith and morals’, Mr Chauncy had his children taught at home. In 1825 the family returned to England. In 1826 Martha, followed by her elder sister Theresa ( Walker ), went to live with their paternal grandfather in Berkshire until his death in 1829. Theresa settled in London in 1832 and was soon joined by Martha. Both were members of Edward Irving’s church and their only recorded art lessons were obtained through it. According to Hylton, the 'good masters’ who taught them art – mentioned by their brother Philip – may have included the miniature painter Pierre Mejanel. In 1835 'Miss M.S. Chauncey [sic], Miniature Painter’ of 24 Seymour Place, London, had a portrait of a lady shown in the Royal Academy’s summer show.
Martha was living at Charmouth, Dorsetshire, on 11 October 1836, when she married Captain Charles Berkeley of the 60th Rifles. A week later, accompanied by Theresa, they left for South Australia on board the John Renwick . They arrived on 14 February 1837. Martha was one of several early settlers who painted views of the province as a conscious historical record of its early years. Unlike most, she also worked professionally, painting portraits and miniatures, which she appears to have sold – especially after the farming venture failed. One of her earliest known Adelaide miniatures is a watercolour portrait of the botanist Charles Algernon Wilson (1838, Art Gallery of South Australia [AGSA]). Other commissions included a portrait of the Governor’s wife (1843). She also had at least two daughters during these years.
The Catalogue of the Exhibition of Pictures: The Works of Colonial Artists (1847) lists 15 works by Mrs Berkeley and there were at least two in the following year’s exhibition (a complete catalogue is not known). Her surviving miniature of Howard Ind (1848, p.c.) was probably another. The majority were portraits, including Lady Agar Ellis and her Child and Duchess of Sutherland and Child (possibly the untitled watercolour reproduced by Shirley Cameron-Wilson, p.c.). There were several landscapes of famous beauty spots in England, Wales and Germany, but only a single subject picture, Lorenzo and Jessica – the Merchant of Venice (unfinished) . Her annotated copy of the 1847 and part-1848 catalogue (SLSA) corrects the attribution to a Miss Potter of a view of Carisbrook Castle on the Isle of Wight, noting that this was her work. In addition, Berkeley noted: 'I exhibited one of Mr Anstey’s house omitted in this catalogue… Also one of Mrs Andrews playing her harp’. The last is now thought to be that in the Art Gallery of South Australia – one of her most elaborate and attractive works. In 1848 Martha and her three daughters visited Theresa in Sydney and a moonlit river scene by 'Berkeley’ was included in the Fords’ 1848-49 Sydney Art Union.
Berkeley continued to paint portraits, mainly watercolour on ivory miniatures. In 1848 she began painting in oils, a technique probably learned in London. Several oil paintings were raffled locally and a landscape (medium unspecified) by 'Mrs Berkeley’ was included in the Fords’ art union at Sydney in 1848 49. The best known of her large watercolours of Adelaide and its environs in North Terrace, Adelaide, looking East South East (1839, AGSA), a charming view of the ambitious infant town painted in a competent English picturesque style, with elegant gentlemen on horseback in the foreground and a characteristic frame of drooping eucalypts. Torrens Bridge (1842, p.c.) and other views also survive (AGSA, p.cs). Berkeley frequently included Aborigines in her paintings, sometimes simply as exotic staffage but occasionally in a more personal way. Her major work is a large watercolour, The First Dinner Given to the Aborigines (AGSA), depicting the three Adelaide tribes being entertained by Governor Gawler on 1 November 1838. The Aborigines sit awaiting the distribution of biscuits, meat, tea and blankets, while their three chiefs, dressed in new jackets provided by the settlers, stand together at the inner edge of the circle surrounding the Governor, the Protector of Aborigines and their wives. Behind the Aborigines is a standing ring of settlers, which includes obvious portraits. Berkeley added a pencil description of the event on the back of the painting in 1847, which confirms her aim of recording an important historical event for posterity. Her meticulous detail contrasts markedly with the undistinguished distant watercolour view of the same event painted by Mary Hindmarsh .
Until Jane Hylton’s 1994 exhibition of works by the two Chauncy sisters (AGSA), Martha Berkeley was best known for these large watercolours of Adelaide and its environs. Thanks to a large donation and sale of works to the AGSA from a Tasmanian descendant in 1994, she is now also appreciated as a gifted portraitist. Oil on metal portraits of the artist, her husband, their three eldest daughters and of Theresa and her first husband, in particular, have survived in excellent condition. A sketchier watercolour depicts the family group and is a rare example of a woman artist depicting father as well as mother – Martha herself – with the children.
This particular father, however, left Adelaide in 1852 to join the Victoria Police force. Martha and their four daughters moved to Launceston (Tas.) to spend three years with Theresa and her husband. Martha joined Charles at Portland in 1855, but he died the following year. Their colonial life had always been financially precarious and Martha was left destitute. In 1856-60 she was working as matron at Melbourne’s National Model and Training School where the headmistress was the novelist and painter, Ellen Davitt .
In the 1860s Martha’s fortunes apparently improved. She became part owner of a country property near Merton, north-east of Melbourne and spent several months there each year painting watercolour views. In 1867-76 she lived in St Kilda Street, Brighton. She revisited England in 1877 and made her last known drawings. Back at Melbourne she lived at Hawthorn, then at a daughter’s home at Burwood Road, Camberwell. She died in Camberwell on 7 July 1899.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 August 1813
- Summary
- England-born resident of Australia's southern states, Berkeley is best known for her large watercolours of Adelaide and as a gifted portraitist. The Art Gallery of South Australia holds a number of her locally produced works.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7 July 1899
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1899-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, architect, civil engineer and army officer, was born in Ireland, eldest son and sixth child of Cornelius Mann and Sarah, née Fyers, was the elder brother of John Frederick Mann . After serving in the Bombay artillery, India, where he rose to the rank of captain, Mann left the service in 1836 and came to Australia. He visited New Zealand in HMS Rattlesnake in 1837. The following year he married Mary Hely and settled in Sydney as an engineer in private practice. On 2 January 1844, the New South Wales Government Gazette published his name among the insolvent. He then found employment with the colonial government as a draughtsman in Captain George Barney 's Department of Royal Engineers where he designed a lightweight mortar used in the New Zealand wars. In 1854 he was appointed captain and commandant of the first Volunteer Artillery Corps raised in the colony.
From 1847, as directing engineer at Cockatoo Island, Mann was responsible for all penal and civil building design work on the island, including the free overseers’ quarters of 1850 and the second storey on the east range of the prisoners’ barracks (for which his plans survive: Dixson Library and Cockatoo Island). His sketchbooks (Mitchell Library) contain rough pencil sketches of the island and details of fittings for its buildings. In 1852 he moved into Greenwich House on the point across from Cockatoo, commuting to the island until he moved into Biloela, the superintendent’s residence on the island, in 1858. In 1859 he became superintendent at Cockatoo. His major achievement was the design and construction of Cockatoo’s Fitzroy Dock (1847-57), the first dry dock 'South of the Line’. He also designed much of the dock’s equipment. After Mann retired in 1870, he moved back to Greenwich House with his family. He and his wife had twelve children.
Mann was an indifferent sketcher yet his drawings are of interest because of their unusual subjects. These range from various engineering details to a group of sketches of Maori chiefs (drawn in 1837 in New Zealand). The latter were apparently sketched in pencil and later inked over by his brother, being inscribed, 'signed J.F.M. from the original by G.K. Mann Esq.’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1809
- Summary
- Irish male colonial engineer and soldier who travelled to India, New Zealand and Australia. In the process, he designed weapons and prisons, sketched Maori chiefs, had twelve children, and was a principle architect and superintendent of the Cockatoo Island colony.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1899
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude-37.8334603 Longitude144.9570188 Start Date1861-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Emerald Hill (South Melbourne), Melbourne, Vic., Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 12 November 1861
- Summary
- Botanical painter working in late 19th century Adelaide and Melbourne
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 24 July 1898
- Age at death
- 37
Details
Latitude51.3866695 Longitude-2.3514719 Start Date1854-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bathwick, Bath, Somerset, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, surveyor, editor and writer, was born in Bathwick, Bath, Somerset, England. He came to Australia in the 1870s and worked in Queensland as a surveyor. He married Marion Elizabeth Dye at Sydney in 1879 (NSW records give place and date as Morpeth, near Maitland, in 1878) and immediately after the wedding they set out for Townsville, North Queensland, where Edward opened an office as a surveyor. By 1882 he was in partnership (as 'Architects and Surveyors’) with the Danish architect Christian Waagepetersen, who apparently undertook most of the architectural work; Bevan referred to himself solely as a surveyor after Waagepetersen left Townsville in 1884. Their office was in the 'Bank Building’ (the legal offices of Roberts, Leu and North in 1987). According to Gibson-Wilde, Bevan was also editor or acting editor for a time (c.1884) of the Townsville newspaper, the Northern Standard .
Bevan painted and sketched in Townsville. He also wrote and illustrated newpaper stories and articles – more than 30 are known. The earliest identified is a short story, Marion’s Love , published in the first Christmas edition of the Townsville Herald in 1881. The 1987 facsimile of the 1887 Xmas edition has Bevan’s short story, His Ward , with two illustrations: Hands up, you eternal scoundrel! (four male bushie card players) and Alice, dear, can you forgive me? Brief biographies of Bevan and the paper’s photographer William Rowe by Dorothy Gibson-Wilde are included in the prelims.
Although Bevan’s settings for his melodramatic illustrated stories and articles range from Paris to the South Seas, many have North Queensland backgrounds. A number are based on fact, e.g. The First Man Speared refers to the adventurer Christy Palmerston, while well-known Townsville figures Robert Philp, John Parkes, Andrew Ball and others can be recognised in The Recidivistes , according to Gibson-Wilde.
Bevan moved to Sydney in 1888 to join the staff of the Illustrated Sydney News as both a writer and an artist. Later he became editor of the paper. He had been exhibiting with the Sydney Royal Art Society from 1883, and he showed work with the Art Society of NSW in 1887. Few of his paintings – chiefly watercolours – have been located. His oil painting of Townsville in 1886, probably exhibited in Brisbane the same year, was purchased by the Townsville merchant and Qld MP William Villiers Brown (now in the John Oxley Library). Commenting on the 1890 Art Society Exhibition, the SMH critic noted: “Mr Edward Bevan has also some good work, including Smoke Oh! a timber-cutter pausing in his work for a quiet pipe” ( Sydney Morning Herald 13 September 1890, 5). In the 1891 National Art Gallery of NSW competition for watercolours illustrating Picturesque NSW: “Mr Bevan sends a fine view of Mt Kosciusko” ( Illustrated Sydney News 5 December 1891, 12). “Mr Edward Bevan’s Mount Kosciusko and the Valley of the Upper Murray (no.6) is not quite convincing with its blue, transparent water, but it is pretty: and he does good work in no.67 The Carryong Valley, Upper Murray , in which the water is well-treated and the grassy foreground excellent” ( Sydney Morning Herald 5 September 1891, p.5).
At the 1892 Art Society of NSW Exhibition: “In the water-colour section two of the best pictures (by Mr Hanson and by Mr Bevan) have been purchased by the trustees of the Art Gallery” ( Sydney Morning Herald , 2 September 1892, p.2).
The other work chosen by the trustees is neither so valuable nor so interesting as that by Mr Hanson, though well painted. A Preliminary Puff (no.202) by Mr Edward Bevan, shows the figure of an aged axeman, who has paused in his work to light his pipe. There is character in the old face, and the foreground of leafy plants and weeds gives technical value to the work. This is Mr Bevan’s best picture. He sends also no.248, Old Ben’s Landing, Scotland Island , a picturesque view in spite of the too abundant expanse of rock in the foreground; and meritorious, though the shadows on the water are too pronounced. That this section is not so strong as the oils is attested by the fact that the artists who exhibit in both are less successful with their water-colours ( Sydney Morning Herald , 3 September 1892, p.6).
“Edward Bevan exhibits many good watercolours showing great improvement and is strongest in his 'Preliminary Puff’” ( Illustrated Sydney News 3 September 1892, 4; see also Illustrated Sydney News , 10 September 1892, p.6 or 7). “The two drawings purchased for the Art Gallery A Preliminary Puff (202) by Mr Edward Bevan; ... are perhaps the best choice that could have been made” ( Bulletin 10 September 1892, 5).
Bevan was one of the judges of the Fine Art Section in the 1892 Bathurst Show. He wrote and illustrated an article, Art at the Antipodes , published in the 1893 annual, The Antipodean (London, 1893, 74-86). In the fourteenth annual exhibition of the Art Society of NSW in 1893: “Edward Bevan contributes several very excellent works of which no.137 Broughton Vale is in our opinion his best, and will compare favorably with anything in the collection” ( Illustrated Sydney News 2 September 1893, p.3).
He was elected a Council member of the Art Society of NSW in 1894.
At the 1895 Art Society of NSW exhibition: “Mr Edward Bevan’s Grey Dawn , in which a stockman watches the kindling fire, deservedly attracts attention” ( Sydney Morning Herald 28 September 1895, p.7). “The various phases of bush life are truthfully illustrated by Mr Edward Bevan, in some half-score of water-colors, all racy of the campfire, the 'billy’, the 'sundowner’ and the 'swag’, and are sure to find a numerous circle of admirers” ( Bulletin 5 October 1895, 20).
Gibson-Wilde says Bevan may have revisted England in the 1890s, although he died at Galston, NSW, on 2 March 1898.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1854
- Summary
- Arriving from England in the 1870s, Edward Bevan moved to Townsville and established himself as a surveyor and later as a newspaper editor. He was a regular exhibitor with the Art Society of New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2 March 1898
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- possibly a sketcher , was born in New South Wales, daughter of Thomas Fisher, a barrister, and his wife Thomasine (1825-1913), the eldest daughter of Sarah and William Charles Wentworth of Vaucluse House. The Fishers lived at Vaucluse from 1866 to 1873, then moved to The Priory, North Sydney. Alice Fisher’s album (Mitchell Library) includes a watercolour portrait of her mother thought to have been done about 1860, although it is not certain that she painted it herself.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1844
- Summary
- Probably a sketcher, possibly a watercolourist as well, Alice Fisher was born into the illustrious Wentworth dynasty. She was the granddaughter of William Charles Wentworth and his wife who lived at Vaucluse House. Alice produced an album which included a watercolour of her mother, although the authorship is not conclusive.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1898
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude54.98 Longitude-1.61 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and wood-engraver, was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, eighth of the twelve children of Moses Aaron Richardson and Ann, née Bouchier. Moses Richardson , a well-known Newcastle antiquary, was a stationer, printer and print-seller who printed and published fine books on local heraldry and antiquities; Moses’s elder brother Thomas Miles Richardson was a well-known Newcastle landscape painter. In 1849, having handed over his printing and publishing business to his eldest son George Bouchier Richardson , Moses Richardson emigrated to Australia for the benefit of his health, arriving at Port Phillip in the Clifton on 13 February 1850 with his wife and nine of their children, including John Thomas.
Details of John Thomas Richardson’s training as a painter and engraver are not known but it is highly probable that he received some tuition from his uncle before migrating, then from his elder brother George, who joined the family in Victoria in August 1854. John Richardson first exhibited in November 1860 with the Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts, showing three watercolours: Approach to Melbourne from East Prahran , You Yangs, Werribee Plains and St Kilda Beach (Twilight) . In noticing these 'three small and unpretending water color drawings of Australian scenery’, the Age commended Richardson for his 'attention to atmospheric effects’ and his representation of 'the peculiar character of our foliage’. In 1861 he showed Durham Castle and Cathedral , Prahran from Orrong and Evening Composition , his given address being that of his parents – High Street, Prahran.
Nothing is known of Richardson’s subsequent activity or employment until December 1870, when at the first exhibition of the Victorian Academy of Arts he showed an oil painting, Marsden Rock and Coast Durham , and two watercolours, Southern Gorge, You Yangs and Dunstan Borough Castle . On 1 November 1871 he was elected to membership of the Victorian Academy of Arts, at which time he was working for the wood-engraver Samuel Calvert . The following March he exhibited a watercolour, Twilight , at the Academy’s second exhibition. Later that year he left Calvert and went into partnership with Edward Lee at 3 Collins Street. In November 1872 his watercolour painting, Rocks near Cape Otway was included in the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition preparatory to the 1873 London International Exhibition. The Age critic called it 'a pleasing picture full of feeling’, despite disagreeing with the way the painter had depicted the spray at the top of the breaking waves.
Richardson appears to have moved to New South Wales in 1874 after receiving a painting commission of £100 from 'a liberal patron of art’. By 1876 he had joined the Illustrated Sydney News as chief engraver. He was a founding member of the Art Society of New South Wales, serving on its council in 1880-1881 and showing three oil paintings at its first exhibition in December 1880 from Underwood Street, Paddington: Bell Rock , Grama Grama Bay, Bondi and Valley of the Weatherboard from the Falls . Bell Rock and Merivi è re, Bondi were also sent to the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition. He continued to exhibit with the Sydney society every year until 1886, when he showed Birdie’s Glen (reproduced in the Illustrated Sydney News ). Then he ceased to be a member.
He moved back to Melbourne in 1888 and lived at various addresses in Richmond up to his death. Although continuing to practise as a wood-engraver he does not seem to have been further involved with any art society. He died at 3 Cross Street, Richmond, on 27 July 1898 and was buried in the St Kilda Cemetery. Richardson had been married twice: in 1871 to Anastasia Agatha O’Neil and, after her death on 9 January 1875, to Mathilda Payne, with whom he had nine children.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1835
- Summary
- John Richardson, painter and engraver, arrived at Port Phillip in the Clifton on 13 February 1850. His father was Moses Richardson, a well-known Newcastle antiquary, stationer, printer and print-seller. Richardson was a founding member of the Art Society of New South Wales, serving on its council in 1880-1881.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 July 1898
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude53.0758196 Longitude8.8071646 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bremen, Germany
- Biography
- painter, scene-painter and decorator, was born in Bremen, Germany, on 6 July 1835. Nothing is known of his parents except that his father was later described as a 'prominent merchant’. At fifteen years of age, Hennings was apprenticed to a decorator in Düsseldorf. For a short time he also attended classes in architectural drawing and perspective at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art but soon abandoned his studies to return to decorative art. As a specialist in painting flower and fruit panels he travelled throughout central Europe, executing some floral garlands for a production at the Vienna State Opera, his first experience as a scene-painter.
Hennings migrated to Victoria in 1855, arriving at Melbourne in July or August. He is said to have been encouraged to do so by his brother, apparently already resident in the colony. Hennings first found work in Melbourne as a draughtsman in an architect’s office but soon joined the Queen’s Theatre to paint the scenery for the Christmas pantomime of 1855-56, thus beginning a long and illustrious career as a scene-painter. During the next few years he was engaged at the Cremorne Gardens, the Theatre Royal, the Olympic, Princess and Haymarket theatres (all in Melbourne) and at the Geelong Theatre. He decorated the interior of the Apollo Music Hall, which opened on 5 July 1862. He also painted the auditorium of the adjacent Haymarket Theatre opened on 15 September. Its ceiling consisted of four panels representing the four seasons. In 1866 he was scene-painter for the Lyster Opera Company’s season in Sydney at the Prince of Wales Theatre where he was said to have produced 'scenery unequalled by any we have seen in Australia’.
In September 1859 Hennings joined other members of the German community at Hoeckin’s Assembly Rooms in Melbourne to celebrate the anniversary of Humboldt’s birth; Humboldt’s portrait 'cleverly painted in transparency by Mr. Hennings’ hung at one end of the hall. For the 1861 Christmas pantomime Valentine and Orson at the Melbourne Theatre Royal his scenery culminated in a spectacular closing scene 'that presented a news item in an emblematic and heroic way’ (Colligan, 103). News of the tragic end of the Burke and Wills expedition having just reached Melbourne, it had an equestrian statue of Burke set amidst a ferm-tree grove as its centrepiece, with ballet girls at its base carrying shields inscribed with the names of Wills, King and Gray. In front of them was a figure representing Victoria and a ballet girl playing Fame ascending to crown 'the brave leader of the Exploration Expedition, amidst the plaudits of the largest assemblage we have seen inside the walls of the Royal for many months’. An engraving of the scene was published in the Illustrated Australian Mail on 18 January 1862.
He showed three paintings at the 1864 Annual Exhibition of Fine Arts in Melbourne: Fruit Piece (recalling his earlier decorative work), View in North Germany and Yarra Falls . View on the Yarra, near Melbourne , an oil painting, was shown at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. In 1870 he became a foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts.
Hennings was principally known for his association with the Melbourne Theatre Royal where he became co-lessee in 1867. The management’s first profitable production was The Flying Scud; or, a Four-Legged Fortune, which opened on 16 March 1867; its success owed much to Hennings’s 'wonderful scene’ of Epsom Downs on Derby Day . That year he redecorated the auditorium and instituted a picture gallery within the theatre lobby. He worked as scene-painter at the Theatre Royal until it burned down in March 1872 then at the rebuilt Royal from its opening on 6 November 1872. He painted the domed ceiling of the new theatre with views of London from Blackfriars Bridge and of Melbourne from St Kilda Road and was probably also responsible for the portraits of the actors Gustavus Vaughan Brooke and Walter Montgomery on either side of the stage and the copy of Guido Reni’s Aurora above the stalls.
Hennings became co-lessee of Sydney’s Royal Victoria Theatre in 1880, but it burnt down in July. He was therefore back in Melbourne to paint the panorama ('which begins with the Crystal Palace in Hyde-park, and ends with the illumination of the fleet in Hobson’s Bay on the night of October 1 to celebrate the opening of the Melbourne International Exhibition’) and the transformation scene (which showed 'The Apotheosis of Victoria’s Progress in Four Decades, from 1841 to 1881, from Chaos to Splendour’) for the production of Sinbad the Sailor at the Theatre Royal in December 1880. Indeed, for at least twenty years Hennings’s backdrops, panoramas and transformation scenes for this theatre were widely admired and critically acclaimed. It became a Melbourne tradition for the audience to call for Hennings’s appearance on stage during the Christmas pantomime.
Marcus Clarke used Hennings as his model for 'Vandyke Brown’, the scene-painter, in his spoof article on pantomime production which appeared in the Weekly Times on 31 January 1874:
Now Mr. Vandyke Brown has his grievance. This gentleman, who has to paint some nineteen scenes and contrive the Transformation in addition to a Panorama consisting of the Celebrated Cities of the World ending with Fawkner’s Town and the Local Pump, is apt to get cynical from tobacco and white lead. “I don’t see how to set the Thames on Fire in this last effect”, he says, “without more rosin. And, moreover, seven scenes in the Panorama’s plenty”. “Oh, let’s have a portrait of Bismark”, says Burbo. “Ay! And a couple of views of Metz during the siege, to melt into a pastoral picture of Geelong”, suggests Buzzclack, who is a great man for “ideas”.
From 1882 Hennings worked for the triumvirate of J.C. Williamson, Arthur Garner and George Musgrove until forced into retirement through blindness in 1887. Shortly after this he injured his leg in a fall and was reportedly living in straitened circumstances. In January 1889 a testimonial was proposed, and at a meeting on 19 February a benefit performance was planned for 23 March. Offers of support from former colleagues were so numerous that two benefit performances were in fact given on that day: one at the Princess Theatre, the other at the Theatre Royal. Hennings did not attend either performance on medical advice.
By June he was reported to be recovering; indeed, he was 'so far improved as to have got once more into harness, having just completed an Italian Lake scene, with wings etc. for the Prahran Town Hall’. In November he returned to the legitimate theatre, painting the scenery for Antony and Cleopatra at the Prince of Wales Opera House. Once more he experienced 'continual applause and frequent calls for the artist. The first scene, revealing Cleopatra’s palace, created an uproar of enthusiasm, and many were moved even to tears as Mr. Hennings appeared for a brief moment in acknowledgment of the compliment, for it was the first time since his illness that he had personally responded to popular applause’. He continued in his profession of scene-painter, one noted production from this period being a cyclorama of early Melbourne (La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria) based on an earlier panorama by the architect Samuel Jackson , painted between March and August 1892 for display in the Melbourne Exhibition Building.
Hennings died of pneumonia at Melbourne on 3 October 1898, survived by his wife Ellen, née Targett, whom he had married in Melbourne in the late 1850s, and three adult children. He did not name his wife as beneficiary in his will, however; instead, he left £100 to 'Lizzie Collins, known as Mrs Gardiner’ and named as executor his 'reputed daughter, Florence Targett, known as Kitty Hennings’.
Hennings’s contribution to Australian scene-painting, indeed to theatre itself, was considerable. As early as 1858 J.E. Neild , who believed 'that the whole effect of a play may be made or marred by its pictorial embellishments’, had singled out Hennings’s work for its 'love of art which I rejoice to see in connexion with dramatic production’. Although retaining this early sophistication throughout his career, Hennings increasingly appealed to popular taste and national self-consciousness by incorporating topical events and familiar local scenes into his work.
He seems to have had a namesake, contemporary and compatriot in the artist Johann Friedrich Hennings, given by Thieme-Becker as three years younger and resident in Munich from 1861. Their early careers correspond, however, and the two Hennings were probably one and the same. Hennings might well have sent paintings home from Melbourne to a family connection in Munich for exhibition at the Dresden, Munich and Berlin academies (where Johann Friedrich’s works were exhibited between 1871 and 1898); thus Thieme-Becker, unaware of a long and illustrious antipodean career, assumes continuing German residence.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 July 1835
- Summary
- Painter, scene-painter and decorator, was born in Germany and arrived in Melbourne in 1855 where he painted theatre scenes for about four decades. Hennings's contribution to Australian scene-painting was considerable.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3 October 1898
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude50.725556 Longitude-3.526944 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Exeter, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and surveyor, appears to have come to Sydney from Exeter, Devon, in the late 1840s. He took drawing lessons from Conrad Martens at Sydney in 1848. His earliest known works are two crude initialled undated sketches (Mitchell Library [ML]), a pen-and-ink Stroud, Port Stephens and a pen, ink and watercolour Tamworth, Peel’s River both inscribed 'J.C. Willis in the late forties’. In October and again in November 1853 Willis applied for employment as a draughtsman in the Surveyor-General’s Office. The latter must have been successful for he subsequently worked as a government surveyor.
On 20 January 1855, Willis inscribed a watercolour View of Sydney Harbour from the North Shore (painted in 1854) for his father, B.W. Willis. Another version is signed 'C. Martens’ in red paint, but the Mitchell Library considers it unlikely to be this artist’s work.. Similar watercolour views of 1855-56, variously signed 'J. Willis’ and 'J.A.C.W.’, include the charming St Mary the Virgin, Allyn River (1856, watercolour, ML), which depicts the little stone church on the Paterson River designed by Bishop W.G. Broughton (with some help from an English pattern-book) and an accompanying pencil view of its Gothic Revival interior.
When elected an officer of the NSW Academy of Art in May 1871, Willis’s 'admirable pictorial contributions to the late work published on the colony’ was praised by the members. He sent five watercolours to the academy’s first exhibition in 1872: The Gap at the Kurrajong ('perhaps the best’), View of Bondi , View in North Devon , The Lady Chapel at Exeter Cathedral and Crossing the Ford . Similar watercolour views were entered in subsequent exhibitions; in 1875 he was awarded a certificate of merit for Catumble Mountains, near Wellington, New South Wales . As a member of the Academy’s sketching and photography camps at Grose River, Willis’s 'really faithful delineation of the Govett’s Leap gorge as seen from above’ was praised by the chief instigator Eccleston du Faur at the Academy’s conversazione on 10 November 1875, and his panoramic drawing in which 'every prominent point and height and depth was determined by the theodolite’ was judged the major work produced on the first camp ( W.C. Piguenit was the subsequent star). It was sent to the following year’s exhibition together with a watercolour of the Grose Valley Willis had presumably worked up from it. The watercolour was awarded a certificate of merit, while the drawing was lithographed by S.T. Leigh for distribution to all subscribers to the Academy’s 1876 art union. Over 200 names had been collected by May and because of the demand it was sent out rather belatedly.
G.H. Reid’s An Essay on New South Wales, the Mother Colony of the Australias (Sydney: Government Printer, 1876) included a very long folding panoramic bird’s-eye view of 'The Harbour of Port Jackson & City of Sydney… drawn from nature by James A.C. Willis’ (180 × 1585mm, with the water in lithographed colour). Michaael Treloar Antiquarian Booksellers, Adelaide had it for sale at $450 in their Recent Acquisitions List 73 (2001).
Primarily a surveyor, Willis always retained his amateur status as a painter and confined himself to pencil and watercolour drawings. The Gap, Wheeny Creek, Kurrajong , shown in the New South Wales Court at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition, was judged 'an ambitious effort for an amateur’ by the Sydney Mail critic, though not an entirely successful one. The Dixson Library holds an album of thirty-one of Willis’s watercolour views of rural New South Wales (including Tumut, Albury and Mudgee) dated 1881-86.
Willis lived at Atherfield, Darling Point Road, Woollahra. His last known work, signed and dated 1896, is a view from his home (ML).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1834
- Summary
- Colonial male surveyor whose amateur watercolour drawings of landscapes received certificates of merit and were published as lithographs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 September 1898
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude53.28236125 Longitude-3.828620733 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wales, Great Britain
- Biography
- painter, engineer and pastoralist, son of Commander W.L. Rees, was born in Wales. He was educated at the Royal Naval School then turned to engineering. Rees came to Queensland in 1852 and worked as a station manager. In 1858 he returned to Britain and married, took his bride to New Zealand and settled on the land until 1883 when he became a stock inspector. He died at Wellington in 1898. Paintings made during his New Zealand years are in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. It is possible that Rees did similar work during his six years in Queensland but no examples have been identified.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1827
- Summary
- William Gilbert Rees, a Welsh painter, engineer and pastoralist, travelled to Queensland in 1852. In 1858 he returned to Britain, married and settled in New Zealand. Paintings created during the New Zealand period are in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1898
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- professional photographer, of no known connection to painter Nicholas Chevalier. He is likely to be the Thomas Chevalier who arrived in 1855 listing profession as grocer possibly as he was leaving a wife in England. Where Thomas learned photography is unknown but he was prominent among Sandhurst (Bendigo) photographers before 1870. He had a studio called Chevalier’s Photographic Portrait Gallery in Pall Mall from 1865 to 1868, at one time advertising: 'Mr. Chevalier in returning thanks for past patronage, begs to inform his customers and the public in general, that he has the best lighted rooms in the colony. The sky and side lights afford a soft and beautiful light, which enables the sitter to obtain a life-like portrait’. He offered a variety of portrait styles, regardless of weather, and sold imported frames and cases. An advertisement of 1865 offering copies of cartes-de-visite taken by him over the preceding four years suggests that he had been working in the area since about 1861.
Although primarily a studio photographer, Chevalier also produced photographs of early business premises and public buildings in and around Sandhurst. For a time he had a branch establishment at nearby Eaglehawk and was briefly a hotel-keeper there. Little is known of his movements after setting up a studio in Smith Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne, between 1877 and 1882. He appears to have become a builder and left a reasonable estate.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Cusack, Frank
newtog
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1826
- Summary
- Professional photographer in Bendigo and Melbourne, Victoria. He was primarily a studio photographer but he also produced photographs of early business premises and public buildings in and around Sandhurst (Bendigo, Vic.).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 March 1898
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and entrepreneur, was born in London, a son of the metalworker Thomas Chuck and Mary, née Campbell. He was in Melbourne by 1861, the year Thomas Chuck of Octavia Street, St Kilda, exhibited a ’3 ft 6½ in. [108 cm] Iron Continental Mattress and Upper Horse Hair Mattress’ he had designed and manufactured at the Victorian Exhibition. Thomas senior and generations of Chuck descendants continued in the metalwork business, but Thomas junior embarked on a more flamboyant career.
The following year he was both producer and exhibitor of a Grand Moving Diorama of the Victorian Exploring Expedition . Presenting the events of the Burke and Wills expedition in popular form, the entertainment was first shown in an abbreviated version in January 1862 at Kreitmeyer’s Museum of Illustration, 124-126 Bourke Street East, Melbourne, as Return of Burke and Party to Cooper’s Creek , probably one static scene. By April it had assumed its 'grand moving diorama’ format (actually a panorama wound around vertical rollers). Painted by 'Messrs Clark, Pitt and assistants’ ( William Pitt and Thomas Clark ), the scenes were said to have been taken from 'Authentic Sketches and Personal Descriptions by Members of Howitt’s Relief Party’, including drawings by Howitt himself and his surveyor, Welch . There were approximately sixteen scenes, some being added (and perhaps subtracted) during the life of the panorama. They included Arrival at Cooper’s Creek , Death of Burke and Discovery of King with the Natives , and the concluding scene was a 'Magnificent Tableau … showing the monument which it is proposed to erect to the memory of the explorers, and to place in front of the Parliament buildings, Melbourne. This is a very enchanting representation, and is an appropriate wind up to the series. Burke, Wills, Gray and King are here shown as receiving wreaths from the hands of an angelic figure which, from a slightly exalted position, thus rewards these brave men with its benignant approbation.’
Chuck toured the panorama to Ballarat in June 1862, to Sydney in October (held at the School of Arts) and to Hobart Town in February 1863 (the Theatre Royal). By 1866 he had established a photographic business called The London Portrait Gallery at Burke Square, Daylesford, and was undertaking a professional tour through the Western District at the behest of the commissioners for the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. He took promotional photographic views of the Hampden and Mortlake shire until October then returned to Daylesford. These official views were exhibited by the commissioners at the Intercolonial Exhibition, while Chuck personally showed other photographs of Daylesford and scenes of clouds after a heavy storm, the latter being described as depicting 'the wild and disturbed character of the heavens after an atmospheric disturbance’.
Reviewing the photographic exhibits, the pseudonymous 'Sol’ noted that Mr Chuck of Daylesford ('a photographer little previously heard of’) had provided 'some very creditable specimens’ overall and his excellent views of bush and rock scenery in the Fine Art Gallery were outstanding: 'we had seen no pictures which could have been produced from finer negatives, or ones containing so many of the qualifications necessary to the production of perfect prints … It speaks well for this comparatively young artist’s energy and perseverance, that he should so soon have taken up so creditable a position among older professionals’.
By 1868 Chuck was back at his old St Kilda (Melbourne) address working as an 'artist and photographer’. The following year he opened a separate studio at 4 Collins Street East and sent portraits of the Philharmonic Society to the Melbourne Public Library Exhibition. In 1870 he took rooms in the newly built Royal Arcade, Bourke Street, where he displayed 'some charming coloured views of scenes in the Western District and on the Murray River’. He photographed the great organ of the Melbourne Town Hall during its construction in 1871. Always with a keen nose for publicity, Chuck sent a print of this to the Ballarat Star , which duly reported it.
Chuck produced his most famous image in 1872 – a huge mosaic of 700 photographic portraits, The Explorers and Early Colonists of Victoria , accompanied by a published key. This had taken three years to execute and assemble. It included the explorers Hume, Hovell, Sturt and Mitchell as well as all the squatters and gentlemen of Melbourne. He sold individual portraits from it to the sitters and to the general public, as well as smaller photographs of the composite image produced from a 15 × 12 inch (38.1 × 30.4 cm) glass-plate negative, initiatives which proved popular and financially rewarding. Like many other photographers, he later made further mosaics to cater to this market. At the end of 1872 Chuck sent enlarged photographs of the chief justice ('finished in oils’), Sir Redmond Barry, Judge Williams ('finished in water-colours’) and the dean of Melbourne ('finished in mezzo-tint’) to the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition in preparation for the 1874 London International Exhibition, as well as cases of small plain and coloured portrait photographs. When sent on to London, his photographs were awarded a gold medal.
'An enlarged photograph of the moon’s face’ was also produced in 1872, Chuck having been entrusted with the negative by the government astronomer, Ellery , who had taken it at the Melbourne Observatory. Again a print went to the newspapers. During this active year the trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria granted him sole right to photograph their collections, despite representations from Charles Nettleton who had previously held the contract. Eighteen photographs of paintings in the gallery’s collection, with descriptive commentaries by Marcus Clarke, were issued in parts from October 1873 to March 1875, then collected by the publisher, Bailliere of Melbourne, as Photographs of the Pictures in the National Gallery of Melbourne Photographed by T.F. Chuck. Under the Direction of Eugene Von Guerard [q.v.], Master of the School of Painting. Edited by Marcus Clarke, Secretary to the Trustees of the Public Library and Museums .
In 1876 Chuck sold his London Portrait Gallery business to Nicholas Caire and moved to Ballarat. Yet in June 1882, when opening a studio in the Ballarat Chamber of Commerce building, he was still advertising himself as of the Royal Arcade, Melbourne. By then he also claimed to be the acknowledged inventor of the 'lambertype’ and 'chromatype’ processes for enlarging photographs. He had sold three such chromatypes, overpainted in watercolours by J.A. Turner and Mr Ford (either Thomas or the later painter William Ford), to the National Gallery of Victoria in 1875; the subjects were George Milner Stephen , General Robe, the Governor of South Australia, and Sir R.D. Hanson, South Australia’s chief administrator.
Chuck’s Ballarat Gallery of Art advertised a 'large assortment of paintings and portraits’ (possibly overpainted photographic enlargements) as well as more conventional photographs, including a number executed in carbon (printer’s ink and gelatin). A selection of his 'Enlarged Carbon Photographs of Australian Scenery’ was shown at the London Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 1886. Other 'works of art’ on display in his Sturt Street shop included large, handsomely framed pictures of the late Judge Barry in his Melbourne University Chancellor’s robes, the late Judge Pohlman and the late R.D. Ireland, as well as 'excellent portraits’ of Sir Francis Murphy, Mr Goldsborough and other well-known colonists. His original Picture of the Explorers and Colonists of Victoria was, of course, also there. It is now in the La Trobe Library, along with many other of his portrait photographs. After his death his son, Thomas Henry Chuck, continued the business.
That so much of Chuck’s photography was of men who had 'made good’ in the colony may not have been solely due to his business acumen. Chuck displayed his moral values in the reply he published in 1877 to Anthony Trollope’s comments on the vulgarity of Australians (especially Victorians). Under the title One Story is Good Till Another is Told , he discerned ennobling virtues in colonisation and argued that the pioneer squatters of Victoria were more worthy of being regarded as gentlemen – even moral aristocrats – than members of the squirearchy born 'with a silver spoon in their mouths’ who stayed at home indulging in their assumed hereditary right to 'bad manners and morals’. A personal tour among several stations had proved to him that five out of every six households assembled their children and domestics daily for family worship. 'I know’, he concluded, 'what constitutes a gentleman, it is one who regardless of extraction, means and occupation is above the sordid influences of the vulgar’.
Writers:
Fox, PaulKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1826
- Summary
- Professional photographer and entrepreneur born in London. Resident of Melbourne, Ballarat and Daylesford he documented the explorers and early colonists of Victoria. Much of Chuck's photography was of men who had 'made good' in the colony.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1898
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude51.3813864 Longitude-2.3596963 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bath, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and printer, was born in Bath, England, son of Robert Ferres, a printer, and Esther, née Chancellor.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1818
- Summary
- A skilled sketcher and printer Ferres was appointed government printer of Victoria in 1851 and received a decoration from the French government for his printing work.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21 August 1898
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude51.1423906 Longitude-0.477489811 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Merton, Surrey, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Merton, Surrey. Always known as Ellen, she came to New South Wales with her parents, Captain William Ogilvie and Mary, née White, her aunt and her three brothers, on board the convict transport Granada which arrived at Sydney on 23 January 1825. According to her daughter Mary 's reminiscences, the family stayed at Government House, Parramatta, while Will Ogilvie went looking for suitable land in the Hunter River district, ultimately taking up 10,000 acres near Muswellbrook which he called 'Merton’ after the family home. There Ellen Ogilvie married Wellington Cochrane Bundock in 1841.
In 1845, after the birth of their second child, Ellen Bundock and the children left Merton for Wyangarie on the Richmond River, an extremely isolated property where Wellington and his brother had been living for over two years clearing the land, stocking the property and building a primitive homestead for the family. Their removal, however, was interrupted en route; at Grafton they discovered that the homestead had been burnt down and Aborigines were in possession of the property. Ellen and the children moved in with her brother, Edward Ogilvie, at Yulgilbar on the Clarence River for over a year until the house was rebuilt.
According to Mary, once established at Wyangarie her mother never saw a woman friend 'except on the very rare occasions when she went to see Mrs Wilson at Lismore’. For 18 years she is said never to have travelled farther from home than 'her brother’s place on the Clarence’, which she visited frequently. An oil view of the original mud-walled and thatched-roofed Yulgilbar homestead, its gardens, outbuildings and local inhabitants (both black and white) painted on the cover of a papiêr-maché writing case (ML) was made by Mrs Bundock as a present for her sister-in-law Theodosia Isabella, née de Burgh, who came to Yulgilbar with Edward in 1859 after their marriage in Dublin the previous year.
The Bundocks had six more children at Wyangarie. Ellen taught all six boys and two girls until they were old enough to go to boarding school, just as she and her brothers had been taught by her mother. Her husband held Latin classes for the boys and later on Mary, as the elder daughter, assisted in the teaching.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1817
- Summary
- A painter who worked on an eclectic range of canvases including the cover of a papiêr-maché writing case. Bundock was the wife of sketcher William Bundock and the mother to eight children, including the painter Mary Bundock.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1898
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude50.7241405 Longitude-3.660778816 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and settler, left Devon in December 1836, aged twenty-one, accompanying his elder brother, A.F. Bundock, to Sydney. They sailed on board the Henry Tanner , which arrived in June 1837. A single page from Bundock’s shipboard sketchbook survives in the Mitchell Library (SSV* SHIP/H Tan/1). Initialled 'W.C.B.’, the ink drawing depicts the captain and his dog sitting in the cuddy of the Henry Tanner . Bundock’s pencil annotation verso includes: '...The open door on the right is my Cabin, with drawers and looking glass. next to it Mr G’s children’s and next having windows looking forward, Mr G’s… The frame work on the table is to prevent the plates from sliding’. The sketch apparently accompanied a shipboard journal (now lost), part of which is quoted in his elder daughter Mary 's reminiscences.
From Sydney the brothers contacted Captain William Ogilvie, to whom they carried a letter of introduction. In 1841 Wellington married Ogilvie’s daughter Mary Ellen (known as Ellen ). Having spent some time working on stations in the Hunter Valley, the brothers took sheep and assigned servants up north through New England and the Clarence River districts in 1843 and settled on the Wyangarie Plain. They spent two years establishing the property and building a house for W.C.'s family, then another year rebuilding the house after it had been burnt down by Aborigines in 1845. Then Wellington’s family joined them. He and Ellen had eight children, six sons and two daughters. In the evenings after working on the property, he taught all the boys Latin before they went to boarding school.
Wyangarie became Wellington’s main station, although he later acquired a 19,200-acre run on the Richmond River, Dyraaba, which he visited regularly. He also made regular business trips to Ipswich and Sydney. No sketches are known after his arrival in Australia.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- Travelled extensively throughout New South Wales including the Hunter, Richmond River and Sydney. No sketches are known after his arrival in Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1898
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude38.7077507 Longitude-9.1365919 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1898-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lisbon, Portugal
- Biography
- sketcher, explorer and governor, was born on 14 April 1812 in Lisbon, Portugal, only son of Lieutenant-Colonel George Grey (who died a week before his son’s birth) and Elizabeth Anne, née Vignoles. His mother married Rev. Sir John Thomas in 1817. Grey chose to follow in his father’s footsteps, entering Sandhurst in 1826 and joining the 83rd Regiment as an ensign in 1830. While with his regiment in Ireland he was made aware of the plight of the starving Irish peasants and decided that large-scale resettlement was the only solution. To this end he wrote to the Colonial Office in 1836 offering to lead an expedition in the north of Western Australia; the offer was accepted.
Grey landed at Hanover Bay in December 1837 and began his inland exploration on 29 January 1838. He was speared by an Aborigine early in February, leaving him ill and unable to travel for two weeks. A year later he landed at Shark Bay intending to explore northward to North-West Cape. This expedition was even more disastrous than the first. The party had landed on an island without water and one boat and most of the provisions were lost in reaching the mainland. The two remaining boats were wrecked soon afterwards, so Grey and his men were forced to travel overland, without provisions, 300 miles (480 kilometres) to Perth. On neither of his expeditions had Grey found the bush pastures of a New Ireland, and although he claimed to have discovered 'superior land’ 300 miles (480 kilometres) north of Perth no one else could. He returned to England in 1840 and published his Journal of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia during the years 1837, 38 and 39 (2 vols London, 1841), partly illustrated by lithographs from his own sketches (South African Library, Cape Town). Attack of Natives near Hanover Bay records the skirmish of February 1838 when he was wounded.
Grey returned to the antipodes in 1841 as Governor of South Australia, leaving four years later to be Governor of New Zealand. Drawings made on expeditions during his South Australian years were apparently all by George French Angas . Grey subsequently spent some time in South Africa then returned to New Zealand in 1870, remaining for twenty-four years. He retired to England in 1894 and died in London on 19 September 1898, survived by Eliza Lucy, née Spencer, whom he had married at King George Sound (Albany, WA) on 2 November 1839. Their only son had died in Adelaide (SA) in June 1841. Knighted in 1848, Sir George Grey was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, London.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 April 1812
- Summary
- Grey led disastrously unsuccessful expeditions in Western Australia but later served as governor of South Australia and New Zealand. His published journal (1841) was illustrated by lithographs of his sketches.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19 September 1898
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1897-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator, painter and engraver, was born in England, son of the engraver Henry Cousins and nephew of the more eminent engraver Samuel Cousins. According to Platts, Thomas Cousins came second to Edwin Landseer in the examination for a Royal Academy scholarship, but for health reasons migrated to New Zealand in 1863-64 instead. An English watercolour of a cottage and storm by 'T.S. Cousins’ from the collection of Mrs John Bonython, Menindie, Adelaide, was auctioned at Sotheby’s Melbourne on 16 May 2000 (lot 323, not ill.).
After exhibiting at Dunedin in 1865, Cousins left New Zealand for Victoria. At Melbourne in 1867 he exhibited some watercolours at J.W. Hines’s shop in Collins Street, and he found work as an illustrator and cartoonist. In 1869-70 he was simultaneously chief cartoonist on Henry Kendall’s Touchstone and Marcus Clarke’s Humbug , both satirical magazines but of opposing political views. Patrons of the Turf , published in Humbug 1869 (ill. Caban 1983, p.12, King p.61) shows 3 rough-looking fellows at the races. Other Humbug cartoons (in Joan Kerr’s Archive, NLA) include Fashion and Famine 27 October 1869, 9, contrasting the wealthy going to the Mayor’s Ball and the destitute outside the Immigrants’ Home (ill. King p.47); ' The Political Tommy Didd 22 September 1869, 9; The Race for the Cup; The South Sea Sisters 3 November 1869; Which is it to be? 6 October 1869, 89; What Shall we do with our girl? / John Bull: “Don’t you think that it’s about time Victoria left school?”/ Mrs Britannia (with asperity) “Girls are inclined to be flighty, John; she’d better stop a little longer” 17 November 1869, 9-10.
The Colonial Monthly , when edited by Clarke, called Cousins 'a young artist of undoubted merit and ability’ and stated that his Bushman’s Dream surpassed all local illustrations in beauty. Later it was reproduced in the Illustrated Sydney News . His New Zealand landscapes in the 1869 Ballarat Fine Arts Exhibition were considered 'some of the best colonial paintings’ and labelled 'exquisite transcripts’ of nature by the Argus reviewer (probably James Smith). His watercolour, Flax Swamp, New Zealand , was shown at the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition by J.W. Hines, John Twycross lent Arthur’s Pass, Canterbury N.Z. and R.A. Armstrong sent two engravings (by 'Cousin’). At about this time Cousins was illustrating Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life on its initial appearance as a serial in the Australian Journal ; Platts states that Clarke was often overdue with his writing and Cousins would be wakened in the middle of the night to do the required drawings.
Cousins showed work in the inaugural exhibition of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870 and served on its first council. The Coming Footstep was shown in the 1872 exhibition of paintings at Johnstone and O’Shannessy 's art gallery. By then Cousins had returned to NZ, where he continued drawing cartoons as well as painting. Giant of the Period/ The Workingman – an object of astonishment for the world and a subject of wonder for politicians shows four politicians climbing a ladder to woo the vote of a giant labourer sitting on a wool bale with a couple of Maori in the background (one saying, 'Oh yes! They always fatten a man up before killing him, Karpi’), signed with his 'TSC’ cipher and dated June 1872 (ill. Grant p.35).
In 1874 the Illustrated Sydney News reported that Cousins’s depictions of New Zealand scenery and natives 'have won for him a world-wide reputation’. Nevertheless, after returning to Christchurch he worked primarily as a portrait painter. A fellow-artist, Alfred Henry O’Keefe, described him as a 'big burly man in build, like a policeman, slow in movement but when painting he could get a move on.’ Although said to have inherited £20,000 from an uncle later in life he chose to remain in the Antipodes, dying at Dunedin in 1897. Occasionally he sent New Zealand views back to be shown in Melbourne and Victorian collectors continued to lend their Cousins’ treasures to local exhibitions.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1840
- Summary
- Colonial era cartoonist, illustrator, painter and engraver.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1897
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude51.4538022 Longitude-2.5972985 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1897-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bristol, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and settler, came to Van Diemen’s Land from Bristol, England, with his family. An 1875 watercolour of the Derwent River, Tasmania signed 'Davis’ was in Christie’s painting sale of 27 August 1997 (lot 220). Affixed verso was a 1977 letter from Sarah Lawrence giving brief biographical details of the artist and claiming that a few of his early works, noted for their attention to detail, had been purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1969 for an undisclosed amount.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1840
- Summary
- A painter and settler, he came to Van Diemen's Land in the late 1800's.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1897
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude51.4683558 Longitude-0.3263111 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1897-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Isleworth, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and lithographer, was born on 27 September 1831, daughter of George and Elizabeth Warren of Holly Lodge, Isleworth, England. She trained with the Newcastle-on-Tyne watercolourist Thomas Miles Richardson, then with James Duffield Harding (some studies are in one of her sketchbooks). Later she studied in Paris and 'at the famous artists’ colony of Barbizon’. Some paintings done at the last accompanied her to Australia; in 1881 she showed At Fontainebleau ('a harmonious study of rocks and vegetation – an infinitesimal section of the lovely domain which artists so revel in’) with the Art Society of NSW. One of her sketchbooks (D-M 2001) includes views at Fontainebleau. She was a successful painter and art teacher in England until 1866 when, aged 35, she married architect George Parsons, a widower with two sons. They had a daughter and four more sons.
In 1870 the family migrated to Victoria. At first they lived in Carlton, then settled in St Kilda. Despite being listed as 'amateur’, Mrs George Parsons (the name under which she generally exhibited, though she signed her work 'E.P.’) gained immediate attention for her work. James Smith of the Argus generously noted that her watercolour views of English scenery were 'very solid and free for a lady’s hand’. In December 1870 she had five watercolours of Devonshire scenery ('of conspicuous merit’) in the first exhibition of the Victorian Academy of Arts (VAA). A watercolour of the University of Melbourne is dated 1871. She exhibited oil and watercolour landscapes regularly with the VAA and in 1875 was elected to the Council – its first woman member. She also exhibited with the NSW Academy of Art. Her Lilydale views, shown in the 1877 exhibition, were ranked among the best watercolours by the Sydney Mail art critic who preferred them to her oils – apart from Girl at the Well . Later that year James Smith noted in the Argus (17 March 1877, p.8) the 'bright, transparent and truly Australian’ atmosphere of her View from Berwick Hill .
Although her oils were less experimental than her watercolours (LT), Parsons’s paintings were usually called 'broad’ in treatment and generally praised, although few critics appreciated her novel interest in capturing an impressionistic light that bleached and simplified motifs. In 1875 a reviewer commended her 'boldness and dash of treatment’ simply because it was such a relief 'after the insignificant stippeling [sic] employed by the majority of artists’. In 1881 another stated that her watercolour Sketch at Lorne (shown in the Fine Arts Court at the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition with eight other works) was no more than 'a rough blot’, yet 'a blot which is very telling when it is looked at from a little distance’. The previous year both her oils and watercolours had been admired for their 'natural breezy freshness, telling of a close study of atmospheric effect’.
Parsons was committed to working directly from the subject. In a paper read before the Australian Church Ladies’ Reading Club, she stated: 'The rules of art are few and simple, but Nature is subtle and so infinitely various, and her effects so beyond the power of memory, that the artist should have constant recourse to the ever-changing beauties.’ Her work demanded attention because it so vividly displayed her thorough English and French (especially French) training. Nevertheless, a review in the Sydney Mail (26 July 1884) typifies the most common form of lukewarm praise: 'In landscapes the lady painters are not on a level with some of the male members; but the works of Mrs George Parsons are quite equal to the average.’ She asked appropriately low ladies’ work prices. In 1876 her oils cost five or ten guineas and her watercolours two or three guineas.
Well before the area became inextricably identified with the 'Heidelberg School’, she showed two highly praised Views at Heidelberg in the first exhibition of the Sydney Art Society (December 1880). In 1884-85 she showed landscapes near Lake Wakatipu in Sydney after a trip to New Zealand. (NZ watercolours, photographs and other memorabilia were in one of her Deutscher-Menzies albums.) Along with Tom Roberts , Arthur Streeton et al. she was a founding member of the highly professional Australian Artists’ Association in Melbourne, where she had solo shows in 1885 and 1896 (a catalogue of the latter was in the D-M sale, 2001). Along with artists of a younger generation Parsons was a member of the Buonarotti Club, a source of semi-bohemian culture in Melbourne in the late 1880s (see Bonyhady The Colonial Earth and McQueen Tom Roberts ). After its demise she founded and was president of a society for young artists called 'Stray Leaves’. She also published drawing books appropriate for Australian students; they contain freely sketched lithographs of the semi-rural outskirts of Melbourne.
Three Australian views 'treated in the lady’s usual free and easy style’ were included in the 1873 London International Exhibition and there is some speculation that she was also included in the 1875 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. One English oil and two Australian watercolour subjects by her were part of Victoria’s offerings to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, while two oils and three watercolours were shown at Sydney’s 1879-80 International Exhibition. She had three oils in the 1880-81 Melbourne Centennial International, six watercolours in the 1884 Victorian Jubilee Exhibition and was also well represented in the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition. 10 of her watercolour views were sent to the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London and one oil painting. The latter, now known as Point Ormond, St Kilda but then titled Red Bluff 1881 (LT), was one of three Australian paintings illustrating R.A.L. Stevenson’s review of the colonial works in the Magazine of Art . It was, he said: 'another work inspired by study of good schools … composed and arranged with taste and method; and the colour is laid on in good broad washes.’ In 1920 a large posthumous exhibition of Parsons’s work was held at Decoration Galleries, Melbourne.
Despite this impressive career and oeuvre Parsons remains little known. Public collections hold only a few of her finished paintings, but have numerous sketches (LT) and a drawing book of St Kilda views (NGA). Many of her larger paintings remain with descendants, although these have been increasingly appearing on the market. In 1993 her Louttit Bay, near Lorne, Victoria (1879) was for sale at $16,500. Her luminous and detailed rural landscape, Afternoon Walk 1876, oil on canvas 32 × 47 cm, was offered by Sotheby’s Melbourne on 28 November 2000, lot.172 (ill.), estimate $4,000-6,000. Two of her albums containing over 600 watercolours and drawings done in Britain, Australia and New Zealand were offered at Deutscher-Menzies in August 2001, estimate $15,000-$20,000. The six watercolours illustrated in the catalogue (p.48) were: Heidelberg ; Sydney Road near Park Gates 1872; Brighton Beach 1888; Circular Quay, Sydney ; St Kilda road ; The Hotel at Healesville .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 September 1831
- Summary
- English born painter, lithographer and art teacher who exhibited widely in London and Melbourne. A major posthumous exhibition of Parson's work was held at Decoration Galleries, Melbourne in 1920.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1897
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-41.62808 Longitude147.28384 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1897-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Clarendon, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- watercolourist, was the eldest daughter of James Cox of Clarendon, Tasmania, and his second wife Eliza Eddington (1809-65), daughter of David Collins, lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen’s Land. In 1873 she painted a watercolour of the Cox’s summer residence, Marion Villa at George Town, which shows a croquet match in progress beside the house (private collection). In April 1877 she became the second wife of Rev. John Cowpland Dixon , the Church of England parson at West Tamar. When her husband retired in June 1883 they moved to England but after his death in 1885 Eliza returned to Tasmania. She died at Evandale on 26 April 1897 and was buried in the Cox family vault.
An undated watercolour and pencil sketch of Ben Lomond (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery) is inscribed verso 'Ben Lomond drawn from fields near Ross Tasmania by Eliza Cox’, while another undated watercolour, inscribed verso in pencil 'Low Head Light House Entrance Tamar River Tasmania’ (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery), has had 'by Eliza Cox’ added in ink. Although it has been suggested that these were done much earlier by her mother, they are not incompatible with Eliza’s known work and could date from the late 1860s. Her large collection of very competent flower paintings dating from the 1850s to the late 1870s (after her marriage) is held privately.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- Watercolourist and resident of Tasmania and England.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26 April 1897
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1897-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, watercolourist and schoolmaster, was born in London on 25 September 1824 [1825?], son of William Cook Cawthorne. He lived in England, Scotland and South Africa before migrating to South Australia with his parents on board the Amelia in 1841, aged seventeen. To support himself and his sick mother, he opened a school in Currie Street, Adelaide, and supplemented his income with freelance surveying and sketching. Cawthorne married his cousin, Mary Ann Georgiana Mower, on 24 June 1848; they had two daughters and five sons.
In 1852, after briefly and unsuccessfully joining the Victorian goldrush, he became the second headmaster of Pulteney Grammar School in Adelaide and remained in that position until 1855 when he opened his own Victoria Square Academy. In December 1855 he exhibited over 200 of his sketches at his academy – 'all having a colonial interest attaching to them’ – as well as collections of shells, fossils, minerals and precious stones. A reviewer noted equivocally that 'the greater number of the pictures have not … in any degree sacrificed truthful depiction to artistic feeling’. Greatest interest was 'excited by the department illustrative of the manners, habits and customs of the aborigines of this country’. About this time Cawthorne wrote a story of pre-colonial Kangaroo Island, 'The Islanders’, which was later published as a serial in the Illustrated Adelaide Post . His knowledge of the subject was probably gained while visiting his father, Captain William Cook Cawthorne, the first keeper of the Sturt Lighthouse on Cape Willoughby. During the 1850s he also wrote a thirty-five-page narrative poem based on a Port Lincoln legend, 'The Red Kangaroo’ (not published until 1900), and a memorial tribute to the life and work of his friend Johann Menge, the mineralogist (published 1859).
In the 1860s and 1870s a number of engravings after Cawthorne’s sketches of South Australian scenes and events appeared in both the Illustrated Adelaide Post and the Illustrated Melbourne Post , many being engraved by Albert Cooke . From 1869 to 1874 Cawthorne was proprietor of the Illustrated Adelaide Post . His other publications include Who Killed Cockatoo? (Adelaide c.1870), one of the earliest known Australian illustrated children’s books. Although loosely based on the nursery rhyme 'Who killed Cock Robin?’, it depicts Australian rather than English birds and animals. The text, as Marcie Muir states, is livelier than most early colonial books and the illustrations are well drawn and engraved. His Journal of a Tour in Terra Australis by Markum and Sketchum was compiled in 1844 (manuscript with pen-and-ink sketches, DL), and he wrote a lively 'Journal of a Tour in the North’ that appeared in the South Australian Register on 13 January 1851. An interesting series of paintings made on a trip from Port Adelaide to the Burra, including Burra Creek, December 1850 , are now in the Mitchell Library.
Cawthorne’s 'Rough notes on the manners and customs of the natives’ was delivered as an illustrated lecture in 1864 but not published until 1927 (by the South Australian branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia). The South Australian Register commented that the lecture, 'if not highly instructive was very interesting and in some parts exceedingly amusing’. He illustrated it with ten large views of Aboriginal pursuits. Four showed different methods of catching wallaby and crayfish, while others depicted Aboriginal weapons.
A prolific and vivacious recorder of Aboriginal and European colonial life, Cawthorne’s range is typified by his three watercolours shown in the 1847 Adelaide exhibition of the works of colonial artists: Tekartoo, a Native Beauty ; Mangrove Coast, Gulf St. Vincent ; and Kuraa Palte, Corroborrie of Natives . Four watercolour portraits of Aborigines sold in 1980, initialled 'W.A.C.’ (as Cawthorne normally signed his work), that had been first exhibited on 29 March 1845 were: A Native from the Darling , an untitled portrait, Churguracoo and Wira Maldira . He showed sketches in the first exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts at Adelaide in 1857, but no titles are given in the catalogue.
Writers:
Tregenza, Jean
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.25 September 1824
- Summary
- Sketcher, watercolourist and schoolmaster in Adelaide, Vic. Known for his writings and artworks with a colonial focus.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1897
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude51.4538022 Longitude-2.5972985 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1897-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bristol, England, UK
- Biography
- flower painter, arrived at South Australia from Bristol, England, in 1852 on board the Bentinck , with her husband William Strawbridge and their four children.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1818
- Summary
- Female colonial artist who conducted a school in her home and taught Edith Cook (later the prominent educationalist Edith Hubbe). Some of Eliza's finely detailed watercolour paintings of flowers and native flora were praised in the London Art Union.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1897
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude53.9825271 Longitude-1.385249993 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1897-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, watercolourist, illuminator, decorator and garden designer, was born in Yorkshire, England, son of John Frederick and Mary Agnes Bateman, members of the Moravian Church. His mother was a member of the La Trobe family, leaders in the Moravian community, and Edward was a first cousin of the Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria, Charles Joseph La Trobe , and a nephew of the celebrated Anglo-American architect, Benjamin Latrobe (sic). One of his brothers, John Frederic, became a renowned hydrolics engineer; another, Christian Henry, was a well-known clergyman author.
Initially, Edward worked as an illustrator. His first known published drawings were chromolithographs of flowers to accompany poems by Mary Ann Bacon in an illuminated gift book, Flowers and their Kindred Thoughts (1848). It was followed in 1850 by a similar collaborative work, Fruits from the Garden and Field , then by a third volume on birds, Winged Thoughts , in 1851. All were published by Owen Jones, who produced the first and finest chromolithographic books issued in England. It is probable that under Jones’s direction he helped arrange and decorate the Fine Arts Court in the 1851 Great Exhibition.
During this period Bateman became closely acquainted with the London circle of Pre-Raphaelites – Thomas Woolner , Bernhard Smith , D.G. Rossetti and J.E. Millais. Indeed, his natural history illustrations possibly influenced the PRB – especially Millais – in their characteristic insistence on meticulous truth to nature. He also became intimate with the writers Mary and William Howitt and their children, including the painter Anna Mary Howitt to whom he became unofficially engaged. His house at Highgate, The Hermitage, was furnished with rustic furniture of his own design and manufacture as well as a collection of 'treasures of old china as would make an antiquarian rave’, Mrs Howitt wrote. Rossetti stayed there in spring 1852. In July Bateman boarded the Windsor with Woolner and Smith aiming to make their fortunes on the Australian goldfields. They were farewelled by Holman Hunt, Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown – an event inspiring Brown’s best-known painting, The Last of England (Tate Gallery).
William Howitt was already in Victoria and Bateman joined his party on the road to the diggings in November 1852. He drew views and flowers as they travelled. Charlton Howitt described their peregrinations:
“We are a very jolly company as we go travelling along through the wild woodlands of this country. First of all there is my father [William Howitt], then my cousin “Harry” [Edward], then Mr B [Bateman] the “Painter” who makes sketches as we go along, and lastly my brother Alfred and myself. If anybody could see us on our journey we would seem a queer looking, but picturesque set of folks … the governor often walks first in his broad hat and wide trousers; often the Painter walks beside him in his glazed cap, blue jumper and leather overalls which come up his thighs and with a courier pouch at his side for his sketching things, but just as often he is stalking ahead of everybody for he has a very long pair of legs and they seem to carry him involuntarily.”
Bateman sketched the McIvor diggings in June 1853 (one such sketch is in the National Library of Australia though it is believed to be undated) where, according to William Howitt, he was soon commissioned by eager diggers and tradespeople to draw 'tents, stores and places of business … not under five pounds per [small pencil] sketch’. The party returned to Melbourne in mid-1853 and the friendship soon came to an unhappy end. Bateman’s engagement to Anna Mary Howitt, then studying art in Munich, was broken off, and William Howitt published two books about their Australian adventures without their proposed illustrations. Bateman went back to the goldfields at the end of 1854, but the harsh conditions, flies, heat and appalling journeys proved intolerable and he again left for the city.
Extant tight and detailed topographical sketches, in pencil heightened with white, date from the 1850s and are rarely signed (LT). They include views of Governor La Trobe’s cottage, Jolimont, at East Melbourne, a similar set of Plenty Station northeast of Melbourne commissioned by the Bakewell family (c.1853-54, NGV) and a series made in the vicinity of Cape Schanck. Mrs Godfrey Howitt, a Bakewell sister and a sister-in-law of William Howitt, showed 'Sketches of Australian scenery and flowers, specimens of a forthcoming work entitled “The Bush Homes of Australia” by E.L. Bateman’ at the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition, although no such publication eventuated. In 1869 Bateman himself lent 'A Collection of Drawings [watercolours] from Nature’ to the Melbourne Public Library Exhibition.
The Victorian Government Botanist Ferdinand von Mueller commissioned some Australian botanical drawings from him. He also painted watercolour portraits and at least one still life: a finished watercolour of dead robins on a bed of flowers. He illuminated a children’s nonsense poem in a surviving manuscript book and provided the cover designs and lettering for Louisa Anne Meredith 's Some of My Bush Friends in Tasmania (vol.1, London, 1860) and Last Series: Bush Friends (London, 1891). He was probably also responsible for the binding designs of Meredith’s Loved, and Lost! (London, 1860) and Waratah Rhymes (London, 1891) issued by the same published. In the Victoria Court at the 1862 London International Exhibition Bateman showed 'Designs for woollen fabrics, introducing indigenous flowers and foliage’ and designs for shawls from Australian wool at the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition.
A notable and very early example of Australian flora being used for decorative purposes – claimed as an innovation by Redmond Barry in both his 1861 and 1865 prefaces – is Bateman’s set of initial headings, tailpieces and titles for Melbourne Public Library catalogues from 1861, engraved on wood by Samuel Calvert (a full set of proofs and partial sets of the blocks are held, uncatalogued, in the SLV and NGV). The initial designs (A-Z) were re-used to introduce each chapter of The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens (Melbourne, 2002).
Architectural designs for Barragunda, built at Cape Schanck in 1866 for Dr Godfrey Howitt’s daughter, and for Heronswood, built at Dromana in 1871 for Professor W.E. Hearn, have been attributed to Bateman. Although extremely informal, ruggedly picturesque stone houses in a neo-medieval style very much to Bateman’s taste, G.G. McCrae credited their design to the well-known Melbourne architectural firm of Reed & Barnes, for whom Bateman worked, and allowed him only the decoration. (He undoubtedly painted the passionflowers over a fireplace in Barragunda homestead – one of his few extant flora drawings is an undated watercolour of a trail of passionflowers (NGV), which are not, however, native to Australia – and he evidently laid out both gardens.) For Reed & Barnes he provided coloured stencil designs on the walls and ceiling of the Octagon, erected behind the Melbourne Public Library for the 1866 Intercolonial Exhibition. They included Australian motifs and were much admired. He also decorated a drawing room at Mountstuart House.
Bateman laid out the grounds of the University of Melbourne (c.1855-64) – one of his earliest commissions – and reputedly had a role in planning Melbourne’s Botanic, Treasury and Fitzroy Gardens. He landscaped the gardens of several large private estates, including Frederick Sargood’s Rippon Lea at Elsernwick in southeast Melbourne (from c.1868), with its famous fernery. (Although work did not start on the fernery until c.1874, Bateman is presumed to have planned it as part of his initial design.) In May 1867 he was engaged by John Moffat at a salary of £300 to landscape over 160 acres of Chatworth House in the Western District of Victoria but injured his hand so badly in a buggy accident on 13 September that he had to learn to write and draw with his left. After prolonged lawsuits over the accident, he left Australia at the end of 1869. He evidently took virtually all drawings with him. In 1879 he wrote to Georgiana McCrae that he was making copies of his Australian wildflower sketches for 'A Glasgow Merchant Prince’ (possibly A.B. Stewart whose garden at Ascog Hall on the Isle of Bute, including 'a magnificent sunken fernery’, Bateman almost certainly designed, according to Neale).
Bateman spent the rest of his life as landscape gardener to the Marquess of Bute at Rothesay, Scotland, where he died aged 82 on 30 December 1897.
Writers:
Thomas, Daniel
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1816
- Summary
- Although seeking his fortune in the Victorian goldfields, Edward La Trobe Bateman instead drifted into work as an illustrator and landscape designer. One of his most notable commissions was the layout of the grounds of the University of Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30 December 1897
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude50.9025349 Longitude-1.404189 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1897-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Southampton, England, UK
- Biography
- natural history painter, lithographer and Congregational clergyman, was born in Southampton, England. In London he was a pupil of the painter and engraver Le Cocq who had trained with the eminent engraver Bartolozzi. After he became Congregational minister at Peartree Green, Southampton, Laishley kept up his interest in natural history illustration, studying and drawing plants and birds in the New Forest. Appointed by the Congregational Missionary Society, he travelled to New Zealand in 1860; the British Museum (Natural History) holds his shipboard diary. He lived at Auckland until sent to Melbourne in 1868.
As a Victorian exhibitor at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition Laishley showed lithographic illustrations with accompanying descriptions intended for a projected book, 'Parrots of Australia’, for sale at 7s 6d each. The prints were highly commended by the fine art jurors, who stated in their official report: 'This specimen gives promise of a work in the highest degree creditable to all concerned in its production; the typography also is excellent’. Only one incomplete part of what appears to be this volume is known (ML). Written by Rev. J.J. Halley, The Parrot Family of Australia ( Hamel & Ferguson, Ballarat 1871) contains three plates by James W. Sayer , one of which, Polytelis melanura. Black tailed Parakeet [and] Polytelis barrabandi. Barraband’s Parakeet , is said to have been put on the stone by Laishley. The most conventional depiction of the three, it merely shows the two birds perched on a branch, although it has the same vibrant colour as the other two plates. Laishley’s role in its production, however, appears to have been minor.
Laishley returned to New Zealand in 1874 and settled at Thames. He showed three oil paintings in the New Zealand Court at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition: Finding the Body of William Rufus in the New Forest , Children in the Wood and Maori Woman with Peaches . He revisited England in 1883 84, after his return exhibiting with the Auckland Society of Art in 1884 and 1887. He retired in 1890 and died in 1897. His only known book is the early British Birds Eggs , his ministerial duties apparently interfering with the completion of others. The British Museum (Natural History) holds the manuscript of his 'Gleanings of natural history in New Zealand’, accompanied by a volume of original watercolour and pencil natural history illustrations. A notebook containing parts of his unfinished autobiography (BM) and a manuscript entitled 'Sketch notes of family history’ (ATL) are also known.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1816
- Summary
- Laishley was a natural history painter, lithographer and Congregational clergyman; a pupil of the painter and engraver Le Cocq. He was sent to New Zealand and Australia by the Congregational Missionary Society, staying on and entering many colonial exhibitions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1897
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude53.7975 Longitude-1.543611 Start Date1863-01-01 End Date1896-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leeds, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and illustrator, was born in Leeds. He studied art in England under Richard Waller, then in Antwerp under Verlat. He travelled to New Zealnd for health reasons in 1885 and later lived in Sydney c.1887-89, where he exhibited the the Royal Art Society of NSW and reputedly worked for the Bulletin . He returned to England in 1889 where he worked as an illustrator, taking frequent trips to Egypt. He returned to NZ in 1895 and died at Dunedin in 1896 (Edward D. Craig, Australian Art Auction Records 1975-78 ).
Exhibited Art Society of NSW in the eighth annual exhibition in 1887: 'Atkinson narrowly missed making a great picture out of his “Eviction” but the drawing is by no means equal to the painting, and he seems to have absolutely no sense of proportion. His “Sunshine” is conventional, although it contains good work’ ( Bulletin , 24 December 1887, 9). 'Mr Atkinson is a New Zealand artist of rising fame … His “Evicted” [is one of four pictures] which would arrest the attention of the spectator by reason of their pronounced character. ... [“Evicted”] has many admirable points. The story is well told. ... The child is not well done. It is out of drawing and is not in proportion to the other figures. But outside these minor points, the picture has much that is good in it … Mr Atkinson’s portrait picture “Sunshine” has much character and skill in it, and much of talent too. The dress is not well chosen, perhaps and the figure might easily have been placed to much greater advantage, but nevertheless the artist has produced a fine effect altogether. The sunshine falling on the hair, the face in shade, with some reflected light upon the chin and lips and the red transparency of the ears and finger tips are most cleverly worked’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 8 December 1887, 7). '... the Art Society is to be congratulated in having enlisted a man of his talent in their ranks; he sends three exhibits, No.41 “A Hot Day at Waitamata” is at first unprepossessing and cold; after a while, however, you begin to realise that this is not through any mere unintentional discoloration … the painter has sought to render faithfully and during the discoloring hours of noon the peculiar atmospheric effect of an Australian hot day … In no.54 “Sunshine” ... at his best; the subject, a pretty girl on a swing’ ( Australian Art , January 1888, 2-3).
Exhibited in the ninth annual exhibition of the Art Society of NSW in 1889: His Delicate Question was seen as an 'attempt to realise the genuinely Australian picture’ ( Bulletin , 29 September 1888, 8). 'Mr Robert Atkinson is one of the late additions to the society. His picture “A Delicate Question”, takes a high place for skilful treatment of a thoroughly Australian picture. The shingle roof, the weatherboard wall of the house, the surroundings and tones, are all most natural and effective; the figures are finely drawn, and the treatment of the artist shows a freshness equal to the perennial charm of the subject’ ( Sydney Mail , 29 September 1888, pp.662-666). 'Of essentially colonial subjects, the picture by Mr Robert Atkinson, entitled “A Delicate Question”, claims precedence. Leaning against the corner of the weatherboard homestead, a the end of a shingle-roofed verandah, stands a young squatter, evidently shaping the momentous question to a young girl, whose attitude attention to a welcome subject; the greyhound looks in puzzled surprise. Far off the blue Australian sky is seen, and there is a fidelity in conception and felicity in treatment which make a very pleasant picture’ ( Sydney Mail , 22 September 1888, 614). An engraving of his A Delicate Question appeared in the Illustrated Sydney News 27 September 1888, 7.
Exhibited in the Art Society’s autumn watercolour and black-and-white exhibition ( Sydney Morning Herald , 1 April 1889, 4).
Re Art Society tenth annual exhibition: 'Mr Robert Atkinson, now in New Zealand, will send an “Old Orchard at Richmond” and possibly some of his studies of New Zealand scenery’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 7 September 1889, p.7). 'Mr R. Atkinson in “A Hot Day in New Zealand” shows a poetic yet bold and truthful bit of nature finely painted, “The Old Orchard, Richmond”, contains good work and elaborate detail; but it lacks the artistic feeling which is so strongly revealed in the first’ ( Sydney Mail , 12 October 1889, p.812). 'Mr Robert Atkinson is represented [among the watercolours] by “A Sunny Corner, Auckland” which is a study of wood and garden luxuriance. It is genuinely true to feeling and is well handled’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 4 October 1889, 5).
See Illustrated Sydney News 14 November 1889, 20, re New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition, Dunedin, 1889-90, NSW Court: “The Chief’s Daughter” by R. Atkinson, exhibited as part of a collection of paintings from Art Society of NSW.
Re exhibition of Art Society: 'Mr Robert Atkinson has only one work in the exhibition, a water-colour, entitled “The Chief’s Daughter”, an intelligent-looking Maori child lying in a hut’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 13 September 1890, 5).
Edward Craig records the sale of two watercolours in 1975-78: Bringing in the Dinner , Christie’s April 1976 ($192) and A Lady in Evening Clothes seated in a red chair 1893, Christie’s July 1977 ($200)
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1863
- Summary
- Colonial English-born painter and illustrator who lived in New Zealand and Sydney during his career. Atkinson was a regular exhibitor with the Art Society of NSW during his years in Sydney and was reputed to have also worked for the Bulletin.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1896
- Age at death
- 33
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1855-01-01 End Date1896-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and craftworker, was born at Bayswater, London, the daughter of John and Sarah Rielly. By 1870 she was living at 3 Eastbourne Street, Windsor (Prahran), an inner Melbourne suburb, with her painter brother Henry Rielly (c.1858-1905) and her sister Louisa (later Aplin ) who painted flowers. They remained there until moving to Stanthorpe, Queensland in 1884. Isa exhibited 'Cultivated and Wild Flowers, manufactured of Paper by Exhibitor’ at the 1872 Victorian Exhibition preliminary to the 1873 London International Exhibition. Her painted paper flowers in a glass shade (cat. 62, for sale at 15 guineas) were 'much admired for their fidelity to nature’ when shown in the Victorian section of the Agricultural Society of NSW’s 1873 Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition.
She exhibited paintings with the Victorian Academy of Arts (VAA) between 1875 and 1885. At the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition Waterfall, at Macedon by 'Miss I. Rielly’ was exhibited by the VAA among a collection of members’ work and she won a certificate for her paper flowers shown in the Ladies’ Court. Both she and Henry were awarded medals at a Queensland exhibition in 1885, according to Once a Month . She had paintings in the 1886 London Indian and Colonial Exhibition and in the 1888-89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition, at the latter showing Erica in the Ladies’ Court and 'Oil painting, from nature’ in the Queensland Court.
In 1888 Isa Rielly married James Waldegrave Lane at Warwick, Queensland. She died at Fortitude Valley, Brisbane in 1896, aged 41. Her oil paintings, Pansies and Wild English Heath (n.f.s.), Pelargonium and Chinese Primula (£12) and Rose and Wild Fuschia (n.f.s.) were shown posthumously at the eighth annual exhibition of the Queensland Art Society in July 1896 and Roses and Ivy Geraniums (10 gns) was included in the Society’s display at the 1897 Queensland International Exhibition.
During her lifetime Isa Rielly appears to have worked primarily a flower painter, although no botanical works are now known. At the 1875 exhibition of the NSW Academy of Art she showed an original watercolour Flower for sale at £4. She won a Highly Commended certificate for a painted group of flowers shown in the Agricultural Society’s exhibition that year and continued to send flower paintings to Sydney from Melbourne for sale. Pelargonium (5 gns) and Waratah (10 gns) were shown with the Academy of Art in 1876 and the latter was awarded a Certificate of Merit. Her watercolour Sturt’s Desert Pea (4 gns) was shown the following year along with two oil paintings – Grapes, from New South Wales (6 gns) and Camellias and Snow Flakes (6 gns). In 1881 her painting of native flowers and birds won first prize of £10 in a competition held by the Sydney publishers and printers John Sands for pictures to be reproduced as chromolithographs.
Isa Rielly had long painted landscapes as well. Her watercolour Cottage on the Templestowe Road was shown non-competitively with the VAA at the 1875 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. At the 1879-80 Sydney International Exhibition she showed an oil landscape, Brighton and Elsternwick Beach . Other oils, Scene at Maddingly and Evening at Gippsland , were shown with the Art Society in 1881, the former evincing, according to the Sydney Morning Herald , the artist’s 'loving desire to reproduce the aerial effects and wonderful tints which nature is so lavish in at early morning and sunset’.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanClark, Jane
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1855
- Summary
- As a flower painter and landscapist, Rielly was highly active on the art show scene, receiving commendations at Agricultural Society and Art Academy shows, as well as international exhibitions. Originally from London, she spent most of her life in Queensland, where she devoted much of her career to depicting Australia's flora.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1896
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude50.7981119 Longitude-3.1924599 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1896-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Honiton, Devonshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illuminator, scene-painter and engraver, the youngest son of Edward Fearn, barrister, was born in Honiton, Devonshire, on 25 March 1835. After landing at Melbourne from Liverpool on 25 December 1852 he was employed as a clerk until he joined John Hennings as a scene-painter at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne. He tried his fortune at various goldfields but, having no luck, remained in Bendigo as a scene-painter at the Lyceum Theatre and at the Theatre Royal. He then travelled around Victoria, first to Tarnagulla, where he became lessee of the Theatre Royal; to Llanly, where he opened a store and hotel; then to Dunolly, where he painted scenery for the theatre attached to Frayne’s hotel. James Flett reported that Fearn 'had a way of introducing local events into his productions, and once had caricatures of all the leading publicans in the district worked into a stage setting’.
While at Dunolly Fearn exhibited, with a Miss Bevan , Painting—Flowers in Leatherwork Frame at Melbourne’s 1866 Intercolonial Exhibition. He illuminated presentation addresses and did woodcuts for the Dunolly Express . He also promoted many entertainments (the proceeds of which were given to charities), founded a free library and became a borough councillor. He was made a life governor of Dunolly Free Library and Hospital and was appointed a land officer in 1871. After a period as proprietor of the railway refreshment rooms in St Arnaud, Fearn returned to Bendigo about 1884 and set up as a full-time artist specialising in illuminated addresses. He wrote for several publications, including the Bendigo Advertiser . Fearn died on 23 December 1896.
Writers:
Maslen, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 March 1835
- Summary
- Francis Fearn engaged in a multifarious range of occupational pursuits including gold-prospecting - which unfortunately brought him no luck. He worked at various times as a scene-painter, theatre lessee, and promoter of entertainments. His artistic pursuits were no less varied and in 1884 these finally enabled him to set up as a full-time artist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 December 1896
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1896-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter and solicitor, migrated from England to New South Wales in 1858 and settled in Sydney where, with various partners, he practiced as a solicitor from 1863 to 1880. In 1865 he married Annette de Mestre (subsequently aunt of the painter Roy de Maistre ). Slade was a great admirer of Conrad Martens , a neighbour on the North Shore, and his watercolours often display many of Martens’s mannerisms. On 8 February 1878 he wrote to his mentor thanking him for 'the opportunity I have had for many years of rummaging in your studio, pausing and pondering over your sketches’. He purchased a number of Martens’s paintings between 1868 and 1878 and expressed his gratitude for 'the advantage of having such masterful productions in my own possession … incalculable to an amateur’. He lent one of his Martens views to the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition.
Slade exhibited as an amateur with the New South Wales Academy of Art from 1872 to 1877, showing watercolour, wash and pencil views of New South Wales from 1875. In 1874 he showed four oil paintings – Hawkesbury from Peat’s Ferry , The Basin, Refuge Bay, Pitt Water , On the Mulgoa Creek and View from the Blue Mountain Inn – but in 1877 had reverted to watercolour, exhibiting Creek, Nattai and Bumbo Creek, Bodalla in the medium. Said to have become colour-blind in the early 1870s, Slade returned to England in 1880. He died there 16 years later.
Slade’s album of 80 watercolour views around Sydney and on the Nepean sold at Sotheby’s (London) in November 1984 for $A52 000. The scenes, dated 1858-64, include competent and rare interior views. A later album now containing 74 watercolours is owned by the National Library (some 30 sketches were sold from it in the 1970s). They were produced between 1867 and 1869 and also include views of Sydney Harbour ( Balmain Regatta, 30 Nov. 1867 ), the Nepean ( The Hawkesbury Peats Ferry, 15 Jany 1869 ) and the south coast ( Twofold Bay, 11 February 1868 ). Other sketches were made on a trip to the Blue Mountains (three views of Govett’s Leap dated 26 October 1868 and Hartley Kerosene Works, 27 Oct. 1868 ) and there are 12 views near Hobart Town made on his first visit to Tasmania from 15-25 February 1868 ( All Saints Ch. Hobarton, Tasmania, 22 Feby/68 ). A watercolour of Hobart Town dated 17 February 1868 is in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery together with a few other views and a tiny sketchbook containing 43 drawings and watercolours, including sketches made on a second visit to Tasmania (this time with his wife and child) from 17 December 1869 to 17 January 1870. The Mitchell Library also holds a number of his pencil and pen-and-ink sketches. A late work, Sydney from Fortification Road (1879, pencil and white), was sold at Christie’s (Australia) in September 1984.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1832
- Summary
- George Penkivil Slade was a painter and solicitor. In 1858 he migrated to New South Wales. Slade exhibited with the New South Wales Academy of Art as an amateur. It is said that he became colour-blind in the early 1870s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1896
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude56.0348739 Longitude12.6130073 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1896-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Elsinore, Denmark
- Biography
- scene-painter, cartoonist and soldier, was born in Elsinore, Denmark on 22 April 1829, younger son of the Russian consul François de Habbe and younger brother of the painter Nikolai François Habbe whom he accompanied to Australia in 1855 after fighting in the European wars of 1848 and receiving a severe leg wound in the battle of Schleswig-Holstein. Having little success on the Victorian goldfields he became a scene-painter for theatres at Ballarat and Bendigo, including Ballarat’s Montezuma Theatre. By 1858 he was working as a scene-painter at Melbourne’s Theatre Royal then in 1860 moved to the Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney. For the next few years he painted decorations, backdrops and scenery for Sydney’s new Prince of Wales Theatre from a studio in York Street, often in partnership with W. J. Wilson . According to contemporary reports, Habbe was entirely self-taught and learnt on the job – although having a professional painter for a brother was undoubtedly an asset.
In January 1863 when living at 155 William Street, Habbe exhibited a diorama illustrating the scenery of the Holy Land at the Sydney School of Arts. The Sydney Morning Herald considered it 'beautifully painted’. The following month a report that the diorama was on display at Maitland suggests he travelled it throughout NSW country towns. He was back in Sydney by 1867 when he and Wilson converted the Lyceum Theatre in York Street into an Alhambra-style ballroom. Early in 1868 Habbe and George Appleton painted several of the transparencies that were exhibited on public buildings for the Sydney visit of the Duke of Edinburgh, e.g. the Royal Mint had NSW on a throne, the Infirmary had a 'Good Samaritan’ and Parliament House had 2 ships, 'Britannia’ and 'Australia’. Habbe also produced drawings of the associated festivities for wood engravings in the Illustrated Sydney News , the most striking being his Harbour Illumination in Honour of the Visit of H.R.H. Prince Alfred to N.S.W. , issued as a supplement to the March issue.
By 1870 the Lyceum Theatre had become the Royal Adelphi and Habbe and Wilson painted the scenery for its new dramatic version of Faust , 'the scenes in the garden, in Margaret’s room, at the public fountain, and elsewhere’, in particular, being considered 'beautifully painted, perfect pictures in themselves’. At this time Habbe was still leasing the Adelphi with Wilson and a Mr Harding, but later that year he became a partner in Sydney’s Royal Victoria Theatre where he painted the scenery for productions such as London Assurance and Marcus Clarke’s Foul Play . He was also the designer and painter for Garnet Walch’s Trookulentos , an all-Australian pantomime produced in December 1871.
In 1872 Habbe and Walch moved to Melbourne where Habbe remained until his death. He painted 'magnificent and unequalled’ scenery for many of W.S. Lyster’s Opera House productions, including grand operas such as Lohengrin (1877) and opéras bouffes such as George Musgrove’s record-breaking production of La Fille du Tambour Major (1880). The striking transformation scene in Walch’s pantomime Australia Felix (1873), which revealed an illuminated working model of the new Melbourne Post Office clock chiming midnight, ran for up to twenty minutes and used real water in its last (seventh) scene, The Eastern Pagoda Expanding into the Shrine of Beauty and Cataract of Diamonds .
Habbe’s scenes painted for the Christmas pantomimes at the Opera House rivalled those of John Hennings at the Theatre Royal; both had their staunch admirers. Hennings’s forte was the moving panorama, Habbe’s the transformation scene. That for The King of the Peacocks in December 1876 was described by the Australasian Sketcher as
a series of leaf-and-flower scenes, of leaves and flowers of abnormal size and dazzling beauty, interspersed with the glowing Argus eyes of peacocks’ tails, and leading up to one final tableau, in which all is movement and such dazzling glitter, under the influence of limelight of intense power, that it is difficult to bring away, upon a first sight of it, anything like a clearly-defined recollection.
As usual, 'in answer to prolonged calls … [Habbe] made his appearance on the stage during the transformation scene, and was heartily cheered by the whole house’. A moving panorama painted for Robinson Crusoe in December 1879 was particularly admired. The subject, the Battle of Trafalgar, depicted 'The Deck of the Victory, Grand Panorama of the Battle, The Sailor’s Hornpipe, The Drill, Preparing for the Action, Battle and Death of Nelson, England Victorious, Rule Britannia’. A watercolour (Performing Arts Museum, Melbourne) stamped with the signature 'Alex Habbe’ has been identified by Mimi Colligan as the original design.
Habbe also drew cartoons. His First Arrival of Victorian Settlers was reproduced in Harry Emmet’s Theatrical Holiday Book (Melbourne, 1885). Kelly suggests that at least two of his panoramas in Walch’s pantomimes were parodies of the genre in black and white cartoon form.
Alexander Habbe died of cancer on 14 April 1896 and was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery where a memorial was erected by professional artists and friends.
Writers:
Callaway, AnitaKerr, JoanLennon, Jane
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 22 April 1829
- Summary
- Colonial era Danish-born scene-painter, cartoonist and soldier. Habbe's scenes painted for the Christmas pantomimes at the Opera House rivalled those of John Hennings at the Theatre Royal.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 April 1896
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1896-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, lithographer, farmer, journalist, mining consultant and accountant, was born in London, eldest son of the Rev. John Baptist Austin who subsequently purchased 500 acres at Macclesfield, South Australia.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1827
- Summary
- A mining expert and journalist. Austin's only certain artwork is a signed pencil drawing entitled 'Adelaide, South Australia from the West End of Hindley Street, November 1849'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1 September 1896
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude21 Longitude78 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1896-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- India
- Biography
- painter and engraver, was reputedly born in India. He studied in England under the engraver Edward Goodall. With Goodall’s sons, Edward the younger and Frederick, he visited France in the early 1840s on a sketching tour. He exhibited paintings of French scenes at London’s Royal Academy in 1842, 1844 and 1845 and at the British Institution in 1844, at which time he was living at 6 Jeffrey’s Terrace, Kentish Town. Strafford was acquainted with John Ruskin, who thought so highly of him that he employed him to make designs for his Shield of Achilles . By the mid 1840s he was producing imaginative designs, sketches of Gothic fantasy and visions compared with those by William Blake. In 1847 he married Mary Hemmings in Paris.
By the late 1840s Strafford was suffering from hallucinations and showing signs of mental instability, which came out in his work. His failing health and a weakness in his lungs led to his emigration to Melbourne in 1851 where he was employed by Thomas Ham to produce engraved illustrations – The Water Seeker , The Gold Seeker and Gold Digger of Victoria – for the Illustrated Australian Magazine . Later he worked for De Gruchy & Leigh, for whom he produced the engraving Melbourne 1856 Taken from the South Side of the Yarra . Samuel Calvert also employed him in the late 1850s, particularly for drawing on wood. At least twelve of his drawings were reproduced as wood-engravings in the Newsletter of Australasia between 1859 and 1861 and the surrounds of the cover illustration used on some issues was also to his design.
Strafford’s wife died on 21 August 1857, leaving him with no kin in the colony. By August 1861 his mental instability, accentuated by her death, had increased to such an extent that John J. Mouritz, the Baptist minister of Fitzroy, petitioned for his entry into the Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum; he was admitted on 27 September. He was discharged into Mouritz’s care in December 1864 but after Mouritz’s death was readmitted on 1 June 1869 on the petition of Samuel Calvert, listed in the asylum records as the patient’s friend. Strafford was transferred to Carlton Asylum in May 1871, to Kew in June 1873 and to Beechworth on 9 February 1876. He died in the Beechworth Asylum on 13 February 1896, completely forgotten by the Victorian art community. His age at death was given as sixty-six, but he must have been about ten years older since he was exhibiting in the 1840s.
Three of Strafford’s English paintings as well as works by Edward Goodall from Strafford’s collection were included in the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Art Exhibition. Strafford’s art collection, including his sketchbooks, was then in the hands of Calvert, who put it up for auction in February 1872. In 1888 the National Gallery of Victoria purchased two of his watercolours for 2 guineas each, St. Paul’s Church and Old Princes Bridge, in 1854, from East of Swanston Street and Police Station, Richmond Paddock 1854 (now La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne). In 1904 Calvert presented four of Strafford’s works to the British Museum: 'Design for a fountain 1857’, Tritons , Britannia Letting Australia Walk Alone and a watercolour Study of a Boat .
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1820
- Summary
- Talented and highly technically proficient engraver who suffered mental illness and declined into obscurity.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13 February 1896
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude51.6571646 Longitude-0.9909124 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1896-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Shirburn, Oxfordshire, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, was born in Shirburn, Oxfordshire, fourth son of George Davenport, a banker, and Jane Devereux, née Davis. He was a brother of Sir Samuel Davenport, later a prominent South Australian viticulturalist. Robert studied law and worked as a solicitor in the Westminster courts. In 1842 he left England with Samuel to carry out a survey for their father, an agent for the South Australia Company. Between 1843 and 1849 he produced many landscape paintings; Adelaide from the North Bank of the River Torrens and At Noarlunga are in the Art Gallery of South Australia together with seven other watercolours he painted.
Davenport took up land in South Australia, became a pastoralist and developed an orchard. In 1851 he was elected to the Legislative Council as representative for the Hindmarsh district. He resigned three years later in order to continue farming and to campaign for religious freedom.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1816
- Summary
- Watercolourist produced landscape paintings between 1843 and 1849. His work is held in Art Gallery of South Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1896
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude50.725556 Longitude-3.526944 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1896-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Exeter, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, architect and teacher, was born in Exeter and trained in England as an architect, first under Robert Cornish, architect to Exeter Cathedral, then in London under the notable Exeter-born architect Charles Fowler.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1814
- Summary
- Trained architect who arrived in Sydney in 1844. During his stay Ashworth made many sketches of Sydney streets and buildings using pen, ink and wash.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1896
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and photographic showman, was born on 17 January 1843 in London, son of George Freeman, a trader in base metals, and Eliza, née Alderson. He arrived at South Australia on 3 January 1861 in the Countess of Fife , travelling with his father and step-mother Selina, née Hague. He had experimented with photography as a youth at Bayswater School and had perhaps followed this up with some professional experience in London, for almost straight away he established a photographic studio in Hindley Street, Adelaide, in partnership with another young photographic hopeful, Edward Belcher. Their partnership was to continue, on and off, for several years: at 97 Hindley Street from 1861 (although Freeman was sole proprietor from 1864) and opposite the Adelaide Town Hall in 1866-67 (called the Town Hall Photographic Gallery in 1867).
Freeman seems always to have been less interested in the bread-and-butter side of the photographic business than his erstwhile partner. Throughout his professional career he enthusiastically experimented with the latest processes and techniques, at times being as much a photographic entrepreneur as a practitioner. In December 1864, as a result of some 'chemical experiments’, there was an explosion and fire in the cellar of the Hindley Street premises he had lately shared with Belcher; according to the newspaper reports he was knocked unconscious and suffered serious injuries to his face and hands.
The following year he produced the first double photographic portraits known to have been taken in the colony. The South Australian Register described one as 'two portraits of the same gentleman, one sitting without his hat and looking upward, and the other standing, with his hat on looking downward. They are evidently portraits of one person … The thing is ingenious’. In 1874 the South Australian Advertiser applauded Freeman’s 'triple portrait, showing the face of the Emperor of Prussia, the late Emperor of the French, and Prince Bismarck, all in one bust, having a common neck and cranium’ which the Register referred to as 'a three-headed monster’.
From the early 1870s Freeman called his business (located in Rundle Street until 1882 and in King William Street in 1883-84) the Melbourne Photographic Company. The name suggests that Freeman may have previously visited Victoria; indeed, an otherwise unidentified firm of that name had been operating in the gold-mining town of Heathcote in June 1865 when it was reported that a young man had ordered six cartes-de-visite after posing in rags and tatters, chalked face and mournful expression in order to touch the heart (and pocket) of an uncle at home in England. By 1874, however, Freeman had more than a nominal link with Melbourne; his company was sole South Australian agent for the Art Union of Victoria and he published an album of Adelaide views in conjunction with Edward James Wivell, thought to be the Wivell who had been in partnership with H.J. Johnstone at Melbourne in 1857. (E.J. Wivell was secretary for the Melbourne Photographic Company until December 1878.) Freeman forged links with Johnstone as well. He frequently exhibited Johnstone’s paintings at the company’s gallery (lending three of them to the Chamber of Manufactures Exhibition of Art and Industry in 1877), as well as exhibiting Johnstone & O’Shannessy’s photographs of Governor Jervois (taken in Melbourne) in 1877.
During the 1870s Freeman was probably Adelaide’s leading fine arts entrepreneur. In 1873 he presented a 'dissolving view and oxyhydrogen light’ show of morally-uplifting scenes from Illustrations from the Life of Christ (after Dor?), The Bottle and The Drunkard’s Children (both after Cruikshank) and The Pilgrim’s Progress . In August 1874 he presented an exhibition of British and colonial paintings and photographs in the Adelaide Town Hall which was, the newspapers assured their readers, 'distinct from magic lantern pictures’. After the success of this venture Freeman opened a special picture gallery attached to the Melbourne Photographic Company’s studio and in October encouraged 'colonial artists to send their productions for exhibition’. Here he exhibited the paintings won by South Australian subscribers to the Victorian Art Union and, later, the paintings offered as prizes in the art unions he organised himself.
Meanwhile Freeman’s reputation as an innovative and up-to-date photographer increased. The press reported every novelty; Freeman, according to the Advertiser , 'like the Athenians of old, is always looking out for something new’. He experimented with luminous paint (to make photographs which glowed in the dark), glass transparencies (small-size for magic lanterns, large-size for windows), coloured sunsets and moonrises ('the peculiar greenish tint observable in the moon’s rays is faithfully represented’), and instantaneous action photographs using Philip Marchant’s recently patented dry plates, assisted by flash powder. In November 1879 he debunked the new craze for 'spirit photographs’ by demonstrating how these could be faked merely by partially pre-exposing the plate to form light patches or 'spirits’.
Freeman took several views of Adelaide in 1875 for the South Australian commissioners for the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876. Two of his photographs were panoramas of the city: the first, 11 feet long (3.35 m), was taken from the top of the Advertiser building, the second, 6 feet (1.82 m), from Montefiore Hill. By 1877 he had a new ’22 × 18 inch [55.8 × 45.7 cm] camera’. With views taken by this camera he won a bronze medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1878 and third prize at the Sydney International in 1879. He also exhibited views of South Australia 'well calculated to give a clear conception of our progress in architecture and the character of some of our scenery’ at the Melbourne International Exhibition in 1880.
Freeman married Mary Sarah Goodhart on Christmas Eve 1876; they had five children. He no longer lived on the premises as he had in his Hindley-Street days; when a fire broke out in the Melbourne Photographic Company’s studio on 26 February 1879 he had to be summoned to the scene by his apprentice from his home in North Adelaide. A large number of negatives (uninsured) were lost in the fire.
Notwithstanding his continuing high profile in the South Australian press, Freeman moved his business to New South Wales in 1884. Still styling himself the Melbourne Photographic Company, he worked at Newcastle in 1884 (his photograph of the wreck of the Susan Gilmore was reproduced in the Sydney Mail ), in Reynolds Street, Balmain (1886 87), and in Church Street, Parramatta (1887 89). He had returned to Adelaide by 1892, where he set up a camera obscura entertainment at Glenelg Beach. He died in Adelaide on 5 April 1895.
During its heyday in Adelaide, the Melbourne Photographic Company outdid the declining studios of Townsend Duryea and Robert Hall. Freeman’s photographic career encompassed both devil-may-care showmanship and a business-like consolidation of the views trade. In the former, he resembled early travelling photographers such as Newland; in the latter, he was the South Australian equivalent of Melbourne’s Charles Nettleton and Sydney’s Charles Pickering, who exploited the emergent views trade of the 1860s to become the massive industry it was in the 1870s.
Writers:
Newton, Gael
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 January 1843
- Summary
- George John Freeman was a professional photographer and photographic showman. He arrived at South Australia in 1861. Throughout his professional career Freeman enthusiastically experimented with the latest processes and techniques, at times being as much a photographic entrepreneur as a practitioner.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 April 1895
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude19.0785451 Longitude72.878176 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bombay (Mumbai), India
- Biography
- painter and diorama artist, was born in Bombay, India, on 29 November 1829, son of Joachim Hayward Stocqueler (1801-1886) and Jane Spencer (1803-1870). His father, variously soldier, journalist, playwright and lecturer, was then editor of the Bombay Courier. The name Stocqueler (an Anglicisation of Stockler) derived from a Portuguese forebear, Christian Stockler, was assumed as a family name by Joachim’s grandfather, Jose Christian Stocqueler or Stockler. Later (particularly in the United States) Joachim adopted the name of Siddons, claiming a relationship to the famous English actress.
In 1843 the Stocqueler family returned to England from India to arrange Edwin’s education. Joachim then returned to India alone, which marked his formal separation from his wife. In 1846 he left India for the last time and became associated, not very successfully, with the London stage. He authored numerous publications dealing with India and the military, held editorial positions and assisted students to prepare for commission-based military examinations (Colligan calls him 'an eminent lecturer at moving panorama shows in London’s Regent Street Gallery of Illustration’). Joachim Stocqueler fled London to the United States, bankrupt, in December 1859 due to his involvement in a military commission scandal. He did not return to England until 1864.
Edwin Stocqueler, with his mother, sailed for Australia in 1852, encouraged by his father and the opportunity for a moving panorama of the goldfields. Edwin was on the Bendigo diggings by 1853 and made Sandhurst (now Bendigo) his headquarters. Nothing is known of his artistic training, but a letter to the Bendigo Advertiser in 1857 made reference to his acquaintance with 'Mr. Phaey, R.A. (since Secretary to the London Art Union)’ who, almost certainly, was the drawing master James Fahey (1804-85), secretary of the New Water-Colour Society and painter of a moving panorama of the Nile exhibited in London’s Egyptian Hall in 1849 (Colligan, p.52). It is possible that Stocqueler had trained under him.
Over the next four years Stocqueler, accompanied by his mother, travelled widely, undertaking hazardous journeys in a canvas boat along the Murray, Ovens and Goulburn Rivers. Probably undertaken intermittently, these journeys extended over some four years and involved him in observation and records of natural history along the routes. Returning to Sandhurst early in 1857, he established a studio in Market Place and completed a diorama depicting life on the goldfields and in other parts of the colony. He appears to have worked on this for some time, as the diorama was described in the Bendigo Advertiser as being a mile long (almost certainly an overstatement). It was presented in two parts, each consisting of at least twenty-five paintings. The first half mainly comprised views of Melbourne, Sandhurst, the Bendigo goldfields and the Goulburn River country, while the emphasis in the other half was on north-eastern Victoria, mainly around Beechworth but concluding with several views of Castlemaine. Accompanied by music and songs, it opened to the public in the Sandhurst Mechanics Institute on 8 August 1857. A week later it had moved to Stocqueler’s 'Royal Gallery of Illustration’, the grandiose title deriving from the London gallery where his father had provided the commentary to Grieve & Telbin’s diorama of the shipping route to India and Australia in 1853.
By October the diorama had been succeeded by other entertainments at the gallery, but it reappeared in February 1858 at the Criterion Hall, Castlemaine. Early in March it was being shown at Tarrengower (Maldon) and it is probable that it travelled with Stocqueler to other goldfield towns before it opened at Melbourne in June 1859 in another Gallery of Illustration in Bourke Street. By then a splendid title had been bestowed upon it – Golden Land of the Sunny South. Yet it does not appear to have provoked great interest. Stocqueler moved it to the suburb of Collingwood but soon afterwards both it and its artist disappeared from the local scene. Should the diorama have survived and one day be retrieved, it might well provide one of the most valuable visual records of early colonial and goldfields’ life.
Stocqueler painted other works too. Visiting his studio in 1857, a reporter from the Bendigo Advertiser noted some seventy paintings of native birds and animals and referred to other 'very numerous and interesting sketches and paintings’. He is now known by only a handful of paintings: a small watercolour of early Bendigo (Bendigo Art Gallery), a large oil of Castlemaine from Ten Foot Hill (1858, Pioneers’ and Old Residents’ Association, Castlemaine), an undated oil of a night corroboree (National Library of Australia [NLA]) and two or three others in private collections. Also convincingly attributed to him is a large unsigned Australian gold-diggings scene (c.1858, oil on canvas, NLA). These few works bear out the assessment of a reviewer of his diorama that he was 'an artist and naturalist of considerable merit’. Edwin, effectively abandoned by his father, departed Melbourne for Bombay in May 1860 with his mother.
Later in 1860 he accompanied the British commissioner in Aden, (the then) Colonel Coghlan, to Muscat and Zanzibar to investigate the cause of conflict between the sons of the deceased Sayyid Said. The Muscat and Zanzibar Commission, on which Edwin acted as Clerk, also made enquiries concerning the slave-trade; it reported that upwards of 30,000 slaves annually were taken from the dominions of the Sultan of Zanzibar and the neighbouring Portuguese territories. This formed the basis of Edwin’s later interest in Slavery.
He married Gertrude Harriet Williams in 1862 at Colaba. A son born in May 1863 died on 4 December 1863; and a daughter was born on 29 October 1864. He relocated to South Africa sometime after 1864 where his second son was born in 1867. His first wife died in 1872 (in London) and he remarried Sarah Ann Hinder (1854-1911) in 1876; there was one issue from his second marriage.
In 1876, he was referred to the Anti-Slavery Society by Sir Bartle Frere (1815-84): a leading opponent of slavery; former Governor of Bombay; and High Commissioner for South Africa (1877). Edwin retained his drawings and paintings of the slave-trade made during his work with the Muscat and Zanzibar Commission. A photo-lithograph of his painting The Zanzibar Slave Market was published in the Anti-Slave Reporter in March 1877. Other works followed: in May with the landing of slave cargo at Jeddah; in July a scene in a Mohammedan Court detailing the ordering for sale of a negress and her baby; in November a work that depicting the rescue of a slave by Archdeacon Fuller; and in September 1880 he depicted the horrors experienced on the march of a slave caravan. His last published work with the society depicted the kidnapping of a negro woman.
Three signed South African paintings are recorded by Gordon-Brown(locations unknown), one of Durban being dated 1870.
The second-last recorded sighting and discussion with Edwin was by Charles Walsh Pugh, an ex-resident of Bendigo. During a visit to London in the early eighteen-seventies Pugh came across Edwin. During the conversation Edwin mentioned to him that he had a ‘relic of old Bendigo in 1856 in the shape of a picture painted by his own brush’; he wanted to present it to him. Edwin inscribed the gift ‘To Mr. Charles Walsh Pugh, from an old friend whom he befriended in adversity’. Pugh noted that Edwin had ‘seen better days’. Edwin was about forty-two years of age.
Upon Edwin’s death he was described ‘as an artist who sold oil pictures, either his own or on commission, on the pavement . . . a talented and unfortunate man. For several years we had completely lost sight of him, and his sudden death in the street from syncope was, doubtless, largely brought about by the precarious nature of his livelihood’ (Anti-Slavery Reporter). He was also a pavement artist. Samuel Butler used him as the prototype of Mr. Higgs in Erewhon Revisited, including a reference to a relative who went to Australia in 1851. Perhaps Butler’s description captures how he saw Edwin:
drawing pictures with coloured chalks upon the pavement; I used sometimes to watch him, and marvel at the skill with which he represented fogs, floods, and fires. These three ‘f’s’, he would say, were his three best friends, for they were easy to do and brought in halfpence freely [..] he considered himself a public benefactor but carrying it out in such a perishable fashion. ‘At any rate’, he would say, ‘no one can bequeath one of my many replicas to the nation’.
Henry Festing Jones in his memoir on Butler added:
'I never saw Stocquelar (sic) after Butler’s death. Mr. Tanner, who used to collect his rents, told me about him. He wore long hair and a Scotch cap, and had some artistic training – enough for him to turn one of the rooms in his house into a studio where he had pictures painted by himself, landscapes of Dulwich and the neighbourhood, and portraits, including a portrait of his wife.’
His artistic work extended to sculpting animals; on the 1891 census he corrected the scribe’s record of his occupation to read ‘sculpt’ rather than ‘paint’ animals.
Edwin’s son, Charles, wrote family notes in 1898, three years after the death of Edwin, with the assistance of his cousin, Henry Julian Hunter, the son of Rev. Joseph Hunter. The notes made no reference to the seven years Edwin spent in Australia; no papers were left, and no oral history passed to descendants other than that which described his time in South Africa. Edwin’s period in Australia was expunged from his life, which was perhaps indicative of the fate he suffered in Australia at the hands of his father.
Writers:
Cusack, Frank
Peter Gill
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 29 November 1829
- Summary
- Prolific goldfields painter particularly known for his dioramas depicting life on the goldfields, which were widely exhibited, to much acclaim.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28 October 1895
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude52.0579324 Longitude1.1528095 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ipswich, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, architect, builder and surveyor, son of Joseph Ablett Pettit, a builder of Ipswich, England, set sail for Victoria as an intermediate passenger in the Atrevida on 12 September 1852, accompanied by his wife Elizabeth Ann, née Taylor, whom he had married at Norwich. They had no children. Pettit described the voyage in the form of a continuous letter to his father, which included quick sketches of ports visited en route and concluded on arrival at Melbourne on 6 December 1852. He and a fellow-passenger, Robert Taylor, set out almost at once for the goldfields. They were issued with mining licences in January 1853 and spent about six months prospecting without success. Pettit described life on the goldfields in a series of letters that incorporate diagrams of mining equipment and sketches of a primitive hut, possibly his and Taylor’s temporary abode.
By October 1853 he was at Prahran, Melbourne, styling himself 'Jno. H.W. Pettit, Architect’ and writing to his father: 'Building is the Business to make money at here’. The following month he was at 'Oakleigh in the Dandenong Ranges’, intending to set up as a builder. This project came to nothing; in March 1854 he complained to his father that he and Taylor had been left in the lurch by a 'Yankee’ carpenter. In April 1855 Pettit was appointed superintendent of works for government roads and bridges in the Gippsland region; in September 1856 he became assistant surveyor for the district. Briefly in an architectural partnership with George Hastings in 1856, the firm designed the Early English wooden drop slab Christ Church of England at Tarraville, Alberton Shire, believed to be the first church in Gippsland and now the second oldest wooden church in Victoria. Pettit then established himself at Sale (Gippsland) as an architect, builder and surveyor, designing Clyde Bank and calling tenders for a hotel later that year. He practised there until his death on 26 June 1895.
Pettit’s letters home continued to be enlivened by sketches dotted throughout the text, mostly crude and apparently quickly executed. Some, indeed, were mere diagrams of some building nicety for his father’s edification. A more finished sketch of a ringtail possum drawn on a separate sheet shows more expertise and sensitivity (Mitchell Library).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1828
- Summary
- John Henry Wroth Pettit was a sketcher, architect, builder and surveyor. In 1856, Pettit, in an architectural partnership with George Hastings, designed the Early English wooden drop slab Christ Church of England at Tarraville, Alberton Shire, believed to be the first church in Gippsland. It is now the second oldest wooden church in Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 June 1895
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude52.5310214 Longitude-1.2649062 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England
- Biography
- sketcher, explorer, pastoralist and pearler, was born in England on Christmas Day 1825, second son of Henry Edward Hall and Sarah Theodosia, née Branson. He came to Western Australia with his parents, two brothers and three sisters in the Protector , arriving at Fremantle on 26 February 1830. He attended Rev. J.B. Wittenoom 's school at Fremantle and his earliest known sketch, dated 15 December 1843, is annotated Chaplain J.B. Wittenoom’s Residence . In 1852-60 Hall was at the Victorian goldfields. On his return, he joined Francis Gregory’s exploring party to the north-west of Western Australia. Two years later, he took up Andover, the first sheep station in the Roebourne district, on behalf of John Wellard. He explored the Fitzroy River with McRae in 1865. Hall’s surviving diaries for this period (1861 and 1863-64) give details of his life but make no mention of drawing.
Few works are known but Hall continued to sketch until at least the late 1860s; Roebuck Bay Station is dated 7 October 1866. Other pencil drawings such as Mesas South of Carnarvon are undated. In 1869 Hall became a storekeeper, shipowner and pearler at Roebourne and was involved in the establishment of the pearling industry at Broome. He died of a heart attack while swimming in Cossack Creek on the evening of 11 February 1895. He was survived by his wife, Hannah Boyd, née Lazenby, whom he had married on 2 November 1868, and three of their four children. His papers are in the Battye Library, Perth, WA, but his sketches are still privately owned.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 December 1825
- Summary
- Sketcher, explorer, pastoralist and pearler, was born in England and arrived in Western Australia in 1830. He was involved in the establishment of the pearling industry at Broome.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 February 1895
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ealing, London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer, biologist, anthropologist, philosopher and scientific publicist, was born in Ealing, London, on 4 May 1825, the seventh child of Rachel and George Huxley, a schoolmaster. Huxley had little formal education. At sixteen he became a medical apprentice and subsequently held a scholarship at Charing Cross Hospital. After joining the naval medical service in December 1846 he was appointed assistant surgeon and naturalist to HMS Rattlesnake on an expedition commissioned by the British Admiralty to survey Australia’s north-eastern waters and chart the Great Barrier Reef.
The survey reached Sydney in July 1847 and made Port Jackson its base depot for the next three years. It returned to England in October 1850. Throughout the survey Huxley carried out biological research on marine fauna, wrote his famous memoir on the anatomy and affinities of the medusae family which won him election to the Royal Society of London at the age of twenty-six, and accompanied the Rattlesnake on expeditions which took him from Van Diemen’s Land to the coast of Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef and along the shores of New Guinea and the Louisiade Archipelago. While the centre of his work lay in science the young Huxley emerged as a talented artist, filling his diary and notebooks with sketches of scenery, local inhabitants and depictions of bush life. He made important series of drawings of coastal New Guinea and of the Louisiade Archipelago natives who first aroused his interest in anthropology. He also took photographs by the calotype (salted paper) process.
Sketching variously in pencil, sepia, watercolour, pencil and wash, Huxley produced a lively graphic record of the Rattlesnake 's progress and of inland sorties, including several drawings of Edmund Kennedy 's exploring expedition which the survey accompanied as far as Rockingham Bay. Several are reproduced in J. Huxley (ed.), Thomas Henry Huxley’s Diary of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake (London 1935). A study of native heads from the Louisiade Archipelago was reproduced as the frontispiece to volume two of Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake (London 1852) by the expedition’s senior naturalist, John MacGillivray , a plate from Huxley’s watercolour Rockingham Bay, North Queensland faces page 85 in volume one (the original is in a private collection) and other illustrations are also after his drawings. His detailed scientific representations of oceanic hydrozoa, mollusca and crustacea, later published with his own papers, reveal his striking qualities as a scientific artist. Collections of Huxley’s sketches, watercolours, untitled cartoons and scientific illustrations are deposited in the Imperial College of Science and Technology (London), the Mitchell Library, and the National Library of Australia.
Untrained as an artist, Huxley inherited his facility from his father. 'I can hardly find a trace of my father in myself’, he once wrote, 'except an inborn faculty for drawing which unfortunately in my case has never been cultivated’. None the less, during a dynamic and distinguished career as an evolutionist, scientific educationalist and publicist in Britain, he continued to indulge his private taste for sketching on holiday excursions to Europe and he publicly promoted drawing as part of the curriculum (together with science, music and modelling) when he became chairman of London’s first School Board in 1870.
Huxley not only sketched the Australians he encountered on his journey; he carried one off as his bride. He married Henrietta Heathorn, whom he met and courted in Sydney, at London in 1855. They had eight children. Huxley died at Eastbourne on 29 June 1895. His contribution to Australian art was to provide a perceptive informal visual record of a major scientific expedition and to demonstrate, as a highly talented representative of a nineteenth-century tradition, the fertile link between science and art.
Writers:
Moyal, Ann Mozley
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 May 1825
- Summary
- Thomas Henry Huxley was a sketcher, amateur photographer, biologist, anthropologist, philosopher and scientific publicist. Appointed assistant surgeon and naturalist to HMS 'Rattlesnake' he was part of the mission to survey Australia's north-eastern waters and chart the Great Barrier Reef.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 June 1895
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude50.4164223 Longitude-4.045267398 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Plymouth, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, clerk of the peace and farmer, was born in Plymouth, Devon. Migrating with his family in 1839, they settled on a 200-acre land grant at Jamberoo on the south coast of New South Wales. Perrott’s father had been an army surgeon and for a time Robert studied medicine, abandoning this to go to Bathurst as a government official in the early days of the gold-rush. There he met Fanny Raine whom he married in 1851. Later he was a clerk of the peace at Port Macquarie, until taking up a selection in 1861 at Kelly’s Plains near Armidale in northern New South Wales. The family, by then consisting of Robert, Fanny and five children, travelled by bullock-dray in 1862 from Port Macquarie to their property, called Haroldston after the Perrott family’s ancient seat in Wales. Six more children were born there. A devout Anglican, Perrott donated the land and assisted in the erection of St John’s Church, Kelly’s Plains.
Perrott’s duties as clerk of the peace took him all over the district: to Tamworth, Tenterfield, Grafton, Glen Innes, Newcastle, Hillston and elsewhere. He lived at Waratah, near Newcastle, in the 1880s. As well as collecting natural history specimens, Perrott sketched wherever he went and his life in Australia can be traced through his large collection of landscape drawings, nearly all now in the Armidale Historical Museum. Drawings of Broulee and Ulladulla date from the mid 1840s when Perrott was living on the south coast. A view of Fort Macquarie and Pinchgut, Port Jackson, was drawn in June 1850, while a sepia watercolour, The Crown Ridge [on the Bathurst Road] from Whence the Bathurst Plains Were Discovered , was sketched on 22 April 1855, 'on taking wife down country after marriage’.
Four watercolour sketches made at Port Macquarie in 1862 (ML) combine to form a panorama of the place. Another, From the Hill at S. Grafton, 1862 , was drawn near his new home. His view of Saumarez Station , near Armidale, was done in 1867; a sketch of some granite rocks was made on 10 April 1869 'about 4 miles from Deepwater on the road to Bolivia’. Two Clarence River watercolours were painted about April 1868, one a bush view with Aborigines, the other, South Grafton, from the Parsonage Gardens , showing the township. Both are now in Schaeffer House, headquarters of the Clarence River District Historical Society. Views of Moonbi (October 1866) and Ulmarra (June 1872) are in the Armidale collection.
A sepia wash view of Waratah taken from the hill near the Australian Agricultural Company’s fence reveals that he was in the Newcastle area in April 1882, while another watercolour of Waratah 'From the ridge at the back of Mr. Thomas’s’ is dated 31 December 1885. His watercolour Old Lambton (near Newcastle), showing the township with cleared trees and stumps, may have been completed later for it is precisely annotated 'finished 10 Feby. 1886’. An unidentified watercolour of a mine (presumably at Waratah) was made in November 1888. Perrott continued sketching until almost the end of his life. Chinaman’s Pump for Raising Water from the River Lachlan To Irrigate the Vegetable Garden at Hillston was drawn on 29 March 1894 and a watercolour view of Hillston showing 'Bend in the Lachlan River during flood’ dates from 2 October. He died on 12 August 1895.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1822
- Summary
- Robert Issell Perrott was a sketcher, clerk of the peace and farmer. He migrated with his family to New South Wales in 1839. Perrott donated the land and assisted in the erection of St John's Church, Kelly's Plains, NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 August 1895
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter and statistician, was born in England. Emigrating to Melbourne in 1852, he became the most significant of Australian statisticians during the nineteenth century and was awarded many honours for his work. Hayter had two pictures in the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, Peter Botte Mountain and Peter Botte Peak (medium unspecified).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1821
- Summary
- Painter and statistician, he was much more recognised for his work as a statistician than as an artist. He became the most significant Australian statisticians during the nineteenth century and was awarded many honours for his work.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1895
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- portrait and landscape painter, was born in London, son of an artist of the same name who had some reputation as a painter on glass – probably the J. Backler who is recorded as having worked on a window for the Arundel Baron’s Hall in 1816-17. His father had married Jane Cowie at St Mary’s, Marylebone on 1 February 1810, and Joseph was born about three years later. In spite of a good education and respectable parentage, Backler was accused of using the artistic talents acquired through apprenticeship to his father for dishonest purposes. On 30 June 1831 he was prosecuted at the Newgate Gaol delivery for the County of Middlesex (the Old Bailey) on three indictments of forgery and attempting to pass forged money orders. He was found guilty only of attempting to pass forged orders (although his crime continued to be referred to as forgery). The sentence of hanging was later commuted to transportation for life.
Backler arrived at Sydney aboard the convict ship Portland in May 1832, described in various indents as a landscape painter by profession, able to read and write, of fair and freckled complexion with sandy hair and hazel eyes and five feet five inches tall. He was assigned to the Surveyor-General’s Department under Major Thomas Mitchell as a draughtsman, but his penchant for absenting himself from duties resulted in his relocation to Port Macquarie, a penal settlement for men convicted of further offences in the colony, in May 1833. He remained there for nine years, during which time he continued to accumulate a considerable record of offences. Finally, after an unsuccessful petition to Governor Gipps in 1840 from 'Maternal Relations’ in Glasgow attempting to secure some kind of remission of his sentence, Backler successfully negotiated his own ticket of leave. At first he was confined to Port Macquarie (January 1842), from which period can be dated two oil landscapes of the township (ML). In 1842 he married Margaret Magner in St Thomas’s Church, Port Macquarie (a building he painted at least twice). Permitted to transfer to Sydney in January 1843, he moved into 6 Domain Terrace and advertised his services as a painter of portraits, miniatures and landscapes in oil and watercolours. Unfortunately, Sydney was in the grip of a major recession and by January 1844 he was insolvent.
Backler continued to trade in the Sydney area for over three years. Oil portraits of Mr and Mrs John Scarr (Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society) are signed and dated 1844 on the back. Portraits of Mr and Mrs Howe of Glenlee, commissioned by Campbelltown residents for presentation to the sitters, could be seen at 'the Artist’s residence opposite the Royal Hotel, George-street’ at the end of January 1845. During this time with the assistance of his erstwhile employers, the picture frame-makers, carvers and gilders Messrs Cetta & Hughes of George Street, he attempted to gain a full pardon from the Colonial Secretary. He was finally granted a second-class conditional pardon in mid 1846, which meant he could travel to country districts.
He seems to have prematurely ensconced himself at Goulburn in anticipation of this, being reported in the Sydney Morning Herald of 1 September 1846 as having been successfully painting portraits at Goulburn for the past 12 months. His subjects included members of the Sinclair and Styles families (ML). An oil painting of the township (ML) had been completed by September, for Backler was then about to paint out a mythical steam train he had inserted into it, 'the gentleman for whom it was painted wishing a correct representation of the town as it is’. In February 1847 the Sydney Morning Herald reported his 'temporary residence’ at Bathurst, also for the purpose of portrait painting. There he painted another oil 'of the town as it is’, which properly focused on the gaol (ML). He must have been back in Sydney by 6 November 1849, when 'J. Backler’ of Miller’s Point signed a petition published in the Sydney Morning Herald , along with 'M. Backler’ and others. Portraits of the Bathurst residents Edward and Mary Ann Austin (Bathurst Regional AG) are dated 1850 and members of the Lane family (AGNSW) were painted in 1854, so he clearly became a regular visitor to the district.
Backler’s portrait of Councillor Iredale (a wealthy emancipist ironmonger in Sydney) was lent to the first exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia held in June-August 1847 and he was recorded as one of the colony’s artistic core in Heads of the People soon after the exhibition closed. His reputation as a portrait painter appears to have grown in the late 1840s. Commissions occasionally included copying existing pictures, like Marshall Claxton 's Captain Cook (AGSA) and J. T. Dennis 's Judge Dowling . Not all copies were acknowledged. An admitted copy (in a splendid gold frame) of The Favourite- a much-admired Scottish Art Union prize picture in Sydney-appears to have been successfully raffled at a guinea a ticket in 1849; although when this was followed by Actaeon and Diana in Joseph Grocott’s 1850 art union, there were caustic newspaper comments to the effect that he was trying to pass off a Titian as his own composition.
Backler regularly travelled around northern New South Wales and Queensland painting portraits and landscapes. He was at Tenterfield in 1860 61 and painted two known views of the town (ML dated 1861; Tenterfield Historical Society). He moved on to Glen Innes in 1862, where he executed oil portraits of William Rodgers, his wife Annie and their two unmarried daughters, Rebecca (later Mrs James Alexander Meston) and Anne (Mrs John Fletcher). Three of the Rodgers family portraits are now in the Glen Innes Historical Society’s collection; the portrait of Anne is lost. Backler reached Brisbane in 1863. He made further trips to Queensland in 1865-66 and late 1868. On the last occasion he continued on to Gympie, returning two years later (1871) to paint a life-size posthumous portrait of Governor Blackall from a large photograph given to the Gympie Dramatic Club by the Governor. Later purchased by the Brisbane Municipal Council, the painting now hangs in the Rockhampton and District Historical Society’s meeting hall at Rockhampton.
At Brisbane, Backler painted a full-length portrait of Sir Gilbert Eliott , first Speaker of the Queensland Legislative Assembly, now cut to half-length (Brisbane Civic Museum and Art Gallery, Town Hall, Brisbane). Other known sitters include James Dunlop and his wife Jean, known as Jane (c.1843, ML), Mary Faithfull with other members of her family (1845, p.c.), Andrew Hamilton Hume (c.1848, ML), a young Emily Louisa Kite (later Mrs George Lee) of Bathurst (1847, National Trust, NSW), Richard Ridge (1854) and Margaret Smail and her two children (1858, ML). Over 100 oil portraits on canvas have been identified and, apart from his portrait of Sir Hercules Robinson, Governor of NSW 1872 79, and Governor Blackall, most of his subjects were from the middle rather than upper echelons of colonial society-unromanticised images of self-made working people.
Late portraits were dependent on photography, e.g. his portrait of Sir Hercules Robinson (ML) is an enlarged copy of a J. Hubert Newman photograph. Few works, however, are known after 1880. Aged 82, Backler died of 'old age, asthma and cerebral apoplexy’ on 22 October 1895 in his home at 338 Liverpool Street, Sydney. Survived by his second wife Sarah, née Tincer, whom he apparently married soon after his first wife died in 1852, he was buried in the Church of England section of the Waverley Cemetery. The Mitchell Library holds over forty of his portraits and landscapes; in 1999-2000 it held a small exhibition of the portraits —Backler’s first retrospective.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanPearce, Barry
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1813
- Summary
- Joseph Backler made the best of his transportation to Australia by becoming a prolific and highly regarded portrait painter. He travelled the east coast taking commissions and leaving a rich legacy of 19th century Australian portraiture.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 October 1895
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, architect, surveyor and selector, was born in London on 31 July 1813, eldest son of James Woodward Turner, a prosperous builder and surveyor, and his first wife Ann, née Rockley. Thomas attended boarding school between the ages of eight and twelve and finished his education at Baron House Academy, Surrey in 1826-27. On 23 October 1829, he left Portsmouth in the Warrior with his father and step-mother Maria (his mother’s sister) and six of the seven other Turner children for the recently founded Swan River Colony in Western Australia. James Turner migrated with substantial capital and seven labourers, three of whom were accompanied by their families.
On arrival at the Swan River on 12 March 1830, the Turners and the other would-be settlers found that no suitable land was available in the district and on government advice they pioneered a settlement at Flinders Bay some 200 miles to the south. This settlement, which became Augusta, was depicted by Thomas Turner in watercolour paintings and maps dating from 1830 to 1845: simple, competent records of the development of this small, isolated and struggling place. His views include Augusta. Hardy’s Inlet; First Settlement May 1830 (Art Gallery of Western Australia [AGWA]) and several views looking across Seine Bay to the homes of the early settlers, including the Turners’ Albion House (1836, c. 1837, 1838, 1840s, AGWA) and the homes of the Bussell and Molloy families (1833, p.c. England). He also drew landscapes in the district, e.g. Limestone Cliff, Turnerian Stream, Sussex, West Australia, 1835 (AGWA).
Within a few years the Turners’ fellow landholders abandoned the area, as did most of the indentured labourers. Despite years of determined work by the family, the lack of trading opportunities finally defeated the Turners too. Thomas and his two brothers settled at Turnwood in 1832, 4½ miles by water from the parental homestead at Augusta, where they built a cottage and farm buildings and cleared and farmed the land. This was abandoned four years later after local Aborigines burnt the place down. Late in 1838 Thomas, George and John Turner settled at The Spring, within 2 miles of their father’s property, but again this proved not commercially viable. In 1840 Thomas set off with his brothers to farm at the Vasse, having earlier surveyed and mapped the Sussex district between the two places with his brothers. His Vasse sketches include views of the major home in the district, the Bussells’ Cattle Chosen (1835, 1836, AGWA).
At Dunsborough, near Busselton, Turner married Elizabeth Heppingstone on 27 April 1846. They lived in several parts of Western Australia from April 1840 to July 1852, then moved to Perth. In November he and Elizabeth, their three children and Thomas’s sister Sarah left in the Chusan for the Victorian goldfields, hastily selling their property for substantially less than its market value. After sixteen months living in a tent at Campbell’s Creek, Castlemaine, they settled on a farm at Taradale (Vic.). In August 1854 Sarah wrote to her sister that Thomas was thinking of building a cheap wattle-and-daub house with rammed earth walls, despite a prejudice against this material by settlers used to brick or stone: 'I tell Thos. he must show them what a respectable comfortable house may be made of it, you may depend on Thos. doing the cheapest and best he can and in course of time bricks etc. will come down in price’.
The family moved into the Taradale townsship in 1859 and 'Thos.’ set up formally as an architect, surveyor and mapmaker. Among his commissions was the design and supervision of the Early English Gothic Revival church of Holy Trinity at Taradale, completed 1859. In 1869 Turner exhibited, for sale, a watercolour design for a church at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute. By then he had been working from 24 Doveton Street at Ballarat for some months, having transferred his building and architectural practice there in 1868 though he continued to visit Taradale until 1872. Turner’s ink and wash drawing of nearby Elphinstone and Mt. Alexander is dated 1868. Two undated watercolours, a view of a bridge and View of Taradale from the Westward , are thought to have been done about the same time. A wash drawing, Taradale , is dated 1868 on the back. All are in the Mitchell Library.
The family next moved to Melbourne and Turner was employed as a draughtsman by the Crown Lands Office from 1874. After several moves around Victoria he and his wife settled with their younger son, Edwin, at Bargo, New South Wales in 1880, moving to Sydney three years later. In 1885 Thomas selected 2500 acres at Digby Grange, near Gunnedah, then sold out to Edwin and took up a selection at Brandon in the Forbes district. Thomas died on 3rd July 1895 -the notice of his death appeared in 'The Argus’ Thursday 4 July 1895:Deaths. Turner – On the 3rd inst., at 8 Phillipson-street, Albert-park, Thomas Turner the dearly beloved husband of Elizabeth Turner, father of Mrs. Thomas Gardner, Carlton; E. W. Turner, Gunnedah, N.S.W.; Tom H. Turner, Horsham; Geo. R. Turner, Bunbury, W.A.; and J. R. Turner, Tamworth, N.S.W., aged 82 years.
Turner’s artistic training came more from his father than from drawing lessons at boarding-school (of which sketchbooks survive). As Chapman notes, many of his drawings of houses bear a marked similarity to the architectural drawings which fill his father’s London sketchbooks (British Library). In turn, Thomas’s surveying skills, also acquired from his father, were duly passed on to Edwin whom he took on surveying expeditions. In 1860, while resident at Taradale, Thomas Turner was appointed a mining surveyor, receiving his surveyor’s certificate the following year.
Thomas Turner’s first colonial building job was to help erect the prefabricated house which James Turner had brought out from England. In later life he compiled a picture diary which included this house, and the twenty-nine other residences in which he had lived, from sketches made earlier on the spot. Several of the houses were built and presumably designed by Turner. His drawings show a sharp eye for domestic detail and include humble buildings and people going about their everyday life. Well able to convey the mood of a place, his Augusta drawings are most evocative of its isolation and poverty. Other sketches were the product of expeditions into the countryside, either on surveys or for his own enjoyment.
Writers:
Staff Writer
pathfinder
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2015
- Born
- b. 31 July 1813
- Summary
- An architect, surveyor and selector, his drawings show a sharp eye for domestic detail and include humble buildings and people going about their everyday life.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.6 August 1895
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude43.1009031 Longitude-75.2326641 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Utica, New York, USA
- Biography
- sketcher and geologist, was born in Utica, New York, on 12 February 1813, eldest son of James Dana and Harriet, née Dwight. He graduated from Yale University in 1833, and three years later became assistant to the Yale professor of natural history, Benjamin Silliman, whose daughter he married. Dana was appointed geologist to the United States Exploring Expedition under Charles Wilkes and set sail in the Peacock in August 1838. The expedition reached Sydney on 29 November 1839. Here Dana made the acquaintance of the colony’s natural historians, including Alexander Macleay and William Branwhite Clarke . Dana and Clarke made several geological excursions together, travelling to Toongabbie and Prospect on 26 December 1839 and again on 17 January 1840. A major contribution to Australian geology was Dana’s description and mapping of the rock formations between the Hunter and Shoalhaven rivers.
Clarke and Dana spent the first two weeks of January in the Illawarra district, an expedition which apparently remained a pleasant memory, for in a letter to Clarke written in September 1851 Dana recalled that the 'Illawarra District is a perfect gem of a place for geology as well as for landscape beauty; it is one of the loveliest spots on the globe’. His sketches of the area included the spectacular basaltic columns at Kiama on the south coast which, he stated, 'will bear comparison with the rocks of Staffa’. It was during his two months in New South Wales that Dana first read (in the newspapers) a brief account of Darwin’s theory of the origin of atolls. 'The paragraphs threw a flood of light over the subject and called forth feelings of peculiar satisfaction, and of gratefulness to Mr. Darwin’, he wrote in 1872. He left Sydney in the Peacock in February 1840 for New Zealand where the scientists rejoined Wilkes and the fleet.
After the expedition’s return to the United States in June 1842, Dana was retained to assist in the preparation and publication of the official reports. He was responsible for three volumes – Zoophytes (1846), Geology (1849) and Crustacea (1852) – and their accompanying atlases. He prepared most of the illustrations for the engraver and colourist himself, either from his own specimens or from his original sketches. In the preface to Crustacea: Atlas (1855) he wrote: 'After the engraving of the Plates of this Atlas was completed, a large part of the original drawings were destroyed by fire in Philadelphia. In consequence, many of the following plates which were to have been coloured from the missing drawings, are issued uncoloured … I have had, half a dozen plates excepted, neither the assistance of an amanuensis nor a draftsman. The plates, however, owe much to the artistic skill and taste of Mr. Joseph Drayton [q.v.], artist of the Expedition, who has superintended the engraving and printing and contributed in many ways to the beauty of the work’.
When his part of this project was completed in 1856 Dana returned to Yale where, in 1846, he had been appointed to his late father-in-law’s chair of natural history (later geology). His Zoophytes volume and its atlas had been especially admired and, using his notes, specimens and sketches from the expedition, Dana extended this into his seminal work, Corals and Coral Islands , published in 1872. Appleman considers Dana 'the most influential American geologist of the nineteenth century’ and 'a towering figure in the history of geology’.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 February 1813
- Summary
- An eminent US scholar, considered to be "a towering figure in the history of geology". Dana's contribution to Australian geology was his description and mapping of the rock formations between the Hunter and Shoalhaven rivers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1895
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude52.4796992 Longitude-1.9026911 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- miniaturist, watercolourist, engraver, poet, writer and botanist, was born on 20 July 1812 at 47 Newhall Street, Birmingham, England, only child of Thomas Twamley and Louisa Anne, née Meredith, daughter of a barrister and solicitor.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 July 1812
- Summary
- Miniaturist, watercolourist, engraver, poet, writer and botanist. She resided in Tasmania for most of her life and exhibited in many Intercolonial Exhibitions.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21 October 1895
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude51.4816546 Longitude-3.1791934 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cardiff, Wales, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Cardiff, Wales, educated in France and worked in Hobart, Tasmania in the Commissariat Department. Son of G.W. Evans and his first wife Jeanett, née Melville, George Francis painted Tasmanian landscapes in oils, including Risdon Cove and New Town from the Queen’s Domain (both Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1809
- Summary
- The Welsh-born Evans, son of G.W. Evans, painted Tasmanian landscapes in oils, now represented in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1895
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1806-01-01 End Date1895-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, miniaturist, etcher, engraver, lithographer and diarist, was born in Birmingham, England, on 17 May 1806, daughter of William Chapman, landlord of the Castle Hotel, and Ann Floyd, née Evett. She went to the school conducted by Hannah, Mrs William Allport, at Cedar Court, Aldridge, Staffordshire. The school had a strong artistic bias and the influence of John Glover , once drawing master there, continued in the teaching of Mrs Allport’s elder children, Henry Curzon and Mary Anne. The latter, and perhaps the former also, taught Mary Morton Chapman, who appears to have stayed on at Cedar Court as a pupil teacher after completing her schooling. She married Joseph, the Allports’ youngest son, on 20 December 1826. They lived for several years at West Bromwich, where Joseph practised as a solicitor.
The Allports sailed in the Platina for Van Diemen’s Land in July 1831, accompanied by four partners, who were connected either by marriage or long-standing friendship. They reached Hobart Town on 11 December. At Black Brush in the Brighton district, the Allports and their partners lived in what were no more than large dog kennels. Not only did Mary survive, she continued to paint in these primitive conditions. As well as making informal sketches of her surroundings, she inserted an advertisement in the Hobart Town Courier on 13 July 1832 announcing that she was prepared to paint miniatures on commission. She seems to have been the first woman in the Australian colonies to embark on such an enterprise.
Joseph was not successful as a farmer. After the partnership was dissolved on 1 September 1832, he resumed practising law, accepting a partnership with G.W. Cartwright. On 4 October the Allports moved to Hobart Town. There, in Mrs Laughton’s furnished rooms in Macquarie Street, Mary first recorded that she was painting Australian wildflowers. Later they moved to a cottage (Fairy Knowe) in upper Liverpool Street, which they purchased in March 1834. Here Mary continued to paint landscapes, flowers, natural history studies and portrait miniatures, although her commissions for the last can never have brought her more than pin money. She also began to make prints during this period. Rathmore. My First Etching M.M.A. survives, as well as a hand-coloured engraving on copper of local flowers used as a frontispiece to Elliston’s Hobart Town Almanack for 1838 .
The Allports moved to Aldridge Lodge in Elboden Street in August 1839 and at about this time Mary attempted lithography. An early example appeared in the Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science in 1841. This was the first issue of the journal of the Tasmanian Society, to which she had been admitted as a member in October of the same year – first as a corresponding but later as a resident member. Other Tasmanian lithographs include the lively Opossum Mouse from Grass Tree Hill Tasmania Drawn from Nature and on Stone by M.M. Allport and Comet of March 1843 Seen from Aldridge Lodge, V.D. Land . The latter was published in the second volume of the Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science , then reproduced in the Illustrated London News of 3 February 1844. No oil paintings survive, but it is known that she also worked in this medium, while her etchings, engravings and lithographs were the first to have been made by a woman in the Australian colonies.
Mary Morton Allport died at Aldridge Lodge on 10 June 1895 after a short illness, survived by two of her eight (?) children. She was buried in the family vault at Queenborough Cemetery.
Writers:
Stilwell, G. T.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 May 1806
- Summary
- Painter of landscapes, flowers, natural history studies and portrait miniatures. Allport's etchings, engravings and lithographs were the first to have been made by a woman in Australia and she is also believed to have been the first woman to advertise skills and willingness to paint miniature on commission.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10 June 1895
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude36.1285933 Longitude-5.3474761 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gibraltar
- Biography
- professional photographer, was working in 1867 at 200 Pitt Street, Sydney, in partnership with Walter Rice . He had his own Sydney studio in the 1870s, was at 115 Botany Road in 1879 and in Sutherland Street, Paddington, in 1882 91. In 1872 fourteen stereoscopic views by Brodie of 'the City, suburbs and harbour of Sydney’ were published by J.R. Clarke. A tiny album of carte-de-visite views of Sydney is in the Historic Photograph Collection (SU).
Turner & Henderson published fourteen of Brodie’s stereo photographs at Sydney in 1875 as Album of Views of New South Wales . Included were scenes taken in the Blue Mountains at the time of the first of the artists’ camps in the Grose Valley set up by Eccleston Du Faur (a founder of the New South Wales Geographical Society and a trustee of the National Art Gallery) in hopes of promoting the mountains as a tourist resort. The camps were intended for painters (especially W.C. Piguenit ) as well as for photographers. Du Faur paid Joseph Bischoff £40 to prepare photographs of the valley for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, but Brodie, who worked on a smaller scale, is unlikely to have been paid. At a conversazione held by the NSW Academy of Art on 10 November 1875, Du Faur admitted that neither photographer had successfully captured the sublime qualities of the place. He thought Brodie’s details 'perfect’ but complained that his plates were 'not of a size worthy of the subjects’. Nevertheless, both sets of photographs were sent to Philadelphia. There they attracted no attention whatsoever, the exhibition being full of much larger and more dramatic American landscape photographs.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1840
- Summary
- As a professional photography, Alexander Brodie took photographs of the first artists' camp in the Grose Valley in order to entice tourists. While it does not seem to have been successful, his images were exhibited in Philadelphia, USA.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 October 1894
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude41.3738765 Longitude-94.506357 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Prussia
- Biography
- Professional watchmaker, jeweller, metalsmith, retailer and landowner. Augustus John Kosvitz brought to Brisbane a wealth of information and contacts in the Australian decorative scene, and his business was responsible for bringing innovative examples of Australian decoration and metalwork to Brisbane, as well as fashioning important commissions within the colony. Kosvitz’s work was influenced by the work of Julius Hogarth, noted in his application of Australian emblematic references in his works. Son of saddler Friedrich Kosvitz and Elizabeth Schmidt, Augustus John Kosvitz was born in 1831 in Prussia. Kosvitz trained as a watchmaker in Europe, advertising that he had worked for Edward Dent in London. He arrived in Australia aboard the William Oswald on 11 April 1855. He quickly worked to establish himself within the decorative scene in Australia and by 1858 listed himself as a “Watchmaker by trade and partner to the firm of Hogarth, Erichsen & Co.” In December 1858 Kosvitz applied for a certificate of naturalisation, which was granted to him. In 1859 Kosvitz moved to Brisbane and established a retail jewellery store of his own opposite Kingsford’s drapers in Queen Street, before moving in 1860 to the fashionable newly built shops erected by Patrick Mayne, which featured large plate glass windows and acetylene gas lighting. Kosvitz’s business flourished as development within Brisbane increased after separation from New South Wales. He secured a number of commissions in the early years of his establishment, including several medals and jewels for various Masonic lodges in the Brisbane region. In 1863 Kosvitz was commissioned to fashion the silver mounting for the Drum Major’s staff for the Queensland volunteer regiment band. The staff was made of colonial light wood by Andrew Petrie and Kosvitz’s decoration included a coat of arms incorporating a kangaroo and emu. Kosvitz moved premises in September 1863 to a building in Queen Street opposite the first Parliament Building in Queensland. This shop was fitted by James Furnival. It was around this time that Kosvitz created his most elaborate commissions; including a 22 carat gold mounted whip and spurs presented to W.H. Yaldwyn from the North Australian Jockey Club in 1864. This commission once again made use of native wildlife, with a kangaroo and crest forming a part of the whip mounting, and possums decorating the rowels of the spurs. The same year Kosvitz produced the spade with which Lady Diamantina Bowen turned the sod where the first railway in Queensland was to be laid; a silver mount for a presentation cricket bat awarded after the Intercolonial Cricket Match at Green Hills in Brisbane, and a medal for the Horticultural Society of Queensland’s exhibition. In December 1864 Kosvitz’s shop was ravaged by the fire which swept Queen Street. He moved with his salvaged stock to a temporary location opposite the Australian Joint Stock Bank in Queen Street, north of his ruined premises. When Kosvitz returned to his former premises on Queen Street in 1865 he continued to produce a selection of presentation articles, as well as supply the Queensland public with various jewels, ornaments, clocks, watches and decorative items from the other Australian colonies and abroad. He was later to move to a position opposite the Supreme Court building in Queen Street. A law suit in 1865 by Kosvitz against his insurer during the period of the fire, the Queen Insurance Company, revealed the diversity of stock and manufacturers that Kosvitz sold at his premises. Notable Australian jewellers including Adolphus Blau; Berens Levi and Seligman; and Henry Schilsky all supplied wares to the store, many on consignment. A legal case in 1865 links Kosvitz to scientific instrument manufacturer Angelo Tornaghi. Like many other businesses in Brisbane at the time, the firm also sold theatre and event tickets, and other decorative furnishings on consignment. He is known to have kept staff, in 1862 he advertised a position for an apprentice, and had a employee at the time of his insolvency in 1873. In 1872 Thomas Faulkner successfully sued Kosvitz for work done. On 20 October 1868 Kosvitz married 21-year-old Elizabeth Mary Josephine Doyle, daughter of London innkeeper James Doyle. The couple bore one son, Augustus James, on 3 December 1869, and the following year travelled to the Sydney International Exhibition, where Kosvitz inspected and purchased items to retail in Brisbane. In April 1873 Kosvitz provided two exhibits at the Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition in Sydney, one with a selection of gold and mineral specimens, and another of a silver mounted emu egg, which received a commendation. Kosvitz was declared insolvent in 1873, listing the cause for this as “losses in business caused by family troubles and illness.” Preceding this had been a very public dispute between Kosvitz and his wife which resulted in the sale of the couple’s home furnishings in 1871; and increased financial strain on the business due to Kosvitz’s illness resulting from excessive drinking. In 1874 the contents of Kosvitz’s shop were disposed via auction, and that same year his wife sued him for not providing for her and their child. After the insolvency Kosvitz continued his work as a jeweller, although minimal reports were made of his business. He is listed at several addresses on Elizabeth Street, Brisbane, and Cairns Street, Kangaroo Point, for the remainder of his career. Kosvitz was admitted into the Brisbane Hospital on 3 July 1894 and died on the 12 July that year; his causes of death are listed as Mediastinal tumor and Bronchitis. He was 63 years of age. He was buried at South Brisbane Cemetery on 17 July 1894. The work and retail operations of Augustus Kosvitz allowed the expansion of a newly manifested Australian mode of decoration into the north Australian region. His influence from Julius Hogarth resulted in pieces which cited the natural history of Australia, and his stock reflected some of the innovative workmanship that was being produced by notable local manufacturers.
Writers:
Timothy Roberts
Note:
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 1831
- Summary
- Queensland-based watchmaker, jeweller and metalsmith who produced presentation pieces and jewellery in gold and silver. A former employee of Hogarth, Erichsen & Co., Kosvitz introduced a variety of colonial jewellery styles to Queensland through his retail operations and commissions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 July 1894
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude21 Longitude78 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- India
- Biography
- sketcher and teacher, was born in India, son of John Hinder junior. Educated in Ireland, he came to Adelaide in the Hughli in 1846, but by 1849 he was at Ebenezer, New South Wales, apprenticed to a builder. In 1852 he began a long teaching career at St James’s Church of England School at Pitt Town, subsequently teaching at Anglican schools in Kelso (from 1857), Wilberforce (1860) and Smithfield (1871). Appointed principal of the Protestant Orphan School at Parramatta in 1873, he remained there until he retired. An oval pencil drawing of a rural scene and residence (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW) is inscribed on the back of the mount: 'This primitive picture is thought to be a sketch by Edward Robert Hinder, when a young man living in Ebenezer. He had no formal art training, but as a hobby throughout his life he sketched and copied pictures’.
Hinder married Miss Sophia Ford at Wilberforce (near Ebenezer) on 11 February 1851. Their son, Robert John, was headmaster of East Maitland High School for twenty-five years, while another son, Dr Henry Vincent Critchley Hinder (1865-1913), was a noted art collector, father of artist Frank Hinder. Edward Hinder died in his home at Summer Hill, Sydney, on 15 June 1894.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1829
- Summary
- Sketcher and teacher, was born in India,, he came to Adelaide in 1846 then moved to NSW soon after. He had no formal art training, but sketched as a hobby.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15 June 1894
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude51.1638175 Longitude10.4478313 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Germany
- Biography
- engraver, professional photographer(?) and vigneron, was born at Aschersleben, Prussia, in February 1828, son of Tibertus Andrew Arristoft Grosse and his wife Dorothea. He came to Adelaide in the Caesar Godefroy in January 1854 but left for Melbourne in the Mazeppa a few days later. After spending some time on the goldfields in the neighbourhood of Bendigo, he set up business in Melbourne as a designer and wood-engraver, first at 30 Russell Street but by December 1856 in Neeve’s Building, 62 Collins Street East, where he remained until 1868. He did two engravings of fish for Blandowski in 1856 and appears to have been involved in the formation of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts that October, exhibiting at its only exhibition in 1857. He also showed work at the Victorian Exhibition of 1861, then seems to have no further involvement in any art society or exhibition.
Grosse is best known as a reproductive engraver, having engraved for nearly all the illustrated magazines and newspapers in Melbourne up to the time he entered government service. His earliest recorded work is in the first issue of Melbourne Punch on 2 August 1855. He was later involved with James Smith, Nicholas Chevalier and William Detmold in the production of the Illustrated Melbourne News , which began on 2 January 1858 and closed a month later. In addition to his illustrative work, Grosse engraved the punches for various Victorian postage stamps issued in 1860 (Beaded Ovals) and 1863-67 (Laureated Series).
In association with Rudolph Jenny , who seems to have been his employee until succeeding to the Collins Street business, Grosse patented 'Bismuthography’ on 16 February 1861. This arrangement by which lines formed of bismuth are made to stand out in relief on a zinc plate does not seem to have been practical for reproducing line drawings and there are no records of its use, though Grosse and Jenny may have used it for the production of printing blocks in their own business. Grosse or a member of his family possibly tried photography about this time; 'R.’ Grosse was listed as a photographer at 72 Collins Street East in 1861.
Appointed supernumerary wood-engraver to the Government Printing Office on 11 June 1868, Grosse subsequently produced hundreds of wood-engravings for department publications, the principal one being Robert Brough Smyth’s The Goldfields and Mineral Districts of Victoria (Melbourne 1869) and The Aborigines of Victoria (Melbourne 1878). On 1 July 1877 he was given a permanent appointment as engraver and electrotyper, but on 31 December 1880 his office was abolished and he was dismissed with compensation.
He became a full-time vigneron. He had planted a vineyard at Thomastown as early as 1857 but the area proved unsuitable. In 1864 he purchased the Tooronga Vineyard on Emu Creek, Strathfieldsaye, from Albert Bruhn and from 1872 was exhibiting award-winning wines at various local and overseas exhibitions. In May 1881 he opened the Bendigo Wine Cellars at 106 Collins Street West and in 1889 brought out Maurice Steiner, formerly manager of the Royal Hungarian Model Cellars, Budapest, to act as his cellar manager. Shortly before his death phylloxera was discovered in the vineyard and all vines were uprooted in December 1893.
Grosse died of pneumonia at St Kilda, Melbourne, on 5 October 1894 and was buried in the St Kilda Cemetery. His wife Sophia, née Hanstein, had predeceased him on 6 October 1887.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. February 1828
- Summary
- Frederick Grosse was an engraver, vigneron and probably professional photographer. Born in Prussia, he came to Melbourne via Adelaide in 1854. Grosse is best known as a reproductive engraver. In 1868 he was appointed supernumerary wood-engraver to the Government Printing Office. Later he purchased the Tooronga Vineyard on Emu Creek, Strathfieldsaye and from 1872 was exhibiting award-winning wines
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 October 1894
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, sculptor and carver, was born in London, son of William Scurry, architect, and Mary née Rodd. He married at London in about 1847, but his wife died before he migrated to Australia and they had no children. Although nothing is known of his art training, Scurry exhibited five portrait busts and three medallions at the Royal Academy between 1850 and 1852 when he was living in London so he was possibly a student at the Academy Schools. His busts included one of J.E.D. Rodgers, professor of chemistry at the St George’s School of Medicine (RA 1850), a posthumous bust of William B. Essex, son of the enamel painter to Queen Victoria (RA 1852) and a plaster bust of his father (RA 1851).
James Scurry came to Melbourne in about 1853 with at least three brothers: Alfred, Frederick and William G. That year he sketched and dated four fine pencil views of local scenery, remarkable for their skill and delicacy – Coles Wharf 1853 from South Side of the Yarra , View from the Flagstaff Hill , View on the Yarra and Sandridge Pier – which he presented to the Victorian National Collections in 1884 (La Trobe Library [LT]). A pastel portrait of his brother Frederick and a self-portrait (LT) date from about the same time.
No other landscapes are known, but Scurry sometimes accompanied his exhibited three-dimensional work with 'sketches’ – a term that could have referred to rough three-dimensional work rather than works on paper. At the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art, listed as a colonial artist of 94 Russell Street, he showed five sculptures and a medal designed and modelled for the Agricultural Society of Australia. They were accompanied by Sketch for a Figure of 'Mercy’, Modelled for the New Houses of Parliament , and Sketch for the Figure of a Monk . The former, like his Basso Relievo, Morning , Ornamental Bracket for a Figure or Bust and Figure of 'Justice’ for New Council Chambers , was for the Assembly and Legislative Council Chambers of Peter Kerr and J.G. Knight’s Parliament House, Melbourne, where Scurry was employed under the superintendence of the sculptor Charles Summers . Presumably, Scurry’s Miniature Bust of a Gentleman and Bust of a Lady , shown in the same exhibition, were private commissions.
When work on both chambers of parliament was completed at the end of 1856 Scurry went into partnership with his colleague John Simpson Mackennal , father of the more famous sculptor Bertram Mackennal RA. They worked from Scurry’s 94 Russell Street studio, chiefly on architectural sculpture. A foundation member of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts in 1856, Scurry also showed work in its exhibitions. In the first (1857), he showed Study of a Female Head , busts of the actor Charles Young and his wife, a plaster alto-relievo of Ariel and a medallion portrait of John Pascoe Fawkner. The firm of Mackennal & Scurry won a certificate of merit for the best draped figure: Scurry’s Ariel . At the Society’s 1860 exhibition Scurry showed a bas-relief Night , a medallion and Posthumous Bust of W.G. Scurry -his brother William, who had died in Victoria.
The firm exhibited 'Cement Vases: [and] Sketches for Fountains’ at the Society’s 1861 exhibition, then Scurry sent two designs for fountains and a design for a chimney-piece to the 1862 London International Exhibition. Sculptures shown at subsequent exhibitions included Figure: Francesca (Melbourne Intercolonial 1866), a fountain (Ballarat Mechanics Institute 1869) and a bust of Charles Summers (Melbourne International 1880). An undated plaster bust of Lanney , last male member of the group of Tasmanian Aborigines rounded up by George Augustus Robinson , is at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston, while other Aboriginal portrait busts are in the National Museum of Victoria.
Scurry was a founding member of the Victorian Academy of Arts (VAA) in 1870. He re-visited England in 1872 then returned to his architectural decoration and sculpture business in 1874. His plaster relief sculpture, The Shearer , modelled for the Art Union of Victoria, predateds Tom Roberts’s 'strong masculine labour’ by almost a decade (see Jane Clark). After his return he took his nephew William into the business, where he remained for thirteen years. Scurry retired to England in 1885 but later returned again. After a three-year illness, he died at his Melbourne residence, 57 William Street, North Carlton, on 4 May 1894, aged sixty-seven. The unusual headstone over his grave in the Melbourne General Cemetery was evidently to his own design.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1826
- Summary
- Sketcher, sculptor and carver, James Scurry was a founding member of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts in 1856.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 May 1894
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude50.725556 Longitude-3.526944 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Exeter, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- landscape painter and teacher, was headmistress of the girls’ school Rosebank in Darlinghurst, Sydney and a pupil of Conrad Martens . Two Sydney views (Mitchell Library) attributed to her – Christ Church, Sydney (1858) and South Head (c.1858) – were perhaps done as his student. Miss Martin exhibited as an amateur from an address in Macquarie Street in the watercolour section of the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, showing From Darling Point (after Martens) , Balmain (after Martens) , North Head (after Martens) , The Gap (after Terry [ F.C. Terry ]) , On Wollongong Road (after Terry) , Copy from Lithograph, by Harding and three original watercolours from nature: From Milson’s Point, North Shore , Falls, Mossman’s Bay and Island Scenery . She regularly exhibited as an amateur with the NSW Academy of Art, her New England views being much admired in 1872. Other paintings exhibited with the academy were: Fernhill, near Mulgoa (Residence of E.K. Cox, Esq.) (oil, shown 1874) and Manly Beach Harbour, from the South (waterccolour, shown 1876).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
KayeSchofield
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. c.1 January 1826
- Summary
- Female colonial headmistress in Sydney who painted and exhibited oil and watercolour landscapes and copied works by other artists.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16 October 1894
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, U.K.
- Biography
- painter and draughtsman, was born in London on 8 May 1824, one of the eight children – three boys and five girls – of the London engraver, lithographer and watercolour painter Henry Melville (1826-41) and his wife, Martha, née Harden. Harden’s career as a painter began with lessons from his father and at school but, as he explained in his (third person) autobiographical The Adventures of a Griffin on a Voyage of Discovery. Written by Himself (London 1867), he speedily began to regard with conceited contempt the drawing master’s copy, and acquired with some readiness the power of drawing from nature; and so in a few years, during which a medal had been gained at the Society of Arts, a picture or two placed near the ground at the [Royal] Academy Exhibition, and a provincial sketching tour or so had been accomplished, the young art-student became confirmed in his calling.
Indeed H.S. Melville had three paintings hung in the Royal Academy’s summer show between 1837 and 1841. They were sent in from the same London addresses as his brother Henry Alfred Melville , then also practising as a painter.
Splendid visions of the South Pacific acquired from reading Captain Cook’s Voyages as a boy, said Harden, induced him to accept the position of draughtsman on board HMS Fly in 1841. Under the command of Captain Francis Price Blackwood Fly and her tender Bramble conducted the first official hydrographic survey of the north-east coast of Australia in 1842 46. Melville later regretted this 'time given up from the regular practice of my profession and spent either in countries which rarely offered anything worthy of its exercise, or under circumstances which made that exercise almost impossible’. He found Australia very dreary, writing of 'the dull, matter-of-fact, dense, unchanging and monotonous forests of the vast and tractless Australian regions’, which he compared unfavourably with the romantic palm trees and spice groves of the East.
Nevertheless, a considerable body of Australian work is known. Original shipboard sketches of Pacific subjects are included in John Sweatman 's journal (ML). Bush Scene, Swan River, W.A. is in the National Library. The Adventures of a Griffin contains a frontispiece and twenty-nine other illustrations drawn on the wood by Melville from his original voyage sketches, then cut by H.N. Woods. They include Fern Tree Valley near Hobarton , Wombeyan Cave [NSW] and other picturesque views. How the Natives Danced the Corrobary was seen and sketched at Port Stephens (NSW), while two of the Aboriginal figures in Bush Scene – Port Stephens were, he said, 'taken at Sydney; the rest were taken on the spot’.
While in Van Diemen’s Land from 28 August to 30 September 1842, Melville drew 'a sketch of Lady Franklin’s native girl [Mathinna, see Thomas Bock ]; she seemed intelligent, but was very ugly, and of a more coppery colour than Australian blacks’. He was a member of the party that accompanied Governor Sir John Franklin in the government yacht on a tour of inspection of the penal stations on the Tasman Peninsula. When about to leave Port Arthur, 'the draughtsman [Melville] promised his Captain to make an oil sketch of two favourite Kangaroo-dogs of Captain Booth, the Commandant’ – the dogs having saved Booth’s life. According to Melville, the ship’s departure was delayed to allow him to finish this painting.
Annette Macarthur Onslow has discovered that Melville visited Camden Park in 1845; Emily Macarthur recorded it in her diary:
16 October – Went to the school. Hannibal, Emmeline and Mr. Melville came. Fires in the evening. [From that time there was a bit of sight seeing, driving around here and there, etc.]
17 October – Mr. Melville sketched Pussy [the pet name of Elizabeth Macarthur , then five years old. There were three sittings on different days until]
24 October – Mr. Melville left for Illawarra.
The National Library of Australia owns two coloured drawings of Elizabeth at exactly this age, which it claim are by Emily Macarthur, following an unconvincing attribution by Susanna de Vries. But such competent portrait sketches were well outside Emily’s artistic range and are clearly by a professional artist. They were presumably sold to the library by the distant relative to whom they had been bequeathed by Elizabeth Rothe, the last family member to own them.
By 1847 Harden S. Melville was back in London, living at 67 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. As well as providing nineteen drawings and two maps for Joseph Beete Jukes’s official Narrative of the Surveying Voyage of H.M.S. Fly… (2 vols, London, 1847) he published a collection of twenty-five tinted lithographs (hand-coloured in the expensive edition), each with a leaf of descriptive notes, titled Sketches in Australia and the Adjacent Islands (London, 1849). Included are views of Port Essington (Northern Territory), the Queensland and New South Wales coasts, Port Phillip, Van Diemen’s Land, the Swan River (WA), New Guinea, Timor, Java and other places visited.
He seems to have provided all but one of the full-page illustrations in Ludwig Leichhardt’s Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia, from Moreton Bay to Port Essington…1844 1845 (London, 1847), the exception being Charles Rodius ' drawing of the two NSW Aborigines who accompanied Leichhardt, Charley Fisher (from Bathurst) and Harry Brown (from Newcastle), which was undoubtedly drawn in Sydney. Some of John Murphy 's drawings were apparently used as small, unacknowledged vignettes in Leichhardt’s book, but the full-page illustrations, like Lagoon near the S. Alligator and Ranges Seen from a Granite Hill between the 2nd and 3rd Camp at the Burdekin , were of places Melville had visited on board the Fly . Victoria Square, Port Essington is actually a duplicate of Melville’s view in Jukes’s Voyage . The fact that Harden’s father lithographed the plates doubtless explains his involvement. Harden also supplied five illustrations of Australian Aborigines and their weapons for James Greenwood’s Curiosities of Savage Life (London, 1864). He added several of the figures introduced into views drawn by S.C. Brees when Brees published them as Pictorial Illustrations of New Zealand (London, 1848), with the lithographer again being Henry Melville senior. As well, Harden was one of the painters employed to turn Brees’s New Zealand sketches into a full-scale London panorama in 1849.
Melville showed two paintings and a drawing of an equestrian statue at the Royal Academy in 1859 and 1864 65; ten works appeared at the British Institution in 1848 65; and he exhibited seventeen works at the Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street between 1847 and 1879. Only one appears to have been of an Australian subject, an oil painting entitled The Squatter’s Hut – News from Home (NGA), shown at Suffolk Street in 1851. Issued as a colour-etched and wood-engraved 'Baxter print’ in 1853 titled Australia. News from Home , it depicts three men in a rough bush hut containing their possessions, a pet sulphur-crested cockatoo and numerous dogs. Two hideous caricatures of Aborigines have just delivered a letter and a copy of the Illustrated London News (showing the Crystal Palace, London) which two of the men are avidly reading. A more sentimental companion print, News from Australia , was produced in 1854 (at the height of the Victorian gold-rush), possibly after a painting by Chester Earles . It shows an elderly cobbler and his wife in their British hovel listening to their daughter reading a letter from Australia while their son jumps with joy at the £100 note enclosed, seemingly about to heed the poster on the wall advertising emigration to Melbourne in the ship Hope . As a pair, they were among the most popular of the well-known Baxter prints. Melville obviously varied his style for his market. The Aborigines in the English oil painting and print bear little relation to the sympathetic ethnographic illustrations he made as a naval draughtsman, e.g. the group of sensitively drawn Aborigines in the foreground of his view of the hospital at Victoria, Port Essington (1846).
Harden S. Melville has been confused with his brother, Henry Alfred Melville, who lived in Sydney from about 1841 until he died, aged thirty, in 1849. Although trained as a painter and exhibiting work at major London art exhibitions between 1826 and 1841 Henry junior worked as a schoolteacher in New South Wales. As the Sydney Morning Herald stated in 1847, when Henry was operating his Commercial Academy at 30 Elizabeth Street, he was 'following, from necessity, another profession’. Although not known to have painted in Sydney, Henry may have exhibited an old work there: Scene from the Lord of the Isles . A scene from Lord Howe Island, however, identified in the Herald of 24 July 1847 as being by 'H.A. Melville’ was surely by Harden, Lord Howe being on the Fly 's itinerary.
All the Melville paintings shown at the second exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia in 1849 were demonstrably by Harden. James Melville lent Sporting on the Moors , while Charles Rodius (Harden’s fellow illustrator in the Leichhardt journals) exhibited Harden’s The Flute Player , considered to be 'A drawing from the hand of a true artist, full of colour, character, and effect’. Cornelius Delohery showed Harden’s Poacher in a Storm , labelled 'another favourable specimen of the talents of this artist in a different branch’. Design from Scottish History by 'H.S. Melville’, called 'A drawing of a high character in the Cattermole school, affording another evidence of the varied talent of the artist’, was lent by H.A. Melville. His English work also appeared in New South Wales e.g. Bloodhound with Armour was shown (non-competitively) by Sidney Douglass at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition.
On 22 October 1851, Melville married Fanny Beale in the parish of Speen, County of Berkshire. In 1881 there were at least five living children of the marriage: Frances E., another Harden S., Henry B. (an artist), Jessie M. and Lydia. Harden S. Melville died in North London in the second quarter of 1894.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 May 1824
- Summary
- A painter of English origin, he conducted the first official hydrographic survey of the north-east coast of Australia in 1842-46. He regretted this time given up from the regular practice of painting profession.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1894
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude53.55 Longitude10 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamburg, Germany
- Biography
- lithographic artist, engraver and draughtsman, was born in Hamburg, Germany, son of Joseph Hamel, an accountant, and Frederica, née Bloch. He studied in Hamburg and Paris then moved to Nottingham, England. Hamel came to Victoria in the Great Britain , arriving at Melbourne on 12 November 1852. After spending about a year on the Bendigo and Ballarat goldfields he moved to Melbourne and worked as a lithographic artist and draughtsman with J.S. Campbell & Co. and the succeeding firms of Campbell & Fergusson, and Fergusson & Mitchell. He lithographed E.L. Bateman 's drawing McIvor Diggings, July 26, 1853 , published by J.S. Campbell & Co., but most of his work at this time was in the form of sale plans, many of which included small vignettes of scenery or buildings.
In 1857 Hamel went into partnership with Henry Locher . They exhibited specimens of lithographic chalk printing and chromolithography in the 1858 Victorian Industrial Society Exhibition but the partnership terminated with Locher’s death that year. Hamel then operated as Hamel & Co., his firm exhibiting specimens of lithography and engraving on vellum at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition. He joined with the lithographic printer John Ferguson in 1864. The firm of Hamel & Ferguson is now best known for printing and publishing von Gué rard 's Australian Landscapes (1866-67) and S.T. Gill 's Australian Sketchbook (1865). The partnership was dissolved in 1889 and Hamel continued on his own account until bankrupted in 1893; then his business was assigned for the benefit of his creditors and sold.
Hamel was closely involved with the St Kilda School of Art and Design, being its superintendent in the early 1870s. He resigned in March 1873. He was a member of the Victorian Lithographic Artists and Engravers Club but did not join any local fine art society. Well known in Australian chess circles, he played in the first chess tournament in Melbourne and in intercolonial matches in 1879, 1880 and 1884, was a foundation member of the Melbourne Chess Club and later an honorary member.
Hamel had married Harriet, fourth daughter of William Eldershaw, a stationer of London, and Harriet, née Casey, in Christ Church, St Kilda, on 1 November 1862. He died at his St Kilda home on 14 May 1894 and was buried in St Kilda Cemetery, survived by his wife and seven children. His son Edward Henry was a lithographic draughtsman and illuminator while William Sigismund, also a lithographic printer, carried on his father’s business for a time.
Very little original work by Hamel is recorded apart from his many illuminated addresses (La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne). The finest of these in Australia is the set of Statistics of the Municipality of St Kilda, made in 1861 and shown at that year’s Victorian Exhibition. Hamel, as Hamel & Ferguson, illuminated some fine addresses presented to Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh on his Australian tour in 1867-68, all now in the Thuringisches Staatsarchiv at Schloss Friedenstein, Gotha, where a large and complete collection of original addresses presented during his various visits to Australia is held. One was given to the duke by the Melbourne City Council on the laying of the foundation stone of the Town Hall. Another, presented by the Corporation of Melbourne, was reported by the Argus of 25 November 1867, p.6, to have included 'beautifully executed coloured vignettes of the principal buildings of the city – some being drawn as they now are, and others as we hope one day to see them’ (ill. Hawkins). Both were bound by William Detmold and cased by Henry U. Alcock (ill. Hawkins). The Argus noted that the same artists (the firm of Hamel & Ferguson) had also finished another address for presentation by 'the Hebrew congregation of Bourke-street’. On 27 December 1867 the Duke laid the Foundation stone of the Mechanics Institute at East Collingwood and again received a Hamel & Ferguson illuminated address. This one included vignettes of stonemasons at work and an elevation of the completed neoclassical building (Hawkins, 96-97, ill. 97).
In 1867-68 Hamel lithographed a series of illustrations for Dicker’s Mining Record consisting of copies of German mining scenes from old German prints and Ballarat mining scenes based on photographs. In 1859 he had published a series of portraits titled The Men of Victoria , but whether or not these were drawn by him is unknown. At least one portrait was by Frederick Schoenfeld , whom Hamel employed as a lithographic artist.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1822
- Summary
- Lithographic artist, engraver and draughtsman, very little original work by Hamel is recorded apart from his many illuminated addresses. Hamel, as Hamel & Ferguson, illuminated some fine addresses presented to Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh on his Australian tour in 1867-68.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 May 1894
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude13.1500331 Longitude-59.5250305 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Barbados
- Biography
- sketcher, etcher, art patron, gallery director and businessman, born in Barbados and educated in London, was the second son of Isaac Levi, a London merchant with extensive interests in Barbados, and Esther Hanna, née Montefiore.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1820
- Summary
- Sketcher, etcher, art patron, gallery director and businessman, he helped establish the New South Wales Academy of Art and the National Art Gallery of New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 October 1894
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude53.1908873 Longitude-2.8908955 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Chester, England, UK
- Biography
- marine and natural history painter, was born on 19 May 1817 at Chester, England, son of a local doctor with artistic interests.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 19 May 1817
- Summary
- Oswald Walters Brierly was a well-respected marine and natural history painter whose works are held in many public and private collections in Australia and England.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 December 1894
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude51.2094511 Longitude-2.6451203 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wells, Somersetshire, England, UK
- Biography
- miniaturist, sketcher, public servant, geologist, barrister, politician and faith-healer, was born in Wells, Somersetshire, sixth son of John and Mary Stephen.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1812
- Summary
- Throughout his artistic life Stephen worked as a miniaturist and sketcher, offset by such occupations as public servant, geologist, barrister, politician and faith healer (it is said that he even treated the Prince of Wales).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 January 1894
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude39.3260685 Longitude-4.8379791 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1894-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Spain
- Biography
- amateur photographer and monk, was born in Spain on 5 July 1811, son of Peter Salvado and his wife Francisca Rotea. Salvado learned photography in Spain at the court of Queen Isabella II where he was for many years chaplain and confessor to the Queen. While at the Escorial, the monastery of the court, he practised this new science. There were several revolutions in Spain at the time and Santos Salvado decided to accompany his younger brother, Bishop Rosendo Salvado, back to the now flourishing Benedictine monastery at New Norcia in Western Australia which Rosendo had established in 1846. He arrived at Fremantle in the Robert Morrison on 3 May 1869, accompanying his brother and 47 tons of baggage and objets d’art for the monastery.
Fr Salvado immediately proceeded to record every facet of life in the New Norcia area. His glass plates, still carefully preserved in the New Norcia Museum, are an invaluable record of Aboriginal and mission life in the late 1860s and 1870s. Several depict Aboriginal students of the Mission College for Natives established by his brother in 1848, either on their own or in the company of one or more of the Benedictine brothers. After about ten years at the monastery, during which time he served as prior for a year, Salvado returned to Spain, possibly in February 1879. He died on 17 April 1894.
Writers:
Pheloung, Ann
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 July 1811
- Summary
- Born in Spain, Santos Salvado arrived in Fremantle on 3 May 1869, accompanying his brother and 47 tons of baggage and objects d'art for the Benedictine monastery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 April 1894
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude52.3730796 Longitude4.8924534 Start Date1849-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Biography
- Simon Peter van Kaspelen was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, sometime around 1849. He first became known in Australia when he was working as a portrait artist in Mount Gambier, South Australia, in 1880. By 1882 van Kaspelen was working in Port Augusta, where he advertised his services in the South Australian Advertiser (12 June 1882): “For really artistic and life-like Portraits wholly drawn in Crayon (no Photographic enlargements worked up), send to Van Kaspelen, Port Augusta.”
Around this time he married and briefly lived in Adelaide. By 1884 van Kaspelen was living in Sydney, where he was employed by the prominent art dealer W. Aldenhoven. At Aldenhoven’s, van Kaspelen continued to produce crayon portraits from photographs up to the time of his death and was regarded by the art dealer as the finest artist of this technique working in Australia ( Sydney Morning Herald , 13 January 1893, p. 5).
The artist was a heavy drinker and was known to become violent when intoxicated. In late 1892 van Kaspelen attacked Aldenhoven in the throat. A newspaper report of the inquest suggests that van Kaspelen was not dismissed, however, because Aldenhoven valued his work ( ibid ). Instead, he was banned from going to Aldenhoven’s gallery, his work being sent to his home. In December 1892 van Kaspelen’s wife left him due to his violent behaviour. On 12 January 1893 he shot dead Mrs Annie Wilson at his home in Bourke Street, Woolloomooloo, Sydney, in the belief that she was his wife. Van Kaspelen then killed himself in his room. The murder suicide gained much press attention at the time.
Writers:
Silas Clifford-Smith
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1849
- Summary
- Dutch-born artist who specialised in making life-size French crayon portraits from photographs. He was active in Australia from 1880-1893.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 January 1893
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter and scene-painter, was born in England on 14 January 1848, son of Dr Rupert Pincott and Ann, née Stow. The family sailed for Victoria in the Eliza , landing at Portland on 9 April 1853. On 31 August they reached Geelong in the Francis Henty , where they settled. Young Pincott began his schooling at Geelong Grammar. In 1869 he exhibited six watercolours and one chalk drawing of local scenery at the Geelong Mechanics Institute and three watercolours and the same chalk drawing ( Wreck of the Light of the Age at Queenscliff ) at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute. The You Yangs, from Drysdale and possibly Queenscliff and Point Nepean from Swan Bay were watercolours common to both exhibitions. In 1871 he exhibited an oil painting of Buckley Falls at Fyansford in Geelong. The following year he showed views of Cora Lynn (Tasmania) and several New Zealand scenes at the town’s newly established Frank’s Art Gallery.
In 1873 Pincott held his fourth art union at Geelong, offering six of his large oil paintings of colonial scenery as prizes. The views of the Grampians and Loutit Bay he exhibited in 1874 were considered some of 'the most picturesque and romantic scenery in the colony’ by the Geelong Advertiser . He showed four paintings with the Victorian Academy of Arts at Melbourne in 1874: three views of New Zealand and a Geelong scene, Early Morn on the Barwon . The latter and Sunset, Mount Cook were thought by the special reporter of the Geelong Advertiser to be evidence of 'Pincott’s reputation as an artist of considerable promise’. The Victorian and New Zealand landscapes he exhibited with the academy in 1875 were praised, Lady Mountain Lake being especially noted as 'a remarkable piece of scenery’ with 'weird and gloomy features’.
Pincott’s private commissions included three paintings ( Loutit Bay , The West Coast of New Zealand and The Grampians ) completed in 1875 for Mr Ayrey of Warren Hope Station. Lovers Leap , a precipitous ledge of rock above the Moorabool River, was done at the same time for John Wallace of Ballark. He also held 'classes for instruction in oil and watercolour painting’ in the town, but the patronage of the squattocracy proved the more lucrative and in 1876 he advised his pupils that he was unable to resume classes until March as there was 'so much work in the Horsham area’. In fact, classes did not resume until July. His Wimmera patrons included the aforementioned Mr Ayrey, for whom Pincott painted five more oil views of his station before May 1877, including the homestead, the training stables and the Richardson River.
Pincott continued to hold regular art unions of his work. In September 1877 eighty subscribers were attracted to a lottery which offered as prizes Early Morning on the Barwon , Melbourne from Brander’s Ferry and The You Yangs Taken From the Rural District of Drysdale . As reported in the Geelong Advertiser of 26 September 1877, the last was won by Robert McDonald, a chemist of Ryrie Street. Pincott finished another oil painting in October, described as 'a piece of bush scenery on the road to St Leonard’s’. In December he was at the gold-mining town of Creswick completing a drop-scene measuring 19 × 17 feet (5.79 × 5.18 m) for the Town Hall stage. He worked sporadically as a scene-painter – usually at Christmas-time when the spectacular pantomime scenery required extra hands – at the Theatre Royal, Hobart Town, and as assistant to John Hennings at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne in 1876 and 1880.
Apart from such short breaks Pincott continued to paint in and around Geelong until 1882, then travelled to San Francisco where he is said to have exhibited some of his paintings. He was back at Geelong by 1889, the year he painted the monochrome watercolour Paper Mill on the Barwon (Geelong Art Gallery).
Pincott died at Perth, Western Australia, on 27 February 1893. Most of his paintings remain in private collections.
Writers:
Fox, Paul
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 January 1848
- Summary
- Henry Stow (Harry) Pincott was a painter, teacher and a scene-painter. He worked at the Theatre Royal, Hobart Town. In 1876 and 1880 Pincott worked at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 February 1893
- Age at death
- 45
Details
Latitude-31.9559 Longitude115.8606 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Perth, WA, Australia
- Biography
- Painter, teacher, art teacher and silk painter was born in Perth, Western Australia on 12 October 1845 to Walkinshaw Cowan and his wife Elizabeth n_e Dyer. Cowan had arrived in 1839 aboard the Brothers, his wife eight years earlier on the Drummore. At the time of Jessie’s birth Cowan was 'Clerk to Council’ a position he achieved the year of his arrival. In 1846 he became Secretary of the Government Grammar School but by 1848 was the Protector of the Aborigines 'Over the Hills’ in the rural district of York, Western Australia where he became Resident Magistrate from 1873-88. The family home is now the Residency Museum in York. It is not known how Jessie was educated. Many of the daughters of the gentry learnt from their parents or governesses, the other classes at the convents run by Irish nuns or at the “chapel” schools. Given their later skills it is possible the Cowans were sent to Perth to the Young Ladies Academy, which offered “Every facility afforded to young ladies for the acquirement of a thorough English Education”. This was run by the Sisters of Mercy who advertised that they taught French, Italian, music, drawing, painting in watercolours and illuminating. Eldest sister Agnes and Mrs Knight opened a boarding school in Perth in the late 1860s. In 1868 when Mrs Knight retired Jessie and sisters Annie and Lily went to help at the school. Jessie taught drawing. A pupil, Edith Dircksey Brown, married their brother James in 1879 before becoming a noted feminist and the first woman parliamentarian in Australia. Edith’s elder sister Blanche was also a pupil at the boarding school. Jessie assisted at the school until her own marriage in 1874 to Joseph Hillman, brother of the diarist. They had three children Alfred born 1875, Jessie 1881 and Lillian 1883. A stillborn child was delivered in 1879 and she nearly died having Jessie. Hillman who had been a clerk in the Western Australia Bank before they married became a clerk at the Treasury and Public Works in 1874. In 1881 he was Government Clerk in the newly opened Railway Department. Hillman was also treasurer of the Turf Club from 1874 and member of the Weld Club committee. In the Hillman diaries Jessie is recorded as dressing as “[c]omin thro’ the Rye” to the Rinking Club’s fancy dress ball held in the Perth Town Hall 17th October, 1878. Roller skating was apparently a favoured pastime. A rink was even set up by Lady Robinson in the Government House grounds where the ballroom is now. In August 1881 the Hillmans moved from Perth to live in North Fremantle with Agnes who had opened another school, which ran from 1876 to 1887. This was a large three-storey building which had been a hotel. In 1881 they attended the International Exhibition arranged by Joubert and Twopeny in Perth in their “[i]ron palace on the green”. Not long after this she painted the lilies on her ex-pupil Blanche Habgood’s dress. She died in 1893. Blanche Mary Elizabeth Brown (b.1860) was a pupil at the boarding school. Blanche was the daughter of Kenneth Brown, pastoralist, a partner with his brother Maitland at “Glengarry”, Champion Bay and his first wife Mary Eliza Dircksey Wittenoom, teacher and daughter of the colonial chaplain the Rev. J. B. Wittenoom. In 1880 Blanche married Robert Henry Habgood, son of Robert Mace Habgood jeweller and merchant of Perth and London, Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. Jessie is noted for the lilies painted on Blanche’s wedding dress. The two-piece dress of heavy cream ribbed silk and silk taffeta was made from the same fabric that her sister Edith had used the previous year for her wedding dress. About two years after her wedding Blanche’s dress was 'renovated’ to become an evening gown. At this time the sleeves were removed and the tiger lilies were painted onto the taffeta panels. Edith Cowan later surmised it might have been dyed in coffee to change its colour before being painted by Jessie Hillman “who painted beautifully”. Today it has a plain tight bodice with pointed waist, deep V d_colletage and the small puffed shoulder straps so fashionable about 1882. The bodice is trimmed at the waist with grosgrain ribbon. The silk taffeta panels are painted with pink and white tiger lilies with green leaves and stems. Helena, wife of Blanche’s son Robert wore the dress to a Western Australian Centenary ball in 1929. The dress has been stabilised and restored with a gift from the Utah foundation. It is permanently on display at Stirling House, the headquarters of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 October 1845
- Summary
- Jessie Shippard Cowan was a painter, art teacher and a silk painter. Her eldest sister Agnes and Mrs Knight opened a boarding school in Perth in the late 1860s and Jessie taught drawing there. She died in 1893.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1893
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1839-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Robert Saunder Rayment was born in London in 1839. From an early age Rayment showed a talent for painting but, in deference to his parents, he studied law. After qualifying, he returned to art, visiting the Tate and National Galleries in London where he copied the work of watercolourists such as J.M.W. Turner. Rayment became a pupil of John Ruskin and in 1870 joined the Langham Sketching Club but little is known of his career in England. In 1887 he migrated to Australia, arriving in Brisbane on 1 July. Rayment was determined to contribute to this new society: the month after his arrival, he exhibited watercolours of 'Milton Reach from Grey Street Ferry’, 'Sandgate’ and 'Hamilton Reach from Braeside’ at the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association. He also contributed paintings to the Queensland Court at the Centennial International Exhibition, Melbourne in 1888.
Rayment’s first two years in Queensland were spent travelling and painting pictures, some on commission for owners of stations. However, Rayment’s arrival in Queensland coincided with an economic depression so he also taught drawing at the Brisbane Technical College, the Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School, Miss O’Connor’s School at Oxley and at Miss Clark’s School at Toowong to make a living. In 1890, he was an unsuccessful applicant for the position as head of the art school at the Brisbane Technical College. He exhibited watercolours of English and local subjects at the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association in 1887 and 1891 and the Queensland Art Society in 1892. He died suddenly at Cleveland on 18 August 1893. As his active career in Queensland was just six years, his paintings are rare.
Research Curator, Queensland Heritage
Writers:
Cooke, Glenn R.
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1839
- Summary
- Robert Rayment was a capable artist but his contribution to to development of art in colonial Queensland was truncated by his early death.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 August 1893
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- amateur photographer and merchant, was born in London, apparently the eighth of the sons of Esther Hanna, née Montefiore, and Isaac Levi, a merchant with business interests in London, Barbados and Brussels.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1834
- Summary
- Amateur photographer and merchant.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 July 1893
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude52.88815615 Longitude-7.950366552 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Greenhills, County Tipperary, Ireland
- Biography
- painter, lithographer(?), draughtsman and zoo director, was born on 5 March 1831 at Greenhills, County Tipperary, Ireland, eighth son of the nineteen children of Rev. William Minchin, the Dunkerrin parson, and Mary Ann, née Wright. In 1851 Richard migrated to Adelaide in the Stag . Three years later he moved to Victoria where he became clerk of the court at Bacchus Marsh. After marrying Ellen Rebecca Ocock at Melbourne, they returned to Adelaide in 1857 and Minchin obtained a position as clerk in the civil service. In 1859 he was promoted draughtsman at the Land and Titles Office. According to his obituary, he was at some stage drawing master at Prince Alfred Boys’ College.
In the late 1850s Minchin produced several small lithographs of Adelaide buildings and it is probable, but not certain, that he put his sketches on the stone himself. Some, perhaps all, were printed by Penman and Galbraith . House of Parliament, Adelaide S.A. 1858 , Wesleyan Chapel, North Adelaide and Post Office, Adelaide S.A. are in the Mortlock Library, while Government House S.A. 1857 and St. Michael’s Church, Mitcham S.A. (c.1860) are in the Art Gallery of South Australia, which also holds his original drawing for Government House .
In 1859 Minchin exhibited Dove Returning to the Ark and a drawing, Even as a Hen Gathereth her Chickens , with the South Australian Society of Arts, the latter being commended by the judges although neither won a prize. In 1862 he showed fifteen works and was awarded four prizes. The South Australian Advertiser commented that his exhibits were 'a very marked improvement on his former efforts’ and especially praised his prize-winning watercolours, Tela Hill and Horrock’s Pass . Hospital and Park Lands , however, was dismissed as a crude effort. He also won the competition for the society’s medal, for which he had submitted three entries.
At the society’s next exhibition, in December 1863, Minchin won prizes for the best watercolour (also titled Horrock’s Pass ), the best original drawing of a South Australian scene ( On the Sturt ) and the best ink, wash or sepia drawing ( On the Light ). The critic from the Advertiser praised his ability to capture sublime effects, with some reservations: 'In everything that pertains to massive rock, dark and frowning hills, and gloomy passes, Mr. M. frequently borders on the grand and the eye recognizes great individuality and dignity; but in those works where the chief charm would be a rich and mellow tone – a breadth of light and shade – there is a marked deficiency’.
In 1864 Minchin was again awarded the 5-guinea prize for the best watercolour painting, Creek near the Black Hill . This time the Advertiser 's lengthy appraisal condemned the work as 'a pretty little sketch’ which lacked character: 'The worst part of it is the tree on the bank to the left, which is a great deal too high – to measure by the human figures introduced – and its stems and branches do not grow naturally’. Despite further prizes in 1865 and 1866, the Advertiser became increasingly hostile, commenting that Steamboat on the Murray , awarded the prize for the best painting illustrative of colonial life in 1866, was 'not a painting properly so called, being a mere small sketch without any finish whatever, and miserably weak and flat’. Another prize-winner, Glenelg from the North Shore , was judged the best of Minchin’s offerings that year solely because it seemed to have had a little more care bestowed upon it. Minchin also won a prize for his design for the society’s Certificate of Merit at this exhibition. It showed Rubens on the left and Venus on the right, water-lilies at the base and rushes in the background which, the Advertiser stated, looked like fireworks, although 'notwithstanding these eccentricities, the design is on the whole not ugly’.
Minchin continued to win prizes in 1869, 1870 and 1871, one novel exhibit being a specimen of ornamental writing suitable for an address or testimonial which won a guinea prize when lent by Townsend Duryea in 1869. At the same exhibition Minchin’s eldest son, Ernest William , made his debut in what was to be a long artistic career, winning a drawing prize in the under-sixteen section. It is perhaps worth noting, in the light of Minchin senior’s subsequent zoological career, that the several prizes he won in 1871 were for animal drawings. That year he also held a separate exhibition of his own consisting of loan works from private collections and watercolours of New Zealand subjects painted on a recent visit. The New Zealand works predictably demonstrated his continuing interest in sublime subjects, several being said to show 'the wildness and grandeur’ considered characteristic of that country, and all were represented in what was stated to be 'painstaking’ detail. A watercolour of Milford Sound dated 1878 (ATL) suggests that this was not his last visit to that country and he probably combined sketching trips with visits to members of his family who had settled near Christchurch after the sale of Rev. William Minchin’s estate in 1852.
From 1870 until 1882 Minchin worked on contract to the Lands and Titles Department. Then he was appointed director of the new Adelaide Zoological Gardens, having for many years been honorary secretary of the local Acclimatization Society which founded it. He visited South-East Asia in 1885 and Europe in 1887 in order to collect specimens. After contracting a wasting disease at Hong Kong in 1889 and becoming an invalid, he and his family moved to the reputedly healthier air of Mount Barker. Minchin died there on 4 January 1893, survived by his second wife Ellison Barbara (Ellen), née Macgeorge, whom he had married in 1883, and the two sons and three daughters of his first marriage.
The Art Gallery of South Australia holds Minchin’s watercolour Wild Dog Creek Station, Mount Remarkable, Melrose as well as other works such as an album of watercolour sketches of Pewsey Vale and Wongalere given to Jane Gilbert in 1864. On 25 November 1865 the Illustrated Melbourne Post published The Drought in the Far North, South Australia: An Out Station from a sketch by Minchin. The Mitchell Library holds his watercolour Mount Serle (1875).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 March 1831
- Summary
- Painter, lithographer(?), draughtsman and zoo director, migrated to Adelaide from Ireland in the 1850s, won many prizes at the South Australian Society of Arts with landscape and genre paintings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 January 1893
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude53.88674525 Longitude9.964008763 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Holstein , Germany
- Biography
- German artist, portraitist and professional photographer is likely the John Tensfeld aged 24 from Holstein,listing himself as a quartz miner in Maldon for his Australian naturalisation certificate of 14 October 1859. A relative Eggert Tensfeld, an engineer from Holstein was naturalised on 12 October. Tensfeld was working as a painter in Sandhurst, Castlemaine and Ballarat by 1863 and is listed by Sandy Barrie as an itinerant photographer in Daylesford and Seymour in 1862 and 1864.
Tensfeld showed a painting Sunday Creek, near Seymour in the fourth Annual Exhibition of Fine Arts at Melbourne in 1864. It was described by the Argus critic as 'stiff and chalky’. Two paintings by Tensfeld, Lal Lal Falls and Terriers Catching Rats , were exhibited by Richard Geilhofer for sale at the 1863 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition. Tensfeld’s oil painting Main Street, Daylesford (1862, p.c.) appears to have been painted over or from, a photograph. Newspaper references in Ballarat 1863 report that Tensfeld painted over life size portrait photographs for Solomon and Bardwell studio and may have learned photography from them.
From May 1864 to January 1865 Tensfeld was in partnership with scenic artist Moritz Freyberger at 92 Bourke Street, East Melbourne. Their dissolution notice in _The Age_18 Jan 1865,said Tensfeld was to pursue mining interests in Woods Point and Freyberger to work as a artist at the Theatre Royal.
Tensfeld departed for New Zealand 31 May 1866 on the s.s. “Albambra” arriving Greymouth 4 July 1866 on the s.s. “Claud Hamilton. He took over the studio of Tait Brothers in Greymouth, South Island in July to August 1867. He worked as a photographer and painter in attracting attention as well for large painted portrait photographs and his views photographs including in February 1868 a commercial album of Westland views. Tensfeld had a studio in Princes street Dunedin in 1869-69 and offered a portfolio of twenty New Zealand views and an art union. He was active as a portraitist and scene painter as well as a photographer making and selling views and bound albums including two part panoramas.
Tensfeld was working in Auckland in December 1869 in association with Bartlett Studio, specialising as before in paintings and portraits over a photographic base as well as views of the Thames goldfields. On 4 May 1870 Mr Tensfield boarded the s.s. “City of Melbourne” bound for Honolulu.
By 1879 Tensfeld was established as a portraitist and painter in Brooklyn and the The Brooklyn _ Daily Eagle_ 14 August 1879, page 3 gives a description of a rather flamboyant character in girth, height and temperament who after studying art in Germany had lived in England, France, India, Australia, the Sandwich Islands, California, and in fact all parts of the world. He made a small fortune in Australia (not in art, of course), lost a good part of it in bringing a lot of cannibals to America, went back to his art in California’. Which indigenous performers that refers to is not determined. He married in Chicago in 1882 and died in St Louis 8 September 1893.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. c.1 January 1830
- Summary
- Painter and professional photographer, showed artworks in fourth Annual Exhibition of Fine Arts at Melbourne in 1864, and in the Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition, and appears to have painted over a photograph in the painting 'Main Street, Daylesford.' Worked as a painter-photographer in New Zealand 1866-1870 and as a painter in the United States 1870-1880s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 September 1893
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude39.623657 Longitude19.9234355 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Corfu, Greece
- Biography
- sketcher, schoolmaster and clergyman, was born at Corfu, second of the eight children of Benjamin Kane, a royal engineer who was assistant clerk of works for the British Ordnance Department at Corfu in 1826/30, and his first wife Caroline Charlotte, née Plow. His mother died at Portsmouth (England) on 10 May 1838 as the result of childbirth and a month later his father married Elizabeth Margaret Plow, presumably her sister or cousin. Henry was the eldest of the six surviving children under 12 from the first marriage and there were at least three from the second. He migrated to Van Diemen’s Land in about 1845 and found work as tutor to the son of a Launceston merchant, William Barnes, until becoming headmaster of the new Launceston Church Grammar School at the beginning of 1846.
H.P. Kane was ordained deacon and licensed as a Church of England minister in July 1846. On 8 May 1847, Rev. J. Fereday married him to Caroline Jeannette Neilley at her father’s house, Rostella, East Tamar. Kane resigned the headmastership of Launceston Church Grammar School in December 1848 and took up the living of Patterson’s Plains. When his father-in-law died, he and Caroline moved to Rostella, where they raised some of Henry’s younger brothers and a sister as well as their own two children. Kane’s teaching was recognised by the Lambeth degree of Master of Arts in 1854 and Bishop Nixon ordained him priest at Holy Trinity, Launceston, on 11 May 1857. From 1854 to 1859 he was assistant secretary, then secretary, to the Launceston branch of the Tasmanian Royal Society. He had a private church school for boys at Rostella from the late 1860s to about 1873.
For a short time the Kanes lived in Victoria where Henry had the charge of several small Melbourne parishes. After their only son died at the age of 15 they left for England. Caroline Kane died there in 1882. Retiring from the church and leaving his daughter Emily with relatives, Henry returned to Melbourne. There, on 1 May 1883, he married Alicia Bradish of Dingley (a former parishioner) and set up in business. This ended in bankruptcy. Kane died on 11 November 1893 at his home, Rhyll, in Wellington Street, Brighton, Victoria.
Despite little obvious talent or interest in sketching, Kane is responsible for the only known illustration of the first St Peter’s Church of England at St Leonard’s (1846 47, replaced 1869), a simple Gothic Revival chapel designed by the Tasmanian architect William Archer to which Kane was appointed missionary chaplain on its completion in June 1847. No other drawings have been located.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1826
- Summary
- Kane was a schoolmaster and clergyman. He is responsible for the only known illustration of the original St Peter's Church of England at St Leonard's, Tasmania dated c.1846/47.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 November 1893
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- wood-engraver, was born in London on 27 March 1825, youngest son of Ruth and James Winston (1773-1843), a wealthy comic actor and theatre manager. Winston trained as a wood-engraver under C. Whymper, presumably a connection of the eminent engraver Charles Whymper. Arriving at Adelaide from London in the Harpley on 16 January 1851, Winston seems to have worked in South Australia with Samuel Calvert . He engraved a perspective view of the Bank of Australasia in 1851 and possibly was employed by the architect Richard Lambeth to produce an engraving of his proposed Catholic Cathedral of St Francis Xavier, Adelaide. Some of his engravings were published in Goodhugh’s South Australian Almanac for 1852 .
By late 1852, however, Winston had set up business as a wood-engraver in Geelong, Victoria. His engravings appeared on theatre posters and as advertisements in the Geelong Directory for 1854 , in which his partnership with the drawing master Edward Sasse as 'Artists and engravers on wood’ at Bellerine Street was announced. They were particularly offering drawings and engravings for parties selling their property. The partnership had lapsed by 1859 when Winston had established a business in Neave’s Buildings, 42 Collins Street, East Melbourne. 'Winstone’ was catalogued as showing a 'Frame of Colonial Wood Engravings’ at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition from this address.
Winston moved to Dunedin, New Zealand, in about 1863 and set up as a wood-engraver in Princes Street South. He and Margaret Jane, youngest daughter of Francis Rashleigh, married there on 25 March 1864. They were back at Melbourne by 1868 and Winston was in business as a designer and engraver on wood at 41 Swanston Street. He advertised 'Designs for Posting Bills. Machinery and Architecture accurately Engraved. Estimates given for Illustrated Catalogues’ in the catalogue of the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition held before the London International Exhibition of 1873, and he exhibited proofs of his wood-engravings at the 1875 Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition Preparatory to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Many of his engravings, mostly of buildings after drawings by Albert Cooke , appeared in the Illustrated Australian News between 1868 and 1873.
In 1876 Winston was in Sydney, his engraving rooms being on the upper floor of the Town Hall Hotel. In March 1886, described as 'the well-known wood engraver, whose productions in all classes of work, including the best book illustration, have been circulating through various colonies for many years past’, Winston was invited to test the suitability of a variety of Australian timbers for wood-engraving. Choosing appropriately varied subjects—'flowers, foliage, birds, insects, beasts, human figures, machinery and other objects’—his cuts were judged bold and clear and in some cases the wood proved capable of taking comparatively fine work. The blocks and his proofs taken from them were forwarded to the 1886 London Colonial and Indian Exhibition.
Having remained an engraver on wood ('woodpecker’) all his life, Winston died on 5 January 1893, survived by his wife, their five sons and a daughter. He was buried in Balmain Cemetery.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 March 1825
- Summary
- Charles Edward Winston was a wood-engraver. He arrived in Adelaide from London in 1851. Winston worked in South Australia, Victoria, New Zealand and New South Wales. In Sydney in 1876, he was invited to test suitable Australian timbers for wood-engraving.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 January 1893
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude57.6882638 Longitude-4.1721447 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ross-shire, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- caricaturist, army officer(?) and remittance man(?), was, according to local legend, really Sir Thomas, son and heir of Sir James Urquhart, head of the Ross-shire branch of this ancient and proud Scottish clan, who had been exiled to Australia for marrying Mary Norrie, the local butcher’s daughter. (Modestly, he never used the title after inheriting it in 1875.) According to his death certificate, however, he was the son of Freeman and Lydia Urquhart. Said to have been commissioned captain after active service in the Crimean War, the only possible candidate listed in Burke is Thomas Bedford Urquhart (1842-91), a captain in the 72nd Highlanders and a younger son of the (untitled) Aberdeen branch of the Urquhart clan, and it is possible that his rank too was mythical.
By the late 1860s Thomas and Mary Urquhart were living at Cudgewa Station, near Corryong on the Upper Murray in Victoria, a run taken up in 1865 by Mary’s brother David and her stepfather Alexander McEwan. That Captain Urquhart was at least a notable eccentric is evidenced by the further story that throughout his life he received regular remittances from home which he hid in the Cudgewa 'feather-house’, the shed where poultry was plucked. (A large hoard of coins is supposed to have been discovered there after his death.) His hobby was drawing and he specialised in comical and good-natured caricatures of local residents, many of which were given to his victims and framed and hung on their walls. Thomas died in 1893, aged sixty-nine, Mary in 1917 aged ninety-three. Both were buried in the Cudgewa Cemetery.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1824
- Summary
- Thomas Urquhart was a colonial era Victorian caricaturist, army officer(?) and remittance man(?). He was exiled to Australia after he married Mary Norrie. His hobby was drawing and he drew comical caricatures of the local residents which were framed and given to them. Urquhart died aged 69 years.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1893
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- amateur photographer, was born in England. She married James How, a labourer from Melvern, Cambridgeshire and they had two sons, William (b. 1844) and Edward (b. 1848?). The family arrived at Port Phillip aboard the Royal George on 28 November 1849 under the assisted passage scheme. James How was initially employed in Melbourne by Joseph Raleigh, a merchant and wharf owner. In 1857 he was listed as one of the principal directors of How, Walker & Co., a merchant and shipping business started by a relative, Robert How, by which time the family was living at Woodlands, next door to the present-day Admiralty House on Kirribilli Point, North Sydney, (New South Wales).
How’s photographic knowledge probably came from several sources, including her copy of the 1850 English Art Journal , which contained several articles on the development of photography. Indeed her very first photograph was of an engraving in the same volume, a portrait of the Dowager Countess of Darnley after the painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence. She may have obtained photographic materials and tuition from professional studios in England or, more probably, Sydney. One local dealer, William Hetzer , was well known for his salted paper prints from half-plate glass negatives – the process How also favoured.
Most of Louisa Elizabeth How’s extant photographic work is contained in an album of forty-eight salted paper prints (ANG (Australian National Gallery, Canberra formerly, current: NGA – National Gallery of Australia, Canberra)). These date from her first photograph taken in October 1858 to January 1859. The majority are portraits of visitors to Woodlands and include the merchants George S. Caird, Robert P. Paterson (dated October 1858) and Hendricks Anderson, the explorer William Landsborough with his Aboriginal companion 'Tiger’, and the settler Charles Morison from Glenmorison, New England. Several are posed beside a stereoscopic viewer and cards. How also photographed Sydney Cove, Government House, Campbell’s Wharf and views around her own house and garden.
The Hows continued to live at Woodlands until about 1866, then moved to Calingra at Woollahra, Sydney. The reason for the move seems to have been the declining fortunes of the How merchant company, which lost one of its principal directors in 1861 and five years later disappeared from business listings in directories. James How died in about 1869 and a year later Louisa moved house to Heaton, also in Woollahra. Little is known of her life or that of her children from this period, except that the family moved several times before Louisa’s death in 1893 at the age of seventy-two.
Writers:
Crombie, Isobel
Note: Primary
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1821
- Summary
- Amateur photographer, she appears to have been self taught. Her husband was a merchant and she photographed prominent visitors to their Sydney home as well as Sydney scenes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1893
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude43 Longitude12 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Italy
- Biography
- sculptor, had two marble statues exhibited by J. Markby in the New South Wales Court at the 1888-89 Centennial International Exhibition, Melbourne: 'The Sister’s Charge’ and 'King Lear’. 'G. Fontana of Italy received an Hon. Mention for his 'Collection of marble statuary’ ( Official Record , p. [or perhaps a catalogue] 67, p.691). Fontana’s busts of Mayor and Mrs Riley signed 'Giovanni Fontana’ are in Sydney Town Hall; Riley was mayor in 1888.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1821
- Summary
- Late colonial era Italian/English sculptor, who worked in Sydney during the 1870s to 1890s. Fontana received an Hon. Mention for his work in 1888/1889.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1893
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude51.7455659 Longitude-3.3786082 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, UK
- Biography
- sculptor, professional photographer, architect, inventor and lecturer, was born in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, eldest son of William Jones, the parish clerk. One brother, Watkin D. Jones, was also a sculptor; the other, J. Emrys Jones, a designer. William and Watkin left Merthyr for London, following the example of their fellow townsman and friend, the sculptor Joseph Edwards with whom Jones was said to have found employment in London. This was not the case, although the two remained in close contact until they fell out over an artistic matter. Jones exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1843 and 1855. His statue of the ancient bard Taliesin, The Prince of the Bards , was exhibited at the Abergavenny Eisteddfod in 1845 and reproduced in the Illustrated London News . Also an inventor, his productions included printing blocks 'of a superior character’ and military weapons, the latter being said to have aroused some government interest 'and then, as too often the case, forgotten’. He also spent time and money on a scheme for harnessing magnetism as a motive power.
Migrating to Melbourne in 1854, Jones married Catherine Dunphy in 1855. He exhibited portrait sculpture at various Melbourne exhibitions and had his portrait painted by Andrew MacCormac . At the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art he showed busts of John Pascoe Fawkner, George Coppin and Mr R. Younge, giving his address as 110 Lonsdale Street East. The following year he was represented in the first exhibition of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts (when living in Hodgson Street, Collingwood), with busts of Mr Clough and Mr and Mrs Charles Young and a portrait medallion of Fawkner. He then moved to Sydney, where he executed an allegorical figure of Flora for the garden of Clarens, the residence of Sir James Martin, and modelled a number of portrait medallions, among them a bronze cast of a young man in profile said to be Daniel Deniehy (1859, Mitchell Library). In July 1859 Jones was proclaiming himself 'inventor of the Australian style of architecture’ and offering patrons 'artistic architecture, combining elegance, utility, stability and economy’. The advertisement received a poor response and Jones was forced to abandon both sculpture and architecture later that year. He then set up as a travelling photographer. By 1863 he was at the Harp of Erin Hotel in Maryborough, North Queensland. After a year in Queensland he returned to his family in New South Wales.
In 1870 Jones attempted to resume his sculptural career and showed eight sculptures (executed 1857-59) at that year’s Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition. He offered his services to the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts as a teacher of modelling for a salary of 50 guineas a year but the offer was refused. In January 1871 Jones, a member of the Unitarian Church and the Sydney Secular Society, was arrested for blasphemy, allegedly having denounced the Old Testament. He was sentenced to two years’ gaol and fined £100, but the Governor of NSW soon ordered his release from prison and the fine was remitted. Afterwards Jones appears to have reverted to working as a travelling photographer and public lecturer in rural New South Wales. In March 1875 a letter written in doggerel verse by his wife at Parramatta appeared in the Stockwhip . It detailed the hazards of her husband’s career:
The New South Wales martyr has to roam far far from his dear family and home,
From day to day and week to week, a living for them joyfully does seek,
Photography and dissolving views are his daily occupation.
He lectures on astronomy and the wonders of creation.
He meets with many bigots and many bitter foes,
Who try their best to starve him, and ruin him as he goes.
He also meets with kindness, from those whose minds are strong;
From men of sense and learning, who know he suffered wrong.
Jones received only one known sculptural commission in the 1870s – the monument over the grave at Rookwood Cemetery of his former friend, the Unitarian minister James Pillars, which he carved in 1875. In about 1888 Henry Parkes ordered a replica of the Flora statue for the Sydney Botanic Gardens from him and Jones responded with a bitter letter describing the hardships he and his family had faced, stating that he had been 'a long, long time out of employment’. In 1887-88 he was listed in Sands Sydney Directory as a sculptor of Granville, near Parramatta, but the spectre of his blasphemy conviction continued to haunt him. Rev. W.A. Phillips, incumbent of St Mark’s Church of England at Granville, was deeply offended when Jones was employed as an architectural carver on the church in 1885-86: 'Seeking out the contractor, he fumed and poured out the figurative vials of his wrath upon him for allowing an unbeliever to take part in building an house purposed for Divine Worship’.
On 22 May 1893, Jones died at the home of his only child, a married daughter then living in Margaret Street, Petersham. He was buried in the Independent section of Rookwood Cemetery. Soon forgotten colonially, he enjoyed a glorified posthumous reputation in his native town, it being stated in a 1908 history of Merthyr Tydfil that he had been presented with a gold medal in Melbourne and that his studio had been 'one of the fashionable resorts of the city’:
He appears to have realised considerable wealth at Melbourne, but being of a roving disposition he did not remain there long. Bidding his friends adieu, he started coastwise in his gig for Sydney, and, from that time, disappeared. Many years have passed since then, but no tidings of his fate have ever reached this country.
Writers:
Lennon, Jane
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1819
- Summary
- Nineteenth-century sculptor, professional photographer, architect, inventor and lecturer, he produced figurative statues among other things. His reputation was damaged when he was convicted for blasphemy,and he was soon forgotten colonially but enjoyed a glorified posthumous reputation in Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 May 1893
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Deptford, London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, surveyor and sailor, was born on 29 April 1816 in Deptford, England, son of Lewis Roper Fitzmaurice, a master mariner. He entered the Royal Navy on 12 January 1831. When serving in HMS Beagle under John Clements Wickham and J. Lort Stokes he made some of the drawings subsequently reproduced in Stokes’s Discoveries in Australia…Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle 1837-43 (London 1846). In his introduction, Stokes thanks Fitzmaurice and Graham Gore 'for many of the sketches which illustrate this work’. Contributions by Fitzmaurice include the frontispieces to both volumes, Natives of Western Australia and Messrs Fitzmaurice and Keys Dancing for their Lives , the latter a bizarre reversal of the standard image of Aborigines dancing for white spectators.
Fitzmaurice had joined the Beagle as mate, but Stokes later appointed him assistant-surveyor. As such, he carried out a survey of the Queensland coast between Flinders River and Van Diemen’s Inlet until severely wounded in the foot by the accidental discharge of a gun. Disabled by his injury, he was promoted lieutenant and given a pension.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 April 1816
- Summary
- A sketcher, surveyor and sailor who while serving on the Beagle, made some of the drawings subsequently reproduced in Stokes's Discoveries in Australia. He also surveyed part of the Queensland coast until severely wounded in the foot.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1893
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, gunsmith and farmer, was born in Birmingham, England, on 1 August 1814, son of Joseph Nixon and Hannah, née Millington. He came to Victoria in the Havilah in 1855 with his wife Eliza, née Wood, whom he had married in England in 1838, and their numerous children, including Stephen , Samuel and Joseph . Nixon worked in the Duryea Brothers Adelaide studio in 1855-58, then became a partner. Howell’s Adelaide Directory for 1858 referred to him as 'W.M. Nixon (late Duryea Bros) Daguerreotype & Photographic Artist. King William Street’ but advertisements in 1858-60 were always for the firm of Nixon & Duryea. When the partnership was dissolved in 1860, Townsend Duryea retained the King William Street premises and Nixon moved to the Adelaide Arcade.
Cato states that Nixon specialised in 'mother and child’ portraits, solving the problem of long exposure times by taking the baby asleep. In 1868-73 Nixon was working at Lake Pomanda on the Murray River (the place to which Townsend Duryea later retired), and he apparently travelled to other small towns in the district until finally settling on a property over the border in about 1879. He died at Deniliquin, New South Wales, on 7 April 1893. Statton states that he was a gunsmith as well as a photographer and farmer.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 August 1814
- Summary
- William Nixon emigrated from Birmingham to South Australia in 1855. A gunsmith by trade, Nixon switched to a career in photography following his experience in the Duryea Brothers' studio for a short period of time. He specialised in mother and child portraits during the nineteenth century.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 April 1893
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude52.6285576 Longitude1.2923954 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Norwich, Norfolk, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, diarist and teacher, was born in Norwich, Norfolk, on 3 February 1812, third son of William Aram and Sarah Mackie.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 February 1812
- Summary
- Colonial male Quaker teacher of natural sciences whose sketches of prisoners provide insight into the Port Arthur colony. He travelled to Quaker communities around the world before opening a co-educational school in Hobart Town, Tasmania.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 June 1893
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- mezzotint and wood engraver, was born in London, son of Samuel Sadd, a jeweller, and Dorothea, né e Clint. Another source names sister as Sarah a half sister of English portrait painter and engraver George Clint (1770-1854).His first recorded works are prints: a portrait of the actor John Liston after G. Clint was published in 1832 and an engraving was exhibited at the Society of British Artists that same year. Sadd came to New South Wales in 1853 by way of North America. Working in Sydney as a portrait engraver he became involved in the current heroising of 'the gold discoverer of Australia’ E.H. Hargraves, whose portrait he engraved in July 1853 from a daguerreotype by Elijah Hart. The daguerreotype and engraving are lost.
Sadd,however, is listed as an engraver in Edwards Street, Auckland on 7 February, 1854 from which address he advertised his daguerreotype portrait service as well as engraving in the New Zealander from 1 April to 10 May 1854. He departed Auckland 23 May 1854 on the “Moa” for Sydney with Mrs Sadd and two children
Sadd was listed at 21 Morrison Street, Sydney in 1854 but by March 1855 had settled in Collingwood, Melbourne. Most of his Victorian work, also based on photographs, consists of mezzotint portraits of clergy, politicians, the Governor of Victoria and standard British celebrities such as Scott, Burns, Shakespeare and Florence Nightingale. In 1868 he produced a mezzotint portrait of the visiting royal prince, HRH Prince Alfred, KG, Duke of Edinburgh (NLA). Engraved portraits of Sir Charles Napier and Dr A. Cairns were shown at the Victorian Exhibition of Art in December 1856, other engravings at the first exhibition of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts in 1857, and portraits of Robert Burns (after J. Nasmyth) and William Wordsworth (after B.R. Haydon) at the Melbourne Public Library Exhibition in March 1869.
Sadd worked on his own account, publishing through different booksellers and journals. In June 1859 the Examiner and Melbourne Weekly News announced:
Mr. Sadd has submitted to us a number of remarkably well-executed engravings in a peculiar mezzotint, taken from photographs. The drawing of these is especially delicate and the shadows have all the softness and rotundity of life. The fidelity of the portraits is moreover very noticeable. To those persons who have numerous friends at home desirous of possessing their likenesses, Mr. Sadd’s process offers an economical way of satisfying them; for at a comparatively small cost he can produce 50 or a 100 impressions, which, unlike the ordinary photograph, may be coloured and mounted like any other print. It is indeed astonishing that Mr Sadd should not have met with more liberal patronage than would seem to have been hitherto awarded him.
Although principally known as a mezzotint portrait engraver on copper and steel, Sadd also taught himself wood-engraving and did portrait engravings on wood for the Illustrated Australian News and the Sydney-based Town and Country Journal , the latter engaging him as a wood-engraver in 1871. He suffered severe head wounds in August 1875 when a building under construction in Barrack Street collapsed onto the roof of Engel’s printery where he was working, demolishing the press-room and burying Sadd and the presses in the rubble.
Early in 1883, Sadd returned to Melbourne. In October he showed a portrait at the Victorian Academy of Arts’ Second Black and White Exhibition, also showing work in the VAA’s fifteenth annual exhibition in 1885. His work in mezzotint was unique in Victoria and he became well known for his skill in this technique, achieving great delicacy and softness of tone. However, the process was rendered commercially obsolete with the rapid progress of photography.
For many years Sadd was totally deaf (possibly as a result of the accident in 1875) and this made him reluctant to communicate with strangers. He died at 13 Bridport Street, St Kilda on 24 November 1893 and was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, Johanna, née Barry, whom he had married in New York about 1848, and one of their three daughters.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
newtog
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. c.1811
- Summary
- A mezzotint and wood engraver, Sadd migrated to Australia in 1853 by way of North America. Most of his Victorian work, based on photographs, consists of mezzotint portraits of clergy, politicians, the Governor of Victoria and standard British celebrities.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24 November 1893
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude53.6161857 Longitude-0.9724456 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Thorne, Yorkshire
- Biography
- sketcher, architect and builder, born in Thorne, Yorkshire, arrived at Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, as a convict in the Manlius on 12 August 1830. He spent the rest of his life in Van Diemen’s Land, during which time he worked as a carpenter, builder and architect. He died at Sandy Bay on 8 November 1893. His best-known architectural work is the Hobart Town Savings Bank (now the Murray Street branch of the Savings Bank of Tasmania); he also designed the Congregational Church at Richmond. His only known painting is a watercolour of an English scene (ALMFA).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Stilwell, G. T.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1810
- Summary
- The best known architectural work by Edward Casson Rowntree is the Hobart Town Savings Bank (now the Murray Street branch of the Savings Bank of Tasmania).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 November 1893
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1806-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- painter, draughtsman, scholar and naval officer, was born in Paris on 2 March 1806. He entered the navy in 1820 and within twenty years had participated in three major voyages to the Pacific, visiting Australia twice (1826 and 1827-28) on board the Astrolabe in the company of de Sainson and Lauvergne . The commander, Dumont D’Urville, 'instructed M. Pâris, who has a great taste for drawing, to record all the canoes of the various peoples we would visit, and he acquitted himself of this task in a very satisfying manner. The collection of these drawings … will show immediately the different advances made by these populations towards naval construction’. The atlas illustrating this voyage contains a number of plates by Pâris, none of an Australian subject. His drawing of a canoe at Jervis Bay (NSW) is held in the Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris.
Within nine months of returning to France, Pâris was again en route for the Southern Hemisphere on board the Favorite under Laplace, revisiting Hobart Town and Sydney in July-September 1831. Once again, although several of his works are reproduced in the official atlas of the voyage, none is from Australia, but his view of A Mill at Paramatta [sic], Sept. 1831 (photograph, Musée de la Marine, Paris) nevertheless shows that he drew there. In addition an extensive collection of coastal profiles originating from this voyage, paralleling those drawn by Lauvergne on the same occasion, is on deposit in the French National Archives; four folios of this collection are devoted to Australia. Pâris’s final visit to Australia in the Art é mise , once again under the command of Laplace, took place in January-March 1839, with further visits to Hobart Town and Sydney. A dated view of the Port Arthur penitentiary (photograph, Musée de la Marine) became the basis of an engraving by de Laplante, published in Casimir Henricy’s Album Pittoresque d’un Voyage autour du Monde , entirely illustrated by Pâris and published in the 1880s.
One fruit of these voyages was Pâris’s Essai sur la Construition Navale des Peuples Extra-Europ éens , of which plate 112, engraved by Adam and Lemaître after Pâris, incorporates the canoe from Jervis Bay he had drawn in 1826. The accompanying commentary deserves to be quoted in full:
NEW HOLLAND. Before advancing further east, we shall stop briefly in New Holland, of which the miserable population, already largely replaced by the English, inspires neither the same pity nor the same regrets as the majority of those peoples whom the latter have destroyed to take possession of their land. It could almost be said that they have driven out only animals without skills, scarcely possessing the instinct to find shelter, to feed themselves on a few shell-fish and to half cover themselves in kangaroo skins: on the south coast, and in Van Diemen’s Land, the former inhabitants had never dared to venture on the water, and as no trace of them has been found for several years, it is supposed that they have been completely wiped out, although only forty years have elapsed since their island was occupied. Only at Jervis Bay, south of Port Jackson, did we see a canoe on the sand, 4 to 5 metres long, if however this name may be applied to a piece of bark tied at the ends (plate 112, fig. 1) and held open in the middle by flexible saplings, curved by a cord like a bow; this frail skiff had no form and could not have been able to travel very far. We do not know how the natives succeeded in removing such large pieces of bark from the handsome trees which cover the region around their bay, where, in 1826, the English had called only briefly and had not yet established a settlement. As for the canoes of the northern part of New Holland, of which the inhabitants are less weak and more courageous, they are probably scarcely worthy of notice, for no navigator mentions them.
Pâris’s subsequent career, with steam navigation matters an outstanding speciality, was studded with promotions (he reached the rank of vice-admiral in 1864), decorations (he received the highest honour his country could confer, the Grand-Croix de la L é gion d’Honneur , in 1880) and scholarly publications (numerous articles and at least thirty books and pamphlets). He continued to call on his considerable skills as a draughtsman, eg Souvenirs de Jerusalem (Paris 1862) is illustrated with lithographs after the author’s drawings and Souvenirs de Marine (Paris 1877-93) consists of seven folio atlases of plates showing different sea-going craft. He retired from active service in 1871 and devoted the remaining twenty-two years of his life to the Musée de la Marine, of which he was director. He died in Paris on 8 April 1893.
The fact that D’Urville’s account of the voyage of the Astrolabe incorrectly records Pâris’s given name as 'Edouard’ has led to some confusion with the genre and landscape painter Edouard Pâris, who exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1833 to 1839 and published an album of lithographic views of the Pyrenées in 1841.
Writers:
Collins, R. D. J.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 March 1806
- Summary
- François-Edmond Pâris was a painter, draughtsman, scholar and naval officer. He was born in Paris in 1806. Pâris entered the navy in 1820 and within twenty years had participated in three major voyages to the Pacific, visiting Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 April 1893
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude50.3712659 Longitude-4.1425658 Start Date1804-01-01 End Date1893-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Plymouth, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, medical practitioner, natural historian, museum curator and director, was born on 31 January 1804 in Plymouth, England. He first visited Australia in 1829 on one of his many natural history expeditions, then returned in 1832 and again in 1836 and remained in Sydney, where he set up a successful medical practice. Bennett published many papers on natural history, was a fellow of the Linnaean Society and a corresponding member of the Zoological Society. He wrote up some of his extensive travels in the Pacific region in Wanderings in New South Wales … being the Journal of a Naturalist (2 vols, London 1834). His 'Ornithorhynchus paradoxus or Water Mole’, an abstract from the 1853 Transactions of the Zoological Society , was published in the Illustrated Sydney News on 1 April 1854. Another contributor to these 'Australian Natural History Notes’ was William Sheridan Wall .
Bennett, a key figure in the newly established Australian Museum, was succeeded as curator by William Branwhite Clarke , then Wall. Interpersonal relationships at the museum were volatile ( see G.F. Angas , H. Barnes and J.L.G. Krefft ) and Bennett’s only certain art work, annotated Wall on the Whale after Clarke W.B. , is a scurrilous pencil sketch depicting Wall astride a harnessed and spouting whale. It is drawn on the end-paper of Bennett’s copy of Wall’s History and Description of a New Sperm Whale (Sydney 1851, Mitchell Library) which Bennett had rebound and retitled Macleay’s Sperm Whale . He glued to the front end-paper a review stating that Wall 'had the assistance of the Committee of the Museum’ in the book’s compilation and bracketed off 'by William S. Wall, Curator’, adding 'by William S. Macleay Esq.’ (a more eminent naturalist) to the title-page.
In 1890 Bennett received the Clarke (W.B.) Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales and was awarded an honorary gold medal by Britain’s Royal College of Surgeons in recognition of his contribution to zoological science. He died in Sydney on 29 September 1893. Married three times – his third wife was Sarah née Adcock – there were eight Bennett children in all, two of whom died in infancy.
Writers:
Henderson, Beryl
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 January 1804
- Summary
- After two previous trips to Australia as a natural historian, George Bennett finally settled in Sydney in 1836 and worked as a medical practitioner. He maintained his interest in natural history however and became intimately involved with the Australian Museum, eventually as its Museum Director and Curator.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 September 1893
- Age at death
- 89
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1892-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- natural history artist, author, surveyor and draughtsman, came from Ireland to Sydney in 1856 and worked in the Lands Department for thirty years as a draughtsman and surveyor. As well as being an enthusiastic ornithologist, taxidermist, natural history writer and collector, Fitzgerald was an extremely competent and prolific botanical illustrator; Lionel Gilbert considers him the most accomplished delineator of Australian plants since Ferdinand Bauer . Complete with macroscopic studies and superb dissections, his plates in Australian Orchids , published at Sydney in two volumes of twelve parts from 1875 to 1894, brought him international fame. The lithographic plates were produced in conjunction with Arthur James Stopps , then hand-coloured by other artists from Fitzgerald’s instructions and sample sheets.
Although Fitzgerald is known to have sketched natural history subjects from 1856, his public career as a botanical illustrator appears to have begun in September 1865 at the monthly meeting of the Horticultural Society of New South Wales. There, reported the Sydney Morning Herald , he produced 'some beautiful and exceedingly correct drawings of native flowers which he had traced. The pictures were very much admired and spoken of in terms of the highest commendation. It was thought that a book of drawings would be valuable to the society and it was suggested that they might also be made available in the Illustration of the Horticultural Magazine . Mr Fitzgerald also showed several specimens of coccus [sic] in different stages of development … point[ing] out some of the leading peculiarities of the insect’. At the May 1866 meeting Fitzgerald showed drawings 'of the insect popularly known as the “ladybird”, distinguishing the useful species from the destructive’. In 1867 two of his botanical illustrations, Clematis lanuginosum & Nuytsia floribunda , were reproduced in the Horticultural Magazine (vol. 4, no. 1).
Fitzgerald showed 100 of his 'beautiful coloured drawings of indigenous orchids’ at the 1871 exhibition of the Agricultural Society of New South Wales, his specimens having been collected from Cape York to Sydney. The following year John Fairfax & Sons exhibited woodcuts engraved from Fitzgerald’s drawings for a series published in the Sydney Mail .
Fitzgerald was elected a fellow of the British Linaean Society in 1874 and a member of the Royal Society of New South Wales two years later. He died in his home at Hunter’s Hill on 12 August 1892, survived by the three sons and three daughters from his marriage to Emily Blackwell Hunt in 1860.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- Fitzgerald was a prolific botanical illustrator. His plates in Australian Orchids (1875-1894) brought him international fame. He also produced drawings of native flowers and ladybirds.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 August 1892
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1892-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- amateur photographer and clerk, was born in London, son of Henry Leigh Hunt and Ellen, née Simpson. He came to New South Wales in 1854 to work as chief clerk of the bullion office at the Royal Mint and soon started to practise photography as a hobby. Hunt and John Smith 's outdoor stereoscopic views taken in 1855 are believed to be the first colonial examples of this type of photograph on card. In 1857 Hunt photographed the wrecked Dunbar on which his two sisters had lost their lives.
Hunt went on photographic excursions around Sydney with William Stanley Jevons , an assayer at the Mint who wrote to his sister Lucy about one such occasion in November 1858:
Mr Hunt of the Mint agreed to go photographing with me and accordingly we started out about 2 p.m. last Saturday … for Middle Harbour, intending to camp out all night and photograph in the calm clear air of early morning. Hunt’s boat is a beautiful light skiff or wager boat named the Terror … [at Middle Head] our photographic zeal was so incited by the bold water-worn cliffs that we decided on landing my lighter apparatus, and taking them off … this was not easily done, nor, after spending an hour and a half over four trials, did we get at all a perfect photograph.
After camping overnight at Willoughby Falls, they finally managed to take photographs which satisfied them: 'Hunt has since printed and mounted one of his plates, producing a really beautiful picture, and certainly the best he has taken. My plate is smaller, and has a slight defect, but otherwise ought to turn out even better’.
In December 1858, together with other amateur photographers, including Professor John Smith , M.F. Moresby and their superior at the Mint, Captain Edward Ward , they exhibited their work at the first photographic conversazione of the Philosophical (Royal) Society of New South Wales. Then, on 22 December 1859, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the second photographic exhibition of the Philosophical Society contained: 'Twelve views around Sydney from collodion negatives, by Mr Hunt; six large photographs (imported); [and] twenty-three stereographs, from collodion negatives by Messrs. Hunt, Jevons, Moresby and Captain Ward’.
Hunt married Mary Paul in Sydney on 25 November 1860. In 1870 he was transferred to the Melbourne Mint and remained there until appointed deputy-master of the Sydney Mint seven years later. From Sydney he sent a collection of coins and medals struck at the Mint to the 1883 Calcutta International Exhibition. He continued to be an active photographer, producing sets of panoramic cabinet cards up to 1888, his favourite subjects being exteriors and interiors of houses and Sydney’s water supply. Appointed CMG in 1888, Hunt died at Sydney on 27 September 1892.
Three photograph albums and 200 stereo cards donated to the Historic Photograph Collection at the University of Sydney came from Hunt’s collection. Most are his work but almost all his Sydney Philosophic Society colleagues are included.
Writers:
Wickman, WarrenGroom, Barry
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- Robert Hunt was an amateur photographer and clerk. Outdoor stereoscopic views taken in 1855 by Hunt and John Smith are believed to be the first colonial examples of this type of photograph on card.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 September 1892
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude21 Longitude78 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1892-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- India
- Biography
- sketcher and squatter, was born in India, youngest of the four sons of Thomas Learmonth and his second wife, Christian Donald, Scottish gentry of Parkhall, Stirlingshire. He was living in Van Diemen’s Land with his parents and brothers by 1835, then left in 1845 to serve in the East India Company’s army at Bombay [now known as Mumbai], invaliding out as lieutenant after five years’ service and joining his squatter brothers in Victoria. He, his brothers and his uncle made a fortune from having a sheep run where Ballarat now stands and from a gold-mine (at Forest Creek, Castlemaine), according to Stanley Leighton . By 1868 Andrew Learmonth had leased or purchased several large runs, including Urseldown in Victoria and Groongal in the Riverina district of New South Wales. Learmonth visited all his properties from time to time but, said Leighton, his headquarters were the Melbourne and Sydney Clubs where he received regular reports from his overseers and managers.
Leighton, who visited and drew Groongal in 1868, commented that it was 'a squattage of first rate size’, 28 miles deep with a river boundary of 20 miles, which employed 70 men, plus many more at shearing time. Despite paying 'good wages’ of 15s or 20s a week with food and lodgings to his regular hands, Learmonth told Leighton that 'he could only depend on one besides his overseer and manager’. He had paid £113 000 for the stock and lease of Groongal and spent nearly £50 000 on improvements. This did not, however, include anything on the homestead,
a picturesque red brick building with a high shingle roof and, of course, a verandah. There was but one small room both for eating and sitting in. A treble-bedded sleeping room served for my companion, Rees Davies, Buxton and myself. Mr Main, the manager, and Mr. Learmonth slept in an adjoining room, and I think there was a third slip of a room somewhere. The only improvement which Learmonth had made to the house was the putting up of a rough bathroom of wood, where we could have a tub of muddy Murrumbidgee water in the mornings… There were several well-fingered books in the house, Spencer, De Quincey, Tennyson and others.
Learmonth told Leighton that he was intending to return home because of 'the hopeless exclusion of the upper classes from public life in Australia and the envy which they had to contend against. He spoke bitterly of the effects of universal suffrage, and of the corruption of the members of Parliament.’ Meanwhile, shearing was under way at Groongal and Learmonth was experimenting with employing Chinese shearers since his white shearers had previously attempted to strike for better conditions. Leighton added: 'He was a remarkably refined and rather well-read man, and was something of an artist besides.’ No paintings are known.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1826
- Summary
- Sketcher and squatter who was born in India and migrated to Australia as a child with his family. Known to have sketched on his property in the Riverina District in NSW, Learmonth is best remembered as a highly successful landowner.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1892
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1892-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- photographer, born in Ireland he became a private in the Royal Artillery and arrived in Western Australia on the Clara as a pensioner guard. In 1868 he was a sergeant at Perth Military Hospital and Clerk to the Commandant in 1874. He advertised as a photographer and jeweller in Fremantle in 1884, though the jeweller would have been his son Thomas Richard. This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- Photographer who became a private in the Royal Artillery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1892
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1892-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- oil and watercolour painter, woodgrainer and house decorator, was born in London on 8 October 1813 to James Webb, a veterinarian, and his wife Mary, the second (but eldest surviving) son in a family of five boys and four girls. His grandson stated that when Alexander showed an early aptitude for drawing and painting his father sent him to Scotland to learn art from Lady Gordon Cummings. He lived in the vicinity of Glamis Castle and members of the Bowes-Lyon family are said to have spoken to him when he was out painting landscapes. A report in the Geelong Advertiser of 4 March 1869 stated that he also studied at the Edinburgh Royal Academy and his paintings certainly suggest some formal academic training.
In Scotland Webb met and married Jane Alves from Forres, Morayshire. The couple lived in Edinburgh for seven years before deciding to migrate to Victoria, arriving about 1855, possibly in the John Bell (family records identify the ship as the Iron Bell ). They lived in various parts of West Geelong before settling above the town in Ashford Cottage, Belmont, on the south side of the Barwon River. Unable to earn a living in Geelong as an artist, Webb became a woodgrainer and house decorator with the firm of Stringer’s in Ryrie Street. On occasion he turned his hand to producing banners for local temperance and religious societies. His grandson believed that, although a Presbyterian, Webb both drew the preliminary designs for the building and painted a fresco on the walls of the second St Mary of the Angels Catholic Church in Yarra Street (begun 1871 and long demolished).
Decorating the mansions of the squatters of the Western District may have provided Webb with the opportunity to produce landscape paintings, said to have been his 'great love’; he reputedly walked from Geelong to Lorne to paint the Erskine Falls. As far as can be ascertained, most of his paintings were done in the late 1860s and 1870s (when he was in his sixties), although he did exhibit three at the Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition in 1857: a view of Venice after Turner, a view of Lake Como and a Victorian view of Bellerine with Cape Otway in the distance. At the same time he displayed samples of his graining and gilding on glass.
Thirteen oil and watercolour paintings were hung in the 1869 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition, six having been sent by Webb himself: a Madonna after Raphael and five colonial scenes. The landscapes were favourably reviewed in the Geelong Advertiser , with Sunny Shower—Yalla-y-Poora and views of Larra Station in 1844 and 1868 being singled out for special praise. Webb also showed View of Mount Elephant and Cape Otway Ranges , while A.S. Robertson lent five views of his property, “Gnarpurt”. Webb’s Madonna and Sunny Shower—Yalla-y-Poora reappeared in the 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute exhibition together with an oil painting of cattle and a landscape with sheep. In 1871 he displayed oil and watercolour paintings in Geelong shops and galleries; the following year he was represented in the Victorian Academy of Arts Exhibition.
As a member of the Academy, Webb sent four oil paintings to the NSW Agricultural Society’s exhibition at Sydney in 1873: a pair of views from the Ranges near Ararat (15 guineas each) and two views of the Lake District in England (7 guineas each). Squatters and Selectors and Loutitt Bay were shown with the academy in 1874. The latter had been awarded a medal when shown at Sydney in 1873, but this time the Age reviewer James Smith criticised it for being 'pre-Raphaelite in the extreme, and boldness and freedom have to give way to nice exactitude’.
Webb continued to paint and exhibit oil and watercolour views of Geelong and the Western District for the rest of the decade together with British works; Near Randolph’s Leap, on the Findhorn, Scotland was included with the paintings sent by the Victorian Academy of Arts to the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition. Late in life he became partly paralysed. He died in June 1892, aged seventy-nine, and was buried in Geelong Cemetery. Jane Webb lived on until August 1928, into her hundredth year. The Webbs had five boys and four girls.
Writers:
Wynd, Ian
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 October 1813
- Summary
- oil and watercolour painter. Migrated to Victoria about 1855 and settled in Geelong. His work consisted mainly of landscapes, most of which were done in the late 1860s and 1870s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- June 1892
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1892-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, farmer and orchardist, son of Thomas Plush and Frances, née Taylor, and brother of Thomas Hall Plush , was born in England. He came to South Australia in the Somersetshire in 1839 and spent much of his working life at Angaston, the home of George Fife Angas and his family. The Art Gallery of South Australia holds a watercolour by Plush titled Mount Alexander Gold Diggings from Adelaide Hill (Victoria). This is identical to an extra, seventh, lithograph by George French Angas , George French’s son, in Six Views of the Gold Fields at Ophir (New South Wales). McCulloch suggests that both could have been copied from a photograph by William Friend Bentley , who also painted a similar picture from it.
Plush married Emma Radford on 7 June 1844; they had several daughters and two surviving sons. He died on 24 June 1892 at Light Pass and was buried at Angaston.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1808
- Summary
- South Australian sketcher, farmer and orchardist. The Art Gallery of South Australia holds a watercolour by Plush.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24 June 1892
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1892-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Sketcher, lawyer and politician, was born in London on 13 September 1808, second son of William à Beckett, a solicitor, and Sarah, née Abbott. Admitted as a solicitor and attorney at Lincoln’s Inn in 1829 à Beckett practised in London for the next twenty-one years. In 1850 he visited his two brothers who had migrated to Sydney and decided to settle at Port Phillip (Melbourne) and continue to practise his profession. In 1852 he entered public life as a member of the Victorian Legislative Council. He held several ministerial posts before his retirement in 1878 and was a trustee of the Melbourne Public Library, Art Gallery and Museum. He gave public readings from Charles Dickens’s novels and delivered lectures, one being published in Melbourne in 1871 as Painting and Painters .
Two works by the Hon. T.T. à Beckett – Schnapper Point and Point Nepean Police Station – were shown at the Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1860. Despite being listed in the sculpture section of the catalogue, they appear to have been drawings or paintings. Late watercolours, including a conventional little Australian landscape, Minnie’s Hut Feby 1881 , and Gum Trees near Grange (1878 and 1883), are included in a collection of family papers containing works by his more artistically famous niece, Emma Minnie Boyd (Fryer Library). The most interesting shows Emma Minnie and two other girls playing croquet on the lawn at The Grange in 1878.
A devout Anglican, à Beckett died on 1 July 1892 and was buried in the Church of England section of the Melbourne General Cemetery with his two wives: Eliza (d.1854) and Laura Jane (d.1902).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 September 1808
- Summary
- This sketcher,lawyer and member of the Victorian Legislative Council held ministerial posts and was a trustee of the Melbourne Public Library, Art Gallery and Museum. His drawings or paintings were exhibited at the 1860 Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1 July 1892
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.1251275 Longitude1.3134228 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1892-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dover, England, UK
- Biography
- teacher, was born in Dover, England. She came to Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, in December 1832 to join her fiancé, the convict Frederick Le Geyt Piguenit, whom she married on 18 February 1833. Four days later she advertised her 'establishment for young ladies’ where she taught 'French, music and drawing’. She became the mother of the painters Harriet and William Charles Piguenit and presumably gave them their first art lessons.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1808
- Summary
- Mary Ann Piguenit (née Igglesden) was a teacher who arrived in Hobart Town in 1832. Piguenit became the mother of the painters Harriet and William Charles Piguenit.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1892
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- painter and scene-painter, was born in Sydney, son of Michael Setright, a builder, and Margaret, née Hennessy. On 22 October 1866 the Sydney Morning Herald noted that he had helped extinguish a fire at the Victoria Theatre where he was working as a scene-painter, although his name was misspelt as Selwright. Two months later an advertisement for the Victoria Theatre’s Christmas pantomime stated that the scenery – 'extremely new’ – was by Messrs Burbury and Setright, and for the next few years Setright worked as scene-painter for both the Victoria and Prince of Wales. Known as Richard, he was listed as an artist living at 190 Riley Street in 1868, at 205 Bourke Street in 1869-71. Robertson’s Point, North Shore (for sale at 12 guineas) was shown from the latter address at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition in the category of landscape watercolours by professionals. In 1873 he painted 'the whole of the scenery and decorations’ for the Freemasons’ Hall, Wagga Wagga, including a new drop-scene. According to the Illustrated Sydney News , it was 'a beautiful work of art, representing with remarkable fidelity, a view of Windsor Castle from the Thames’.
Some time before 1875 Richard was joined by his brother Thomas, whose occupation was also given as artist; the two were listed as Setright Brothers of 207 Bourke Street in 1875-76. No surviving works by either brother is known and undoubtedly both made a living primarily as scene-painters. Although 'R. Setright’ also exhibited with the Royal Art Society in 1880, when he died at Sydney in October 1891 the Lorgnette noted that 'the only work of the deceased artist at present in evidence is the act drop of the Standard Theatre, and this alone serves to remind the present generation of the now extinguished light of the much vaunted “old colonial days”’. He was survived by his widow Susan, née Harvey, whom he had married at Newcastle in about 1877, and two sons, Augustus and Percy, as well as his brother Tom—still in Bourke Street but now calling himself 'music-seller’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1840
- Summary
- John Richard Setright was scene-painter who helped extinguish a fire at the Victoria Theatre when he was working there.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- October 1891
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in the residential clerk’s quarters of the Merchant Taylors Hall, London, ninth of the ten children of John and Isabel De Mole. With her widowed mother, brothers George and Ernest and elder sister Fanny , she came to South Australia in 1856. Little is known of her colonial life apart from a distinguished history as an exhibitor and prizewinner in the annual exhibitions of the South Australian Society of Arts from 1865 to 1871, together with her sister. At the society’s 1865 exhibition Miss H. De Mole won 3 guineas for the best watercolour landscape. The following year her Fisherboy 'very deservedly takes the prize … for the best painting of the human figure’.
No paintings were exhibited in 1867, the year Fanny died. But at the society’s 1868 exhibition Harriet – now the 'Miss’ of the De Mole family – won 3 guineas for the best watercolour painting of fruit and/or flowers by a lady, 2 guineas for the best watercolour painting of a bouquet of flowers and a guinea second prize in the open section for fruit and/or flower painting. Despite the fact that every one of the flower paintings she entered won a prize, the South Australian Advertiser 's art critic, oblivious of any change in artist, commented that this year Miss De Mole’s watercolours had not been 'arranged with her usual judgement, or finished with her usual care. There is also a flatness and want of variety in the group which takes the 15th prize. We are inclined to prefer Mrs Mack’s [q.v.] group which takes the 17th prize.’
Harriet not only assumed the mantle of floral artist in the family but also continued to paint subject pictures. In 1868 Miss De Mole was awarded a special prize for her crayon copy by an amateur ( The Village Belle ) and two second prizes: one for another copy from a chromolithograph or watercolour (hers depicted children gathering roses in a wood) and the other for an original watercolour landscape by an amateur. She also won three first prizes for her flower paintings. The Adelaide Observer noted: 'The various prizes offered for flower painting seem to have elicited considerable competition, but all the prizes but one are, as usual, carried off by Miss De Mole. Her bouquet of native flowers … is a tasteful group, beautifully executed’. Harriet’s ability in flower painting was obviously equal to her sister’s; her exhibition record after Fanny’s death strengthens Duffy’s hypothesis of collaborative work on both paintings and book.
Miss De Mole reaped a bumper crop of eight prizes in the Society’s 1869 exhibition, her winning entries comprising two copies (first prize and runner-up), a coloured chalk drawing ( A Virgin and Child ) and five flower paintings. The flowers gained her three first and two second prizes – runner-up to her own work. At the following exhibition she only won two prizes, for a copy and a flower painting, but by then she seems to have been exhibiting less. Her solitary prize-winner in 1871 was a painting illustrating the last ten lines of Shakespeare’s King John, Act 4, Scene 2 (the blacksmith’s scene) for which Mr Abraham had offered 5 guineas conditional on the subject having been painted in the colony in 1870 or 1871. The Advertiser thought her entry was not a success in any respect, 'but we presume the judges thought differently. Neither in conception, composition, nor execution does it appear to us to possess qualities entitling it to a first-class prize.’
Harriet’s mother died in 1870 and this apparently left her with no reason to stay in South Australia, indeed in the world. Soon afterwards she returned to England and is believed to have entered a nunnery (possibly an Anglican sisterhood). She died in England in 1891. A few of her exquisite watercolours of flowers remain in family possession.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1837
- Summary
- Painter, particularly known for her paintings of Australian flowers. Her beautiful studies appear in 'Wildflowers of South Australia,' published in London in 1861.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1891
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, London, England?
- Biography
- cartoonist and illustrator, was the eldest son of Ferdinand Charles Wirgman (1806-57); he was presumably born in London, though his birth certificate is untraced. Although his brother Theodore Blake Wirgman (1848?-1925) was trained at the RA Schools, became a portrait painter and exhibited at the RA, Charles was reputedly self-taught as an artist. Yet drawings sent back to England from Paris dated 1854-55, significantly including My academy dinner (1854), suggest some training and Charles is said to have gone to Paris in 1852 to study painting. In 1857 he was sent to Japan as a correspondent for the Illustrated London News [ ILN ], reportedly from Australia. John Clark, however, is adamant that there is no known Australian connection. In 1856 Wirgman was confused with his uncle Theodore, an army captain who had served in Austria [ sic ], which may explain the mistake.
The records of the ILN were largely destroyed by bombing in WWII, but the only Australian connection found by John Clark, the Wirgman expert, is that Charles’s brother Francis (1837-1870) died there. Moreover, Charles sent articles headed 'En route for China’ back to the ILN from Malta on 13 March 1857 as 'artist and special correspondent’, so must have sailed from England. He was also in Alexandria and the Suez in March, according to ILN illustrations. By 12 May he was dating views from Hong Kong. On 4 July and 10 October works were dated from Manila, the first occasion being a visit taken with Jardine of Jardine Matheson. He was back in Hong Kong by 29 October, then moved to China to record the fall of Canton on 29 December 1857. Yokohama was opened on 2 June 1859, but Wirgman is not supposed to have arrived there until 6 May 1861, having been living in Hong Kong and travelling to record the Chinese wars with the photographer Felice (Felix) Beato (1825/34?-1908?), with whom he was to be in partnership in Yokohama as 'artists and photographers’ in 1864-67.
Charles Wirgman’s Japanese illustrations include the very painterly A Japanese dinner party , published ILN 3 January 1874, 12 (ill. Monet and Japan , NGA cat., 2001, 25). 12 of his views of Japan were lithographed by Hanhart for Alcock’s The Capital of the Tycoon (London, 1863); they include 'From Our Inn at Omura’, 'Halt by the Wayside near Palhiwa’, 'Odah’m 'Scene in a Silk Shop’, 'Wayside Inn near Nagasaki’ and 'Woman of the Yeddo in Winter Dress’. Wirgman married a Japanese woman, Ozawa Kane (probably in 1863), and remained in Japan until his death. He was considered eccentric in dress and behaviour, according to Schodt (p.38), quoting Ernest Satow, one of the first British diplomats in Japan:
“Wirgman’s costume, consisting of wide blue cotton trousers, a loose yellow pongee jacket, no collar, and a conical hat of grey felt, gave rise to a grave discussion as to whether he was really an [ sic ] European, or only a Chinaman after all.”
As well as teaching drawing, watercolour and oil painting (especially watercolours), Wirgman introduced European-style cartoons to Japan. (The next cartoonist was a Frenchman, Ferdinand Georges Bigot (1860-1927), there in 1882-99.) As well as recording major events of the period, Wirgman published the Japan Punch in Yokohama in 1862 and from August 1865 to 1887. It had a Samurai Mr Punch on the cover with a quill instead of a sword. Although simply a ten-page monthly in English with a circulation of about 200, it was printed on special Japanese paper, printed with woodblocks and stitched Japanese-style. Primarily, it consisted of text and a few woodblock cartoons, all by Wirgman himself, mainly about the foreign compound, especially the British community in Yokohama, plus a few drawings about the impact of the West on Japanese life, e.g. February 1886, 39. As the first western-style humour magazine Japan Punch had a tremendous influence on Japanese artists. For instance, Wirgman’s use of word balloons was taken up. Schodt (p.43) gives an example of an 1869 Wirgman cartoon about samurai in awe of their first bicycle being reproduced as the top half of a 'then-and-now’ 1897 cartoon by Kotaro Nagahara. So popular, indeed, was his magazine that a Japanese version was produced. Wirgman is still considered the patron saint of Japanese cartoonists who every year hold a ceremony at his grave in Yokohama.
Wirgman paid a brief visit to Britain in 1887. When he died in Japan in 1891 his age was given as 58.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1832
- Summary
- English raised Japanese cartoonist and illustrator. It is asserted in some biographies that he worked in Australia during the mid 1850s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1891
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude53.479444 Longitude-2.245278 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manchester, England, UK
- Biography
- scene-painter and actor, came to Melbourne in 1852 and worked for the theatrical entrepreneur George Coppin. In April 1855 he was at Sydney’s Royal Victoria Theatre with Mr Clint ( Scipio Clint ) and Mr Thomas (probably Edmund Thomas ), but by November he was back painting the scenery for Lola Montez’s performance at the Melbourne Theatre Royal. From about 1856 Fry worked at a number of theatres in Bendigo, including the Criterion and the Lyceum whose new scenery for the latter’s production of The Will and the Way was said to be painted by 'Mr Fry’. On 8 May 1862 the Sandhurst (Bendigo) Amateur Dramatic Club gave him a benefit. 'A new grand panorama of the Burke and Wills Exploring Expedition painted by Mr J. Fry with novel mechanical effects’ accompanied by an illustrative lecture on that ill-fated expedition featured on the programme at the Lyceum Theatre on 7 July 1862. Fry’s panorama, however, was not a great success, being described as a copy of the one previously exhibited in Bendigo by Thomas Chuck .
Fry remained at the Lyceum until the end of 1862. The following May he was in Melbourne, working as a scene-painter with Pitt , Opie and others at the Theatre Royal. In September 1867 he was reported as having designed the scenery for The Beulah Spa at Melbourne’s Royal Haymarket Theatre, the set in the second act being especially commended for the pains 'the artist of the company’ had taken to make it look like a garden 'albeit it was a little hard and angular’.
Fry was apparently in Hobart Town in February 1877, when a panorama by him, said to have been painted there, was on show at the Theatre Royal. Stacy’s Great Panorama of the Australian Colonies and New Zealand , painted by Fry using 'well-known sketches that have appeared from time to time in the Illustrated Australian News ' (Colligan p.85), opened at St George’s Hall, Melbourne on 24 March 1877. Although then said to be going to England, it turned up in Wellington, at the Academy of Music, in July 1880. In 1881 Fry was in Adelaide exhibiting at premises opposite the Theatre Royal in Hindley Street, 'THE GREAT PICTURE of the notorious Bushrangers, painted by Fry, from a photograph taken on the ground where the murder of Sergeant Kennedy was committed. Every visitor will be presented with a PHOTOGRAPH of the notorious NED KELLY’. He died in Adelaide on 8 November 1891.
Writers:
Maslen, JoanKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. May 1831
- Summary
- Scene-painter and actor, worked for various theatrical companies creating sets in theatres primarily in the cities of Melbourne and Adelaide.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 December 1891
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1828
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1891
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude42.5195292 Longitude-70.8967226 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Salem, Massachusetts, USA
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He was a younger brother of the itinerant photographer Perez Mann Batchelder who employed him on the Californian goldfields in 1853. Benjamin, his younger brother Nathaniel and a third brother, Freeman (see P.M. Batchelder), arrived at Melbourne from Boston in the Cahota on 21 February 1856 to join Perez, who had opened a Melbourne branch of the firm at 57 Collins Street East in 1854. Benjamin and Nathaniel set up their own studio at Sydney in 1858, but when Nathaniel died two years later Batchelder Brothers closed down. Benjamin moved to Sandhurst (Bendigo) and opened a studio in his own name loosely linked to the Melbourne family firm, now Batchelder & O’Neill .
Benjamin Batchelder soon became Bendigo’s leading photographer, a title hitherto held by Alexander Fox . In 1861 Gus Peirce was sent to Bendigo by Batchelder & O’Neill to help Benjamin meet his commission from the Sandhurst Borough Council to photograph the local mining scene for the 1862 London International Exhibition. Peirce noted: 'We were furnished with a little black push-cart holding the camera and other necessaries, and we were to get pictures of all objects of interest … the work was most disagreeable, owing to the heat and dust’. Batchelder’s Views of Bendigo , an album of 51 sepia photographs produced in 1861, is in the La Trobe Library.
In 1866 every shire and borough council in Victoria was invited to send 14 photographic views to the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition, framed together with 'the statistics of the district as a centre piece’. Benjamin Batchelder was commissioned to produce the photographs for the Shire of Korong. He took general views of Inglewood and its public buildings, mines and mining scenes ('including Claughton’s & Masterton’s crushing mills’) and a cave at Mount Kooyoora, 'the haunt of the notorious bushranger, Captain Melville’. The last was especially commended as 'a beautiful specimen of the photographic art’. Each photograph was 'bordered and lettered’ by the Shire Council surveyor, Mr Wynne, then framed by Mr Deslandes. The whole Victorian collection was shown together at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, where Korong’s effort was awarded an honourable mention, before being sent to Paris.
Throughout 1866 and 1867 Benjamin’s studio was in Temple Court, Pall Mall, Bendigo. His Photographic Rooms were advertised and illustrated in Stevens & Bartholomew’s Sandhurst … Directory for 1867 as: 'The largest, the cheapest & the best in the colony … Views of buildings &c. taken to order. Cartes de Visite and Portraits of every description, beautifully Tinted to order. Photographic Albums, Frames, Cases, Passepartouts, Lockets, Engravings &c., in great variety, AT LESS THAN MELBOURNE PRICES. Cartes de Visite sent to any part of the colony free of postage. B.P. Batchelder, Artist’.
Benjamin sold up and returned to the United States in 1868. He died at Stockton, California, on 16 November 1891. An infant son is buried in the Bendigo General Cemetery. The La Trobe Library holds the most extensive collection of his photographs, including an undated portrait of Perez (1860s).
Writers:
Cusack, Frank
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1826
- Summary
- Benjamin Pierce Batchelder arrived in Australia with two of his brothers, both fellow photographers, in 1856. He established a successful business in Bendigo where he worked for nearly a decade before returning to the United States.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1891
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude51.6458441 Longitude-2.764539646 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ross, Monmouthshire, Wales, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, actor and entomologist, was born in Ross, Monmouthshire, Wales. He came to Melbourne in the early 1850s and made his stage debut as an actor with George Selth Coppin’s company at the Queen’s Theatre in 1855. Later he was a member of G.V. Brooke’s company. In December 1858 Edwards made a balloon ascent in Sydney. His lifelong hobby was entomology, and while in Sydney he became friendly with the naturalist and collector (Sir) William Macleay (1820-91) and, according to his surviving correspondence (American Museum of Natural History, New York), drew natural history sketches in Australia. None have been located.
Edwards went to California in 1867 and there became well known as an actor. He briefly returned to Melbourne in October 1889. Ultimately he owned one of the largest insect collections in the United States and compiled a catalogue of North American lepidoptera. He died in New York in July 1891.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1824
- Summary
- A sketcher, actor and entomologist, Edwards worked in Australia as an actor and made natural history sketches. He ultimately owned one of the largest insect collections in the United States.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- July 1891
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude55.861111 Longitude-4.25 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, lithographer and surveyor, was born in Glasgow, Scotland. In early life he studied medicine but gave this up for art, which he studied with a Mr Simpson and Charles Godfrey in Glasgow. Later he moved to London where, Henry Allport states, he studied at the Royal Academy Schools under J.M.W. Turner. He then worked for Day & Co., lithographers to the Queen. A chronic asthmatic, Dunnett was advised to leave Britain for a more favourable climate. He came to Melbourne about 1856 but soon left for Tasmania. There he found employment in the Hobart Town Survey Office. One of his co-workers was W.C. Piguenit and the two formed a close friendship. Dunnett is said to have given Piguenit 'advice and instruction in painting’.
Dunnett was an experienced lithographer, as the Hobart Town Courier of 12 November 1858 pointed out: 'it is no disparagement to our old lithographists whose merits have been cheerfully and freely acknowledged by the colonial Press and the public patrons of their art, to congratulate them upon the accession to their ranks in the person of Mr F. Dunnett, from Days of London, who has drawn on stone a portion of Chalmers’ Free Church and Manse in a manner which has never been equalled in the colony. The print is published by R.V. Hood [q.v.], of Fitzroy Place, from whom copies may be obtained’. (A copy of this print was known to have existed previously in a private collection but its current location is unknown.)
By 1860 Dunnett was teaching drawing at Chalmers School. Throughout the decade he continued to produce watercolours and lithographs. Watercolours include St John’s Church, New Town and Mount Wellington from the New Town Park (both c.1860, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery). He showed A Head at the Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition of 1862-63. Dunnett (as lithographer) and Piguenit (as original sketcher) combined to produce a Map of the Seat of War in New Zealand , advertised in November 1863 for 5s coloured, 2s 6d plain. Dunnett had engraved a New Zealand subject in 1861 – a view of Nelson College – and may already have visited the country. On 5 December 1864, Walch’s Literary Intelligencer announced that his two-colour lithographic Portrait of His Excellency the Governor (Colonel Gore Browne), published by J. Walch & Sons, was for sale at 7s 6d (TMAG). His Map of Hobart Town and some sketches of Tasmanian blue-gums were shown in the Tasmanian court at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, the latter sketch being awarded a highly commended certificate.
Dunnett subsequently joined the government service in New Zealand, where he reputedly continued to produce paintings and lithographs. Early in 1874, at Port Chalmers, he married Annie Jane, youngest daughter of Edmund Hodgson of Glen House, Hobart, and they returned to Tasmania. He was advertising as a writing and drawing master for Hobart Town schools and families in March 1875, offering special classes for 'two or three youths, so as to qualify them for situations in Government Survey Departments’.
Dunn was responsible for Henn & Co.'s Tasmanian calendar for 1877, bordered with holly and mistletoe on one side and waratah and colonial shrubs on the other; cupids feature among roses in the top corners and a woodcut of the firm’s premises appears under the calendar. Two further lithographs have also been identified, sheet music covers for Adam Clarke compositions: The Waratah Blossom Waltz and The Garrison Parade Polka . Both date from the mid 1880s and were published by R.L. Hood at the Hobart Town Mercury office. He exhibited in the 1881 fine art exhibition at the Hobart Town Hall and in the 1886 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. According to the catalogue of the Old Hobart Exhibition of 1896, Dunnett was responsible for painting the landscape background in the well-known portrait of Rev. Robert Knopwood, the portrait of the parson being attributed to T.G. Gregson and the pony and dog to J.W. Graves junior (qq.v.) – a group effort which must have been completed over many years. Dunnett died at Hobart on 12 October 1891.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1822
- Summary
- Frank C. Dunnett was a painter, lithographer and surveyor. As a chronic asthmatic he was advised to leave Britain and so in about 1856 he migrated to Australia. Dunnett moved to Tasmania and found employment with the Hobart Town Survey Office. In 1866 he exhibited at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition and was awarded a highly commended certificate for a sketch.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 October 1891
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude50.7218485 Longitude-3.5032797 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Heavitree, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- illustrator, cartoonist and writer, was born on 26 August 1822 at Heavitree, Devon, second son of a retired naval paymaster, Samuel Haydon, who supervised his sons’ education and developed their artistic talents. George’s elder brother, Samuel James Bouverie Haydon (1815-91), became a noted sculptor. George himself was apprenticed to the architect Charles Hedgeland at Exeter in 1837, but terminated his articles after twenty-one months and set out for the 'South Seas’. He sailed in the Theresa to Port Phillip, beginning the first of his diaries in March 1840. He arrived at Melbourne in July, where he worked in a bookshop and designed buildings (particularly terraced cottages) as clerk to the architect Thomas Price.
Haydon sketched for the newspapers and supplemented his income by holding private drawing classes at his shop; he moved to larger premises in Lonsdale Street in 1841. He became well known for his sketches, that of Melbourne in 1840 being widely reproduced when featured with a later engraving of Melbourne in the Australian Sketcher of 10 July 1875. Many of his sketches of Aboriginal life were sold to the illustrated papers or as souvenirs to send to Britain for 10s 6d each. A surviving pencil portrait of a man is signed and dated 1842 (Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania).
In 1843 Haydon moved to the Western Port coastal stations, staying with squatter friends. For six months he and a friend lived in isolation on French Island burning mangroves for barilla, an unsuccessful commercial venture. In about April 1844 he joined G.A. Robinson , chief protector of the Aborigines, as camp artist (for a salary of £2) on a trail-blazing expedition to East Gippsland. At the Victorian settlement he was employed designing buildings before meeting up with friends who took him on a swanning expedition in Western Port, his last adventure before returning to England in the Abberton . He left Melbourne on 15 January 1845.
Back at Exeter Haydon became an advocate of emigration, giving public lectures and publishing his Five Years’ Experience in Australia Felix (Exeter and London 1846), which drew on George Arden’s Latest Information with regard to Australia Felix rather than his own adventures. He then worked on a novel, The Australian Emigrant, a Rambling Story, Containing as much Fact as Fiction (London 1854), in which his own adventures and colonial acquaintances appeared, thinly disguised. His artistic interests had to be fitted in with his career in hospital administration and the law. He was steward of the Devon Lunatic Asylum at Exminster in 1849-53 and of Bridewell and Bethlehem hospitals in 1853-59. In 1865 he was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple. He died at his home, Ettrick, Putney Lower Common, on 9 November 1891.
As an artist, Haydon’s work falls into two periods. The early formative Australian period is mainly interesting for historical reasons. He made the 'first bold start at introducing the fine arts into Victoria as a humanizing agent’, said his friend Henry Hainsselin when describing his drawing classes of 1844, and he left a pictorial record, sometimes comic, of the early settlement and Aboriginal life in Port Phillip. His sketchbooks for this period (R.B. Smyth Collection, La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Vic (La Trobe)) are still unpublished. The illustrations to his two Australian books, although based on his sketches, were redrawn by artist friends; Charles Risdon engraved Five Years’ Experience and Watts Phillips The Australian Emigrant . Haydon’s view of the anchorage at the bottom of William and Queen streets, Melbourne, with the brig Henty in port (c.1840), published in the Australasian Sketcher on 10 July 1875, was subsequently worked up into an oil painting by Nellie McGlinn (La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria).
The second or 'Bedlam’ period saw Haydon develop as a cartoonist and illustrator in his own right. He joined the Langham Sketching Club, a British offshoot of the Artists Society, whose members met every Friday night to draw a set subject. In 1860 he illustrated Lady Julia Lockwood’s Instinct or Reason , a book of animal tales for children, and in 1868 the privately printed The Surprising Adventures of Three Men . Haydon’s style was influenced by his friend George Cruikshank who shared his interest in mental asylums and temperance. Through his friendship with Charles Keene and John Leech many of his sketches appeared in the London Punch . Haydon’s literary and artistic circle included George Augustus Henry Sala and Roger Acton as well as Samuel Phelps, the actor.
Haydon married Clarissa, daughter of Joseph Risdon and sister of his friend Charles, at Langtree, Devon, on 20 December 1851. They had four sons and one daughter. His two great interests outside his art were the Volunteer Movement and angling. He took up the temperance cause in Melbourne and was a health enthusiast, although fond of pipe-smoking. Physically and mentally 'a large man’, his superb torso was sketched by Hainsselin in the 1840s; Keene’s study The Gigantic Angler in Punch 's almanac for 1885 was said to be the best likeness of him appearing in that magazine.
Writers:
Gunson, Niel
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 August 1822
- Summary
- Illustrator, cartoonist and writer, spent five years in Victoria, 1840-45. He left a pictorial record, sometimes comic, of the early settlement and Aboriginal life in Port Phillip.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9 November 1891
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude46.5036807 Longitude-63.59541097 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Prince Edward Island, Canada
- Biography
- sketcher and public servant, was born on Prince Edward Island, Canada, son of Samuel Huyghue, a French Canadian. Samuel junior arrived aboard the Lady Peel on 4 February 1852 to join the Victorian gold-rush. In 1853 he became clerk of the Office of Mines at Ballarat, in 1862 collector of imposts, and in 1872 clerk of Petty Sessions at Graytown. He retired in 1874 to live in Melbourne where he died, unmarried, on 24 July 1891.
During the 1850s S.T. Gill lithographed a letterhead after Huyghue’s sketch of an Extraordinary Carving Found at Creswick’s Creek, Sixty Feet Six Inches below the Surface . Huyghue was in Ballarat at the time of the Eureka uprising and sketched The Government Camp, Ballarat, 1854. Troops Arriving from Melbourne , published as a lithograph by F.W. Niven . Many years later he made a large chalk and watercolour drawing titled Eureka Stockade (1882, BFAG) which vividly records the final confrontation between the miners and the mounted troops. His Eureka sketches were used for a series of wood-engravings prepared by 'A.C.’ (possibly Albert Cooke ) to illustrate the revised edition of W.B. Withers’s History of Ballarat (1887).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- Samuel Douglas Smith Huyghue was a sketcher and public servant. His watercolour drawing titled 'Eureka Stockade' is held at Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, in Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24 July 1891
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, was the second daughter of Robert Campbell and Sophia , née Palmer. She was born in London on 24 February 1812, when the Campbells were on a visit from Sydney. In 1847 her brother George gave her an album which she filled with pencil and watercolour sketches by her friends, her teacher and presumably herself (no attributed works are signed). From the evidence of the sketchbook it appears she had lessons from Conrad Martens who taught the daughters of many of the colony’s leading citizens in the 1840s. Paintings and sketches by Martens are numerous; so are lesser attempts in his style by an obvious pupil. Two pencil sketches, unsigned but presumably by Campbell, Duntroon N.S. Wales Decr 1841 and Canberra Church 26 August 1844 , are the earliest known views of the Canberra district (her father owned Duntroon). Their naive style when contrasted with later pencil sketches such as North Shore from 'the’ Garden and To the Wharf, both drawn from her Sydney home in 1850, suggests that the lessons from Martens occurred in the interim.
Apart from these youthful sketches no paintings or drawings are known. Sophia Ives Campbell was later considered by the family to have been far more fond of riding than of sketching. She inherited the property Delegate, in southern New South Wales, but after becoming arthritic lived mainly in Bournemouth, England, until her death in 1891.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 February 1812
- Summary
- Sketcher and resident of Canberra, Sydney and England. Considered by her family to have been far more fond of riding than of sketching, she nevertheless is believed to have had drawing lessons from Conrad Martens.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1891
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude54.98 Longitude-1.61 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1891-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and photographer, was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England; he studied art in both England and Munich.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1809
- Summary
- The adventurous Flintoff travelled in North America before reaching Melbourne, via Mexico and the Society Islands. This voyage formed the subject of his later paintings. He died of ammonia poisoning, having mistaken the toxin for cough mixture.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 October 1891
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.2239544 Longitude1.4027344 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Deal, Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- illustrator, painter, etcher, art teacher and decorator, was born in Deal, Kent. He studied topographical drawing at the Royal College of Art, South Kensington (London), before proceeding to India. He was assistant drawing master at the Teacher Training College in Poona in 1860-62 and instructor in topographical drawing at the Imperial Central School from the following year. The precise date of Clarke’s arrival in Queensland is unknown but in 1866, together with the local poet James Brunton Stephens, he founded Queensland Punch . Clarke contributed illustrations to it then, and again when the journal was revived in 1878. He also illustrated Stephens’s verse, including Illustrated Marsupial Bill and Roley Poley People . The two were members of Brisbane’s Johnsonian Club, founded in 1878; Clarke was elected vice-president in 1882.
Active in Brisbane’s cultural life generally, Clarke illuminated addresses and presentation books for the Johnsonian Club, decorated banners, such as that for the United Trades’ loyal demonstration during the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to Brisbane in 1868, and in 1881 painted the Tragic and Comic muses on Brisbane’s Theatre Royal, then being remodelled by the architect Andrea Stombucco. He recorded important local personalities and events such as the opening of the new St Stephen’s Catholic Cathedral, Brisbane, in 1874 (later published as a tinted lithograph by the Brisbane publishers Watson & Co.), designed the first notes and seal for the Queensland National Bank and provided illustrations for popular newspapers, including the Queenslander (including a new cover in 1877), Queensland Figaro and Planter Farmer .
According to William Moore, Clarke was the first etcher in Queensland. A collection of his designs and proof copies of his book covers and book illustrations (1867-79) is in the Mitchell Library. He was a regular participant in Brisbane’s early art exhibitions – the exhibitions of Arts and Industries – held at the School of Arts in the early 1870s. He designed the prize certificates for the 1873 exhibition as he did for Brisbane’s Intercolonial Exhibition in 1876. He was one of the three organisers of the Fine Art Gallery for the National Agricultural & Industrial Association of Queensland’s second exhibition in 1877 and showed several works in it, including etchings (one being a proof engraving of the new cover for the Queenslander ), watercolours ( A Deal Lugger in a Squall and Deal Luggers in a Calm ) and 'one admirable local subject, namely a sketch of the Brisbane River in one of its most picturesque aspects’. Other works were shown in the Queensland National Association Exhibitions of 1879, 1885 and 1887, and he continued to serve as a steward for the Fine Arts section. Indeed, his enthusiasm for the local National Association exhibitions was such that he opposed the formation of the Queensland Art Society in 1887; for him existing fine arts displays adequately served the needs of local artists.
In 1881, together with the architect Christian Waagepetersen, Clarke initiated art classes at the Brisbane School of Arts which he continued until his death, then was succeeded by Godfrey Rivers. Initially he taught freehand drawing and design and held a 'ladies’ class’ for watercolour painting. He was teaching modelling in 1888 89 when Harold Parker was a student. Clarke was a keen advocate of technical education in Brisbane. When the teaching role of the School of Arts was separated off to create the Brisbane Technical College in 1884 he designed the college emblem with its motto 'Ars Orta Labore’.
He is best remembered for his large, 12 × 4 feet (3.6 × 1.2 m), panoramic painting of Brisbane, commissioned for the Queensland court in the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition. This was shown again at the 1881 Queensland National Association Exhibition, then acquired by the Queensland Museum. It was a prominent and familiar exhibit in the museum’s former building. Another well-known work is his portrait of Dr James Quinn, Roman Catholic Bishop of Brisbane, painted for All Hallows Convent where, according to Keith Bradbury, he was art master.
At the 1880-81 Melbourne International Exhibition, in Qld Class 2 division ('various paintings and drawings’, cat. p.525), J.A. Clarke showed 'black-and-white drawings, illustrations to Brunton Stephen’s poems, Marsupial Bill and Roley-Poley People published in Queenslander .
Clarke regularly contributed to major exhibitions beyond Queensland, including the 1879 Sydney International, for which he designed the cover of the Catalogue of the Queensland Court and in which he won a third prize for his 'engravings’ (etchings?). He was well represented in the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition with A Bush Scene near Brisbane as well as his View of Brisbane among the oil paintings, the Brunton Stephens illustrations among the black and white drawings and one etching, Creek Crossing at Ashgrove, near Brisbane . He also sent work to the 1886 London Colonial and Indian Exhibition and the 1888 89 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition, at the latter showing in the Queensland Court (Class 1, Oil Paintings, cat.4) a 'View of Quart Pot Creek, Stanthorpe’ and 'Study of a Coleus’ ( Official Record p.534).
Writers:
McKay, Judith
Note: Dictionary of Australian Artists biography.Kerr, Joan
Note: Additional information: "At the 1880-81 Melbourne International Exhibition... published in Queenslander."
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1840
- Summary
- Illustrator, painter, etcher, art teacher and decorator born in England. Resident of Brisbane Clarke was the first etcher in Queensland.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1890
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude-42.8339024 Longitude147.274444 Start Date1839-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glenorchy, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- sketcher and surveyor, was born at Glenorchy, Van Diemen’s Land, youngest son of George Hull, a civil servant, and his wife Anna. In 1862 he went to Maryborough, Queensland, as a surveyor under his brother-in-law W.M. Davidson (later surveyor-general). There he married Mary Anna Barns, the daughter of a local solicitor, in 1865. He was in the Kennedy district in 1870 and was surveying Cardwell in 1872 when he drew pencil views of the town. Another, taken on the Mackay River, features the shooting of a crocodile. In 1880 Hull returned to Tasmania, where he also sketched. Thirty competent pencil drawings of Queensland in 1872 and Tasmania in 1882 and one sketch taken in 1879 when his ship was moored at Eden, Twofold Bay, New South Wales, remain in the family. Some of Hull’s drawings were reproduced as lithographs in leading journals of the day, including the Australian Town and Country Journal and Queensland Punch . Hull died at Toowong, Brisbane, in 1890, aged fifty-one.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1839
- Summary
- Alfred Arthur Hull was a sketcher and surveyor. He was surveying Cardwell in 1872 when he drew pencil views of the town. Some of Hull's drawings are reproduced as lithographs in leading journals such as the Australian Town and Country Journal and Queensland Punch. Hull died in 1890.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1890
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolour painter and Anglican clergyman, was born in London in July 1835, son of Marcus Brownrigg RN and Maria Caroline Brownrigg , née Blake. He arrived in Sydney in 1856 and by 1860 had been ordained an Anglican priest. In 1862 he married Eliza Shapcote in Albury, NSW. Canon Brownrigg, rector of St John’s Church of England at Launceston, undertook 13 missions to the people of the Furneaux Islands between 1872 and 1885. A keen sketcher, he illustrated his book The Cruise of the Freak (1872) with his own lithographs (see Australian Dictionary of Biography ). He also exhibited watercolour views at various exhibitions in Tasmania and New South Wales, e.g. [Royal] Art Society of NSW in 1883. At the third annual exhibition of Art Society of NSW: “ no.164, 'Kanimbla Valley’ is a large oil painting by the Rev. Canon Blake of Tasmania. It is rather too misty but the great valley has been correctly sketched and the distance is good, so that it is to be hoped Canon Brownrigg will contribute again” ( Sydney Morning Herald 21 March 1883, 11: info. Edwina Deakin).
At the 1887 Exhibition of Fine Arts, Parliament House, Hobart: “The Rev. M.B. Brownrigg exhibits four pictures from his own easel which do not display any great artistic merit, though the coast scene 'The Bass Rock’ and the 'Wild North West Coast of the North Countrie’ are freely drawn and accurately coloured representations of difficult and not very interesting subjects” ( Hobart Town Mercury 16 February 1887, 3: info. G.T. Stilwell). His panoramic watercolour view of Mount Strezlecki and the Chapel Islands viewed from the western tip of Cape Barren Island (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tasmania) was excuted during his 1881 voyage in 'his self-built canoe the Nautilus ' (Sullivan and Adkins).
.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1835
- Summary
- An artistic Anglican clergyman who painted the landscapes of Tasmania, to varying degrees of regard. A bit of an explorer, he built his own canoe, and illustrated and wrote a book about his travels.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1890
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude50.6190962 Longitude-3.4146801 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Exmouth, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in Exmouth, Devon, son of Thomas Smyth Stacy and Mary Ann, née Sheppard. He came to South Australia on board the Orissa in 1841. On 22 May 1857 he married Maria Tatham Dean; they had eight children. From 1864 Robert S. Stacy had a photographic studio in O’Connell Street, North Adelaide. The second son, Robert Sheppard Stacy (b.1862), was subsequently in partnership with his father and carried on the firm of Robert S. Stacy after his father’s death.
Branch studios were opened at Gawler in 1867, at Clare in 1871, and the firm was later listed as working for short periods at Menindie (1887), St Leonards (1888) and possibly Strathalbyn (carte-de-visite). At some stage Stacy appears to have been in partnership with James Machan . He died at St Leonards in 1888 and was buried in Brighton Cemetery. In the early 1860s Stacy’s photograph of John McDouall Stuart was reproduced in the Illustrated London News embellished with a background stated to be after a drawing by the explorer himself (but almost certainly by Stephen King ). A copy of the photograph is in the Mortlock Library.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1834
- Summary
- Robert Stacy emigrated from England to South Australia as a young boy in 1841. He practiced photography from c.1962, establishing a series of photographic studios around Adelaide. He also travelled throughout the state, specialising in portraiture and scenic views.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1890
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and inspector of schools, was born in London, son of Thomas Venables, private secretary of Lord Sidmouth and Sir Robert Peel, and Jane, sister of the Australian explorer Charles Sturt . While studying at Oxford Venables met Henry Kingsley , with whom he travelled to Port Phillip (Victoria) in the Gauntlet , arriving in December 1853. Both were lured by 'the Australian madness of 1852’, as Kingsley later phrased it, and worked together on the Mount Alexander and Moliagul diggings – without any great success. Three sketches by Venables are in the Baillieu Library (MU): a watercolour of the Gauntlet , a drawing dated 1855 of a vessel bearing news of the Crimean War, and a view of the tent where Venables and Kingsley camped after disembarking. The last is annotated by Venables 'Our first place of abode’ and shows the friends preparing a meal around a campfire.
Mellick states that Kingsley and Venables had gone their separate ways by June 1854. In 1856 Venables was back at the Moliagul diggings, but by March 1858 he had joined the Victorian teaching service. After working as a school inspector and examiner, he was appointed secretary to the new Department of Education in 1872. Later he was employed as examiner and librarian at the University of Melbourne. He is said to have lost money in gold speculations in the late 1880s. His wife Christina Mary, née Burke, whom he had married in 1867, died in 1885 leaving Venables inconsolable. In March 1889 he returned to England. He died there on 31 December 1890, survived by two sons.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- Henry Pares Venables was a sketcher who travelled to Victoria from England in 1853 with Henry Kingsley, both lured by the goldrush. Three sketches by Venables are held in the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31 December 1890
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and photolithographer, was born in Scotland. He was in Melbourne by 1859, when he advertised a negative printing service to assist amateur photographers; his studio at 83 Swanston Street is listed in the Melbourne Directory for the following year. Crawford became a council member of the Photographic Society of Victoria in 1860, then moved to Sydney later in the year. In January 1861 he advertised that he was about to leave New South Wales and was selling off remaining stock 'considerably under cost price’: 'a complete set for portraits or views, 10 × 8 [25.4 × 20.3 cm] or under, by Ottewile with Ross lenses. A Captain Fowkes camera for 10 × 8 in the dark box; a double lens stereo-camera, with Ross one-quarter lenses, will take portraits or views instantaneously’, and more. Another disposal sale of photographic equipment was advertised in December from the same address, Whittell’s Buildings, near the Wharf, Bathurst Street.
Soon afterwards Crawford was managing the Adelaide Photographic Company in King William Street, Adelaide, South Australia. There he was noted for cooling his large studio window with running water in summer (to assist short portrait exposure times). In March 1864 his firm advertised photographs of Bishop Short of Adelaide, Bishop Patteson of Melanesia and ministers of the Church of England and other denominations. The following month the South Australian Register praised two cartes-de-visite, 'one representing the outside of the book just presented by the Queen to the South Australian Institute and the other the inside of the volume with the written inscription’. In 1865 he was involved in a legal dispute with Townsend Duryea and Charles Wilson over the newly fashionable sennotype, 'denying both the originality of the sennotype process, and Mr. Duryea’s exclusive possession of the secret’. In 1866 he invited a group of gentlemen to spend an evening at the company’s studio in order to witness his experimental attempts to take photographs with the artificial light of magnesium flash.
Crawford was fond of novelties. He was possibly the first photographer in Australia to provide original photographs for books. Those in George Hamilton 's 1866 horse books, discussed by Robert Holden, may be attributed to his Adelaide Photographic Company because of the photographs the firm soon afterwards produced of Sophia Sinnett 's ink sketches, although Townsend Duryea, another innovative photographer, was photographing drawings for albums and books at about the same time. In the mid 1860s Adelaide possibly had the most innovative photographers in the Australian colonies.
Not all the experiments were considered an unqualified success. Crawford produced single-plate panoramic views of Adelaide taken with a wide-angle lens in 1866, 'a branch of the art little practised in these colonies’, commented the pseudonymous critic 'Sol’ when examples were shown at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. But, 'Sol’ added disparagingly, 'we much doubt their becoming very great favourites with the public if the specimens before us shew the greatest amount of definition that can be obtained in shadow by the process’.
From 1868 Crawford was a photo-lithographer with the South Australian Survey Department. He was one of the two photography judges appointed to the 1870 exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts (the other was W.C. May ). He died, unmarried, on 29 October 1890.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1829
- Summary
- Professional photographer and photo-lithographer born in Scotland. A resident of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, Crawford was possibly the first photographer in Australia to provide original photographs for books.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 October 1890
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude59.0967308 Longitude10.02192996 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Larvik, Norway
- Biography
- Sketcher, caricaturist and banker, Alexander Archer was the tenth of the 13 children of William Archer and Julia, née Walker, of Perth, Scotland.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
MacAulay, Bettina
Note: (DAA biographer, information sourced from)
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 10 April 1828
- Summary
- Member of a large enterprising colonial family which included a number of fellow artists, Archer worked for a number of years for the Bank of New South Wales. His sketches include landscapes and caricatures of family members.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28 February 1890
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude55.6100589 Longitude-4.4964652 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kilmarnock, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- James Urie, decorator and plumber, came to Victoria from Scotland c.April 1853. In partnership with James Ferguson , they set up a plumbing, slating and glazing business at Curzon Street, North Melbourne. By 1860, when Ferguson & Urie were listed in Sands & Kenny’s Commercial and General Melbourne Directory under 'Painters, Plumbers, Glaziers and Paperhangers’, they were manufacturing decorative lead light windows. They displayed specimens of their 'Ornamental Glazing in Lead’ at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition preceding the 1862 London International. At the same exhibition the British-trained stained-glass designer John Lamb Lyon , then living in Main Street, Maldon, exhibited 'Stained Glass’ of early English design and, as 'John L. Lyall’ (sic), a 'Drawing for Stained Glass’. By late 1861 Lyon had joined the firm as their stained glass artist, followed by the English artist David Relph Drape in 1863, and they became a commercial stained glass business.
Ferguson & Urie ran a display advertisement in Sands & McDougall’s Melbourne Directory for 1864 offering stained-glass windows for 'Churches, Public buildings, Hall Lights, and other purposes, executed at the Stained Glass Works, Curzon Street’. Their earliest extant stained glass window is located at St Margaret’s Church at Eltham dated circa Nov 1861. A Burning Bush window for St Enoch’s United Presbyterian Church, West Melbourne (destroyed), an entire cycle of windows for St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, West Melbourne (now in Box Hill Church) and a large four-light Prince Albert Memorial window in Holy Trinity, Kew (extant).
At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition Ferguson, Urie & Lyon (who were exhibiting stained-glass window designs for the Public Works Department, the Post Office and the Melbourne Public Offices) won a medal for 'Establishing a Manufacture of Stained Glass, creditably executed’. In 1867 the firm advertised: “Stained Glass Windows for Churches, Public Halls and Hall Lights and other purposes, executed at the Stained Glass Works, Curzon Street. Designs in any style made and submitted with estimate of cost. Lead lights in Cathedral, Crown Sheet and Ornamental Glass, and Pattern.” Towards the end of the year they painted transparencies on glass to decorate the windows of many Melbourne business premises as part of the city’s decorations in honour of the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit (November 1867-January 1868). John Lamb Lyon left the firm in 1873 to join his friend Daniel Cottier as “Lyon & Cottier” until his death at Balmain, NSW, on the 14th June 1916.
By 1864 Ferguson & Urie were exporting glass to Adelaide, South Australia, and to rural areas; their stained-glass window at the entrance to John Dixon Wyselaskie’s country seat Narrapumelap, near Hamilton, Victoria, is dated 1873. According to Zimmer, the pinnacle of their stained-glass career came in 1875 when they had a central Collins Street shop specialising in 'Memorial, Heraldic, and Grisaille Illuminated Commandments and Wall Decorations’ and they won a first-class certificate for their glass at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. By then the firm had lost the advantages of colonial monopoly, especially as their styles and techniques never seem to have been at all innovative. Throughout the thirty-odd years of the firm’s existence, the design and colouring of their stained-glass windows continued to have an archaic, early Victorian medieval character. Examples of their brightly coloured, rather simple, pictorial stained glass can be found in Christ Church, Geelong ( Christ Enthroned with the Four Evangelists ), St John’s, Clifton Hill, St Cuthbert’s Presbyterian Church, Brighton (c.1888), and in the Caulfield house of Judge Billing, now called Labassa (National Trust).
Ferguson & Urie survived beyond Urie’s death in 1890 and Ferguson’s death in 1894, but with decreasing success. In 1894 their sole warehouse was in Franklin Street. In late 1899 the surviving sons of the founders, James Ferguson Jnr and William Urie, sold the entire stock in trade and closed the business.
Writers:
Staff Writer
rayjbrown
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2016
- Born
- b. 14 May 1828
- Summary
- Slater & Glazier, born in Kilmarnock, Scotland. He was an apprentice of James Ferguson in Wallacetown, Ayr. Both men came to Australia in late 1852 and started the "Ferguson & Urie" plumbing, slating and glazing company in 1853. By 1861 they were solely a stained glass company. The company's stained glass could be seen in the eastern states of Australia as well as New Zealand from 1861 to 1899.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21 July 1890
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and grocer, appears to have been the S. Clifford who arrived at Hobart Town from London in December 1848 by the Windermere . On 24 September 1851, at St John’s Church, New Town, Samuel Clifford, aged twenty-four, married Ann Margaret Giles. He was appointed storekeeper at the Hobart Town Prisoners’ Barracks in October 1851 and remained there until 1856, then went into partnership with Edward Williams as a real estate agent. The partnership was dissolved in October and Clifford continued on his own. By January 1858 he was established as a grocer in Australia House, 69 Liverpool Street, where he remained for several years.
Having taken photographs from at least 1859, early in 1861 Clifford advertised in Walch’s Literary Intelligencer and the Hobart Town Advertiser that his stereoscopic views of Tasmanian scenery were on sale at his grocery shop together with photographic equipment. Then, after paying a short visit to Melbourne, he set up a 'New Photographic Establishment’ at 132 Liverpool Street, opposite Perkins’s Emporium, where, he announced, he would in future devote himself entirely to the stereoscopic photographs for which he had long been known. While in Melbourne he had photographed a most unusual subject: an artificially-lit waxworks tableau in Kreitmeyer’s Waxworks Museum, showing the explorers Burke, Wills and King at Cooper’s Creek. His half-plate albumen print of the three realistic figures (modelled by the sculptor Charles Summers) in front of a painted backdrop bushland setting (artist unknown) is in Alfred Abbott 's album (Crowther Library).
In 1862 Clifford exhibited photographs of Tasmanian scenery at the Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition and in 1865 he claimed to have received the highest award for architectural and landscape photography at a New Zealand exhibition (presumably Dunedin). The 100 stereoscopic views of Tasmanian scenery and the large photograph of Hobart’s Governor Franklin statue that he showed in Melbourne’s 1866 Intercolonial Exhibition were praised by the pseudonymous “Sol”, who greatly admired Clifford’s 'dry’ stereographs produced by 'Russel’s tannin process’: 'Surely no wet photography ever excelled these delightful representations of nature’.
A number of Clifford’s photographs were reproduced as lithographs in the colonial illustrated press and in a German immigration handbook (Hamburg 1870). From the mid 1860s he sold albums of views; a number survive in Tasmanian public collections. Clifford produced portraits of the Tasmanian Volunteers, taken at a rifle match on 17 October 1863, together with views of Hon. T.Y. Lowes’s estate, Lowestoft, Glenorchy, where this had been held. The portraits were extensively and favourably reviewed.
Clifford was one of four local photographers commissioned to cover the Tasmanian part of the Duke of Edinburgh’s 1867 68 Australian tour; his photographs are held in the Tasmanian Museum and in the Archives Office of Tasmania. His view of Governor Du Cane’s swearing-in ceremony, taken from the corner of Elizabeth and Macquarie streets, was praised in the Evening Mail of 19 January 1869. In 1870 he was advertising in the Mercury as 'Prize Medallist at Melbourne and New Zealand. Photographer to H.R.H. Prince Alfred at Government House by Command’ and inviting visiting 'officers and others’ from the Flying Squadron 'to inspect the largest and choicest stock of photographs of Tasmanian scenery from all parts of the Islands that can be obtained in any of the Colonies’.
The bulk of Clifford’s business always remained stereographic scenery which he produced in very large numbers. As early as 1865 he was advertising that he had 700 stereoscopic views of Tasmania available. His most significant work was done by 1873 although he continued in business in Hobart Town until bought out by the Anson Brothers in 1878. He died at his son’s residence at Melton Mowbray on 14 April 1890. His wife had died in childbirth on 9 January 1867.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1827
- Summary
- Professional photographer and grocer. Resident of Tasmania he produced very large numbers of stereographic scenery.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 April 1890
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude22.5726459 Longitude88.3638953 Start Date1823-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Calcutta, India
- Biography
- amateur photographer, military engineer and deputy master of the Royal Mint, was born on 17 August 1823 in Calcutta, India, son of the Hon. John Petty Ward of the Bengal civil service and Elinor, née Erskine. Commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1841, he studied engineering and architecture at Chatham and mining at the Royal School of Mines, London, then served in Bermuda and Britain. While working at the London Royal Mint, Captain Ward was appointed deputy master of the new Sydney branch; he arrived in the Calcutta on 22 October 1854.
The assayer at the Sydney Mint, who thought Ward 'generally civil and attentive, but very distant’, was W.S. Jevons . Both practised wet-plate (collodion) photography at the Mint. So did Robert Hunt , Ward’s first clerk in the bullion office and Jevons’s friend. Together with W.F. Moresby , apparently a photographic proétgé of Ward’s, they all exhibited at the second photographic conversazione of the Philosophical Society of New South Wales in December 1859 with other Sydney photographers. These four showed a collection of twenty-three stereographs they had taken.
Ward held a far more exalted position in the Philosophical (later Royal) Society than his assistants, having helped found it in May 1856 and serving both as councillor and honorary secretary. He was later elected a corresponding member, and he published three papers in its Transactions . In 1863 he published a report on the Defences of the City of Sydney and, with Professor John Smith , wrote 'Report on the southern goldfields’ which appeared in the History of New South Wales (London 1862). A trustee of the Australian Museum, Ward held various other official offices, being appointed a member of the Legislative Council (1855-56 and 1861 65) and a commissioner of the railways (1856-58).
At Holy Trinity (the Garrison) Church, The Rocks, Sydney, on 21 November 1857, Ward married Anne Sophia, daughter of Robert Campbell junior; they had at least three sons and three daughters. The Wards lived at Dawes Point Battery and Edward’s undated photograph taken from within its low walls shows the ordnance in front of their home and their splendid view of Sydney Harbour (Historic Photograph Collection, Macleay Museum, University of Sydney). Eight stereographs of similar harbour views (Josef Lebovic Gallery) were exhibited in 1989. Other photographs taken by Ward are in the Macarthur family albums (Mitchell Library), James Macarthur being a close friend with whom Ward maintained a lifelong correspondence.
Ward took leave from the Sydney Mint in 1866 and returned to England with his family. When they came back to the colonies in 1869 (the year he became a colonel), it was to a Melbourne posting. As deputy-master of the newly created Victorian branch of the Royal Mint, he supervised the design, construction and fitting out of the Mint Building which opened on 12 June 1872. Two designs for the building survive in the Victorian Public Records Office, both signed 'Comber and Ward’. One shows the Mint as erected; the other depicts a far more ambitious scheme with fenestration modelled on that of Charles Barry’s Reform Club, London; it was reputedly designed by Ward in London before his return. The drawings for the administrative buildings and guard-houses as built were prepared by J.J. Clark .
In 1876 Ward was again granted home leave. He never returned to Australia, although subsequently investing in cattle stations in Queensland, but lived in London and France for the rest of his life. He died at his villa in Cannes on 5 February 1890 after having been promoted major-general (1877) and knighted (1879).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 August 1823
- Summary
- Deputy Master of the Royal Mint in both Sydney and later Melbourne. Practiced wet-plate (collodion) photography. Exhibited at the second photographic conversazione of the Philosophical Society of New South Wales in December 1859 with other Sydney photographers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 February 1890
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude50.83635905 Longitude0.46178908 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- West Indies
- Biography
- painter, lithographer and novelist, was born in the West Indies where her father, Colonel George Barney RE , served for twenty years.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1821
- Summary
- Painter, lithographer and novelist. She exhibited two watercolours and a pencil drawing in the 1854 Australian Museum Exhibition.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1890
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and police officer, was born in England of French refugee parents and spent an indulged early childhood with relatives in France. At the age of eight he rejoined his widowed father who had remarried and was working as a language teacher at Plymouth. Alexander attended school at Plymouth, Rouen, Maidstone and Hawkhurst, then attempted to run away to sea. Apprehended in London, he was signed on as a deckhand aboard a collier by his father, in an attempt to dissuade him from a sailor’s life. While ashore in Sunderland the youth entertained a large gathering of sailors’ wives by playing the fiddle and taking their portraits. Subsequently enrolled at Rev. Mr Boyce’s school at Edgeware, where he was 'made to live on milk and water’, led to Alexander enlisting in a British legion fighting in Portugal. His sketch of a manoeuvre where the company landed under fire made, he thought, 'a very pretty’ picture. A view of the town of Luria outlining the enemy position was commissioned by General Bacon, but was not delivered for many years and then to the general’s wife, Lady Charlotte Bacon, whom Tolmer encountered at a Government House ball at Adelaide in 1865.
After the war Alexander returned to England and was reconciled with his father. Disfigured by smallpox contracted on the voyage home, he retreated to France for six months to further his studies in French, English, drawing and music. Again the active life beckoned and Tolmer enlisted in the 16th Lancers at Maidstone, Kent. A print after Rubens he copied at this time was given to his superior officer, Colonel Brotherton and, Tolmer claimed, was passed on to Lord Hill who presented it to Queen Victoria at her particular request. Meanwhile, Tolmer had been passed over for promotion and was in financial difficulties, so he decided to migrate to South Australia. He reached Adelaide in February 1840 with Mary, née Carter, his wife of four years, their infant child and Mary’s sister. Through a letter of introduction to Governor Gawler, he secured the position of sub-inspector of police and soon afterwards was promoted inspector of mounted and rural police. He was also an adjutant of cavalry in the volunteer militia with the rank of captain.
Tolmer’s colonial career was initially adventurous and successful. While pursuing criminals and bushrangers over large tracts of uninhabited land and settling disputes between settlers and Aborigines in the interior he always carried a sketchbook. This was, Tolmer claimed, at the specific behest of Governor Sir George Grey, who in the early 1840s had begun writing a book on South Australia which he asked Tolmer to illustrate. His drawings, including views of the Blue Lake at Mount Gambier, an Aboriginal burial ground beside Lake Alexandrina, natives canoeing on the Murray River and a native throwing a spear, were exhibited on the drawing-room table at Government House but when subsequently published 'my name as original artist was never acknowledged’.
Tolmer showed four pencil sketches at the first Adelaide art exhibition in 1847: Charge of the Inneskillen Dragoons, Waterloo , Sketch of Government Cutter Scudding in a Gale , Sunset off Kangaroo Island , and an untitled drawing. The Art Gallery of South Australia holds two of his pencil sketches, Hadley Park Mount Gambier (n.d.) and Robe Town—Embarkation of H.E. Sir James Ferguson, June 12th, 1869 . His oil painting The Major O’Halloran Expedition to Encounter Bay , sold at Leonard Joel’s in November 1975, records the notorious expedition that Tolmer joined soon after arriving in South Australia, which court-martialled then executed two Aborigines allegedly responsible for murdering the survivors of the Maria .
In late 1852 Tolmer was promoted commissioner of police and police magistrate. In February he initiated a successful escort service to bring gold from the Victorian goldfields to South Australia, but the five months he spent travelling with it weakened his hold in Adelaide and in 1853 he was demoted to his previous position. Although subsequently promoted police superintendent, he was dismissed in 1856. In 1859 he was reinstated but lost his job after nine months. Suffering financial difficulties, he had to withdraw his children from school. He lost money in an unsuccessful attempt to be the first to cross the continent from south to north in 1859 and he failed as a sheep-farmer. In 1862 he was appointed a Crown lands ranger, then was transferred to what he regarded as the 'degrading position’ of inspecting ranger. In 1877 he was sent to Adelaide as sub-inspector of Crown lands.
Tolmer published his reminiscences in 1882. The two-volume work was a blatantly self-promotional exercise in exculpation. His claims for his art, of Queen Victoria’s interest and the unacknowledged use of his works, are but two unsubstantiated items in a long catalogue of grievances, his memoirs alternating between boasting of his talents and fame and lamenting the plagiarism of his work and ideas. Some of his claims, however, seem to have been justified. He was a vigorous and talented police officer who commanded great loyalty through his bravery and enterprise but was also extremely adept at making enemies.
Tolmer’s first wife died in 1867 leaving him with three children. His marriage in 1869 to Jane Douglas produced a further four daughters and two sons. He died at Mitcham, Adelaide, South Australia, on 7 March 1890.
Writers:
Lennon, Jane
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- Sketcher and police officer, was born in England of French parents and moved to South Australia. Sketched military pictures, scenes of the Australian landscape, criminals and bushrangers and Aboriginals.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 March 1890
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude52.253094 Longitude-1.3884119 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Southam, Warwickshire, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, house painter and builder, was born in Southam, Warwickshire, into a landed English county family which traced its origins back to the sixteenth century.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1814
- Summary
- Professional photographer, house painter and builder. Evidence suggests he was practicing as a professional photographer from about 1860-63. Working with members of his family, Burmam photographic studios sprouted all around Melbourne and by 1878 William and his sons Frederick and William were well reputed. Another son, Arthur William became an independent photographer in Fitzroy and Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 June 1890
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- Amateur wood turner, born in Scotland, who arrived in 1830 as a crewmember of the Eagle owned by Charles Pratt. He married Ann Ellen Pratt in 1836. Dempster brought his treadle lathe with him.This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1810
- Summary
- Amateur wood turner, born in Scotland, who arrived in 1830 as a crewmember of the Eagle owned by Charles Pratt.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1890
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1804-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- miniaturist, portrait painter, sketcher, architect and diarist, was born in London on 15 March 1804, natural daughter of George, fifth Duke of Gordon, and Jane Graham of Rockmoor, Scotland. Acknowledged as the duke’s daughter, she was at first privately educated then attended a convent in London. Georgiana was first taught to draw when she was living at Somers Town, aged seven, and met Louis Mauleon, a French prisoner of war on parole, who visited her daily for two years until repatriated on 13 August 1813. He also gave her French lessons. Later she was taught by the landscape painter John Varley (1815), supplemented by a dozen sessions with John Glover (also a landscape painter) and a few from Dominic Serres, marine painter to the King, who taught her to draw in Indian ink and indigo. Then she learnt from the portrait and miniature painter Charles Hayter, which was more to her taste as she recollected that she always wanted to be a portrait painter. However the lessons ended abruptly when Hayter offered to marry her to one of his sons (whom she had never met).
As 'Miss Georgiana Huntley’ [sic], she exhibited annually at the Royal Academy from 1816 (when aged 12!) to 1819 and in 1821 and 1825, her subject matter varying from landscape to genre and portraiture. {Under 'Miss Georgiana Huntley, Painter’, Graves lists: (from 14 Clarendon Square) 1816 View of a church; (from 7 Clarendon Square) 1817 View on the Thames near Richmond, and View of Lambeth from Millbank; (from 25 Buckingham Place) 1818 'A peasant boy returning from market with vegetables, on a winter’s day; 1819 Scene before a cottage door near Margate; (from 16 Newman Street) 1821 Portrait of a French lady; and (from 10 New Road, Fitzroy Square) 1825 A Portrait.} In 1820 she was awarded the Silver Medal of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (later the Royal Society of Arts) for a miniature portrait of her grandfather, Alexander, 4th Duke of Gordon (her watercolour on paper copy is at Arthur’s Seat, Victoria). In 1821 she won the Society’s silver palette for 'an original group of portraits in watercolour’ (both medal and palette are in LT).
In the 1820s Georgiana went to live at her grandfather’s Scottish estate in Morayshire and became 'Georgiana Gordon of Gordon Castle’. She spent much time painting, including copying many of the portraits in the castle. After Duke Alexander died in 1827, she continued to live there (far less happily) with her father and his wife, Elizabeth, née Brodie of Brodie Castle, until 1829 when she moved to a boarding house in Edinburgh to paint. A list in her handwriting titled 'Portraits Painted for Fame (and Money)’ gives details of works painted between 1827 and 1830. 16 were painted at Gordon Castle, 35 at Edinburgh (nearly all of women and children) and one at Cullen House. Not all were miniatures. Some were half- or full-length portraits such as The Marchioness Cornwallis; a Full-Length; Sitting at her Drawing . Frequently not only the name of the sitter is given but also much information on their social position or connections, e.g. 'Lieut. James Skene in uniform, for Mrs Skene. He afterwards married a Greek lady, and had, in her right, “the liberty to pasture his bees on the sunny side of Hymettus”.’
On 25 September 1830, Georgiana wrote: 'Left my easel, and changed my name. £225 in Sir William Forbes’s bank; the result of my portraits’ That day she married Andrew Murison McCrae, a solicitor and kinsman to the Gordons, at Gordon Castle. They lived in London with a house in Edinburgh until the Duke died leaving everything to his wife. Their financial position then became precarious and, enthused by Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell , they decided to emigrate to NSW. Andrew arrived at Sydney in March 1839 and later moved to Melbourne where members of his family were living; Georgiana ill and weak after the birth of her fifth child (four still living) was forbidden to travel so remained in London, coping with her own various childhood illnesses and soon forced to earn a living teaching and painting miniatures after receiving no support from her husband. It was two years before she and the children joined him in Melbourne. In 1842 they moved into a house, Mayfield, on the Yarra River designed by Georgiana, which was described as 'one of the first superior houses erected in the colony’.
The following year, however, Andrew took up a run near Dromana; he moved the family there in 1845. On the eve of her departure from Melbourne Georgiana wrote in her journal:
If I had a free choice in this matter, I should remain at “Mayfield” until the house is sold or let. There is a living to be had here through my art of miniature painting, for which I have already several orders in hand, but dare not oppose the family wishes that “money not be made in that way”! At Arthur’s Seat we have only huts, and no house built for the reception of ourselves and furniture.
Despite such difficulties Georgiana drew and painted a large number of works, mostly portraits of her family and views of the surrounding districts. Some are in the McCrae homestead, Arthur’s Seat, on the Mornington Peninsula, now owned by the National Trust (Vic.). She played a major role in the design of the Arthur’s Seat homestead, noting in her diary her exasperation when the builder omitted the hearths. The major collection of her work (LT) consists of 50 sketches and drawings, some pre-dating her emigration. The most common subject is the McCrae homestead and its environs, including The Kitchen, Arthur’s Seat (1845, pen and wash), but there are also sketches of early Melbourne such as Flagstaff and Cemetery: Queen St. Corner and Savings Bank, Collins Street (1853, pen and wash).
Her portrait of Bishop W.G. Broughton (c.1843) provoked Jane Franklin , wife of the Governor of Tasmania, to write to the bishop in January 1844:
We have seen your portrait by Mrs McCrae. May I venture to tell you what I think of it? It is too young, too smooth, too pink and white and consequently too handsome – but notwithstanding it is vastly inferior to the original, not half so interesting looking, so intellectual or so benignant. I shall like it better in the engraving, tho’ even there it will fail in the full expression of the qualities I have enumerated. It is certainly a very pretty picture however – and does credit to the artist.
Georgiana and her children returned to live in Melbourne in 1851 when Andrew took up an appointment as police magistrate at Alberton, Gippsland. She seems to have exhibited rarely, although at the first exhibition of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts at Melbourne in 1857 she showed several works. Some were copies of paintings by Murillo, Reynolds and Van Dyck possibly painted many years earlier; others were sketches or miniatures from life. All appear to have been on a small scale in pencil or watercolour, with many of watercolours on ivory. The Illustrated Journal of Australasia in January 1858 stated, 'Mrs McCrae has some of the most beautiful and delicate miniatures we ever saw’, and the Age of 11 December 1857 was equally complimentary: 'Mrs A.M. McCrae has a number of miniatures executed in a style superior to anything of the sort we have seen in the colony; as also a series of clever studies’. The Argus reviewer wrote:
We hope to see more of this lady’s productions in a future exhibition. Some of the miniatures are exquisite and might vie in grace, delicacy of touch, sentiment and high finish with those of Ross or Thorburn. The small copy of Murillo’s “Laughing Beggar Boy” is a gem in its way, and will bear the most critical examination. The studies from Reynolds are equally beautiful and combine correct drawing, purity of colour and beauty of expression. We have seen no miniatures in the colony comparable with those which have been contributed to this exhibition by Mrs M’Crae: while the pencil and watercolour drawings which accompany them are full of talent.
Most of McCrae’s known colonial works are portraits of family members or friends. Because of her breeding, education, charm and wit she mixed in Melbourne’s highest social and literary circles. Frequent visitors to her house were Governor La Trobe and his wife, Sophie (with whom she mostly conversed in French), Sir John and Lady Franklin, Bishop Broughton, Richard 'Orion’ Horne , Nicholas Chevalier and the poets Henry Kendall and Adam Lindsay Gordon. She was fully accepted into upper-class colonial society, despite the opinion of some of her husband’s family that he had married beneath him and their subsequent refusal to accept her.
Georgiana McCrae was the first woman artist in Port Phillip to write about her life in the colonies as an 'exile’. Even so, her journal suggests that her life was an active and purposeful one, centring on her home and family of seven children, although ultimately she became disillusioned with the new settlement and longed for Scotland. Unfortunately, although she continued to exercise her artistic skills in portraiture, she did so despite 'Mr McCrae’s opposition to my wish to employ my professional talent to profit’. Apart from the apparently demotivating effect of this opposition, it was also regrettable in the light of the family’s frequent financial distress.
At her death in 1890 Alexander Sutherland wrote: 'It was largely due to the influence of such women as Mrs McCrae that ideas of refinement and principles of taste were kept alive during the “dark ages” of our colonial history’.
Writers:
Alford, KatrinaBruce, CandiceKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 March 1804
- Summary
- A prolific painter. McCrae produced a variety of work throughout her life. She received much acclaim for her miniatures and portraits.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1890
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude36.1285933 Longitude-5.3474761 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gibraltar
- Biography
- sketcher, engineer, explorer and surveyor, was born in Gibraltar on 7 January 1802, son of Rev. J.T. Frome of Woodlands, Dorset. His parents died of the plague in 1804 and Edward was taken to England. Schooling was followed by entry to the Royal Military Academy in 1817 and he was commissioned royal engineer in 1825. Two years later Frome joined a group of engineers working in Canada on the Rideau Canal; he superintended some of the construction and made all the surveys. He returned to England in 1833 and there married Jane, daughter of Alexander Whalley Light of the 25th King’s Own Borderers.
The important post of surveyor-general for South Australia was offered to Frome in 1839. He arrived at Port Adelaide aboard the Recovery on 19 September with his wife, three children and his sister-in-law. Accompanying the group of sappers and miners travelling to Australia to work under Frome on land surveys was James Black Henderson , subsequently one of Frome’s most valued assistants.
Initially the situation was most unsatisfactory since Governor Gawler had already appointed Captain Charles Sturt surveyor-general. After Gawler managed to placate Sturt, however, the combined staff worked well together satisfying the enormous demand for land. By the end of 1840 the initial survey was virtually complete, but the colossal expenditure disturbed the commissioners in Whitehall. Gawler was recalled and Captain George Grey sent to South Australia in his place. The 27-year-old Grey initiated a series of cuts, one of his economies being to burden Frome with the extra duties of colonial engineer and the Land Office. With the survey of the limits of settlement complete, Frome made journeys farther afield. Most of his artwork was done on these expeditions; only twelve sketches are known that were made in the vicinity of Adelaide. The rest were drawn on treks in the Lake Alexandrina and Coorong country in 1840 and on two northern expeditions: one in 1842 when he made seventeen known sketches; the other to Mt McKinlay in 1843 from which thirty-one sketches survive. The party that set out in July 1843 included George Charles Hawker and James Henderson and both wrote journal entries of their daily progress, always hampered by shortage of water and the need to shoot animals and birds to supplement rations. Despite such vicissitudes, both Frome and Henderson made sketches of the scenery. One entry in Henderson’s diary reads: 'About nine o’clock it rained hard, and we consequently did not start. It was not, however, a “dies non” with us, as we finished a number of sketches which we had made on our trip.’ Frome’s sketches, many of which he later turned into more finished watercolour paintings, reveal his ability to capture the character of a region and its physical features in a graphic, direct style. While Henderson’s and Hawker’s diary entries complain of the barren desolation of much of the area they traversed, Frome’s paintings show the inherent beauty of this part of the country.
Back at Adelaide, Frome’s responsibilities increased with the development of mining as a major industry. He also became involved with public works such as the Adelaide Gaol and the bridges over the Torrens River. In February 1849 he left Adelaide with his wife and family of five children on leave of absence in England and did not return. During the following years he held various official posts, including that of surveyor-general of Mauritius and, after his resignation from the army, lieutenant-governor of Guernsey. He died on 12 February 1890 at Ewell, Surrey.
Frome was one of the more skilled amateur artists to use his talent as a useful tool in his career and it is evident that he possessed some training in watercolour technique and an understanding of contemporary aesthetic conventions. His images from inland journeys are a valued legacy to Australia’s exploration art. In 1970 the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Adelaide City Council jointly purchased a collection of his work from the Royal Commonwealth Society, London, comprising 152 pen, pencil and watercolour drawings, some in sketchbooks and some loose, dating from 1839 to 1849, his South Australian years. Two rough pencil plans of the Government Houses in Sydney and Hobart (with brief descriptions) remain in the Royal Commonwealth Society’s Frome Papers.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 January 1802
- Summary
- A skilled amateur artist, Frome used his talents to create a career as a painter. His works portrayed the country as inherently beautiful and are a valued legacy to Australia's exploration art.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 February 1890
- Age at death
- 88
Details
Latitude51.2350544 Longitude0.6856152 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1890-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Runham, Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer(?), natural historian and naval surgeon, was born in Runham near Great Yarmouth, Kent, on 22 July 1800. He followed in the professional footsteps of his father, Robert McCormick senior, a surgeon in the Royal Navy, studying medicine at Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals, London, and receiving his diploma in 1822. Joining the navy as an assistant surgeon in 1823, McCormick’s first appointment was to the West Indies, but he seems to have had little liking for life in the tropics and invalided himself out of service in 1825. Later he volunteered for service with the Arctic explorer William Edward Parry, and was promoted surgeon on 27 November 1827.
Two subsequent attempts by the navy to send him to the West Indies (1829 and 1833) proved no more successful than the first: on both occasions he invalided himself out almost immediately. In July 1831 he was appointed surgeon to the Beagle under Robert FitzRoy , but again was not happy. FitzRoy called him 'an empty Cox-comb and I an egregious Ass in not finding him out at an earlier period’. McCormick left the expedition in April 1832. His post as surgeon was taken by Benjamin Bynoe; his post as naturalist by the previously unpaid Charles Darwin. McCormick then spent several years on half-pay, fostering, as the Dictionary of National Biographies [ DNB ] puts it, his interests in geology and natural history in the English and Welsh countryside.
According to A.G.E. Jones, both McCormick’s autobiography and Laughton’s DNB article (the latter based almost entirely on the former) exaggerated McCormick’s importance. McCormick suggested that it was as much his natural history skills as his medical capacities which won him his desired appointment to James Clark Ross’s Antarctic expedition in 1839 but Jones says it was simply a case of 'loyalty to a former colleague’. Nevertheless, Ross notified the Admiralty in May that he did not consider 'the appointment of a specialist naturalist at all necessary, as the surgeon of the Erebus [McCormick] had devoted his time and attention for many years past both to the study of zoology and geology, and specially qualifying himself for the position’. But it was the young Joseph Dalton Hooker who, although entered in the ship’s manifest as assistant surgeon, acted as the expedition’s biologist. Hooker wrote to his father: 'McCormick has collected nothing but geological specimens, and pays no attention to the sea animals brought up in the towing nets and they are therefore brought to me at once … McCormick and I are exceedingly good friends, and no jealousy exists between us regarding my taking most of his department’.
At a meeting of the Royal Society in London on 2 July 1839 McCormick was given an introduction to the pioneer photographer Fox Talbot. 'On the following day’, McCormick recalled, 'I called on Mr. Talbot at no. 31, Sackville Street, and had about an hour’s conversation with him respecting his new process, of which he presented me with a specimen, and an invitation to spend a day or two with him at his country house, where he promised to give me a practical lesson in the whole process’. Both McCormick and Hooker were subsequently instructed in Talbot’s 'photogenic drawing’ and McCormick later wrote to Talbot acknowledging the 'incalculable value’ of the process in 'delineating the various objects of Natural History’. Although it is intriguing to imagine McCormick whiling away the long Antarctic summer days in the practice of primitive photography there is, unfortunately, no evidence that any photographs were taken during the course of this expedition.
The ships of Ross’s expedition, the Erebus and Terror , left England in September 1839 and returned in September 1843. During this time they made three visits to Hobart Town during the southern winters. On the first visit in 1840 McCormick met Thomas Gregson of Risdon, 'who subsequently became one of my most valued friends’, and made several pencil sketches of Risdon. Two were reproduced ('transferred to the stone under my own supervision’) in McCormick’s Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas . One is a view of Mount Wellington and River Derwent, Tasmania, Sketched from Risdon . The other, Risdon, Tasmania, the Residence of T. Gregson, Esq. , is a picturesque view, best described in McCormick’s own words: '[Risdon is] most picturesquely situated on a rising knoll, embosomed in trees, and perfectly isolated, approached by a winding road skirting the creek … for most part of the way having a thickly-wooded hill on the right’.
These are McCormick’s only published drawings of Tasmanian subjects, although he sketched regularly. None of his sketches were used in Ross’s official publication of the expedition and on 9 August 1847 McCormick collected from the Admiralty his 'private journals and sketches … which had only just arrived from the “Ship Hotel”, where they had been lying ever since the return of the expedition’.
McCormick was not happy in his subsequent career. His proposal to lead a search party for Sir John Franklin and the Erebus crew was refused by the Admiralty but he nevertheless made a partial search in a small boat during his service as surgeon in the North Star in 1852. He was appointed deputy-inspector of hospitals on 20 May 1859, retiring in July 1865. He published his Voyages of Discovery (including his autobiography) at his own expense in 1884. The fulsome tone of this puff book has been more than countered by Jones’s recent article: 'Only in the Services would he have been a success, and in the Navy his advancement came through longevity and the rule of seniority. Perhaps it might have been kinder if in his early years somebody had told him of his limited ability’. McCormick died at Ridgeway Place, Wimbledon, on 28 October 1890.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 July 1800
- Summary
- McCormick is neither remembered for his excellence in the navy nor blessed with a magnificent portfolio that might redeem his deficiencies in this area. Although it is recorded that he took lessons in 'photogenic drawing' and sketched regularly, especially while visiting Tasmania in the early 1840s, not more than a couple of drawings survive to confirm the written history. He had several posts as
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28 October 1890
- Age at death
- 90
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- natural history painter, miner and settler, son of John Nancarrow and Marianne, née Lidgey, migrated from England to Victoria with his brother in 1855 and joined the gold-rush near Bendigo. Afterwards he settled in nearby Neilborough where he became well known for his botanical and entomological drawings. He also lectured on natural history at the Bendigo Mechanics Institute. Nancarrow won a gold medal for a collection of watercolour paintings of Australian wildflowers he showed at the Geelong Industrial and Juvenile Exhibition in 1879. He died at Raywood (Vic.), in 1889, aged 56.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1833
- Summary
- Migrating to Australia in 1855, he settled in Neilborough in Victoria where he worked as a miner. He became well-known in the area for his natural history paintings and won the gold medal for his Australian wildflower watercolour paintings at the Geelong Industrial and Juvenile Exhibition in 1879.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1889
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- sketcher, scientist, Roman Catholic priest and mystic, was born in London on 15 November 1832, fourth son of James Dominic Woods, a parliamentary reporter who had studied law, and Henrietta Maria Saint-Eloy, née Tenison. Details of his early life given in the memoirs he dictated in 1887-88 are sometimes unreliable, for Woods romanticised his past, claiming for example that (despite having been baptised a Roman Catholic as an infant) he was a convert to the faith. He attended the Government School of Design for a few months in 1848 before abandoning art for journalism in 1849. The following year he joined the Passionist Order but, after prolonged bouts of the ill-health which would dog him all his life, transferred to the less strict Marists and was sent to recuperate in France. There he came into contact with the mystics Julien Eymard and Jean Baptiste Vianney (both later canonised) who perhaps inspired his own later spiritual extravagances.
Woods arrived at Hobart Town on 30 January 1855 as a lay chaplain and teacher, but he soon fell out with Bishop R.W. Willson (a pattern that was to repeat itself in other colonial dioceses). He joined his older brother, James, in Adelaide, where he was ordained priest on 4 January 1857. He was appointed to a large parish in the south-east of the colony of South Australia and for a time combined his pastoral work with geological field studies. He corresponded with fellow natural historians such as W.B. Clarke and Baron von Mueller , sent scientific papers to the Victorian Philosophical Institute, and wrote his first book, Geological Observations in South Australia (London 1862). His biographer, O’Neill, wrote that during this period Woods 'amused himself occasionally with drawing and painting, making this accomplishment helpful to his scientific work. He could paint excellent reproductions of flowers, shells and the like and these sketches often served to illustrate his published writings’. Geological Observations , however, was illustrated with drawings by Alexander Burkitt .
In the mid 1860s, with his protégée Mary McKillop, Woods founded the Sisters of St Joseph as a teaching order. In 1867 Woods became director-general of the Catholic education system of South Australia, as well as editor of The Southern Cross . In 1870, while Sister Mary McKillop was in Brisbane setting up a Queensland branch of the order, the Adelaide convent, left under Woods’s spiritual guidance, was apparently visited by a horde of tormenting devils who burned beds, threw boiling liquid over the sleeping nuns and violated the chapel, leaving blood-stains on the altar cloth. Even after an ecclesiastical inquiry had elicited a confession from the nun who had orchestrated these events, Woods persisted in his foolhardy belief in their authenticity. His position in Adelaide became untenable and he was actively encouraged by church authorities to leave South Australia altogether. Exiled to the eastern colonies, he remained a controversial figure, becoming a freelance preacher and missionary and founding a second order of nuns (the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration). He suffered frequent episodes of illness (suspected to have been petit mal ), during which he was subject to visions and torments, managing to alienate by his behaviour many would-be supporters.
It is difficult to reconcile this image of Woods as mystic with his parallel scientific persona. Yet throughout this period of intense religious fervour he continued his geological and palaeontological work, even expanding his studies to include marine biology. His scholarship was respected by associates such as William Macleay and he was elected president of the Linnaean Society of New South Wales in 1880, having published twenty-three scientific papers the previous year. The illustrations accompanying them were sometimes his own-necessarily detailed, even finicky, drawings of fossils or shells to record type specimens. More interesting than these diagrams, and far more revealing, are the sketches of people and places Woods made when travelling in Asia in 1883-86. His sketchbook (Catholic Historical Museum) contains lightning portraits such as that of the Filipina Antonina (1886), as well as a series of delicate watercolours he made while ill and snow-bound in Japan during the winter of 1885-86.
Woods’s health rapidly declined from the time of his return to Australia. He was cared for in a house in Elizabeth Street, Sydney, where he dictated his memoirs and some articles for the popular press. He died there on 7 October 1889 and was buried in Waverley Cemetery.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 November 1832
- Summary
- Scientist and Roman Catholic priest, Woods was skilled at detailed sketches of his specimens and often sent them in with his scientific publications. His ecclesiastical life was far more controversial, he suffered many bouts of visions and torments, had frequent fall-outs with other parishioners until he was finally exiled by South Australian church authorities.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 October 1889
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude50.725556 Longitude-3.526944 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Exeter, England
- Biography
- sketcher, scene-painter, actor and entertainer, was born in Exeter, England. The eldest son of artist George Rowe and Philippa, née Curtis, he followed his father to Victoria in the Blorenge – the ship that also brought Edmund Thomas and Scipio Clint to Australia – arriving at Port Phillip on 25 November 1852. Father and son travelled with Edmund Thomas and a Dr Hoyle to the goldfields at Castlemaine where they worked the diggings with little success. By July 1853 they had abandoned their claim and established a refreshment tent at Bendigo. Here Rowe junior took up sketching, signing his work 'George Fawcett’ to distinguish it from that of his father.
George Fawcett, however, was more successful as a theatrical artist. He was singer, comedian and scene-painter at the Crystal Palace and Sydenham Gardens, Bendigo, and for the theatre at Eagle Hawk Creek. When the Criterion Theatre opened at Bendigo in 1856, the Bendigo Advertiser noted: 'the scenic arrangements are entirely at the direction of Mr George Fawcett, a gentleman whose talents are well known to the Bendigo public. His pencil has for some time been unremittingly employed in the production of scenic compositions which for intrinsic beauty and artistic effect will surpass anything of the kind in Australia.’
Fawcett performed at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre in 1858. His benefit performance in December included: 'a short comic sketch on the introduction of Mr Fellow’s new bill. His disguise, as a dashing young lady, was not at first perceived by the audience, so excellently was it managed; but when some of the local allusions were duly pointed, the joke was apprehended and caused much merriment. The song of the Strong-United Woman, and that of the helpless Melbourne fop, were very good’.
George Rowe senior returned home to England the following year, but George Fawcett and his two younger brothers, who had come to Victoria in 1854, remained in Melbourne. All appeared on the Melbourne stage adopting the surname Fawcett, but it was George who became a principal performer – in comic and burlesque roles – and joint proprietor of the Princess Theatre. Mrs Fawcett , a Bendigo sketcher, was possibly his sister-in-law. {ADD The first theatre in Townsville, North Queensland, the Theatre Royal [erected before 1871 but after the 1868 goldrush], was attached to the Commercial Hotel owned by C. S. Rowe and run by Rowe’s brother, known as Fawcett (Gibson-Wilde). Evidently the two were Sanford and Tom Rowe, George’s two younger brothers who came to Australia.}
Late in 1861 George Fawcett entered into a partnership to build a theatre in Dunedin, New Zealand. Also called the Princess, it opened on 5 March 1862. Later in the year he returned to Sydney with his troupe, followed by a short season at Dunedin. He returned to the Melbourne Princess on 2 February 1863, painting a large ('30 feet [9 m] long’) transparency for the theatre’s façade 'showing a very handsome Prince of Wales’ feather’ for the city’s celebration of the royal marriage in May but was forced to close the theatre on 10 October. He left Melbourne again the following year and spent some time in New Zealand, where he made a pencil and wash view of Wellington (1864, ATL), before moving on to North America. He made his first appearance on the New York stage in February 1866. His subsequent appearances in British, American and Canadian theatres (as George Fawcett Rowe) were regularly reported in the Melbourne press, where he was referred to as 'Our George’ and 'Melbourne’s own’. His American wife, Kate Girard, who shortly after their marriage 'became a victim to a sad mental derangement’, divorced him in New York in 1879. He pursued a successful career as actor and playwright on both sides of the Atlantic until his death in 1889.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1832
- Summary
- Sketcher, scene-painter, actor and entertainer, George Fawcett entered into a partnership to build Princess Theatre in Dunedin, New Zealand, which opened in 1862. He not only performed in Australia but also appeared in British, American and Canadian theatres.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1889
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude50.8221133 Longitude-1.067760249 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and storekeeper, son of William Batchelor and Elizabeth, née Miller, was born on 3 September 1830 in Portsmouth, Hampshire. He came to Adelaide with his wife, Elizabeth, née Franks, aboard the Lord of the Isles in 1854. They settled at Kooringa, the company town for the Burra Burra mine in South Australia, and Batchelor became a shopkeeper at 'The Burra’.
For at least two years – 1867 and 1868 – Batchelor also worked as a photographer. He died at Burra on 25 August 1889, survived by his wife and several children. A lithograph of a major train derailment at Peake’s Crossing south of Burra on 9 February 1876, published in the March issue of the Illustrated Adelaide News , was said to be after a Batchelor 'sketch’ (a term then occasionally used to include a photograph).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 September 1830
- Summary
- Arriving from England in 1854 with his wife, William Henry Batchelor disembarked at Adelaide and promptly went inland to Burra Burra where he lived the rest of his life. It is believed he worked as a photographer in 1867-68.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25 August 1889
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude56.0348739 Longitude12.6130073 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Elsinore, Denmark
- Biography
- painter, was born in Elsinore, Denmark, on 10 April 1827, elder son of the Russian consul François de Habbe. In 1839 he entered the Copenhagen Academy and seven years later was awarded its silver medal. He then studied painting in Italy; one of three surviving watercolour figure studies (private collection), initialled 'N.H.’ and dated 1863, carries an inscription on the back of the frame reading ’57 Memories from old Rome … Nicholas F. Habbe’. In 1851 he received the Neuhausen prize for his oil painting The Reservists of 1848 on the March . With two of his portraits, this now hangs in the National Museum, Denmark. He exhibited genre paintings at the Copenhagen Academy between 1847 and 1870 and had achieved a respectable local reputation before migrating to Victoria with his brother Alexander Habbe in 1855 in search of gold.
Nikolai Habbe painted oil portraits, genre and allegorical subjects in both Melbourne and Sydney. He also joined his brother as a painter on glass and a theatrical scene-painter; in fact, he probably initiated Alexander into the latter profession. Yet although Nikolai worked as a 'fine artist’ all his life, it was Alexander who achieved the greater artistic reputation. Even so, in 1875 the Melbourne Athenaeum called Nikolai’s drawing admirable: 'his conceptions are eminently original and his colouring has been modelled after the style of the old Masters.’ The Sydney Mail critic, on the other hand, was 'unable to say anything complimentary’ about Habbe’s figure paintings, 'but we may mention by way of compensation that his picture of “Britannia Ruling the Waves” with the assistance and consent of Neptune and his company of nereids and tritons, is more highly priced than any other in the exhibition’.
With Dangerous Spot (painted in Denmark, for sale at £100), Britannia Rules the Waves (for sale at £400) was shown with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1877. Signed and dated 1876 (p.c.), it is a large allegorical oil painting 5 feet x 6 feet 6 inches (1.52 × 1.98 m) featuring Britannia seated beside Neptune in a chariot harnessed to four horses and preceded by three mermen blowing triton shells. Hailing their progress is a group of disporting sea nymphs, some riding dolphins.
Nicholas was undoubtedly the Herr Habbe who painted The Charge of the Six Hundred , shown in an exhibition of war scenes at the Sydney School of Arts in 1872, and America for the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition – one of the allegorical murals of the four continents in the pendentives of the Garden Palace dome (incinerated with the building in 1882). Another of his large allegorical oils, depicting New South Wales (1884), was auctioned at Sotheby’s in October 1987 where it was purchased by the Powerhouse Museum. It is reportedly now hanging in Parliament House, Sydney, on loan from the museum.
In 1888 N.F. Habbe showed eight oil paintings at the Centennial International Exhibition in Melbourne, giving his address as 109 William Street, Sydney. Their titles indicate his range and are likely to have been painted over several years. They included apparent allegories ( British Culture on Australian Ground , Australian Centennial and his 1884 New South Wales ), narrative genre ( There’s a Sweet Bye-and-Bye and A Christmas Box ), a possible theatre subject ( To Be, or Not To Be , presumably from Hamlet ), a landscape ( A Dusty Day in Sydney Several Years Ago ) and a historical portrait, Captain Cook . The following year A Visit to the Prison, Italy was exhibited with the Art Society of NSW. Yet when he died on 11 November that same year, Habbe’s obituary in the Illustrated Sydney News stated that, though resident in Sydney for many years, he had not actively pursued his profession there. 'Triumvir’ in the Sydney Morning Herald regretted that he had died 'as he had lived here, almost alone and unknown’. It was not until 11 July 1905 that the Daily Telegraph announced the exhibition of a 'unique art collection’ at Tyrrell’s art gallery, 83 Market Street, all the work of N.F. Habbe, who was said to have been resident in NSW for 16 years (Johnson, p.72).
A self-portrait, exhibited posthumously with the Art Society in 1890, was transferred from the Art Gallery of New South Wales to the Mitchell Library in 1920. (There is some speculation that Nicholas Habbe also painted Portrait of a Russian Officer 1857, ie. his brother Alexander, listed as cat.20 by “Unknown artist, 19th Century” in Sotheby’s Fine Australian and European Paintings , Melbourne 25-26 August 1997).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 April 1827
- Summary
- Painter, was born in Denmark and arrived in Victoria in 1855. He later moved to NSW and painted oil portraits, genre and allegorical subjects in both Melbourne and Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 November 1889
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude51.4538022 Longitude-2.5972985 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bristol, England, UK
- Biography
- seamstress, was born in Bristol, daughter of Mr and Mrs Splain. She married Samuel Edward Withers at London in 1841. When their first child, a girl, was only fifteen months old, they sold their manchester shop and embarked for Victoria, arriving at Melbourne in 1851. A son, Samuel Edward junior, was born that year. The family then travelled to the newly-discovered Sandhurst (Bendigo) gold diggings; Mrs Withers is said to have been the first woman on the fields. They were at Ballarat during the 1853-54 rush which culminated in the great diggers’ uprising. With the help of Anne Duke, another miner’s wife, and possibly Anastasia Hayes, wife of Peter Lalor’s mining mate Timothy Hayes, Anastasia Withers sewed the Southern Cross flag which flew over the Eureka Stockade throughout the famous battle.
After the miners were defeated, it was rumoured that the authorities were looking for Anastasia as one of the makers of the rebel flag. The family fled to Ararat, then to Moyston where Samuel set up an orchard which they called Bristol Orchard after Anastasia’s birth-place. Later, at Horsham, they opened a fruit shop which was run by several of their nine children. Anastasia Withers died in 1889, aged sixty-four, predeceased by Samuel in 1883, who died at the same age. Both are buried at Moyston.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Note: secondary
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1825
- Summary
- seamstress, she sewed the Southern Cross flag which flew over the Eureka Stockade throughout the famous battle. The flag was made with the help of Anne Duke, another miner's wife, and possibly Anastasia Hayes.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1889
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude55.833333 Longitude-3.083333 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Midlothian, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, explorer, squatter, amateur scientist, botanist, palaeontologist and author, was a descendant of the Duke of Atholl on his father’s side and his mother was a daughter of the Scottish Lord Forbes. His family owned a property at Lugate, Midlothian, where George was born. As the third son and hence unlikely to inherit land, he was educated to make his own way in the world. He attended Rugby School where he was taught to draw by Edward Pretty, a minor topographical and landscape artist. A knowledge of the rudiments of topographical drawing was thought useful for a career in the army or the navy at that time in order to make drawings to accompany reconnaissance reports.
In 1839, aged seventeen, Fairholme worked with his childhood friends, the Leslie brothers, on a sheep station in New South Wales. He helped Walter Leslie and the Dalrymple and Leith-Hay brothers bring up their sheep to the Condamine so that they could squat on suitable grazing land on the Darling Downs. On the pioneering trek to Queensland they were often under attack from Aborigines and the journey took several months. Fairholme worked with the Leslie brothers at their Canning Downs Station until his father advanced him money to purchase his own Darling Downs property from them at South Toolburra, which he ran until 1852. Ludwig Leichhardt records in his letters a series of expeditions he made with Fairholme on the Condamine to search for fossil bones when staying at South Toolburra. He was so impressed by Fairholme that he invited him to join his expedition. Fairholme declined.
Fairholme was a guest at the neighbouring property of Coochin-Coochin when Conrad Martens visited in 1851. Martens dedicated two pencil sketches to him (Mitchell Library) and may have given Fairholme drawing instruction at the same time. Two years later Fairholme inherited the substantial property of Old Melrose from his childless uncle Adam Fairholme. He sold South Toolburra and his second property, Bromelton, on the Logan and Albert rivers, and returned home. Contemporary journals described him as 'the most handsome man ever to come through Cunningham’s Gap’ and 'a very intelligent and gentlemanly man … the most intelligent of any of the squatters’.
Now wealthy, Fairholme travelled extensively in Europe. The Macarthur family recorded meeting him in Paris, and in Austria he met and married the young Baroness Pauline Poellnitz-Frankenberg. He spent the rest of his life either in Scotland or on the Baroness’s estates at Wellenau, near Bregenz in the Austrian Alps, where he continued to write and illustrate books. His account of his early life on the Darling Downs, published privately for the benefit of his friends under the title Fifteen Views of Australia in 1845 by G.K.E.F. , contains some of the earliest views of Brisbane and the Darling Downs, each hand-coloured at the time of publication. Although his sense of perspective and figure drawing is somewhat rudimentary, Fairholme’s sketches of Queensland pastoral life and early Brisbane Town have charm and vitality.
Writers:
Vries-Evans, Susanna de
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1822
- Summary
- Described by his contemporaries as 'the most handsome man ever to come through Cunningham's Gap', the watercolourist and polymath George Fairholme had a fairytale life. Without wealth or property of his own, he worked for friends droving sheep before inheriting two properties. He subsequently travelled to Europe, met and married an Austrian baroness, and lived for the rest of his life between Sco
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1889
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude53.55 Longitude10 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamburg, Germany
- Biography
- sketcher, journalist, farmer and politician, was born on 12 November 1819 in Hamburg, Germany, a son of John Leake, a farmer and politician, and Elizabeth, née Bell. He came to Van Diemen’s Land with his parents and siblings in May 1823 (including an elder brother, John Travis Leake ) and they settled on a property, Rosedale, at Campbell Town, Tasmania. Charles went to school at Kirklands then worked on the family property, inheriting Rosedale when his father died in 1865.
John Leake had employed James Blackburn to turn the original Rosedale homestead into a grand Italianate mansion and this apparently became the subject of one of Charles’s drawings. In 1855 the Colonial Times reported that John Leake had received 'a beautiful representation of Rosedale … engraved as a letter head on steel, and used by Mr Leake in his correspondence, after the custom frequently used at home. The drawing, we understand was done by Mr Charles Leake, who is now travelling on the continent, and the engraving by Rock & Co., Wallbrook, London’. Charles’s sketch, however, was undoubtedly reworked by Elizabeth Hudspeth , the artist acknowledged on the letterhead. A pen-and-ink cartoon by Charles Leake relating to the Campbell Town election of 1884 is held by the Allport Library.
Like his father, Charles Leake played an active part in various local benevolent and public associations. He was a benefactor of the Campbell Town Anglican church, organised the Campbell Town water supply (the town lake was named after him) and wrote articles for the newspapers as 'J.W.’. Succeeding his father, he was MLC for South Esk in the Tasmanian Parliament from June 1882 to August 1884. Leake married Clara Jane Bell and they had three daughters. He died on 11 June 1889.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 November 1819
- Summary
- Sketcher, farmer and politician of German descent who resided in Tasmania.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 June 1889
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude52.6022751 Longitude1.2387914 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Langley Park, Norfolk, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, pastoralist and orchardist, was born on 16 October 1819 at Langley Park, Norfolk, third son of the third baronet, Rear-Admiral Sir William Beauchamp-Proctor, and Anne, née Gregory, an heiress.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 16 October 1819
- Summary
- Born into a privileged family, Beauchamp married an heiress after travelling between England, New Zealand and Victoria for a number of years. They finally settled outside of Launceston, Tasmania and it was from here that Beauchamp exhibited his paintings - in Melbourne, Launceston and Otago, New Zealand.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 August 1889
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. c.1819
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1889
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- taxidermistss, with daughter Jane Catherine (Ada Jane) Rohu founding proprietors of Tost & Rohu, a taxidermy firm that operated in Sydney from 1860 until well into the 1930s. Jane Tost was the daughter of a naturalist, Herbert Ward, who trained both son and daughter into his profession. Jane Tost’s brother, Henry Ward, became John Audubon’s taxidermist before opening his own business in London. His son, Rowland Ward, is probably the most famous taxidermist of the nineteenth century. In 1839 Jane Ward married Charles Tost, a Prussian cabinet and pianoforte maker and taxidermist in Soho. Between 1840 and 1857 they had six children, including Jane Catherine (known as Ada Jane).
During the 1840s and early 1850s Jane Tost carried out work for the British Museum. Then in 1855 the Tost family migrated to Tasmania where Mrs Tost earned a living stuffing and mounting specimens for the Hobart Town Museum, run under the auspices of the Royal Society of Tasmania (now part of Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery). In 1860 the Tosts moved to Sydney. From 1864 to 1869 Jane Tost was employed as a taxidermist by the trustees of the Australian Museum, a job for which she received the same wage as her male counterpart, £10 a month. This arrangement came to an end, however, when Charles Tost clashed with the museum’s curator Gerard Krefft , who had tried to frame him for theft.
Ada Jane Tost, who appears to have been a well-known actress at the Victoria Theatre in Pitt Street during the 1860s, married James Coates, an earthenware, china and glass dealer, in 1868. They had three children before James Coates, along with Ada Jane’s brother Charles, were killed in the Prince of Wales Theatre fire in 1872. Following the fire, mother and daughter opened Tost & Coates, Berlin Wool Depot and Taxidermists, at 60 William Street. After Ada’s marriage in 1878 to Henry Rohu, a naturalist and curio collector, the business became Tost & Rohu. In 1896 it expanded into second premises at 10 Moore Street, near the GPO, and by 1899 was being run by Ada’s son, Willis. Tost & Rohu continued well into the twentieth century; it was once owned by the bookseller James Tyrell, who delighted in the fact that it was known as the 'queerest shop in Sydney’.
For over forty years (1860-1900) Jane Tost and Ada Jane Rohu were the most consistent and most successful NSW women exhibitors at international exhibitions, winning at least twenty medals between them. They showed their work at London in 1862 and 1886, at Paris in 1867, Sydney in 1879, Calcutta in 1883, Melbourne in 1888, Launceston in 1891-92 and Chicago in 1893 where Ada Jane won an award in group 164, 'Two stuffed specimens’ for her 'Apteryx (Kiwi)’. They also exhibited in local exhibitions; Mrs J. Tost of 60 William Street, Sydney, showed 'Stuffed Birds’ for sale at £7 in class 587 (cat. 1640) 'Perfumery and Fancy Articles’ at the Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition organised by the Agricultural Society of NSW, which opened at Sydney on 6 April 1875. Their success highlights not only their great skill and artistry but the value placed by exhibition organisers and judges alike upon the 'unique’ products of Australasia, including its fauna.
Writers:
Sear, Martha
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. c.1817
- Summary
- Taxidermist in partnership with her daughter Ada Jane Rohu. For over forty years (1860-1900) Jane Tost and Ada Jane Rohu were the most consistent and most successful NSW women exhibitors at international exhibitions, winning at least twenty medals between them.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1889
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Grazier and sketcher. Thomas John Domville Taylor was one of the earliest settlers on the Darling Downs to visually record his life and movements in the colony.
Taylor was the third child of Mascie Domvile Taylor and his wife Diana née Houghton. He was baptised on 10 April 1817 in Chester Cathedral. Taylor’s father had matriculated from Brasenose College, Oxford in 1802 and attained a Master of Arts in 1809. He was appointed Rector of Langton, Yorkshire in 1818 and Moreton Corbett, Shropshire the following year, a post he held until his death on 9 October 1845.(1) Macsie Domville Taylor held the Manorial seat of Lymm Hall; is it likely that Thomas and his siblings grew up there.
Taylor arrived in Sydney aboard the Euphrates on 20 December 1839.(2) Little is known of his early time in Australia, however Taylor’s sketchbooks reveal that he travelled south to Omeo Plains and the Snowy Mountains before moving northward passing Liverpool Plains and Byron Plains, eventually reaching Queensland in 1841, accompanied by John Howell and Charles Markham.(3) By 1842 Taylor had established himself on a pastoral lease bordering the Condamine River known as the Broadwater. Taylor was partnered with Dr John Rolland, who had travelled to the Downs with his wife Fanny and their two children in 1842.(4) The lease for Broadwater had initially been taken up by James Wingate in 1841, but was renamed Tummaville by Rolland and Taylor by 1843.(5)
As early arrivals in the region, Rolland and Taylor essentially built Tummaville from the ground up. Taylor’s sketch of the first camp at Tummaville shows a Spartan set up of a circular tent and two gunyah-style constructions around a campfire; with a dray, a few head of cattle, chickens, a dog and a horse accompanying the party.(6) A second sketch showing the finished station evidences that within a couple of years the business partners had erected four more substantial structures, including a large building with verandah and fireplace.(7) Dr Rolland provided medical services to the community around him, and in October 1843 Fanny Rolland gave birth to the couple’s third child, Charlotte, the first baby to be born in the region.
While living at Tummaville, Taylor made several sketches of the station and its surrounds, as well as depictions of daily life. These sketches include a panorama of the Long Reach in the Broadwater at Tummaville, a detailed view of the landscape around Cecil Plains station, and a sketch of a bullock dray descending Cunningham’s Gap.(8) A second, more comical sketch titled 'Gee Smiler!’ highlights the difficulty of traversing the range between the commercial centres around Moreton Bay and the pastoral leases on the Downs.(9) More prosaic scenes depicting roping a bullock, roping cattle, and a wool press are also represented among Taylor’s drawings.(10)
Tummaville was located on country known to the Giabal, Gambuwal, Bigambul and Jarowair communities, and Taylor’s sketches evidence escalating tensions between settlers and indigenous communities across the Darling Downs. A sketch inscribed by Taylor 'Aborigines of Australia on the lookout for whitefellows’ depicts five aboriginal people sitting atop an elevated viewpoint observing three men on horseback emerging from scrub in the distance.(11) Fine details including scarring on the men suggest that Taylor may have based this representation on indigenous subjects that he had contact with. Another sketch inscribed 'Squatters in search of blacks N.S.Wales’ depicts a dozen relaxed squatters at camp with their horses and travelling accoutrement.(12) This image contrasts with a more potent scene a few pages later, 'A party in search of blacks,’ which depicts a man holding a rifle giving directions to four similarly dressed and armed man, while an attendant, possibly indigenous, sits nearby, and a large group of figures on horseback amass in the middle ground.(13) Towards the end of the sketchbook, one page titled 'Shooting blacks N.S.Wales’ features three loose drafts of armed settlers aggressing towards indigenous Australians, and another titled 'Drinking N.S.Wales’ depicts an indigenous man armed with a spear, about to attack a settler who is drinking from a waterhole.(14)
The most potently graphic image among Taylor’s sketches is a drawing executed in 1843 records 11 men loading their rifles and shooting as they advance toward a group of about 25 aboriginal men, women and infants.(15) The presence of gunyahs in the image suggests that the aggressors may have approached a camp, which justifies the lack of defence observed in the scene – just one man peers around a tree holding two spears, and another man carries a boomerang. Taylor inscribed beneath the image ‘The Blacks who robbed the drays on the Main Range of Mountains attacked by a party of Darling Downs Squatters after following them for a week.’ Historian Ray Kerkhove notes that this image may be connected to the storming of the Rosewood Scrub in late-1843.(16) The image is one of the earliest and most significant depictions of violence by European communities on the Darling Downs towards indigenous people.
These sketches of conflict contrast with more intimate depictions of indigenous subjects in Taylor’s papers. A caricature portrait of Peter Boombiburra in the scrapbook of Taylor’s step-mother depicts Taylor’s ‘servant’ dressed in trousers, smoking a pipe.(17) His scarring is visible and a camp dog sits by his side. Taylor’s most intimate and impressive drawing of indigenous life was executed in 1844, and depicts a group of men performing a corroboree around a campfire by moonlight, accompanied by women instrumentalists.(18)
In July 1844 Rolland and Taylor dissolved their business partnership. Taylor negotiated a new partnership for Tummaville with a member of the Ross family. This venture was short-lived; within a year Taylor left Tummaville to take part in an expedition mounted by Christopher Pemberton Hodgson to search for explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. The party left Jimbour Station on 8 August 1845, and while on the expedition, Taylor kept an expedition diary and took several sketches. These include a loose sketch of the party resting, maintaining their equipment, and surveying their position; a view of a mountain; and a drawing of an indigenous mortuary platform that the search party observed near Dogwood Creek.(19) After a six-week journey, the search party returned to Jimbour Station on 19 September 1845.
Taylor’s father, Mascie Domvile Taylor died on 9 October 1845.(20) It is perhaps for this reason that Taylor departed Australia for London on 16 June 1846 aboard the General Hewitt.(21) Tummaville was acquired in 1846 by Thomas Gore, brother of St George Richard Gore who owned neighbouring station Yandilla.(22) Taylor would not return to Australia, however, keen to preserve his memory of his time in Queensland, in 1847 he commissioned Chester-based artist George Pickering to complete an ink wash sketch of the interior of his hut at Tummaville.(23) Taylor died on 14 September 1889, at Trouville Road, Clapham Common, and was survived by his wife Charlotte.(24)
NOTES(1) Joseph Foster, ed., Alumni Oronienses: the members of the University of Oxford 1715-1886: their parentage, birthplace and year of birth, with a record of their degrees, vol. 4, Oxford: Parker & Co., (c.1891), p. 1395.(2) The Australian, 21 December 1839, p. 2.(3) National Library of Australia PIC MSR Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/5, PIC MSR Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/6, PIC MSR Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/46, “PIC MSR Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/47”:https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-587406923/view; Letter from Domville Taylor to the Colonial Secretary, 4 January 1841, requesting access to Moreton Bay settlement.(4) Sydney Morning Herald, 15 September 1842, p. 2.(5) New South Wales Government Gazette, 27 October 1843 (no. 90), p. 1395.(6) National Library of Australia, PIC Volume 1126 #PIC/14394/4(7) National Library of Australia, PIC Volume 1126 #PIC/14394/1(8) National Library of Australia, PIC MSR Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/40, PIC MSR 14/1/6 Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/15, PIC MSR Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/39(9) National Library of Australia, PIC MSR Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/60(10) National Library of Australia, PIC MSR 14/1/6 Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/32, PIC MSR 14/1/6 Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/10, PIC MSR 14/1/6 Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/13()(11) National Library of Australia, PIC MSR 14/1/6 Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/7(12) National Library of Australia, PIC MSR 14/1/6 Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/8(13) National Library of Australia, PIC MSR 14/1/6 Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/12(14) National Library of Australia, PIC MSR 14/1/6 Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/28, PIC MSR 14/1/6 Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/30(15) National Library of Australia, PIC Volume 1126 #PIC/14394/3(16) For further discussion on the Battle of One Tree Hill, please consult Ray Kerkhove, Mapping Frontier Conflict in south-east Queensland, 2017, Harry Gentle Resource Centre.(17) National Library of Australia, PIC Volume 1126 #PIC/14394/5(18) National Library of Australia, PIC Volume 1126 #PIC/14394/2(19) National Library of Australia, PIC MSR Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/51, PIC MSR Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/58(20) William Phillimore Watts Phillimore, ed., Shropshire Parish Registers: Diocese of Lichfield, vol 1. Shropshire: Shropshire Parish Register Society, 1900, p. iv (between pp. 250-251).(21) Sydney Morning Herald, 17 June 1846, p. 2.(22) Sydney Morning Herald, 18 February 1846, p. 4.(23) National Library of Australia, PIC MSR Volume 1191 #PIC/20299/42(24) F_lintshire Observer, Mining Journal and General Advertiser for the Counties of Flint and Denbigh_, 21 September 1889, p. 6.
Writers:
Timothy Roberts
Date written:
2020
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. c.1817
- Summary
- Thomas John Domville Taylor was one of the earliest European settlers on the Darling Downs, Queensland and made pencil sketches of of the landscape and daily life. These sketches are some of the earliest visual records of European occupation of the Darling Downs, and also depict some of the earliest conflicts in the region between settlers and Indigenous communities.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 September 1889
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude50.8036831 Longitude-1.075614 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Portsmouth, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolour painter, sketcher, professional photographer, lithographer, art teacher, inventor, assistant gold commissioner and police magistrate, born in Portsmouth, England, on 3 December 1815, eldest of the ten children of Joseph Francis Gilbert and Jane, née Snelling. Early in 1816 the family moved to Chichester, Sussex, where they lived for many years. His father, a landscape painter who exhibited at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and the Society of British Artists (Suffolk Street), taught George art – and an enthusiasm for mechanical inventions. George Gilbert arrived at Melbourne in November 1841 on board the Diamond with his wife Ann, née Birch, the two children of Ann’s previous marriage to Sir John Byerley, and George’s brother Francis Edward Gilbert. He immediately established himself in Melbourne as a drawing master, teaching at schools, taking private pupils and holding drawing and lithography classes at the Melbourne Mechanics Institute. In June 1844 he became the institute’s honorary secretary. He also taught dancing and gave drawing lessons at his wife’s ladies’ seminary.
Soon after his arrival Gilbert helped found the Melbourne Debating Society. He was co-founder and co-editor of the Port Phillip Magazine in 1843 (the first magazine to be published in Victoria) and drew and put on stone some of its lithographs: Williams Town, from the Beach , Lighthouse and Entrance to Port Phillip Harbour and a view of the Melbourne court-house and gaol. The magazine was short-lived and in 1844 Gilbert was declared bankrupt. That year he did the lithographic illustrations for Thomas Ham 's Australian Drawing Book and in 1846 Ham printed Gilbert’s lithographs of fossil teeth after Mrs E.C. Hobson 's drawings, which also appeared as a foldout double plate in the Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science . Gilbert lectured on lithography at the Mechanics Institute in August 1845.
The earliest known resident photographer in Melbourne, Gilbert was advertising from his home on Eastern Hill from late November 1845 to early February 1846 claiming to have developed a new technique for producing better likenesses by daguerreotype. In 1848 John Cotton , whom he appears to have taught photography, noted that Gilbert had 'tried the daguerreotype, oxyhydrogen microscope, and various other things’, being 'always engaged in trying mechanical experiments … [but] unfortunately seldom perfects anything’. In any case, Gilbert had found that drawing brought most 'grist to the mill’, wrote Cotton, adding: 'He is a very intelligent person and will talk from morning to night, always in a fluent and agreeable manner. He appears to have studied every subject that may be started, or, at all events, plunges into the midst of it, and dives to the bottom of it in a short time’. Cotton’s son William and his daughters Eliza and Caroline ( Le Souëf ) learned drawing from Gilbert at school in Melbourne in 1844 and, when visiting the Cotton property Doogalook, Gilbert ('a sort of naturalist’) encouraged John Cotton to make a collection of the insects in the district.
Gilbert held two exhibitions at the Melbourne Mechanics Institute. The first, in 1847, consisted of his own 'crayon’ (pastel) landscape views of Port Phillip and the Goulburn, Barwon, Yarra and Plenty Rivers; the second, in 1849, included the work of his pupils. The former was described in the Port Phillip Patriot of 15 April as 'decidedly the best delineation of Australian scenery yet produced, possessing the semi-tropical peculiarities of colouring in depth and tone, which the description of crayon used and manufactured by the artist (Mr Gilbert) alone can communicate’. In March 1849, when the Governor of Victoria viewed and praised some original drawings, Gilbert was reported as being about to publish a pictorial work on Victoria called Australia Felix Illustrated . It is not known to have eventuated. In 1851 he participated in the Victorian Industrial Society’s first exhibition, showing 'beautiful crayon drawings’ of well-known scenery in Melbourne and Geelong that were highly commended by the judges, 'not only on account of their intrinsic merit, but from the circumstance also of their subjects being so perfectly appropriate to the occasion’.
Competing with his various cultural pursuits was an obsessive interest in mesmerism and clairvoyance. He established a reputation as a lecturer and demonstrated his clairvoyant skills to large, enthusiastic audiences. As soon as the gold-rush fever began in 1851, Gilbert left Melbourne and headed for Bendigo. In February 1852 he was appointed assistant gold commissioner and police magistrate for the Bendigo area, but resigned in May 1853. Back at Melbourne he revived his artistic pursuits. He showed two works in the 1853 exhibition of the Victorian Fine Arts Society: Happy Valley near Geelong and View of the Barrabool Hills . A silver tea service presented to him by the Bendigo diggers and a salver commemorating his work as secretary of the Port Phillip Academical Institution were displayed in a Melbourne shop window in 1854. He was at Geelong in 1856. After this, details of his life become increasingly imprecise. He was apparently painting at Rotorua, New Zealand early in 1857 en route to England; a drawing of Mokaia Island is dated 24 April (Dixson Library). Soon afterwards, a friend who met him in London wrote that he was now involved in 'the Spirit World’, passing on this news and a Gilbert drawing to his brother, the Victorian grazier George Hobler, then in California, who wrote in his diary on 1 June 1857: 'I don’t like his drawing of the Bunyip made when in the Spirit, for I do not believe any animal of the kind exists’.
By 1859 Gilbert was back in Melbourne, employed in colouring photographs for Richard Daintree. In 1861, at the Victorian Exhibition, Thomas Ford exhibited a set of photographs of colonial scenery coloured by Gilbert. He died some time before 1889 (when referred to as 'the late’), but his final years are buried in obscurity.
Writers:
Creelman, A. E.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 December 1815
- Summary
- George Gilbert founded the first magazine in Victoria, and helped found the Melbourne debating society. He was a multi-talented artist, but was eventually declared bankrupt. Pursuing fortune, he travelled to New Zealand to participate in the gold rush.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1889
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude60.3943055 Longitude5.3259192 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bergen, Norway
- Biography
- painter, drawing master and professional photographer, was born in Bergen, Norway, on 10 September 1811, son of the pharmacist Johan Storm Bull and Anna Dorothea Borse, née Geelmuyden. Said to have had his first art training in Copenhagen, it is not known with whom. From November 1833 to May 1834 and again in 1838 Bull was a student of J.C. Dahl in Dresden, Germany. Several of his early oil portraits are in collections in Norway, including Christopher Malthe, Town Clerk (1830, Bymuseum, Oslo) and likenesses of members of his family (1833, Historisk Museum, Bergen, on loan to Lysøen, Lysekloster, Norway). A few early landscapes, most showing the influence of Dahl, are also known, e.g. Waterfall at Tvinde (1835, oil, Bergen Billedgalleri).
Bull visited London in 1845 but had been there only five weeks when he was tried at the Central Criminal Court on 15 December for 'Feloniously making part of a Foreign Note for 100 Dollars’. Erroneously stated to be 31 years old, he reached Norfolk Island by the John Calvin on 21 September 1846 under sentence of 14 years’ transportation. His conduct on the voyage out was reported as exemplary. Bull’s watercolour painting Aboard the John Calvin depicts convicts and crew on deck and may have been done for the ship’s surgeon, Henry Kelsall . Kelsall owned two oil paintings of the The Wreck of the Waterloo , one now attributed to William Huggins (ML) and one by Bull dated 1846, which was probably painted on board the John Calvin concocted from a description given by Kelsall, who had survived the wreck in 1842. Bull’s version, later given to Kelsall, remained in the family until May 2000 when auctioned at Sotheby’s Melbourne (lot 56: see long description – $60,000).
In June 1847 Bull was transferred to Van Diemen’s Land and sent to the Saltwater River probation station. In May 1849 he came to Hobart Town and the following year was inland, teaching at Mrs Rogers’s seminary at Bagdad; The Wreck of the George III (1850, oil, p.c. NZ) may have been painted there. On 8 December 1850 Bull absconded to Melbourne from Hobart Town. His recapture was reported in the Hobarton Guardian of 22 January 1851:
A respectable looking man, who gave the name of Thomas Evans, but whose real name is Canute Bull (a Dane) was on Thursday committed to gaol for the purpose of being forwarded to Van Diemen’s Land (from Port Phillip) by the first opportunity, as a runaway prisoner of the Crown. A person named Simpson, Chief Constable at the Hopkins, proved that he had known the prisoner, who was an artist by profession, both at Hobart and Norfolk Island, at which time he was a prisoner of the Crown and was still so, having been transported for a period of fourteen years. For the defence a certificate of freedom was produced in the name of Thomas Evans, but it had evidently been altered, and was altogether such a suspicious looking document that the Justice paid no attention to it.
It was fully two months before Bull was tried. Then, because he had been so long in custody, he was sentenced only to 20 days’ solitary confinement. The Hobarton Guardian of 29 March 1851 commented: 'It is a fortunate circumstance for Mr. Bull that he is not an Irish State Prisoner’.
Several of Bull’s somewhat wooden oil portraits of Tasmanians are known, the earliest apparently being of Phillis Boyd, wife of the chief clerk in the Police Office (c.1848, p.c.). Others include Mrs Coverdale, wife of the district surgeon at Richmond (1852, VDL Folk Museum, Hobart), and Portrait of Henry Chapman , a local architect and builder (1854, TMAG). He is far better known for his Tasmanian landscapes, which he seems to have begun painting only after April 1851 when assigned to another oil landscape painter, Rev. J.G. Medland , who lived at Boa Vista, Hobart. Indeed, it is possible that Bull painted no Tasmanian landscapes until he was again working professionally. The unsigned Mount Wellington, Tasmania (n.d., TMAG), attributed to Bull, is suspiciously similar to Medland’s pencil sketch The First Convict Station in the Penal Colony of Tasmania. Mount Direction in the Distance (c.1848, TMAG), while a pair of unsigned oil paintings of Boa Vista and its surrounding landscape, attributed to Bull when auctioned in London in July 1982, could also be Medland’s work.
On 16 March 1852, Bull received his ticket of leave. On 14 April he applied for permission to marry Mary Anne Bryen, free. Approval was granted, the banns were called and the wedding celebrated by Medland in Holy Trinity Church on 14 May 1852. Bull signed his Christian name 'Knud’ on the register (though often called 'Knut’ in official records). On 1 November 1853, he received his conditional pardon. The baptism register of St George’s Church, Battery Point, records the christening of the Bulls’ three eldest sons: Edward Knud (b. 15 August 1852), Henry Ole Borneman (b. 19 March 1854) and Johan Storm (b. 16 March 1856).
Having gained (restricted) freedom, Bull embarked on a period of intense artistic activity over the next three to four years. In 1854 he gave drawing lessons at the Hobart Town Mechanics Institute and at Trinity School House. He was drawing master at Alexander Cairnduff’s Hobart Town Academy in 1855, and William Moore claims that he also taught drawing during the 1850s at the academy run by William Slade Smith . He advertised his willingness to take 'Daguerrian Portraits’ in the Tasmanian Daily News during April 1856, although no surviving daguerreotypes have been identified. He made his name with views of Hobart Town painted between 1853 and 1856, especially City of Hobart Town (c.1854, oil, TMAG). With the complementary Hobart Town and Mt Nelson (c.1854, oil, TMAG), this was shown at the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition. Bull made two oil copies of City , which he advertised in the Hobart Town Courier of 14 September 1855, stating that he would dispose of them by a lottery of 50 tickets at £2 each. He valued the larger copy at £150. City of Hobart Town was also published as a tinted lithograph by E. Walker in 1855; in 1859 53 of the prints supplemented with statistical details of the colony and framed in muskwood and Huon pine were sent to London to encourage emigration to Tasmania.
All but two of the paintings and prints attributed to Bull which local residents lent to the 1896 Old Hobart Exhibition were views of Hobart – and both exceptions ( Sunnyside from the Domain 1848, lent by Miss A.L. Chapman, and New Town , lent by H.W. Knight) may now be more convincingly attributed to Medland. Unsigned oil landscapes like The Rossbank Observatory, Hobart (1850s, DG) are also of uncertain authorship. One signed oil by Bull that is not of Hobart is Near Oatlands, Tasmania, with Table Mountain in the Distance (1855, AGSA). Unmistakably and uniquely his are the (signed) Tasmanian oil landscapes of melodramatic (Nordic?) mood and vivid colour. Entrance to the River Derwent from the Springs, Mount Wellington (1856, TMAG), in particular, with its hot reds, purples and browns and large brooding bird in the foreground, conveys a menace absent in any other representation of the Tasmanian landscape before or since.
According to his death certificate, Bull left Tasmania in about 1856 and settled in New South Wales. He was advertising as an artist of 474 George Street, Sydney, in 1863 and listed as an artist of 14 Hunter Street in Sands Sydney Directory 1867-69. He may also have worked in South Australia – a view of Adelaide at sunset dated 1859 (p.c.) has been attributed to him – and he certainly seems to have visited Victoria. The Ballarat architect Henry Caselli (father of Elizabeth Caselli ) lent an oil painting titled Summer Evening on Lake Wendouree, Ballarat by 'Knud Bull, Academies of Copenhagen and Dresden’ to the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition, while the Mitchell Library holds Old Ellswick , a signed watercolour of the 1860s. Bull’s Sydney pupils included his younger son Alfred and Gladstone Eyre, who both became professional painters.
Under contract to Walter Renny Bull painted a large – 40 × 20 foot (12 × 6 m) – transparency for the Sydney Customs House at Circular Quay to celebrate the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh in January 1868. It represented 'the landing of Captain Cook, and his taking possession of the country in the name of the King in 1770’. As well as the proclamation and its attendant festivities, Bull’s picture showed 'the progress of architecture in the colony’ from the first wharf to the present Circular Quay, from the 'wretched shanty’ erected by Governor Phillip to the extant palatial Government House, and from old St Philip’s Church to St Andrew’s Cathedral. In short, it seems to have been an ambitious history painting on a grand scale. A local critic commented: 'Too much praise cannot be bestowed on the artist for the manner in which the piece is painted’.
Otherwise Bull’s artistic productivity seems to have waned on the mainland; few works are known. Two attributed oil views of Sydney Harbour (p.c.) possibly date from the 1870s. A loosely attributed, unsigned oil portrait of James Nicholls (1880, AGSA) would be his last known work, if by him. After contracting typhoid fever, Bull died at Alfred’s residence, 177 Devonshire Street, Sydney, on 22 December 1889. He was buried in the Church of England section of Rookwood Cemetery.
Writers:
Stilwell, G. T.Kerr, JoanHansen, Irene
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 September 1811
- Summary
- Painter, photographer and drawing master in Hobart and Sydney in the mid to late nineteeth century. Bull arrived in Australia as a convict, having been arrested for 'Feloniously making part of a Foreign Note for 100 Dollars'. Best known for his Tasmanian landscapes, a number of Bull's works may have been wrongly attributed given their similarity to the work of fellow painter J.G. Medland and the f
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 December 1889
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1889-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and merchant, was the second of 11 children and eldest son of James Wilshire, a successful tanner, and Esther, née Pitt. The place and year of his birth – Sydney 1807 – have given him legendary but dubious status as Australia’s 'first native-born artist’, i.e. white male oil painter. Sir William Dixson claimed that Wilshire had no formal art training apart from some early drawing lessons: 'his first attempts at colour painting were made about 1829-30, when he copied some of Skinner Prout 's work’. Since Prout did not come to Sydney until December 1840, Wilshire must either have copied English engravings or have begun painting much later than Dixson suggests. Dixson also said that Wilshire was a photographer but may have confused him with J.W.F. Wilshire, a professional photographer working in the Sydney suburb of Waverley in the 1870s.
Nevertheless, William Pitt Wilshire undoubtedly used photography in his work. Some of his paintings appear to be little more than coloured photographs. Initially, he specialised in portraiture, but later he also painted landscapes perhaps because of the threat photography posed to the portrait painter. Most of his known paintings appear to be copies, e.g. The Coming Simoon , shown at the 1854 Australian Museum exhibition, which was a copy of a well-known English painting (possibly an art union winner though the artist is unknown) in Sydney. He showed seven paintings in the 1857 Fine Art Exhibition at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts. Three were portraits – Sir Daniel Cooper, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, an Australian Aboriginal woman and an unidentified sitter – but the rest (at least) were copies: Beatrice Cenci , Sir Joshua Reynolds , Laughing Boy and Cottage Girl . He exhibited original oils and more copies with the NSW Academy of Art in 1872 as an 'amateur’.
Little more is known about Wilshire’s art except that he never seems to have worked professionally. A pencil portrait of a deceased uncle, Robert Pitt (Mitchell Library [ML]), copied from an oil painting brought to NSW by Pitt’s widow, was drawn on a visit to his aunt some time before October 1859, when the painting was lost in a shipwreck. In October 1853, Wilshire charged Thomas Lane with the theft of various articles, including a paintbrush, but the charge was dismissed. He spent most of his life as a merchant, including running a preserved meat business ('preserved by his entirely new process’) in October 1874, but apparently painted as a hobby for most of his life. His oil painting, Aborigines of Queensland (ML), was done in 1886 when he was 78 and is inscribed on the back of the canvas as being after a photograph. A complementary painting, Camp of 'Blanket’, Aboriginal Visitor (unlocated: photograph Archives Office of New South Wales), with figures formally posed in a row, also seems to have been copied from (or painted over?) a photograph.
Wilshire married Catherine Maria Robertson, a sister of John Robertson (later NSW Premier) at Sydney on 21 February 1829. They had a large family, although only two sons and a daughter survived him. Late in life he retired to Kurrajong in the Blue Mountains but died in Surry Hills on 12 March 1889 and was buried in the Church of England section of Rookwood Cemetery. His brother Joseph gave Wilshire’s occupation as 'gentleman’ on his death certificate.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1807
- Summary
- Native colonial whose claim to fame as first-born Australian artist belied the fact he took up landscape only because of the threat of photography to portraiture and his earliest colour paintings were little more than retouched photographs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 March 1889
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- scene-painter, journalist, politician and businessman, was born in London, elder son of Jane and Thomas Clark . He came to Victoria with his parents in 1852. From an early age he was obliged to earn a living – as a seaman, in a ships’ chandlery at Port Melbourne and as a tide waiter attached to the Customs Department (1870-71). According to an article on his father in the Argus on 23 May 1888, at Melbourne in the 1860s Alfred had painted theatrical scenery to pay for his education, although Colligan points out that his father was the 'Mr Clark’ responsible for painting Thomas Chuck 's Burke and Wills panorama in 1862, in partnership with William Pitt .
In 1871 Clark was elected to the Victorian Parliament and remained the radical member for Williamstown for seventeen years. During this period, critical articles on Queen Victoria he published in the Williamstown Advertiser (of which he was founder and part proprietor) resulted in him being horsewhipped by an angry reader, Mr D.C. Moodie. Normally, however, he seems to have been regarded as something of a hero in Williamstown. He was partner in an auctioneering firm there, director of several insurance companies and president of the Football Club. He made a fortune in land speculation.
Clark resigned from the Legislative Assembly in order to stand for the Legislative Council in 1887, but was defeated. The following year he left for London to float a South Australian mining company but died on board the Oceana outside Colombo on 19 May. His widow Alexandra, née Dickson, and their three children returned to Victoria.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1845
- Summary
- Scene-painter, journalist, politician and businessman born in London. Resident of Melbourne, Victoria he painted theatrical scenery to pay for his education.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19 May 1888
- Age at death
- 43
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in Berlin on 18 April 1831 of working-class parents. His brother Bernard migrated to Victoria in about 1854 and established a furniture business at Rutherglen; Johan Friedrich or 'Fritz’ (as he signed himself before anglicising his name to Fred) joined Bernard as a partner before April 1863 when his wife and son followed him to Melbourne in the barque Macassar . Fred Kruger soon became sole proprietor of the furniture business but had sold up and become a cabinet-maker at Taradale by January 1866. Later that year he opened a photographic studio at 133 Cardigan Street, Carlton, Melbourne.
Kruger took the first group photograph of the Aboriginal cricket team which toured Victoria before going to England to play at Lords in 1868. ( Patrick Dawson took each player individually.) The photograph dates from about October-November 1866 and Kruger is presumed to have taken it during the match at Hamilton to send to Melbourne as advance publicity. At this stage Tom Willis, the white coach, had not arrived at Hamilton and, indeed, all three (white) managers of the team were apparently taken in Kruger’s Melbourne studio and added to the montage. An engraving published in the Illustrated Australian News (Melbourne) on 20 December 1866 was adapted from his photograph, the figures being reversed.
Throughout the following decade Kruger received international recognition for his landscape photography, being awarded medals at the 1872 Vienna and 1876 Philadelphia Centennial exhibitions. Locally, he was commissioned by the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines in 1877 to produce an album of carte-de-visite portraits of the Aborigines at the Coranderrk Aboriginal Mission Station near Healesville, together with views of the settlement. The album, published in 1883, includes possibly his best-known photograph: a cricket match at Coranderrk.
Kruger won a gold medal for the best collection of landscape views taken within 25 miles of the Geelong Post Office and a gold medal for the best panoramic view of Geelong at the Geelong Industrial and Juvenile Exhibition of 1879, his 10-foot (3 m) long panorama comprising 10 photographs taken from the tower of St Paul’s Church on La Trobe Terrace in September 1879. He also took photographs of the Geelong exhibition itself, such as the fountain in the main hall, the rockery in the annexe, the exhibition building and scenes at the opening ceremony. By February 1880 he had collected 60 views, which he sold separately as cabinet photographs or together in an album.
By then Kruger had settled permanently in Geelong. The first of his numerous excursions around the district was made in August 1879 when he photographed 'scenery in the neighbourhood of Batesford and the Barrabools’ and 'a very pretty view of Highton’. In 1880 he issued a collection of 12 views of the principal streets and public buildings of Geelong. The views of Geelong and its suburbs that he showed at the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition again won him an award. The Victorian government commissioned him to photograph the Yan Yean waterworks for the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London. The numerous views he showed at the 1887 Geelong Exhibition seem to have been a novel compilation of photographs taken over the preceding eight years. The 31 photographs were enclosed in medallions of various sizes to form 'a really magnificent panoramic picture … entirely different to anything else in the building’, the Geelong Advertiser reported on 23 November 1887.
Kruger received numerous private commissions from property-owners in the district to photograph their estates, including Peter Manifold of Purrumbete (who wrote, however, in 1879, 'please do not send me any more as I have now such a great number’), George Fairbairn of Wyndermere, Frederick Armytage of Wooloomanata (c.1880) and the Chirnsides of Werribee Park (1882). His most prestigious commission was from Lady Loch, the governor’s wife who, when accidentally encountered on an excursion to Point Lonsdale in 1885, asked Kruger to take a view through the trees of SS Austral against a backdrop of Point Nepean.
As early as March 1879 Kruger was photographing groups of Geelong townsmen, on one occasion taking the employees of the boot manufacturers Strong & Pierce picnicking at Bream Creek. Conscious that prospective buyers had to be clearly seen, he took care to bring out the figures 'so distinctly that the identity of each person could be easily established’, the Geelong Advertiser of 21 March 1881 noted. Similar care was taken when photographing the Corio Bay rowing crew in November 1879.
For the colonial photographer ever pressed to find new subjects to attract buyers, disasters proved a godsend. The boiler at Humble & Nicholson’s foundry exploded in 1879 and Kruger exhibited before and after photographs; the Barwon River flooded Queen’s Park and he provided a bird’s-eye view; the George Roper was wrecked off Point Lonsdale in July 1883 and Kruger rushed to photograph it, including in his images the sightseers on the beach, who proved to be buyers as well as enhancements to the composition and drama of the image (NGV). He returned to Point Lonsdale three years later when the barque Glanseuse was wrecked.
Kruger made three less dramatic photographic visits to the Queenscliff area in January 1881, 1882 and 1885, taking views of the township, its buildings and marine setting on the first occasion and the Easter encampment of the Volunteer Artillery on the second. On the third, he made a panorama of the whole of the fortifications for the Defence Department to exhibit at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London and took a group photograph of the Garrison Artillery on parade. He had an eye for novel presentations of his photographs; for instance, two views of the Barwon River were enamelled in 1881. He marketed his views as appropriate birthday, Christmas and New Year presents from October 1884 when he offered sets of 'charming little landscapes’ in albums. Private residences, public buildings and rural landscapes from many districts were all grist to his mill.
On 15 February 1888 Fred Kruger died of peritonitis at Surrey Hills, Melbourne. A large collection of his photographs was presented to the National Gallery of Victoria in 1979.
Writers:
Fox, Paul
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 April 1831
- Summary
- Photographer known as Fred Kruger won a number of awards and gained international recognition for his panoramas. In 1877 he was commissioned by the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines to photograph Aborigines at the Coranderrk Aboriginal Mission Station.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15 February 1888
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Amateur photographer, watchmaker and optician, was the elder brother of Alfred Abbott . With his mother and brother he came to Hobart Town in 1850 to join his emancipist father in business as a clock-maker. In 1857-59 Charles took landscape photographs and, with Alfred, accompanied John Mathieson Sharp on photographic excursions. He conducted some early experiments in colour printing using the chemicals potassium permanganate and potassium ferrocyanide. Alfred Abbott’s album (Crowther Library) contains several of Charles’s photographs, mainly stereoscopic prints of views and buildings in and near Hobart. A few are colour experiments, such as the blue half-plate Hobart Town from the Back of our Residence in Murray Street (showing the Abbott garden with its workshop and pear tree in the foreground). He abandoned photography in 1859 and sold his camera to Morton Allport . Also a skilled watchmaker and optician, Charles carried on the family business after his father’s death in 1883 until his own death five years later.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1824
- Summary
- Amateur photographer, watchmaker and optician, his subjects were mainly views of Hobart and he conducted some early experiments in colour printing. His brother, Alfred, was also a photographer and they went on joint photographic excursions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1888
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude52.7835769 Longitude-8.9056991 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dromoland Castle, County Clare, Ireland
- Biography
- watercolourist, lithographer, draughtsman, architect and engineer, was born in Dromoland Castle, County Clare, Ireland, fifth son of Admiral Robert O’Brien RN (1766-1838) and grandson of Sir Lucius O’Brien, 5th Baronet and from 1855 13th Baron Inchiquin.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1821
- Summary
- George O'Brien appears to be a man of many parts, watercolourist, lithographer, draughtsman, as well as architect and engineer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30 August 1888
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- miniature painter, engraver, professional photographer and public servant, was born in London, son of William Walter Thwaites, an amateur painter who exhibited a miniature of Miss Sims at the Royal Academy in 1819 (from 69 Great Prescott Street) and Le Chapeau Noir at the Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street in 1826 (from 14 Bedford Place, Commercial Road, London). By profession his father was a civil engineer and, with his cousin Sir John Thwaites, was responsible for constructing the Thames Embankment; his mother was the daughter of Captain Maitland of the Royal Navy. Reputedly educated at Rugby, Thwaites left England in 1834 to work in Sydney as a miniature painter. In August 1836 he advertised in the Australian and the Commercial Journal that he had moved to 1 Hunter Street, Sydney, 'where the orders of those that shall honour him with a call will be most punctually attended on the most reasonable terms’.
Thwaites married Jane McLean in Sydney on 13 September 1839. The following year their son, Walter William McLean Thwaites , was born. In 1842 they moved from Surry Hills to New South Head Road, where on 14 August Jane gave birth to twins, Isabella C. and Hector J. Thwaites ; Sophia Jane followed c.1846. The family seems to have been living on a farm at Botany in September 1842 but by 1847 W.W. Thwaites was back in business as a miniature painter of Madeira Place, Devonshire Street, Sydney. A small, undated watercolour portrait of Susannah Bedwell is held by the Mitchell Library, which also holds copies of W.W. Thwaites’s undated engraving of St Peter’s Church of England, East Maitland (NSW). A lithograph after an equestrian portrait of Mr Henry Reeves, clerk of the (race) course and proprietor of the Fitzroy Hotel at West Maitland, 'drawn by W.W. Thwaites from life’, appeared in Heads of the People on 2 October 1847 so he must have worked in the Maitland area for a time.
During the 1850s Thwaites abandoned art and worked in the Auditor-General’s Office. He evidently learnt photography during this period. When he re-appeared as an artist in the 1860s, it was as a professional photographer as well as painter – in Tasmania. 'W. Thwaites’ was listed as an artist and photographer of 128 Liverpool Street, Hobart Town in 1861. In February 1862 he was advertising his Macquarie Street studio, two doors from the Bank of Van Diemen’s Land. Rumoured to have taken nude photographs of 'a Woman of the Town’ (a genre unrepresented in known colonial photographs), W. Thwaites placed an advertisement in the Hobart Town Advertiser in September 1862 vehemently denying 'ever having disgraced my Establishment by any such proceeding’. The story does not seem to have damaged his reputation. A few months later Fanny Maria Davenport , daughter of the Anglican archdeacon, wrote in her diary that her brother Arthur had had his likeness taken by Thwaites on 22 December soon after Thwaites had received a consignment of new photographic equipment via the Percy .
In February 1864 Thwaites was writing to the Hobart Town Council complaining of water charges. He apparently left the colony soon afterwards, re-appearing in South Australia in 1865 with his two sons, both now practising as photographers too. While he and Hector worked in Adelaide (under Walter’s name), Walter William junior covered the country towns. Then they all went to Western Australia in the Sea Ripple , arriving on 19 January 1867. The following month the Perth Inquirer was carrying Thwaites senior’s advertisements announcing his arrival from Adelaide and stating that he would be visiting the districts of Newcastle, Victoria Plains and Gingin, 'having with him the most approved apparatus for taking Views and likenesses’. Thwaites added that he could produce testimonials from such prominent local gentlemen as J. Seabrook, C. Smith, E.B. Brockman, A.W. Morgan and J.M. Dempster, whom either he or the boys had presumably photographed.
Thwaites stayed on after his sons left Fremantle for Adelaide on 23 March and entered into partnership with Bernard Goode , another visiting photographer from Adelaide who rapidly returned to South Australia. Thwaites, however, remained in the West. He was working as an independent photographer at York, Northam and Toodyay in 1867 and took a series of photographs of the Aboriginal mission station at New Norcia in September-October (Archives, Benedictine Community of New Norcia). He was at Perth in February 1868, renting premises in Howick Street for 'a short stay’. Then he too returned to South Australia. He was listed in the 1868 Adelaide Almanac as a photographic artist of Ward Street. He was at Clare in 1869 70. By 1879 he was working as a travelling photographer with the London (Australian) Photographic Company, being then at Riverton. In 1880-81 he was at Tanunda and travelling around the district; one of his subjects was Werner and Cook’s workshop near Jamestown.
Retiring from photography, Thwaites settled in Kangaroo Valley (NSW) until the late 1880s. Then he and his wife moved to Parramatta. There, on or about the night of 23 February 1888, he shot himself. He was buried on 26 February in the Church of England section of Rookwood Cemetery. His daughter-in-law testified at the inquest that he was destitute after moving to Parramatta on the promise by Sir Henry Parkes of a home for life for himself and his wife then discovering that this meant only a place in separate poor houses.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1814
- Summary
- A miniature painter and engraver, W.W. Thwaites (1814-1888)and sons established themselves as professional photographers in West and South Australia in the 1860s. However, despite such success, financial difficulties in later years resulted in the taking of his own life.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 February 1888
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude46.5093268 Longitude6.498317 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Morges, Vaud, Switzerland
- Biography
- Swiss landscape painter and portrait photographer, settled in Melbourne in 1864, admired by the artists from the Heidelberg area such as Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton who bestowed him with the accolade of 'Father of Australian painting’. In the 1870s, his work increasingly drew elements from Australian landscape such as the bush land in works like Lilydale (1878) and Bush Track.
He was born on 3 March 1814 at Morges, in the Vaud, Switzerland, second son of François-Simeon Buvelot, a civil servant, and Jean-Louis Marguerite, née Heizer, a schoolteacher. His family were descended from French Protestant refugees. Although his full name was bq). Abram Louis Buvelotbq)., he never used his first name, and aways signed his name as 'Louis Buvelot’. The family was inclined to art; his brother, Eugene-Jean-Louis-Henri Buvelot, became a printer and lithographer. After attending art school at Lausanne he travelled to Paris in about 1834 and studied briefly with Camille Flers before travelling to Brazil, where his uncle had a coffee plantation.By October 1840 he was established as an artist in Rio de Janeiro, where he exhibited paintings, lithographs and undertook commissions for photography. He was awarded a gold medal by the Rio Academy of Fine Arts in 1842 and was patronised by the Emperor Dom Pedro II. While living in Rio he married the French born Marie-Félicité Lalouette.In 1852 the family returned to Switzerland, where he worked chiefly as a photographer. He travelled alone to Calcutta in 1854, before returning to his family in Switzerland, where he became drawing master at an experimental industrial school at La Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel. He had modest success as an artist in this period, being awarded a silver medal at the 1856 Berne Exhibition.In 1864, after the death of his first wife, he sailed to Australia from Liverpool, accompanied by Caroline-Julie Beguin, a fellow teacher from Neuchâtel. They arrived in Melbourne in February 1865 and bought a photography studio in Bourke Street. By the following year they were living at 88 La Trobe Street East, where Buvelot established a studio, while Caroline-Julie gave French lessons. That year he began exhibiting his paintings. In 1873 they moved to George Street Fitzroy. The distinctive quality of his painterly landscapes meant that his talent was soon recognised by James Smith, the influential art critic of The Argus. Two paintings, Winter Morning Near Heidelberg and Summer Afternoon, Templestowe, were among the first Australian paintings purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria.From 1869 he taught at the Carlton School of Design where he became a most influential teacher to the next generation of artists including Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin. He encouraged his students to paint en plein air; although his own work was completed in the studio. His subjects were landscapes of the region surrounding Melbourne: Heidelberg, Templestowe, Dromana, Lilydale and Mount Macedon. He had hoped to be appointed to lead the National Gallery School, but was passed over in favour of Eugene von Guérard. By 1884 failing eyesight and crippled hands meant that he ceased painting. After his death on 30 May 1888 a monument was erected at Kew Cemetery and in 1894 one of the galleries at the National Gallery of Victoria was renamed in his honour. Buvelot also has the distinction of being the subject of the first memorial retrospective exhibition for an Australian artist. This was mounted by the National Gallery of Victoria in July 1888 by George Folingsby and James Smith.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 March 1814
- Summary
- Swiss landscape painter and portrait photographer, settled in Melbourne in 1864, admired by the artists from the Heidelberg area such as Tom Roberts and Arthur Streeton who bestowed him with the accolade of 'Father of Australian painting'. In the 1870s, his work increasingly drew elements from Australian landscape such as the bush land in works like Lilydale (1878) and Bush Track.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30 May 1888
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist and public servant, was born in Scotland on 31 March 1808, fourth of the 13 children of Rev. Donald Fraser, minister of Kirkhill, and Jane, née Gordon. In about 1835 Peter Fraser joined the Colonial Office and was later appointed sheriff of Van Diemen’s Land, arriving in May 1839 and taking up his position in January 1840. Three years later he became colonial treasurer, a post he held until 1856. At one time collector of internal revenue, he also served as a member of the Caveat Board, acted as colonial secretary in 1851-52 and was a member of the Executive and Legislative councils.
Fraser’s period of office as colonial treasurer was free from the difficulties which had beset former occupants of the position and he appears to have performed his duties with diligence but without distinction. In 1847 he returned to England and, on 11 October 1848, married the Tasmanian-born Mary Bisdee, daughter of John Bisdee, of Hutton Park, Van Diemen’s Land, at Hutton, Somerset. They returned to Van Diemen’s Land shortly afterwards. Two sons and a daughter were born in the colony and they had two daughters after returning to Somerset in 1860. Fraser died at Weston-super-Mare, England, on 27 April 1888.
A keen sketcher, Fraser painted in watercolours throughout his Tasmanian sojourn. With Boyes , Bicheno , Skinner Prout and other local artists, he was a member of the Hobart Town Sketching Club in the 1840s. He was among the 'party of gentlemen’ who accompanied Prout on a sketching tour from Hobart Town up the east coast of Tasmania, through the St Mary’s Pass and Fingal Valley to Longford then back to Hobart, from December 1845 to January 1846. The following month he joined Prout and Francis Simpkinson on a sketching tour to Lake St Clair. Sketches and watercolours produced by Fraser, Prout and Simpkinson on these excursions are extremely similar in both style and subject matter.
As a member of the committee, Fraser helped organise the art exhibition held in the Hobart Town Legislative Council Chamber in January 1845. He showed three of his own paintings: Deer Stalking, Invernesshire, Highlands of Scotland , River Derwent from Ancanthe and Mount Wellington from opposite Stoney Steps . Although the Colonial Times criticised the exhibition for its exclusiveness and the curious manner in which it was created, the Hobart Town Courier singled out Fraser’s Mt Wellington and Derwent views for particular commendation: 'These pictures evince much talent for landscape painting, are coloured in a sweet and harmonious style, and afford proof that if the artist were enabled to devote his entire attention to its study, he could not fail to attain a high rank amongst its professors’. The Hobart Town Advertiser considered Deer Stalking proof of the healthy state of local art: 'If our amateurs can produce drawings of such feeling and such skill as are evinced [here] ... we shall not despair of finding ample materials for another exhibition’.
The following year’s exhibition did contain several of Fraser’s pictures, Sketchers Cove, at the Schoutens being especially praised in the Britannia . The Colonial Times also placed it among the best of the watercolours but considered that as a class these were disappointing. It was exhibited again in 1858, 1862-63, 1887 and 1888 by its owner, Dr J.W. Agnew, being described in 1863 as the 'best picture ever painted by this talented amateur’. Paintings by Fraser shown at the Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition in 1858 were: St Marys Pass (1846), Shepherds on the Look Out (after R. Carrick) and River Derwent from Ancanthe (which had already been exhibited in 1845). Wood and Water , owned by T. Giblin, was shown in 1862-63.
Owned by the Allport family in 1858, St Marys Pass and River Derwent from Ancanthe are now in the Allport Library, which has since purchased Fraser’s Mount Wellington from opposite Stoney Steps . An Allport family scrapbook (ALMFA) includes some small works by Fraser, in particular a sympathetic watercolour portrait of a convict in government slops, an extremely rare contemporary subject. A pen-and-ink sketch of Mary Morton Allport at the piano, viewed from behind, is also attributed to him, although his initials and the (incorrect) date of 1848 are in another hand. Fraser lived near the Allport family, first in Elboden Place, later at Bellevue, Fitzroy Place. He frequently sketched with Mary Morton Allport, who when visiting Victoria in 1854 referred to some drawings as having 'Mr Fraser’s style but better finished’.
Writers:
Glover, Margaret
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 March 1808
- Summary
- Critics considered Fraser's work as proof of the healthy state of local art: 'If our amateurs can produce drawings of such feeling and such skill...we shall not despair...' Fraser lived in Tasmania on and off for two decades, working for most of that time as the Colonial Treasurer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 April 1888
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.82117935 Longitude151.0179687 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Elizabeth Farm, Parramatta, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher and poet, was born at Elizabeth Farm, Parramatta, New South Wales, youngest of the four daughters of John and Elizabeth Macarthur and sister of William . A cousin, Emmeline Macarthur , was named after her. The elder Emmeline married Henry Watson Parker, Governor Gipps’s private secretary, at Sydney on 21 November 1843 despite her widowed mother’s opposition, Elizabeth stating that she considered Henry 'bad-tempered, penurious, and narrow-minded’ and 'his future prospects equivocal, depending on the will of his father’. The Parkers built a large house, Clovelly, at Watson’s Bay and Henry briefly became premier of New South Wales (1856-57) and was knighted in 1858. He and Emmeline, Lady Parker, spent their retirement in England. Henry was worth just under £140 000 when he died in 1881.
Emmeline’s album (Mitchell Library) was begun in January 1834, well before her marriage, and she continued it for at least some time afterwards. It contained poems, notes and illustrations but all her drawings have long been removed and only some captions remain to indicate her subjects. These include Tintern Abbey , Spanish Girl , Fid èle , Good Night and Last Look . Accompanied by poems in imitation of Waller and Walter Scott, a sonnet, a copy of a poem by Bishop Heber, several poems chosen and copied in by Watson Parker (including extracts from Byron) and other contributions from friends, it is likely that the drawings would have been typical of any well-bred young lady’s collection. The album also includes Emmeline’s poem 'On Belgenny Camden 10 January 1834’ (to accompany her lost view of Belgenny) and 'Lines on the Taralga Stream’ sent to her by an unknown author in April 1835. A view of Taralga by Conrad Martens , also removed, suggests that he may have given Emmeline drawing lessons. Martens certainly taught her niece Elizabeth Macarthur , but his work was commonly included in albums at the time. Emmeline’s paintbox from Ackermann’s, London, with her Christian name engraved on a plaque on the top, survives in the family.
Emmeline and Henry Parker had one daughter who died at birth. Emmeline herself died at the Parkers’ home, Stawell House, Richmond, Surrey, on 3 May 1888.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1808
- Summary
- Emmeline Emily Parker was a sketcher and poet. She married Henry Watson Parker who was Premier of New South Wales from 1856-57. Her mother opposed to her decision to marry Henry as she considered him 'bad-tempered, penurious, and narrow-minded'. Parker's album, no longer holds any of her drawings but some of the remaining captions suggest she may have had drawing lessons from Conrad Martens.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3 May 1888
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude-33.816667 Longitude151 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parramatta, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, acquired her middle name by being native born – at the Blaxland family home, Newington, Parramatta, on 22 May 1807, soon after her parents, John and Harriott Blaxland, had arrived in New South Wales. She was the sixth of 11 children. Mrs Blaxland encouraged all six daughters to collect and sketch flowers. Emily Manning recorded one of these sketching excursions taken in the company of Louisa and her sister Jane when she stayed at Newington in 1837. Louisa Blaxland never married. Her role in life was to remain at Newington and look after her parents. In 1863, well after both had died, she made her first visit to Britain, Newington having been sold the previous year by her brother Edward, who had inherited the property when their mother died. Louisa regretted the loss of her family home all her life and in 1880 petitioned the New South Wales government to turn it into a public memorial to her father. Instead, it was later renamed Silverwater and converted into a minimum security prison under the control of the New South Wales Department of Corrective Services.
Louisa Blaxland died at Parramatta on 2 August 1888. Some of her letters and her record of John Blaxland’s dying reminiscences of his early life survive in the Blaxland family papers (ML). No extant drawings have been identified.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 May 1807
- Summary
- A member of the aristocratic Blaxland family, Louise Australia was the sixth of 11 children, acquiring her middle name as the first 'native' born child after her parents emigration. Despite being encouraged to sketch by her mother, none of her drawings survive, indeed Blaxland is best known for her unsuccessful petition to have Newington, her family home at Parramatta, turned into a public memoria
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2 August 1888
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude60.1531357 Longitude-1.1427296 Start Date1805-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lerwick, Shetland Islands, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Lerwick, Shetland Islands, one of the ten children of William Irvine and Grizel, née Clark, only five of whom survived beyond infancy.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1805
- Summary
- As a painter and portraitist, John Irvine made a name for himself in Scotland as well as Adelaide and Dunedin. Actively involved in art societies, his portraits showed a romantic flair, while those of women and children were considered among his best.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1888
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1804-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- sketcher, engraver, pharmacist and farmer, was the son of Thomas Jones and Hannah, née Fryer, the place of his birth being given variously as Cheltenham, England, and Cardiff or Swansea, Wales. He was apprenticed as a pharmacist, but no other details of his early life are known until 1836, when he was travelling in North America. Then, at the suggestion of his brother-in-law Daniel Rutter Long , a fellow pharmacist, he migrated to Melbourne in the Himalaya , arriving on 29 September 1840 with Long and his family. On 16 March 1842 George Augustus Robinson appointed him medical dispenser to the Aborigines at Narre Narre Warren Station at a salary of 3s a day with a single ration. A pencil drawing, Aboriginal Family , may date from this period. Jones retained the position until 30 September 1843. As late as 1847, when living in Little Collins Street, Melbourne, he was called 'Deputy Protector of Natives’.
Early in 1846 Jones produced a series of etchings of Melbourne scenes which were printed as headings on sheets of notepaper by John Green , an engraver and copperplate printer, also of Little Collins Street. These included views of Collins, Elizabeth and Bourke streets, the Melbourne wharf and signal station and some of the principal buildings of Melbourne, such as the Wesleyan and Catholic chapels and Old Government Offices from Batman’s Hill . Together with lithographs by G.A. Gilbert and Joseph Pittman , they constitute some of the earliest views of Melbourne to be printed and published there. In the 1920s the original copperplates were discovered in an old trunk; 12 were reprinted as a set by the Fine Art Society of Melbourne in 1934.
Although of considerable value as a historical record, Jones’s views suggest that he was an amateur who had difficulty in mastering perspective—at least when faced with the problem of reversing a sketch for etching on a plate. They are not known to have been publicly distributed at the time and have since been universally accepted as private productions. Yet, as well as being a chemist, Henry Gilbert Jones was listed as an artist of Collins Street in the Port Phillip Almanac for 1847 and as an artist and engraver of 107 Elizabeth Street in 1859, which suggests some professional artistic aspirations. A lithograph, Native Encampment (Deutscher Fine Art), is attributed to Henry Gilbert Jones.
In August 1850 Jones purchased 93 acres in the parish of Nillambick at Eltham where he built a log hut and for many years lived the life of a recluse. He died on 27 March 1888 at his nephew’s pharmacy, 183 Bourke Street East, Melbourne, and was buried in the St Kilda Cemetery.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1804
- Summary
- Sketcher, engraver, pharmacist and farmer, he produced a series of etchings in the 1840s which constitute some of the earliest views of Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 March 1888
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1804-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, pastoralist and politician, was born in London, son of John Weston, a surgeon. Having entered the wool trade, Weston sailed for Australia in the Adrian in 1823 and eventually settled in Van Diemen’s Land on a 2000-acre land grant. He married Ann Elphinstone Clark at Bothwell in June 1826; they had five sons and three daughters. A deeply religious man, Weston played an active role in the Church of England at Longford. Later he left the Anglican Church and helped found the Launceston Congregational Church with his friend John West, with whom he also founded the Anti-Transportation League. Its members later commissioned Robert Dowling to paint Weston’s portrait (QVMAG) in gratitude for his successful efforts.
Weston was elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly in 1856 and twice served short terms as premier. In the 1860s he went to live on a property he owned at Geelong, Victoria, subsequently moving to Melbourne. He died at St Kilda on 21 February 1888. His fifteen known drawings in pencil, pen-and-ink and wash (QVMAG), originally in a sketchbook, pay far more attention to topographical accuracy than to composition, perspective or balance. Most depict parts of the Longford district where Weston built his Regency-style villa Hythe in 1831. A number of the vistas incorporate large houses surrounded by trees: Cressy House 1840 and Hythe, Going towards Bishopsbourne (n.d.). Local landmarks, such as bridges, the punt at Longford, Ritchie’s Mill and the buildings in the main street of Perth (VDL) are also featured; one is titled Scene Describing Capture of a Prisoner in a Cave on the Banks of Jordan (c.1840). All are inscribed in Weston’s hand although an undated letter from his daughter, Ann Archer, suggests that Henry Mundy might have assisted with the brushwork.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1804
- Summary
- Elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly and twice served short terms as premier. His fifteen known drawings in pencil, pen-and-ink and wash originally in a sketchbook, depict parts of the Longford district where Weston lived and other vistas.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21 February 1888
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1888-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK, UK?
- Biography
- lithographer, printer, frame-maker and fine arts dealer, arrived at Hobart Town in the Warrior on 27 June 1833. He was accompanied by his wife Sarah née Lloyd, his 14-year-old stepson Richard Lloyd, and his 5-year-old son Robin Lloyd. On his arrival he gave his occupation as carpenter, but he soon abandoned general carpentry for the specialist trades of carver, gilder and frame-maker. His first known address was 1 Murray Street ('near St David’s Church’) in 1836. He moved to 108 Elizabeth Street in March 1838, then to a 'weatherboarded house’ in New Town Road which was destroyed by fire in November 1840. The following year he built a shop and residence at 34 Liverpool Street which he called Somerset House.
Following the success of the art exhibition organised by John Skinner Prout and others at the Legislative Council Chambers on 6 January 1845, Hood built a gallery adjacent to his Liverpool Street premises. In February 1846 he advertised that the gallery was ready, and the committee held its second exhibition there on 24 May. Hood’s gallery became the focus for the exhibition and sale of fine arts in Hobart exhibiting, among others, the works of painters such as John Glover and Thomas Wainewright and, later, Haughton Forrest . When Prout left for London in April 1848 Hood bought his lithographic equipment and began a new career as lithographer and printer. Clifford Craig has noted that all known Hood prints were published after the purchase of Prout’s press. The earliest are probably a series of whaling prints drawn on the stone by William Duke and published by Hood in September 1848.
Hood showed picture frames at London’s Great Exhibition in 1851 and in Paris in 1855. Yet he apparently intended his career to be short for in February 1851 he retired in favour of his son, Robin Lloyd Hood (1828-1916), who became a well-known printer and frame-maker in his own right. Despite this public withdrawal, however, Hood seems to have continued lithographic printing from his residence at Fitzroy Place, publishing lithographs by Frank Dunnet in November 1858 and Henry D’Emden in 1861, as well as exhibiting picture frames. He seems to have retained the ownership of the Somerset House premises as well. In February 1862 he advertised that the property, including the exhibition room, was for sale. The previous August he had turned the 'large and commodious premises’ at 56 Liverpool Street into the 'City Restaurant’, which offered both food and accommodation. The printing business, then trading as R.L. Hood & Brother, was next door.
Robin Vaughan Hood died at Hobart in 1888, his wife having predeceased him in 1857. No original artwork by Hood is known and drawing onto the stone was apparently always the work of others. Nevertheless, there are sufficient Hood lithographs, otherwise unacknowledged, to suggest that he may sometimes have performed this task himself. In any event, as lithographic printer and fine arts entrepreneur, he was an integral part of Hobart’s cultural life.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1802
- Summary
- Lithographer, printer, frame-maker and fine arts dealer, arrived at Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land (Tas) in 1833. No original artwork by Hood is known, but he was an integral part of Hobart's cultural life.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1888
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1887-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and draughtsman, was born in Sydney on 28 February 1840, son of the merchant William Andrews and his wife, whose portraits were painted in 1861 by James Anderson . As William Andrews junior, William began painting professionally in about 1860; by 1868 he was listed in Sands Sydney Directory as an artist of 44 Yurong Street. William Moore states that he received several landscape commissions when Lord Rosebery visited Australia in 1883-84, which Rosebery took back to England, but mostly he worked as an amateur, earning his living as a draughtsman in the NSW Colonial Architect’s Office. In the 1870s he lived at Double Bay.
In 1870 Andrews contributed an oil painting, Ship in Distress , to Sydney’s Intercolonial Exhibition; it was highly commended. Three other works entered in the same class (oil paintings by amateurs) were Raft Scene – Sunset , Red Riding Hood and Cattle Piece . Two years later his oils and watercolours attracted favourable attention when shown with the NSW Academy of Art: 'Of the paintings in oils’, declared the Empire on 5 March 1872, 'Mr W. Andrews junior’s “Tranquility” must, one should think, bear away the palm’. A coastal landscape at sunrise with a dismantled hulk in the foreground, it was in fact awarded the medal for best exhibit by a local amateur. Andrews also showed Nearing the Heads and The Old Hull at Cuthbert’s , the latter a moonlight scene. They received certificates of merit.
In April he showed more oil paintings, including A War Scene , in an exhibition held at the Pitt Street Congregational Sabbath School. The Agricultural Society’s annual exhibition in May included his Early Morn and The Last Gleam , the latter winning a first prize. Morning and Evening ('two fine [oil] pictures of sea-coast scenes’) were 'decided favourites’ when exhibited with the NSW Academy of Art in 1873. Stranded , shown in the following year’s exhibition, would have won a silver medal, it was reported, 'but for what was thought to be a sameness in the picture to others exhibited by that talented gentleman during the last two years’. Another oil coastal scene was shown with the Academy in 1874, and Andrews donated at least two paintings as prizes in the Academy’s annual art union. A decade later, his watercolour of Darling Harbour in the 1884 Royal Art Society Exhibition was described in Once a Month as 'one of the finest works contributed’.
LATER EXHIBITION HISTORY:
In the oil paintings section at the NSW Academy of Art third annual exhibition 1874: ’1. “Coast Scene” – W. Andrews – Amateur – NSW – original – Competitive; 2. “Stranded” – W. Andrews – Amateur – NSW – original – Competitive’.
Re the watercolour section of the First Exhibition of the Art Society of NSW in 1880: 'Mr Andrews has a lot of exhibits, and of them no.113, “The George’s River (Moonlight)” is perhaps most attractive. In most of this artist’s pictures Turneresque effects are introduced’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 23 December 1880).
Exhibited a watercolour at the first Art Society of NSW exhibition: 'No.148, “The Wreck” by Mr W. Andrews … a meritorious specimen of watercolor painting’ ( Bulletin , 1 January 1881). Exhibited Art Society of NSW 1881 and 1887.
Exhibited oil paintings in the exhibition at John Sands Art Gallery: 'Mr William Andrews exhibits 3 works, one entitled “Stranded” and 2 view of the Nepean. “Stranded” is a well conceived and skilfully executed picture, representing a sailing vessel caught upon a sandbank at night time. Through a rift in a heavy bank of clouds the moonlight falls upon the waves and throws portion of the sails and rigging of the vessel into relief. Fishing smacks are seen in the distance coming to her aid’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 8 January 1884).
Exhibited in fifth annual exhibition of the Art Society of NSW: 'No.19, “Pyrmont, from Johnstone’s Bay” by William Andrews, is a good marine picture, but it represents Pyrmont under a more picturesque aspect than it is usually seen’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 15 July 1884). 'No.50, “Darling Harbour” by William Andrews is a good study of shipping’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 16 July 1884). 'No.124 “Georges River” by William Andrews is a picturesque combination of river and woodland with a group of natives encamped in a glade to the right’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 19 July 1884). 'No.167 “Hawkesbury River” is by William Andrews … No.183 is one of the best, although one of the smallest of William Andrews’ pictures … No.190 is another artistic little sketch by William Andrews who seems to be more successful with those small works than with his larger efforts … No.229, “Near Manly, Pittwater-road” by William Andrews … [is] interesting work’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 19 July 1884). Also see a review by De Libra (a.k.a. James Green) in the Sydney Mail , 26 July 1884.
Re the Art Society’s sixth annual exhibition in 1885: '... sea view … over the doorway entitled “The Last Voyage” by Mr William Andrews … Mr William Andrews presents us with some very peculiar sky tints in his “Bend on the Hawkesbury” a rather effective picture’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 6 April 1885). 'No.14 “Near the Currajong” [sic] by William Andrews is a clever picture, its best points being the water in the foreground, and the shimmer of evening light through the trees in the middle distance’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 11 April 1885). 'Mr Andrews in many of his modestly-priced pictures shows a marked improvement’ ( Sydney Mail , 11 April 1885). Also see a review in the Illustrated Sydney News , 9 May 1885.
'Mr Andrews’ drawing is a scene at George’s River on a still evening, with an atmosphere charged with moisture. The shadows of the trees on the water, and the boat moored to the a post on the beach, certainly convey an impression of deep tranquility’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 5 February 1886).
At the seventh annual exhibition of the NSW Art Society: '“Evening on the Hawkesbury” (oil) (3) by Mr William Andrews, is well worth looking at, being a pretty river scene … “Morning on the Hawkesbury” (127) by Mr William Andrews, would be a good sketch if the sky were not so heavy … “The Wreck” (75) by Mr William Andrews is an effective piece of painting’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 20 April 1886). An oil painting called 'On the Nepean River, Blue Mountains, New South Wales’, signed l.r. 'Wm Andrews 1886’ was offered by Christie’s Australia, Australian and European Paintings , Melbourne 27 & 28 April 1998, lot 297A. Andrews dates are there given as 1840-1877 [sic].
Committee member of Art Society of NSW in 1886. Died January 1887, when Annual Report of Art Society called him 'a most promising artist’. At the monthly meeting of the Art Society the council 'placed on record its deep sense of regret for the loss of one of its members, Mr W. Andrews, by death’ ( Sydney Morning Herald , 14 February 1887). An oil painting by Andrews was exhibited posthumously at the 8th annual exhibition of the Art Society of NSW. The Sydney Morning Herald (8 December 1887) commented:
Mr W. Andrews has shown an ambitious picture called “Circular Quay” which has one merit and many faults. The Colour is not good, the pinky-blue over all is not a tint seen in these southern skies. There seems to have been an attempt to catch an effect like that of “Arundel Castle, Sussex” in the Art Gallery, but it has failed. He has some lines on the water also, which are seen in a river where there is a current, but which are not seen, I think, on the harbour here. The water looks like a flowing river by reason of these lines.
Moore states that one of his last works was a view of Sydney from Milson’s Point.
Writers:
McDonald, Patricia
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 28 February 1840
- Summary
- Oil and watercolour painter of Sydney landscapes in the mid to late 1800s. Andrews was a regular exhibitor with the Art Society of New South Wales. He showed a work in their inaugural exhibition in 1880 and was a committee member in 1886, the year before his death.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- January 1887
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude56.79445175 Longitude8.85994251 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1887-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nykobing, Mors, Denmark
- Biography
- Peter Schourup was born in Nykobing, on the island of Mors in Northern Denmark, in 1837. By the time he emigrated to South Australia in 1862 he was an accomplished artist and cartographer who had trained at the Royal Academy of Arts at Copenhagen. He left Copenhagen on board the 897-ton British sailing vessel William Jackson, which was carrying a cargo of timber to Port Adelaide and had three passengers in the cabin, including Schourup.
In letters he wrote home to Denmark he described his experiences both on board the ship and after he arrived in Adelaide. When the ship had reached South Australian waters he wrote:
Today we have been at sea for 95 days, and we expect to arrive at Port Adelaide in 5 or 6 days. It will be quite nice to see land again after having seen only sky and water for a quarter of a year … I have drawn portraits of the captain and the mates – to their great pleasure – and it is probably because of that that I am their favourite …’
6th January, 1863 – Today we can see land again. Although we have been as comfortable as possible, I feel an indescribable joy at seeing God’s dear earth again. It is Kangaroo Island we can see – about 35 miles from Port Adelaide. We will probably not reach it until tomorrow as the wind is against us, and we must tack.
Adelaide, 25th January – As you can see I have already been here for 3 weeks. We came ashore on the 7th, and the voyage lasted a total of 101 days. The reason I have not written before is that the mail does not leave until Wednesday morning; it is picked up only once a month.
The luck I had on the sea seems to follow me on land. After a few days I obtained a job with a photographer, Professor Hall, and, curiously enough, the first thing I did in Australia was to paint my own portrait – as a test. They do not ask for recommendations here, but rather, ‘what can you do?’
You can see from the enclosed article which I have cut from a newspaper that the test turned out well. I thought it might please you to see me favourably spoken of in the town’s principal newspaper.
The newspaper Peter Schourup referred to was probably the Advertiser, which said: ‘We had an opportunity on Saturday of inspecting some beautiful specimens of art at Professor Hall’s studio in Hindley-street. They are portraits taken by the ordinary photographic process, and afterwards painted in oils on the glass with great skill. The likenesses are correct and faithful, as photographic portraits must be; and the subsequent oil colouring has an excellent effect. The artist employed by Professor Hall is a young Dane, lately arrived in the colony, and the portraits painted by him are very clever, and well worth inspection.1
The Register also referred to Professor Hall’s innovation. ‘It is a combination of portrait painting and photography. The photograph, on glass, is first taken, and is then treated as a groundwork for an oil painting, the colours being laid on by an artist skilled in this kind of work. The result in many instances is shown to be a portrait possessing the correctness of a photograph and the softness of an oil painting. But the process is somewhat expensive, and does not in all cases preserve a striking likeness. Most of the portraits taken, however, in this instance are good, and no doubt many persons to whom this mode of colouring is new will be glad to give it a trial.2
In his letter Schourup described some aspects of life in South Australia.
Some Englishmen are very nice people, and I live here in the house of the professor as though we had known each other for many years. The first day I was there I was invited to go for a drive with his family. We went to the seaside 2 Danish miles from the town where we enjoyed ourselves the whole afternoon. Since then I have made many excursions together with them: in short, they show me much attention, so you can see that I am very well off for the time being. But Paradise is never perfect, and we are plagued by many things, such as mosquitoes, a kind of gnat, and a most terrible heat which is sometimes as much as 30 to 40 C. I have never before been able to sweat – but here I sit quietly and sweat the whole day. How it is possible to endure hard labour I do not understand.
I would like to give you a description of this strange country, but time and place do not permit and I do not know much about it yet. Let me just tell you that it is not without reason that Australia has been called the country of wonders. Here you can find animals, birds and plants of such strange shapes, colours and characteristics as cannot be found anywhere else in the world …
I do not yet know how much money I will earn, but I feel certain I shall be able to repay the money I borrowed from the Savings Bank within the time stated … You probably won’t see Uncle Niels, but if you should, please give him my regards. To think I might have stayed at home because of him and never have been so happy as I am here now – and I feel sure that in time I shall also be able to earn some money. I must admit that it is perhaps more luck than wisdom which has led to my success, as there are many emigrants here who are very badly off … My address is Mr Schourup care of Professor Hall, Hindley Street, Adelaide, South Australia.3
It seems likely that Peter Schourup learnt the art of photography from his benevolent friend Professor Robert Hall (q.v.), as on his arrival he was demonstrating his skill as an artist, but by the end of the year was practising photography.
On 5 November 1863 an advertisement in the Register informed the public at Port Adelaide that P. Schourup had opened a portrait room at Mr Lavin’s on North Parade, Port Adelaide, business hours 9 am to 4 pm. John Lavin was a grocer and confectioner on North Parade (Lewis directory 1862). Schourup’s directory entries as a photographer on North Parade did not start until 1867 and the last was in the directory for 1874.
What are presumed to be Schourup’s first cartes de visite carry the printed inscription, ‘P. Schourup, of the Royal Academy of Arts, Copenhagen, Portrait Painter and Photographer, Port Adelaide’. On his later cards, of similar design, was ‘P. Schourup, Artist Photographer, Port Adelaide’.
In September 1867 the Register commented on his photographs of the new press boat: ‘We have seen an artistic production from the atelier of Mr Schourup, Port, representing the new boat recently built by Mitchelmore for the Shipping Reporter. This boat is the largest ever laid down for the beach service, and although under jury-rig when taken presents a very fine appearance, especially as the artist has succeeded in producing a good picture with all sail set …’
When Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, arrived in South Australia a few months later, Schourup was able to obtain photographs of the Duke’s frigate, HMS Galatea. The photographs were on sale at E.S. Wigg’s stationery shop in Adelaide and at Schourup’s Port Adelaide Photographic Rooms. The photographs were reported in the Register on 25 November 1867: ‘By the courtesy of theCommander every facility was afforded [Schourup] in producing a series of pictures which are highly interesting, and as works of art reflect great credit on the artist …’ A detailed description of the views then followed: one taken with the camera on one of the steamer’s paddle-boxes; another from the fore bridge showing the drummer, commander, and the deck fittings; and a view from the starboard gangway, showing a group of officers standing beneath the bridge.
Schourup’s views of Port Adelaide were also noticed by the Register on 5 January 1872: ‘Mr Schourup has made it a specialty of his profession to pay particular attention to photographing nautical scenes, and the positions of some of his ships are excellently chosen. Lately he has taken several views of the Port as it is seen from the opposite river bank … Should the views stand the lapse of time, in a few years hence they will prove interesting records of the past.’ The article wenton to describe the photographs, detailing the vessels and buildings recorded by the camera. ‘Altogether the pictures are gems of art reflecting great credit on the photographer.’
A few months later the Register reported that Schourup, ‘who has long been favourably known to the public because of his artistically arranged shipping views as well as the clearness of the portraits he takes’, had made improvements to his studio, using an ingenious arrangement of curtains to give a softness of light and shade which greatly improved his portraits. Some of Schourup’s views of the Port were included in the South Australian exhibit at the 1873 London International Exhibition.
By June 1882 Peter Schourup had moved to New Zealand and established a flourishing photographic business at 150 Colombo Street, Christchurch. His health failed before he had an opportunity to return to Denmark, and he died on 24 January 1887, at the age of 49.
There is a portrait of P. Schourup in Fifty Years of the Port Adelaide Institute.4
1Advertiser, 19 January 1863.2South Australian Register, 11 February 1863.3Source not available.4F.E. Meleng, Fifty Years of the Port Adelaide Institute, The Institute, Pt Adelaide, 1902, p. 80.
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) ‘Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915’, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, pp.257-59.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1837
- Summary
- Peter Schourup emigrated from Denmark to South Australia in 1862-1863, settling in Port Adelaide. Trained as an artist and cartographer, he learnt photography from Professor Hall, a Danish emigrant who specialised in portraiture. Shourup became well known for his shipping views and scenes of Port Adelaide, and several of his images were included in the South Australian exhibit at the London International Exhibition of 1873.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24 January 1887
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1887-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- sketcher, was the daughter of Joseph Underwood, a merchant who came to New South Wales in June 1807 accompanied by his wife and a 'large yet infant family’. They lived at Ashfield Park, outside Sydney, which Joseph had purchased from Robert Campbell, husband of Sophia . Sketches by Charlotte were among a collection of drawings and documents relating to the Underwood and Want families (1830-50) auctioned in October 1986: a pencil and wash view of a river with a house in the background, Cattle Drinking at the River (c.1845, watercolour) and an attributed watercolour, Fox Hunt . A watercolour portrait of Charlotte herself by William Nicholas , dated 1843, was also in the collection.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1835
- Summary
- Sketches by Charlotte Underwood were among a collection of drawings and documents relating to the Underwood and Want families (1830 50) auctioned in October 1986.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1887
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1887-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stepney, London, England, UK
- Biography
- lithographer and publican, son of grocer John Green and Mary Eaton, was born 5 October 1818, WLOT (Within the Limits of the Tower) and christened in St Dunstan’s, Stepney, London, on 11 July 1819. His grandfather, Daniel Isaac Eaton (d.1814), an East End bookseller indicted at least nine times for printing, publishing and selling seditious literature – mainly Thomas Paine’s pamphlets but also his own magazine and tracts – spent several terms in prison and three and half years in exile in North America. H.G. Eaton arrived in Australia on board the convict ship Henry Porcher, which arrived in Hobart Town, VDL (Tasmania) on 15 November 1836. Henry had been tried and found Guilty at The Central Court (Old Bailey) on 13 June 1836, of 'Larceny in a Dwelling House’ and sentenced to Transportation for Life. In 1844 Thomas Bluett published Six Views of Hobart Town , lithographed by Eaton after drawings by T.E. Chapman . Eaton’s billhead for T. Stump, 'Purveyor of Meat to his Excellency’ (c.1845, p.c.), with its carefully detailed view of Stump’s Elizabeth Street butcher’s shop, was undoubtedly a more normal commission.
Eaton apparently left Tasmania in the 1850s. When he married Lucy Hayman in a Wesleyan ceremony at her parents’ home in Darlinghurst, Sydney, on 20 August 1861, he gave Queensland as his place of residence. The family, including their only child, Esther Lucia (born c.1858), remained in Queensland where Henry continued to work as an 'artist lithographer’. Craig notes that H.G. Eaton signed the lithograph Somerset, Cape York, 1866 in Narrative of the Overland Expedition of the Messrs Jardine, from Rockhampton to Cape York, Northern Queensland (Brisbane, 1867). The 22 plates in Frederick M. Bailey’s Handbook to the Ferns of Queensland (Brisbane, 1874) and all Silvester Diggles 's bird prints, done between 1866 and 1870, were his work.
By 1882 Eaton was at Rockhampton. His competent lithographic Q.N. Bank, Quay Street Rockhampton was published over two pages in Louis Marcellin Martin 's Rockhampton Laughing Jackass on 22 April, and he contributed large portrait lithographs of local notables to the magazine, including those of Mayor R. Sharples (6 May) and Donald Paterson, 'Our Senior Member [of Parliament]’ (20 May). His lithograph of W. Pattison JP, chairman of the Gogango divisional board (8 April), was acknowledged as being after a photograph taken by the American Photographic Company ( see William True Bennett ) and the others were evidently based on photographs too. The Rockhampton Laughing Jackass expired with the issue of 10 June 1882. Its lithographs had appeared infrequently and eccentrically, rarely when advertised, and Eaton clearly had some more compelling interest. Martin’s regular anguished apologies in the journal’s editorials contain a strong hint that this was alcohol, so it seems appropriate that from 1883 to 1886 H.G. Eaton is listed in Queensland directories as proprietor of Rockhampton’s Turf Hotel, for which he held the license between 1880 and 1887. He died, aged 69, on 29 October 1887, survived by his wife and daughter.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 October 1818
- Summary
- Eaton was a lithographer and publican. He worked mainly in Queensland, producing lithographs of Australian flora and fauna and portraits based on photographs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 October 1887
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude56.7114295 Longitude-2.4681544 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1887-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Montrose, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, editor and businessman, was born on 3 June 1815 in Montrose, Scotland, where he was educated. After a short period in business in London he migrated to Van Diemen’s Land, arriving at Hobart Town in the barque Janet on 2 December 1834. The Janet continued on to Launceston a month later with Aikenhead as a passenger, arriving on 20 January 1835. The journal he kept of the entire voyage is interspersed with pen-and-ink sketches of places visited, including his impressions of Hobart Town and Launceston; its present location is unknown.
In 1841 Aikenhead helped establish the Cornwall Fire and Marine Insurance Company at Launceston, of which he was secretary until 1884. In 1842 he founded the Launceston Examiner with Rev. J. West and J.S. Waddell, and he remained its editor until 1869. He was one of the founders of the Launceston Savings Bank in 1835 and its manager up to his death. He assisted in establishing the Launceston Chamber of Commerce and the Mechanics Institute (where his portrait used to hang) and was co-founder and president of the Launceston Public Library. His many commercial and public interests included mining. A religious man, Aikenhead was for some time superintendent of the Tamar Street Congregational Sunday School, at which church he worshipped. Unwilling to accept public office while editing the Examiner , he became Conservative member for Tamar in the Legislative Council only in June 1870, a few months after handing the paper over to his son William, then continued to represent it until retiring in 1885.
Aikenhead married Jane Priscilla, daughter of Rev. William Judson of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, on 26 February 1840. They had 12 children, but only William and three daughters survived him. No further drawings are recorded.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 June 1815
- Summary
- Scottish male colonial sketcher and founder of the Launceston Examiner, Aikenhead's journal recording his emigration from London to Tasmania, with his only known drawings, has since been lost.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1887
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1887-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wandsworth, London, England, UK
- Biography
- Born in Wandsworth in London, in 1809, Henry was the son of a Suffolk miller named Abraham Norman and his wife Sarah née Cousins. As a young boy he and his brothers were trained as watchmakers and jewellers in London. When His father returned to Suffolk after the death of his wife shortly after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, Henry joined him there and was subsequently trained as a flour miller. In West Wich in Norfolk in 1830 he married Harriet née Chapman. The marriage produced four sons (Henry Abraham, William Chapman, Edward Augustus and Abraham John) and a daughter, Harriet Anne. After his wife Harriet died at Norfolk in 1847, Henry married Sarah Cason, a single mother of a young daughter named Louisa, in King’s Lynn in June of 1851. Returning to London prior to immigrating to Australia, Henry completed a course in photography at the Royal London Polytechnic Institute under Richard Beard, after which he and his family immigrated to Portland in Victoria, Australia. Arriving on 25 August 1852, they travelled to the Ballarat goldfields for a short period and after returning to Portland Henry opened a small shop near the corner of Julia and Percy Streets, where he traded as a photographer, watchmaker and jeweller. Henry’s wife Sarah returned to England with their young son Samuel in 1854 and his eldest son Henry Abraham did likewise a couple of years later. After his wife left, Henry senior and his other children relocated to Hamilton in Victoria, where they opened another photographic studio. In 1860, Henry relocated to Mount Gambier in South Australia and established Norman’s Photographic Studio on the corner of Krummel Street and Commercial Road. Besides photography, the family traded as a watchmakers, jewellers and millers. A carte-de-visite from 'H. Norman / Photographic Artist’ is in the R.J. Noye Collection at the Mortlock Library in Adelaide. Ennis included four of Henry Norman’s cdvs (c.1867-c.1877) in _Mirror with a Memory. Most of the children worked in the business, with Abraham , William , Harriet and Henry junior (1833-96) each for a time running the photography studio while Norman returned to full-time horological activities. The Norman photography studio continued to operate at Mount Gambier into the twentieth century {Ennis says to 1899} although Henry Norman is not known to have been involved beyond the mid 1872. He died at Mount Gambier on 14 March 1887.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
U106
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2023
- Born
- b. 1809
- Summary
- A photographer, watchmaker and jeweller. He established himself as a watchmaker and jeweller and later on set up a photography side to his business which was run by his children.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 March 1887
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude54.8948478 Longitude-2.9362311 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1887-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Carlisle, England, UK
- Biography
- amateur photographer and medical practitioner, was born in Carlisle, England, on 4 June 1800, son of a Wesleyan preacher. Educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, Story studied medicine and botany. He left for Edinburgh in 1821 to continue his studies. His 1824 diploma as doctor of medicine from Edinburgh University is in the Mitchell Library, along with his account books and other professional papers as a Tasmanian government surgeon. He came to Van Diemen’s Land after private practice in London in 1825-28 and served as surgeon at Waterloo Point from 5 April 1829 to November 1841, then at Great Swan Port (1842-44) and at Rocky Hills Probation Station (from 10 December 1845). A keen botanist, Story was primarily responsible for the creation of the Royal Society’s Gardens in Hobart from their foundation in 1843 until 1847 when F. H. Newman is believed to have been appointed. Later he collected for the Victorian government botanist von Mueller .
Story spent most of his time with his school friend and fellow Quaker Francis Cotton at the Cotton home, Kelvedon, at Swansea where he took the photographs now preserved in the Cotton Papers (c.1860, TU Archives). He died at Kelvedon on 7 June 1887 and was buried on the property. Two watercolours – a giant fish 'found on the rocks at Circular Head’ (Stanley, Tasmania) on 29 September 1856 and painted as a record for the Royal Society of Tasmania and Young of Voluta mamilla, Tasmania, found at Circular Head (two sides of a single shell) done at the same time (both TMAG) – are likely to be his work, despite an apparent signature of 'W.’ Story.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 June 1800
- Summary
- Medical practitioner, amateur photographer and botanist who arrived in Tasmania in the late 1820s to serve as a government surgeon at various locations. Story spent most of his time in Swansea where he took photographs now in the University of Tasmania collection. Two watercolours of natural history subjects, believed to have been painted by Story, are in the collection of the Tasmanian Museum an
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 June 1887
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude-31.8816667 Longitude152.1594444 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1887-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Somerset, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in Somerset, NSW (see Michelle Nicholls, The Hawkesbury Pioneer Register 2nd edn Windsor NSW: Hawkesbury Family History Group, 1994, for details of the Champion family). He moved to London and set himself up as 'a furnishing ironmonger and bath manufacturer’ at 18 Southampton Row. In October 1841, aged 41, he migrated from London to Australia with his wife and five young children (a daughter died in London before they left). Initially, he worked in Sydney checking goods at Woolley’s import store, and two more children were born in Sydney. All the children lived to be more than 60, most far older. The ninth and last was born at Windsor, NSW in 1849, where Thomas lived for over 30 years, becoming a well-known character in the district.
Champion first worked as the brewers’ R. & E. Tooth & Company’s representative in the Richmond and Windsor district. Then in 1858 he took four lessons in photography at 10/- a lesson and set himself up as a professional photographer in Windsor. In January 1859 he advertised that he would continue 'taking likenesses in the best style of art, at moderate charges’ at Church Street, Parramatta. Then he took a photographic assignment at Wiseman’s Ferry, arriving with Ted at J. Mackenzie’s place per steamer on 19 January and moving on to Dr Cross’s. On 18 February things began to go disastrously wrong when he left for Mrs Jurd’s inn at St Albans 'per police boat’, arriving at midnight 'drenched with rain’. They didn’t have a single customer for a week and from 25 February to 4 March took only ’1 or two portraits’. Champion’s chemicals and 'appliances’ were 'deranged’ by the rain and by his 'own want of experience in the art’.
By 1861, however, Champion was travelling confidently, profitably and professionally around the Hawkesbury District with 14-year old Ted, having arranged to hire themselves out to settlers at 30 shillings a week – the time it took to take a batch of portraits and develop them to the sitter’s satisfaction. He was with 'J. Lamrock Korrajong [sic]’ in November, then with Mr J. Sherwood at 'Woodside Cottage (Korrajong) Douglass’s Hill’ and Mount Tomah, ending the year at J. Markwell’s at Richmond. In January 1862 he began taking photographs at G. Cobcroft’s, Wilberforce. During the 1870s he worked primarily from his photographic 'gallery’ in George Street, Windsor.
Champion kept simple but detailed diaries of his daily activities from 1841 to 1877 (National Library of Australia MS 1093), including records of all the photographs he took. Posthumous ones of Revd P. Turner, who died on 1 November 1873, were noted on Tuesday 4 November (the day of the funeral): 'Printed & toned 1 doz portraits of Rev. T. for sale.’ He also sold posthumous cartes-de-visites and portraits of Mr J. Hoskisson, a wealthy and prominent mill owner of the district in January 1874. In his reminiscences, When We Were Boys Together (Windsor: F. Campbell, 1909, p. 31), J.C. Fitzpatrick recollected:
Down George-street from the Mill lived old Thomas Champion, photographer, collector, and a host of other things – who always carried with him when he walked abroad a white umbrella of antique design. He had a studio there for years.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1800
- Summary
- Professional photographer born in Somerset, NSW. Resident of London and Sydney he spent the majority of his life in Windsor, NSW where he became a well-known character.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1887
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude50.110556 Longitude8.682222 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany
- Biography
- German painter, scene-painter and briefly a professional photographer, arrived in Melbourne at an early age and worked as a scene painter with John Black at The Princess Theatre then the Geelong Theatre with George Meadows and Clarence Holt.
He showed two works, Scotsman’s Creek, Oakleigh and View of Edinburgh (medium unspecified), at Melbourne’s fourth Annual Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1864. Both 'H.M.’ and 'H.N.’ were used as the artist’s initials in the catalogue but he was listed as a practising artist of Gore Street, Fitzroy, in each case. Freyberger was briefly in partnership with Tensfeld in a Melbourne photographic firm at Bourke Street East the following year. On the dissolution of their studio, in 1865 Freyberger worked for the Theatre Royal as a scenic artist. He accompanied W,B and Mrs Gill to India in 1870 staying on after the couple left for America. He returned to Melbourne in ill health a week before his death.
Freyberger worked as a scene-painter in Melbourne theatres from at least 1862. In December 1864 he assisted the scene-painter John Hennings with the splendid 'pictorial effects’ for the pantomime The Enchanted Isle , 'a travestie of Shakespere’s [ sic ] “Tempest”’ at the Theatre Royal. As scene-painter for W.S. Lyster’s opera season at Melbourne in 1867, Freyberger provided the scenery for the production of Auber’s opera, Gustavus III; or, the Masked Ball . Although recalled in the Argus of 29 June 1878 as being 'all that could be desired’, this was criticised at the time by James Neild for its lack of realism. Neild singled out for special complaint the anatomical and proportional deficiencies of the skeletons in acts II and III and Harold Love describes how, a few days after this criticism appeared in print ( Australasian , 13 June 1867), Freyberger had his revenge: 'Neild received a large crudely wrapped parcel. Inside it was the canvas skeleton’.
In November 1867 Freyberger painted a 12 × 8 foot (3.65 × 2.43 m) transparency for George Robertson’s bookshop in Collins Street, one of the decorations installed for the Melbourne visit of the Duke of Edinburgh. Above a portrait of Queen Victoria supported by cupids were three Gothic arches, 'the left containing a view of an English winter landscape by night; the right, an Australian summer landscape at sunrise; in the centre arch, a figure of Britannia … to illustrate the saying, “The sun never sets on the British dominions”’. For the same occasion Freyberger was commissioned with Kursteiner to paint an illusion of the façade of the Melbourne Public Library on a canvas hoarding stretched in front of the unfinished building.
Freyberger was still painting theatrical scenery in Melbourne in 1870, often as Hennings’s assistant. Sometimes he was chief painter, as with the production of Frou Frou at the Princess Theatre in August 1870 when 'entirely new scenery [was] painted expressly by Mr Freyberger and assistants’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. c.1 January 1838
- Summary
- A painter and part time photographer, Freyberger was best known as a scene painter in Melbourne theatres in the 1860s and 1870s. He also painted street scenery for the 1867 visit of the Duke of Edinburgh.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.5 April 1886
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude52.2657649 Longitude0.1909734 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, schoolteacher and editor, son of Kedawins Stout, was born in Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, England. He became one of the handfull of competent photographers working in Western Australia during the 1860s and 1870s. Formerly a land agent and surveyor in England (where he married and had a child), in 1856 he was convicted of forgery in London’s Central Criminal Courts and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years. He arrived at Fremantle on 1 June 1858 in the Lord Raglan . During the voyage he gave lectures on subjects as diverse as The Eclipse of the Sun and Employment Opportunities in Australia , became the ship’s schoolmaster and edited the ship’s newspaper, The Life-Boat , a pun on the lifetime exile faced by so many of the convicts.
After receiving his ticket of leave at Bunbury on 30 April 1859, Stout became a schoolmaster at nearby Australind. He was dismissed in 1861 but this was said to have been no reflection on his teaching abilities (more on his convict status). He was granted a conditional pardon at Fremantle on 1 September 1862 and in 1864 established himself as a photographer. One patron in 1866, Mrs T.C. Gull, reported that he took very good likenesses 'on cards like Curtis [q.v.]’ and that his views were first-rate, 'one of the church being beautifully done’. Six cartes-de-visites cost 10s. Unfortunately, Stout was to suffer financial competition from wealthier photographers of the free class who were able to travel overseas in order to study new processes and who could afford the latest equipment.
At Australind on 28 July 1868, Stout married Ellenor (Fanny) Brown, the 17-year-old daughter of a recently remarried widow, Mrs Howell. He gave his age as thirty-five (though the convict records stated he was twenty-nine on arrival ten years earlier). Despite the obvious age difference and his dubious status, Stout was an acceptable husband, having been well educated and of a good social background before his fall from grace in England. He also possessed an obvious charm.
On 23 October 1872, S.M. Stout, 'artist photographer’, advertised that his photographic gallery in Hay Street, Perth, was now open. He was offering cabinet portraits for 3s each, cartes-de-visites for 1s 6d for the first copy, with additional copies 1s, and 'a large and varied assortment of photographic goods’. Country orders were invited. By now competition had become keen and a growing family made more regular employment a necessity, so the following year he accepted the position of schoolmaster at the Pensioners’ Barracks, Perth. This was a significant post since teachers of the bond class were normally not tolerated in metropolitan government schools. Stout was the first and only expiree to be appointed to a government school in the city.
A popular lecturer, Stout also conducted a magic-lantern show on occasions, the commandant of the Pensioner Force lending him his equipment for charitable functions. He had access to a very complete collection of slides: on historical subjects, the Crimean War, the Victoria Cross, the Eddystone Lighthouse, the polar regions, natural history and astronomy, and 'innumerable comic slides guaranteed to produce roars of laughter’. He also showed chromatropes (a lantern slide of two circular discs, one rotating in front of the other to give a kaleidoscopic movement of colours). One exhibition of slides of historical and educational value at Perth Town Hall in June 1876 was voted a 'complete success’ although the Inquirer reported: '“Showing the magic lantern” is doubtless very amusing, but such excellent slides…should be made subservient to the lecturer, and we are glad to hear that…Mr. Stout is preparing a course of lectures explanatory of the subjects exhibited’.
Stout was transferred to the Champion Bay (Geraldton) government school in 1878 where he soon embarked upon a different enterprise, becoming editor, under contract for at least a year, to a newly established newspaper, the Victoria Express . Not long afterwards the proprietor sued him for embezzlement, but the judge ruled that there was no case to answer. Stout started a rival newspaper, the Observer , but in such a small community this was not a profitable venture and he soon returned to Perth to work as a reporter for the Daily News and Morning Herald . He died in Perth Hospital on 11 April 1886. Fanny had died the previous year, so their six children were left orphaned. His ten-year career as a photographer was relatively brief but his surviving work, preserved in old family albums and in the Battye Library, is an important contribution to that field of art in Western Australia.
Writers:
Erickson, Rica
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1829
- Summary
- Convicted of forgery and sentenced to fourteen years transportation, Stout became one of the handful of competent photographers working in Western Australia during the 1860s and 1870s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 April 1886
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude51.8881287 Longitude0.922722092 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Colchester, Essex, England, UK, Colchester?, Essex, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Essex, probably at Colchester, on 4 July 1827, youngest son of a West Country-born Nonconformist minister, Rev. Henry Dowling, and his second wife Elizabeth, née Darke. His eldest brother, Henry (1810-85), became a well-known printer, publisher, banker and philanthropist in Tasmania; another brother, Thomas, was an influential grazier in the Western District of Victoria.
In July 1834 Robert Dowling left England with his parents aboard the Janet bound for Hobart Town, soon to join in Launceston other members of the family who had migrated some years earlier. Rev. Henry Dowling established the first Baptist Chapel at Launceston in 1840 and his pastoral work was widely known throughout the island. Specifically, he espoused the causes of civil and religious liberty, the infant school, and (with John West, William Pritchard Weston and Richard Dry) the anti-transportation movement. Robert Dowling was brought up within this high-minded moral ambience. Little is known of his education except for an early apprenticeship as a saddler, a trade he practised in Launceston. At the age of twenty-two he married Arabella Dean; their daughter Marion Beckford Dowling was born in 1851.
George Carr Clark, an acquaintance connected with the Dowling family by marriage, recorded in a letter of 1853 that Robert Dowling, then aged twenty-six, had for some years been interested in portrait painting. Years later in London, Dowling painted Early Effort – Art in Australia (exhibited Royal Academy 1860: now National Gallery of Victoria) in which he presents himself as a boy in the bush painting the portraits of a group of unlikely-looking Aborigines outside his rural cottage, the youthful artist being surrounded by an admiring peasant family. Life was, in fact, neither so bucolic nor culturally isolated. Young Dowling could have had lessons from Frederick Strange , a portrait and watercolour painter working and teaching in Launceston in the 1840s, or from Henry Mundy , a portrait painter who briefly taught at Launceston in 1843. Writing in 1919, Alfred Bock claimed that Dowling had studied with his (step-)father Thomas Bock , the foremost colonial portrait painter of the period, as well as with Rev. J.G. Medland , an amateur painter in oils. The best-known artist of northern Tasmania, John Glover , who had painted Rev. Henry Dowling baptising in the Ouse River in 1838, would obviously have been known to his son.
Of real importance considering Robert Dowling’s later subject paintings was his father’s friendship with John West (1809-73), historian, anti-transportationist and one of the moving spirits in the colony, who had delivered a lecture at Launceston in 1848 propounding the Ruskinian view of art as an active moral force for good. Robert Dowling painted John West’s portrait in 1851, having embarked on a career as a professional painter in 1850 with his father’s encouragement. He advertised as an art teacher, portrait and miniature painter in the Launceston press and after 1852 also in Hobart Town. The portraits he showed in the 1851 Launceston Exhibition were considered 'PROMISES of what his genius may effect … favourable specimens of the apprentice, not master’s hand’. Among the commissions of this period that can be ascribed to him are Launceston portraits of Mr and Mrs William Field (c.1850) and Hobart Town portraits of Mr and Mrs Charles Buckland, their daughter Elizabeth Fleming and grandson Henry Fleming (c.1853, VDL Folk Museum, formerly attributed to Thomas Bock).
On 18 August 1852 Robert Dowling left Launceston with his family and made his first visit to Victoria. He made another visit in about 1856, working in and around Melbourne. Mr and Mrs Charles Kernot sat for him, as did the first Anglican Bishop of Melbourne, the Right Rev. Charles Perry (known only through an engraving). He visited the Western District of Victoria and there executed numerous portraits of the Ware and Dowling families. The grazier Joseph Ware, of Minjah Station near Warrnambool, commissioned at least six oil paintings, including two group studies of the Victorian Aborigines, Minjah in the Old Time (c.1856, Warrnambool Art Gallery) and its companion piece, A Group of Natives of Spring Creek (University of Queensland), as well as Masters George, William and Miss Harriet Ware with an Aboriginal Servant (1856, private collection). Charles Kernot showed an Aboriginal subject by Dowling, A Native Group , at the 1857 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition. An outstanding group portrait depicting the interaction of white and black in the district, Mrs. Adolphus Sceales with Black Jimmie on Merrang Station (1856, National Gallery of Australia [NGA]), was painted for Joseph Ware’s neighbour, the widowed Jane Sceales; 'Black Jimmie’ is the groom.
Robert Dowling and his family left Launceston for England aboard the Pharamond in April 1857. Aided in his ambition to become a major painter by a subscription from local well-wishers, he settled in London and enrolled at Leigh’s Academy in Newman Street. His London career was watched from Australia and he played to this market while also flattering the growing awareness of Empire in England. The Sydney Morning Herald of 6 September 1861 reprinted a review of Dowling’s Raising of Lazarus from the London Review (22 June), in which the reviewer emphasised the fact that Dowling was 'a young Australian, who has enjoyed few opportunities of study, except such as a distant colony afforded, and which we may venture to say would never have sufficed to the development of a good artist in the absence of true genius. But the very circumstances that would seem to militate against the artist, have really been favourable to him. Out of the influence of bad example, and the depressing contagion of conventionality, his originality has developed itself without becoming subservient to the pedantry or the craft of the schools’. The reviewer concluded that Dowling’s painting 'would scarcely be possible from a European artist, whose genius would be more or less warped by the contemplation of previous works representing the same incident’.
In Australia Dowling became known as the first example of a colonial artist making good in the Old World. Emphasising his background, he painted a number of works with Australian subject matter in London in 1859-60. The best known of these is his large painting of Tasmanian Aborigines, Group of Natives of Tasmania (1859, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery [QVMAG]), based on watercolour studies executed by Thomas Bock in the early 1830s (a set of which Robert Dowling had from his brother Henry). Six oil on art-paper studies (National Library of Australia) and a preliminary oil study (Royal Anthropological Institute, London, on loan NGA) are known. The final painting, presented by the artist to the City of Launceston, was the star of the 1860 art exhibition marking the official opening of the Launceston Mechanics Institute building. A subscription list was opened for photographs of it taken by Henry Frith . Dowling also sent a self-portrait to the exhibition (1857, o/c, QVMAG).
He exhibited numerous works at the Royal Academy and with the Royal Society of British Artists in the 1860s and 1870s. Many were sent out for colonial exhibition and photographs of others are mentioned. The Sydney Morning Herald of 29 January 1861 reprinted favourable comments from the London Art Journal on Dowling’s The Presentation in the Temple , then being exhibited at Benjemann’s in Oxford Street, Sydney. From December to January 1862 it was shown at Hobart Town and in February at Charles Summers’s sculpture studio in Melbourne.
Dowling was the first to establish the pattern of expatriate exploitation of home patronage which became such a marked aspect of subsequent Australian art history. Some of his subjects were drawn from contemporary life, e.g. the anecdotal painting Grandfather’s Visit (c.1865, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery), one of four paintings he sent out to be raffled in an art union at Launceston in 1866 (won by T.C. Archer). True to his family background and High Victorian taste, he painted biblical scenes such as Miriam (c.1868) and The Baptism of Christ (exhibited Launceston 1865), themes from literature – particularly Scott and Shakespeare – and historical Cavalier subjects (e.g. The Consultation of 3 Elizabethan doctors, sold Christies August 1997, lot 148). In 1872-73 he visited Cairo, a favourite site for nineteenth-century European painters, and on his return painted his best-known oriental subject, A Sheikh and His Son Entering Cairo, on Their Return from a Pilgrimage to Mecca . This large picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy, then shown at Launceston and Melbourne. It was purchased by the trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria in 1878.
Dowling also continued to paint portraits, sometimes working for colonists visiting England or on colonial commissions. Major commissions from the City of Launceston were for portraits of the royal family: copies of Franz Xavier Winterhalter’s portraits of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort (1862) and, 'from actual sittings’, full-length portraits of the Prince and Princess of Wales (1866) shown at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition before going to Launceston. (The Prince alone was seen in Sydney.) Dowling’s portrait of the Duke of Edinburgh (1869) was purchased in 1871 by the contractors for the Launceston and Western Railway and presented to the Mechanics Institute (now QVMAG). According to Henry Button , a photograph by Charles Woolley was the basis of Dowling’s oil portrait of Sir Richard Dry (1871, Northern Region Library, Launceston), presented to the people of Launceston by Dowling’s brother, Henry.
Now the possessor of a secure colonial reputation, Robert Dowling returned to Australia in 1884. He settled in Melbourne, opening a studio in the Mutual Providence building in Collins Street West and visiting Tasmania and Sydney. He exhibited widely, involved himself in the affairs of the Victorian Academy of Arts and received numerous portrait commissions from the Melbourne establishment. The best are of the Argus art critic James Smith (1884, La Trobe Library [LT]) and the Governor of Victoria Sir Henry Loch (1885, LT), the former being shown in the 1884 Victorians’ Jubilee Exhibition and the latter at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London. Both were included in an exhibition of oil paintings Dowling held at the Launceston Town Hall in March 1885 where he showed seven of his own paintings and two by his pupils, Alice Grants and Miss Connolly. Dowling’s portrait of Sir Redmond Barry (1886, Supreme Court Library, Melbourne) is one of his last Australian works. He died in his Coleherne Road studio, London, on 8 July 1886, having returned from Melbourne in April aboard the Liguria . He was buried in the Brompton Cemetery.
Writers:
Jones, John
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 July 1827
- Summary
- With subjects ranging from Aboriginal to Bibical and orientalist scenes, Dowling was the first to establish the pattern of expatriate exploitation of home patronage, which became such a marked aspect of subsequent Australian art history.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 July 1886
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude55.6405878 Longitude-4.756814 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stevenston, Ayrshire, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and explorer, was born at Stevenston, Ayrshire, Scotland on 21 February 1825, son of Rev. Dr David Landsborough, a clergyman, naturalist and artist, and Margaret, née McLeish. Encouraged by his father Landsborough took an early interest in natural history, while a 12-mile daily trek to and from school at Irvine prepared him for the arduous physical life of the explorer. He migrated from Scotland to Port Phillip (Victoria) in 1841 and immediately proceeded to the New England district in northern New South Wales where his two elder brothers had properties. By 1850 he had leased a nearby run. The following year he joined the gold-rushes near Bathurst, remaining on the goldfields for two years and having some success.
From 1856 Landsborough undertook various exploratory expeditions, mainly seeking good country for stock (which he found and took up), but including an unofficial search for Leichhardt in 1859 and an official search for Burke and Wills on behalf of the Queensland and Victorian governments in 1861. On the latter expedition he travelled from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Melbourne and was celebrated as the first explorer to cross the continent from north to south. He also brought news of excellent land, publicly revealed in the Journal of Landsborough’s Expedition from Carpentaria, in Search of Burke & Wills (Melbourne 1862) and in Landsborough’s Exploration of Australia from Carpentaria to Melbourne (London 1866), which resulted in a rush to the gulf country.
The Melbourne editions of his book were illustrated only with a map and a frontispiece group portrait of the party after a photograph while the London edition, compiled from official reports and other material by James Stuart Laurie, contained the map only. Landsborough, however, is known to have sketched. In March 1866 the Illustrated Sydney News published an engraving of The Bowen Downs after one of his drawings, Bowen Downs being one of the places he had named (after the then governor of Queensland) on his 1861 expedition. An engraving after another of his sketches was published in the same journal in February 1867: a view of Donor Hills, situated near the bight of the Gulf of Carpentaria between the Albert and the Flinders Rivers, Queensland, and named by him in honour of a donation of £1000 to the Victorian Burke and Wills search fund.
After Landsborough married Caroline Hollingworth Raine in Sydney on 30 December 1862, they left for Britain. Returning to Brisbane in 1865, he was appointed police magistrate and commissioner of Crown lands at the Gulf of Carpentaria and lived in the wild and lawless Burketown (which he tamed but which finally destroyed his career). Left with three young daughters when his wife died, Landsborough moved to Toowong, Brisbane. There, on 8 March 1873, he married the widowed Maria Theresa Carr, née Carter, a gifted musician and occasional sketcher. In the second exhibition of the National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland, held at Brisbane in 1877, both Mr and Mrs Landsborough were reported as showing 'admirable’ Indian ink and oil sketches.
William Landsborough died on 16 March 1886 at Loch Lamerough, Caloundra, a property on the coast north of Brisbane which he had purchased with the £2000 awarded to him in 1882 by the Queensland government in belated recognition of the value of his explorations. He was survived by Maria Theresa, three daughters and three sons. Landsborough’s journals are in the John Oxley Library (State Library of Queensland).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 February 1825
- Summary
- Sketcher, explorer and resident of NSW and Qld. Celebrated as the first explorer to cross the continent (Australia) from north to south.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 March 1886
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude50.8510325 Longitude-1.0165502 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Portsea, Hampshire, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and master mariner, was born into a naval family of Portsea, Hampshire, England, on 1 May 1825. At the age of nineteen he reputedly joined the Royal Navy and served on the China Station for five years. In 1857 he transferred to the merchant navy, taking command of the ship Pizarro and spending much of his time in South American waters. He resigned in 1862, bringing his wife Elizabeth and their children to Queensland to grow cotton soon afterwards. (The Sweets finally had four daughters and five sons.) The venture appears to have been a failure and Sweet was soon practising as a professional photographer in South Brisbane. The Brisbane Courier commended his 'excellent photograph of the trunk of an immense fig-tree which is to be seen in the scrub fringing the Brisbane River; we believe it is the first picture of the kind taken in this colony’.
Early in 1866 Sweet and his family moved to Sydney. There, on 20 June, he advertised his skill as a photographer, with especial expertise in taking views of private residences, already claiming as patrons Governor Sir John Young and 'the elite of Sydney’. His studio was in Rushcutter’s Bay. In July the Sydney Morning Herald praised three views he had taken of Sir William Manning’s house, Wallaroy, at Woollahra, adding that the collodion had been provided by Charles Johnson of Melbourne and the print 'subjected to a process of which Mr Sweet claims to be the originator, called the “ceraotype” process, wax forming an element in the materials used’.
By the end of the year the Sweets were in Adelaide. In the South Australian Register of 21 November 1866 Samuel Sweet and William Gibson advertised a photographic partnership, but this was short-lived and Sweet was soon advertising independently. At the 1867 annual exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts he won 2 guineas for the six best untouched photographic views not less than 8 × 6 inches (20 × 15 cm) in size; his 'Prize View & Samples’ were still on view at his gallery in 1869. In the South Australian Almanac for 1869 he remained 'late of New South Wales’ (now at 222 Rundle Street), 'photographer to His Excellency Sir John Young K.G.B., Sir William Manning, & His Excellency Colonel Hamley’. He was now offering to photograph tombs as well as gentlemen’s residences. His 'Wax portraits’ (ceraotypes) were available for 13s a dozen.
For the next eight years Sweet and his family lived at various addresses in Adelaide, finally settling at Bowden-on-the-Hill (now the Parklands, Bowden). The photographic rooms disappeared, for in 1869 Sweet returned to the sea. Having unsuccessfully applied for the position of official photographer on the Goyder Survey, he became commander of the schooner Gulnare , carrying men and supplies to the new settlement at Port Darwin. There Sweet was ordered to survey the Roper River in order to determine the feasibility of constructing an overland telegraph. On 3 May 1869, Surveyor-General G.W. Goyder wrote: 'Captain Sweet is an able, active, energetic officer, and did all in his power to facilitate my plans. He is also an expert photographer, and has taken several views in the locality, of which I am glad, as Mr Brooks [q.v.] has been fully occupied preparing plans and documents for the field parties during the last two months’. Over the years Sweet took many photographs of the Roper River and the Port Darwin settlement, showing, as Cato wrote, 'the first stage of a canvas town being converted into one of timber and stone’. McDougall states that only three photographs of this first expedition are now known, including one showing members of the Overland Telegraph party in front of the jetty, the supplies and the ship, with the river and bush in the background.
On his return to Adelaide in June 1869 Sweet gave a lecture on his trip to the north – the first of several over the ensuing years as master of the Gulnare – using his 'beautifully finished’ photographs as illustrations. He subsequently made regular voyages to the Northern Territory and to Timor, always taking photographs on his journeys. One, commemorating the official ceremony of the planting of the first telegraph pole at Port Darwin on 15 September 1870, was judged interesting because of its subject matter but considered overexposed in the bright northern Australian sun. It was on this trip that Sweet met Charles Foelsche , the new chief of police and first resident photographer of the Northern Territory. According to Noye, it was probably Sweet who taught Foelsche photography.
An exhibition of his expeditionary photographs at Mr Williams’s stationery shop in King William Street in July 1871 established Sweet as one of Adelaide’s leading photographers. Williams was appointed his agent and Sweet exhibited and sold his work there regularly. In 1872 73 he was again in Darwin as official photographer assigned to the completion of the Overland Telegraph and its link with the British Overseas Cable. Approximately ten images survive showing the Overland Telegraph party’s encampment near the port; one is a rare shot of three figures leaning on a wagon – the Overland Telegraph engineers. (photograph of members J.A.G. Little, R.C.Patterson, Charles Todd & A.J. Mitchell at Roper River 1872, NLA)
After running aground in a gale on 11 May 1875 and being censured for an error of judgement Sweet retired from the sea to concentrate on photography. The Southern Argus reported in July 1878 that he had visited the Point Macleay mission station, 'taking a view of it, for a frontispiece for the Rev. G. Taplin’s book on the “Narrinyeri” that is now being published … He also photographed the largest number of natives I saw taken together, there are between 50 and 60 in the group’. He toured South Australia with a horse-drawn darkroom taking hundreds of views of the outback and of remote homesteads. Such subjects had become far more accessible photographically because of the invention of the dry-plate process, which Sweet was one of the first to use.
In 1884 Sweet was awarded a silver medal for his photographs at the Calcutta International Exhibition. The following year he opened his own photography gallery, one of the first tenants in the newly completed Adelaide Arcade, which he also photographed. These proved to be among the last photographs he took. He died suddenly of sunstroke on 4 January 1886 when visiting Halldale, Riverton. After his death his widow continued his studio and sold prints made from his old glass-plate negatives for many years. The major Sweet collection is in the Mortlock Library, and other notable photographs are held at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 May 1825
- Summary
- Colonial photographer and master mariner, awarded a silver medal for his photographs at the Calcutta International Exhibition in 1885. His photographic career included some unusual and rare shots in Australian photographic history such as the settlement at Port Darwin, the Point Macleay Station which was used as the front piece of Rev. G. Taplin's book, Narrinyeri and views of the outback and rem
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 January 1886
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude47.4332388 Longitude19.1329729 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rozsnyo, Hungary
- Biography
- professional photographer, composer, music and language teacher, author, civil engineer and soldier, was born in Rozsnyo, Hungary. After training as a civil engineer he joined the Hungarian forces in the uprising against the Austrian Empire in 1848, becoming aide-de-camp with the rank of captain to General Görgey. With the failure of the revolution Rochlitz fled with others to Hamburg, Germany, in 1849, and from there to England in 1850 where he found work as a language teacher. When the British government offered the Hungarian refugees a subsidy of £12 to emigrate, Rochlitz was one of the twelve who chose Victoria rather than the United States. In company with Ernest (Erno) Szumrak, he embarked in the Marlborough on 1 August 1852.
On landing at Melbourne, Rochlitz and Szumrak travelled with five companions to the Mount Alexander (Castlemaine) diggings. They had no luck and the group broke up. Szumrak and his two new partners soon struck it rich with a nugget weighing over 9 pounds; Rochlitz, instead, had set up a photographic studio in a 'two storied wooden house’ near the Golden Fleece Hotel, Lydiard Street, Ballarat. He ran this business in 1854-55 but in 1856 sold it to Cowley and J. Noble Wilson , remaining as their assistant for some months. Later that year he moved to Beechworth and formed the photographic partnership of Acley & Rochlitz in Ford Street. A display of their cartes-de-visite of Beechworth is in the local Robert O’Hara Burke Memorial Museum.
When naturalised in 1857 Rochlitz gave his profession as that of civil engineer. In 1858, however, he was still working as a photographer, travelling around southern New South Wales and visiting rural properties on speculation with his equipment. He recorded that his clients 'always treated me as a gentleman’. His brother Koloman (Kalman) reached Melbourne on 25 January 1860 and was registered as a medical practitioner on 26 July 1862, by which time Rochlitz was also living in Melbourne, teaching music and languages and composing his Geelong-Melbourne Railway Polka . He had left Victoria by 1864 and by 1866 was in London, where he published Love Letters for the Lovers of Truth . Kunz believes that this pamphlet indicates that he was 'suffering from schizophrenic delusions’, yet the following year he returned to Hungary and took up a teaching position in the English Department of the University of Budapest. He died at Budapest in 1886.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1824
- Summary
- Julius Albert (Bela) Rochlitz was not only a professional photographer but also a composer, music and language teacher, author, civil engineer and soldier. He died in 1886.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1886
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude54.98 Longitude-1.61 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, lithographer, engraver and naturalist, was born on 25 April 1822 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, fourth child and eldest son of George Fife Angas, a merchant and banker, and Rosetta, née French. As the eldest son he was expected to join his father’s firm, but some months in a London counting house proved a disillusioning experience. In 1841 he took art lessons for four months from Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, a natural history painter and lithographer, and armed with this instruction set out to see the world. He began in the Mediterranean, publishing A Ramble in Malta and Sicily in the Autumn of 1841 … Illustrated with Sketches taken on the spot, and drawn on stone by the author , the following year.
Angas’s father had established the South Australian Company in 1836 and had large areas of land as well as banking interests in the province. At his behest, George French sailed for South Australia in 1843 in the Augustus , with John and William Calvert , arriving at Adelaide on 1 January 1844. Within days he had joined an exploring party selecting runs for the South Australian Company. They travelled through the Mount Lofty Ranges to the Murray River and down to Lake Coorong and Angas sketched views of the countryside, native animals and the customs and dwellings of the Narrinyeri people. Later he drew scenes on his father’s land—28 000 acres in the Barossa Valley—and accompanied George Grey 's expedition to the then unknown south-east as unofficial artist.
In July 1844 Angas visited New Zealand. Guided by two Maoris, he travelled on foot and by canoe through both islands, painting portraits of Maoris and views of their intricately-carved pahs . He returned to Sydney in November, bringing with him James Pomara, an orphaned Maori youth about 13 years old whom he placed in a school. Re-visiting South Australia early in 1845, Angas joined Grey on an expedition by ship to Kangaroo Island and Port Lincoln. In June he held the first art exhibition in South Australia (admission 1s, catalogue 6d), in Adelaide’s Legislative Council Chambers, showing watercolours of his journeys. These formed the basis of many lithographic plates in his South Australia Illustrated and The New Zealanders Illustrated , published after his return to London in 1846.
The pictures had another showing in Australia—at the Royal Hotel, Sydney, in July 1845—at which time Angas took the opportunity to visit the Illawarra district and paint its rainforests and wild scenery. He also painted portraits of some prominent Sydney Aborigines, such as Old King Tamara. The Last of the Sydney Tribe. Aug. 15, 1845 and a matching watercolour, Kaaroo alias Old Gooseberry, Widow of Bungaree , the two being shown at the first exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia, held in Sydney in June 1847. (Gooseberry had guided Angas and his friend W.A. Miles to Aboriginal rock carvings in the district.)
In September 1845, accompanied by James Pomara, Angas set off for England via Cape Horn and Rio de Janeiro, arriving in February 1846. An exhibition of his work was organised at the British and Foreign Institution on 17 March and he presented it in person to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at Buckingham Palace on 3 April. Two days later a grand exhibition opened at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, which consisted of more than 300 of his paintings, 'entirely executed on the spot, from Life and Nature’, accompanied by Aboriginal and Maori costumes and implements, bird specimens, and Pomara in person dressed in native costume. Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand: Being an Artist’s Impressions of Countries and Peoples at the Antipodes (2 vols, Smith, Elder & Co., London) was published in 1847. It was reviewed in the Sydney Morning Herald on 9 July.
At the end of 1846 Angas left for South Africa, visiting Cape Town, Durban and Zululand. An attack of fever there affected his health for the rest of his life. Back in London in 1848, he exhibited his South African works, published The Kaffirs Illustrated (1849) and was appointed naturalist to the Turco-Persian frontier commission (although ill-health prevented his participation). On 27 December 1849 he married an Irishwoman, Anna Alicia (or Alicia Mary) Moran, in a United Church of Ireland ceremony in Dublin. Mrs Angas appears to have been a Roman Catholic as the four daughters of the marriage were baptised Catholics; since Angas’s parents were strict Baptists the Anglican ceremony may have been a compromise between the two families.
Soon afterwards the couple emigrated to Adelaide. George French opened a studio in King William Street, painted watercolour portraits and landscapes, and taught drawing for 2 guineas a quarter. Early in 1851 he travelled to New South Wales. He was in Sydney when news of the first gold discoveries arrived. Determined to record the goldrush, he travelled on foot to Ophir, near Bathurst. Woolcott and Clarke published his set of two-colour lithographs, Six Views of the Gold Field at Ophir… , which included such scenes as Gold Washing, Summer Hill Creek, 1851 . It was favourably reviewed in the Sydney Morning Herald of 1 September 1851.
The precarious financial situation of the professional artist apparently then led Angas to the new Victorian diggings, to sketch and to search for gold. Six months later he was back in Sydney. After difficulties with his agent in Adelaide and with his English publisher, Views of the Gold Regions of Australia, Drawn on the Spot by G.F. Angus (sic) was published in London but Angas seems never to have been paid for his work. (McCulloch suggests that at least some of the Victorian views were after photographs by W.F. Bentley and the extent of Angas’s Victorian travels is difficult to gauge.) He made many watercolour views of Sydney, such as Double Bay, Port Jackson (December 1852). A coloured lithograph of Sydney and the harbour from Vaucluse, published by Woolcott & Clarke from one of his drawings, was favourably reviewed in both the Sydney Morning Herald (14 March 1853) and Freeman’s Journal (17 March), while his lithographic portrait of the gold prospector Edward Hargraves was praised as a 'faithful likeness’ in the Herald of 23 April 1853.
After his appointment as secretary and accountant of the Australian Museum on 10 October 1853, Angas no longer attempted to support his family solely through painting and illustrating. Nevertheless, he continued to be quite prolific and his name appears with some regularity in the Illustrated Sydney News from its second issue of 15 October 1853 until its demise (vol. 4, no. 90) on 30 June 1855. 18 original paintings were shown in the exhibition which Angas helped organise at the Australian Museum in November 1854, in preparation for the 1855 Paris Exhibition. He worked at the museum as an administrator and undertook cataloguing and research. His particular interest was conchology (the study of shells) and he published an article in the Journal de Conchyliologie which was illustrated with 30 lithographs from his watercolours. He also drew the first scientific record of Bennett’s cassowary, The 'Mooruk’ from New Britain, Sydney, Sept. 15th 1857 . Three of his watercolours, Sailor Boy , Fisher Boy and Scene in Illawarra , were exhibited in January 1857 at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts. Angas and the architect John Bibb were the first examiners to be appointed to this institution, at the end of 1858.
In 1859 the museum trustees appointed a new curator from England to direct Angas, who was then partially dislodged from his living quarters. On 1 March 1860 he resigned rather than accept an inferior position and the family returned to South Australia to stay with his brother John Howard Angas at Angaston. George Fife arranged his son’s election as chairman of the District Council, a position which permitted him to continue natural history studies in addition to his paid work. In 1863, after a disagreement with his father over a local scandal and divorce, he took his family to England. It seems that his father then paid him a remittance.
In London Angas wrote Australia: A Popular Account of its Physical Features, Inhabitants, Natural History and Productions. With the History of its Colonization [sic] (London 1865) and Polynesia, a Description of the Islands of the Pacific (London 1866) for the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. Both were illustrated with wood-engravings after his drawings. He also published a collection of poetry and drew illustrations and wrote articles for the popular press. In a letter of 18 January 1869 to S.W. Silver he expressed interest in working as an illustrator for Cassell’s Illustrated Travel . Nevertheless, for the last 20 years of his life Angas’s major contribution was as a conchologist; he wrote and illustrated 55 articles for the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London and donated nearly 1500 shells and 300 insect specimens to the British Museum. He was made a fellow of the Linnaean, Royal Geographical and Zoological societies.
Angas’s father died in 1879, leaving a vast estate from which George French received only an annuity of £1000. In 1884 he went to Dominica on a collecting expedition, finding shells, moths, butterflies and birds. Dogged by rheumatism and neuralgia during his last years, Angas died in London on 4 October 1886, survived by his wife and three of his daughters. He left an estate worth just £293, plus some pictures and books.
The artist himself emphasised that his works were 'drawn on the spot’, but this insistence on locality and immediacy is somewhat misleading. As Tregenza states, his practice was to draw 'rapid pencil sketches in the field, adding colour notes and other directions… [he would] fill out a landscape as required when he came to “finish” a picture in the studio’. Many drawings were made into lithographs, both by himself and others, and this transfer of medium sometimes resulted in a rearrangement of pictorial elements and an elaboration of detail to fit contemporary illustrative norms. Yet his natural science illustrations were more knowledgeable and accurate than many contemporary works, as can be seen in his meticulous specimen drawings, especially of Australian plants.
A letter to the South Australian of 17 June 1845 discussed Angas’s paintings then on show at the Adelaide Council Chamber and compared them unfavourably with the work of S.T. Gill . The writer, signing himself 'N.R.F.’ (but immediately revealed as Frederick Robert Nixon , q.v.), complained that Angas’s style was 'essentially limited, that is – he adopts the same to all his subjects’—and lacked that 'general effect’ essential for great landscape painting, providing instead minute detail and much accuracy. Angas’s work certainly did not attempt the 'grand manner’, but his output was mainly for publication and information, not moral uplift. His achievement was to communicate his wide experience in little-known lands with skill, grace and surprising fidelity.
Writers:
Dixon, Christine
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 April 1822
- Summary
- A watercolour and natural history painter, many of Angas's sketches from his travels as a naturalist in the mid 1800s became the basis for lithographic plates used in his publications.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 October 1886
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, Middlesex, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and chemist, apparently learned photography in England as well as training there as a pharmacist. He was working as a chemist in Victoria when his photographs of Raglan Castle, Tintern Abbey and other picturesque places in Britain were sent to the 1862 London International Exhibition, having first been shown at the preliminary 1861 Victorian Exhibition. Their quality prompted Perez Mann Batchelder , who apparently saw them in England, to employ Dunn as chief photographer in Batchelder & O’Neill 's Melbourne studio from the beginning of 1863. Dunn’s photographs, above all, were claimed to have won the firm its later artistic reputation.
When the firm of Batchelder & O’Neill was dissolved in 1864, Dunn continued trading as Batchelder & Co. in partnership with J.N. Wilson and John Botterill . James Smith’s The Lambert Album – consisting of sixteen original photographs of the actor J.C. Lambert in various character poses – was published by 'Batchelder & Co. (late Batchelder & O’Neill)’ at Melbourne in 1866. The photographer was undoubtedly Dunn, who later that year won a medal for the firm at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition with his untouched, coloured and mezzotint 'Portraits … in fancy costume’ and 'Portraits of Governors of Australia’.
Batchelder & Co. continued to operate until 1895, but with other proprietors. Dunn was in partnership with John Gaul as photographers of 75-77 Swanston Street in 1868/1869, then seems to have worked on his own as both a chemist and photographer until his death in 1886. His pharmacy was at Hawthorn, Melbourne.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1820
- Summary
- Nineteenth-century professional photographer.Dunn's photographs were claimed to have won the firm of Batchelder and O'Neill its later artistic reputation.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 January 1886
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude7.87739585 Longitude80.66247852 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ceylon, Sri Lanka
- Biography
- watercolourist and army officer, third child and eldest son of the seven children of Anne and William Thomas Lyttleton , was born in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) when his father was on an army posting there and was baptised Westcote, a family name of the Lyttletons of Hagley Hall, Stourbridge, Worcestershire, to whom he was distantly related. The family was in England and Scotland in 1822-25, then migrated to Van Diemen’s Land where Westcote remained for ten years. He left for London in February 1835, arriving in August in order to enter his father’s old college, the Royal Military Academy.
Commissioned ensign in 1837, lieutenant in 1839 and captain in 1845, Lyttleton was posted to Halifax, Nova Scotia, with the 64th Regiment in 1840 and arrived in October. In 1842 he married Joanna, eldest daughter of 'Governor’ Peter McNab, a member of one of Halifax’s leading families. He purchased McNab Island off Halifax and lived there for seventeen years. Carter calls his undated watercolour panorama of Halifax Harbour Seen from McNab’s Island (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) the masterpiece among the small number of works of early Halifax known today. Although obviously a very competent landscape sketcher before arriving in Canada, no Tasmanian work has been conclusively identified. This Canadian watercolour, however, is close in style to that of William Lyttleton’s Panshanger , allowing the presumption that his art training came as much from his father as from the drawing lessons he would have received at Sandhurst.
In 1853 W.W. Lyttleton was one of the judges in the Fine Arts section of the Provincial Exhibition (where his sheep won an agricultural, not art, prize). At the 1862 London International Exhibition his Sketch of Halifax and American Winter Scene were included in the Nova Scotia court and at about this time a lithograph after his Halifax view was published in both London and Boston. In 1863 Westcote helped organise an art exhibition in the Halifax armoury which included several of his watercolours. Nor was he entirely forgotten in Tasmania. At the 1862-63 Art Treasures Exhibition in Hobart Town his mother exhibited his watercolour, Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia . It is also possible that he made a short visit to see his brother Thomas in Victoria and revisited Tasmania after he retired from the Royal Newfoundland Companies in 1866. An unsigned and undated watercolour of Ben Lomond and South Esk River (Tas.), presented to the Mitchell Library by Westcote’s niece Edith Lyttleton in 1937, together with sketches of Canada and Scotland, stylistically appears to belong to the 1860s rather than the 1830s. Lyttleton subsequently left Halifax in order to live in Britain. He died at Keswick on 9 August 1886.
Few surviving works are known. Four watercolours, two lithographs and a drawing for an engraving (all of Halifax subjects, including a precisely detailed watercolour view of his brother-in-law’s house) are in Canadian public collections. A single page from an album (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery) has a large watercolour on each side. One is an unsigned and undated portrait of 'Major Edward Giels of 19th Lancers, who came from Ardmore on the Clyde, Dumbartonshire’, additionally annotated 'A friend of W.T. Lyttleton of 73rd Regt’, while the verso is a signed view of some European mountains with figures in high hats and knickerbockers. Ancient Entrance Gateway to Sangwhar House, near Forres, Forfarshire [Scotland]. Aug. 29, 1883 ' is in the Mitchell Library, which also holds a collection of views sometimes attributed to him but almost certainly by his father. The two have continually been confused.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1818
- Summary
- Watercolourist and army officer. Son of William Thomas Lyttleton. Though he lived in Van Diemen's Land for ten years, most of his surviving work is during his period in Halifax, Canada.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9 August 1886
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude52.5310214 Longitude-1.2649062 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England
- Biography
- painter and bank officer, was born in England, son of Edmund Dinham of Newton, Cornwall. He came to Tasmania in about 1846. Nothing is known of his early years in the colony but by 1854 he was senior superintendent at the Cascades and Brickfields convict establishments. However, most of his working life was spent with the Bank of Van Diemen’s Land which he joined in 1855, and where he occupied various positions including cashier and accountant.
Dinham exhibited paintings at Hobart Town in 1858 and 1862-63 ( Fruit and Prairies on Fire ), at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition ( Sandy Bay and St Helena Point ) and the 1879 Sydney International ,and Launceston exhibitions in 1879 and 1884. He worked in both oils and watercolours. One of his two oils shown at Launceston in June 1884, Mt Olympus, Lake St Clair (1883), is now in the Allport Library, which also owns a minor watercolour. A contemporary considered that his middle distances bore a strong resemblance to those in some of W.C. Piguenit 's best landscapes.
Dinham died on 29 December 1886, aged seventy-nine. He was survived by his wife, two sons and several daughters. An obituarist noted that he was a 'talented amateur artist, several of his paintings being much valued by those who possess them’.
Writers:
Glover, Margaret
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1807
- Summary
- George Dinham emigrated to Tasmania around 1846, he was an amateur painter who exhibited in several major exhibitions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 December 1886
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude50.3712659 Longitude-4.1425658 Start Date1804-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Plymouth, England, UK
- Biography
- drew the scientific illustrations in his Monograph of Certain Crustacia Entomostraca. Order Branchiopoda; Section Lophyropa; and Genera Cyclops, Daphnia, and Lynceus. Illustrated by much-enlarged Microscopic Drawings, subsequently reduced by Photography , Adelaide, E.S. Wigg & Son (Printers), 1883 (“for private circulation only”, Octavo, 18 pp plus 10 albumen paper photographs, c.150 × 100 mm, mounted on individual leaves). The drawings, photographed for publication by Captain Sweet , were done, Wyatt wrote, 'about fifty years since, when residing and in medical practice at Plymouth, my native place… The cares and labours of life in a colony for nearly fifty years, ad incepto , fully accounts for so long a delay in even this limited publication.” It also explains why all known South Australian drawings are by his son, William Wyatt .
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1804
- Summary
- Medical practitioner who made an album of scientific illustrations after settling in colonial South Australia. Father of William Wyatt.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1886
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.7838848 Longitude-1.4852861 Start Date1803-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Witney, Oxfordshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and chemist, was born in the old wool marketing and processing town of Witney, Oxfordshire.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1803
- Summary
- Chemist and amateur painter from Victoria. He painted hundreds of landscapes, in other colonies as well as in Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 August 1886
- Age at death
- 83
Details
Latitude51.68138845 Longitude-2.353186338 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dursley, Gloucestershire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher(?) and landowner, was born at The Rangers, Dursley, Gloucestershire, on 15 March 1802. He travelled to New South Wales with his wife Henrietta and 12-year-old son Oswald in 1838, keeping a diary during the voyage from 11 April to 3 August. Arriving at Sydney in December 1838 armed with letters of introduction to Governor Gipps, he took part in an expedition to seek land for settlement. Bloxsome was accompanied by Archibald Boyd and a representative claiming land for Archibald Windeyer. They explored and selected land in the New England region, an area nicknamed 'Beardy Valley’ or 'Land of the Beardies’ since the three explorers were bearded. Bloxsome named his selection Rangers Valley. Ultimately he owned 'an immense amount of land’ but never lived on any of his properties. The Bloxsomes returned to England in October 1856.
Bloxsome’s Sydney home, The Rangers at Mosman Bay, was built with convict labour in the early 1840s to the design of the Sydney architect John Frederick Hilly. The dining-room of the house was decorated later in the 1840s by Oswald Brierly with a mural showing HMS Rattlesnake in a storm, but both house and mural have long been destroyed.
Sketches and paintings – mainly pencil drawings of buildings and landscapes of the Sydney area – have been attributed to Bloxsome but are more likely to have been by his wife, his son of the same name, or his daughter-in-law, another Henrietta . In particular, an attributed pencil sketch labelled Sydney Harbour Looking towards Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, c. 1850 (National Library of Australia) looks more like one of his wife’s views of an English building (which may have inspired the design of The Rangers) than a sketch of the Mosman house. The setting is unlike Sydney Harbour and the house seems more imposing and half-timbered than their home was, although such inaccuracies were certainly common enough at the time.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 March 1802
- Summary
- Colonial New England [NSW] and Sydney landowner, Oswald Bloxsome's one attributed sketch may have in fact been done by his wife, Henrietta.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1886
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, merchant, politician and churchman, was born in Sydney on 25 July 1802, eldest son of Robert and Sophia Campbell . Educated in England, he returned to New South Wales to work in his father’s wharf, store and shipping business. By 1830 he was unofficially its head, officially so from 1836 until selling out in 1876. He was a member of parliament from 1856 until his death on 22 January 1886 at his home, Clunes, in the Sydney suburb of Stanmore.
John Campbell never married, but devoted himself to public charities, being a great patron of the Church of England and the Fine Arts. Despite some apparent artistic talent (presumably encouraged by his mother), Campbell never developed his youthful interest in sketching. At the second annual exhibition of the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1873 he showed a watercolour painted 'when very young’. 'As the youthful effort of a good friend to art, viewing it always from its education stand-point’, commented the Sydney Mail , 'No. 48 is highly creditable’. Slight sketches by him are included in an album owned by his sister-in-law and cousin, Marrianne Campbell .
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 July 1802
- Summary
- John Campbell was a Sydney-based sketcher, merchant, politician and churchman. While never fully committing to his artistic career Campbell nevertheless still exhibited with the NSW Academy of Art in 1873.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 January 1886
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude54.8647255 Longitude-6.143637911 Start Date1799-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- County Antrim, Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in County Antrim of a wealthy Northern Irish family and he remained an idle gentleman all his life – a rare and normally transitory species in early colonial Australia. Thomson was no exception. After visiting Victoria in the late 1830s, he returned home with two Aboriginal clubs, a map of Port Phillip and two watercolour sketches he had drawn on his visit. He donated them to the Ulster Museum in 1843. One sketch is labelled Travelling at Port Phillip, July 12th 1836 ; the other is a portrait of William Buckley, the 'wild white man’ convict who lived with the Port Phillip Aborigines for thirty-two years until July 1835 and who was still a curiosity when employed as an interpreter for John Batman in 1836. Three etchings of Aborigines by Benjamin Duterrau are also in the collection.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1799
- Summary
- An 'idle gentleman' from Northern Ireland who made two watercolour sketches during a visit to Victoria in the late 1830s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1886
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude54.8246802 Longitude-3.1610942 Start Date1795-01-01 End Date1886-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wigton, Cumberland, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and composer, was born in Wigton, Cumberland, son of Joseph Graves, an ironmonger, and Ann, née Matthews. Before leaving England for Van Diemen’s Land in 1834 with his second wife Abigail, née Porthouse, and their six children as assisted migrants Graves worked in a woollen mill and a coal-mine. At the same time he developed his skills in drawing, painting and music. Although his song 'D’ye ken John Peel?’ set to a traditional tune subsequently brought him fame, Graves’ early ambition was to be a painter. He hoped to take lessons and he painted some oil portraits, yet his formal art training appears never to have progressed beyond an apprenticeship to his Uncle George, a coach-painter.
In the colony Graves tried a number of different occupations. In May 1836 he advertised that he was 'willing to repair, paint and varnish carriages, paint portraits and heraldic devices and undertake japanning, plumbing and glazing’. He also applied, unsuccessfully, for the position of government lithographer in June 1837. In 1842, having spent some time (apparently as an inmate) in the New Norfolk Lunatic Asylum, he went to New Zealand. He returned to Hobart in 1845, probably via Sydney, and remained in Tasmania until his death in 1886. The eldest of his eight children, a namesake son, became a successful Hobart Town lawyer, but it was the eccentric composer father to whom a memorial was ultimately erected in St David’s Park, Hobart (in 1958).
Few artworks are known. In December 1850 Graves advertised in the Hobart Town Advertiser offering to paint transparencies 'suitable for the forthcoming rejoicing’ (over the abolition of transportation). From Hobart Town in 1875 he sent an oil painting, Harvest Time , to the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition held in preparation for the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. An oil portrait of the Tasmanian farmer and politician William Hodgson (VDL Folk Museum), inscribed 'Unfinished and unsigned portrait by his friend John Woodcock Graves’, presumably dates from the 1880s. In the catalogue of the 1896 Old Hobart Exhibition, J.W. Graves was stated to have painted the pony and dogs in an equestrian portrait of Tasmania’s first chaplain, Rev. Robert Knopwood, with T.G. Gregson and Frank Dunnett also contributing to the work, though this may have been the son.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1795
- Summary
- A painter and composer, Graves worked in a variety of roles and jobs while living in Tasmania, advertising his various skills that included painting, composing, carriage maintenance and plumbing.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1886
- Age at death
- 91
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Hobart Town on 30 April 1844, sixth of the eight children of Bishop Francis Russell Nixon and his second wife, Anna Maria Nixon . His undated sketch of the Nixon family’s third Tasmanian residence, Bishopstowe, at New Town outside Hobart, is held in the house – now called Runnymede and occupied by the National Trust (Tas.). It was presumably drawn before February 1862 while the family was still living there. Nixon married Adela Russell Walker, a sister of Anna Frances Walker , in 1871. He died at the Walker family home, Rhodes, Concord (Tas.), aged forty-one.
Writers:
Stilwell, G. T.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 30 April 1844
- Summary
- A sketcher whose most renowned work was of his family's residence - Runnymede - in Bishopstowe Hobart.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1885
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude53.4931312 Longitude-2.4853234 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stafford, Manchester, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and draughtsman, was born on 26 June 1834 at Manchester, England. While working as an apprentice in a patents’ office as a youth, he built a camera obscura from cigar boxes and spectacle lenses. Afterwards he trained as a civil engineer. He learned to take collodion photographs before leaving from Liverpool for Victoria on 6 July 1852, attracted by the gold-rush. Arriving at Melbourne in the Serampore on 9 October 1852 and finding that thousands had preceded him to the goldfields, Woodbury earned a living as a carrier of goods and a cook for a few weeks, then became an assistant surveyor with the government, taking photographs as a hobby with an adapted camera obscura he had purchased locally. On 30 January 1853 he wrote to his mother that he could 'at last manage to take a good likeness, now I never have a failure’, and that he was teaching Dawson, the surveyor for whom he was working, to take photographs too. On 30 June he enclosed 'a bit of a sketch of our tent which although is not very good will give you some idea of it’. In August a small plan of the township he had been surveying, Buninyong near Ballarat, was sent home.
In January 1854 Woodbury moved to Melbourne and worked as a draughtsman with the Commission of Sewers and Water Supply. He was still taking photographs, but rather less frequently because of the pressure of work. At a time when the daguerreotype process remained dominant in Australian photography, Woodbury was employing the collodion wet-plate process which he had learnt in England, becoming one of the colony’s earliest practitioners. He produced both paper prints and ambrotypes. As a 'Mechanical draughtsman’ of 78 Flinders Lane East, he had nine ambrotype views of Melbourne for sale in the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition which were awarded a second-prize medal. These may relate to the two- and eight-section paper panoramas of Melbourne which survive in his Australian album and are dated in his hand 1853 and 1854 (possibly years later).
On 30 December 1854 Woodbury informed his mother that he was 'once more without a situation … and with not the least chance of getting it’, so had decided 'to turn photographic artist’ professionally. He set up in partnership with a Mr Spencer , to whom he had taught photography, and they proposed to travel around the diggings taking portraits. He thought his medal displayed in a showcase would 'do a little’. The venture, however, was not a success and Woodbury set up on his own at North Melbourne. By September 1855 William Davies was managing the studio and Woodbury was earning £4 a week at Batchelders, the leading daguerreotype establishment in Melbourne, Perez Mann Batchelder having assured him that he was 'the best glass artist in Melbourne’ Woodbury told his mother.
At Batchelders he took a likeness of the visiting actress Lola Montez 'for myself’. Meanwhile he was 'rapidly filling up a nice album with photographic views which when completed I shall send to you’. In October 1855 he included a small parcel of (paper) self-portraits and ambrotype views in his letter home, and a stereoscope by Batchelder which 'is I think the best thing in the photographic line I ever saw … The glass ones are mine but they are not specimens of my best. I was rather late or I should have sent you a large glass picture as mine are acknowledged by all who see them to be superior to anything in England or America’.
By February 1856 he was planning to relocate his studio in town, having almost run out of sitters at North Melbourne but apparently set up at Ford Street, Beechworth (Vic.), instead, being listed there in the Ovens Directory for 1857. By June he had a studio at Batavia, Java (Indonesia), in partnership with a Mr Page, where he wrote in September that he was getting very good prices for portrait photographs, from 13s or 14s up to £10 a piece, the latter being coloured by an artist who received half the fee. This was a great contrast to Melbourne where, Woodbury had earlier commented, a rival had started up who charged only 2s 6d for a paper portrait, even if this was, naturally, vastly inferior. Woodbury sent home a few stereoscopic slides he had taken in Melbourne with his September letter, adding that although he was continuing to take both glass (ambrotype) and paper views in Java, henceforth he would forward only paper prints. One was reproduced in the Illustrated London News on 15 October 1859, and a collection of his stereos was issued by the London photographic firm of Negretti & Zambra in 1861.
Having married in Java, Woodbury returned to England in 1863, although the firm of Woodbury & Page continued to operate successfully in Java for many years. A prolific inventor, Woodbury filed twenty patents for improvements in photographic apparatus between 1864 and 1884, including one for his 'Woodburytype’ process, a particularly fine and detailed photo-mechanical technique he patented in 1865. It was used widely for illustrations in high-quality books until about 1880. The drawback of the Woodburytype was that it required special ink to be printed, so that separate plates had to be added to books. Although its reproduction quality was superior, it was eventually replaced by more convenient processes which could be printed with the same ink as the letterpress. Woodbury used the process to photograph paintings and sculptures in many major European art galleries which he sold all over the world. He publicised his inventions, mostly made in his Manchester studio, through numerous articles in professional journals and papers delivered to learned societies.
Woodbury died at Margate, Kent, on 5 September 1885 from an accidental overdose of laudanum. The British Royal Photographic Society archives at Bath hold his only known surviving Australian works, an album of photographs taken in 1853 57 (now disassembled) containing views of Victoria and Java and an albumen silver paper self-portrait showing him posed in front of his camera. His son, Walter E. Woodbury, was also an active photographer.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanNewton, GaelWillis, Anne-Marie
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 June 1834
- Summary
- Trained as a civil engineer, Woodbury honed his photography skills on the goldfields of Melbourne before making his way as a professional photographer to Indonesia and back again to his country of birth, England.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 September 1885
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, sketcher, wood-engraver and wood carver, was born in Scotland. His father was a Glasgow carver of ship’s figureheads and George took up his father’s trade. George Sutherland married Jane Smith in about 1851; their first son, Alexander, was born at Glasgow in March 1852. Because of George’s ill health, the three migrated to the United States; a daughter Jane (the later Heidelberg School painter) was born in New York in December 1853. The family returned to Scotland soon afterwards and a second son, another George, was born at Dumbarton in October 1855.
In 1864 George Sutherland and his family set sail for New South Wales. He is known to have been painting at this stage and a number of small watercolours he made on the voyage, including Ile de Mahe, Seychelles , have survived in private collections. The family settled in Sydney, where in September 1865 Sutherland advertised an 'Evening Class for freehand sketching’ to be held on Tuesdays and Fridays at 71 Stanley Street. In 1870 the family moved to Melbourne and Sutherland became a teacher of drawing with the Victorian Board of Education. In January 1875 he applied for appointment as Drawing Master for State Schools in the Carlton district and the following July notified his intention of attending the examination for the Drawing Teachers’ Certificate. In October 1876 he commenced teaching in the Ballarat and Clunes district. He appears to have resigned from the Board of Education in 1878.
Sutherland exhibited three 'well-executed’ chalk portraits at the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition in 1872. He became a member of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1875 and exhibited there in 1875 ( Compulsory Education and A Slight Cold ), 1877 ( A Friendly Game) , and 1878 ( Ferns for Christmas ). Sutherland was colour-blind and had to seek assistance to distinguish colours. This restricted his painting and explains why he concentrated on sketches. A number of sketches of his children are held by family members. His proficiency as a sketcher qualified him for a later appointment as artist and woodblock engraver for the Melbourne illustrated press.
Sutherland died in 1885, survived by his wife and their five sons and three daughters. All were notable participants in Melbourne artistic and academic circles: Alexander, founder and principal of Carlton College, historian and writer of educational textbooks, journalist, and Registrar and lecturer in English literature at the University of Melbourne; Jane, painter; George, historian and journalist, and father of both painter Ruth Sutherland and composer Margaret Sutherland; William, physicist and journalist; Julia, music teacher; James, science teacher; John, actuary and philosopher; and Jessie, lieder singer.
Writers:
Rosewarne, Stuart
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1829
- Summary
- Despite ill-health and colour-blindness, George Sutherland was the father of eight children and a prolific artmaker. He concentrated more on sketching due to his impairment, but it did not hamper his abilities either as a teacher or as an artist and engraver.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1885
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude54.43644065 Longitude-3.516692646 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Beckermet, Cumberland, England
- Biography
- lithographer, was born on 6 April 1825 in Beckermet, Cumberland, England, son of Henry Shepherd, a farmer, and his wife Jane. Educated for the law, his love of art predominated; at an early age he illustrated John Linton’s A Guide to the English Lakes . Marrying in 1851, he and his wife Agnes, with his brother John, reached Melbourne on 23August 1853 and proceeded to Geelong where they lived with relatives. Details of his stay at Geelong are not known but part of his time was spent sketching on the Steiglitz goldfields, examples being published by Cyrus Mason in the Illustrated Melbourne Family News in September 1855. Steiglitz Quartz Crushing Mill and Drive on Davis’s Reef , which appeared in the Newsletter of Australasia in May 1857, was also after his sketch. In 1857 Shepherd moved to Emerald Hill (South Melbourne), where he lived for the rest of his life.
Shepherd was associated with St Luke’s Presbyterian Church at Emerald Hill and drew and lithographed a view of the church in the early 1860s (LT; ML), possibly to assist church finances. He unsuccessfully applied for positions as lithographic draughtsman in the Railway and Crown Lands departments early in 1858, but in January 1859 was successful in obtaining a temporary position with the latter and began work on 7 February. He was retrenched without compensation on 30 June 1860, then was appointed supernumerary lithographer in the lithographic branch of the Geological Survey of Victoria; he was retrenched from this position in 1861 during the period when John Humffrey was commissioner of mines and the survey staff was cut back.
He undertook freelance work until reinstated to the Geological Survey in a temporary capacity on 17 September 1861. Work produced during this freelance period includes an exquisitely illuminated manuscript of the Borough of Emerald Hill’s Municipal Statistics commissioned to be shown at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition held in preparation for the 1862 London International Exhibition.
Shepherd’s position at the Geological Survey was made permanent on 24 July 1865 and he was placed in charge of the lithographic branch, but on the abolition of the survey in December 1868 he was again retrenched. He spent January 1869 on a sketching tour through the hills to Marysville. After lithography being reconstituted as a branch of the Mining Department, Shepherd was reinstated as officer in charge on 15 February 1869. On 'Black Wednesday’, 9 January 1878, he was dispensed with together with most other staff, then reinstated temporarily on 18 April and permanently on 10 May. He continued in this last position until his death.
Shepherd lithographed most of the geological maps issued by the Geological Survey and the Mining Department between 1860 and 1885. A particular expertise in which his artistic talents were brought into full play was in applying hill hachures on the maps. He was acknowledged as the finest 'hill lithographer’ in Victoria and the standard of his work is probably unique in Australia. Following his death no geological map again showed the same high standard of achievement. He also drew and lithographed many illustrations in various departmental publications, including drawing and lithographing the fossil fruits making up twenty plates in F. von Mueller 's Observations on New Vegetable Fossils of the Auriferous Drifts (1871-83) and most of the illustrations in R.B. Smyth’s Aborigines of Victoria . He also contributed a note on drawing skulls published as an appendix in volume 2.
Shepherd was active in the Volunteers, having enrolled at the foundation of the movement in Victoria and being elected sergeant of the Emerald Hill Rifle Corps. He illustrated various military manuals, including Snee’s Manual of Gun Drill (1873) and an instruction sheet (1862), and lithographed the large Review and Encampment of Victorian Volunteers at Werribee 1st April 1861 (NLA) after the painting by Nicholas Chevalier . In 1870 Shepherd was a foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts but seems to have taken no further part in it after 18 December. He helped found the South Melbourne Art School and was active in the Emerald Hill Mechanics Institute. He served as an art juror at the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition, for which service he received a bronze medal (now held in the Science Museum of Victoria).
Shepherd died on 10 June 1885 from valvular heart disease and was buried in the St Kilda Cemetery. He was survived by his wife (who died 5 December 1892), one daughter and three sons.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 April 1825
- Summary
- Richard Shepherd was a lithographer. He was a foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870. Shepherd also helped found the South Melbourne Art School.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 June 1885
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- landscape painter and shipping agent, was born in England, son of Joseph Bingham and Elizabeth Clifton and first cousin of Elinor , Louisa , Mary and William Pearce Clifton . Little is known of any art training, except that in 1835 he received a merit award for his achievements in drawing while a pupil of John Whichelo at Rev. Edward Trimmer’s Putney School, London. A watercolour painted in England in 1843 is in the Western Australian Museum.
Clifton came to Western Australia on board the Jedda in February 1861 with his second wife, Sophia Harriet, née Adcock, and three of his children (the family finally consisted of four daughters and six sons). As agent for the P & O Shipping Company, Clifton had been transferred from Mauritius to Albany, King George Sound. His large panoramic view of Albany (34.2 × 162.5 cm), painted from his yacht, was left to the city of Albany by his third daughter, Ethel, on her death in 1933. This is his only known Australian work.
At Albany, Clifton established a savings bank for the coalers (1861) and a local co-operative society (1867). He was Albany agent and correspondent for the Adelaide Register and the Melbourne Argus . The family lived at Albany until William decided to retire in 1882. William and Sophia then returned to England in March 1882, where Clifton died on 29 September 1885.
Writers:
Staff Writer
dsenn
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1820
- Summary
- Landscape painter and shipping agent. Resident of Western Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 September 1885
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Greenwich, London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, sculptor and civil servant, was born in Greenwich, London, third son of (Mr) Lord Henry Smith and Jane Mary, of the Voase family of Anlaby, Yorkshire.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1820
- Summary
- 19th century painter, sculptor and civil servant, whose pre-Raphaelite type medallion portraits of several associates and family members were exhibited at the Royal Academy, London. However, it was his drawings and illustrations of poetry and fantastic scenery borrowed from Australian landscape and vegetation with a spaciousness and clarity of format which is significant within Australian art history.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 October 1885
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude55.8798355 Longitude-4.2718216 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Springbank, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- printer, bookseller, newspaper editor and politician, was born at Springbank, Glasgow, on 22 January 1819, eldest son of James McColl, a warehouseman of Springbank, and Agnes, née Cowan. After serving an apprenticeship to a Glasgow printer and bookbinder and working for fifteen years as a bookseller at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, McColl came to Victoria with his family in the Emigrant . His wife Jane, née Hiers, whom he had married at South Shields, Durham, in 1843 and with whom he had seven children, died on 2 January 1853, just as the ship entered Hobson’s Bay. In 1856 he married Mary, sister of George Guthrie of the Bendigo Potteries, at North Melbourne; they had six children.
McColl was listed in Melbourne street directories as a printer of 28 Little Bourke Street East in 1853, of 41 La Trobe Street East in 1854. In 1853 the Argus referred to him as an 'artist’, a category then defined very broadly. He may, however, have reproduced his own drawings when both printer and publisher of the Melbourne Banner and Diggers Advocate . McColl later managed a mine at Sandhurst (Bendigo). In 1874 he was appointed secretary of a utopian scheme to irrigate 6 million acres in northern Victoria—by the Grand Victorian North West Canal, Irrigation, Traffic and Motive Power Company Ltd—and travelled the country to promote this. (It never progressed beyond one canal in the Goulburn district.) At his fourth attempt he was elected parliamentary representative for Mandurang in 1880, from which position he continued to display his by then legendary 'water-on-the-brain’ obsessiveness. McColl died on 2 April 1885 at St Kilda and was buried in the Back Creek Cemetery, Bendigo.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 January 1819
- Summary
- Hugh McColl had a diverse CV that included working as a bookseller, as publisher and printer of two Melbourne papers, a stint as a manager of a mine and secretary to a scheme devised by the Grand Victorian North West Canal, Irrigation, Traffic and Motive Power Company. Despite its grandiose title and enthusiastic goal to irrigate 6 million acres in northern Victoria, the company only succeeded in
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2 April 1885
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude53.8034966 Longitude-2.716737426 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Broughton, Lancashire, England
- Biography
- photographic colourist and Anglican clergyman, was born in Broughton, Lancashire, son of Rev. Myles Cowpland Dixon. Admitted to St John’s College, Cambridge, in December 1845, he was sent to Nova Scotia as a missionary by the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1848 and remained there until at least 1853, serving at Truro and at Shubenacadie, Middle Musquodoboit. In May 1855 he came to Launceston with his wife and five children and the following year was appointed chaplain at Jerusalem (now Colebrook). In June 1861 he was transferred to Windermere on the Tamar River. Dixon’s first wife, Eliza Lovekin, died in June 1876 and in April 1877 he married Eliza Cox at Holy Trinity Church, Launceston.
Complaints of pastoral neglect by West Tamar residents in 1877 led to an investigation by a committee of Synod which found that 'no misconduct in greater or less degree … has been substantiated, although we conceive that there are inaccuracies of statement in the letters … by the Rev. John Dixon to your Lordship, but not wilful in character nor material in kind’. Dixon retired in June 1883 and was granted an annual pension of £200. The following October he asked for it to be paid to him in England and returned home. On 14 June 1885 he died at Notting Hill, London. There were no children of either marriage.
Dixon’s only known work is an oil portrait of Bishop F.R. Nixon painted over an albumen silver paper solar enlargement produced by Frith Brothers . Dixon exhibited the resulting work in the Tasmanian court at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial and the 1879 Launceston Fine Arts exhibitions. J. Whitefoord, who lent it to the latter, acknowledged it in the catalogue as 'Painted from [sic] an enlarged photograph’. It was subsequently purchased by a group of Launceston citizens for display in a public building (now QVMAG). The 'J. Dixon’ who exhibited photographic portraits in the 1862-63 Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition was most probably Rev. J.C. Dixon too, although again it is unlikely that he took the photographs himself. Instead, he seems to have specialised in painting over them; Dixon taught Sarah Ann Fogg how to colour photographic enlargements with oil paint.
Writers:
Glover, Margaret
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1819
- Summary
- John Cowpland Dixon was a photographic colourist and Anglican clergyman. He exhibited at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial and the 1879 Launceston Fine Arts exhibitions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1885
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude54.971478 Longitude-2.1017927 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hexham, Northumberland, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, teacher and scientific writer, was born in Hexham, Northumberland, son of Martin Dobson. After leaving Hexham Grammar School he taught English at a school near Calais, then was mathematical tutor at Thorogood’s School, Totteridge. He entered St John’s College, Cambridge in 1845, graduating BA (17th wrangler) in 1849 and MA in 1876. He arrived at Hobart Town on 12 January 1850, and until 1853 was mathematics master at the Hobart Town High School. He then returned to England and became assistant master of Greenwich Hospital School, headmaster of the training frigate Conway on the Mersey, then headmaster of his old grammar school at Hexham (1863 76). He ended his career as headmaster of the Marine School, South Shields, Durham, remaining there until his death on 8 October 1885.
Dobson was a pioneer in cyclonology and invented a machine to illustrate the deviation of the compass in iron ships. Author of six books on storms, cyclones and hurricanes, including Australasian Cyclonology (1853), The Hurricanes of the South Pacific Ocean (1859 60) and many scientific papers (some published in 1870 in aid of the Royal Lifeboat Institution), he was also interested in local history and wrote a History of Hexham . Most of his Australian sketches relate to his scientific interests, but a watercolour landscape, Lake St. Clair, Source of the Derwent, Mount Olympus , is known (1850, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1814
- Summary
- Dobson was a pioneer in cyclonology and invented a machine to illustrate the deviation of the compass in iron ships. Author of six books on storms, cyclones and hurricanes. Only one landscape of Australia is known, most other sketches relate to his scientific interests.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 October 1885
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude51.8085317 Longitude-4.9628273 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotchwell, Haverfordwest, Wales, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, surveyor, explorer and naval officer, son of Henry Stokes and Anne, née Phillips, was born on 1 August 1811 at Scotchwell, the family home near Haverfordwest, Wales.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
Bolton, G.CNote: DAA biographer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 August 1811
- Summary
- John Lort Stokes was a sketcher, surveyor, explorer and naval officer. In 1837-43 he took part in the survey of the coastline of northern Australia. Stokes found and named Port Darwin and the Albert River in northern Australia. A giant sea serpent, Hydrus stokesii, was named after him.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 June 1885
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and public servant, was born in Scotland, son of John Sercold Jackson, a major in the 72nd Regiment. He came to Sydney with his parents and numerous siblings in 1825 and was employed as a draughtsman in the New South Wales Surveyor-General’s Department. In 1831 he settled in Van Diemen’s Land, where he ran two properties as well as editing the Launceston Advertiser from about 1833. He claimed in 1839 to have been associated with the Launceston press for 10 years. Jackson married Maria Anne Walker at Vron, Norfolk Plains, on 24 March 1834.
Governor Gawler invited Jackson to South Australia in 1839 to become Colonial Treasurer. Being simultaneously a director of the Adelaide branch of the Bank of Australasia led to accusations of conflict of interest, so Jackson became Colonial Secretary in 1841. He was a founding member of the South Australian Subscription Library in 1842. Jackson resigned as colonial secretary in June 1843 and left for England to clear himself of charges of financial improprieties and incompetence. He returned to Sydney early in 1846. In June he went back to Launceston, where he was appointed the London agent for Van Diemen’s Land. He sailed from Sydney for London in the Penyard Park in December 1846, arriving on 3 April 1847. There he was invited to represent South Australian interests also. He published several influential pamphlets on colonial issues in London. Although no longer resident in South Australia, a sketch by Jackson was exhibited in the 1847 Exhibition of Colonial Artists at Adelaide. The South Australian Register labelled it 'a beautiful little water-colour drawing’. Jackson’s agency work ceased in 1853 and he returned to Melbourne as colonial inspector of the English, Scottish & Australian Bank (1853-72). He died at Ealing, near London, on 25 May 1885.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1809
- Summary
- Sketcher and public servant, was born in Scotland and came to Sydney, Australia in 1825 to be employed as a Government draughtsman. He moved between Australia and England often, and exhibited in the Exhibition of Colonial Artists at Adelaide in 1847.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25 May 1885
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude53.9015775 Longitude-0.3827242 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hull, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, fourth of the five daughters of Rev. Samuel Marsden and Elizabeth, née Fristan, of Parramatta, New South Wales, was born in Hull, Yorkshire, on 7 December 1808 when her parents were staying with Fristan relatives. A diary of a voyage to England in the Nimrod dating from 14 June to 19 August 1827 (private collection, England) has been attributed to her, while sketches of the Parramatta district where her father was Church of England minister (family collections, England) are also thought to be by her and/or her sisters. A watercolour portrait (Mitchell Library) attributed to Richard Read junior shows Jane standing with her hand on her sketchbook, open at a page containing a view of a colonial cottage. Jane married her second cousin Thomas Marsden (d.1836).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 July 1808
- Summary
- English female colonial sketcher who drew pictures of where she lived in Parramatta, and recorded her voyage to England in her journal. She posed for a watercolour portrait by another artist and married within the family to her second cousin.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1885
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1806-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- sketcher and poet, was the third daughter and sixth child of Rev. Samuel Marsden and Elizabeth, née Fristan, of Parramatta, New South Wales. She accompanied her father to New Zealand in 1830. Later that year she married John Betts in Sydney. An unsigned and undated portrait (Mitchell Library), presumed to have been painted about this time and attributed to Richard Read junior , shows Mary in the act of painting a flower in her sketchbook. The specimen she is copying stands in a vase on the table in front of her and her box of watercolours is at her side, but none of the flower paintings she presumably produced have been identified. There are, however, surviving sketches attributed to the Marsden daughters with family papers in England. As Mary Betts, she published a tribute to her father, Lines Written on the 100th Anniversary of the Birthday of the Rev. Samuel Marsden (Sydney 1871).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1806
- Summary
- Female colonial poet, watercolourist and sketcher who posed for another painter in the act of painting flowers, although no floral still-lifes by her have been found.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1885
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1804-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, London, England (alleged)
- Biography
- painter and writer, was born in England, probably London, on 5 March 1804, the second daughter of Sir Francis Molyneux Ommanney and Georgiana Frances, née Hawkes. She married Augustus Prinsep in Calcutta on 6 June 1828. She and her new-born daughter joined the ailing Augustus at Singapore on a voyage to Van Diemen’s Land in the Flora . On 22 September 1829 they landed at Hobart Town where they stayed until the following March. After her husband’s death in October 1830 Elizabeth Prinsep edited his letters into Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Van Diemen’s Land , published in 1833. Although many of the sketches in the two volumes of accompanying illustrations published later that year are attributed to Augustus, the plate New Norfolk is inscribed 'from a sketch by Mrs. A Prinsep’ and New Norfolk from the Governor’s House is also assumed to be her work. These and Augustus’s Hobarton were engraved by Elizabeth’s younger brother, John Orde Ommanney.
A large oil painting, Hobart 1829 (DG), was developed from a sketch by Prinsep (probably by the later painter Haughton Forrest ) and photographed early in the twentieth century by John Beattie for his Historical Photographs Relating to Tasmania , where it is titled Sullivans Cove, Hobart Town 1829 . Beattie described the photograph as 'copied from a sketch by Mrs. A. Prinsep, of Calcutta’, although she is unlikely to have been responsible for this fine oil painting. Nevertheless, her role in the production and illustration of the Journal seems to have been far more than a matter of simple editing. This is probably also true for the publication in 1834 of The Baboo: And Other Tales Descriptive of Society in India , attributed posthumously to A. Prinsep on the title-page.
On 16 July 1840 Elizabeth Prinsep married the architect Samuel Beachcroft in Mortlake Church, Surrey, a building enlarged earlier that year to Beachcroft’s design. A print from her sketch of the unimproved church is known. She died on 18 March 1885.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 March 1804
- Summary
- Elizabeth Acworth Prinsep is best known for editing her husband's letters into Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Van Diemen's Land, published in 1833. She did a fine job and also contributed some sketches to the volume herself.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 18 March 1885
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude39.9527237 Longitude-75.1635262 Start Date1799-01-01 End Date1885-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Biography
- painter, naturalist, amateur photographer and museum curator, was born in Philadelphia, North America, on 2 November 1799, youngest son of the painter Charles Willson Peale who at the time was deeply involved with his museum of art and natural science.This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 November 1799
- Summary
- Titian Ramsay Peale was a painter, naturalist, amateur photographer and museum curator. He was born in Philadelphia, North America, in 1799. Peale was appointed to the Scientific Corps as a zoologist and naturalist to the proposed United States South Sea Surveying and Exploring Expedition. They reached Sydney in 1839.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13 March 1885
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1847-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Born in England in 1847, Walter Rowe arrived in South Australia on the Earl Dalhousie in 1875.1 On 23 March 1875 he advertised in the Northern Argus that he had succeeded to the business of Jas. H.E. Brown, of Main Street, Clare, and that he was prepared to execute all classes of photography. His cartes de visite were priced at 12s per dozen, and local views were 7s 6d per dozen. At the end of April he advertised his full range of services: carte de visite portraits; vignettes and cameos; the new Rembrandt or shadow portraits; miniatures for brooches and lockets; cabinet portraits; enlargements finished in any style; pictures, architectural drawings, plans, and models could be photographed and either enlarged or reduced. He also said that he had ‘a very superior apparatus’ for taking views and out-of-door groups, and he was prepared to travel a reasonable distance to take photographs at pastoral properties around Clare.
Walter Rowe made the earliest known South Australian ferrotype photographs (tintypes) in May 1875. The Northern Argus reported, ‘Mr Rowe, photographer, of Clare, has introduced a process of taking likenesses which is much admired, and is known as the ferrotype style. It has many advantages, and not the least is that the pictures can be finished very quickly. Customers can have their picture taken and get them in ten minutes. Mr Rowe has produced some excellent ferrotypes. Those who have seen them think it a decided improvement on the old style.’ However, it was not until the early 1880s that the ferrotype was produced in any numbers in South Australia, and then only for a brief period by a few specialist Adelaide studios and travelling photographers. Some photographers considered the ferrotype a ‘cheap’ type of photograph, and refused to use the process.
In August 1875 Walter Rowe advertised that he was making preparations for a tour of the towns in the agricultural areas north of Clare. He began his tour with a visit to Mintaro at the beginning of September, from where the correspondent for the Northern Argus wrote on the 15 August, ‘The most active business at the present time is photography. Mr Rowe, from Clare, is here. He is doing a splendid trade, and will have no occasion to regret having visited Mintaro.’
From Mintaro Walter Rowe went to Georgetown, and on 22 October he published the rest of his itinerary in the Northern Argus, something rarely seen in South Australian newspapers. His itinerary was: ‘Gladstone, Oct 23 to Nov 4; Clare, Nov. 5 to Nov 12; Gladstone Nov 13 to Nov 22; Laura, Nov 23 to Dec 4; Jamestown Dec 5 to Dec 31’. He was then to return to Clare for January before visiting Redhill and Port Pirie in February 1876.
By March 1876 Walter Rowe was back in Clare and had erected a ‘commodious studio’ at the rear of the Institute building. Although it is obvious photography was his main profession, directories from 1877 to 1879 list his occupation as Secretary of the Clare Institute. In 1876 Walter Rowe’s wife, Selina, advertised that she gave instruction on the pianoforte and attended soirees.
When Walter Rowe imported a large batch of chemicals and materials direct from London in March 1877, he announced a temporary reduction in the price of his photographs. He advertised carte de visite portraits for 7s 6d per dozen, views of Clare ls each or 8s per dozen, and told the public ‘It is therefore absurd paying any more’. This latter comment suggests another photographer had arrived in the town and that Walter Rowe was feeling the effects of competition, and that this was the real reason for his reduction in prices. Business had picked up by July when he suggested appointments should be made, and when he said children definitely not to be brought in after one o’clock in the day. This may have been the time of day that the low July sun began casting the shadow of the two-storey Institute over his studio. In November the Institute Committee said that their forthcoming art exhibition was bound to be a success, as many people had promised support, including Mr Rowe, who had taken ‘thirty good negatives of well-known residents for exhibition’.
Walter Rowe used the following lines on the backs of some of his Clare cartes de visite:
Blest be the art that can immortalise. COWPER.
How little is the cost I have bestow’d
In purchasing this semblance of myself SHAKESPEARE.
In January 1878 Walter Rowe’s home was destroyed by fire. The house had two front rooms built of stone and roofed with iron, and a third at the back was mostly wood. Some of the best furniture was saved and some of Mr Rowe’s clothes, but all of the clothing belonging to Mrs Rowe and the children was destroyed.
By October 1882 Walter Rowe was in Adelaide, as in the Commercial and Traders Directory 1882–83, published in October 1882, he is listed as a photographer at Killua Place, Adelaide. Killua Place was off the south side of Halifax Street, and has been known as Ada Street since1901.
A large portrait of Dr J.W.D. Bain, once described as ‘England’s greatest gift to Clare’, signed ‘W. Rowe 1883’, appears to be a photographic print pasted to a canvas backing on a wooden frame, and overpainted in oils. For well over a century the original occupied a prominent position over the fireplace in the Clare Institute reading room, but was replaced by a copy when the Public Library was opened.
By April 1883 Walter Rowe was manager of the Canadian Photographic Company (q.v.), Kenilworth Road, Parkside, a firm which specialised in outdoor photography. In that month he advertised his mail-order copying service in the Northern Argus, ‘12 Cartes de visite, 4s 2d; six 2s 8d. Send carte with stamps. Perfect copies and originals returned free.’ In the directories for 1884 and 1885 his address was given as Albert Street, Goodwood, which also appeared on cabinet photographs of the Canadian Photographic Company. The 1885 entry was an error, as Walter Rowe died of typhoid fever at Hobart on 11 May 1884.
1Jill Statton (ed.), Biographical Index of South Australians, 1836–1885, South Australian Genealogy and Heraldry Society, 1986, p.1395.
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, p.251-52.
Writers:
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
2013
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1847
- Summary
- Walter Rowe emigrated from England to South Australia in 1847. He was a photographer based in Clare, but also travelled his services throughout the mid-north of the state. He later settled in Adelaide. Rowe is recognised for both his portrait and scenic photography, and is credited with producing South Australia’s earliest ferrotype photographs.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 May 1884
- Age at death
- 37
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- modeller in wax, teacher and author, was born in Sydney, daughter of W.W. Thwaites senior and Jane née McLean, and younger sister of W.W. Thwaites junior and of the twins Isabella and Hector Thwaites. She grew up travelling around Australia with her parents and finally settled in South Australia. In 1868, when aged about 23 – evidently with her father’s support – she set up as 'Lady Superintendent’ of a boarding school for young ladies in Grove House, Kent Town, which had been rented in the mid-1860s by a Miss Bird as home and school. The students at Miss Thwaites’s school were instructed in English grammar and composition, writing, arithmetic, English history, geography, mapping, music, French, German and dancing – and also in Latin grammar, an unusual subject for girls at the time. In the arts she offered oil and watercolour painting, pencil drawing, embroidery as well as plain needlework, leatherwork, and craftwork including the making of wax flowers. She also trained young ladies 'for business’ – apparently the first to do so in SA – and offered a prize for bookmaking, according to advertisements cited by Young.
Sophia Jane Thwaites exhibited a composition of wax flowers entitled Perserverance in the 14th annual exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts, which opened on 15 December 1870. With Mrs J. Harrison and Miss Ellen L. Gray, she was one of three competitors in the wax modelling section (No.58), all judged 'of such equal excellence that a prize was given to each’, and shared the prize of two guineas offered by W.G. Gerke Esq., J.P., for 'flowers, no less than eight varieties, natural size’.
At the end of 1873 Sophia Jane married the American-born Charles Andrew Murphy, several years her junior, an agent, newspaperman and publisher (at least from 1877) of the satirical Adelaide magazine the Lantern (1874-1890), who was appointed American Consul in South Australia after Sophia Jane’s death. Their Church of England wedding took place in Miss Thwaites’s private residence in Kent Town and the groom moved into the school after the marriage. As 'Mrs. Chas. A. Murphy’, 'Principal and Lady Superintendent’, she continued to advertise her school in the Adelaide press. Later she ran smaller schools at Brighton and in Lewisham Villa, Semaphore, seaside areas west of Adelaide, while Charles worked as an agent nearby. In 1878 her English grammar book for use in schools was published from the newspaper offices responsible for the Advertiser , Chronicle and Express .
The Murphys were living in Barton Terrace West, North Adelaide when Sophia Jane died in October 1884, soon after the birth of their third child and second daughter. An obituary was published in the Lantern .
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1845
- Summary
- She exhibited a composition of wax flowers in the 14th annual exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- October 1884
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude54.1775283 Longitude-6.337506 Start Date1844-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newry, County Down, Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, architect and surveyor, was born at Newry, County Down, Ireland, son of Joseph McMinn and Martha née Hamill. He came to Adelaide at the age of six with his widowed mother and his seven brothers and sisters on board the Albatross in September 1850. In 1859 he exhibited a pen-and-ink drawing, Castle of Segovia , with the South Australian Society of Arts. It was commended by the judges but did not win a prize. He won a 5-guinea prize at the 1861 exhibition for 'the best architectural drawing’.
Apprenticed to the architect James Macgeorge on leaving school, McMinn at first practised as a surveyor and in 1865 was involved in a disastrous expedition to northern Australia to map the Adelaide River. To return to civilisation McMinn and six others, including Charles Hake, Arthur Hamilton and J.P. Stow, bought (from another ship) a 23-foot open boat, named it the Forlorn Hope , and sailed 2000 miles south to Champion Bay (Geraldton, WA). A pen-and-ink copy of his drawing of the crew bailing water in a severe storm is annotated 'Mr Stow and party in a gale,—in their perilous voyage in an open boat from Adams Bay to Western Australia, Tuesday June 11, 1865. from a Sketch by Mr W. McMinn, one of the Party’ (Mitchell Library). A version of this sketch, The 'Forlorn Hope’ in a Gale on her Voyage from Adam Bay to Western Australia , appeared in the Illustrated Melbourne Post later that year.
McMinn established himself as an architect in 1867, subsequently designing, amongst other works, the original Venetian Gothic building of the University of Adelaide, now known as the Mitchell Building (c.1877-81 in partnership with Edward John Woods), Marble Hill at Norton Summit, the summer residence of the governors of South Australia, several hotels and the original part of the Adelaide Children’s Hospital. He won second prize for his design of a bridge over the Torrens River. He was also government surveyor and overseer of works on the northern part of the Overland Telegraph from Port Darwin to Port Augusta (Northern Territory) in 1871 but was dismissed following his return to Adelaide in July.
McMinn married Mary Frances Muirhead at Glenelg on 14 March 1877; they had two daughters. He died at North Adelaide on 14 February 1884, aged forty.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1844
- Summary
- Sketcher, architect and surveyor. In 1865 McMinn was involved in a disastrous expedition to northern Australia to map the Adelaide River. To return to civilisation McMinn and six others purchased a 23-foot open boat, named it the Forlorn Hope, and sailed 2000 miles south to Geraldton, WA. In his later years as an architect McMinn was responsible for designing the original Venetian Gothic building of the University of Adelaide, now known as the Mitchell Building (in partnership with Edward John Woods), Marble Hill at Norton Summit, the summer residence of the governors of South Australia and the original part of the Adelaide Children's Hospital.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 February 1884
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born in London and came to Melbourne on board the Gloriana in 1853. Early in 1866 he photographed landscape views at Koriot, Woolsthorpe, Dunmore and Tower Hill in the Western District of Victoria. In April he was appointed general manager of the photographic studio of William Vazie Simons in Swanston Street, Melbourne, an appointment apparently necessitated by the departure of Simons’s partner, Alexander Fox . The following month Soden was accused of 'having forged and uttered a number of bank notes’ and remanded at the Melbourne Police Court before being committed for trial. Investigations had discovered photographic negatives of pound notes at Simons’s photographic premises and a forged pound note was found in Soden’s South Yarra residence. Soden served a year in Pentridge Prison, during which time some of his photographs were exhibited at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition.
On 18 October 1879, a Mr Soden reappeared as proprietor of a new photographic salon in High Street, Kyneton, stated by the Kyneton Guardian to be the most up-to-date studio in any country town in Victoria. His predecessor Henry Glenny had by then left the district so there was no resident competition. It is not known how long he stayed at Kyneton or in other Victorian towns, but in 1881-82 Soden had a studio at 10 Park Street, Sydney. He died in Sydney on 24 October 1884.
Writers:
Fox, Paul
Note: Primary.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1840
- Summary
- Professional photographer, arriving from London in Melbourne 1853. In a scandalous series of events, Soden was accused of forging pound notes and served out his conviction in Pentridge Prison in the same year that his photographs were exhibited at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24 October 1884
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude-26 Longitude121 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Western Australia, WA, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Western Australia, eldest daughter and fourth child of the farmer and lay preacher John Wall Hardey and Elizabeth, née Davey, two of the Methodist migrants who had come out in the brig Tranby in 1830. With Mary Ann’s uncle Joseph, the Hardeys lived on a property at Maryland on the Swan, which they called Tranby. They later had a 16,342-acre selection in the York district called Mount Hardey. Mary Ann drew a small pencil sketch, Duck Hunting , in August 1861 among the Hardey Papers in the Battye Library of Australian History, State Library of Western Australia, Perth, WA, her only known art work. It was presumably drawn at Mount Hardey; the portraits of her parents now hanging at Tranby were painted by Hannah Maria Hudson .
In 1863 Mary Ann married Edward Graham Barrett-Lennard at Guildford, and they lived at nearby St Lennard’s on the Swan. The Barrett-Lennards had nine children before Mary Ann died from measles at St Lennard’s on 13 February 1884 and was buried in the Old Cemetery, East Guildford. The Inquirer and Commercial News noted: 'A very painful circumstance in connection with the sad event is that a large and helpless family, of whom six are now prostrated with sickness, are left motherless’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1840
- Summary
- Sketcher, was born in Western Australia. A small pencil sketch titled " Duck Hunting", 1861 is her only known art work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13 February 1884
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Sydney, New South Wales, daughter of Harriet Calcott and Captain Robert Stirling. As aide-de-camp to Sir Thomas Brisbane her father left Sydney in 1825 and soon afterwards her mother moved to Newcastle and became a seamstress. There Harriet Calcott had two daughters, Harriet and Helena ( Scott ), with Alexander Walker Scott whom she later married. Frances lived with her mother, step-father and half-sisters. A small, delicate oval watercolour painted in 1841 of the Scotts’ home on Ash Island, a place well known for its hospitality to many visiting scientists and artists, is her only known work. It may have been done as a souvenir, for in that year she married Wilhelm Kirschner, a Prussian businessman who had migrated to Sydney in 1839.
Some time after their marriage, probably in the late 1840s, the Kirschners visited Frankfurt-am-Main where Wilhelm published a handbook for German migrants to Australia. In 1858, when the German naval vessel Novara was in Sydney, its ethnologist, Karl Scherzer, visited the Kirschner’s home on five acres at Darling Point and afterwards wrote in his diary that Mrs Kirschner was 'very pleasant and speaks fairly good German’, adding, 'you would never think by looking at her that she has seven children’. By then Wilhelm Kirschner had made a fortune manufacturing stearin candles for the goldfields and was consul for Hamburg, Prussia and Austria. Although Scherzer commented that Mrs Kirschner’s two sisters were 'busily preparing a substantial work on the beetles, butterflies and moths of New South Wales’, he made no mention of any drawings by Frances.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1824
- Summary
- Sketcher whose only known work is a watercolour of Ash Island, Newcastle, NSW. Married to Wilhelm Kirschner who was consul for Hamburg, Prussia and Austria in 1850s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1884
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in London on 20 July 1819 into a family of eminent architects; she was the niece of Sir Charles Barry, designer of the British Houses of Parliament, and a cousin of Sir John Wolfe Barry, designer of Tower Bridge and Kew Bridge. In 1844 she married William Charles Cleveland, a trader between Sydney and Launceston who had settled in Van Diemen’s Land in the 1830s. They lived in England and Europe for eight years and had four children. During this time she is known to have sketched; a drawing of Venice is extant (p.c.).
The Clevelands left for Tasmania in 1852, arriving at Launceston aboard the Mermaid on 4 August. They lived at Normanstone from about 1858, when a new brick house was completed. Four more children were born before 1864, the year the family moved to Melbourne. In 1871 Charlotte embarked for England on the Queen of the Thames and was shipwrecked near Durban. She nevertheless reached England in May, then returned to Melbourne in 1872. In 1877 her husband’s ill-health necessitated a move back to Launceston where they lived at The Hollies in the High Street. After William’s death Charlotte moved up to Windmill Hill; she died there in 1884. William Cleveland’s diary is in the Mitchell Library, Charlotte Cleveland’s remains with a descendant.
Charlotte drew, in pencil or pencil and wash, views of buildings and landscapes. These include Windermere Church on the Tamar, Tasmania (1854), Hobart Town (1854), The Signalling Station & Cottage, Windmill Hill. View of the Cottage at the Flag Staff Station Launceston, Tasmania (1854) and Creek of the North Esk. The Bathing Place of the Boys of Christ’s College Bishopsbourne with a Distant View of Part of the Western Tier, Tasmania (1856). Two sketches in a family collection—pencil views of Launceston (n.d.) and White Hills (1854)—are signed 'Chas [Charles] Eddy’, but the family believes these were in fact by Charlotte. A male pseudonym is compatible with the architectural precision and focus of much of her work and there is a suggestion that she perhaps would have liked to have been an architect like the male members of her family.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 July 1819
- Summary
- A member of architecturally acclaimed Barry family - Cleveland's uncle, Sir Charles Barry, designed the British Houses of Parliament while her cousin, Sir John Wolfe Barry, designed London's Tower and Kew Bridges. An artist in her own right, Cleveland was a sketcher whose main body of works document the Tasmanian landscape, where she immigrated to in 1852 with her husband William Charles Cleveland.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1884
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher and medical practitioner, was son of the Dublin lawyer James Mackin, and Jane, née Turton. He graduated in medicine from Trinity College, Dublin, then was attracted to Victoria by the discovery of gold. He is known to have been on the Ballarat goldfields in the mid 1850s. One of his drawings, Diggers’ Hut, Buninyong dates from about 1855-56. Mackin was at Geelong by March 1856 when he presented his 'Report on the health and sanitary condition of the town and suburbs of Geelong’ to the corporation. He remained there for the rest of his life, for many years as medical attendant at Geelong Gaol. In the early 1860s he married Sarah Shaw, the sister of Thomas Shaw junior, pastoralist of Wooriwyrite Station, Western Victoria.
Mackin’s earliest dated work is Harris’s, Point Henry (December 1856). Such Geelong drawings of the late 1850s show a fondness for ramshackle and ruined colonial dwellings, a typical example being the pencil drawing of March 1857, Ruins of House of Early Settler, near Portarlington, Miss Drysdale’s . (Miss Drysdale was one of the few Victorian women pastoralists; she had had the architect Charles Laing design her a new residence in picturesque mode in 1849.) Mackin’s work of the 1860s can be characterised by the strong massing of buildings which dominate the centre of his compositions, the most striking being the tinted drawing On the Road to Portarlington (1868, Geelong Art Gallery), until the mid-1980s recently in its original frame by Thoms of Geelong. Other works include Benevolent Home for Aged Females (w/c, 1865) and South Geelong; December 1869 (pencil and wash).
Although Mackin’s obituary stated that he was of quiet disposition and took no active part in social or public matters, he did show eight works at the 1869 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition and eleven at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition held that same year. Titles include the picturesque subjects Jedburgh Abbey (w/c) and Martello Towers, near Dublin (w/c), At Battersea, Surrey (w/c), Old Buildings (w/c), Cathedral Scene (pencil), and the oriental Interior of a Turkish Mosque (chalk). These could imply that Mackin re-visited Britain and Ireland at some time in the 1860s, although they might have been developed from prints or photographs as all were popular subjects at the time. More suggestive, perhaps, is the fact that in 1880 he exhibited Mount Dunstan, New Zealand and Leaning Rock, New Zealand at the Geelong Juvenile Industries Exhibition.
Writers:
Fox, Paul
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1818
- Summary
- Colonial male doctor and sketcher who made watercolours of his travels, throughout Victoria and New Zealand, and maybe as far as Ireland and England.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1884
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- sketcher, writer, farmer and stock agent, was born in England, son of William Lincolne. After farming in Suffolk, he came to New South Wales in the Spartan on 30 January 1838 and ran cattle on a family property on the Lachlan River. He married in the year of his arrival. A pencil drawing of an encounter with bushrangers in Lincolne’s sole known sketchbook (Mitchell Library) has a note that 'the rencontre represented on the opposite page’ occurred on 9 October 1839 when 'delivering part of a purchase of 4000 head of cattle to E. Horne Esq. and which he was driving to “Adelaide” from our Lachlan stations’. In 1840 he rented Fig Tree Farm at Jamberoo, Illawarra, remaining for four years until ruined by floods.
Lincolne’s Australian Sketches contains twenty-six pencil sketches (some with a watercolour wash). All appear to have been done between about 1840 and 1844 and most are accompanied by a descriptive letter-press in the manner of a set of views. The images minutely delineate, with a topographer’s eye, every feature of homesteads, townships and views in the Illawarra, Kiama and Canberra regions. For instance, his drawing of his own Fig Tree Farm, dated 1841, fastidiously records every detail of the homestead. Waugh Hope Jamberoo Illawarra is annotated: 'the house of Mr J.M. Waugh built of mud, plastered within & stuccoed without—about 4 miles from Kiama township’ (J.M. Waugh was the father of James William Waugh and David Waugh, who first settled on the property). A similar interest in visual description is evident in Lincolne’s view of the Kiama township, although this is a more naive work, especially in its perspective and scale. Less ambitious studies, such as Tree Portrait , are usually quite finely worked.
As well as the brush with bushrangers, Lincolne sketched other dramatic moments of his life such as difficulties with an angry bull. He was a more than competent animal sketcher in a style similar to his contemporary George Hamilton but, interestingly, his only depiction of an Aborigine appears to have been copied from a plate in W.H. Fernyhough 's Twelve Profile Portraits of the Aborigines of New South Wales (1836). Simply altering Fernyhough’s original tribal designation of Botany Bay , this pencil and wash sketch of Mary – Five Island Tribe – Illawarra employs little of his keen eye.
As yet no drawings are known for the rest of Lincolne’s life. He returned to England in 1848-49, then settled in Adelaide, where he founded the East Torrens Agricultural Society. By 1866 he was farming at Moonee Ponds, Victoria, and at some stage had a property on the Campaspe River. By 1870 he had established himself in Bourke Street, Melbourne, and was listed as a stock agent there until 1881. During this period he was secretary to the Port Phillip Farmers’ Society. He published two books, The Australasian Farmers’ Guide (Melbourne 1869) and The Farm and Selection (Melbourne n.d.; reprinted 1878), as well as writing for agricultural journals. Lincolne died in Melbourne on 10 October 1884.
Writers:
Neville, Richard
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- Abraham Lincolne was a sketcher, writer, farmer and stock agent. He came to New South Wales in 1838 where he rented Fig Tree Farm at Jamberoo, Illawarra.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 October 1884
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude53.8 Longitude-2.6 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lancashire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and landscape gardener, second daughter of George Orred of Tranmere, Cheshire, and Aigburth Hall, Lancashire, married Robert Lowe in Holy Trinity Church, Chester, on 29 March 1836.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1813
- Summary
- Sketcher and landscape gardener. The Mitchell Library's collection includes numerous views taken around Nelson Bay, many depicting Bronte and its gardens.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1884
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and lithographer, was born in Birmingham, son of Samuel Burn, a varnish-maker, and Hannah, née Oliver.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1807
- Summary
- Burn's watercolour and oil landscapes demonstrate his success in capturing the changing effects of light and atmosphere as well as incorporating interesting contemporary details.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 October 1884
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude51.6267968 Longitude-0.0769118 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1884-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edmonton, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and author, was born on 31 December 1802 in Edmonton, near London. Brought up by his wealthy paternal grandmother, he attended John Clarke’s school where John Keats had been a pupil. Influenced by the poet Shelley, Horne embraced a literary career after fighting for Mexican independence in 1825-26. Sketchbooks from his Mexican experience include many drawings of yellow fever victims, while a North American tour made before returning home resulted in more conventionally picturesque subjects such as the Catskill Mountains. Back at London, Horne published prolifically, most notably an epic poem, Orion (1843), sold at a farthing a copy. Its price and content made him a celebrity.
Horne married Catherine Foggo in 1847, but the marriage was a failure. As well, his financial position was precarious and he had come to dislike working on Charles Dickens’s Household Words , so in September 1852 he arrived at Melbourne in search of a fortune and a new life, the most famous poet ever to set foot in the antipodes (as he asserted). He was an assistant gold commissioner at Heathcote until dismissed in November 1854. His wife requested a formal separation in 1855 and Horne then lived with a Scottish woman, Jessie Taylor. Their baby son died in 1857. After unsuccessfully contesting two elections and losing other jobs, he became warden of the Blue Mountain goldfield in Victoria ('the Siberia of all the goldfields’) from which he frequently escaped to Melbourne.
A flamboyant and eccentric character, Horne was one of the founders of Melbourne’s Garrick Club (with the critic James Smith), arriving at its first meeting in 1856 in Elizabethan costume. He was friendly with writers such as Marcus Clarke and with the poet and artist George Gordon McCrae who was to illustrate an epic based on Horne’s Australian experiences to be called 'John Ferncliff’, which never proceeded beyond the prospectus. But Horne spasmodically wrote a good deal during his Australian years. His prose was primarily journalism for Dickens (and later, begging letters), but he also published Australian Facts and Prospects: To Which is Prefixed the Author’s Australian Autobiography (London 1859), a highly romanticised, self-promotional book which was received far more warmly in London than in Victoria. His lyric masque, The South Sea Sisters , opened the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. He wrote a cantata for the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh in 1867 signed Richard Hengist Horne, the name he adopted thereafter. He also made several lecture tours.
Giving his address as Flinders Lane East, at the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition Horne exhibited a sheet of pen-and-ink sketches titled Recollections of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst , having studied there in 1819-20 before being expelled. Another version dated 16 October 1856 (private collection) was drawn during his brief sojourn as clerk to the Melbourne lawyer and art patron Archibald Michie; the journalist James Hingston recalled Horne holding court in Michie’s rooms while working on the sheet. These further recollections were shown at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition and art-historically are of great interest, the large single sheet progressively illustrating the first-year exercises set at Sandhurst in military drawing (hill hachures) and landscape studies (picturesque British views), together with a view of the college itself and two sketches of 'Local Characteristics’ (caricatures of military personnel).
Horne also showed The Forest King (a watercolour), An Incantation (listed as a watercolour in the first edition of the catalogue and as an oil in the second) and a pen-and-ink Portrait of Bonaparte, Lieutenant of Artillery copied from a print. The catalogue of Victorian exhibits included in the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition includes his watercolour, A Lion’s Head (possibly the portrait of Napoleon). A competent charcoal sketch of two young women, signed 'R. Horne’ (hence drawn before 1867), is in a private collection in England.
Horne left for England in June 1869. There he again published a great deal but never made any money or had another success like Orion . He received a government pension in 1874 and died on 13 March 1884.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 December 1802
- Summary
- Sketcher and author, born in England, he wrote for Charles Dickens's "Household Words" before arriving in Melbourne in 1852. In Australia he wrote and exhibited paintings and drawings until returning to London in 1869.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13 March 1884
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 16 November 1848
- Summary
- Printer, publisher and art print and bookseller active in Elizabeth street Melbourne by circa 1875 and with branch in George Sydney from 1886. Produced 'The Exhibition album: photograph views of Sydney'
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 February 1883
- Age at death
- 35
Details
Latitude43 Longitude12 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Italy
- Biography
- painter, professional photographer, printmaker and assayer, was born in Italy, son of the painter Joseph Severn and his wife Elizabeth, née Montgomerie, and brother of Joseph, Arthur, Mary and Walter Severn, all of whom were professional English painters whose work was shown in Australia, although there is no evidence that any of Henry’s family ever joined him in the colonies. His father had accompanied the dying poet John Keats to Rome in 1820 and subsequently served as British consul there for twenty years. A mineral assayer, Henry arrived in Sydney on 14 March 1854 aboard the Maid of Judah (1st Cabin class), having been appointed a clerk at the Sydney Mint. He married Frances Allan at Holy Trinity Church of England (The Garrison Church at The Rocks) on 26 September 1855. They lived at Neutral Bay, where Jevons photographed him. The Severns had 6 children, all born in Australia.
Severn helped decorate the North Shore School of Arts to celebrate the marriage of the Prince of Wales in 1863: the Sydney Morning Herald of 12 June noted that he painted the transparencies while the other decorations were by Mr Bell (probably the architect Edward Bell ). In 1866 his 'Picture in Anastatic Printing’ and some stereoscopic and microscopic photographs he had taken were shown at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. He received an honourable mention for the photographs. The critic of the Australian Monthly Magazine , writing under the pseudonym 'Sol’, thought them 'very well taken on the whole’, regretting only that some appeared to have suffered the effects of dust-storms and hot winds.
Severn was also represented in the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, showing stereoscopic views (for sale at a shilling each) and two photographs of the Longford Viaduct. At the huge Melbourne Public Library Exhibition of 1869, he exhibited five anastatic prints. He and John Curtayne also lent sketches by various members of the Severn family to this exhibition, including two pen-and-ink sketches of a deer by Walter (the subject of many of Walter’s paintings shown at various London exhibitions between 1853 and 1889) and three or four pencil and watercolour portraits by Mary Severn. Her watercolour titled Two Girls , lent by Curtayne, is possibly that now called Two Children in an album of watercolours in the Mitchell Library.
Early in the 1870s Henry Severn went to New Zealand to work as a mineral assayer (1872-75). There he painted a panoramic view of the Thames goldfields. Afterwards he returned to Sydney; in 1877 he gave a series of public lectures 'on scientific subjects’ at the Guild Hall in Castlereagh Street. He later returned to England.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1833
- Summary
- Henry Augustus Severn was a painter, professional photographer and printmaker. In 1863 he helped decorate North Shore School of Arts to celebrate the marriage of the Prince of Wales. Severn also worked as a mineral assayer in New Zealand.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1883
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- lithographer and language teacher, was born in Paris on 11 November 1829, only son of François Jacques Cogné and Madeleine Adelaide, née Oury.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 11 November 1829
- Summary
- Lithographer and language teacher born in Paris, France and resident of Ballarat, Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1883
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Sydney, one of ten children and elder of the two daughters of James Norton (1795-1862), a prominent and wealthy Sydney solicitor, and his first wife Jane, née Mackenzie. In 1834 her father purchased Elswick, a 100-acre property on the Parramatta Road, where she lived. She had drawing lessons from Conrad Martens , whose account book contains the following entry for 23 September 1846: 'One Quarter Instruction, Miss Norton, £10.10’. Her father paid for two further quarters’ instruction on 19 August and 18 November 1847. Mr Norton lent Jane’s sketch, Elswick, Seat of James Norton Esq. , to the second exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia in 1849. The Herald reviewer noted that it was 'A good bold drawing rich in tone, broadly touched with a full pencil: the drawing evidently of the Martens school’. It is probably the very competent, unsigned, oval pencil and wash sketch of Elswick House now in the Mitchell Library, which is very much in Martens’s style.
Jane Norton married Rev. Charles Frederick Durham Priddle on 25 February 1851. They lived at Liverpool where Charles was minister of St Luke’s Church of England. They had at least four sons and three daughters.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1828
- Summary
- The Herald reviewer noted that Norton's work was 'A good bold drawing rich in tone, broadly touched with a full pencil: the drawing evidently of the Martens school'.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1883
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude51.2 Longitude0.7 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and civil servant, was born in Kent, eldest son of Rev. John Vesey Hamilton and possibly a nephew of George Hamilton . He was educated at Harrow and in Paris and Brussels. In 1843 he left England for Sydney with £50. Fortunately he met Governor Robert FitzRoy on board ship and continued on to New Zealand as FitzRoy’s private secretary. After subsequently serving under Governor George Grey , Hamilton returned to England in 1846. He came back to New Zealand in 1848 on board HMS Acheron . The ship dropped anchor in King George Sound, Western Australia, on 19 August and Hamilton drew coastal views in his sketchbook. He held various government positions in New Zealand until his retirement in 1874, having settled with his family in the Canterbury district.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1825
- Summary
- sketcher and civil servant, he lived and worked primarily in New Zealand. While returning to New Zealand, he drew coastal views of King George Sound, Western Australia in his sketchbook.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1883
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude54.3794828 Longitude-2.9061994 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Windermere, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, surveyor and farmer, was born in Windermere, England, son of John Sherbrooke Gell and Isabella, née Parker. Gell arrived at Launceston in November 1843 and the following month was appointed surveyor to the Van Diemen’s Land irrigation survey under Major Cotton. In 1849 he was re-employed for the trigonometrical survey, also under Cotton. After further surveying work on the north-west Tasmanian coast, Gell resigned in 1851 in order to concentrate on farming his property, Baskerville, on the Macquarie River. This was apparently unsuccessful; in 1853 he was listed as postmaster and Justice of the Peace at Macquarie River, where he lived on a property called Morningside. There, on 22 September 1846, he married Catharine Abbott Parker, a connection of his mother’s. They had five sons and three daughters.
Gell twice stood for the parliamentary seat of South Esk, unsuccessfully in 1856 and successfully in 1858, being a member of the Legislative Council from March 1858 to October 1862. Later he moved to New South Wales and lived at Burrangong, Urana. He died at Launceston on 30 January 1883. Known pencil sketches of Tasmanian scenes (c.1850, Crowther Library) appear to be pages from a sketchbook. They include River Gordon and Mount Anne from the Denison Plains (State Library of Tasmania).
Writers:
Staff WriterBennett, S.
Note: secondary biographerBennett, B.
Note: secondary biographer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1822
- Summary
- Sketcher, surveyor and farmer, his artworks are primarily pencil sketched scenes of the Tasmanian landscape, many of which are held in the State Library of Tasmania.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30 January 1883
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude52.6285576 Longitude1.2923954 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Norwich, Norfolk, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, sketcher, cartoonist, writer and solicitor, was born on 12 July 1815 in Norwich, Norfolk, eldest son of John Skipper and his wife Jane, sister of James Stark RA, a landscape painter of the Norwich School.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 July 1815
- Summary
- Colonial Adelaide painter, sketcher, cartoonist, writer and solicitor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1883
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and teacher, was born in London, son of Thomas Clark, an artist, and Susan, née Ashley.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1814
- Summary
- Painter and teacher born in London, England. Resident of Victoria he taught in and exhibited with many institutions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21 April 1883
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, photographer(?), engraver and lithographer, was born on 23 March 1812 in Dumfries, Scotland, elder son of James and Isabella Shaw. His younger brother was the painter James Shaw whom he later followed to Australia. Both boys were taught to draw, paint and lithograph by their father and probably accompanied him on local sketching expeditions. George was sent to the Academy of Fine Arts at Trieste, Italy, to perfect his artistic skills. After returning to Scotland he was commissioned to do the illustrations for the Abbotsford edition of Sir Walter Scott’s works and, later, the engravings for Lockhardt’s Life of Scott . For several years he also worked as an illustrator on the London Art Journal .
In January 1851 Shaw arrived in the Titan at Dunedin, New Zealand. A surviving view of the town dated that year (Hocken Library, University of Otago) may be the view he exhibited in November and was proposing to make into a lithograph. It was not executed due to lack of support. In 1856 Shaw left New Zealand for Australia. First he visited his brother in Adelaide, showing Othello and Iago and Edinburgh, from the Calton Hill as an Adelaide resident at the first exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts in 1857. Then he settled in Crown Street, Sydney. Over the next decade Shaw completed a series of portraits, some drawn, some engraved, of Sydney politicians and clergy. Surviving lithographs include portraits of Bishop Frederick Barker, Dean William Cowper, Sir Daniel Cooper (Speaker of the House of Assembly) and Sir Stewart Donaldson.
Shaw returned to South Australia in 1866, again presumably to see James, who had been living there since 1850. In 1867 he was listed as a resident of Ward Street, North Adelaide. Several proof copies of his engravings were shown in December 1866 with the South Australian Society of Arts, among them one of The Silver Cord Loosed after the Scottish artist Sir Joseph Noel Paton. At the society’s 1867 exhibition he was awarded the 5-guinea prize for the best South Australian oil landscape painting, not less than 30 × 20 inches (76.2 × 50.8 cm) in size, by a resident South Australian artist. His winning exhibit, the view from the hill opposite Beyer’s garden looking down the main East Adelaide road, was thought 'tolerably correct’ by the South Australian Advertiser , 'but the position chosen is, for artistic purposes, unfortunate. Our hills, especially in Spring, offer to the eye such an unvarying mass of brilliant green that a wearisome sameness in the picture is almost inevitable’.
Platts notes that Shaw revisited Christchurch (NZ) later in 1867. The following year he was living in Sydney, at 128 Burton Street, when the Sydney Morning Herald reported: 'Mr Shaw, well known as an engraver, has commenced an attentive study of lush vegetation and is preparing to give us some truthful representations of it. He has made a pretty little sketch of Willoughby Falls, on the North Shore, and has succeeded in catching the general characteristics of the scene very well … if … enabled to be as steady and faithful a copyist of nature as, graver in hand, he has been of works of art, he will produce some very valuable pictures of Australian scenery’.
He showed three landscapes – Harbour View, from Double Bay , On the Manning River and Macleay Heads and Trial Bay – at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, together with a painting titled Cavalier and Ladye which was disqualified because it was not an original work. Then living at 160 Castlereagh Street, he remained there throughout the 1870s. At the 1877 exhibition of the New South Wales Academy of Art he showed a watercolour, The Bass Rock (for sale at 20 guineas), a 'crayon’ portrait of A. Roberts MD, and an oil painting, The Pets (12 guineas). Said to have been a photographer in Edinburgh, G.B. Shaw is not known to have practised professionally in Australia. The photographs used as the basis of his portrait lithographs were not necessarily taken by him.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 March 1812
- Summary
- In order to perfect his artistic skills George Baird Shaw was sent to the Academy of Fine Arts at Trieste, Italy. He was awarded the 5-guinea prize for the best South Australian oil landscape painting at the South Australian Society of Arts Eleventh Annual Exhibition in 1867.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 September 1883
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude52.083333 Longitude-2.75 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Herefordshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, lithographer, explorer, author and policeman, was born in Herefordshire on 12 March 1812.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography .
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 March 1812
- Summary
- George Hamilton was a painter, illustrator, lithographer, explorer, author and policeman. He exhibited with the South Australian Society of Arts. Hamilton died in 1883.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2 August 1883
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude45.71305295 Longitude-73.42693978 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Quebec, Canada, Quebec (Canada)
- Biography
- watercolourist, soldier, settler and policeman, was born on 18 August 1811 in Quebec, Canada, eldest son of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Zouch and his second wife Ann, née Ritchie. Educated at the Royal Military College in 1826-28, then commissioned ensign into the 4th (King’s Own) Regiment, he came to Sydney in the Asia on 2 December 1831. He was promoted lieutenant on 1 July 1833 and the next year placed in command of the mounted police at Bathurst. On 29 December 1836, in Holy Trinity Church, Kelso, near Bathurst, he married Maria, sixth and youngest daughter of Captain Richard Brooks and his wife Charlotte. The wedding reception was held at Alloway Bank, the home of his friend Captain John Piper.
When his regiment was posted to India, Captain Zouch sold his commission and retired to the land, living on Maria’s property, Ashby, south of Bungendore near Lake George. Locally renowned for his horsemanship and for the horses he bred and raced, Zouch also sketched. A watercolour dated 1846 (private collection) depicts the home of Hugh Gordon , Manar, near Braidwood. It shows the homestead in the distance and two Aborigines with their dogs camping in the foreground scrub. The trees and the Aborigines are peculiarly scaled but the architectural details of house and outbuildings are competently handled and informatively detailed, Zouch clearly having more expertise in architectural and surveying drawing than in view painting (the massive eucalypts framing the image are not at all conventionally picturesque in effect). This is his only identified sketch but others may remain with descendants of landed Protestant families in the district.
Zouch was appointed assistant commissioner of Crown lands on the Turon diggings in 1851-53 then returned to Goulburn as superintendent of mounted police for the southern districts. He supervised the Gundagai and Braidwood gold escorts and was in charge when the anti-Chinese riots erupted on the Lambing Flat (Young) goldfields in 1860-61. He became superintendent of all police in the south-east in 1862, a time when bushranging was rampant and Ben Hall’s gang active in his district.
On 28 October 1883 Zouch died of sunstroke at his home near Goulburn and was buried in the Church of England section of Goulburn Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, four sons and three daughters, his eldest and third sons and his second daughter all marrying into the Throsby family of Bong Bong.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 18 August 1811
- Summary
- Superintendent Zouch was in charge when the anti-Chinese riots erupted on the Lambing Flat (Young) goldfields in 1860-61. Zouch's only identified sketch is a watercolour dated 1846 which depicts the home of Hugh Gordon, Manar, near Braidwood, NSW.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28 October 1883
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England
- Biography
- This record is a stub. You can help out by adding more detail.
Writers:
staffcontributor
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. c.1810
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1883
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude52.7136471 Longitude-8.55336091 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Springfield, County Clare, Ireland
- Biography
- amateur photographer and doctor of medicine, came to South Australia from Springfield, County Clare, Ireland, with his wife and family and settled at Kapunda. Dr and Mrs Blood remained there for the rest of their lives apart from a two- to three-year-long visit to New South Wales in the 1860s to stay with their eldest son, William, when Dr Blood appears to have taken up photography. As well as being the first official doctor at the Kapunda copper-mines and first resident general practitioner in the district, Blood became renowned as an enthusiastic amateur photographer: 'Most of his friends had to submit themselves to the ordeal.’ In the 1860s he probably organised his photographic supplies through Stephen Nixon or Nixon brothers . During the 1870s he used a large plate camera especially made for him by the then resident Kapunda professional photographer, James Uren.
Blood was mayor of Kapunda when the Duke of Edinburgh visited the town and the mines in 1867, but the official photographic record of this momentous occasion was taken by Stephen Nixon. A carte-de-visite from the firm of Blood & Nixon must date from the 1880s, when the partners would have been Dr Blood’s youngest son, Johnny (John Henry Smyth Blood) – known to have had a short fling as a professional photographer before settling into a long career in the Post Office – and Stephen Nixon’s son, Charles.
Dr Blood was a long-serving officer in the local Volunteer Force. As well, he was famous throughout the district as a prodigious snuff-taker. He and his wife had nine children. Their six girls were educated by an Irish governess, Miss Howe, who lived with the family and became Mrs Blood’s companion after Dr Blood died, on or about 30 March 1883.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1808
- Summary
- Kapunda, South Australia's first resident general practitioner, Blood was also a keen amateur photographer who was said to submit most of his friends to the ordeal of being photographed. Blood was mayor of Kapunda when the Duke of Edinburgh visited the town and surrounding mines in 1867.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.30 March 1883
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1883-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and dentist, practised as a dentist in England for eighteen years (mainly in London) after serving his apprenticeship with a Mr Helsby of Manchester. Norman came to South Australia in the Taglion in 1844 and opened a surgery in Wright Street, Adelaide on 5 October, announcing the colony’s first dental practice in the South Australian Register that day. By December 1845 he had also opened a daguerreotype studio in King William Street, Adelaide with C.A.F. Heseltine . Considered to be South Australia’s first photographic business, it lasted only a few months. Heseltine joined Schohl in 1846 and Norman reverted to dentistry, moving his surgery into Belle Vue House on North Terrace in July 1847 and remaining in practice there for almost thirty-seven years (assisted by his son Roger , who succeeded him as name partner in 1878). Robert Norman died on 31 October 1883 and was buried at Normanville.
Norman and his wife Sarah, née Hayes, daughter of a London dentist, had six sons and two daughters. Three of the sons – Roger, Leslie and Herbert Hayes Norman – also became dentists. As well as photography, in which he apparently retained an amateur interest and taught at least his son Herbert to take daguerreotypes, Norman had a wide range of talents and cultural interests. Chapman states that he spoke Gaelic, French and Italian, possessed a fine tenor voice and was highly musical, was fond of literature and a 'scholar’ of Shakespeare, played an excellent game of billiards and was considered an accomplished swordsman.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1807
- Summary
- A photographer and dentist. He spent the majority of his life practising as a dentist however he did open Australia's first photographic business. He taught one of his sons how to take a daguerreotype and had a wide range of cultural interests.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31 October 1883
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter and photographic colourist, was born in England. Aged two, he came to Victoria with his parents who were attracted by the gold discoveries. The family settled in Melbourne. While an extremely young student at what became the Royal Melbourne Technical College, John worked as a colourist with the Melbourne photographic firm of Johnstone & O’Shannessy . In 1867 he was employed as 'artist in watercolours’ with the Adelaide Photographic Company then managed by H. Davis ; his senior colourist colleague was Ebenezer Wake Cook . He remained with the firm for about three years while attending painting classes in Adelaide. In 1867 69 he was listed as a professional artist of Carrington Street. At the 1873 London International Exhibition Mr Upton of Adelaide showed 'Specimen of Coloured Photograph by the Photographic Company’ in the South Australian court.
John Upton may have accompanied his exhibit to London since he left for Europe at about this time and enrolled as a student at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. His oil painting, Peasant Girl at the Shrine (1876), purchased by the Art Gallery of South Australia in 1883, was painted at the end of his Munich studies according to J. B. Mather , who considered it a splendid technical performance for such a young painter. Then Upton went to London, undertook further study at the South Kensington Schools and became a professional portrait painter. His oil painting of a girl’s head (AGSA) is possibly the Study of a Head exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881, the year Upton returned to Adelaide having been appointed (on Sir Edward Poynter’s recommendation) to the newly created position of painting master at the Adelaide School of Design attached to the Art Gallery of South Australia. He proved too ill to begin teaching and after some months reputedly returned to Munich, where he is said to have died soon after.
During this brief period in Adelaide, Upton painted several formal oil portraits of local citizens, including Sir Robert Torrens, premier of South Australia (c.1881, NLA), and Abraham Abrahams, chairman of the Board of Governors of the South Australian Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery. The latter portrait, commissioned by the board, was presented to Abrahams in 1881 for the gallery’s collections.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1850
- Summary
- John A. Upton was a professional painter and photographic colourist of the late 19th Century. Upton studied at the Royal Melbourne Technical College and the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and his work is held in the Art Gallery of South Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1882
- Age at death
- 32
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer, economist, logician, amateur botanist and musician, was born on 1 September 1835 in Liverpool, England, ninth of the 11 children of Thomas Jevons, an iron merchant, and Mary Anne, née Roscoe.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 September 1835
- Summary
- Nineteenth century sketcher, amateur photographer, economist, logician, amateur botanist and musician. Jevon's took photographs of people and scenery around Sydney and the Braidwood-Araluen goldfields.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13 August 1882
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude21 Longitude78 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- India
- Biography
- sketcher and amateur photographer, naval officer and politician, was born in India, son of Arthur Pooley Onslow of the East India Company and Rosa Roberta, née Macleay. He came to Sydney in 1838 to stay with his grandfather Alexander Macleay (father of Fanny Macleay ), rejoining his family in England in 1841. In 1847 he entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman in the Howe , was promoted lieutenant in 1852 and commander in 1863. Having served in HMS Herald on the survey of north-eastern Australia in 1857-61, he returned to England and served in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean. Arthur Onslow came back to Sydney on sick leave in 1864. He married Elizabeth , only child of James and Emily Macarthur , on 31 January 1867 and retired from the navy with the rank of post captain in 1871. A pair of fine photographs in the Camden Park Albums showing Arthur and Elizabeth Onslow before their marriage were taken by William Hetzer . He and Elizabeth and their growing family lived at the Macarthur property, Camden Park, and the family name ultimately became Macarthur-Onslow.
Photographs taken by Onslow during the Herald voyage were included in the Camden Park albums (Mitchell Library), re-attributed to him by Newton after long being given to his wife’s bachelor uncle, Sir William Macarthur , who also lived at Camden Park and who collected the photographs. In particular, Newton attributes all the Western Australian photographs to Onslow, including good close-up portraits of Aborigines at King George Sound, e.g. Native Woman King George’s Sound 1858 , Native Women Albany King George’s Sound 1858. On 7 February 1858, he noted in his Journal (Mitchell Library):
There are a great many natives about at this time of the year most of them are out in the bush catching kanga. On Wednesday I went ashore with Milson and we commenced photographing. In fact I had great trouble in getting them to sit as they were afraid that it’d cause their death. But on seeing me take of the [M’Hails?] and by [crossing?] them they pluck’d up courage enough to let bring the lens to focus on them but they are bad sitters. I have not yet been very successful but tomorrow I will try again. [Excerpt as transcribed in a Tim McCormick 1990s sale catalogue which was offering two other prints of the WA native women, also with a Macarthur family provenance.]
They were probably the first photographs taken at King George Sound and the first to be taken in Western Australia outside Perth. (These works have previously been attributed to Matthew Fortescue Moresby who was thought to have taken them when aboard the Iris in 1858)
As well as being an enthusiastic photographer – one of the Sydney circle of gentlemen amateurs whose ranks included Moresby and Joseph and Ernest Docker – Onslow was a competent if conventional landscape sketcher. A few attributed examples survive among work by his wife and children in family sketchbooks and albums. His contribution to photography is of much greater importance yet was long forgotten, as all the photographs in the Macarthur Albums were previously attributed to their collector, William Macarthur. During his lifetime Onslow was best known for his public life as a politician, holding the seat of Camden from 1869 until he retired in 1881. Any late connection with photography was slighter. A devout Anglican, it was Onslow in his role of trustee who denounced Henry Barnes for selling obscene photographs at the Australian Museum in 1874. He died of paralysis in January 1882, survived by his wife, six sons and one of their two daughters.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1833
- Summary
- During his lifetime Onslow was best known as a politician, holding the seat of Camden for 12 years, but he was also an enthusiastic photographer. Onslow is thought to have taken the first photographs of King George Sound in Western Australia in 1858.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- January 1882
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, UK
- Biography
- painter and professional photographer, was born in Norwich, England, eldest son of Joel Fox, a furrier and a prominent member of the Jewish community, and his first wife, Eliza. Fox’s father was a native of Lissa, Prussia (now Leszno, Poland), who had come to Norwich in 1816 aged about thirteen, was naturalised in 1846 and remained there until his death in 1872. Alexander Fox came to Melbourne in search of gold in 1852. He married Rosetta, eldest daughter of Solomon Phillips and Caroline, née Solomon, in Melbourne on 20 September 1854 – the Phillipses being a cultured and devout Melbourne Jewish family. Alexander and Rosetta had six sons and a daughter, their second youngest child being the painter Emanuel Phillips Fox.
After unsuccessfully pursuing gold on the Bendigo diggings, Alexander Fox opened his Daguerrean Gallery in Bridge Street, Sandhurst (Bendigo) in 1856. The Bendigo Advertiser of 9 September 1856 noted that Fox’s daguerreotype likenesses were 'for accuracy, beauty and freshness in detail equal if not superior to anything of the sort seen in the colony’. He soon began casting an eye on the colourful passing scene; in 1857, experimenting with the new collodiotype process of wet-plate photography, he produced a series of views of Sandhurst streets, the first known photographic record of early Bendigo. He also made a tour of the local goldfields in 1856, taking mining photographs. Some of these were later drawn on stone by A.J. Stopps and published locally as prints and letterheads by J.J. Blundell & Co. and George Slater (examples Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales; La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria).
In 1858 Fox moved from Bridge Street to View Point (his former studio was taken over by the photographers Morgan and Fill ). His panorama of View Point was considered by the Bendigo Advertiser to be 'a triumph of the art—the most minute details being brought out sharp and distinct, the shades beautifully mellowed, and happily wanting that cloudy appearance in parts which too often disfigures these productions’. This is most probably Fox’s Photographic Panoramic Views of Sandhurst—Pall Mall (undated) now in the Mitchell Library. Fox was a member of the Sandhurst Hebrew congregation in 1855. Also a Freemason, he was elected Worshipful Master of the Corinthian Lodge at Sandhurst in 1858.
After a brief partnership with Christian Ludwig Qwist at View Point in 1859, Fox moved to Melbourne. By 1862 he had established a photographic company at Collins Street with W. Vasie Simons . This, however, failed. Mrs Fox and the children had to be financially supported by her brothers, who finally made their help conditional on the promise that Fox would remove himself from their lives. He moved to Swanston Street, but his photographic practice never recovered. On 13 August 1866 he wrote to his wife from the Sydney and Melbourne Photographic Studio, Collins Street East, Melbourne, that he was lonely and penniless. A week later the Illustrated Melbourne Post published an engraving of The Melbourne Banking Company, Queen Street—from a Photograph by Mr Alexander Fox , but such work did not pay well.
Fox apparently hoped to change his fortunes by painting. 'I can paint so well that my former productions seem daubs’, he wrote to his wife: 'I have finished one this morning, that makes two I have done here on Sundays. I shall get paid for them this week’. The 1867 Melbourne Post Office Directory lists Fox solely as an 'artist’, but he soon reverted to photography. In 1867-68 he was in Sydney, employed by E. Montagu Scott to operate his photography studio, the Sydney and Melbourne Photographic Company, while Scott painted transparencies for the royal visit of the Duke of Edinburgh. Listed at Pitt Street in 1868, Fox then left Newcastle in July 1868 on the Lady Dufferin for San Francisco. He was in partnership with Charles William Symons in Salt Lake City from 1874 until his death in 1882. He is buried in the Mt Olivet cemetery.
Frank Cusack
Writers:
Cusack (foundation biography), Frank
butchm
fishel
newtog
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1828
- Summary
- A professional photographer, he produced the first known photographic record of early Bendigo but later sought to change his financial fortunes by painting. In 1868 he went America and died in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1882.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1882
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, explorer and civil engineer, was born on 7 April 1821 in Dublin, third son of Major Benjamin Ball of the 40th Regiment of Foot. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Early in 1839 he came to Sydney where he practised his profession of civil engineer for eight years. Ball’s lifestyle was bohemian and somewhat nomadic, unlike his elder brother, the Right Honourable J.T. Ball, whose distinguished career included the position of lord chancellor of Ireland.
In 1847 Adam Gustavus Ball helped overland a mob of cattle to Adelaide, then remained in South Australia working as a surveyor and taking part in expeditions of exploration. He was known on every outlying sheep and cattle station for his genial disposition and his skill with a pencil. His sketches include incidents such as cattle musters, kangaroo hunts and camp scenes, all executed with verve in a bold, free style. Unfortunately, an accident prevented the continuation of these sorties into the bush.
Ball exhibited with the Society of Arts at Adelaide in 1859 and 1860. Many of his sketches were reproduced as photographs by Townsend Duryea and G.J. Freeman in the 1860s and early 1870s and apparently sold well. Numerous originals survive, including at least two large watercolours of a kangaroo hunt (NLA). The Art Gallery of South Australia holds The Cattle Run (c.1865, w/c), Dog Chasing a Kangaroo (1860, w/c), and two pencil drawings wryly captioned ' Ah! By the By! Do you want many wool bales this season? ' and ' Coves what I know better than rarey '. These last were probably drawn during the drought of 1864-65, which bitterly disproved Goyder 's optimistic estimates of the pastoral possibilities of the country along the Flinders Ranges.
Much of Ball’s work is only initialled 'A.G.B.’, such as an album of eight pencil drawings of Australian landscape and outback scenes, including another kangaroo hunt (1869-70, ATL) and two pencil drawings, Aborigine Hunting Emus and Aborigine Hunting Kangaroos (sold in 1983). A photograph of a pencil drawing of the death of the Victorian explorer Robert O’Hara Burke carrying these initials and titled 'When I am Dead, Place My Revolver in My Hand and Leave Me Unburied as I Lie’ (1871, ML) was, somewhat incongruously, included in Duryea’s Adelaide Album (1866) otherwise filled with photographic views of Adelaide streets and buildings.
Ball’s elegant design for the McKinley monument at Gawler, South Australia, was unfortunately rejected by the selection committee, which chose to erect a monument to the design of the architect John Rudall in 1874-75 instead. Adam Gustavus Ball died at his residence in Childers Street, North Adelaide, on 22 August 1882, aged 61. He was survived by his wife and two daughters.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 April 1821
- Summary
- Like so many artists of the period, Ball's job as a civil engineer allowed him to travel throughout South Australia recording scenes of outback life and the Australian landscape.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 August 1882
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Watercolorist, architect, surveyor, civil engineer, schoolmaster and entrepreneur who was born in London. After training as an architect and civil engineer he worked on the London to Birmingham railway. He then had a practice in Manchester 1848-53 and London 1854-62. He married and had a large family. Browne was convicted of forging money orders in 1862 and sentenced to ten years transportation arriving in Australia in 1863 on the Lord Dalhousie. Years later he claimed he was only guilty of shielding his wife. His black hair, sallow complexion and lean visage engendered the nickname 'Satan’ to distinguish him from all the other Tom Browns. He was employed in the office of works of the Convict Establishment. At the time they were building the Lunatic Asylum. He painted a sketch of it soon after completion about 1865. He received his ticket of leave that year and was self-employed. He became a schoolmaster at Ferguson until his conditional pardon was granted in 1869. He then set himself up as an architect and land agent in Fremantle. He was a supervisor of a gang working on the Geraldton Northampton Railway but fell foul of the new Director of Public Works James H. Thomas in 1876. In 1872 Browne became a free man. He designed schemes for harbour works and railways in the colony but had trouble getting any accepted because of the stigma of bond class and the animosity of Thomas who wrote to backers to discredit him. Browne had an office in Hay Street, Perth. He restored the old mill on the Hamersley Estate in South Perth and developed it as a pleasure resort with hotel facilities and gardens. Alta Gardens was opened in April 1880. The Inquirer of 21 April 1880 has a full description. Alta Gardens Hotel became Perth’s most fashionable social centre. Browne however was in financial difficulties and tried for criminal activities over land transactions. He committed suicide in prison before being sentenced.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1821
- Summary
- Watercolorist, architect, surveyor, civil engineer, schoolmaster and entrepreneur born in London. Browne was convicted of forging money orders and sentenced to ten years transportation arriving in Australia in 1863. In 1880 he restored the old mill on the Hamersley Estate in South Perth and developed it as a pleasure resort with hotel facilities and gardens named Alta Gardens.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1882
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- watercolourist, architect, surveyor, civil engineer and schoolmaster, was born on 7 April 1818 in London. After training as an architect and civil engineer, he worked on the London to Birmingham railway under (Sir) Charles Fox from 1832 39, then with William Nicholson, a civil engineer of Manchester, to whose practice he succeeded in 1848 (according to Browne in 1878). He had his own London practice in 1854 62. During this period Browne married and had a large family. Then, at the London Central Criminal Court in 1862, he was convicted of forging money orders and sentenced to ten years’ transportation to Western Australia, arriving in the Lord Dalhousie on 28 December 1863. Years later he stated that he was guilty only of shielding his wife.
For eighteen months Browne was employed in the Office of Works Department of the Convict Establishment at Fremantle, working on E.Y.W. Henderson 's large lunatic asylum building then in progress (erected 1861-65). His watercolour of the completed building, The New Lunatic Asylum, and Invalid Depot, Fremantle, Western Australia , was painted in 1866 (ML). After receiving his ticket of leave on 12 June 1865, Browne was self-employed. It seems that at least two extant watercolours were commissioned at this time: an attributed view of houses in the High Street, Fremantle (WA Museum), and Ravenswood Hall, Murray River (RWAHS). At the end of 1865 he was appointed schoolmaster at Ferguson, resigning about the time he gained his conditional pardon, on 27 December 1869.
After a brief period away from the town, possibly at the abortive Peterwnagy gold-rush, Browne set himself up as an architect and land agent in Fremantle. Because of the numerous Tom Brown(e)s around he acquired the distinguishing nickname of 'Satan’, a reference to his black hair, sallow complexion and lean visage. His sentence expired on 11 May 1872 and he was declared a free man, an expiree.
The major public work being proposed for Fremantle from mid 1869 to January 1875 was the Harbour Improvement Scheme, for which three tenders were received: from Browne, S.W. Bickley and from the surveyor and director of Public Works, Malcolm Fraser (who also happened to chair the commission which was to award the contract). Predictably, Fraser’s tender was chosen, but the new Governor Robinson persuaded his council to over-rule the recommendation and send Browne’s cheaper scheme to London for professional appraisal by Sir John Coode, a leading civil engineer. In the interim Browne was appointed inspector of works on the Geraldton to Northampton railway. He started planning a connecting system of light railways throughout Western Australia. Difficulties soon arose with the organisation and finances of both projects and Browne was dismissed in 1876.
By then Browne had cut off all English ties (his wife being dead and his children indifferent). In October 1875 he married Mary Ann (Polly) Letch in the Fremantle Congregational Church but soon was facing problems with this marriage. Their first child, a daughter, died of sunstroke when she was six months old and, according to Browne, Polly took to heavy drinking. They moved to Perth, but by then no civil engineer’s position in government service (especially in the major towns) was open to an expiree. He made a precarious living as an architect and land agent, one of his commissions being to draw a bird’s-eye view of the Jarrahdale Timber Company’s works. He also spent much time and effort on a plan for a new road and traffic bridge. Again this came to nothing, mainly because of a vicious personal vendetta against him (and his status as an expiree) by the new director of Public Works, James Thomas.
Nevertheless, Browne continued to survive as a private land agent in Perth until 20 April 1880, when he opened a grand hotel and pleasure garden around a disused mill in South Perth renamed the Alta Gardens Hotel. This became Perth’s most fashionable social centre. Yet, despite a roaring trade, because Browne had no capital the venture was always in debt. On 11 January 1882 he was found guilty of criminal activities over a land transaction in connection with the hotel. In prison that night, waiting to be sentenced, he committed suicide by taking strychnine. He left a note blaming his (second) wife for his troubles. The warders were censured for not having searched him and Detective Sergeant Rowe – sole witness in his defence to whom Browne wrote his last letter – was reprimanded for befriending a criminal. Polly Browne died in 1937, aged eighty-six. Alta Gardens became a poultry farm and was later subdivided. The old mill still stands.
Writers:
Erickson, RicaKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 April 1818
- Summary
- A nineteenth-century watercolourist and architect who produced paintings of buildings in Fremantle, WA.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 January 1882
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude50.8746139 Longitude0.005115324 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lewes, Sussex, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and coach-maker, was born at Lewes, Sussex. He was living in Adelaide by 1850. His home was at Norwood in 1857, the year he showed a painting at the first exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts, variously referred to as Portrait of an Aboriginal Native Female , Black Girl and Portrait of a Native . This was entered in competition for the society’s major prize and was placed second after The First Steamer on the Murray and the Surprise of the Natives by J.H. Adamson , the judges being two prominent Adelaide citizens, Thomas Wilson and John Brown. Starnes exhibited three more of his paintings in the society’s October 1859 exhibition: Aboriginal Female Head , Aboriginal Man’s Head and Portrait of a Lady . He showed Prince of Wales and Past and Present in the 1861 exhibition but then seems not to have exhibited again for nine years. In the interim he was listed in Adelaide directories as a coach-maker of Beulah Road, Norwood.
The fourteenth annual exhibition of the Society of Arts in 1870 promised a great Starnes resurgence: W. Starnes painted and exhibited Volunteer and Oysters , H. Starnes showed Caught Napping and Miss Starnes exhibited her painting, The Squire’s Daughter (although it seems likely that W. and H. Starnes were the same person – William Henry. Presumably, Miss Starnes was his sister.) Unfortunately, no further works followed. William Starnes moved to North Terrace, Adelaide in 1871. Statton states that he married Sarah Ann on 5 July 1876 and that there were two children of the marriage. He died on 5 April 1882.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- A painter and coach-maker, Starnes exhibited with the South Australian Society of Arts. His enthusiasm one year lead him to show works under two names - perhaps he thought this approach would give him a better chance at winning.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 April 1882
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland
- Biography
- sketcher, surveyor and pastoralist, fourth son of Stewart Ryrie and Ann, née Stewart, was born in Scotland in 1812. When his father was appointed to the New South Wales Commissariat in 1825, Ryrie junior accompanied him and his stepmother, Isabella, on board the Triton to Sydney, landing on 28 October. Ryrie senior served as deputy commissary-general in Sydney for several years, after which the family settled on a property in the Monaro district of New South Wales (now ACT). Ryrie junior married Janet Mackenzie on 26 April 1845 and remained in the Monaro district until his death on 16 October 1882.
In a letter dated 2 December 1839 Deputy Surveyor-General S.A. Perry asked Ryrie to travel into the Snowy Mountains region to make a 'comprehensive examination of country which has not yet come under regular survey’. Ryrie made four such journeys during which he drew crude topographical views of the mountain ranges, some in ink but most in pencil (ML). On 15 February 1840, he crossed the Crackenback River and climbed the Rams Head Range to the point where Kosciusko Chalet stands today. There, he recorded in his diary, 'on gaining the summit saw one of the highest points covered with snow to be distant to North West about three or four miles, but finding it too late to reach that point, turned S.W.’. Thus Ryrie missed climbing to Australia’s highest point on the very day Count Strzelecki claimed he had ascended and named Mount Kosciusko.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1812
- Summary
- Stewart Ryrie, sketcher, surveyor and pastoralist, was asked by Deputy Surveyor-General S.A. Perry in 1839 to travel into the Snowy Mountains region in order to make a 'comprehensive examination of country which has not yet come under regular survey'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 October 1882
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and clergyman, was born in London on 12 September 1812. Ordained deacon in 1838, he married Anne Ireland in London that same year. En route to Van Diemen’s Land they landed in December at Sydney and Bishop W.G. Broughton, who was very short of clergy, induced them to remain. After briefly acting as minister to the penal establishments Walsh was appointed to the new Sydney parish of St Laurence in April 1839, his predecessor having proved to be an alcoholic. In September he was ordained priest by Broughton with whom he forged a firm friendship; the bishop secured a Lambeth Master of Arts degree for him in 1843. Walsh worked vigorously to raise funds to complete his parish church, holding services in a storeroom in Elizabeth Street until Christ Church was consecrated in 1845. In the same year, with the assistance of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, the successful Christ Church School was founded.
A member of the High Church Cambridge Camden Society, Walsh made Christ Church a centre of liturgical revival and, somewhat belatedly, attempted to convert his rudimentary pointed Gothic church building (not begun by him) into an archaeologically correct embodiment of the English ecclesiologists’ architectural ideals. The result was not entirely successful, although when Edmund Blacket’s tower was added to the front it disguised earlier sins of ignorance such as the box-like form and over-large central entrance door. Walsh was involved in the erection of several other Sydney churches in a more 'correct’ style, all designed by Blacket, another close friend and the regular organist at Christ Church. The two took drawing lessons together from Conrad Martens in 1847, an entry in Martens’s account book recording that on 11 January they had paid £7 for joint lessons. Walsh also paid Martens 5 guineas for private classes on 24 August 1847.
On 27 September 1853 Walsh rode to Mount Tomah with Lord Henry Scott , Lord Schomberg Kerr and Rev. Henry Stobart . All were keen sketchers, yet it was only Walsh’s 'one or two sketches’ that Stobart recorded in his journal as having been made on the trip. A watercolour, View nr. Sydney by the Revd. W. Walsh is in the collection of drawings Lord Henry made in Australia (Palace House, Beaulieu, Hampshire: microfilm, Mitchell Library). The three visitors stayed in Sydney with 'our very kind friends, the Walshes and Naylors, who have a house between them’. This was the large (extant) Cleveland House at the Rocks attributed to Francis Greenway .
Walsh’s health seems always to have been delicate and in July 1850 he took leave of absence on health grounds and returned to England. There he raised funds for a peal of bells for Christ Church and gave an illustrated lecture to the Ecclesiological Society (formerly Cambridge Camden Society) on 'The ecclesiology of New South Wales’. The sketches he used in his talk may be the unsigned pencil and wash drawings now in a scrapbook in the State Library of NSW (Dixson Galleries DG*15) since they include most of the buildings discussed. In 1855 Walsh was a member of the Sydney Sketching Club (with Martens as president), the sole qualification for admission being 'a certain degree of competency to sketch from nature’. In 1864 he again took leave for health reasons and this time remained in England, resigning his Sydney parish in 1867. Through the influence of another friend, G.A. Selwyn, former bishop of New Zealand who had recently been appointed to the See of Lichfield, Walsh was found some English livings. He kept up colonial contacts and in 1872 sent a watercolour, Asia in a Cyclone , to the annual exhibition of the Agricultural Society of New South Wales, where it was shown non-competitively.
Towards the end of his life Walsh was drawn back to New South Wales, arriving in 1880 and living at Bodalla with the family of his old friend T.S. Mort. When Blacket’s Mort Memorial Chapel was completed in 1881, Walsh resigned his English positions and became the first incumbent but died at Bodalla soon afterwards, in December 1882.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 September 1812
- Summary
- sketcher and clergyman. Walsh was involved in the erection of several Sydney churches. He was a keen sketcher and a member of the Sydney Sketching Club.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- December 1882
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude51.58607595 Longitude-0.80137568 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and surveyor, was born on 8 June 1808 at Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, son of the quartermaster of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. After being educated at Sandhurst, he joined the Ordnance Survey and was appointed assistant surveyor in Van Diemen’s Land. He arrived at Hobart Town aboard the Thames at the end of 1829 and there worked under Surveyor-General George Frankland , who is vividly recalled in Calder’s series of newspaper reminiscences (published as Recollections of Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin in Tasmania in 1984).
On 8 January 1838 Calder married Elizabeth Margaret Pybus; they had three daughters and two sons. He worked as a surveyor in Tasmania for more than forty years, exploring, measuring land, drawing up plans and official reports and making roads. Surveyor-general from September 1859 until June 1870 (when the position was abolished), he was then granted a pension and the office of sergeant-at-arms at the House of Assembly, Hobart. As well as writing for the press about the personalities and early history of the colony late in life, Calder was the author of many reports on local conditions and industries. He published The Woodlands, etc. of Tasmania (London 1874) and wrote on the Tasmanian Aborigines, their language and customs, pleading for the use of their place-names. He died at Hobart on 20 February 1882.
Calder was a subscriber to the Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition in 1858, but lent only an oil painting of Ben Lomond (Scotland) by the British artist Clarkson Stanfield. He was, however, both artist and exhibitor of a plan of Hobart Town at the 1866-67 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. Surviving sketches of Tasmanian scenery which relate to his training and experience as a surveyor represent the height of his artistic ambitions; an attributed, undated oil painting of Port Phillip Bay signed 'J. Calder’ was undoubtedly by John Calder .
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 June 1808
- Summary
- Sketcher and surveyor in Tasmania for more than forty years.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20 February 1882
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude53.5105252 Longitude11.076282 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ludwigslust, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany
- Biography
- miniaturist, sketcher, religious artist, chemist and geologist, was born in Ludwigslust, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany, son of August Christian and Johanna Friderika Abel.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1802
- Summary
- This chemist, mineralogist and amateur artist had an interest in religious art. A German immigrant, he settled in Ballarat, becoming an active member of the Ballarat Mechanics Institute. His art practice included watercolour as well as mixed media featuring minerals and metal.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 July 1882
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude50.818373 Longitude-0.3933519 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- West Tarring, Sussex, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, settler, merchant and banker, eldest of the eleven children of Frances and Thomas Henty, a farmer and banker of West Tarring, Sussex, arrived at Fremantle on 12 October 1829 on board the Caroline , chartered by his father to establish the family in the Swan River Colony. Soon afterwards Henty was appointed magistrate for Fremantle and was granted vast tracts of land. His fiancée, Charlotte Carter (1806-68) of Worthing, Sussex, joined him in Western Australia in April 1831; they were married in Fremantle on 2 May. Disillusioned with their prospects, they left for Launceston early in 1832 where Henty set up business as a general merchant. Bankrupted in 1846, the Hentys and their seven children returned to England in 1848. In 1851 the family returned to Australia, this time to Melbourne, where James started a business. The following year he was elected representative of Portland in the Legislative Council and remained a member of the Upper House for the rest of his life. He died on 12 January 1882.
Henty’s artistic activity was confined to amateur sketching. A sketchbook containing four Western Australian pencil views is in the possession of a descendant. The views depict Fremantle in 1829 , Rottnest Island (1829 and 1832) and Albany, King George’s Sound (1832).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1800
- Summary
- Sketcher, settler, merchant and banker, Henty's artistic activity was confined to amateur sketching, done mainly during his time in Western Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 January 1882
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-33.82117935 Longitude151.0179687 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Elizabeth Farm, Parramatta, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Biography
- amateur photographer(?), collector and landowner, was the youngest son of the pioneer colonists John Macarthur and Elizabeth, née Veale. He was born at Elizabeth Farm, Parramatta, New South Wales. After being educated by a private tutor and in England, William spent most of his life living with his brother James, James’s wife, Emily , and their daughter Elizabeth at Camden Park, which he had inherited jointly with James and where he had his own bachelor wing. He became well known as a sheep-breeder, vigneron, collector, horticulturalist and politician. He exhibited prize wool and wood specimens from New South Wales in the 1851 Great Exhibition in London and won many prizes for other primary products in colonial exhibitions, especially wine and wood. He was a commissioner for New South Wales at the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition and was knighted in 1856.
Although pastoral and agricultural interests were dominant, William Macarthur played an important role in many of Sydney’s cultural institutions. He was on the committee of the Australian Museum from 1836 and a trustee from 1853; in 1870 he became a trustee of the Free Public Library. He was vice-president of the Acclimatisation Society of New South Wales in 1860, as well as being president, then senior vice-president of the Agricultural Society of New South Wales. He was a member of the Senate of Sydney University (1860-80) and a longstanding member of the New South Wales Parliament (1849-55 and 1864-1882), although neither an active nor interested politician.
Albums of 1850s photographs collected at Camden Park (Mitchell Library) have for many years been considered mainly Sir William’s work, although some photographs were clearly identified as having been taken by others when Jack Cato was allowed to remove them from the albums and inspect their backs. He assumed that the rest were Macarthur’s, including photographs of the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides and Sydney University. In fact, most of the overseas views were taken by Matthew Fortescue Moresby (some are initialled M.F.M.), while those of Sydney University are by John Smith . Views of other Sydney buildings are by W. Hetzer and R. Hunt and Hetzer took individual portraits of the Onslow family and William Macleay. Informal photographs of family groups at Camden Park seem to be all that remain to claim for Sir William. Now even these have been attributed to Arthur Onslow , the naval captain who married Sir William’s niece Elizabeth, although this has not yet been substantiated. The albums are being recatalogued by Alan Davies.
Writers:
Willis, Anne-Marie
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1800
- Summary
- Member of the famous colonial Macarthur family who may have been an amateur photographer. William was involved in numerous organisations and participated in several international exhibitions.
- Gender
- Unspecified
- Died
- 1882
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1798-01-01 End Date1882-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Goldsmith and orchardist who was born in England and probably did not practise as a goldsmith for some years. John Gresswell with his wife Henrietta, sailed out to the Swan River Colony in 1831 in the Jolly Rambler, a small trading vessel that he jointly owned with his partner, W. H. Harris. He opened a tavern as well as taking up agricultural land on Rottnest and other places. He later worked from his residence in Mount Street, which had commercial gardens stretching down to the river with arbours where patrons could come and sit. Here he also engaged in mercantile and other endeavours. Gresswell was a goldsmith of consummate skill, as a ledger for 1829-74 in the collection of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society attests. This details his London clients, numbering among them Storr & Mortimer who had a Royal Warrant.
The techniques he undertook were extensive, including engraving, filigree and cantille work. He mounted Chinese scent bottles, and set miniatures and pebbles as brooches, a 'standard gold embossed snake bracelet with large carbuncle garnet upon the head and ruby eyes 'was made, and a 'spider web brooch with a garnet centre’. For a Mr Mainwaring he set twenty-four emeralds in a coloured and chased-gold nautilus-shell pin. For Messrs. Payne & Sons, he mounted pink topaz and half-pearls in a gold-screw filigree clasp, and coloured gold for a necklace with Georgian chain festoons. For Storr & Mortimer he mounted Florentine mosaics as necklace clasps. Records of local work are sketchy. In 1832 he repaired a silver fork and an enamel and pearl brooch for Mr Stone, and a carnelian ring for a Mr Heaven. The next entry in this ledger is for 1874 when he made work for Henry Seeligson, an emancipist jeweller in St George’s Terrace. Gresswell was active until late in life but apparently only in a minor way. His major interest was in being a landowner. At present no work made by him has been identified, but English-made pieces that once belonged to Capel Brockman, née Bussell, are in a style Gresswell had been accustomed to making. Gresswell died, 'much revered’, in Perth in 1882 aged eighty-four. As a man of property he appears to have concentrated on his orchards and gardens, and his house on Mt Eliza. Whether this was by choice or from lack of opportunity in the goldsmithing field it is difficult to tell, but given the desire by many of the early settlers to acquire property and through it a rise in social status, it would seem logical that it was mostly by choice.
Writers:
Erickson, Dorothy (Dr)
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1798
- Summary
- Goldsmith and orchardist who was born in England who lived and worked in Perth in mid 1800s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1882
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-35.1718654 Longitude138.8360273 Start Date1848-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Macclesfield, SA, Australia
- Biography
- professional photographer(?) and photographic colourist, was born in Macclesfield, South Australia on 1 August 1848, twin eldest of the four children of the Adelaide lawyer Dr Ulrich Hübbe from Kiel, Germany, and Martha, née Gray from Glasgow, widow of a Swiss officer, Colonel Fuessli. In the mid-1860s Mary, as she was known, was working in Townsend Duryea 's Adelaide studio, presumably as a colourist, while John Hood was a camera operator. They married in 1869 and had at least four sons, several of whom also became photographers. Mary Hood died on 27 January 1881 and was buried in Brighton Cemetery (SA).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 August 1848
- Summary
- In the mid-1860s Martha Mary Hübbe was working in Townsend Duryea's Adelaide studio, presumably as a colourist. She married John Hood who was a camera operator in the studio.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27 January 1881
- Age at death
- 33
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- Richard Hall was the son of ‘Professor’ Robert Hall of Hindley Street, one of South Australia’s early photographers. He was born in Adelaide on 28 December 1845, nine years after the state was founded, and within months of the first photographs being taken in the colony.
When only 16 years old Richard Hall had a narrow escape when returning from practice at the rifle butts. The horse drawing his phaeton bolted down Hindley Street, throwing out the occupants, the empty vehicle then capsizing at Morphett Street and, being lightly constructed, it was a total wreck.
In March 1864 the Illustrated Melbourne Post published an engraving of Government House, Adelaide, engraved by Samuel Calvert from a stereoscopic photograph taken by Richard Hall, who by this time appears to have been working in his father’s studio in Hindley Street.
Another of Richard Hall’s photographs, copied by a less competent engraver, appeared in the Illustrated Melbourne Post for September 1865 with the caption ‘Mons. Vertelli walking across the Mount Lofty Waterfall on a wire’. The engraving was criticised by the Register for being ‘neither truthful nor spirited’, and for giving an incorrect representation of the scene for which there was no excuse, as a photograph of the wire-walking feat had been supplied to the ‘artist’.
At the South Australian Society of Arts annual exhibition in December 1865, when just twenty years old, Richard Hall was awarded two prizes: one for the best set of six photographic views; the other for the best set of six stereoscopic photographs.
Richard Hall’s photographer–father, Professor Robert Hall, died in August 1866, and references to a photographer named Hall after that date would almost certainly belong to Richard Hall. The photographers Hall & Edwards, Rundle Street, are listed in the directories for 1866 and 1867, and in January 1867 Thomas Jackson (q.v.) engaged ‘Mr Hall, the well-known photographer’, to take portraits for him. And towards the end of 1867 Hall & Freeman (q.v.) were taking portraits at Eden Valley and Tanunda.
When the process of photo-lithography was attracting attention in 1867, the Register reported that Richard Hall had photographically reduced a copy of Joseph Elliott’s Bygone Days, the negative of which had then been photo-lithographed by Penman and Galbraith. Although each page of the reduced copy was less than 3 × 2 inches in size, ‘every line and point, both of the words and music, is there, in almost microscopic minuteness …’
An unusual event was reported by the Port Lincoln correspondent of the Register in July 1868. A seal had come ashore ‘for the purpose of accouchement’, and after she had given birth ‘an excellent photograph of the seal and her young was taken by Mr Hall, photographer, late of Hindley Street, Adelaide’. The seal attracted a large crowd, was tied by rope at one stage, and handled by sightseers, eventually abandoning her offspring which later died.
A photographer making carte de visite portraits at Hookina in April 1871, and known only as ‘Mr Hall’ (q.v.), may have been Richard Hall.
The directories list Richard Hall, of Port Lincoln, as photographer for 1871–72; innkeeper for 1873; publican at the Northern Hotel 1874–76; then Pier Hotel 1877–79. It was about 1879, and possibly near the time of his departure for Adelaide, that Richard Hall made a panoramic photograph of Port Lincoln (Noye collection) – four whole-plate prints assembled to make a 30 × 5 inch view of the township and its harbour, a steamship at the jetty and Boston Island in the distance.
Richard Hall died on 29 September 1881, aged 35 years, while landlord of the Southern Cross Hotel, Adelaide.1
1Jill Statton (ed.) (1986), Biographical Index of South Australians, 1836–1885, South Australian Genealogy and Heraldry Society, p.648.
Text taken from:Noye, R.J. (2007) Dictionary of South Australian Photography 1845-1915, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide. CD-ROM, p.145.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Nerina_Dunt
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 28 December 1845
- Summary
- Richard Hall was the eldest son of photographer ‘Professor’ Robert Hall and Ruth, nee Smith. He won prizes for the best stereoscopic photographs at the ninth exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts in 1865, when apparently employed in his father's Adelaide studio. After his father’s death, Hall was in partnership with E.F. Edwards, initially based in Rundle Street, 1867-68, and later at Port Lincoln, 1871-72.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 November 1881
- Age at death
- 36
Details
Latitude51.0575 Longitude-1.3075 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hampshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, professional photographer, calligrapher, tutor, clerk, storekeeper and miner, was born in Hampshire, England on 22 March 1838, second son of John Noel Thurston and his wife, Eliza . He reached Sydney on 4 September 1853 as a passenger in the barque Ann Holzberg , his older brother John Bates Thurston (later Sir John, Governor of Fiji 1887-97) being a member of the crew. Horatio’s mother and three sisters joined him in Sydney on 23 December 1853. Horatio worked for a time on the New South Wales goldfields at Hanging Rock and Peel River diggings, in a merchant’s office at Sydney and as a storekeeper in Newcastle. Early in 1856 he moved to Mudgee as a storekeeper, briefly became tutor to the children of George Tailby, a squatter of Fernside, Rylstone, then was employed as an attorney’s clerk in Mudgee. On 9 June 1863 he married Tailby’s daughter Jane; they had ten children.
In 1867/1868 Horatio Thurston set up as a professional photographer and stationer in Mudgee. A studio portrait of his sister Emily survives from this period (p.c.). His brother John had taken lessons in photography at Sydney in 1864 before searching for botanical specimens in the Pacific Islands and Horatio possibly learned his trade at the same time. For a while John Thurston sold photographs in the Pacific Islands for a living, but Horatio’s Mudgee studio does not seem to have been as profitable. In 1870-71 he was town clerk at Mudgee, but he had reverted to being an attorney’s clerk by December 1871 when he gave this as his occupation on the birth certificate of his sixth and fourth surviving child (a 9-month-old son had died the previous January from inhaling a prairie-grass seed).
Later Horatio Thurston was appointed secretary and librarian of the Mudgee Mechanics Institute and appears to have made quite a success of these positions. It was reported that the Institute’s (School of Arts’) exhibit at the Mudgee Agricultural Show in March 1879 included 'a court of fine arts, &c., embracing some choice pictures and miniatures, penmanship, minerals, sericulture, conchology, and taxidermy, the work principally of H. Thurston, custodian of the School of Arts (who not only merited his prizes for the worth of his exhibits, his own work, but also praise for his efforts to make the School of Arts Exhibition all that it should be)’. He died at Mudgee on 6 July 1881 after a fall from a horse.
Writers:
Symons, Berry
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 March 1838
- Summary
- Mid-nineteenth-century photographer, though this was only one of his many trades, and not the most successful.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6 July 1881
- Age at death
- 43
Details
Latitude53.3806626 Longitude-1.4702278 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sheffield, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, professional photographer and prospector, was born in Sheffield, England. Moore states that he was a pupil of the popular English landscape painter and Royal Academician Thomas Creswick. Wright came to Melbourne in 1852 and that year won a gold medal for his View on the River Plenty (located just north of Melbourne) at the Victorian Industrial Exhibition. He was listed in the Melbourne Directory for 1853 as a landscape and portrait painter of 26 Queen Street. He may then have been a gold prospector at Bendigo, but by 1859 he was living in Back Street, Geelong. He certainly lived at Bendigo in the early 1860s, when he painted many views of the town and district such as Bendigo Valley and the panoramic Sandhurst in 1862 (o/c, Bendigo AG). Lithographs were made after some of these, including Sheepwash Creek, near Sandhurst (1863), drawn and lithographed by F. Cogné for Troedel 's Melbourne Album . A self-portrait in oils (c.1860) hangs in the Bendigo Art Gallery.
In 1864 Wright was listed as an artist of 3 McKenzie Street, Melbourne, but the following year his studio was at 236 Bourke Street, East Melbourne. He may then have visited New Zealand, but was back at Melbourne by 1866 when he showed seven paintings at the Intercolonial Exhibition, six being oil landscapes, mainly of New Zealand subjects. The seventh, a view of Wesley College, where he was employed as drawing master, was included in the category of architectural designs and engravings. In 1867 Wright was listed as both a painter and photographer and had acquired separate rooms in Bourke Street (no. 52) as a photographic studio. He retained both until 1872. From 1867 he also taught landscape painting at the Richmond Artisan’s School of Design in the evenings.
Wright painted several large allegorical transparencies for the Melbourne visit of the Duke of Edinburgh in November 1867. Neptune and Victoria featured at the Bull and Mouth Hotel, the Duke flanked by Britannia and Neptune adorned the Colonial Bank, and Buckley & Nunn’s shop displayed his female embodiments of Victoria, Britannia and Liberty welcoming the Duke. Completed in 1870, Wright’s full-length, life-size posthumous portrait of Rev. Dr D.J. Draper, the former headmaster of Wesley, must have been exceedingly flattering (and quite unlike the subject) as the Argus tactfully noted that he had evidently aimed to give an ideal representation of the man as his admirers remembered him rather than 'any mere photographic exactness of resemblance’. It still hangs at the school.
Although an infrequent public exhibitor during the 1860s, six of Wright’s landscape paintings were included in the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition, two oils and two watercolours of New Zealand and English subjects being lent by the artist, while a 'sepia composition’ and View near the Heads , a watercolour, came from Alfred Woolley’s collection. Melbourne Punch 's critic thought Landscape, English Composition looked like the work of a beginner: 'Skies ought to be painted in, not smeared’. In May 1870 Wright’s view of the Waitahuna River at Otago, New Zealand, was just being finished in his Bourke Street studio for display in a shop window in the town.
A foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870, Wright sent paintings to its annual exhibitions until 1875. The Argus critic, James Smith, praised two of the five paintings he showed at the first – Doubtful Weather, Richmond Paddock and A View on the Waitahuna River, [Otago] N.Z. (Bendigo AG) – because they had 'the air of having been painted out of doors, and reflect the breezy motion of the clouds and the freshness of the atmosphere’, yet concluded rather dismissively: 'The chief merit of the pictures is, however, their extreme faithfulness to nature’.
At the second exhibition, held in 1872, Wright was 'almost entirely unrepresented, owing to an attack of illness on the eve of completing various pictures intended for exhibition’, but he made up for this by showing six paintings the following year. An 1875 contribution, The Ford , was again praised for its naturalism, 'the sky and background being a minutiae of nature’. Showers and Steam on the North-East Line and Morse’s Creek were shown competitively with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1874. The former, recognised as an Australian tribute to Turner’s Sunshine, Storm and Steam ( Rain, Steam and Speed ?) except that 'the master touches of the greatest English colourist are entirely wanting’, was a controversial highpoint of the exhibition: 'Some critics have warmly declared this picture to be one of the best in the exhibition’, the Sydney Mail reported, 'but this enthusiastic opinion has been as strongly dissented from’.
Wright continued to paint both Victorian and New Zealand subjects throughout the 1870s while increasingly adding more romantic, generalised landscapes to his repertoire. His large poetical evocation, The Ploughman Homeward Plods his Weary Way from Gray’s Elegy , was completed shortly before his death in 1881.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- Thomas Wright was a painter, professional photographer and prospector. According to William Moore, Wright was a pupil of the popular English landscape painter and Royal Academician Thomas Creswick. He was a foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1881
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude52.2646577 Longitude10.5236066 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Brunswick, Germany
- Biography
- sketcher and naturalist, was born in Brunswick, Germany, on 17 February 1830, son of William Krefft and Johanna, née Buschhoff. In 1850 he migrated to the United States, then came to Melbourne in the Revenue in November 1852. After working on the goldfields for five years, Krefft joined William Blandowski 's expedition to the Murray and Darling rivers, on which he made over 500 drawings of natural history specimens and Aboriginal subjects. Examples are in the Mitchell Library.
As a professional painter of 7 Cardigan Street, Melbourne, Krefft showed examples of his expedition drawings at the 1858 Victorian Industrial Society Exhibition. One reviewer commented: 'Mr Krefft’s drawings have a special interest as they are illustrations from the life of some of the more curious animals &c. of the country … the most striking is that of a native corroboree, at Gall Gall, and of a rare animal, the chaeropus, about which there has of late been so much controversy.’
In 1860 Krefft was appointed assistant curator of the Australian Museum on the recommendation of Governor Denison. Over the following decade, he built up an international reputation as a scientist. He was one of the few Australian scientists to accept Darwin’s theory of evolution and disseminate it in the 1860s. He published over 200 articles, as well as a book, The Snakes of Australia (1869), for which Harriet and Helena Scott drew the plates. In 1871 Krefft published The Mammals of Australia , again with illustrations by the Scott sisters. The award-winning photographs Krefft exhibited from the Australian Museum in 1870 were almost certainly taken by Henry Barnes and/or Victor Prout , but the 'watercolour drawings of numerous animals [and] a variety of sketches of Australian birds’ he showed in 1872 at the annual exhibition of the Agricultural Society of NSW would have been his own.
After many clashes with the Museum Trustees, in 1874 a government committee recommended Krefft’s dismissal on 12 charges ranging from drunkenness to disobedience. On appealing to Premier Henry Parkes to intervene, Krefft was cautioned 'to keep a cool temper and a respectful bearing even to gentlemen who may be opposed to you’. The advice fell on deaf ears. Krefft finally barricaded himself in the building and had to be forcibly evicted. E. Lewis Scott’s pantomime Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star! or, Harlequin Jack Frost, Little Tom Tucker and the Old Woman that Lived in a Shoe , performed at Sydney’s Royal Victoria Theatre in 1876, had Twinkle say:
... Of its curator, the Museum’s bereft.
They treated like a dog poor Gerard Krefft.
They voted him a thousand, and think it funny
To laugh at him, when he demands his money.
Several lawsuits followed and Krefft received some compensation but the long fight ruined his health. He died at Randwick, Sydney, on 19 February 1881, aged 51, survived by his wife Annie, née McPhail, and two of their four children.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 February 1830
- Summary
- On an expedition of the Murray and Darling rivers, Krefft made over 500 drawings of specimens and Aboriginal subjects. Later he became assistant curator at the Australian Museum, where he published numerous scientific articles and wrote two books on snakes and mammals of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19 February 1881
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sculptor, monumental mason and phrenologist. McGill worked in Port Fairy, Victoria, from the mid 1850s until the early 1860s, then lived at Maitland, NSW, and was working in Sydney by 1864.
In Port Fairy McGill worked on the carvings of St. John’s Church of England, designed by Nathaniel Billing and built between 1853 and 1858. Author Hal Porter later identified a number of McGill carvings in Port Fairy’s buildings and cemeteries in a letter quoted in Scarlett, 1980, pp 394-5.
After moving to Sydney, McGill carved the St. Jude’s Fountain, Alison Road, Randwick (NSW, 1866) and the nearby statue of Captain Cook, High Cross, Randwick (1874). The St. Jude’s fountain features a clever use of naturally occurring red stripes in the sandstone block to highlight the decorative floral motif.
McGill carved the capitals on James Barnet’s extension of the Australian Museum, Sydney, 1866, and was commissioned by NSW Chief Justice Sir James Martin to sculpt a life-size replica of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates for Martin’s Potts Point garden (1870, moved to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, during World War II).
McGill carved the allegorical figures, including “Science”, on the Sydney General Post Office’s George Street façade in 1869, as well as the northern façade of the first stage of the same building. Darlinghurst Gaol also benefited from his work.
McGill is also credited with the Woolloomooloo Gates of the Royal Botanic Gardens, erected in 1873.
As an avid phrenologist, McGill cast the death mask of executed bushranger Captain Moonlight in 1880 (Historic Houses Trust NSW Police & Justice Museum Collection). He was also known as a caricaturist and his model of the Zigzag Railway was sent to the Melbourne Exhibition in 1880-1881.
McGill died at his Darlinghurst home on 2 July 1881, apparently as the result of an earlier accident involving a collision with a horse in Paddington.
Writers:
Riddler, Eric
Date written:
2006
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1826
- Summary
- Mid 19th century Port Fairy (VIC) and Sydney sculptor, monumental mason and phrenologist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2 July 1881
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude55.861111 Longitude-4.25 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- landscape painter, schoolteacher and police clerk, was born in Glasgow.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Morris-Nunn, Miranda
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1825
- Summary
- Nelson was a landscape painter, schoolteacher and police clerk. He painted prolifically as he travelled throughout Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1881
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- wood-engraver, son of Abraham Mason and brother of Walter and George Mason , was born in London. He came to Sydney with George. Soon afterwards the two announced their services as draughtsmen and wood engravers in the Sydney Morning Herald of 22 March 1850, from premises in Crown Street. Charles married Annie Carnell in 1853. They had no children. Although listed as a wood engraver in Sands’ Sydney Directory , no examples of Charles’s work have yet been identified. He is buried in Balmain Cemetery.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Note: primary biographer (DAA); additional material
Note: additional material (black and white artists)
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1825
- Summary
- Colonial male draughtsman and wood engraver who set up business with his brother, but there are no identified examples of his or their work.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1881
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude53.1823034 Longitude-0.203120854 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lincolnshire, England, U.K.
- Biography
- sketcher, architect and clergyman, a native of Lincolnshire, was a Methodist minister in Cornwall when elected one of the English representatives to the Australasian Wesleyan Methodists’ Conference to be held at Sydney in January 1861. He wrote a book about his antipodean journey, Australia, with Notes by the Way, on Egypt, Ceylon, Bombay and the Holy Land (London 1862), which contains a frontispiece after one of the watercolour sketches he made on the voyage, Sydney from the North Shore . The original drawing is in Jobson’s album of 15 Australian Watercoloured Views 1860-61 (NLA) together with First View of the Australian Coast (wash drawing), Hobart Town, Tasmania , Leaving St. [sic] George’s Sound (pencil), Cape Otway (pencil), Sydney from the Balcony at the Honble A. McArthur’s – Glebe Point (w/c), Sydney Heads – Port Jackson (w/c), Tamar from Bass’ Straits to Launceston, Tasmania (pencil) and Wilson’s Promontory (wash drawing).
As well as giving a great deal of information about Methodism in the Australian colonies in 1860-61 (especially New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia), Jobson’s book is of considerable value to the architectural historian. He was a competent amateur architect, having studied ecclesiastical architecture under Edward James Willson, the brother of the first Roman Catholic bishop of Tasmania and A.C. Pugin’s collaborator on Specimens of Gothic Architecture . In 1850 Jobson published Chapel and School Architecture, as Appropriate to the Buildings of Nonconformists, Particularly to those of the Wesleyan Methodists, with Practical Directions for the Erection of Chapels and School-Houses . This was largely a plea for the adoption of Gothic styles for Nonconformist ecclesiastical architecture. In addition to the winning Gothic Revival design (by James Wilson of London and Bath) in a Wesleyan Model Chapel competition held in England, Jobson’s book included illustrations of three Gothic-style chapels he had designed himself (classical losers in the competition barely having been mentioned, let alone illustrated).
In Victoria Jobson had been gratified to note that the larger of the Wesleyan Gothic Revival chapels at Ballarat 'had been mostly copied from one of my own published designs’ (although this design may have derived from the Watchman , the English Wesleyan newspaper for which he wrote weekly articles). Even more numerous in the Australian colonies were the Wesleyan Gothic chapels copied or adapted from Wilson’s winning Model Chapel design which Jobson so strongly advocated. Sydney versions at Newtown and Balmain were by the architect J.A. Mansfield, son of the pioneer Wesleyan missionary Rev. Ralph Mansfield whom Jobson visited on 24 February 1861, and other examples continued to be erected throughout the colonies long after Jobson’s visit. Although a competent sketcher of the picturesque traveller type, Jobson’s significance for the Australian visual arts is therefore far greater in architecture than in painting.
Jobson had written an earlier travel book illustrated with his own sketches, America and American Methodism (London 1857), and he also published pious biographies: A Mother’s Portrait , The Servant of his Generation (a biography of Rev. Jabez Bunting) and The Shipwrecked Minister and his Drawing Charge: Memorial Tribute to the Rev. Daniel J. Draper: A Sermon .
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1821
- Summary
- Colonial-era sketcher, architect and clergyman, he published various books on Australia, Methodism in the Australian colonies and ecclesiastical architecture that were illustrated with his own watercolour sketches.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1881
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- painter, watercolourist, pastellist, picture-framer and art promoter, was born in Dublin, Ireland, son of Joseph Whitehead, a carver and gilder, and Ann, née Studdard.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1819
- Summary
- Isaac Whitehead was a painter, watercolourist, pastellist, picture-framer and art promoter. He must have come to Victoria with his family in about 1858, according to information given in his death certificate. During his lifetime Whitehead's paintings were well received by the public as well as by critics.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1881
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- miniaturist, portrait painter and professional photographer, was born in Britain, son of John Botterill and Mary, née Barker. John junior was working in Melbourne from the early 1850s, advertising in the Argus of 12 April 1853 as a portrait, miniature and animal painter and offering lessons in landscape, fruit and flower painting in oil, watercolour, 'crayon’ or pencil. Examples of his work were displayed at Mr Baker’s Church of England Book Depot, 71 Swanston Street. The Armchair critic stated that his portrait of a little girl was 'pert, pretty and picturesque’ but considered his Greek Girl more English than Grecian.
In 1853 Botterill joined the organising committee for the Victorian Fine Arts Society’s exhibition, to which he contributed eight works. These included portraits (one a miniature self-portrait), two figure studies – Greek Girl and Peasant Boy – and a possible narrative subject, Thank you, Sir . He was listed in the catalogue as a miniature painter at Mr Baker’s. His two works shown in the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art were Family Portrait , described as a 'large oil painting, representing a group of three little girls and a boy, very artistically treated’, and a 'portrait of a little boy half nude, and engaged in plucking a bunch of grapes’, possibly another appearance of Peasant Boy .
Botterill appeared in Melbourne directories from 1862 to 1866 as an artist of Caroline Street, South Yarra. Between 1861 and 1865 he was also working at P.M. Batchelder 's Photographic Portrait Rooms in Collins Street East, Melbourne, 'engaged … to paint miniatures and portraits in oil, watercolour or mezzotint – these deserve what they are receiving, a wide reputation’, stated the Argus on 22 November 1865. In 1866 he became one of the proprietors of Batchelder’s with F.A. Dunn and J.N. Wilson , but the partnership lasted only until the end of the following year. For the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to Melbourne in November 1867 Botterill painted a 4 × 5 foot (121 × 152 cm) transparency to decorate Batchelder’s. The Argus described this in detail, noting that it represented four of England’s chief naval heroes (Drake, Blake, Nelson and Collingwood) as well as Prince Alfred, an Elizabethan galleon and the Galatea , with the motto 'England’s naval heroes and her hope’. Two coloured photographs by Botterill, Portrait of Sir J.H.T. Manners-Sutton and Portrait of Lady Manners-Sutton , were lent by the Governor Manners-Sutton to both the Melbourne Public Library and Ballarat Mechanics Institute exhibitions in 1869. From 1870 to 1879 Botterill operated his own Melbourne photographic studio: at 19 Collins Street East in 1872-74 and at 12 Beehive Chambers, Elizabeth Street in 1875-79. He died on 25 July 1881 and was buried in the St Kilda Cemetery.
Few extant works are known. The Mitchell Library holds an undated oval watercolour Portrait of His Excellency Sir John Young signed 'J. Botterill, Artist’; an undated oil portrait of Sir Redmond Barry and an elegant hand-coloured photograph of Captain William Lonsdale are in the La Trobe Library; and the National Library of Australia owns a watercolour bridal portrait of the botanical artist Ellis Rowan , painted over a photograph in October 1873.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1817
- Summary
- John Botterill worked as a professional photographer and oil miniaturist in the mid-19th century in Victoria. In 1853 he was part of the organising committee for the Victorian Fine Arts Society's exhibition to which he contributed eight works.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25 July 1881
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude46.603354 Longitude1.8883335 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- France
- Biography
- amateur photographer, merchant and property developer, was born in Angoulême, France, eldest son of Auguste Alexis Joubert, naval officer, and Rose Elizabeth, née Civadier. He came to Sydney in the Cova Nelly in May 1837 as agent for the Bordeaux wine and spirit merchants Barton Fils but was soon on his way to New Zealand where he had purchased land (unseen) at the Bay of Islands. At Kororareka on 23 November 1839 he married Louise (Lise), daughter of Charles Bonnefin . His New Zealand land proved unsuitable for farming and the Jouberts returned to Sydney in December, setting up home, stores and office in Macquarie Place. By 1841 Joubert was in partnership with Jeremiah Murphy.
Captain Lucas brought a daguerreotype camera to Sydney in late March 1841 and offered it for sale. Joubert must have purchased it for he, Murphy and Lucas were undoubtedly the 'gentlemen’ reported in the Australian as having produced, on 13 May, the first recorded photograph taken on Australian soil: 'At the stores of Messrs Joubert and Murphy, an interesting trial of the advantages of the Daguerreotype was made on Thursday, at which we were present, and received the politest attention at the hands of the gentlemen who conducted the experiment … an astonishingly minute and beautiful sketch was taken of Bridge-street and part of George-street, as it appeared from the Fountain in Macquarie-place’. The exposure time was said to be five minutes; hence the daguerreotype was considered suitable only for views of static objects.
No further reports of local daguerreotypes are known to have appeared in the press until George Baron Goodman opened Sydney’s first commercial studio in December 1842, and it has been assumed that the camera either left with Lucas or else was unable to be used once the initial supply of plates and chemicals was exhausted. Yet press silence was hardly surprising when commercial photography was a British monopoly controlled under licence, as Newton has pointed out. Joubert clearly had connections in France so could have ensured a continuing supply of the necessary equipment, difficult for amateurs to obtain in British possessions and virtually impossible for professionals unless purchasing a licence in London (although Daguerre freely gave his invention to the rest of the world). Despite being prevented from selling his photographs, Joubert certainly produced further daguerreotypes as a private activity. His daguerreotype camera was stated to be 'complete, with all the apparatus, and a great number of plates’ when offered for sale in March 1843, together with all the Jouberts’ Macquarie Place household furnishings, the family being about to leave for Europe.
After returning to Sydney about 1846, Didier resumed his partnership with Murphy, the firm now being located in Lower George Street. While overseas, presumably in France, Joubert had continued his photographic interests. Restrictions from England were by now collapsing (because of the impossibility of enforcing them) and photography had become much better known, so a viable local market directed primarily at amateurs was possible. On 30 April 1847 Joubert and Murphy were advertising for sale 'four complete Daguerreotype apparatus, with all the latest improvements, and a number of plates’ – undoubtedly fruits of Joubert’s European trip. (The adjacent column in the Sydney Morning Herald carried the litigious Goodman’s announcement that his professional daguerreotype portrait studio had just re-opened.) No further photographic activity on Joubert’s part is known and none of his daguerreotypes have been identified.
Joubert would have known Mary Reibey at Macquarie Place, for in 1846 he purchased her 120-acre Figtree Farm at Hunter’s Hill where the family settled permanently. With his brother Jules , who brought his second wife and family to live on an adjacent property in 1855, Didier developed the peninsula. Reputedly importing some seventy stonemasons and other artisans from Lombardy, they built numerous stone houses on their land. Didier added a stone wing and paved verandah to Mary Reibey’s cottages, thus incorporating them into one building (now called Figtree House) and the family lived there until a grander home was completed. He alone is considered responsible for Coorabel (originally two stone cottages for lease), a house now called Annabel Lea (originally the servants’ quarters for Coorabel), Warrawillah (leased), St Malo (the second family home: demolished 1960) and The Bungalow (built 1881 for lease).
Both brothers were active protagonists for the development of local amenities. Didier became the first mayor of Hunter’s Hill in 1867-69 while Jules was the first chairman of the local council. Didier and Lise’s son Numa, by then a planter in New Guinea, returned to Hunter’s Hill when Didier died in 1881 and for a time was proprietor of the Hunter’s Hill and Lane Cove River ferries, which his uncle had started and his father had continued (as one of a syndicate) when Jules was declared bankrupt in 1866. Alfred Randall 's Saintonge, where William Charles Piguenit also lived, was built on land acquired from D.N. Joubert in 1883.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1816
- Summary
- Colonial-era amateur photographer, merchant and property developer who reportedly produced the first recorded photograph taken on Australian soil. After immigrating to Sydney from France, Joubert lived the remainder of his life in Sydney and was the first mayor of Hunter's Hill.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1881
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-33.816667 Longitude151 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parramatta, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, art student, public servant and politician, was born in Parramatta on 16 December 1876, son of Bernard Fitzpatrick, an Irish convict, and Catherine, née Milling, a schoolteacher. Educated by his mother at St Joseph’s Catholic School (1829-31), and at Rev. John Dunmore Lang’s Australian College (1832-34) where Samuel Elyard was a fellow pupil. Fitzgerald came to Elyard’s home for private drawing lessons in 1837. Entries in Elyard’s journal indicate that he was not especially diligent, the two being far too close in age for a satisfactory pupil-teacher relationship. Indeed, Fitzpatrick, who by then was an usher at Rev. Henry Carmichael’s Normal Institution, was slightly older than Elyard.
Michael Fitzpatrick joined the Lands Office in October 1837 and later became an under-secretary in the Department of Lands (1856-69). As 'M. Fitzpatrick’ of Sydney, he contributed an untitled pen-and-ink drawing to the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition so may have continued to sketch as a hobby. He was an active member of the Linnaean Society but otherwise spent most of his energies on political issues (he was member for Yass Plains in the Legislative Assembly in 1869-81). It was over one of these political issues, public education, that he managed to alienate both Premier Henry Parkes and Parkes’s bitter opponent, the Catholic Archbishop Vaughan. Fitzpatrick died of 'apoplexy’ on 10 December 1881, survived by his wife Theresa Anastasia, née Small, whom he had married on 1 August 1846 and had had four sons and two daughters. Denied the rites of the Catholic Church, his burial in Petersham Cemetery resulted in a public scandal.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 December 1816
- Summary
- Fitzpatrick contributed an untitled pen-and-ink drawing to the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition but is thereafter thought that he only continued to sketch as a hobby. Fitzpatrick's chief interest was politics and it was his passion over the issue of public education that alienated him from both the NSW Premier Henry Parkes and Parkes' bitter opponent, the Catholic Archbishop Vaughan. When he died from 'apoplexy' and was consequently denied Catholic burial rites it caused a huge public scandal.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 December 1881
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude55.069836 Longitude-3.6092292 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dumfries, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, photographer, engraver, lithographer, surveyor and lawyer, was born at Dumfries, Scotland, on 12 January 1815, son of James and Isabella Shaw and brother of George Baird Shaw . The family lived at 28 Gayfield Square, Edinburgh, and his father worked nearby as senior clerk and proofreader for the booksellers and publishers Cadell & Company. Having trained as a lithographer and engraver in Glasgow and painting for his own pleasure, it is likely that James Shaw senior instructed both sons in these arts from an early age.
After attending the Edinburgh Royal High School James was sent to the University of Edinburgh to study law, qualifying in 1836. Through family contacts he met a wide range of prominent literary and scientific men and came close to fulfilling his father’s wish that he receive 'a liberal education’. In September 1836, sponsored by Justice Thomas McCornock, he left Edinburgh for Jamaica to be a junior bookkeeper on one of the estates for which McCornock was attorney. There, in his leisure hours, he drew and painted. As word of his talents spread among the colonial population, Shaw began to receive commissions to draw the planters’ estates. In 1841 he was invited to leave accounting and become a surveyor, a position which brought with it more money and greater freedom. With the ending of slavery and the subdivision of many larger estates, there was no shortage of work to be had and Shaw gradually acquired entrée to a higher social class, resulting in several portrait commissions. He also had frequent opportunities to sketch Jamaican scenery. Some of his artistic efforts were sent home to Edinburgh for sale and from time to time he asked his father for criticism of his work.
In 1847 Shaw returned to Edinburgh and soon set up as a portrait painter and photographer, photography being a skill he had reputedly just acquired from his brother George. On 5 July 1850 he married Janet Liddle Paterson. Five days later they left Scotland in the Sacramento bound for South Australia. They reached Adelaide in November and Shaw found work soon afterwards as a clerk in the Adelaide Post Office. As always, he continued to sketch, paint, engrave and take photographs, producing a large body of work throughout the next three decades. Wood-engravings are also known: Free Church, Adelaide (1852), McLaren Wharf and Mitcham Church . In 1857 he showed five paintings at the first exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts, of which he was a founding member. View of the Hills from South Terrace, Adelaide received an honourable mention from the judges 'for the spirited and correct effect of a portion of the foreground, comprising the wagon and horses’, although, they added, 'much of the rest of the drawing is very unequal’.
Shaw also produced lithographs but these appear to have been begun somewhat later, during his brother’s 1866-67 visit (George was an expert lithographer). Penman & Galbraith lithographed as well as printed one of James’s sketches, Gawler Town, S.A., from the South , in about 1864, but two years later they were merely the printers for his large lithograph, Town Hall Opening Ball, Adelaide June 1866 (Mitchell Library), Shaw having put this on the stone himself. The undated Adelaide, S.A. from Montefiore Hill (Art Gallery of South Australia [AGSA]) inscribed 'Drawn by J. Shaw’, which Carroll calls 'surprisingly awkward’, may be an early effort.
Shaw exhibited regularly with the Society of Arts from 1857 ( Scene in Jamaica and Island of St Paul’s ) until 1871. He rarely received unqualified praise for his paintings. In January 1862 the South Australian Advertiser commented equivocally on his oil in the society’s sixth annual exhibition: 'Mr. Shaw’s “Eagles’ Nest” ... is an ambitious attempt, inasmuch as the scenery in the part of the hills he has taken for a subject is extremely difficult; but the painting is much better than any of this artist’s former productions’. He won a special 3-guinea prize for his paintings in the society’s 1863 exhibition, invented because they did not fit into the various stipulated categories: Flood at Kent Town and Sticking Up were called 'historical’ works. The critic of the South Australian Register felt that in failing to keep back his distances Shaw gave his paintings a hard and wiry appearance and the South Australian Advertiser liked them even less: 'His style is peculiar and astonishing. Adhering to the primitive colors, and using them in primitive strength, he disdains to modify a blue, soften a green, or tone a red. One advantage that they possess is that the colours will not fade soon’. This critic thought that his more 'poetical’ The Drifting Wreck was 'not without a certain charm, evanescent though it be, that points conclusively that the ideal and not the real is the peculiar forte of Mr. Shaw’.
Ironically, Shaw’s paintings now most appreciated are those dating from 1852 to 1879 which portray 'real’ events, places and buildings in and around Adelaide in his detailed, colourful and meticulous manner. Oil paintings such as Fire at the Adelaide Steam Flour Mill, Mill Street, Adelaide, 17 April 1855 , The Admella Wrecked, Cape Banks, 6th August 1859 , views of the Adelaide Botanical Gardens (1865), The Tannery (1865), Residence of F.B. Carlin, Kent Town (1860) and Livingstone House (1861) – all now in the Art Gallery of South Australia – are valuable, if technically naive, precisely because they tend to depict every object with equal clarity. His most distinctive works, however, are those few combining painting and photography in a unique way. The South Australian Parliament: The House of Assembly (c.1867, AGSA), The Town Hall Opening Ball (1866) and City Ball in Honour of Prince Alfred (1867, both Adelaide Town Hall) all include painted figures with photographed faces glued onto the canvas. These small photographs could have been taken by James, but it has been more plausibly suggested that James obtained them from Townsend Duryea , who specialised in such 'gem’ portrait photographs.
In 1868 Shaw’s wife died suddenly at the age of forty-one and he was left to raise their six young children. From then on his artistic output declined. He died on 1 September 1881, aged sixty-six. The Art Gallery of South Australia holds the major collection of his work.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 January 1815
- Summary
- James Shaw was born in 1815. He was a painter, photographer, engraver, lithographer, surveyor and lawyer. Shaw's two works 'Flood at Kent Town' and 'Sticking Up' were called 'historical' in the Society of Arts 1863 exhibition because they did not fit into any of the stipulated categories.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1 September 1881
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude53.76908 Longitude-2.7105501 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bolton, Lancashire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, modeller and amateur photographer, was born in Bolton, Lancashire, son of Rev. Marshall Claxton, a Wesleyan Methodist minister, and his wife Diana.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1813
- Summary
- Painter, modeller and amateur photographer born in England. Resident of NSW and Victoria he was a prolific painter and 'national benefit'. He is represented in the collections of many of Australia and England's major public galleries.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28 July 1881
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- marine painter, portraitist, teacher and master mariner, was born in London, the second son of Captain John Smith RN and his wife Ann, whose father was Charles Smith, the cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Captain James Cook from whom Smith inherited many relics and whose surname he sometimes included in his signature. His obituary states that Smith 'showed himself to be an artist almost from infancy, delighting his friends with his juvenile abilities at the early age of seven’. His English work includes a portrait of his mother’s cousin Isaac Smith , reproduced in Isaac Selby’s The Old Pioneers’ Memorial History of Melbourne (Melbourne 1924).
After serving in many ships, some of them whaling vessels, Smith joined the Vansittart under Captain Prince in 1837. By 1842 he was at Launceston, Van Diemen’s Land, where he became master of the Government Buoy Boat on the Tamar River but soon reverted to 'engaging in the practice of his favourite art’. In January 1848 while the first exhibition of pictures was on display in the Cornwall Assembly Rooms, Launceston, Smith gave a lecture on 'the principles of the Art of Painting, as illustrated by the pictures in the exhibition’. The Launceston Examiner stated that 'the audience appeared gratified and could scarcely fail to be instructed by the observations of the lecturer, who is a successful amateur, and an enthusiastic admirer of the art’. Soon afterwards, Smith set up as a professional portrait painter with a studio at the corner of Tamar and Brisbane Streets.
Marine interests were not, however, abandoned. Around this time Smith built the yacht Rory O’More 'which was famous in the early days of regattas on the Tamar, and with her carried off numerous prizes’. At the Independent Chapel on 15 February 1843, James Smith married Ann Elizabeth, second daughter of Susannah and William Capon . A son and five daughters were born (perhaps including Jane Smith, later the wife of Gracius Broinowski ).
In October 1849 Smith, as proprietor, exhibited a Moving Panorama of London from Old Thames , which he had painted with Philip Barnes . It was shown again in April 1850, Smith having added some Tasmanian scenes to the entertainment in the interim. Another local reference was added in July: a diorama, complete with flames, of a recent fire at a Launceston hotel. Smith then took the panorama to Melbourne and exhibited it in November-December 1850, claiming in the Argus that his 'nearly 6000 feet [sic] of painted canvas’ had been publicly commended by Governor Denison. He announced in the same advertisement that he would be 'happy to execute commissions in marine portraiture’. Although complemented with views of Hobart, Launceston and 'a view of Loch Katrine, and the Cathedral of San Isidoro, Madrid seen by daylight and then lit up for the celebrations of solemn mass’, the entertainment does not appear to have been a great success (see Colligan 44).
Back at Launceston in March 1851 he exhibited a view of George Town at the Launceston Exhibition and was called one of the artists 'long resident in this town’. He had, however, returned to Melbourne by May when the Melbourne Daily News noted his recent arrival and praised his 'admirable [oil] paintings of colonial vessels and scenery’ as well as his 'speaking likenesses in miniature’. His portraits of the ships Raven and Swift were on view at Hatch’s store in Collins Street, Melbourne. The same panorama – perhaps with further improvements – was again shown in December 1852, this time at the Melbourne Temperance Hall. Once more the readers of the Argus were reminded that Governor Denison had 'highly praised the drawing and perspective of the picture’ and the panorama – now described as a more realistic ’2,000 ft [609 m] of canvass’ – was judged 'a really splendid affair’
...most truthful and complete in its representations, depicting with the exactest nicety every object from the new Houses of Parliament to Greenwich Hospital … the panorama is a moving one, and each place of note was well and graphically described by the proprietor as it came before the spectator … Altogether, we regret Mr. Smith has not a more central and popular place to exhibit his beautiful representation. We would suggest the Mechanics Hall [which Smith had used in 1850] as a more suitable exhibition room.
J. Smith exhibited three paintings with the Victorian Fine Arts Society in August 1853. Since all were of ships ( The Schooner Deborah off Farm Cove, Sydney , The Schooner in a Gale and The Argyle Hulk, in Hobson’s Bay ) it seems likely that the artist was James Smith. Three years later, one J.C. Smith (almost certainly James Cook) of 130 Russell Street, Melbourne, showed his oil View of River Mijecote, Honduras at the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art. An unfinished view of Launceston taken near the hospital shown at the 1865 Launceston Exhibition of Paintings was certainly his. In 1867 he painted several of the transparencies displayed on city buildings to celebrate the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to Melbourne.
An invalid for six years, Smith died at West Melbourne on 19 September 1881; he was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery. A slight but accomplished chalk and pastel portrait of Mr Driver of Launceston (in the wool trade) appears to be signed by Smith though the signature is now almost illegible (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 1839). His oil, Roseneath, Austin’s Ferry (c.1848), is on loan to Glenorchy City Hall. A youthful English sketchbook and a few later landscapes remain with descendants but no mainland oil paintings have been located.
Writers:
Staff Writer
duggim
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 1813
- Summary
- Nephew of James Cook, related to Isaac Smith, the colonial artist painted portraits and the marine. Some of his more accomplished works include two large scale panoramas of London from the river Thames, the first six thousand feet and the second, 2000 feet in height received mixed reactions from the local press when they were exhibited and commended by the Governor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19 September 1881
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland
- Biography
- amateur photographer, pastoralist and agriculturalist, was born in Scotland. He arrived at Western Australia on board the Ganges on 15 October 1841 and was employed as a shepherd by James Drummond junior. On 4 January 1849, having become an independent flock-master, he married his former employer’s sister, Euphemia Drummond, at Toodyay. There were eleven children of the marriage. Mackintosh soon became a prosperous farmer and pastoralist on his own property, Glendearg, in the Toodyay Valley. He died at Toodyay on 4 June 1881.
Mackintosh took up photography as a hobby in the 1860s. One of his photographs, identified by a descendant, is the only known portrait of his father-in-law James Drummond senior, the eminent botanist. The original photograph shows Mackintosh’s elder son James at about five years of age leaning against his grandfather’s knee, a delightful grouping from which the child has been excised in most reproductions. The only other photographs attributed to Mackintosh are portraits of James Drummond junior and Rev. Charles Harper, the district clergyman. Neither shows much photographic skill.
Writers:
Erickson, Rica
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1812
- Summary
- Scottish male colonial farmer and photographer who lived in Western Australia producing portraits of his family and important people in the community.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 June 1881
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude7.87739585 Longitude80.66247852 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ceylon, Sri Lanka
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer(?), lithographer(?), model-maker, cartographer, architect, surveyor and grazier, was born in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and educated at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. A royal engineer, he joined the Hill Drafting Department of the British Ordnance Survey and apparently gained most of his mapping experience in Ireland. He was working there when appointed surveyor-general of New Zealand in 1841. A small pencil drawing (c.1844, Alexander Turnbull Library) depicting the waterfront at Auckland is initialled “C.L.” and attributed to him.
Ligar retired in 1856 and, while searching for suitable grazing country for cattle (taken up in South Otago), discovered gold in the Mataura River. He visited Victoria in 1857 as land commissioner for Otago and in 1858 was appointed surveyor-general of Victoria. Powell states that during the eleven years he held this position he and three partners leased 3 million acres in the Riverina. He was a councillor and sometime vice-president of the Royal Society of Victoria to which he delivered a paper titled “Grass Tree”. At the 1861 Victorian Exhibition, Ligar showed, as surveyor-general, lithographs, photographs and a plaster model of the colony, receiving first-class certificates for the lithographs and the model – both apparently in his own right. Since no other references to any photographic or lithographic activities are known they were most probably done by members of his department. However, he certainly modelled relief maps. In the Victoria court at the 1865 Dublin International Exhibition he showed specimens of J.W. Osborne 's photolithographic process and his own 'Model maps of Victoria, cast in relief & coloured to indicate the physical characteristics of the country’.
Ligar’s wife Grace, née Hanyngton, whom he had married in Ireland in 1839, died in 1868 and the following year he married Maie Williams of Auckland. After retiring from his department (where he has never been popular), Ligar retired to the Mediterranean coast. Eventually he came to rest on a cattle ranch in Texas, USA, where he died in February 1881.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1811
- Summary
- Colonial New Zealand and Victorian sketcher, amateur photographer, lithographer, model-maker, cartographer, architect, surveyor and grazier
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.February 1881
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1806-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, naval officer and public servant, was born in London on 20 September 1806. Having trained at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth from 1819, Dashwood’s career included serving as lieutenant under Captain Fremantle on HMS Challenger . He was on board when the ship called at Fremantle, Western Australia, in September 1832. A pencil and watercolour sketch of Pakenham Street, Fremantle and a pencil and wash drawing, The Top of Pakenham Street, Fremantle, and Entrance of the River Swan , both date from the week’s visit. Surviving sketchbooks of 1830-34 contain pencil, ink and watercolour views of Hobart (?), Sydney, Tahiti, Rio de Janeiro and England.
Dashwood was promoted captain in December 1833. Due to ill health, he retired on half-pay in 1837. Although an Anglican, he married Sara Rebecca Loine in a Roman Catholic ceremony in London on 27 December 1839. In the early 1840s the Dashwoods and their two children sailed to Adelaide in the Orissa and settled near Echunga. Charles was a member of the Legislative Council of South Australia (1842-43 and 1852-55) and, variously, commissioner of police (1847-52), collector of customs and London emigration agent for South Australia. The year before his retirement in 1879 he was given the naval rank of commander 'by Admiralty indulgence’. He died on 15 March 1881.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 September 1806
- Summary
- First visited Fremantle, Western Australia, in September 1832 on board HMS Challenger. Immigrated to South Australia in early 1840s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15 March 1881
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude19.0785451 Longitude72.878176 Start Date1804-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bombay (Mumbai), India
- Biography
- sketcher, military officer, vigneron and horse-breeder, was born in Bombay, India.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1804
- Summary
- Sketcher, military officer, vigneron and horse-breeder, was born in Bombay, India.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1881
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude56.7820654 Longitude-2.5156131 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Marykirk, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter and builder, was born in Marykirk, near Montrose, Scotland on 11 July 1802, fifth son of James Napier, a weaver. At the age of 14 he joined his uncle’s timber business at Blackfriars Bridge, London as a clerk, remaining there until he was 20. Although painting never became more than a hobby, during this period he is said to have attended 'the best schools of painting’ and to have spent two years studying works in the British Museum. Returning to Scotland, Napier worked as a carpenter in Montrose, both on his own and in partnership with the builder John Brown (later of Como, Victoria), with whom he migrated to Van Diemen’s Land on board the Lavinia . They arrived at Hobart Town on 5 November 1832, where they built several houses, including one for Surveyor-General George Frankland to Frankland’s design. On his arrival Napier saw the surviving members of the Big River Tribe being brought in to Hobart Town by George Augustus Robinson en route to Flinders Island and obtained permission to paint their portraits. His oil painting of Woureddy and Trukanini seated and clad in wallaby skins (p.c.), a larger oil Alphonse, the Tasmanian (QVMAG) and a portrait of Manalargenna (Melbourne Savage Club) date from this time. James Bonwick, a friend of Napier’s, later commissioned Thomas Clark to copy some of Napier’s Aboriginal portraits for his book, The Last of the Tasmanians (London 1870).
In March 1837 Napier chartered the Gem and took a cargo of timber to the new settlement at Port Phillip (Melbourne, Victoria). He decided to settle there and at the first land sale in June purchased a block of land in what became Collins Street West. He rapidly erected his own wattle and daub cottage ('the best house in the place’) then sent for his wife Jessie, née Paterson, another Scot (from Dundee) whom he had married in Hobart Town on 3 August 1836.
Napier and Brown continued in the building trade for a further two years. A house they erected on the corner of Bourke and Queen streets became one of several claimants to the title of the first brick house in Melbourne. Then he and his family moved to Dandenong Creek intending to raise cattle. They were rapidly disillusioned with the pasturage and soon returned to Melbourne; their third son, Theodore, was born there in 1845. The following year they moved to a 100-acre property in the Doutta Galla (Moonee Ponds) district which they called Rosebank. Apart from a visit to Edinburgh in 1854-60 to educate his sons and daughter, Napier lived at Rosebank until his death, on 7 February 1881. He became a prosperous Melbourne citizen and donated three fountains to the city.
In Melbourne, according to Leavitt, Napier 'painted several portraits of friends, and executed the first oil painting of a Port Phillip Aboriginal, called “Jack Weatherly”’. Several versions of the Weatherly portrait seem to have been painted; descendants claim the originals always remained in the family, and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria has another version. Napier was painting portraits of the Victorian Aborigines from at least 1843, when 'two oil paintings of the aborigines of Australia Felix, by Mr. Napier’ were displayed at a bazaar at the Melbourne Mechanics Institute in aid of the Wesleyan Chapel alongside 'a number of reticules and net bags composed of grass and the fibrous substance of certain indigenous trees manufactured by the black women undergoing a probationary course of civilization on the station of Mr. Protector Parker’. The portraits were praised for their fidelity of execution and close resemblance to nature, 'although, from the disregard he has shewn in the outlines to “light and shade”, we cannot but suppose Mr. Napier to be a young artist’.
At the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition Napier exhibited two oils, A Native of Melbourne, 1861 (presumably Weatherly) and Mary Queen of Scots , the latter a copy of a portrait he had seen in the Scottish Hospital, London. His portraits are stylistically naive and his figures tend to have over-large heads for their bodies, yet he seems to have captured the appearance and something of the personality of his sitters. Tasmanian works initialled T.N. are most likely to be by Thomas Norrington .
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 11 July 1802
- Summary
- Painter and builder. Born in Scotland in 1802 and arrived in Hobart Town 1832. He then moved to Melbourne in 1837 where he died in 1881.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 February 1881
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1794-01-01 End Date1881-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and surveyor, was born in London on 20 April 1794. He came to Sydney in July 1823 and was appointed assistant surveyor under Surveyor-General John Oxley and sent to survey the site of Brisbane. In 1837 Hoddle was posted to Port Phillip as senior surveyor over Robert Russell , a predictably acrimonious relationship. He conducted the first land auctions at Melbourne and within the year had surveyed and planned Geelong. In 1842 he became an alderman on Melbourne’s first city council. After Separation in 1851 Hoddle was appointed Victoria’s first surveyor-general. He is attributed with laying out Melbourne’s streets in their formal grid pattern.
In his leisure hours Hoddle enjoyed gardening, playing the organ and flute, collecting books and pictures, and sketching. The major collection of his pencil and watercolour drawings (LT) includes Melbourne – Port Phillip – 1840 from Surveyor-General’s Yard , a bucolic scene which is appropriately detailed in its architecture but surprisingly naive in the exuberant addition of people and animals dotted throughout the drawing. His maps are more professional, but the crudely drawn, often out-of-scale, people and animals in some of his watercolours add a liveliness to otherwise prosaically precise views. Some of his landscapes, possibly done with the aid of a camera lucida, are more technically accomplished. A sketch he made of Kiama, Illawarra, New South Wales, was later worked up into an oil painting by Henry Gritten .
Hoddle married Mary Staton at Surrey, England, in 1818; they had one daughter. In 1863, following Mary’s death the previous year, he married the 18-year-old Fanny Agnes Baxter. They had four children, including Agnes, who later painted his portrait (o/c, LT). Land purchases in Melbourne had made Hoddle an extremely wealthy man but in 1877, ill with scarlet fever, he transferred all his assets to Fanny, including £38 000 in cash, £59 000 in government debentures and valuable real estate in Melbourne City, Essendon, Frankston and elsewhere. When he died in 1881, aged eighty-seven, he left nothing.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 20 April 1794
- Summary
- Sketcher and surveyor, was born in London and arrived in Australia in 1823. In 1851 Hoddle was appointed Victoria's first surveyor-general.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1881
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1880-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illuminator and businessman, was born in London on 14 October 1837, son of Luigi Guiseppe Stefenoni, an Italian expatriate upholsterer who had settled at Holborn, London, and his second wife Sophia Elizabeth, née Samweis (later Samways), a German Jew. After his shop burnt down, the family moved to the Isle of Man. There, from the age of sixteen, Lewis worked for the Royal Navy as a designer and embroiderer of badges. He probably worked his way to Australia as crew, arriving at Sydney on 9 November 1852 (according to family records). He lived in the Coles Building, Argyle Place and by 1862 was working as an artist in the advertising department of the Sydney Morning Herald . He painted the Herald building’s transparencies for 11 June 1863, when Sydney celebrated the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Illuminated with between 500 and 600 sperm-candles in the windows and with cauldrons on the roof spurting flames, the building was considered (by the Herald reporter) one of the outstanding 'manifestations of loyalty’ in the city. Steffanoni’s transparencies – covering the five front windows on the first floor – were said to have excited the most interest of all. They included the royal portraits, Britannia beckoning to a Danish ship ('Welcome Rose of Denmark’) and a seraph unrolling a scroll bearing a quote from Tennyson.
Steffanoni married John Fairfax’s niece Sarah Ann Reading in April 1869, then went into partnership with his mother-in-law Ann Reading and his brother-in-law, William, in a fancy-goods shop. Reading Son & Steffanoni at 92 Market Street imported 'Berlin wools, Traced goods [and] glass shades’, as the sign over their door proclaimed. Clocks, bullion, statuary and other goods imported from Italy were also part of the stock. The Steffanonis had two sons and three daughters, their second daughter, Sophia Elizabeth (known as Sophie) becoming a professional bullion embroiderer and oil painter. Their private residence was Brighton House, Carrington Street.
The illuminated addresses Steffanoni continued to produce during his business life were displayed in his shop windows. He may also have been associated with the Sydney printers and publishers Gibbs, Shallard & Co. An illuminated address for James Fairfax was commissioned by employees at the Herald to mark his departure for Europe in the steamer Bombay in 1865, and a note in one of Steffanoni’s albums claims he was responsible for at least ten of the numerous addresses congratulating the Duke of Edinburgh on his recovery from attempted assassination at Sydney in 1868. Royalty in any form was exceptionally good for business. Steffanoni painted several transparencies in 1868 for city business premises as part of the decorations welcoming the unfortunate Prince Alfred to Sydney. Three were allegorical (one showed the Duke in a chariot driven by Neptune with sea-horses and mermaids abounding) and two featured native Australian flora alongside the rose, shamrock and thistle. He had earlier illuminated an address which, set in an elaborately chamfered Oxford frame, was presented to Queen Victoria on the occasion of the death of the Prince Consort. An address he illuminated for Sydney’s German residents to send to the Emperor of Germany and Prince Bismarck was mentioned in the Cologne Gazette in 1875, the Sydney Morning Herald proudly reported.
Steffanoni’s earliest known illumination, decorated with geometrical patterns, was done in 1862 for presentation to Francis Semhill, manager of the Commercial Banking Company’s branch at Muswellbrook, on his departure for Sydney. Those of the 1870s included presentations to Henry Parkes (from the citizens of Dubbo), Morgan O’Connor and the former King of Fiji, Ratu Chamian Vunivalu (from the Wesleyan Church). The last included a view of Levuka and was engrossed in both Fijian and English. All seem to have been photographed and preserved in albums, two of which survive in family possession.
Since the photograph of Steffanoni’s 1874 address to Rev. William Curnow from his York Street Circuit congregation is signed by the Sydney photographer J.T. Gorus , it is possible that the others, unsigned, were also taken by him, probably as a commercial venture to sell as souvenirs to those who had paid for the original presentation. For instance, the photograph of Steffanoni’s 1874 illuminated address to Thomas Brown , police magistrate in the Hartley and Bowenfels district, is annotated: 'Photos of Brown’s address 5s 9d each painted, 4s 9d each not painted – 12 to be taken for certain’. (The address itself with a painted vignette of Brown’s home, Cooerwull, still in the family, cost 25 guineas, frame extra.)
At the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition Steffanoni won a bronze medal for his illuminated address presented by the Prince Alfred Yacht Club to J. Gay Hanks, their commodore. One of his most elaborate works, it cost 60 guineas plus £7 for the frame and was painted in oils on vellum (rather than parchment), the preferred medium for important works. It also employed a considerable quantity of gold leaf. The central painting depicts the 'Yacht for Commodore’s Cup March 19 1870’, and smaller vignettes of yachts are added down the sides. His large 1876 illuminated address to William Laidley from the miners, chairman, secretary and delegate 'on behalf of the employees and friends’ of the Co-operative Colliery, Wallsend, near Newcastle NSW (ML), includes a view of the colliery, the miners’ huts, a coal-miner at work and the Gothic Revival Public School for the miners’ children, which Laidley had sponsored.
Steffanoni was a council member of the NSW Academy of Art from 1872 to 1876 and compiled the catalogue for its first (1872) exhibition. Sands Directory for 1877 lists him as an illuminator at Wynyard Terrace, Wynyard Square. As well as illuminated addresses, he painted oil and watercolour views and marine scenes throughout his life. He exhibited an oil painting of the Weatherboard Falls at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition. Some of his paintings (mainly landscapes and seascapes) survive in family possession, including a monotone watercolour depicting the wreck of the Dunbar in 1857. He died at Sydney on 29 May 1880, aged forty-three. His widow, left to support the young family, opened a boarding-house, Brighton House at 31 Grosvenor Square, Church Hill, where she continued the embroidery side of the business, advertising as Madame Steffanoni , 'Art Needlework and Gold Embroiderer’.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 October 1837
- Summary
- painter, illuminator and businessman, was born in London before moving to Australia. He made many well known illuminations, and won a bronze medal at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition, before dying, leaving his wife and children in poverty.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 May 1880
- Age at death
- 43
Details
Latitude22.5726459 Longitude88.3638953 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1880-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Calcutta (Kolkata), India
- Biography
- sketcher and clerk, was born in Calcutta, eldest son of Captain William Thomas and Cordelia, née Aschemanns.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1822
- Summary
- W.R. Thomas was a competent watercolourist and a number of his works survive in private homes in South Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 September 1880
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude51.0804057 Longitude-4.0600467 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1880-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Barnstaple, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, sketcher, surveyor and engineer, was born on 27 November 1820 at Barnstaple, Devon, son of Edward Snell and Elizabeth, née Stothert.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 November 1820
- Summary
- A successful surveyor and engineer as well as a painter and a sketcher, whose move to Australia was significant to his artistic output, beginning with a sketch diary kept on board the voyage to Adelaide.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15 March 1880
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1880-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, author and pastoralist, was one of the four sons of Andrew and Margaret Lang of Selkirk, Scotland who came to Australia. Thomas, a doctor, and William, a farmer, came out in 1839 and took up land on the Saltwater River near Melbourne; Gideon joined them in 1841 and Patrick arrived much later. In 1845 Gideon Lang published Land and Labour in Australia which advocated far better squatters’ rights, squatting on large tracts of land being the brothers’ speciality. In 1850 Gideon and William found and then squatted on land in southern Queensland, running cattle on Heatherlea and later Narmbool, near Buninyong.
Although attributed to 'W. Gideon Lang’ in the catalogue, it was undoubtedly Gideon Scott Lang who was responsible for the original sketch which H.R. Smith worked up into an oil painting titled Mount Abundance Fitzroy Downs, Maranoa District and showed at the 1854 Australian Museum Exhibition in Sydney together with the similarly inspired View of the Hut where Leichhardt and his Party Were Last Seen . The latter subject may be related to Lang’s unrealised interest in mounting an expedition to search for Leichhardt and his party (and thus claim the £2000 government reward) after he had received information about Leichhardt’s whereabouts from some Darling Downs’ Aboriginal people.
Because of the gold-rushes the Langs found it difficult to retain employees and so overlanded their herds from Queensland to their Riverina properties, Mungadal and Pevensey. They gradually acquired adjacent runs until finally holding a 30-mile frontage along the Murrumbidgee River. They claimed to have established harmonious relations with the Narmbool Aboriginal people; on any long expedition overlanding cattle and searching for good country, Gideon and his brothers were always accompanied by Aborigines from their stations. Belonging to the 'feed and be firm’ genre, The Aborigines of Australia, in their Original Conditions, and in their Relations with the White Man (1865) is Lang’s practical book of advice to other squatters. He was a Sydney Morning Herald correspondent on the diggings in the early 1850s and contributed articles to various other newspapers.
Gideon Lang had married Elizabeth Jane Cape in July 1854 and they had three sons and a daughter. After briefly serving as member for Liverpool Plains and Gwydir in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly (1856-57), he took his family to Europe until 1862. On their return, he became president of the Riverina Association, formed in 1863 to press for separation from New South Wales, the subject of his book Independence of the Riverina District of Australia: Collection of Papers and Articles in Reference Thereto (1863). He died on 13 July 1880.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1819
- Summary
- Lang was a sketcher, author and pastoralist, who arrived from Scotland in 1841. He later became a Member of the Legislative Assembly in New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13 July 1880
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1880-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in London, son of Samuel Salkeld Knights – probably the S. Knights who published sporting prints early in the nineteenth century from his premises in the Royal Exchange Building, London. The younger Samuel came to Victoria in about 1852, aged 35, and began his known artistic career with an Aboriginal picture. A competent, illustrative oil painting, Natives Spearing Eels, on Back Creek (Victoria), signed S. Knights, is dated 1852 (NLA). However, Knights was soon devoting his energies to painting the prize animals of wealthy Victorians and had made enough of a reputation by 1855 to gain a splendid commission. In February 1856 the Port Phillip Farmers’ Society announced that the 15 portraits of prize-winning stock in their recent show which had been chosen by the animals’ owners in lieu of a medal were now complete and on view at Knights’s studio in Collins Street, East Melbourne.
Precisely 15 paintings by Knights (commonly misspelt Knight) were shown the following March at the 1857 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition. At least two of these, however, had not resulted from the farmers’ show; Knights himself exhibited, for sale, White Hawk (presumably another animal portrait) and Girl and Cows . But H. Dewing obviously owned some splendid prize-winning horses. The eight paintings he exhibited, all catalogued as by Mr Knight, included stock horses and draught mares, a champion draughthorse and several individual racehorses, including the Geelong champion Van Tromp. Alderman Lowe exhibited Knights’s Portrait of a Bull Bred by W. Robertson and Portrait of a Horse , J. Tannock showed Master Butterfly , S. Higgott lent his portrait of Black Thursday and Jessy was 'the property of Mr Kelly’. Two unidentified and undated horse portraits by Knights (LT) can probably be identified with this prize commission since the notion of substituting paintings for trophies appears to have been abandoned after this one attempt.
Knights gained further commissions from James Wilson of Geelong and from Francis Tozer of Warrnambool in 1859, the latter proving a constant patron. The new owner of Master Butterfly, James Ware of Geelong, commissioned him to paint another portrait of this prize shorthorn bull in 1861. In 1865 Knights painted the more ambitious subject of horses with jockeys up parading before the start of the Melbourne Cup at Flemington (LT).
Knights appears to have been living in Carlton in 1866-67, On 28 May 1868 he married Selina Wild and they moved to Balmain Street, Richmond. One of his paintings was reproduced in Australian Horse Racing for 1871 and his painting of a bay hunter in a paddock with a bay and grey in the background (p.c.) is dated that year. His naive oil painting of a Champion Durham bull Tooram bred by Francis Tozer, was sent to England as a prime example of colonial grass-fed cattle, but the picture was ruined on the voyage; a replica dated 1874 is in a private collection (Vic.). Another splendid bull portrait (p.c.) is dated 1875, while an equine portrait of 1876 was again for Mr Tozer.
Then Knights visited South Australia. Under the heading 'Animal Painting’, the Adelaide Observer of 4 November 1876 reported: 'The Melbourne Photograph Company, Rundle Street, [ see George Freeman] has on view a production of Mr. S.S. Knights (a Victorian animal painter who is on a visit to this Colony). The picture represents two horses – a beautiful bright bay and a grey – in a pasture, and the artist has given great life and spirit to the splendidly proportioned creatures, both of which look thoroughbred. We have had several visits from artists of the sister Colonies lately, and are glad to welcome them, especially as they give an impetus to local talent’. Six weeks later, on 23 December, the Observer reported that an exhibition of works of art held in the refreshment rooms of the Adelaide Town Hall had included 'some of Mr S.S. Knights’ studies of animals, which were shown at the last exhibition of the Chamber of Manufacturers and others painted by him on commission &c.’.
By then Knights was probably back home. He was continuously listed as resident 'off 100 Dover Street, Richmond’ in the Melbourne Directory from 1876 until his death on 10 May 1880, aged 66. He was survived by his wife, who continued to be listed at this address for some years.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanLaverty, Colin
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1818
- Summary
- The son of a London sporting print publisher, Samuel S. Knights arrived in Australia in 1852. Soon after his arrival he became known as a painter of prize-winning animals.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 May 1880
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1880-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, professional photographer, musician and naturalist, was born on 24 January 1817, eldest son of Edward Holt Diggles, an ironmonger of Liverpool, England, and Elizabeth, née Silvester.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 January 1817
- Summary
- Regardless of whether he was painting a seashore scene on a mutton shoulder-blade, or showing his special skill in life-like and accurate natural history illustrations, Diggles' outstanding artistic achievement was the completion of 325 pencil and watercolour plates illustrating 600 birds for the impressive tome, 'Ornithology of Australia.'
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21 March 1880
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude53.9825271 Longitude-1.385249993 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1880-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and medical practitioner, was born in Yorkshire, England, one of the six sons of John Leake, a pastoralist, and Elizabeth, née Bell, who migrated to Van Diemen’s Land from Hamburg, Germany, in 1822-23. His younger brother was Charles Leake . The family settled 'Rosedale’ in Campbell Town where John Travis Leake lived from 1840 to 1850. Six very European-looking watercolours of picturesque Tasmanian scenes, including View on the Derwent and Hegley Flats, that had been inherited by (Charles’s?) descendants, Dorothy Foster of Rosedale then Rosemary Ryan (d.1996) and her son Dominic Ryan, were offered by Sotheby’s, Melbourne, on 5 May 2003 (lot 286, est. $1,000-$2,000, one ill. p.133).
Leake moved to the mainland, trained in medicine and practised as a surgeon at Portland, Victoria. The Illustrated Australian Magazine of December 1850 published a lithograph by the Ham brothers (see Thomas Ham ) after an original drawing by Leake: View from Caves near Portland, Looking towards the Bridgewater Lakes and the Sea . The accompanying article, which saw the caves as an example of the power and beauty of God, noted that by 'The kindness of J.H. Leak [sic] Esq., a surgeon residing in the vicinity, we are enabled to present our readers with a view of these grand curiosities of nature’. In later life Leake’s mind became deranged.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1810
- Summary
- Sketcher, was born in Yorkshire, England. He also trained in medicine and practised as a surgeon at Portland, Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1880
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1880-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in London on 13 November 1807, daughter of George Cowie, a bookseller, and Rachel, née Buxton. With her mother and three sisters, Emma arrived at Hobart Town on board the Eveline on 7 December 1834 to join her brothers Robert and Anthony. She lived with Robert at his home, Brookstead, Avoca, where, on 3 May 1836, she married John Lewis von Stieglitz. There were no children of the marriage. In about 1839 the von Stieglitzes moved to Ballan, Victoria, some 40 miles from Melbourne, to a property called Ballanee. They returned to Ireland about 1860 and settled at Altmore, County Tyrone where, on 22 August 1868, John died. By November 1875 his widow had returned to Tasmania and was living in Elizabeth Street, Launceston. She remained there until her death from pleurisy, on 1 November 1880. She was buried in the Cypress Street Cemetery, Launceston, although her headstone was subsequently re-erected in the Church of England Cemetery, Evandale.
Emma von Stieglitz’s sketchbooks (p.c.) have been published in part in two booklets, Early Van Diemen’s Land 1835-1860 (Hobart 1963), edited by K.R. von Stieglitz, and Emma Von Stieglitz: Her Port Phillip and Victorian Album , published by Fullers Bookshop, Hobart (1964). These pencil and watercolour views, largely of family homes and domestic affairs, range from the interior view of a settler’s hut (1841) and bush kitchen (1854) to the wash-place on the Werribee River at Ballanee (November 1849) and a shepherd’s watch-box (March 1854). Poor Mungit’s Grave, Ballan (November 1852) and Deserted Mia Mias at Villamanatta (25 March 1854) indicate that the artist’s interests and sympathies were not entirely confined to the affairs of white settlers.
Portraits of a Tasmanian Aboriginal man and woman forwarded to the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition by her brother-in-law, Frederick Lewis von Stieglitz of Killymoon, Fingal, were catalogued with the statement that they were intended as 'a correct idea of the appearance and character of Tasmanian aborigines, and by no means as works of art, conscious that as such they are altogether undeserving of notice’ – comments probably emanating from the modest Emma herself, whose paintings they undoubtedly were. The perceived inferiority, however, lay in being colonial rather than female, similar comments being recorded at the same exhibition from a male Tasmanian photographer, Douglas Thomas Kilburn .
Emma von Steiglitz’s Ballan House (1851, w/c) and Killymoon, Tasmania (pen and wash) are in the La Trobe Library but most of her work is still held privately.
Writers:
Glover, Margaret
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 November 1807
- Summary
- Painted mainly domestic scenes, von Stieglitz also painted portraits of Tasmanian Aboriginal men and women. The latter were regarded as inferior because they were colonial rather than as a slight on her being a female artist.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1 November 1880
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude21 Longitude78 Start Date1806-01-01 End Date1880-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- India
- Biography
- sketcher and watercolourist, was born in India on 26 February 1806. Christened Amelia, but always known as Emily, she was the daughter of a Bengal civil servant, Henry Stone, and Mary, daughter of Dr William Roxburgh MD, botanist to the East India Company, author of the Flora Indica and superintendent of the Botanic Gardens near Calcutta. The climate of India took a heavy toll of British residents. In 1811 Emily and her older sister, Mary, were sent to England to be under the care of a guardian. Their mother, whose health had been seriously compromised, joined them in 1812 with her younger children, Sibella and Henry, and took them to Scotland where she had spent much of her girlhood, sending her girls to school at Edinburgh. Mary Stone died in 1814 and was buried in Greyfriars Churchyard, as was Emily’s grandfather, Dr Roxburgh, who left India a year later and died in 1815. It appears that Emily’s brother Henry also died at about this time.
Emily’s father, who had returned to the family banking firm of Stone & Co. in London, re-married and had a second family between 1820 and 1828. The family moved house several times before settling in the Gothic mansion of St Leonards at Stanmore. Some of the happiest times for young Emily were spent at St Leonards and at Gresford on the Welsh border and scenes of both places feature in her early drawing books. There are also sketches from her travels in the British Isles and in Europe, where she made an unusually daring tour with a group of young women in 1836.
Emily had firm opinions about education, particularly religious instruction. While living at Stanmore she taught part-time in a small school at Harrow Weald. Difficulties at home caused her to spend more time with her married sisters, and it was while staying with her younger sister, Sibella Norman, in 1838 that Emily met James Macarthur. Within months they married and she sailed with him for the colonies. Their arrival in New South Wales in March 1839 during one of the worst droughts ever recorded must have been a severe shock, but Emily applied herself with great energy to colonial life as the first mistress of the newly completed Camden Park. Here in 1840 her only child, Elizabeth , was born. Besides being wife and helpmate in her husband’s political career, Emily added her weight to many projects of the estate, including the wine and butter industries and the school which James’s brother, William Macarthur , had founded in 1838. Her sketches, diaries, notebooks, ledgers and other documents are an invaluable record of their lives from 1839 until her death on 27 November 1880.
All known work by Emily Macarthur consists of pen, pencil or watercolour drawings in sketchbooks in family collections. There are approximately five books of her early work, containing about 137 drawings and paintings of Britain and Europe. Later work includes such watercolour sketches as Camden 1859 (signed 'E.M. Fecit’) and Bellbird Creek Jany 27 1859 . From family correspondence discovered in the 1980s, it seems that the interior view of the library at Camden Park, previously attributed to Elizabeth and dated c.1865, may have been painted much earlier by Emily.
Writers:
MacArthur-Onslow, Annette
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 February 1806
- Summary
- Female colonial artist of the famous Macarthur family who painted and sketched places where she lived and travelled, eventually establishing the Macarthur family home, Camden Park, in New South Wales.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27 November 1880
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude55.861111 Longitude-4.25 Start Date1803-01-01 End Date1880-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, farmer, politician and manufacturer, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on 25 September 1803.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 September 1803
- Summary
- Watercolourist, farmer, politician and manufacturer. In 1845 he took an exhibition, 'South Australia As It Is', to Scotland.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9 April 1880
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude52.67537 Longitude-0.3174702 Start Date1788-01-01 End Date1880-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Market Deeping, Lincolnshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher(?), naval officer and settler, was born on 2 August 1788 at Market Deeping, Lincolnshire. After joining the navy and fighting against the French, Hardwicke came to Sydney on 7 February 1814 as third officer in the convict transport General Hewitt . Disgusted with the experience, he gained permission from Governor Macquarie to remain in Australia and in 1816 settled in Van Diemen’s Land, taking up land at Norfolk Plains (Longford). A young Aboriginal girl, Plorenernoopperner, known as Fanny, who had been abducted from the Piper River people, was a member of his household.
On 12 January 1820 Fanny was baptised by Rev. John Youl in St John’s Church of England, Launceston, at which time she was reputedly 11 years old. Her charming watercolour portrait, wearing a pink-spotted muslin dress and holding a ring-tailed possum by the tail (private collection), has been attributed to Hardwicke by Plomley and Henley, although it is perhaps more likely to have been by Elizabeth Chapman, Hardwicke’s fiancée, who married Hardwicke in the same church six days after Fanny’s christening. (The annotation on the painting is obviously a later addition.)
C.B. Hardwicke’s life indicates no interest in art. He was chief constable at Longford from 1823 until forced to resign in 1826 after being convicted of selling illicit spirits. He received large grants of land both before and after his conviction and became a successful pastoralist and justice of the peace. His major interest, however, lay in breeding and racing horses. He was seeking permission to conduct race-meetings from soon after his arrival and became one of the founders of the Cornwall Turf Club in March 1830. Hardwicke died at Launceston on 27 September 1880, survived by 14 children, Elizabeth having predeceased him.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 August 1788
- Summary
- Naval officer and settler, the only sketch attributed to him may have in fact been drawn by his fiancée, Elizabeth Chapman. The sketch is of a young Aboriginal girl who had been abducted from the Piper River people.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 September 1880
- Age at death
- 92
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- Watercolorist, soldier and businessman, John de Mansfield Absolon was the fourth of twelve sons of the renowned English watercolour painter John Absolon (1815-95) and his French wife née de Mansfield. He was known as amiable, modest and retiring. He served in the Queens Rifles in the 1860s and also exhibited with the Society of British Artists. He came briefly to Western Australia in 1869 and returned to England to marry Sarah Bowles Habgood daughter of goldsmith and merchant Robert Mace Habgood (qv) of Tulse Hill. They were married in Trinity Church on June 28th 1870. On board ship he spent many hours painting the sea, sky and shipboard life. The young couple returned to Western Australia where her father’s company, R. M. Habgood & Co, became Habgood, Absolon & Co responsible for the Geraldine lead mine near Geraldton, the company stores and the shipping business. It transported wheat, wool, lead and pearl shell to England, sandalwood to Singapore and luxury items and building materials from Europe to Western Australia. They lived in St George’s Terrace. He became Chairman of the Fremantle Chamber of Commerce about 1875. Absolon had little time to paint but he managed a number of pictures from the verandah of the family’s Northam residence and others in Fremantle and on board ship. His “Sunday Evening on the Deck of an Emigrant Vessel” was praised as masterful when exhibited in the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition in 1879 after his death. The critic wrote: “'To Mr Absolon’s graceful pencil the gallery is indebted for two of its best works-a scene on the deck of an emigrant vessel on a Sunday evening, and the exterior of a church in Brittany. In the former the ship is bowling along before a fair wind on an even keel, night is falling, and a young mother of the peasant class, with the English roses in her face, is reading by lamp light to a large family party from a Bible, with all sorts of home associations clinging to it. The arrangement of the figures is quite unconventional the light skilfully managed, and the general tone of the work very harmonious The second picture represents a village cure of the Dr Primrose type, on his way to church, laying his hands in benediction on the heads of some young children who look up smilingly in the good man’s face, while their elders reverently doff their hats. An air of tranquillity and repose seems to breathe from the quaint little church, the graves yard, and the evening landscape. A third picture, by the same artist shows us the wife of Camille Desmoulins outside the Palace of the Luxembourg, in which her husband is confined, gazing on its impenetrable walls with a countenance full of touching sadness.“ Absolon represented the London Art Union in Western Australia from 1871. “The Art-Union of London was established to promote the knowledge and love of the fine Arts, and their general advancement in the British Empire, by a wide diffusion of the works of native artists; and to elevate Art and encourage its professors, by creating an increased demand for their works, and an improved taste on the part of the public.” He was also a Justice of the Peace. He was a bird fancier exhibiting pigeons, canaries and finches in 1874. In 1874 the Absolons returned to London to see their families. Once more shipboard life provided time to paint again. His special skill had been in rendering colour and light. Absolon died suddenly in Perth aged thirty-six after a protracted illness.
Writers:
Staff Writer
erickd
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2014
- Born
- b. 1843
- Summary
- This artist's son operated the Geraldton Lead Mines and international cargo ships. His watercolour works included landscape sketches and scenes of shipboard life, studies of flora and fauna and bush scenes, notably views from his home east of Perth, WA.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 May 1879
- Age at death
- 36
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- painter, amateur photographer and lawyer, was born in Hobart Town on 15 June 1835, son of Francis Pitt, water bailiff and harbour-master, and Maria, née Reardon. After serving his articles with C.B. Brewer, Pitt was admitted to the Bar on 29 July 1856 and subsequently practised law in partnership with Charles Henry Elliston. On 27 April 1859 Pitt married his partner’s sister, Amelia Maria Elliston. He was active in the formation of the first Volunteer Force and first lieutenant in the Artillery Corps. He took stereoscopic view photographs of Hobart Town in 1864 and of Melbourne in 1866, part of a series commemorating The Cruise of the Wanderer (TMAG, p.c.).
Pitt and his family left Tasmania for New Zealand in 1868. There he practised law at Reefton in the Nelson district. Drowned on 30 March 1879, en route to the Supreme Court sittings at Hokitika, he was survived by his wife and four children. His only recorded painting is a watercolour, Tasman Island , shown in the 1862-63 Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition, Pitt having been a member of the committee which organised the exhibition.
Writers:
Glover, Margaret
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 June 1835
- Summary
- William Pitt was a painter, amateur photographer and lawyer. His work was shown in the 1862-63 Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition. Pitt have been a member of the committee which organised the exhibition. He drowned in 1879, en route to the Supreme Court sittings at Hokitika, New Zealand.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30 March 1879
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- painter, showed View in the Gulf of Genoa at the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia Exhibition at Sydney in 1849. She was the younger sister of Miss M.A.C. Bray and may be the 'Miss Bray’, after whom Henry Curzon Allport painted a view, On Goulburn Plains .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1830
- Summary
- Nineteenth-century painter, known for "View in the Gulf of Genoa", the sister of Miss M.A.C. Bray.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1879
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude55.861111 Longitude-4.25 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Glasgow, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- Daniel Marquis (1829-1879), photographer, was born on 17 May and baptised on 24 May 1829. and raised in Glasgow. He was the second of twelve children of John and Mary Marquis, who were grocers, victualers and spirit mer¬chants.
In 1851 Daniel married Grace Murray in Glasgow; he was 22 years old and working in a cloth warehouse; she was 20 and keeping house for her father and her five younger siblings. Grace and Daniel went on to have five children, of whom three survived to adulthood.
By 1855 Daniel was working as a photographer in Glasgow. In 1856 he was running his own studio in Grangemouth. In 1857 he was in Hamilton. By 1858 the family had moved to Stirling where Daniel opened a studio in Mayday Yard, then at 32 King Street, and later in Barnton Place.
In 1862 doctors certified that Grace Marquis was insane and she was treated for several months in the Montrose Royal Asylum. For most of the following year she was in the Royal Edinburgh Asylum.
In late 1864 the family left Scotland for a new life in Australia. They sailed from London to Moreton Bay as fare-paying passengers in the clipper ship Flying Cloud. The household — Daniel (35 years old), his wife Grace (33), their children Isabella (9), John (7), and James (5), and Grace’s sister Margaret Murray (23) — arrived in Brisbane in March 1865.
By the end of 1865 Daniel had rented studio and living space in George Street in Brisbane. Within a few years the family had bought land and built a house beside the river at Lower River Terrace, South Brisbane. They also used their government-issued land orders to buy 33 acres (13½ hectares) of rural land on the river at Indooroopilly.
Daniel established a successful photographic business in the George Street studio. He made portraits that were presented as albumen prints in carte-de-visite and larger formats. Outside the studio he photographed the town’s buildings and places, either on commission or for sale as stock items. He produced albums of views. He showed his work in exhibitions, took forensic photographs for the police, provided photographs to make engravings for publication, and he made copies of drawings.
His most remarkable work was a series of photographs of Indigenous people who posed in his studio for solo and group portraits — he was the most prolific Brisbane photographer in this genre in the 1860s and 1870s.
In 1873 Grace Marquis had another breakdown and was treated at the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum near Brisbane.
Daniel Marquis died of hepatitis in 1879 at the age of 49 and was buried at South Brisbane Cemetery. He left his estate to his sister-in-law, Margaret Murray, as trustee for Grace and the three children. Daniel’s photographic business, including his archive of negatives, was sold to another operator, but it was closed about a year later.
Grace was admitted to the Woogaroo asylum again in 1881 and died there in 1882.
The three Marquis children who came to Queensland in 1865 all married and stayed in Queensland. Grace’s younger sister Margaret continued living in the house at South Brisbane until she sold it in 1887.
The lives of Daniel Marquis and his family exemplify the experience of Scottish migrants who came to Queensland in the 1860s. Daniel did not leave a cache of diaries or letters to tell his story, so much of his personal life remains obscure, but a substantial photographic legacy has survived in private and public collections.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Peter Marquis-Kyle
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. 17 May 1829
- Summary
- Male professional photographer, trained in Scotland, who offered a typical range of services through his Brisbane based studio. He produced many studio photographs of Indigenous people for sale as stock items.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 January 1879
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude55.6867243 Longitude12.5700724 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Biography
- Professional jeweller, gold and silversmith, sculptor, engraver and diesinker. Julius Hogarth was instrumental, along with other jewellers and smiths including his business partner Conrad Erichsen, in the development of 'Australiana’ themed decoration on metalwork and jewellery, which actively promoted the use of Indigenous Australian floral and faunal elements.
Julius Hougaard was born in Frederiksberg Copenhagen, Denmark, on 24 December 1820, sixth child of Jørgen and Charlotte Hougaard. He was christened on 4 February 1821. Hougaard was listed in the 1840 Danish census as a Journeyman Goldsmith, and was recorded as living in the household of Jørgen Dalhoff, Danish royal goldsmith with his family, their maid, and Dalhoff’s apprentice Carl Christensen. (1) Ten years later, the Danish census recorded Hougaard as an engraver, student of the Academy of arts, and teacher at the Technical and Metalwork Institute, living in his Copenhagen residence with his wife, two sons, their maid, and apprentices Wilhelm Valentin Reggendorf and Andreas Wilhelm Wolge. (2)
Little is known of Hougaard’s life and work in Europe, however an obituary mentioned he won “eight gold and silver medals for various artistic works” in Denmark. (3) Hogarth married Christiane Galle at The Church of the Holy Trinity (Trinitatis), Copenhagen in 1842. The relationship produced three sons, Waldemar, Ingomar, Hagbarth, and one daughter, Laura.
On 17 August 1852 Hougaard left Europe from Hamburg alone aboard the Cesar Godeffroy, arriving in Sydney on 11 December that year. (4) Upon his arrival, Hougaard briefly prospected on the Victorian goldfields, but with little success. He was one member of a “party of German goldsmiths” who was employed by Adolphus Blau around March 1853, and produced a parure consisting of a bracelet, brooch and earrings, and a four-inch-high statuette of a miner equipped for a prospecting expedition. (5)
By March 1854, Hougaard had anglicised his surname to Hogarth and had established a manufacturing jeweller’s business in partnership with Norwegian engraver Conrad Erichsen, under the name Hogarth and Erichsen. Their premises were initially established at 255 George Street, Sydney. (6) The firm quickly gained a reputation for high quality workmanship, evidenced in commissions such as a three-inch-high gold statuette of a digger for Joseph Montefiore in March 1854, and the exhibition of wares including gold and silver figures of miners and Aboriginal Australians at the Australian Museum in Sydney in 1854, and the Paris Exhibition the following year. (7) In 1856 Hogarth and Erichsen moved to 310 George Street and renamed the business Hogarth, Erichsen & Co., after Prussian watchmaker Augustus Kosvitz became a partner in the firm. (8) Hogarth was naturalised on the 8th December 1856. (9) In 1858 Hogarth married Charlotte Elizabeth Tegg, daughter of Sydney bookseller James Tegg. (10) The couple bore eight children, one of whom died in infancy.
Hogarth and Erichsen’s partnership achieved great success during the 1850s, notably through vice-regal patronage by Governors Young and Denison, and the securing of many large and important commissions. The firm supplied pieces to prominent jewellery retailers Hardy Brothers and Flavelle Bros. & Co. In 1859, Hogarth, Erichsen & Co. moved to 312 George Street, premises that had been formerly occupied by Alfred Lorking. (11) In December 1859 Augustus Kosvitz ceased his involvement with the company, and removed to Brisbane where he operated a jewellery manufacturing business for over a decade. (12) Hogarth and Erichsen moved again in 1861 to 295 George Street. (13) The firm’s repeated relocations towards the end of the 1850s were likely associated with business troubles.
In January 1861 Hogarth and Erichsen dissolved their partnership and the firm was declared insolvent. Later that year Hogarth re-established himself at 9 Hunter Street, Sydney, and worked as a contractor for the jeweller Adolphus Blau. Hogarth maintained his vice-regal patronage, evidenced by the presentation of a solid gold casket in March 1864 to Government House in Sydney, commissioned by the Governor’s wife as a gift to the Danish Princess Alexandria from the ladies of New South Wales. The lavish gift featured moulded decoration of Indigenous figures, emus, crests, and Australian flora with a specially constructed base of Myall wood and silver. (14) Hogarth was also commissioned by the ladies of New South Wales to fashion an emblematic emu egg vase in 1861, which incorporated three cased specimens of seaweed from Manly Beach. (15) His work was displayed by Lady Young, wife of Governor Sir John Young, at the New South Wales Exhibition in October 1861 and the London International Exhibition of 1862.
Hogarth was robbed at his Hunter Street premises around Christmas 1862; a quantity of both stock and items for repair were taken. Hogarth used this robbery as the reason for his second insolvency on 9 May 1864, and during the insolvency proceedings moved his premises to 21 Hunter Street. (16)
Hogarth has documented relationships with a number of Australian artists. During his second bankruptcy, debts were owed to Alexander Habbe and Knud Bull. (17) Hogarth and Erichsen worked from William Dexter’s original drawings for the Randle Testimonial in 1856. (18) An ambrotype portrait of Hogarth with a pair of gold figures was displayed in the shop of photographer Lawson Insley in 1858. (19) Publisher John Degotardi commissioned a writing set featuring a silver-mounted cassowary egg from Hogarth, thought to be the first of its kind in Australia. This set was presented to Alois Auer, Director of the Imperial Printery in Vienna. (20)
Hogarth forged many relationships with jewellers around the Sydney region. Silversmith Evan Jones completed the first part of his apprenticeship with Hogarth, Erichsen & Co., before continuing his apprenticeship with Christian Ludwig Qwist after the firm’s insolvency. Qwist supplied goods to Hogarth in 1861. Christian Hafer is known to have engaged with the firm in the capacity of watchmaker and jeweller, and Hermann Finckh was employed on a casual basis for the company. (21) Watchmaker Augustus Kosvitz’s partnership with the company between 1856 and 1859 saw the firm rebranded as Hogarth, Erichsen & Co. (22) Hogarth’s various bankruptcy records list debts to other artisans for work done, including jewellers John (Johann) Berthold, James Bowen, Gustavus Schroeter, Veyret & Delarue, and watchmakers Edwin Beckmann, Alexander Conray, Alfred Joseph, and Theodor Lassen. (23)
Around 1865-6 Hogarth moved to Melbourne and was recorded as a chaser and goldsmith; in 1866 he operated from 13 Bourke Street West, and between 1866 and 1878 moved to several other addresses in the city. (24) A silver statue of a kangaroo by Hogarth was displayed by Alexander Habbe at the 1866-1867 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. (25) Hogarth was declared insolvent for a third time on 18 December 1866. (26) He was employed by Walsh Brothers in Melbourne, and undertook work for Thomas Young & Son.
In 1878 Hogarth worked alongside other silversmiths at Walsh Brothers to create a centrepiece for presentation to Michael O’Grady. Hogarth later identified a silver figure and leaves that he fashioned in legal proceedings following the theft and destruction of the work. (27) He was employed in engraving and die sinking for Stokes & Co, where he designed an Aboriginal portrait for use on commemorative tokens to be struck at the 1872 Melbourne Exhibition, and cut Oswald Rose Campbell’s design for the medallion that was struck at the 1873 Melbourne Exhibition. Hogarth was awarded a bronze medal at the 1875 Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition for the impressions on another set of medals that he cut to Campbell’s design. (28) Melbourne jeweller George Catanach reported in 1876 that he had entered a partnership with Hogarth for the completion of silver and gold presentation work, medals and dies. (29) That year Hogarth also executed Charles Turner’s design for the Victorian Humane Society medals. (30)
Hogarth returned to Sydney with his family in February 1878 aboard the Cheviot, and opened premises at Newtown. (31) On 5 March 1879 Hogarth died at his residence, Juliette Cottage, Chippendale, as a result of chronic liver disease, and was buried at Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney. He was survived by his second wife and seven children, and the son of his first marriage who had moved to Victoria in 1876. (32)
Hogarth’s work is distinguished by the inclusion of a variety of Australian motifs, notably animals, Indigenous figures, and selected specimens of native plants. Particularly fine workmanship and attention to detail is consistently evident in his pieces. The bankruptcies during Hogarth’s career mean that many of the pieces executed by him are unmarked, or marked by the company which he worked for, providing uncertain provenance links to the artist. Additionally, Hogarth, Erichsen & Co. was sub-contracted to fill orders of other jewellery retailers, which were marked by the contracting company. For these reasons, many pieces of silver and gold smithing are only attributed to this maker. Hogarth’s maker’s mark on his die sinking efforts was the initials J. HOGARTH, J.H or I.H, and items of silver, gold or jewellery are sometimes marked HOGARTH ERICHSEN SYDNEY. Hogarth’s works are held in the collections of The National Library of Australia, Canberra; The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Museum Victoria, Melbourne; The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; The Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; and private collections nationally and internationally.
footnotes:(1) Danish Census 1840: County: København, District: København (Staden), Parish: Sankt Annæ Øster Kvarter, Place Name: Sankt Annæ Plads, 60, Mellembygning, Address: Stuen, Household No: 267. Source entry number C4387 Record No: 1343. Hougaard’s occupation was listed as a “guldsmedesvend”.(2) Danish Census 1850: County: København, District: København (Staden), Parish: Frimand Kvarter, Place Name: Frimands Kvarter, Address: Skindergade 41, 2den sal, Household No: 252. Source entry number C1436 Record No: 1259. Hougaard’s occupation was listed as a “cisselaur, elev af kunstacademiet. Lærer i det Tigup institut og institutet for metalarbeidere”.(3) Australian Town & Country Journal, Sat 15 March 1879, p 27.(4) http://mariners.records.nsw.gov.au/1852/12/023cae.htm(5) Sydney Morning Herald, Tue 8 March 1853, p 2; Thurs 10 March 1853, p 1s; Sat 12 March 1853, p 6; Mon 14 March 1853, p 3; Fri 3 November 1854, p 5.(6) Sydney Morning Herald, Mon 27 March 1854, p 5.(7) Ibid.; Fri 3 November 1854, 5; Fri 22 December 1854, p 5.(8) Sydney Morning Herald, Fri 4 July 1856, p 8. (9) Hougaard, Julius, 3 November 1856, Reg 1, p 781. Item 4/1200 Reel 129. State Records of New South Wales.(10) New South Wales Department of Births, Deaths and Marriages Marriage certificate 856/1858. (11) Sydney Morning Herald, Tue 8 March 1859, p 8.(12) Sydney Morning Herald, Thurs 15 December 1859, p 1. Timothy Roberts, ‘The life and career of Augustus Kosvitz’, Australiana vol 31 no 3, August 2009, pp 4-8.(13) Sydney Morning Herald, Fri 15 February 1861, p 5. (14) The Empire, Tues 1 March 1864, p 4. (15) Sydney Morning Herald, Fri 15 February 1861, p 5. (16) JB Hawkins, ‘Julius Hogarth, Behind the Shopfront’, Part 1, Australiana vol 22 no 2, May 2000, 36-48.(17) Ibid.(18) Sydney Morning Herald, Fri 18 April 1856, p 5.(19) Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, Sat 6 November 1858, p 3.(20) JB Hawkins, 19th Century Australian Silver, Volume 1, Antique Collectors’ Club, 1990, pp 132-3.(21) Hawkins, ‘Julius Hogarth,’ Part 1, 36-48.(22) Eva Czernis-Ryl ed., Brilliant: Australian Gold and Silver 1851-1950, Powerhouse Publishing, Ultimo, 2011, pp 28, 30. (23) Hawkins, ‘Julius Hogarth,’ Part 1, 36-48; JB Hawkins, ‘Julius Hogarth, Behind the Shopfront,’ Part 2, Australiana vol 22 no 3, August 2000, 68-79.(24) Hawkins, 'Julius Hogarth,’ Part 2, 68-79.(25) Argus, Tue 30 October 1866, p 5.(26) Hawkins, 'Julius Hogarth,’ Part 2, 68-79.(27) The South Bourke Standard, Fri 1 April 1870, 3.(28) Argus, Tue 5 October 1875, p 5; Sat 13 November 1875, p 5; Wed 17 November 1875, p 9. (29) South Australian Advertiser, Mon 21 August 1876, p 3.(30) Argus, Sat 30 December 1876, p 5. (31) Argus, Sat 9 February 1878, p 6; http://mariners.records.nsw.gov.au/1878/02/026che.htm(32) Sydney Morning Herald, Fri 7 March 1879, p 1; Australian Town and Country Journal, Sat 15 March 1879, p 27. New South Wales Births, Death and Marriages death certificate 492/1879.
Writers:
Timothy Roberts
duggim
Date written:
2012
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 24 December 1820
- Summary
- Professional jeweller, smith, sculptor, engraver and diesinker of Danish origin. Resided and worked in Sydney and later Melbourne, is distinguished for his incorporation of Australian floral and faunal motifs into his silver and gold creations.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 March 1879
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude50.84467705 Longitude-0.783114432 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Chichester, Sussex, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, amateur photographer, teacher and surveyor, was born on 19 November 1820 in Chichester, Sussex, second son and fourth child of Joseph Francis Gilbert and Jane, née Snelling. He came to Victoria in November 1841 with his elder brother, George Alexander Gilbert, and the two were living together at Melbourne in 1843. Gilbert became tutor to some of the children of Joseph Docker at Wangaratta, then, in about 1846, to the family of John Cotton. Of an inventive disposition like his father and brother, Frank Gilbert made daguerreotype portraits at Cotton’s station in February 1847 (using Cotton’s photographic equipment) and Cotton also commented that Gilbert 'fancies he can draw and paint, but has little taste in this way’. Gilbert subsequently lived in Geelong and worked as a surveyor. In 1875, at Frank’s Fine Art Gallery, Malop Street, Geelong, he exhibited eleven English and colonial landscape views which he and other members of his family had painted, to be disposed of by an art union.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 19 November 1820
- Summary
- As tutor to John Cotton, he used his employer's photographic equipment to make daguerreotype portraits but later moved to Geelong to work as a surveyor. Unfortunately, an art union disposed of eleven landscape paintings that he had exhibited in 1875.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1879
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter and scene-painter, the son of a successful English scene painter, arrived at Port Melbourne on 27 January 1853 with his wife Jane as unassisted migrants. An experienced scene-painter from the London Lyceum Theatre, he was soon employed by the theatrical entrepreneur George Selth Coppin. When Coppin’s company appeared at Geelong’s weatherboard Theatre Royal in March 1855 the building had been refurbished and decorated by Pitt. Coppin had purchased a prefabricated iron theatre in England in 1854 and had it shipped to Melbourne. This became the Olympic Theatre and Pitt painted many of the backdrops to G.V. Brooke’s Shakespearian performances there in 1855-56. Styled by the Argus in January 1856 as 'the most accomplished scenic artist in the colonies’, he also painted the scenery for Brooke’s performances in August 1856 at Melbourne’s Theatre Royal (then also owned by Coppin); his scenery for The Winter’s Tale was particularly admired. During the year he also worked with Wilson , Arragoni and Hennings on the Neapolitan panorama for Coppin’s Cremorne Gardens at Richmond, an enormous work reportedly covering 25 000 feet (7620 m) of canvas. In 1858 he painted a new panorama, The Fall of Delhi , working with Wilson and one of the Habbe brothers , almost certainly Alexander.
In February 1859 Pitt’s transformation scene, Conchological Cosmorama of Coral Coruscations , was included in a production of Once Upon a Time There Were Two Kings at the Royal Victoria Theatre, Sydney, on which occasion the management 'particularly requested that parties will not move from their seats during the working’ of the scene. By then Pitt was general manager for the partnership of Coppin & Brooke, in charge of the finances of the Olympic Theatre, Theatre Royal, Cremorne Gardens and the Argyle Ball Rooms. When the partnership was dissolved Pitt appears to have remained with Coppin at Cremorne Gardens until at least 1861. In that year he exhibited three paintings at the Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts – Off to Dandenong , View near the Splitters’ Hut, Dandenong and A Sketch – of which the Examiner noted: 'Mr Pitt’s long experience in another branch of the art has enabled him to concentrate his effects, and the spectator, though dwelling upon a particular part, enjoys the feeling of taking in the whole of the picture, so judiciously is the interest circled round a centre of brightness.’
Pitt continued to work as a Melbourne scene-painter throughout the 1860s. In 1868 he was listed as an 'artist and portrait painter’ of 173 Bourke Street West. On the Teign in Devon , lent to the 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition by W. Robertson, was included among the exhibits 'particularly worthy of notice’ by the Age , while the Argus described it as a 'marvellous river scene, full of shadows and daylight’. A foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870, Pitt was elected treasurer. He resigned later that year as a protest against an exhibition he predicted would be a failure. Nevertheless, he showed an oil painting in it, Near Yalcombe, Devon , but did not exhibit again.
Pitt died at his St Kilda home on 17 January 1879. At the time he was lessee of the Theatre Royal Café and on the evening of his death the café's lights were dimmed and the staff wore mourning. Pitt’s son, William Pitt the younger, who became a prominent architect and parliamentarian, designed several Melbourne theatres.
Writers:
Maslen, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1819
- Summary
- An experienced scene-painter from England, William Pitt arrived in Melbourne in 1853. Working for many years in theatre production, he was also a foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts before a quarrel saw him resign from his post.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 January 1879
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude51.2715316 Longitude-0.341452351 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Surrey, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, architect, mining engineer, geologist, pastoralist, politician and author, was born in Surrey, England. Wathen studied architecture, but it is doubtful if he ever practised. On completion of his studies he travelled to Egypt, attracted by its antiquities and possibly also for health reasons. One result of the visit was the publication in London in 1843 of an ambitious book, The Arts, Antiquity and Chronology of Ancient Egypt . Unfortunately, another was that during the trip he contracted ophthalmia and on returning home suffered a breakdown in health. Possibly in the hope of effecting some improvement, he sailed for Australia later in the decade, reaching Port Phillip (Victoria) before the discovery of gold. He carried out an exploration of likely auriferous areas in the colony and submitted his findings to the government; in 1853 he published the first account of the geology of the Victorian goldfields.
The years 1851-54 were spent mostly on the Victorian diggings and Wathen’s observations of goldfields’ life were recorded in his book The Golden Colony; or, Victoria in 1854 (London, 1855). This was illustrated, if somewhat sparsely, with his own sketches. As the preface makes clear, they were taken from a sketchbook of his Australian travels but the book’s present whereabouts are unknown. An apology for the sketches is being made with 'more regard to truthfulness than to pictorial effect’ is scarcely necessary; they exhibit the practised skill of the field artist of the period.
Wathen returned to England to see his book through the press and in April 1855 was elected a fellow of the Royal Geological Society, London. In 1857 he set out on his travels once more. This time he went to South Africa, where he purchased a property near Richmond in Natal, took up sheepfarming and designed himself a neo-Gothic homestead. In 1862 he entered parliament as a member of Natal’s Legislative Council. He was habitually dogged by ill health and this was seriously aggravated by a fall from a horse, leading to his retirement to England with his family in 1867. Subsequent winters were spent in the south of France and Italy, and it was while travelling in Italy in 1879 that he became ill and died at Viareggia near Pisa. He was buried in the local Protestant cemetery, leaving a wife, a daughter and two sons. A man of considerable and diverse talents, Wathen’s obituarists refer to his 'singular intelligence’, his 'superior ability’, his 'moderation, amiable qualities and reproachless reputation’.
Writers:
Cusack, Frank
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1818
- Summary
- George Henry Wathen's observations of goldfields' life were recorded in his book 'The Golden Colony or, Victoria in 1854'. This was illustrated, with his own sketches that exhibit the practised skill of the field artist of the period.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1879
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude55.1315912 Longitude-6.671861 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Coleraine, Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher and governess, was born in Coleraine, Ireland, only daughter of the poet, lyric writer and student of Aboriginal culture Eliza Hamilton Dunlop by Dunlop’s first marriage to James Sylvius Law, an astronomer. Her mother married a fellow Irish native, David Dunlop, at Portpatrick, Scotland, in 1823 and Georgina (as she seems to have been known) came to New South Wales in February 1838 with her mother, step-father and the four children of this marriage. Dunlop was appointed first police magistrate in the Penrith district and leased the old Government House at nearby Emu Plains for his family. On 7 July 1840 Georgina Law signed and dated a pencil view of the building (Mitchell Library). Another drawing, Sir John Jamison’s Factory, Emu Plains , inscribed 'Sunday 19th(?)/41 Mary G. Law’, a far cruder work, is perhaps a copy of Georgina’s (lost) original.
David Dunlop was subsequently appointed police magistrate and protector of the Macdonald River Aborigines. The family moved to Wollombi where Dunlop built a stone house, Mulla Villa, but Georgina Law became governess to the Hassall family. By the early 1860s she was headmistress of Sydney’s St Catherine’s Church of England School for the daughters of clergymen. Later she too lived at Wollombi with her mother (again widowed: Dunlop died in 1863), her half-sister Rachel and Rachel’s husband, David Milson, at Byora, the property David managed for his father. Georgina Law died at Wollombi in 1879 and was buried in the Church of England section of the local cemetery.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1816
- Summary
- Sketcher. Made a pencil view of Old Government House, Emu Plains, in 1840.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1879
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude53.9015775 Longitude-0.3827242 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hull, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, teacher and novelist, was the eldest of the five daughters of Edward Heseltine, a bank manager, and his first wife and first cousin, Martha. An 1837 pencil sketch by Ellen (private collection) includes her sisters Rose and Isabella, the former to become Mrs Anthony Trollope, wife of the famous novelist. Ellen was baptised at Holy Trinity Church of England in Hull, Yorkshire, on 4 March 1812 but later converted to Roman Catholicism, possibly when studying in Paris. In 1874 she described herself as 'a lady both by birth and education’ and stated that after private study in England she had 'spent some time in fashionable schools in Paris. The Sacre Coeur was one of them.’ She probably met the Catholic Arthur Davitt from Drogheda, Ireland, in Paris where he was a 'Professor of Modern Languages’. They married at Jersey in 1845, but were in Ireland by 1847 when Arthur was appointed an inspector of schools. Ellen taught drawing in the Irish National Board’s Model School for Girls at Dublin in 1851-54.
Arthur and Ellen Davitt reached Victoria on 30 July 1854, having been respectively appointed principal and first superintendent of the new Model Schools in East Melbourne. Seconded by her husband, Ellen was the major figure behind the remodelling, enlargement and rebuilding of the school buildings (begun in 1852) to a more Irish model, which she detailed very fully. Her contribution was not appreciated by the architect, Arthur Ebden Johnson, who complained of 'the close and vindictive espionage’ practised by certain National Board officers during the last stage of building. She did not appeal to Martha Berkeley , who was matron at the school in the late 1850s, either; she reportedly commented that her superior was 'fit only for an actress’. J. Alex Allan in his The Old Model School: its history and romance 1852-1904 (Melbourne University Press, 1934) depicted Mrs Davitt as insufferable, her only good point, in his opinion, being her efficiency to which was added 'a certain harshness, priggishness and overbearing self esteem’.
Her painting skills were even less admired. At the first exhibition of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts in 1857 she showed a large oil Saint Cecilia , the models for the saint being several girls at the school. Offered for sale for an exceptionally ambitious £105, the painting drew a typically satirical response from the critic 'Christopher Sly’ ( James Neild ), who stated that while it was a tremendous thing for a woman to do, he wished Mrs Davitt would not do it any more. The Argus critic, James Smith, was even more caustic:
Venturi tells us that when the picture of St Cecilia which Raffaelle had painted to ornament the chapel of St Giovanni in Monte, at Bologna, was unpacked by the Bolognese artist, Francesca Francia, he was so overpowered by its transcendent merits, and so impressed with the inferiority of his own works, that he fell ill with grief, took to his bed and died. We sincerely hope that no such fatality will result from the exhibition of Mrs Davitt’s 'Cecilia’, which is in every respect an astonishing production, its anatomical details more particularly.
Mrs Davitt appears to have taken the critics’ advice to heart and is not known to have exhibited any further paintings.
When the budget of the National Board of Education was slashed, the Davitts agreed (under protest) to being discharged with £500 compensation. With this, Ellen opened 'The Ladies’ Institute of Victoria’ in Granite Terrace, Carlton Gardens in 1859. Arthur retired to Geelong in the final stages of the tuberculosis from which he died on 24 January 1860. The design of the 'handsome monument’ over his grave in the Catholic section of Geelong’s Eastern Cemetery is attributed to Ellen.
Mrs Davitt’s school failed and she seems to have taught for some years in the public school system; she was at Portland Common School 510 from 1 August 1862 to 30 September 1863. At Portland she gave a public lecture on 'The Influence of Art’, a topic that was part of her repertoire when she made a lecture tour of rural Victoria in 1863-64. Other lectures were on 'The Vixens of Shakespeare’ and 'Woman and her Mission’, the latter being described in the Hamilton Spectator as 'an essay in female heroism’ based on a wide range of historical and literary sources. When she lectured at Kyneton on 'Woman and her Mission’ and 'The Influence of Art’ in January 1864 her connection with Anthony Trollope was publicised in the Kyneton Observer . It may have helped promote her novels, which she began publishing as serials in Melbourne journals about this time. Her first effort, Edith Travers , has not been traced, but the next, Force and Fraud: A Tale of the Bush , was the lead serial in the first issue of the Australian Journal on 2 September 1865. This early 'whodunnit’, one of the first detective stories in English (Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone was not published until 1868), has a hero who is an artist and 'enthusiastic admirer of nature’ and painterly references to Tintoretto, Claude and Salvator Rosa are sprinkled throughout the text. Two lesser novel-length serials and a novella followed in the same journal within a year. Her last acknowledged serial for AJ , 'The Wreck of the Atlanta’, appeared in 1867, although others may have been published anonymously.
In 1874 Ellen Davitt successfully applied to rejoin the Victorian State Education system and was sent to Kangaroo Flat, near Bendigo – where once again she complained of inadequate buildings. She also fought with the head teacher. Anthony Trollope visited her (for an hour) in May 1875, but made no mention of the visit (or the relationship) in his book on his Australasian tour. Finally, Davitt’s health 'gave way’ altogether and she was forced to retire. Repeatedly applying for compensation – to no avail (it was refused because of the £500 she had received in 1859) – she stated on 15 November 1877 that she was supporting herself as a private teacher of 'Drawing and Languages’. She died of 'cancer and exhaustion’ on 6 January 1879 at 62 Nicholson Street, Fitzroy, and was buried beside her husband. In 1993 the Melbourne branch of Sisters in Crime added her name to Arthur’s memorial and published Force and Fraud in book form for the first time. The editor, Lucy Sussex, revealed the full story of Davitt’s Victorian life in her introduction.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.March 1812
- Summary
- Painter, teacher and novelist who ruffled a few feathers with her overbearing personality. She taught drawing at various schools but her own art was not much admired.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 6 January 1879
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude52.661252 Longitude-8.6301239 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Limerick, Ireland
- Biography
- amateur photographer, politician, judge, antiquarian, naturalist and pioneer of technical education, was born in Limerick, Ireland, son of Samuel Bindon and Eliza, née Massy. Soon after graduating in law in 1838 from Trinity College, Dublin, he married Susannah, daughter of Sir Hugh Dillon Massy; they had one son, Massy. The family emigrated to Victoria in 1855 where Samuel worked in the county courts. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly as member for Castlemaine in 1864, becoming minister for justice from 1866 until he resigned in October 1868.
Bindon was an important figure in organising the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition and an active trustee of the Public Library, Museum and National Gallery of Victoria. He was also a member of the Acclimatisation Society. His major achievement, however, was to found and chair Victoria’s Technological Commission in 1869, Australia’s first official organisation for technical education. He became founding chairman of the Industrial and Technological Museum Committee, publishing Industrial Instruction in Europe and Australia (Ballarat 1872).
In April 1869 Bindon was appointed judge of the County Court for Gippsland. Two months later the Colonial Monthly reported that 'to the cultivated taste of Judge Bindon, the colony is also indebted for some exquisite photographs of the wildflowers of Gippsland’. He died at St Kilda on 1 August 1879. The exhibition showing at the Ballarat Schools of Design closed for the day as a mark of respect.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1812
- Summary
- Samuel Henry Bindon contributed his legal expertise in several positions in Victoria and was also heavily involved in a number of artistic organisations. An amateur photographer, some wildflower photographs are attributed to him.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1 August 1879
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude50.7241405 Longitude-3.660778816 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Devonshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, scene-painter, theatre director and actor, was born in Devonshire, England, son of the painter Richard Opie and nephew of the celebrated Royal Academician John Opie.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1809
- Summary
- Painter, scene-painter, theatre director and actor. Born in England he arrived in Australia in 1839 and worked throughout South Australia, Victoria, and Tasmania. He reputedly broke his right arm soon after his arrival and had to learn to paint with his left. He is not known to have signed his paintings and few have been located.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31 October 1879
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude52.0799838 Longitude4.3113461 Start Date1801-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- The Hague, Netherlands
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, was born in The Hague, Netherlands. Two portraits by a Dutch lithographer of this name are known, General G.C. van Geen, Commander-in-Chief at the Belgian Insurrection 1830 and Prince Albert of Prussia (c.1830). After working in Leyden, Utrecht, and possibly England, van den Houten migrated to Victoria with his large family in 1853, aged fifty-two. He had married twice. He and his first wife had five children and there were eight from the second marriage. Two children died in infancy, the rest accompanied their parents to Australia. Van den Houten worked on the goldfields with little success until 1855 then the Board of Education appointed him a teacher of elementary drawing at suburban schools in Melbourne on an annual salary of £300. He later taught at Scotch College, Melbourne; Gladstone Eyre and C. Douglas Richardson were among his pupils. He was naturalised on 26 March 1857.
Scene in Lincolnshire , his first Victorian exhibit, was shown with the Fine Arts Society in August 1853. The next year 'van den Honten’ showed Virgin and Child , a painting 'on glass, in a new style’, at the Melbourne Exhibition. In March 1861 he gave an interview to the Prahran Advertiser (reprinted Bendigo Advertiser 8 March 1861) about his new painting on the Burke and Wills expedition, The Exploring Party Coming Upon an Encampment of Natives , and the picture was exhibited at the 'Melbourne Ladies Benevolent Society Exhibition of Art Treasures’ in May. A large oil painting on this topic auctioned at Sotheby’s in November 1998 (lot 91, purchased NLA) is dated 1878, but the cataloguer (C. Bruce) convincingly argued that it is actually the 1861 painting, possibly reworked the year before he died in an unsuccessful attempt to find a buyer. His executors were still trying to sell his Burke and Wills paintings 27 years after he died (NGV minute book, 29 March 1906: cited Bonyhady).
His oil paintings shown in the 1861 Victorian Exhibition inspired some sarcasm from the Examiner 's reviewer ( James Neild ), who wrote:
Mr Vanden Houten’s style, though peculiar, and possibly original, is not on that account commendable. His pictures, as was shrewdly remarked by a gentleman looking at his Landscape near the Fern-Tree Gully , have very much the appearance of Berlin wool work… You see a cluster of trees but you are by no means clear if they are growing out of the earth, or are being let down from the heavens.
As for Result of a Day’s Sport , 'it is as deficient in composition as a chess-board, which indeed it somewhat resembles in its geometrical alternation of dark and light’.
By 1866 'Henry Houten’ was listed in the Melbourne Directory as a drawing master of Prahran. The four oil paintings he showed at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, from Gardiner Street, South Yarra, included Burke, Wills and King at Cooper’s Creek , Scene in the Dandenong Ranges and Waterfall at Riddell’s Creek ; also a watercolour, Rose of Denmark (probably a portrait of the Princess of Wales). His 152 × 91 cm transparency in honour of the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit to Melbourne in November 1867 was painted on glass at George Carnaby’s premises in Collins Street, presumably on the shop windows, and depicted an anchor surmounted by a crown and flanked by oak leaves. In 1869 van den Houten had four oil landscapes in the Melbourne Public Library Exhibition, three oils (including Sportsman’s Return ) at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute, and two oils and two watercolours at the Geelong Mechanics Institute. Titles included Mitchell’s Falls, Sunset , Landscape with Falls and The Hanging Rock, Victoria . The Disappointment of Burke and Wills was also shown at Bendigo in that year.
Like other Melbourne artists, van den Houten applied for the position of Director of the National Gallery Schools in 1870 ( von Gu érard was appointed). That year he was made a founding councillor of the Victorian Academy of Arts and exhibited ten oils in its inaugural exhibition. According to the Argus , they were 'forcibly painted’ and marked by 'honest solid work… but he appears to us somewhat too fond of impasto '. When shown with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1873, Winter Storm at Yering and Sunset at Mount Macedon (both oils) were admired for their atmospheric effects ('a bleak wind’ and 'a ruddy glow of parting sunshine’ respectively). Photographs of his bush paintings were issued to Victorian Art Union subscribers in 1873-5, while his view of Mount Macedon, drawn expressly to be photographed by Johnstone , O’Shannessy & Co. in 1875 as one of that year’s Art Union prizes, was judged excellent: 'a light, warm, and sketchy drawing of a road very sparsely timbered on either side, with the Mount Macedon range in the distance’.
Hanging Rocks at Woodend ('a capital interpretation’) and Sunset on the You Yangs Ranges ('a little gem’) were shown with the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1875, while an oil painting of Corio Bay was awarded a silver medal by the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1876. The Old Bridge at Eltham (Deutscher Fine Art 1980, Christies’ Melbourne 29 April 1997) and Batman’s First Meeting with Buckley and the Blacks in 1836 (1878, o/c, LT), among other works, were shown posthumously with the VAA in 1879, the latter being sent on to the Sydney International Exhibition with his On the Road to Wood’s Point .
Van den Houten regularly exhibited in Sydney as well as Melbourne. His many works in local and intercolonial exhibitions included five oil paintings at the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1873, sixteen in 1877, and two for sale (at £18 each) at the 1873 Agricultural Society of New South Wales Exhibition. When he showed five oil paintings non-competitively at the 1875 Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition held in preparation for the Philadelphia Centennial, including Melbourne in 1837 , he was tactlessly (but accurately) labelled in the introduction to the catalogue 'a prolific paysagiste ... whose performances are most unequal’. Melbourne in 1837 was exhibited posthumously at the 1880 Melbourne International Exhibition. Van den Houten died on 17 February 1879 'after a long and painful illness’ and was buried in the St Kilda Cemetery. Louis Buvelot and William Ford were among the mourners at his funeral.
His widow also appears to have been an artist, painting subjects indistinguishable from those by her husband (some may have been copies). C. van den Houten was listed as an artist in 1872; C.A. van den Houten exhibited with the Victorian Academy in 1875 from the same address as H.L.; and an original watercolour by C.A., Melbourne from the Friendly Societies’ Grounds , was for sale at 3 guineas in the 1876 exhibition of the New South Wales Academy of Art. In 1886 Mrs van den Houten of 11 Henry Street, Windsor (Victoria) – H.L.'s final address {not according to McCulloch Artists of the Australian Goldrush , p.180, who says he died in his home in Oxford Street, St Kilda, citing Age 20 February 1879: studio?} – had three oil paintings in the London Colonial and Indian Exhibition: Scene at Macedon, 'In the Bush’ ; Scene at Fernshaw, 'Camping for the Night’ and Australian Bush Scene, Black Hills at Kyneton .
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1801
- Summary
- Henricus (Henry) Leonardus van den Houten was a painter and art teacher. In 1853 he migrated with his family to Victoria. Van den Houten was a founding councillor of the Victorian Academy of Arts.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 February 1879
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude52.634444 Longitude-1.131944 Start Date1794-01-01 End Date1879-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leicestershire, England, UK
- Biography
- botanical painter and writer, was born in Newmarket, Leicestershire, eldest daughter of the four children of Captain and Mrs Nathan Cooper. Later the family moved to Dublin where, on 8 April 1813 in the Round Church of St Andrew, Eliza Cooper married Captain William (Will) Shaw of the Rifle Brigade. In 1829 the Shaws, their four sons and two daughters migrated to Western Australia, arriving at Fremantle on 13 February 1830 on board the Egyptian . They settled at Belvoir on the Upper Swan River where they were neighbours of the Irwins (see Elizabeth Irwin ), Tanners, Burgesses and Brockmans – cultured, devout members of the colony’s Anglican establishment. Tragically, the Shaws’ two eldest sons, aged twelve and seven, were drowned at Belvoir on 10 November 1830. They later had two more daughters and another son. After Will died in 1862 Eliza sold Belvoir and went to live with her daughter Mrs John Drummond at Geraldton. She died there on 18 August 1879.
Eliza Shaw was interested in the natural sciences and wrote long letters to her Leicestershire friend, Ellen Waghorne, on the 'curious flora and fauna, geological structures and indigenous inhabitants’ of her new home, as Durack points out. As befitted her class and sex, she was an excellent pianist and needlewoman (a youthful sampler of 1803 survives) and painted watercolour specimens of native flowers. The Shaws did not live in grand style; Eliza taught her daughter Elizabeth to play the piano on the Tanners’ nearby grand and the younger children went to Rev. J. Mitchell’s local 'brushwood school’ (established 1839). One of her early letters describes their original 'plaster and dab’ home: a structure 39 × 12 feet (11.8 × 3.6 m) divided into three rooms by canvas partitions, the main room having a fireplace and two small 'gothic’ windows purchased in Leicestershire. Her sketch of the cottage, drawn in 1831, shows it with a trellised kitchen behind.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1794
- Summary
- Elizabeth (Eliza) Shaw was a botanical painter and writer as well as an excellent pianist and needlewoman. She arrived with her family in Western Australia in February 1830. Tragically, her two eldest sons drowned in November of the same year.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 18 August 1879
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude-38.15 Longitude144.35 Start Date1850-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher and teacher, was born in Geelong, Port Phillip, on 24 August 1850, second daughter of William J. and Sarah Thomas. She grew up at Wenvoe, on the corner of Skene and George Streets, Geelong, and by 1878 was a teacher at the Chilwell Ragged School and applying for her teaching certificate. Sadly, she died of pneumonia soon afterwards, just four days before her 27th birthday. Mary Thomas’s surviving watercolours and ink and wash sketches include youthful copies of European scenery typical of teenage sketchbook work and local landscapes drawn from nature such as her watercolours of the You-Yangs (n.d., La Trobe Library [LT]), Indented Heads (1869, LT) and Lighthouse at Queenscliff (1869, LT), the last a precise and competent topographical rendering. Unidentified sea, land and village scenes date from 1868 to 1874 (LT, private collections). Filmer states that Thomas’s landscapes, although technically and stylistically undeveloped, show an 'enthusiastic approach’ and attempt a range of atmospheric effects.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 24 August 1850
- Summary
- A mid-nineteenth-century sketcher and watercolourist,technically undeveloped but notable for her range of atmospheric effects.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 20 August 1878
- Age at death
- 28
Details
Latitude51.3813864 Longitude-2.3596963 Start Date1847-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bath, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and public servant, was born in Bath, England, only son of a surgeon, Charles Alexander Harries. There is no record of the reason why young Harries chose to leave Bath and take a poorly paid job in the Brisbane office of the Roads and Buildings’ Branch of the Department of Public Works where he received £150 a year as a clerk and draughtsman from 1867. In July 1876 he was appointed chief draughtsman of the Buildings’ Branch at more than double his previous salary, but two years later, aged thirty-one, was found dead 'of unknown causes’ in his cottage, Avondale, South Brisbane.
Sketches (John Oxley Library, Queensland State Library, Brisbane), signed with his familiar name of Harry, record several of Brisbane’s major buildings of the 1860s, including Government House and the Lunatic Asylum at Woogaroo, now Wolston Park Hospital. One delicate and precise pencil sketch shows Woogaroo Asylum just before it was completed in 1865. He used colour washes in tones of grey, raw umber and sepia to heighten his drawings. One of the most charming is of his own house (now relocated on North Tambourine Mountain).
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Vries-Evans, Susanna de
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1847
- Summary
- Sketcher and public servant, he worked as a draughtsman in Brisbane. His sketches from the 1860s record several of Brisbane's major buildings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1878
- Age at death
- 31
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, came to Victoria from Scotland in search of gold in the early 1850s (probably 1852) aged about twenty. Obviously unsuccessful, he then worked for the Melbourne photographic firm of Meade Brothers . When Meades closed Crombie briefly set up his own studio in Britannia Chambers on the corner of Bourke and Russell streets, advertising as a daguerreotype portraitist on 1 January 1855. This was not a success either; by the middle of the year Crombie was in Auckland, New Zealand. There he became a most successful, and flamboyant, photographer.
Between June and September 1856 he reputedly took 1088 portrait daguerreotypes in Auckland, then left on a photographic tour of Christchurch (1857), Nelson, Napier and other South Island towns (1858). After revisiting photographer friends in Melbourne to learn all the 'latest novelties in photographic science’, he was (belatedly) offering ambrotypes at his Auckland studios on his return in October 1858.
Crombie returned to Britain in 1862, farewelling his public in the New Zealander of 2 May, where he acknowledged: 'I arrived among you very imperfect in my profession, and am conscious still of many shortcomings, being, as far as photography is concerned, entirely Colonial-bred. I am very anxious to acquire that knowledge at the fountain head’. Crombie’s 'Colonial-bred’ wet-plate panorama of Auckland, however, was good enough to be awarded a medal in that year’s London International Exhibition.
The lectures he delivered to two Glasgow photographic organisations on the 'slow and feeble’ rate of advancement of New Zealand photography and the 'petty jealousies’ of local photographers were reported in New Zealand in November 1862. Less than three years later, after marrying Harriet Berry, Crombie returned to Auckland, to find that his disparaging remarks had stimulated rather than decreased business. In 1872, after a very successful seven years, he sold up and left for London. Five years later he decided to return to Auckland. His final contact with Australia came in December 1878, when he died at Melbourne en route.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1832
- Summary
- Professional photographer from Scotland. Resident of Melbourne (Victoria), Auckland (New Zealand) and London (England).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- December 1878
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude52.3314292 Longitude-0.1847723 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Huntingdon, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer and geologist, was born in Huntingdon, England, son of Richard Daintree, a farmer.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1832
- Summary
- Richard Daintree was a professional photographer and geologist. He was born in England but left for Australia in mid 1852. In 1857 Daintree collaborated with Antoine Fauchery in publishing a number of photographic albums entitled 'Australia'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1878
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- songwriter and performer, came to Victoria from England in November 1852 in search of gold, found some but decided to combine gold-digging with performing. He wrote and sang humorous ballads about local events and personalities in Victorian goldfields towns, especially Bendigo, in the 1850s. None appears to have had any pictorial component. However, after some years in NZ, he briefly revived his repertoire in October 1866, opening at the Lyceum, Bendigo, with an entertainment in pictures and songs of those far-off days. His 'Life on the Goldfields’ series of some 14 scenes was, he said, inspired by a panorama of the Indian War he had seen in Melbourne many years earlier (by Bachelor?). The paintings, which showed the digger 'in every phase of colonial life, in good luck and in bad, in wine and in water, in demonstrative joy, and – for just a little while – in desolation and despair’ (newspaper report), were by 'a celebrated artist not unknown to fame as his Turner-like pictures of cows and milk sold here may be seen in the various parts of the health-giving districts of Sandridge and Emerald Hill’ (from Thatcher’s opening speech). They were guaranteed authentic because 'the artist has a brother who joined in the rush to Forest Creek and was up there a week and told him all about it’ (ditto). Mt Macedon was a faithful representation as 'portrayed by my amiable artist when under the influence of drink. Thus the height of the mountain is slightly exaggerated and is more terrible and majestic in its proportions than mountains usually are’ – even though it was placed on the wrong side because the artist was left-handed. A favourite scene showed the well-known magistrate 'Bendigo Mac’ presiding in the temple of justice.
Considered a funny and witty parody with nothing salacious about it, the performance also introduced topical songs, e.g. on the procession planned for the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit in December (see Anderson 140-44). After a short season at Bendigo, Thatcher gave a single performance at the Shamrock Hotel, Epsom, and one at the Camp Hotel, Huntly. On 11 November he completed his tour of the old circuit – Gunn’s Hotel, Raywood, then Maryborough, Ararat, Avoca, Ballarat, concluding at Geelong before Christmas Day. This ended his public life in Victoria after almost 16 years. He and his wife gave a solo concert in NZ in 1869 at the Prince of Wales, Auckland, again using the 'Life on the Goldfields’ diorama and a variety of new local songs. He did other concerts less successfully in NZ until joining his wife and daughters on a visit to Europe and started a curio business in London. He died of cholera in Shanghai in September 1878.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1831
- Summary
- 19th century travelling songwriter and performer, use artworks in his performances
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- September 1878
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter, amateur photographer, naturalist and solicitor, was born in England on 4 December 1830. The eldest child of Joseph and Mary Morton Allport , he came to Hobart Town at the age of 12 months. From childhood he was encouraged to take an interest in natural history and art by his mother, although he never worked professionally as an artist. Admitted to the bar in 1852, he became a partner in his father’s legal firm. He was an active member of the Royal Society of Tasmania and corresponded with many European scientists, as well as being an expert on Tasmanian botany and zoology and a keen bushwalker. He played a leading part in the introduction of salmon to Tasmania.
Taught painting and drawing by his mother and John Skinner Prout , Morton Allport exhibited two watercolours and a substantial oil painting ( View on Hall’s New Road to Huon, Tasmania, Fern Tree Gully , p.c.) in the 1858 Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition. But Morton Allport did not develop these talents, turning instead to photography soon after returning from a trip to Europe in 1855. He acquired Charles Abbott 's camera in 1859, and Chris Long has suggested that his photography dates only from this purchase – and from a move to Holbrook Place that year, where he lived and worked until 1873. Albums containing Morton Allport’s half-plate and stereoscopic prints are in the Allport Library, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Archives Office of Tasmania (stereo lantern views of Hobart Town, 1861). He is also represented in Alfred Abbott 's album in the Crowther Library. The Allport Collection contains numerous photographs incorporating members of his family, his parents in particular often being posed in outdoor views.
That Allport’s photographs were normally studies of his family and local scenery is characteristic of amateur work at the time. Less typically, he seems to have made the first photographic expedition to the Lake St Clair region, exhibiting the stereoscopic photographs he took at the 1862-63 Hobart Town Art Treasures and Industries Exhibition {Winter says he made one photographic expedition in 1863. Although he had previously visited Lake St Clair, it was not with photographic equipment.} Walch’s Literary Intelligencer praised his photographs of the 'singularly romantic though wild country’ around Lake St Clair as 'beautiful and artistic’, such subjects appealing to the current taste for sublime landscape. A member of the Amateur Photographic Association of Great Britain, it was most probably Allport, under the pseudonym ' Paul Ricochet ', who described this tour in the English Photographic News . Another excursion made to nearby Mount Arrowsmith, also a wilderness site, resulted in more photographs, discussed in the Launceston Examiner of 17 February 1863. Examples of his work were published in the London Stereoscopic Magazine in 1864 and Samuel Calvert cut wood engravings after his photographs for the Melbourne illustrated papers. The Salmon-Breeding Ponds, on the River Plenty, Tasmania , for instance, was published in the Illustrated Melbourne Post on 20 August 1864.
Allport was a major organiser of the 1858 Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition and a member of the committee responsible for sending Tasmanian exhibits to the 1862 London International Exhibition. He was also a commissioner for the Tasmanian section of the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition, at which he won a medal for his photographs.
In 1856 Allport married Elizabeth, elder daughter of Lieutenant Thomas Ritchie of Scone Mills, Perth, Tasmania. Their daughter, Curzona Frances Louise (Lily ) Allport , became a well-known professional painter. Morton Allport died in Hobart Town on 10 September 1878 and was buried in Queenborough Cemetery. The author of his obituary, published in the Mercury on 11 September and reprinted on both paper and silk, is said to have been Louisa Anne Meredith .
Writers:
Willis, Anne-Marie
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 December 1830
- Summary
- Painter and amateur photographer. Allport appears to have made the first photographic expedition to the Lake St Clair region in Tasmania, exhibiting the stereoscopic photographs he took at the 1862-63 Hobart Town Art Treasures and Industries Exhibition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 September 1878
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude51.16175085 Longitude-3.075386706 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Somerset, England, UK
- Biography
- Sculptor, star pupil at Royal Academy in the late 1840s (bronze medal RA Schools 1850). He came to Melbourne because of tuberculosis; briefly searched for gold with his brothers (two of whom found some) then reverted to his profession. He married Augustine Amiot at Melbourne in 1851; their son Charles Francis was born there in 1858. He was renowned for his helpfulness to students and other would-be sculptors, e.g. Margaret Thomas and William Stanford .
His most famous work is the life-sized statue of Burke and Wills in Melbourne. Other works include a medallion profile portrait of Dr James Neild held by the Australian Medical Association
Summers left Australia with his family in 1867, toured Britain and the Continent then settled in Rome. He died at Neuilly, Paris, in 1878 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1825
- Summary
- Sculptor, star pupil at Royal Academy in the late 1840s, but came to Melbourne due to TB. His most famous work is the life-sized statue of Burke and Wills in Melbourne.ummers left Australia with his family in 1867, toured Britain and the Continent.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1878
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, inventor and penal officer, was born in England, son of William Cherry, an official at Hampton Court Palace, and Sarah, née Rudd. George was educated with a view to his entering the Church of England ministry, but became interested in painting and photography instead. He was commissioned by a titled family to accompany them to the West Indies and illustrate a book of their travels on board their yacht, the Dolphin , and through their influence was appointed assistant superintendent of convicts on Norfolk Island, arriving in January 1849 on board HMS Bangalore . He was unhappy there, he later stated, in constant strife with his fellow officers for objecting to the ill-treatment of the convicts.
Cherry took many daguerreotype views of Norfolk Island. Although only a lithograph from one of these has been identified (Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts), a poem written on board the Bangalore in 1848, addressed to 'Mr. Cherry the Daguerotype [sic] Artist by a Knight Templar, XIth Foot (late the Bard of New Brunswick)’, refers to Cherry as a 'Genius with solar beams’. An 1850 letter from his friend W.N. Thomas on Norfolk Island thanks Cherry for his daguerreotype of the settlement and wishes him 'a speedy and safe passage’ to Van Diemen’s Land.
By August 1852 Cherry was offering views of Norfolk Island for sale in Hobart Town, where he had settled. On 5 April 1855 he married 18-year-old Mary Ann Matilda, daughter of Captain James of the East India Company, in St David’s Church. Describing himself as an artist, Cherry advertised in the Mercury of 20 July 1855 that the carefully-coloured portraits he produced in his Daguerrean Gallery, 43 Macquarie Street, were 'equal to the finest exhibited by himself or any other artist in the colonies’. Three years later he exhibited 'miniature portraits’ (probably painted photographs) and a view of Macquarie Street at the Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition. Three miniatures, including a self-portrait, remain in a family collection. His oil portrait of Alfred Kennerly, painted over a photograph, was discussed in Walch’s Literary Intelligencer in September 1859.
In 1860 Cherry was producing 'Photographic Portraits on paper, glass and ivory, and on canvas from life to locket size, highly finished in Crayon, Water or Oil Colours and warranted to be as durable as the most permanent oil paintings’. He exhibited a portrait (presumably a painted photograph) of the mayor of Hobart Town in 1862. Several of his photographs of prominent Tasmanians were subsequently lithographed by H.J. D’Emden and published by R.V. Hood . A small collection of photographs is in the Archives Office of Tasmania.
In August 1860 Cherry applied for a patent for the invention of a machine for separating precious metals from crushed quartz, perhaps hoping to make his fortune. By 1864, however, he was advertising his intention to devote the whole of his energies to album portraits, obtainable from his gallery, now located at 1 Elizabeth Street, Hobart Town. By 1867 he was at 80 Liverpool Street and beginning to advertise views of Tasmanian scenery. He purchased the Friths ' collection of portrait negatives that year, thus also acquiring their clientele. He was one of several photographers appointed to cover the tour of the Duke of Edinburgh to Tasmania in 1868. In January 1870 he advertised 'photographic pictures of the Squadron’ (the much-publicised visiting Flying Squadron); later in the year he toured north-eastern Tasmania, taking views.
George and Mary Ann Cherry had two sons and a daughter, Ada (later Whiting ), who became a colourist for Johnstone & O’Shannessy and later, a successful miniaturist. She also produced photographs – as an amateur in 1878 from 45 Clarke Street, Chilwell, Geelong (Victoria). On 20 November 1873 Mary Ann Cherry died at 269 Argyle Street, Hobart Town, after a long illness. George Cherry died in 1878.
Writers:
Bruce, Candice
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1820
- Summary
- Professional photographer, inventor and penal officer born in England. Resident of Norfolk Island and Tasmania.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1878
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude52.2434979 Longitude5.6343227 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Holland
- Biography
- painter and teacher, was born in Holland on 4 August 1820, daughter of Louis Emile Matthieu, a captain in the Belgian Army, and Catherine, née van de Winkle. Her father was of French Huguenot descent and Julie was educated in Paris. She married Lewis Vieusseux, an English civil engineer, architect and surveyor also of Huguenot ancestry, on 8 March 1849 at Salford, near Manchester in Lancashire where he seems to have been working as a railway surveyor. Early in 1852 the couple came to Melbourne in the Fortitude , with their two infant sons and Julie’s younger sister, Marie Matthieu. They rented accommodation in Kyte’s Buildings, Princes Street, Collingwood and Julie worked as a portrait painter, inviting potential clients 'to visit her studio, where several beautiful Oil Paintings, also specimens of her Likenesses may be viewed daily. Portraits taken in Oils, Chalks and Pencils, after the most approved styles’. Lewis apparently went to the goldfields.
At the third Victorian Industrial Society Exhibition held in December 1852 Vieusseux received the highest possible awards for her artistic skill. Her study of a girl ('French school’) and her copy of the Virgin Mary after Raphael were together awarded a gold medal, while her oil painting of a minstrel ('German school’) – 'a performance of very great merit’, said the judges – received another. In April 1853 she advertised an exhibition of her paintings at the Melbourne Mechanics Institute, informing the public that her 'much admired collection of Oil Paintings’ could be viewed there daily before their dispersal through an art union to be drawn on 7 May. Circulars about the paintings were available (unlocated).
That year Lewis set up an architectural practice in Swanston Street in partnership with Lloyd Tayler but it did not last. Julie, on the other hand, appears to have had considerable success with her painting. In November 1853 she advertised 'Drawing and Painting Classes for Young Ladies, who can enjoy the advantage of French Conversation’. At the 1856 Victorian Exhibition she showed a pencil drawing of flowers. The following year she showed an oil study of a head with the Victorian Society of Fine Arts, which the critic “Christopher Sly” ( James Neild ) thought 'an admirable performance and proves this lady to be a thorough artist’. James Smith in the Argus , however, patronisingly noted of the same painting: 'If this Lady succeeds as well in original compositions as she has done in this study ( copied apparently from a French Master), she ought to cultivate the pursuit of art’. (It was probably not a copy; Vieusseux liked to show that she could work in both a French and a German manner and identified which was which for colonial viewers.)
Lewis’s partnership with Tayler was dissolved by 1855 and he appears to have had little success as an independent architect so in July 1857 he and Julie opened an expensive élite ladies’ college at 23 and 25 Victoria Parade, Collingwood – their own home, plus the house next door. The published names of 14 referees for the school include Georgiana McCrae , Dr Godfrey Howitt (uncle of Alfred William Howitt ), Matilda Charlotte (the wife of geologist Alfred Selwyn), Mary (the wife of Sir Archibald Michie) and Judge Robert Pohlman. Another referee was Maria Elizabeth, wife of Dr Arthur O’Mullane of Bourke Street West. The mixed French and German qualities of an unsigned and undated oil portrait of Mrs O’Mullane and her four children (c.1855, NGV) have led to it being attributed both to the French-trained William Strutt and the German Ludwig Becker , although it is here attributed to Vieusseux on stylistic as well as associational grounds.
Lewis and Julie Vieusseux taught English, French and German language and literature classes at their school. Julie also taught drawing, painting and craft and ran the boarding school. Eliza a’Beckett (elder sister of the painter Emma Minnie Boyd ) attended the painting classes and later wrote that Madame Vieusseux was
“an expert in soft crayon work, mainly heads of girls of varying types of beauty. I sketched, or tried to sketch, the outlines, then “Madame” would seat herself in my place, correct what was wrong, spend a good half hour with black chalk and “stumps” to soften it down, and I would see a charming picture emerging from my crude beginning. I brought the finished specimens home and they were duly framed and admired, but no more my work than the framer’s.”
So successful was the Ladies’ College that it moved into larger premises in May 1860, a terrace house on the corner of Clarendon and Albert Streets in East Melbourne overlooking the Fitzroy Gardens. Visiting masters included von Guérard , whose portrait Vieusseux painted (1864, oil on canvas, German Club of Victoria) in her competent, detailed style, both his face and those of the O’Mullane family being suggestive of a miniaturist’s precision. The school moved to Brighton in 1868 72 while a new building was erected on the Clarendon Street site.
Two of Vieusseux’s chalk drawings of female heads were shown at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. The last time she is known to have exhibited publicly is in 1875, when she showed an oil painting titled The Minstrel with the Victorian Academy of Arts. It may have been a repeat view of her 1852 painting. If so, it was again greatly admired, the Sydney Mail 's correspondent calling this 'benevolent, careworn, weatherbeaten, intellectual face’ a 'poem on canvas’ that aptly visualised Sir Walter Scott’s word picture of the 'Last Minstrel’.
The Vieusseux’s second son, Stephen, died in November 1852 and in 1858 their eldest son, Lewis, aged eight, was lost in the bush. After all hopes of finding him alive had vanished, Julie painted his portrait using her sole living child, Edward, as a model. She died on 11 March 1878 and was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 August 1820
- Summary
- Oil Painter, art teacher and proprietor, with her husband, of an élite ladies' college in Melbourne. Vieusseux's portrait of painter Eugene von Guérard is held by the German Club of Victoria.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11 March 1878
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, illustrator, writer and teacher, was one of the ten children of Benjamin Walker Lacy, a banker of Belgrave Square, London, and his wife Elizabeth. Nothing is known of his early life or training but in 1842, 'wearied with the hollow conventionalities and grinning hypocrisies of a highly refined community, flat, stale and unprofitable as everything appeared, and possessed with an uncontrollable desire to see men and nature in their primitive state, [Lacy] bade adieu to Old England and sailed for the Antipodes’. He disembarked at Sydney on 6 July 1842 from the barque Wilmot and soon fell into bad company, being, as he later recalled, 'tolerably well fleeced’.
After this experience Lacy went by sea to the Hunter River and spent 'some eight to ten months shooting, stuffing strange birds and reptiles, and preserving insects’. He next tried to cross the Blue Mountains, then eventually moved down the coast and inland to various centres in New South Wales. He is undoubtedly the artist identified only as 'G.L. of Wollongong’ who contributed ten works to the second Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia Exhibition held at Sydney in 1849. Titles included Kangaroo Hunt, the Chase , Kangaroo Hunt, the Death and A Corroberry [sic], or Aboriginal Dance , as well as Head, after Rembrandt and Achilles and Lycaon . All were offered for sale.
The two copies are likely to have been brought to Australia with him and suggest some art school training in England, while two naive watercolours of the London ballerinas Duvernay and Taglione dated 1833 (sold from a family collection in 1974: now Australian Ballet Archives), despite indicating an early interest in drawing and some artistic talent, are evidence that any such formal training must have occurred after this date. A highly stylised drawing of an Aboriginal woman and its pair Coo-ee (an Aboriginal man on a peak), from the same family collection, are said to be the first paintings sent back to Lacy’s family in London. (A variant on the latter appeared in the Illustrated Sydney News on 15 September 1866.)
A self-confessed adventurer, Lacy next appears on the goldfields in the central west of New South Wales, being known to have visited Ophir, Tambaroora and Sofala during the early 1850s. Lacy’s output included many humorous observations on the local mining community and on government attempts to regulate their activities, Ophir – Diggers Bolting , Tambaroura [sic]. Commissioner Settling a Dispute (both Dixson Galleries) and Commissioners’ Barracks at Sofala (National Library of Australia [NLA]), for example. He moved on to the Victorian goldfields about 1855 and remained there for at least five years. Highly prolific throughout this period, Lacy’s illustrations were possibly marketed through storekeepers on the diggings or in nearby towns. The reappearance in March 1970 of twenty-five of his watercolours at Joel’s auction rooms, offered by the great-grandson of the early Bendigo bookseller William Casey, adds some weight to this hypothesis.
During his Victorian years Lacy continued to record aspects of mining life, but he also painted such topical subjects as The First Gathering of the Bendigo Caledonian Society (1860, NLA), The Bendigo-Castlemaine Coach and Burke and Wills Expedition at the Campaspe, near Barnedown (1860, NLA). Other works from this time include equestrian and hunting scenes, bushrangers and Aboriginal subjects.
In 1860 Lacy’s reminiscences were published as four articles in the Albury (NSW) Southern Courier , again initialled 'G.L.’. One reveals that he briefly returned to London in about 1858 59. It also provides information about his artistic activities, thirst for adventure (of any kind) and obvious skill as a bushman: 'I had been invited by a friend to accompany him about 300 miles down one of our main rivers … As he was interested to get a few sketches characteristic of wild horse hunting, and feeling interested myself in participating in the forthcoming fun (for, as he curtly remarked, they would kill a man or two if I wished to see anything particularly exciting), I took advantage of the opportunity, and being furnished with a good hack, arrived in due time at the head station at Wodonga. I stayed about a month at the station, made a good many sketches, and having seen enough, started alone on my long journey homewards’.
Lacy subsequently lived in the Braidwood district of New South Wales, being employed between 1868 and 1877 as a schoolteacher at Farringdon, Jellat Jellat and other local settlements according to Moore’s Almanacs . An undated, probably earlier, letter to his sister, written on the verso of a sketch held by the National Library (Nan Kivell Collection 9862), mentions that he was also 'a teacher at Bong Bong’. Between 1865 and 1878, from Braidwood, he contributed a number of drawings to the Illustrated Sydney News , including a particularly gruesome kangaroo hunt, a view of the Araluen goldfields, and scenes of Aboriginal and European bush life. Customs of Aboriginals in New South Wales. Punishment was published as a chromolithographic supplement to the Illustrated Sydney News in May 1874. His signed watercolour and ink Death of an Explorer (Queensland Art Gallery [QAG]) appeared as a full-page black and white illustration renamed Lost in the Bush in the Illustrated Sydney News of 16 October 1865 and, a week later, in the Illustrated Melbourne Post . He also drew for Sydney Punch , a cartoon on the time-honoured subject of incompetent women drivers by 'G.L.’ appearing in the issue of 29 May 1873. A lively watercolour caricature of a corroboree (QAG) also seems to have been intended for an illustration.
Lacy resigned from his last post at Warragubra in mid 1876 and moved to Bathurst. The following year the five watercolour pictures he showed with the Agricultural Society of New South Wales were commended. He died in Bathurst Hospital of heart disease on 10 August 1878, aged sixty, and was buried in the Church of England section of the local cemetery. Nothing is known about his family, apart from the fact that a nephew of the same name contributed political articles to the Bulletin and other Sydney journals in the 1890s.
All Lacy’s surviving works are in watercolour, wash and ink or, occasionally, pencil. A lithograph published by Richardson & Leech of Sydney is also known. Some are signed 'G. Lacy’ or 'G.L.’ but few are dated and thus cannot be assigned with any certainty to his New South Wales or Victorian years. However, the artist’s style is quite distinctive and the humorous inscriptions, often several lines in length, which usually accompany the image provide further clues to location.
Lacy was certainly a capable topographical artist: his View of the Araluen Goldfields reproduced in the Illustrated Sydney News of 16 July 1866 is very striking. But he particularly excelled in depicting action scenes and conflict between authority and the underdog, epitomised in the frequently reproduced wash drawing Go it, Frying Pan. Head Him down the Flat!!! (Mitchell Library [ML]: NLA). He also drew humorous sequential sketches (strip cartoons) such as The New Chum (18 drawings), The Jolly Digger (18), The Jolly Digger Buys a Horse (12) and The Matrimonial Thermometer (14). His extraordinary watercolour A Dream. The Effects of Lobster-Salad, the Morning after the Ball (ML), one of the few erotic images known from the colonial era, shows a woman en d é shabill é lying on a bed in a pose reminiscent of Fuseli’s Nightmare and dreaming of herself and her suitor as skeletons, the dream incorporating a joke about the current fashion for enormous crinoline frames (c.1860). It too is titled as if for engraving.
As a skilled and amused observer of social foibles and appearances Lacy may be compared with his contemporary S.T. Gill , except that Lacy was almost exclusively interested in incident and showed little talent for landscape, tending to sketch in his backgrounds with broad, sweeping strokes. He remained an obscure figure for many years and was not represented in any Australian public art collection until 1970. The National Library, with over twenty original works, has the most comprehensive holding.
Writers:
Callow, M. W.McDonald, Patricia R.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1817
- Summary
- A self-confessed adventurer, Lacy 'bade adieu to Old England and sailed for the Antipodes'. As a skilled and amused observer of social foibles and appearances Lacy may be compared with his contemporary S.T. Gill.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.10 August 1878
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude52.634444 Longitude-1.131944 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leicestershire, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, algologist and natural history collector, was born in Leicestershire, England, daughter of Freder Apthorp and Susan, née Hubbard.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1810
- Summary
- A watercolourist who lived predominantly in Tasmania. Fereday was also a natural history enthusiast and an accomplished collector who worked with Professor W.H Harvey of Trinity College, Dublin, who named an alga after her.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 21 October 1878
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude51.16175085 Longitude-3.075386706 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Somerset, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, son of Joseph Fowles and nephew of Daniel Adey Fowles , is thought by his family to have been born in Somerset, England. He and his wife arrived at Sydney on 31 August 1838, having sailed from London via Hobart Town aboard the barque Fortune . Although nothing is known of his early life in England, Fowles undoubtedly had some artistic as well as medical training. This is substantiated by his diary of the voyage to Sydney which records that he sketched and painted the ship and shipboard scenes and acted as ship’s surgeon, and by his claim to a reputation as a marine painter upon arrival in the colony. His earliest known Australian art work (1841, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales) is a marine scene. Nevertheless, he chose to earn his living as a farmer, leasing Mary Reiby’s Figtree Farm at Hunter’s Hill (now Figtree House, Reiby Road) from 1838 to 1842 and selling his fruit, vegetables and wood in Sydney. His journal (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales) contains detailed descriptions of the farm and its environs, as well as some sketches of it, and of travelling by boat to Sydney.
Fowles initially came to public attention as an artist in 1847 when he opened a studio at Harrington Street, Sydney and contributed to the first exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia in July. Five of the seven paintings he exhibited were of ships and shipping; one was Kangaroos , Fowles’s first documented animal painting. Critical response was somewhat mixed. The Sydney Morning Herald of 26 July 1847 suggested that 'Mr. Fowles sometimes attempts too much for a young artist. His quiet scenes are much better than his attempts to represent “The Hell of Waters” howling and hissing in a tempest’. Likewise, a foray into landscape painting shown at the second exhibition of the society, titled Byrne’s Mills, Parramatta , was described in the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 June 1849 as 'A glaring and unmeaning mixture of red, yellow and brown’.
Fowles is best known today for his publication Sydney in 1848 . Issued in twenty parts between 1848 and 1850, this consists of eighty 'Copperplate Engravings of the Principal Streets, Public Buildings, Churches, Chapels, Etc., Etc., from Drawings by J. Fowles’. Intended for the English market, Fowles stated that its express purpose was 'to remove the erroneous and discreditable notions connected with the Colony’. Republished in 1878 and again in 1961, Sydney in 1848 was a great commercial success and today serves as an important sourcebook for the architectural historian.
Fowles continued to exhibit marine paintings, his two works listed as prizes in an 1848 Sydney art union being The Fleet Beating out of the Bay of Trafalgar during the Gale, Two Days after the Memorable Victory and The Carrysfort Entering the Heads of Port Jackson . In Joseph Grocott’s third art union, held at Sydney in July 1850, Fowles’s Action at Sea (Marine) won a prize of £10. The Illustrated Sydney News was still referring to him as 'the well-known marine artist’ in 1855.
By the mid 1850s, however, Fowles had achieved a new reputation as a painter of racehorses. The People’s Advocate of 13 January 1855 reported that he had been commissioned by Governor FitzRoy to paint a portrait of his favourite horse, Sam Weller, and The Buffalo Bull with a Group of Cattle . The latter was judged to be 'well composed, and the artist has adhered with strict fidelity to the animals and objects around. We must add a note of praise to the sky which is put in with a bold, dashing, vigorous pencil, without portraying the least mark of slovenliness or haste’. Fowles built up a successful business selling painted and lithographed portraits of champion racehorses in the late 1850s. He exhibited the portraits Van Tromp and Cooramin in the 1857 Fine Art Exhibition at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts. In 1858 he was advertising that he would 'paint pictures of Australian “cracks” and will dispose of engravings of horses from his own pictures’. His fame was such that Bell’s Life in Sydney on 4 September 1858 designated Fowles 'our Colonial Herring’ after the famous English horse painter, John Frederick Herring senior.
Early in 1862, employing an experienced trainer, Noah Beal, Fowles established the Newmarket Training Stables at Randwick. The venture failed and in June 1862 'Joseph Fowles of Randwick, artist’ was listed as insolvent. He returned to painting and received numerous commissions throughout the 1860s. Two small oil paintings of Mr Justice Cheek’s celebrated racers, Clore and Sir Patrick , were on display at Sandon’s shop in George Street in 1865. Early in 1868 the Brisbane Courier described Fowles’s oil painting North Australian in detail after the horse won the Duke of Edinburgh stakes at the Duke’s Day Races in Brisbane: 'it is seldom that a really life-like picture of a race-horse can be obtained in the colonies, but Mr Fowles has achieved a reputation in the southern colonies for his skill in this description of painting, and he has painted many of the winners of the principal events of late years in New South Wales and Victoria’. North Australian was subsequently despatched to Prince Alfred as a souvenir of his Australian visit. Portraits of 'celebrated colonial racers’ were included in the 1861 exhibition of the Natural and Industrial Products of New South Wales held at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts; a landscape, a marine painting and a portrait of the racing mare Zoe appeared in the 1869 Intercolonial Exhibition held by the Agricultural Society of New South Wales.
Fowles taught as well as practised art. He was in charge of the training and examination of art teachers for the National Board of Education from 1854 until 1867 when the board was succeeded by the Council of Education. Hilson notes that it was largely through Fowles’s efforts that 'at the surprisingly early date of 1869, drawing was being taught in every government school in New South Wales. He was also drawing master at a number of private schools, including The King’s School, Sydney Grammar, Sydney High and Camden College, as well as at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts (lessons £1 a quarter) where he delivered public lectures on 'Drawing, and the Advantages to be Derived from it’ in October and December 1858. In connection with his teaching activities, he composed and sold a series of eight graded Elementary Free-hand Drawing Books in the 1850s and early 1860s, on the cover of later editions of which he styled himself 'Artist by Appointment to His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh’. Reviewing one of these publications on 26 December 1864, the Herald commented that 'in this excellent and unpretentious work, the author has given full directions for the guidance of teachers who have not had the advantage of previous instruction in drawing—such directions as will enable them to conduct a drawing-class without difficulty’. These books were the basis of the drawing curriculum of New South Wales government schools until the 1880s.
Fowles suffered from epilepsy. In 1868, when his studio was at Glebe Road, Glebe, he fell down in the street and broke his arm. According to Collingridge Rivett, the regular spiritualist seances he attended were thought to aggravate his condition. On 25 June 1878, at the Fairfield home of Mr Matthews, head teacher of the William Street School, Fowles was attending an after-dinner seance when he began to throw himself around the darkened room shouting in agony. His companions rushed for assistance but on returning with a doctor found his dead body 'entangled around the leg of a table in a pool of perspiration’. The 'paralytic fit’ diagnosed as the cause of death was the third he had suffered. He was survived by his second wife, three sons and three daughters. His artistic materials together with 'the goodwill of his practice’ were left to his eldest son, stated in Fowles’s will to have 'artistic tastes’.
Early in 1999 the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, acquired Fowles’ early watercolour of the historic property Bungaribee, offered by the Joshua McClelland Print Room in Melbourne for $40,000 (T. Ingram, 'Saleroom’, Australian Financial Review , 1 July 1999, 34).
Writers:
Laverty, Colin
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1810
- Summary
- The indefatigable and versatile Joseph Fowles turned his hand to an eclectic range of occupations, with varying degrees of success, alongside his artistic endeavours. He was also instrumental in securing a place for drawing and defining its features in the New South Wales government school curriculum from the 1860s until the 1880s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25 June 1878
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude51.0612766 Longitude-1.3131692 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Winchester, Hampshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Painter, admitted to the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 1839. He was a prolific painter in England, and left quite a body of work. He was an active exhibitor there between 1832-1867, showing over 200 works in several galleries during that time.
Three watercolour portraits of women, painted by Taylor while living in Fitzroy Square, London, were owned by collector Stephen Scheding in the 1980s. Dimensions were 24.5 × 19.5 cm, signed l.l. 'Alfred H. Taylor/ 12 Charlotte St, Fitzroy Square [London]/ 1844.
Taylor came to Australia aboard the Sir John Lawrence in 1871. He painted professionally in Sydney – 2 Art Unions (1874 and 75) and had entries in the New South Wales Academy of Art. He is listed in the Sands Directory 1875-77, as an artist. His death certificate stated that he had suffered “senile decay” for 4 years before his death in 1878. His father, Stephen Taylor, was an artist as well.
Writers:
Staff Writer
yeldham
fishel
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 7 October 1810
- Summary
- Painter who arrived in Australia from Britain in 1871, and had a large body of work produced both in London and Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 April 1878
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1805-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- painter, draughtsman, art teacher and surveyor, was born in Dublin, Ireland. Two Indian ink sketches, Old Oak Above Adelaide Cottage August 1843 and Queen Victoria’s Tree in Windsor Forest 1845, were done in his last years of guard duty at Windsor Castle, his commanding officer Captain Durford being said to have complained bitterly over the use of stationary for him to do them, according to family records. Both are now in Windsor Castle library. In 1849 Hogan migrated to Auckland, where he taught drawing, published lithographs and worked as a surveyor. He is considered the first person to have taught art in New Zealand, advertising classes in the New Zealander on 20 February 1850.
On l March 1858 Hogan left New Zealand for Sydney and took up a temporary position in the New South Wales Surveyor-General’s Department. According to Platts, he continued to work as a draughtsman in the Surveying Department until his death, yet an 1863 Sydney directory lists him as an 'artist’ of George Street, Balmain – presumably either a spare-time activity or an unsuccessful interlude in his life. In 1867 his 'pen etching’ of Queen Adelaide’s Oak was included in the Paris Universal Exhibition. The drawings he showed at the New South Wales Academy of Art’s first exhibition in 1872 were considered 'very good’, while two other pen-and-ink outline drawings of oak trees in Great Park, Windsor were shown with the Academy and at the Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition organised by the Agricultural Society of New South Wales in 1874, where they were were highly commended. One of the latter scenes remained with the family until the 1940s, but both are now missing. Hogan also exhibited oil paintings of New Zealand subjects such as At the Bay of Islands and Waikato River . Most were for sale, despite his proclaimed amateur status.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1805
- Summary
- Painter, draughtsman, art teacher and surveyor, was born in Dublin, Ireland and in 1849 he moved to New Zealand where he is considered the first person to have taught art. In 1858 he came to Sydney where he worked as a surveyor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1878
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude54.9978678 Longitude-7.3213056 Start Date1804-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Londonderry, Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, modeller, naval officer, surveyor and pastoralist, was born on 29 January 1804 in Londonderry, Ireland, eldest son of Thomas Woore, an army captain, and Catherine Anne, née Darcus. Educated at Foyle College, Londonderry, he entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman in December 1819 and served on ships along the English coast. After gaining skill as a surveyor, he was offered a post in the hydrography section of the Admiralty. Joining the Zebra in 1829, Woore made his first visit to Sydney. His ink Panorama of Sydney Harbour (Mitchell Library) was apparently executed when the Zebra visited Port Jackson; according to the donor, it originally had 1829 on the top left-hand corner (later torn off). The view, which clearly reveals Woore’s topographical training, is taken from a position inside the Domain near Macquarie Street and looks down the harbour to the Heads. A number of prominent landmarks are included: the Rum Hospital, St James’s Church, the Court House and the Government House Stables, while HMS Zebra and HMS Crocodile are identified in the accompanying key.
After serving briefly on board Crocodile , Woore was transferred to the Alligator which operated out of Sydney in 1832. At the end of 1834 Lieutenant Woore resigned from the navy on the grounds of ill-health, married Mary Dickson in the Sydney Scots Church on 1 January 1835, and returned to Britain with her the following month. They came back to New South Wales as settlers in 1839. Thomas acquired Pomeroy Station, near Goulburn, where he built a large stone house on the banks of the Wollondilly River. His watercolour dated 1858 (p.c.) depicts the homestead before the addition of its second storey.
Woore soon established himself as a leading pastoralist in the district and was a local magistrate. In the mid 1840s he became deeply involved with the planning and surveying of the local railway line, although he was not paid for this work. In 1861 he contributed a model of a bridge to Sydney’s Exhibition of Natural and Industrial Products of New South Wales. His model bridge and its accompanying 'model of supporting rails’ were sent on to the 1862 London International Exhibition. In January 1875 Woore advertised Pomeroy for sale and moved to Sydney to live with his only daughter, Catherine Anne, who had married the pastoralist and politician William Busby in 1856. Appointed a member of the commission investigating Sydney’s water supply, he lobbied persistently for the construction of a dam at Warragamba and published two pamphlets on his proposed scheme during the 1870s, as well as a critique of the colony’s railway system. On 21 June 1878 Woore died at the Busbys’ home, Redleaf, at Double Bay and was buried in St Jude’s Anglican Cemetery, Randwick.
Most of his drawings date from between 1858 and 1877 and are held privately. An album he gave Catherine in 1870 is filled with sepia watercolour and pencil sketches of various residences in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, including Greenoaks, Redleaf and Edgecliff House, as well as such notable country properties as Camden Park and Regentville. A view of Darling Point Road near St Mark’s Church (1867) includes members of the Mort and Woore families; another shows Prince Alfred’s arrival at Sydney in 1868. A second extant album, inscribed 'Thomas Woore Pomeroy, Woores’ on the fly-leaf, contains ten drawings, most dating from the early 1870s such as The City of Goulburn New South Wales (1870), Christmas Tree in the Hall Pomeroy (1871) and several views of Government House, Sydney. Redleaf. Double Bay , drawn on 17 February 1877 is his last known work. He normally inscribed his drawings with title and date but few are signed. A competent amateur, Woore appears to have painted purely for pleasure, confining himself to the depiction of his immediate environs. Surviving works therefore have considerable documentary importance, being a detailed record of one man’s social contacts, travels and interests during the late colonial period in New South Wales. The numerous houses he sketched are of particular interest to architectural historians.
Writers:
McDonald, Patricia R.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 January 1804
- Summary
- Thomas Woore was a sketcher, modeller, naval officer, surveyor and pastoralist. He visited Sydney for the first time in 1829. Woore's sketches of houses are of particular interest to architectural historians.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21 June 1878
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1799-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolour painter, hotel-keeper and military officer, was born in Chelsea, London, on 17 July 1799, a descendant of the diarist John Evelyn via his mother Philippa, née Evelyn, widow of Major Houghton. His father, Wilbraham Liardet, was an official of Swiss-Austrian descent in the Ordnance Department of the British Army, which W.F.E. Liardet also joined, retiring as a lieutenant on half pay in 1826. In 1821 Wilbraham junior had married his cousin Carolina Frederica Liardet; by July 1839, when they sailed for Sydney in the William Metcalfe , they had had eleven children of whom nine survived infancy.
En route to Sydney the ship spent three weeks at Hobson’s Bay in what is now Victoria and Liardet suddenly decided to settle there. Purchasing a whaleboat to enable him to transport supplies, he began a business of carrying mail ashore from ships. In August 1840 he started running a mail cart to and from Melbourne three times a day, and in October opened the Brighton Pier Hotel and began a passenger coach service to Melbourne. The hotel soon became a popular place for visitors from the town as well as for travellers. Liardet and his sons would catch fish to be cooked on open fires for guests, or he would take them rowing or sailing while he entertained them with his songs, often accompanying himself on the guitar or flute. Horse races and regattas were among the other entertainments provided.
Liardet was, however, a poor businessman and by 1841, at the onset of the general economic depression, he had transferred the hotel licence to his son Frank in an effort to prevent it being sold with his other assets. The family retained the hotel. Always a capable watercolourist, Liardet now turned to art as a way of making some money. On 10 September 1841 the Port Phillip Gazette reported on his availability to paint miniatures and small portraits in oil, watercolour or crayon for between 2 and 5 guineas each, but it appears that he had few orders. Three weeks later he was applying for the second time to become superintendent of water police. Again he was refused. In 1843 he completed a painting of Melbourne from the South Bank of the Yarra which he wished to send to London for engraving. He gained permission to dedicate it to Superintendent C.J. La Trobe and his London courier was Sir John Franklin, retiring Governor of Van Diemen’s Land. The picture was duly engraved and sold for a guinea a copy. An idealised panoramic view of Melbourne, it shows a civilised and prosperous town bustling with signs of commerce and leisurely living. He painted a view of Geelong with the idea of having it engraved too, but the project went no further.
In January 1845 Liardet was declared bankrupt and it became increasingly obvious that the family needed to be able to purchase the land on which their hotel stood. With the purpose of putting their case to the Colonial Office, Caroline Liardet sailed for London, taking the five youngest children. Wilbraham remained at Port Phillip, running the hotel with his sons until 1850 when he sold up and sailed for England to bring his wife and family back. They then settled in a house on the Yarra in Melbourne. Georgiana McCrae recorded meeting Liardet and one of his sons when an emergency forced them to seek shelter and food with her: 'Liardet is not only a scholar, but he has a deeper reach of understanding than many other educated men. He can sketch a horse admirably, and, in his young days, often rode to hounds and so forth … we are all agreed that his good nature and seemingly inexhaustible store of anecdotes should make him a pleasant neighbour’.
It was the 1850s gold rush that finally altered the Liardets’ fortunes. At one stage his sons were said to be making £1000 a week processing visitors to the goldfields through their hotel, and prosperity enabled Liardet to spend more time painting. In 1862 he painted a view of St Kilda and one of the railway station at North Williamstown (La Trobe Library). The following year, after hearing John Pascoe Fawkner lecture on Melbourne as it had once been, Liardet drew a view of Batman’s house and one of Fawkner’s house as he remembered them looking when he arrived. In February 1864 he published a lithographic View of the North Shore of the Port of Melbourne dedicated to Governor Sir Henry Barkly. Soon afterwards Liardet and his wife left Australia to join their sons in New Zealand. Apart from a trip to England to make an unsuccessful legal claim against the British government, they remained there for ten years, during which time Liardet continued to sketch and paint. Returning to Melbourne in 1874, Liardet, now aged seventy-four, drew the Pier Hotel as it had been when he built it in 1840. The place had then been called 'Liardet’s Beach’, and as well as his hotel he showed people disembarking from boats at the jetty, coaches arriving to take them on to Melbourne, men fishing with seine-nets from the beach and his summer house on stilts (washed away in the flood of 1849). The sketch aroused such interest that Liardet was urged to make other scenes of early Melbourne.
He decided to produce an illustrated history and threw himself into the project with characteristic fervour. In 1875 alone he painted forty scenes, thirty-eight of which are known. Although he started with views of Melbourne’s early buildings, he soon added anecdotes and incidents relating to the people with whom they were associated. The scenes he depicted include the signing of the treaty between Batman and the Aboriginal chiefs, Batman’s house (which was destroyed in the 1870s to make way for Spencer Street Railway Station), the first markets of Melbourne, the first government land sale on 10 June 1840, the opening of the Supreme Court on 12 April 1841, the first public execution on 20 January 1842, La Trobe’s house and garden, an 1840 corroboree on Emerald Hill (now South Melbourne) and the flood of 1849 showing with drama, as well as accuracy, the devastation wrought.
Liardet put the project of illustrating the Separation celebrations on Flagstaff Hill of 11 November 1850 to public subscription and gathered 400 signatures, headed by Sir Redmond Barry to whom he dedicated the work. Reviews were very favourable. He was encouraged by this to offer his historicising watercolours for sale to the Victorian Art Gallery but the trustees declined the offer. Liardet then sought to prepare an illustrated history of early Melbourne for publication. He spent a great deal of time researching past events in newspapers and documents and talking to old settlers. However, after writing up to five drafts he was eventually forced to abandon the project due to old age and ill health. Persuaded by his wife to return to New Zealand in 1877, he died shortly afterwards at Vogeltown, Wellington, on 21 March 1878. The major collection of his work is in the La Trobe Library.
Writers:
Bruce, Candice
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 July 1799
- Summary
- A nineteenth-century watercolourist, he first turned to painting as a way out of debt. He subsequently painted historical views of Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21 March 1878
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude51.9784172 Longitude1.0179463 Start Date1798-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- East Bergholt, Suffolk, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, clergyman and geologist, was born on 2 June 1798 at East Bergholt, Suffolk, eldest child of William Clarke, schoolmaster, and Sarah, née Branwhite. He was educated locally and at Jesus College, Cambridge (BA 1821, MA 1824) before entering holy orders (deacon 1821, priest 1823). After several curacies Clarke succeeded his father at the village school, resigning in 1831 to accept the living of Longfleet in Dorset. Ill-health and no great prospect of advancement in England led him in 1838 to seek a chaplaincy in New South Wales. In June 1839 he became headmaster of The King’s School, Parramatta, with parochial responsibility for Castle Hill and Dural. Poor health forced him to leave the school towards the end of 1840. In 1844 he took over parish duties at Campbelltown. Nearly two years later he moved as rector to the new parish of St Thomas, St Leonards (now North Sydney), which remained his charge until retirement in 1871. Clarke died at North Sydney on 16 June 1878.
Although a devoted pastor, Clarke’s fame derives chiefly from his contributions to the geological knowledge of Australia, work recognised by many honours during his lifetime, the most notable being a fellowship of the Royal Society in 1876. He gained wide public notice through his study of the Australian goldfields. Clarke’s scientific achievements are recorded elsewhere but his artistic interests and connections are less known. Pen, pencil, and wash sketches of landscapes and fossils in notebooks and letters testify to his talent.
Clarke’s enthusiasm for geology began at Cambridge; the sources of his interest in nature and art lie in his origins. His mother’s kinsman, Nathan Branwhite (1775-1857) from Lavenham, was exhibiting at the Royal Academy, London, when Clarke was a child. A more immediate influence was John Dunthorne (1770-1844), the plumber and glazier of East Bergholt who had first encouraged another villager, John Constable, to sketch and appreciate nature out-of-doors. Clarke grew up with Dunthorne’s son, also John (1798-1832), later Constable’s protégé and, in Clarke’s opinion, 'an extraordinary instance of genius and talent’ in art. The 'young Willy Clarke’ of Constable’s correspondence was born into stimulating company. Accident, too, led him in 1834 to join one 'J.R.’ in scientific-aesthetic writings about the Swiss Alps. The dialogist, of whose identity Clarke probably knew nothing at the time, was none other than John Ruskin, then aged fifteen. These early connections with nature, art and artists had their counterpart in the long and practical friendship at North Sydney between Clarke and his churchwarden, Conrad Martens .
Clarke’s scientific collections, sketches and papers, purchased after his death by the New South Wales government, were destroyed in the Garden Palace fire of 1882. Surviving examples of his sketches are in the Mitchell Library, in private Australian collections and in public and private archives in the United Kingdom.
Writers:
Vallance, T. G.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 June 1798
- Summary
- Sketcher, clergyman and geologist born in England. Resident of NSW Clarke's fame derives chiefly from his contributions to the geological knowledge of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 June 1878
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1796-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Scotland, eldest daughter of John Bowman, a Scottish carpenter, and Honor, née Honey, from Cornwall. She came to New South Wales with her parents and brother George in the Bardwell , arriving in May 1798. The family settled on a 100-acre land grant on the Hawkesbury River. A silk flag painted with a shield flanked by an emu and kangaroo, plus entwined rose, shamrock and thistle motifs is attributed to Mary. It was made in 1806 to celebrate Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar. (The event took place on 21 October 1805, but it was not reported in the Sydney Gazette until 10 April 1806.) 'Unity’ is inscribed in the upper scroll and Nelson’s famous command, 'England Expects Every Man Will Do His Duty’, appears in the lower. Reputedly made from her mother’s wedding dress, the flag was flown at the Bowman property, Archerfield, near Richmond. It is considered to be the first time native fauna was used in a colonial coat of arms, and it is one of the first recorded Australian art works by a woman. The Bowman flag is now in the Mitchell Library.
At Richmond on 29 August 1818 Mary Bowman became the second wife of James Chisolm. They lived in Calder House, Sydney, and had four sons and three daughters. Mary died on 1 May 1878.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1796
- Summary
- Painter Mary Bowman is best known for the silk flag she painted in 1806 to celebrate Nelson's victory at Trafalgar. Now held in the Mitchell Libary, the flag, which was reputedly made from her mother's wedding dress, is considered historically significant. Believed to be the first time native fauna was used in a colonial coat of arms. it is also one of the first recorded Australian art works by a
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1 May 1878
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1792-01-01 End Date1878-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- The English George Cruikshank (1792-1878), born in London, son of the printmaker and draughtsman Isaac Cruikshank, learnt to use an etching needle before he was ten and did a large number of cartoons and book illustrations in his working life. More than 6,000 of his published works and thousands of pencil sketches and watercolours are now distributed throughout the world. In 1820 he started working with his brother Robert on Life in London , published in monthly parts. One of the series, Passing Events, or, The Tail of the Comet of 1853 , hand-coloured etching, is in the NLA Rex Nan Kivell Collection (reproduced NLA News September 1998, front and back covers). NLA also holds George’s hand-coloured engraving, Arms of the Greeks! as well as etchings by Isaac Cruikshank and Robert Cruikshank (both English).
Among subjects of Australian interest George designed and etched the long, narrow PROBABLE EFFECTS of OVER FEMALE EMIGRATION, or, Importing the Fair Sex from the Savage Islands in Consequence of Exporting all our own to Australia!!! (ML CRUIKSHANK V* CART 16). ML has a large collection of original Cruikshank cartoons, evidently drawn for the Comic Almanac .
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1792
- Summary
- 19th century English cartoonist who drew several cartoons with colonial Australian themes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1878
- Age at death
- 86
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Marylebone, London, England, UK
- Biography
- portrait, landscape and transparency painter, was born in Marylebone, London, son of Nathaniel Snell Chauncy, merchant, and Ann Cram, née Bannerman. He was presumably a relative of Philip Snell Chauncy , Martha Berkeley and Theresa Walker . Chauncy studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London and later in Paris. He appears to have come to New South Wales about 1864. Sydney directories for 1865, 1866 and 1867 list him as an artist of 227 George Street.
Unsolicited, Mr Chauncy applied to the Sydney Mechanics Institute and School of Arts in May 1866 for the commission to paint a portrait of the late Dr John Woolley for the institute, but the committee decided in favour of the Scottish portraitist W.M. Tweedie. In January 1868 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that he had painted a transparency of 14 × 10 feet (4.2 × 3 m) for E. Pugh’s tailor’s shop in George Street to celebrate the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh. It depicted 'Neptune in a chariot, the picture enclosed in an ornamental border of scroll work and flags’.
In 1868 Auschar Chauncy moved to Queensland, perhaps prompted by his brother Hugh S. Chauncy, a mining surveyor and sharebroker working at Gympie. He painted a portrait of Governor Blackall soon after arriving at Brisbane, where he maintained various studios from 1869 to about 1876. As well as offering to paint portraits in oils, he advertised his competence in picture cleaning and restoration and in teaching languages. He travelled around Queensland to find work; in February 1870 he announced (inaccurately as it turned out) that he was leaving Brisbane due to lack of encouragement. In January 1873 he visited Rockhampton, where he advertised as a portrait painter and teacher of oil painting.
Also a landscape painter, Chauncy held a 'grand art union’ of his landscapes at Brisbane in May 1874, then showed unsold work at the Brisbane School of Arts Exhibition in November. He had settled in Gympie by mid 1876 when he exhibited an oil painting of the Lady Mary Mine from his studio in the Freemason’s Hotel. He died there of a heart attack on 30 April 1877.
According to a local report of his death, Chauncy had been 'well known in Gympie, having obtained considerable celebrity as a portrait and landscape painter’. However he was also said to have died 'unwept and neglected’ and presumably in poverty. No extant original works are known, although an undated oil, Sydney from Dawes Point (Mitchell Library), a copy of the frontispiece of James Atkinson’s Account of the State of Agriculture and Grazing in New South Wales (London 1826) signed 'Chauncy’, is possibly his.
Writers:
McKay, Judith
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1836
- Summary
- Portrait, landscape and transparency painter born in London. He worked in Brisbane, Rockhampton and Gympie in Queensland and 'obtained considerable celebrity as a portrait and landscape painter'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30 April 1877
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- painter, engraver and photographer, was born and raised in Dublin. Known as Paul, he was transported to Hobart Town as a political prisoner, arriving in the Adelaide on 29 November 1849. In about 1846 he had gone to London to organise the Davis Club, an Irish revolutionary organisation, and there also became secretary of an English revolutionary society. It was for his part in the latter’s activities that he was given a life sentence for sedition at the London Central Criminal Court on 18 September 1848. As was the case with many other political prisoners, Dowling was granted a ticket of leave upon arrival. He set up as a portrait painter at 9 Liverpool Street on 1 January 1850, received a conditional pardon on 14 August 1855 and a full pardon on 24 February 1857. Supporting his application for the former, the Very Rev. William Hall, the Roman Catholic Vicar-General of the diocese of Hobart Town, wrote: 'he has taught drawing in my school for some time past’.
Dowling, who was said to have studied at the Dublin School of Arts and to have won awards, gave his profession as 'artist’ from arrival in the colony. Julia Ann de Veaux (c.1825-69), Dowling’s fiancée, followed him out from Dublin and they were married in St Joseph’s Catholic Church, Hobart Town, on 4 May 1850. The ceremony was performed by Hall, the witnesses being Sarah and Robin Vaughan Hood . On 25 October 1851, the Launceston Examiner carried his advertisement: 'PORTRAIT PAINTING. – A Card. – MR. WILLIAM PAUL DOWLING, late of London, having arrived, for the first time, in Launceston, begs to inform the ladies and gentlemen who may desire his services that his stay must be limited and therefore their orders are solicited as early as possible. N.B.—To prevent mistakes, there being another artist of the same name, attention is requested to his initials and address. St. John-street, Launceston, next door to Messrs. Gleadow and Henty’s office, and also to the Synagogue’. The other 'artist of the same name’ was Robert Dowling (no relation).
W.P. Dowling moved his studio from Launceston to Macquarie Street, Hobart, opposite St Joseph’s Church, in December 1852. Here he conducted a drawing class for young ladies on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. The chalk and pastel portrait sketches he produced include the four children of Joseph and Mary Morton Allport (ALMFA) and Frances Meredith with her cousin Eliza Jane Windsor (VDL Folk Museum). By October 1854 the rooms were to let and Dowling had moved to Davey Street.
One of Dowling’s earliest known works is his pencil and watercolour portrait of the four Crowther children (c.1851, Crowther Library) formerly attributed to Thomas Bock . Throughout the 1850s Dowling also produced lithographs, mainly portrait subjects but occasionally a landscape or a record of a public event. They include Jubilee Festival Hobart Town 10th August 1853 on the Occasion of the Cessation of Transportation to Van Diemen’s Land (printed and published by R.V. Hood), which shows the fireworks’ display outside the Hobart Town High School (QVMAG holds his original sepia and white drawing for it). He painted oil portraits such as Rt Revd Robert William Willson, First Bishop of Hobart Town (1856, Catholic Church House, Hobart) and Rev. Mother Cahill (Sisters of Charity Congregational Archives) – acknowledged as his when the Bishop of Hobart showed them in a loan exhibition at the Hobart Town Hall in 1881 – and made a lithograph after the former (ALMFA). Two large figurative panels of the altarpiece in St Joseph’s Catholic Cathedral, Hobart are also attributed to him.
From his studio at 14 Liverpool Street in May 1856, W.P. Dowling advertised a 'new style of portrait (on a photographic base) in Swiss crayons, price two guineas’. He had already had some experience in this line, having been employed to colour John Sharp 's photographs in 'pastel or soft crayon’ in preference to Alfred Bock who had previously 'worked up portraits for him, Sharp, in water colour, but of course it was cheaper to employ Dowling’, Bock complained to J.W. Beattie in 1919.
Dowling’s major commitment to photography began at Launceston in about 1859 in partnership with his photographer brother, Matthew Patrick Dowling, who had recently joined him in Tasmania. On 28 April 1859 the Launceston Examiner advertised the Messrs Dowlings’ Chromatype Gallery in George Street, opposite the post office. They were offering 'portraits from locket to life size, Daguerreotypes, oil paintings, &c. copied to any size. Instantaneous portraits of children. Stereoscopic and large views &c.’ Matthew undoubtedly took most of the photographs while Paul coloured them, a pastel-coloured photograph of Thomas Ritchie being an extant example (QVMAG).
W.P. Dowling exhibited a photographic Portrait of a Gentleman overpainted in oils in the 1862-63 Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition and this sort of enlarged photograph, coloured in either oil or pastel, became his speciality. He was still producing original paintings too and was possibly the 'Mark’ Dowling who exhibited A Shepherd at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. Then in June 1869 Matthew accused Paul of selling as his own photographs which he (Matthew) had taken, dissolved the partnership and set up in rivalry with his brother at Launceston. Paul continued their former business on his own, advertising as a photographer although his photographic expertise was questionable, at least initially, and he also overpainted photographs by others and was an acknowledge painter. On 15 July 1871 the Tasmanian labelled him 'one of the most skilled painters in Tasmania’ when discussing his oil-painted photograph of Adye Douglas for the Launceston Working Men’s Club. A week later his overpainting of a large photograph of Henry Hopkins taken by C.A. Woolley for the Gas Company was commended in the local press. His 'mezzo-tint photograph’ of Governor Wild was presented to the Launceston Mechanics Institute in June 1876 and he probably photographed and/or overpainted a few street scenes and views as well, such as a photograph of Peters, Barnard & Co.'s stores in Cameron Street, Launceston, which incorporates the twelve Chinese employees, Mr Peters and two of his sons, one on horseback (1871).
William Paul Dowling died of tetanus at his residence in Brisbane Street on 3 August 1877, following an operation. Reporting his death, the Launceston Examiner stated that he was best known 'for the production of photographic portraits, and particularly for his system of enlarging photos which are then finished in oil or crayons’. His obituary in the Cornwall Chronicle on 6 August 1877 stated he had made 'a comfortable competence’ from the business and had been able to return to Ireland for a visit before moving into his Brisbane Street studio in the 1860s: 'Mr Dowling was an amiable man of quiet, retiring demeanour, very much respected, and liked best by those who were longest acquainted with him’. After his death W. Burrows & Co. purchased all the Dowling Brothers’ negatives from Matthew Patrick Dowling, who inherited the business. Numerous photographs (mainly cartes-de-visite portraits) by W.P. Dowling, both as Dowling Brothers and on his own, are in the Archives Office of Tasmania. Examples of his oil portraits (many painted over enlarged photographs) still hang in public buildings.
Writers:
Stilwell, G. T.Kerr, Joan
Imogen Kennard-King
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. c.1824
- Summary
- William Paul Dowling was a painter, engraver and photographer. In 1849 he was transported to Hobart Town as a political prisoner. Dowling worked in partnership with his photographer brother, Matthew Patrick Dowling until the latter accused William of selling his photographs as his own.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3 August 1877
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude54.98 Longitude-1.61 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, engraver and watercolourist, was born on 26 October 1822 at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, eldest son of Moses Aaron Richardson, an author, publisher and bookseller, and a nephew of the painter Thomas Miles Richardson.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 October 1822
- Summary
- George Bouchier Richardson, sketcher, engraver, watercolourist and editor, 'regretted the necessity which compelled him to join his parents in Australia in 1854, but hoped that his researches might prove of use and his name turn up in connection with the local history worthy of the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28 November 1877
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude18.4929078 Longitude-77.6574376 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Falmouth, Jamaica
- Biography
- sketcher, was born at the port of Falmouth, Jamaica, circa 1822/23. Her full name was Frances Minto Gibbes and she was the fifth child and third daughter of Colonel (then Major) John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787-1873) and Elizabeth Gibbes (née Davis, circa 1790-1874). One of Fanny’s older sisters was the sketcher and watercolourist Mary Murray (née Gibbes).
Fanny’s Indian-born mother was the daughter of an English clergyman while her father was the London-born son of a Barbados sugar planter. A veteran of the wars against Napoleon, Colonel Gibbes had been appointed to the well-remunerated post of Collector of Customs at Falmouth by the British Government in 1819. (Falmouth was then Jamaica’s wealthiest maritime trading centre after Kingston.) Fanny’s carefree Caribbean existence ended sharply at the age of four or five, when her father took the family back to England to live. His constitution had been undermined by Jamaica’s climate and he was forced to obtain a transfer to the customs’ collectorship at the North Sea port of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Fanny immersed herself in books on her return to England, earning a reputation as a bluestocking. She also was taught the social skills and graces that young Englishwomen of her class were expected to acquire during the late-Georgian era. These included the capacity to play at least one musical instrument, a facility in French and the ability to dance, embroider and sketch. During their time in Norfolk, the Gibbes family resided by the sea in Great Yarmouth itself, and at Hobland Hall, in the tranquil East Anglian countryside. There was no further upheaval in Fanny’s life until 1833, when her father applied successfully for a transfer to the collectorship in Sydney, New South Wales (NSW). As head of the colony’s Customs Department, he would be allocated a seat in the NSW Legislative Council and draw a base salary of 1000 pounds a year, which was more than he was receiving at Great Yarmouth.
Fanny, her parents and six of her seven siblings arrived in Sydney, from London, aboard the Resource on 19 April 1834. Colonel Gibbes would remain the Collector of Customs for NSW for a record term of 25 years, during which time Sydney grew from a penal settlement into a cosmopolitan trading city. One of his first actions was to lease a Palladian villa on Sydney’s Point Piper as a home for his family. Known as Point Piper House (or Henrietta Villa), the Gibbes’ new residence had been built by one of the Colonel’s predecessors, the extravagant Captain John Piper. It was surrounded by a European-style garden and native trees and commanded sweeping views of shipping movements on Sydney Harbour. On 23 January 1838, Fanny sketched two views of Point Piper (Historic Houses Trust). The first sketch shows a portion of the house’s verandah and garden, with the water beyond. The second depicts the whole house from a vantage point located in the harbour, probably Clarke Island. Another sketch showing the Point Piper House’s garden and verandah is also extant (National Library of Australia). Regrettably, most of Fanny’s other sketches are lost although there does survive a small pencil portrait that she did of her brother, William John Gibbes (1815-1868), in 1843 (private collection). It should be noted that Fanny’s father supported the work of several Sydney artists. They included the marine painter Frederick Garling , who worked for Colonel Gibbes at the Sydney Customs House, and William Nicholas , who executed drawings and watercolour portaits of members of the Gibbes family. Colonel Gibbes was also on friendly terms with the landscape painter Conrad Martens . (During the 1830s, Martens did drawings and watercolours of Regentville, near Penrith, NSW, which was the rural seat of William John Gibbes’ father-in-law, Sir John Jamison (1776-1844).)
In 1843, Fanny attended the wedding in Sydney of her favourite sister, Mary, to Terence Aubrey Murray, a budding politician, pastoralist and proprietor of two famous NSW sheep stations: Yarralumla on the Limestone Plains and Winderradeen in the Collector Valley. That same year, Fanny, her parents and her unmarried siblings moved across the harbour to Kirribilli Point, on Sydney’s north shore. Here Colonel Gibbes had erected, on a spectacular five-acre site, a sandstone bungalow, which he called Wotonga House. (Wotonga nowadays forms part of Admiralty House – the official Sydney residence of the Governor-General of Australia.) During her seven-year stay at Wotonga, Fanny would travel to Yarralumla from time to time to visit Mary Murray (1817-1858). She would be accompanied on these expeditions, which involved an arduous 300-kilometre coach trip over rough country roads, by her younger sister Matilda Gibbes (1826-1916), herself an enthusiastic amateur sketcher.
Fanny possessed a lively mind and a witty turn of phrase but most prospective suitors found her too plain-looking and forthright for their liking. Her parents feared that she would never marry but during the 1840s, she met and fell in love with an Irish-born farmer and amateur naturalist from New Zealand named Alfred Ludlam (1810-1877). Ludlam returned Fanny’s affection, courting her at Wotonga where he was a house guest. The Gibbes family nicknamed him “Old Bricks” because of his solid, dependable character. On 1 October 1850, Fanny and “Old Bricks” were married at St Thomas’ Anglican Church, North Sydney (where, coincidentally, Conrad Martens was a parishioner). Fanny went to live across the Tasman with Ludlam on his sheep property, Newry, in Lower Hutt. Not long after their arrival at Newry they hosted, in 1851, an official dinner for the Governor of New Zealand, Sir George Grey. Ludlam proceeded to embark on an active career in public life, supporting a variety of cultural and civic institutions in Wellington and entering the political arena in 1854. He represented Hutt in New Zealand’s First, Second and Fourth Parliaments and represented the same area on the Wellington Provincial Council in 1853-56 and again in 1866-70.
Fanny and her husband narrowly escaped death one night in February 1855 when a massive earthquake struck the Wellington region, destroying Newry homestead and sending a brick chimney crashing down around them. They rebuilt Newry and Fanny, who was keen on horticulture, helped Ludlam to establish a showpiece garden on the property which was later opened to the public. Ludlam was one of the founders, too, of the Wellington Botanic Gardens in 1868. Fanny’s father and mother died at Yarralumla homestead in 1873 and 1874 respectively. (They had been living in retirement at Yarralumla since 1859 – the year in which Terence Aubrey Murray sold the property to Fanny’s youngest brother, Augustus Gibbes.) In a codicil to his will, Colonel Gibbes left Fanny 'the piece of worsted work framed and glazed, the four coloured drawings by Mr. Fred Garling [ Frederick Garling ] viz Point Piper House, the Ship in which my dear son Edmund sailed for England and died [in 1850], Mt Keera and a scene in the Domain; also her mother’s gold watch and chain’. The Ludlams travelled to England for an extended holiday following the death of Mrs Gibbes. In London, Fanny was reunited with her eldest brother, George, a retired War Office official, whom she had not seen since her departure for Australia in 1833. Fanny, however, had been complaining of abdominal discomfort for some time. She took ill and died of a “stoppage in the bowel” on 5 March 1877, at 2 Clifton Terrace, Kensington. Ludlam returned to New Zealand where he died 10 months after his beloved wife, having devoted his final days to acts of charity. There were no children of the marriage.
Writers:
Gibbes, Stephen
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1822
- Summary
- Fanny Gibbes was a sketcher and the younger sister of well-known sketcher and watercolourist Mary Murray. Gibbes' surviving sketches depict views of Sydney's Point Piper House, where she lived with her family after arriving from England. An associate of Conrad Martens and Frederick Garling, Gibbes later lived in New Zealand with her husband Alfred Ludlam.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1877
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude18.12682065 Longitude-76.53740115 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Portland, Jamaica
- Biography
- painter and novelist, was born in Portland, Jamaica, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Poitier who was serving there in the British Army, and Sara, née Hunter, from the Bahamas. She lived at Nassau in the Bahamas until both parents died, then, aged eighteen, moved to Ireland, where she married Captain Virginius Murray in 1844. Murray retired from the army and came to Victoria in search of gold in 1852. He was appointed a commissioner on the goldfields, first at Beechworth, then at Dunolly. Elizabeth and their five sons followed him to Melbourne in 1855 but remained in the city while Virginius lived on the goldfields. Disappointed with the place (especially its schools), Elizabeth returned to England at the end of 1859 with the four youngest boys and settled at Harrow. Her husband died in Victoria on Christmas Day 1861.
With the aim of drawing attention to the deficiencies of the colony for young women, and having written earlier successful novels, Elizabeth wrote Ella Norman; or, a Woman’s Perils (London 1864), the story of a poor governess and her depressing adventures in Victoria. It was considered one-sided and full of 'bitter invectives’ by Victorian reviewers. Nevertheless, novel-writing may have proved financially rewarding for she managed to send her sons to Harrow.
Her great-grandson Sir Brian Murray, the then governor of Victoria, stated in his preface to the reprint of her book (Melbourne 1985) that Elizabeth 'painted with a good deal of skill in oils and water colour’. No Australian subjects, however, are known or, perhaps, likely. She died on 27 December 1877. Many of her descendants now live in Australia.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1820
- Summary
- Painter and novelist, brief period of residence in Victoria. Murray's great-grandson Sir Brian Murray, stated that she 'painted with a good deal of skill in oils and water colour'.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27 December 1877
- Age at death
- 57
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- Landowner, amateur craftsperson using straw, wood and other materials, was born in Ireland son of an Irish clergyman, with an uncle Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Gerald d_ Courcy Lefroy arrived in Western Australia in 1843 with his brother Anthony O’Grady Lefroy to pioneer agricultural and pastoral districts at Toodyay, Bolgart and Walebing. At first he was in the New Norcia area living a lonely bachelor existence. Like other pioneer farmers from leisured backgrounds he was able to put his hobbies to useful ends. Lefroy wrote in his diary “I always amuse myself making something in the evening.” The young bachelor embroidered cushions and panels, made frames for embroidery, carved walking sticks, plaited straw for bonnets – that were later lined with silk and trimmed with ribbon, tanned and sewed possum possets and rugs, cobbled silk shoes and made laborious horse hair chains for lady friends. On one occasion he sewed his own racing silks. His brother later took up a position with Governor Fitzgerald. The brothers mixed with society when in town. In the country, they made many things for themselves. As was typical of the period Lefroy carefully observed the Sabbath spending the day writing letters and reading – often the Bible and the Illustrated London News. He was particularly interested in accounts of the great exhibitions and followed them with interest, as did many members of the community.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1819
- Summary
- Gerald dé Courcy Lefroy was born in 1819. He was a landowner, amateur craftsperson using straw, wood and other materials.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1877
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude56 Longitude10 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Denmark
- Biography
- professional photographer and jeweller, was born into a Danish family apparently called Qvist. His descendants spelt their name Quist, but after his first few years in Australia Christian Ludwig seems always to have used Qwist. He came to Victoria in 1852 and within two years had opened a Daguerrean Gallery at Sandhurst (Bendigo) in partnership with Garben. He was also associated with Henry Elsas (born in Prussia in 1827), a Bendigo engraver, jeweller and silversmith. In 1856-57 Qwist had his own studio-shop in McCrae Street and was working both as a goldsmith and daguerreotype photographer. A gold trowel commissioned by the Bendigo Catholic congregation and used by Bishop Goold to lay the foundation stone of their church was described in the Bendigo Advertiser of 23 May 1856. On 4 April 1857 a presentation gold medal for the Bendigo Oddfellows was mentioned as being on display at Qwist’s shop together with 'some miniature portraits and scenic views upon a novel and admirable system’: that is, taken with a stereoscopic daguerreotype camera.
Predictably, Qwist used his camera primarily for portraits but stereoscopic landscapes are also mentioned, some apparently imported (or brought to Australia with him), such as 'an enchanting view of Berne in Switzerland’. He continued working simultaneously as a photographer and goldsmith throughout his Bendigo years although his advertisements suggest that photography dominated. In 1858 he had a photographic studio in View Street in partnership with W.E. James and also produced another gold trowel that year. For a short time early in 1859 he and the photographer Alexander Fox were partners, then Qwist worked alone in Pall Mall (three doors from the Shamrock Hotel), advertising that he had added photographs on paper and on leather (pannotypes) to his repertoire. On 17 February 1860 the Bendigo Advertiser mentioned improvements he had made to his photographic studio, but this was presumably to attract a new occupant. Qwist moved to Sydney soon afterwards.
In 1861 Qwist is thought to have been manufacturing gold objects on commission for the Sydney jewellers Hogarth, Erichsen & Co. (Hogarth, another Dane, may have invited him to Sydney). Meanwhile was also running a photography and goldsmith business in partnership with a Mr Clarke. A silver-mounted emu-egg trophy acknowledged as being by Messrs Clarke and Ghost (sic) was made in February 1861 for the Intercolonial Cricket Match. Hawkins suggests that stereoscopic photographs, some formerly owned by the Castlemaine jeweller Ernest Leviny (now at the National Trust’s property, Buda, Castlemaine), depicting the gold items sent by Hogarth & Erichsen to the 1862 London International Exhibition were taken by Qwist’s firm.
A photography and jewellery firm at 15 Hunter Street, Sydney, was listed in Qwist’s name alone in 1864. In 1865 Clarke rejoined him and they opened premises at 171 Crown Street. Qwist may then have taken the opportunity to revisit Victoria to see Leviny; stereoscopes of Leviny exhibition pieces were taken by an unknown photographer at Buda (Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum) at about the time Qwist & Clarke apparently decided to abandon the photographic side of the business. Early in 1866 Quist was advertising that the photography gallery was to let 'with waiting room attached. Water laid on, and well adapted to a great artist’. Afterwards he moved to 11 Hunter Street, where he remained until 1869.
A prominent and successful Sydney jeweller, Qwist made several fine gold presentation pieces. In 1867 he designed and made the gold and malachite testimonial presented to William Lyster at the end of the Lyster company’s Sydney opera season. Described as 'a pyramid of fine gold standing on a base of quartz and fittingly set, enriched with a wreath and ornaments characteristic of the musical profession’, this was depicted in the Illustrated Sydney News on 16 February 1867. In December the same newspaper described his 'gold trowel, set with brilliants and other precious stones’ with which the Duke of Edinburgh subsequently laid the foundation stone of the Sydney Town Hall. It was on display in Qwist’s shop the following June. He exhibited a cup and cover (the Joske Cup) at the 1862 London International Exhibition. The objects he showed in the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition all featured emblems of New South Wales.
Qwist & Clarke moved their premises to 468 Bourke Street, Sydney, in 1876 but the following year they were back in Hunter Street (at number 17, possibly just the old premises renumbered and renovated). But Qwist did not long enjoy the new shop. He died of pleurisy in his home at East St Leonards (Sharpe Bay, North Sydney) on 21 October 1877 and was buried in the Church of England section of Rookwood Cemetery. He was survived by his wife Anne, née Price, whom he had married in 1859, and four children; one son predeceased him. Two of his silver claret jugs, goblets and a cup, all incorporating emu eggs, are held by the National Gallery of Victoria, and other silver and gold work of a high standard is known.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1818
- Summary
- Photographer and goldsmith of Danish heritage. A resident of Bendigo and in later years Sydney, mainly noted for his design and craftsmanship of commissioned commemorative items in gold.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21 October 1877
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Woodcarver, stonemason and monumental mason was born in England and arrived with his wife Harriet on the Diadem in 1842. He purchased a Fremantle town lot in 1857 and fifteen acres at Pinjarra. He was the case maker for the organ in Christchurch, Mandurah. He died at Pinjarra in 1877. This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Dr Dorothy Erickson
Date written:
2010
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1816
- Summary
- Woodcarver, stonemason and monumental mason, he was the case maker for the organ in Christchurch, Mandurah.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1877
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. 1 January 1815
- Summary
- Born in England in 1815 George Alexander Gilbert arrived in Australia with wife and her children, in 1841 and was known as a drawing teacher, publisher, librarian, bankrupt pastoralist, gold commissioner and mesmerist. Not particularly successful at any venture Gilbert's art work forms an important archive of colonial Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1 January 1877
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude51.8995685 Longitude-2.0711559 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cheltenham, England
- Biography
- Benedictine Abbot and sketcher, drew 'Gentlemen in Waiting – for Dinner!’ a cartoon showing 5 long-haired comic black cannibals with waddies about to emerge from behind a group of trees to club a blithely strolling white gentleman [presumably a clergyman?] with top hat and furled umbrella c.1840, watercolour, NLA Pictures.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1813
- Summary
- Influential Colonial era Benedictine Abbot and amateur sketcher.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19 July 1877
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude57.6613703 Longitude-3.3286702 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dunbar, Elgin, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, author and medical practitioner, was born in June 1811 at Dunbar, Elgin, Scotland, son of John Kelly and Margaret, née Porteous. He came to South Australia in the Baboo in 1840 and worked as a surgeon in Adelaide. In 1843 he sketched a view of the Adelaide Plains (Mortlock Library). He returned to Britain then came back to South Australia in 1847, settled in Morphett Vale and established a vineyard. He married Annie Worthington in 1855 and they had two sons and three daughters. He published The Vine in Australia (Melbourne 1861), illustrated after his own drawings, and Wine-Growing in Australia and the Teachings of Modern Writers on Wine-Culture and Wine-Making (Adelaide 1867).
Kelly died at his home in the Adelaide suburb of Norwood on 9 October 1877.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. June 1811
- Summary
- A keen viticulturalist and medical practitioner Kelly settled in South Australia where he is known to have completed a sketch of the Adelaide Plains. He also illustrated and published numerous books on wine growing.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9 October 1877
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude52.2460367 Longitude0.7125173 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bury St Edmunds, England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Bury St Edmunds, England, son of James Laing, an army contractor, and Elizabeth, née Rainbird, and possibly a relative of the prolific Melbourne architect, Charles Laing (1809-57). J.W. Laing apparently came to Victoria during the gold rush. In 1856 he drew a view of Kilmore, Victoria, engraved on copper by H.S. Sadd (National Library of Australia). Laing moved to Queensland about 1868 and travelled around the colony drawing pencil views of properties and buildings. Surviving drawings, all in the John Oxley Library, include: Spring Gardens – New Town, near Ipswich, Qld, September 1869[?] ; Cumnock Cottage, Gympie (1870); a view of the Pimpama Hotel (c.1873); the Clydesdale Sugar Mill on Doughboy Creek at Hemmant (February 1873); the Primary School at West Oxley (May 1873); W.H. Westaway’s property known as Meridan Plains (August 1875); Redhall, the residence of John Simpson at Caboolture; and Glastonville, William Turnbull’s residence at Glastonbury Creek (May 1877). A view of Eden station, Opossum Creek, is held privately.
Laing died, unmarried, at Tiaro, near Maryborough, Queensland, on 22 November 1877, aged sixty-six.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1811
- Summary
- Laing came to Victoria during the gold rush and travelled around the colony drawing pencil views of properties and buildings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 November 1877
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1877-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kensington, London, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist and merchant, was born in Kensington, London, on 15 March 1809, son of William Knight, a lawyer, and Rebecca, née Talbot. He came to Van Diemen’s Land in the Hugh Crawford in 1827 to investigate the business potential of the colony, returned briefly to England, then arrived back at Hobart Town aboard the Promise , a ship he partly owned, with a cargo of general merchandise. With this he set himself up in business at the Old Wharf and subsequently became a leading merchant of Hobart Town. In 1846 he married Hannah Mary Anne, daughter of the assistant commissary-general William Fletcher, and granddaughter of Joseph Hone, master of the Supreme Court of Tasmania – a brother of the well-known London publisher William Hone. They had ten children.
Knight strongly opposed the cessation of transportation (he advocated its gradual reduction). A principal shareholder and sometime director of the Derwent & Tamar Fire, Life and Marine Assurance Company, he was also closely connected with the Australian Mutual Provident Company: its first Van Diemen’s Land agent and subsequently chairman of its Tasmanian board. In 1872 he stated that his income as agent had increased from £7 10s in the company’s first year to £700 annually. Knight died on 30 June 1877 at his home in Sandy Bay, Hobart Town. His portrait was painted in the 1840s by T.G. Wainewright .
The seven watercolour paintings Knight lent to the 1846 Hobart Town Exhibition of Paintings, Engravings, and Watercolour Drawings included Arch Island, River Huon , A Female Head , Lake on the Summit of the Calderia Mountains, St Michael’s Azores and Native Hut (1845, p.c.), the last a precisely detailed, colourful and rather naive drawing. A romantic view of the Calcutta icebound in October 1840 (apparently a copy) was shown at both the 1846 and 1858 Hobart Town exhibitions as was Garth’s Cottage, River Huon . The Allport Library and Museum holds the former as well as his sepia wash of the latter title, either the exhibit or a preliminary drawing. Miss Lucy Knight lent a portrait of Lieutenant Edward Lord by her father to the Old Hobart Exhibition in 1896 and attributed it to her father.
Of greater significance is Knight’s sketch of Melbourne from an elevated position on Collins Street looking to the west, made on his business trip there in July – August 1839. The rather crude topographic sketch, enlivened by figures of settlers, animals and a group of Aboriginals atop the rise, was printed in August 1840 as a black ink lithograph by London publisher J.[Joseph]Cross of 18 High Holborn,known for maps and guides to the Australian colonies from 1825 through the 1830s. Titled Collins Street – Town of Melbourne, Port Philip, New South Wales. E.Noyce is listed as the lithographer and 'W.Knight pinxit’ as artist. Little is known about Edward Noyce (1816-54) who was active in England from the 1c.835 to 1854 as a topographical artist, lithographer and illustrator of sheet music covers. While Elisha has been attributed to Noyce as a Christian name, this is a confusion with a contemporaneous author of illustrated technical and natural history works who appears to be Edwards’s brother Dr Elisha Noyce. Noyce’s full name appears on a few British prints and E.Noyce on several Australian and New Zealand emigration/gold rush theme prints for Bauericcher & Co, London, and two views of Adelaide in the State Library of South Australia and one of Geelong.
Knight’s lithograph version was reported as being on view 'Messrs. Kerr & Holmes, of the Book and Stationery Warehouse, Collins-street in the 'Local Intelligence’ column on page 2 of The Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser on 18 March 1841. The newspaper commented that ‘The view, though it does not bear much resemblance to Collins-street now, conveys a very faithful impression of the street as it was then, and is better calculated to give a stranger an idea of the appearance of the town than any sketch that has previously come under our notice.’
Curiously, neither J. Cross or Knight appear to have promoted sales of the lithograph and few originals are extant. Perhaps Knight had a small number printed for largely personal use. A number of variants and a watercolour version exist in Australian public collections. An albumen photograph from the late 1850s by John Hunter Kerr (q.v.)in Melbourne, appears to be of the now lost sketch by Knight. The view is the earliest published of the new city.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2019
- Born
- b. 15 March 1809
- Summary
- William Knight arrived as a merchant in Hobart Town and exhibited in the 1846 and 1858 Hobart Town Exhibitions. Examples of his work are held in the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, Hobart.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30 June 1877
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1856-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, calligrapher and draughtsman, was born in Adelaide on 10 February 1856, the only child of John Light Richards, a bootmaker, and his wife Mary A[nne?]. Educated at Prince Alfred College, Richards entered the South Australian Government Survey Department in 1872 as a draughtsman, but was forced to resign through illness. He died at the age of 20, on 15 August 1876, and was buried in West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide.
Self-taught as an artist, Richards drew in pen-and-ink from youth, reputedly with precocious brilliance, his drawings being greatly admired by his fellow workers in the civil service. Recorded examples are The Fawn , London in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth , and a facsimile of a map by George French Angas, all unlocated. His masterpiece was considered to be a portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm of Prussia, not painted but composed entirely of different densities of handwriting, describing in German major incidents in the emperor’s life. Richards forwarded this to the Kaiser in 1876, who sent him a reward for his admirable efforts. It arrived, alas, after Richard’s death. His biographer, Loyau, enthused in 1883 that 'the bent of his genius was wonderful’ and noted that examples of his work then remained with his parents in Adelaide.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 February 1856
- Summary
- Richard Henry Richards, sketcher, calligrapher and draughtsman, died at the age of 20. His masterpiece was considered to be a portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm of Prussia, not painted but composed entirely of different densities of handwriting, describing in German major incidents in the emperor's life. Richards forwarded this to the Kaiser in 1876, who sent him a reward for his admirable efforts, though unfortunately it arrived after his early and untimely death.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15 August 1876
- Age at death
- 20
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land , Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- watercolourist, was born in Hobart Town, second daughter of Samuel James Wintle and Mary Anne, née Magill. In 1839 she accompanied her parents to Sydney where, reputedly aged seven, she began drawing lessons with 'a French lady artist, Madame Romanson [ Romansson ]’ – according to her obituary – then with Conrad Martens (according to family tradition). In 1851 Mary Harriet Wintle married Charles T. Gedye of Eastbourne, Darling Point, Sydney and all surviving works date from after her marriage. The earliest is a Tasmanian subject done about 1854; a watercolour heightened with white and gum arabic of an Australian coastal scene dated 1861 was offered at Christie’s Melbourne on 29 April 1997 (lot 55); while On the Lane Cove , another watercolour (Mitchell Library), is dated December 1862. In 1866, when the Gedyes were living at Lurlei, Woollahra, Mary Harriet showed View from Mount Bowen, South Kurrajong, New South Wales at the Sydney exhibition preceding the Paris Universal Exhibition. Conrad Martens and F.C. Terry were awarded the prizes of £30 and £20 respectively, but the secretary to the commissioners wrote to Mrs Gedye 'to convey to you the very high opinion generally entertained by them of your water-colour painting…[and] the Commissioners regret their inability to testify their appreciation more substantially than by mere words’. The landscape was exhibited in Paris the following year. In 1870 she contributed The Gap, Kurrajong to the Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition and was awarded a bronze medal. A number of her works, mainly views of the Blue Mountains, were lent to this exhibition by her husband. She exhibited with the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and was awarded a prize for Govett’s Waterfall .
Mary Harriet Gedye died at Eastbourne on 31 January 1876, survived by three daughters. The Hobart Town Mercury published an obituary that drew attention to her Tasmanian origins, gave an account of her career and commented: 'The colonial art world suffers a serious loss by her untimely death’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1834
- Summary
- Tasmanian born watercolourist, Gedye started exhibiting her works after moving to Sydney and marrying. Her works were sent to prestigious European exhibitions and competed against other familiar artists such as Conrad Martens. She earned high accolades for her work.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 31 January 1876
- Age at death
- 42
Details
Latitude52.3106138 Longitude-0.865912983 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Northamptonshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and novelist, was born in Northamptonshire, England, on 2 January 1830, sixth son of Rev. Charles Kingsley and Mary, née Lucas. A member of a cultured, well-connected family, it is likely that he was given drawing lessons in youth. Arriving at Melbourne in the Gauntlet in 1853, Kingsley tried gold-mining at Mount Alexander, Ararat and Omeo with limited success. He then travelled around the country on horseback. Nine watercolours of Australian subjects by Kingsley (Mitchell Library), mainly of mountain scenery, were nearly all painted when he was travelling alone through the Monaro, New South Wales, and Gippsland, Victoria, districts in 1855-56. Sketchy but competent, they display some understanding of composition and colouring.
All have lengthy inscriptions of a personal character and were obviously intended to be sent home. They include, for instance, 'Emu Creek in the Portland Bay District. Self on beloved thoroughbred Mazzaroni. Wedge-tailed Eagle following me, and lighting on tree after tree’, and 'an undiscovered gold gully … I cannot describe good and unmistakable wash dirt, any more than you can describe to me the difference between Beaune and Chateau Margot [sic]. But you can tell it as a rule the instant you have it in your hand …’.
Other views are of the mountains around Buninyong, near Langi Willi Station where Kingsley lived for several months in 1857 while writing The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn . The novel was published in London in 1858 shortly after his return. 16 more novels followed before Kingsley died at the age of 46.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 January 1830
- Summary
- Kingsley arrived in Australia in 1853 to try his luck gold-mining. During his travels throughout New South Wales and Victoria he made a number of watercolour sketches and his novel 'The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn' was written while he was staying in Buninyong near the Ballarat goldfields in 1857.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1876
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Van Diemen's Land, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- sporting and animal painter and police officer, was born in Van Diemen’s Land on 10 June 1826, third son of William Thomas Lyttleton and Ann, née Hortle. Thomas grew up on the family property, Hagley, at Longford near Launceston, moving to Victoria in 1851. He joined the Victoria Police Force on 9 January 1852. After serving in various country districts he was appointed superintendent of the Melbourne Metropolitan Police Force in the early 1860s. Sadleir commented that Lyttleton 'never seemed to take his duties quite seriously’, but he appears to have been well liked.
At the age of twenty-seven, Lyttleton married Emily Fenton in Hobart Town; they had two sons and two daughters. In 1853 he joined the Melbourne Club. His interest in the turf is first documented in 1857 when he was elected to the committee of the newly formed Castlemaine Turf Club. His earliest recorded painting is an 1856 watercolour of the horse 'Free Trader’, winner of the inaugural Melbourne Hunt Club Cup. Now owned by the Victoria Amateur Turf Club, it was the first in a series of paintings done over the next few years for his friend, the pastoralist and very successful amateur rider Herbert Power.
Lyttleton contributed 'Four Pictures of Horses’, all watercolours, to the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. In 1868-69 he painted several steeplechase, hurdle and hunting scenes featuring Adam Lindsay Gordon, the then famous amateur rider who was just beginning to receive recognition as a poet. These included Adam Lindsay Gordon Steeplechasing at Dowling Forest Racecourse, Ballarat (1869, oil on board, LT) and Hunting Scene, Gonn Station, Murray River (1869, oil on board, Warrnambool AG). He contributed a watercolour, The Bivouac , to the 1869 Melbourne Public Library exhibition. The eight oils catalogued as lent by 'W.C.’ Lyttleton and painted by 'Lyttleton’ were undoubtedly his; they included racehorse portraits ( The Barb , Glencoe , Western and My Dream ), a Group of Cattle and a landscape of Panshanger, Tasmania , as well as two oil paintings titled The Start and The Finish —possibly the extant pair of oil paintings of a steeplechase held at Flemington on 7 November 1868 and won by Viking, a horse owned, trained and ridden to victory by Gordon (p.c.).
Lyttleton was a foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts and exhibited ten oils at the first and second exhibitions in 1870 and 1872. Again these were mainly portraits of champion racehorses, and one called Coaching on the Woods Point Road . Photographs by Charles Hewitt after Lyttleton’s paintings of the champion horses Camden and Barwon were included in volume 3 of William Yuille’s Victorian Stud Book (Melbourne 1871) together with three photographs of horse portraits by Frederick Woodhouse . That year Lyttleton painted a fine oil of the three Power brothers—prominent pastoralists, stock auctioneers and racing administrators—in a steeplechase at Melbourne.
In poor health, Lyttleton was superannuated from the Melbourne Metropolitan Police Force on 18 August 1874. He went to live in Drysdale (Vic.), and continued to paint in his retirement, completing a portrait of Speculation, Sir Hercules Robinson’s 1874 Melbourne Cup horse, that same year. Some of his paintings were exhibited at Geelong. In April 1875 he was briefly in Sydney for an exhibition of his paintings at Joseph Clarke’s Print Shop in George Street and during his visit advertised his availability to paint horse and cattle portraits. Examples on view at Clarke’s included a painting illustrating Gordon’s poem 'How We Beat the Favourite’.
Thomas Lyttleton died at Drysdale from 'heart disease’ on 22 January 1876, aged forty-nine, and is buried in Geelong Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter. The Geelong Advertiser reported: 'in Mr. Lyttleton the colony has lost an artist of no mean repute, his oil paintings of many of our most celebrated race-horses having invariably elicited much admiration. It is only a few short weeks ago that a representation in oil colors by the deceased gentleman of a winter scene in England, a stage coach and pair standing opposite a lodge gate, was deservedly most favourably commented upon’.
Writers:
Laverty, Colin
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 June 1826
- Summary
- Lyttleton painted mostly racehorse portraits. He was a foundation member of the Victorian Academy of Arts and exhibited ten oils at the first and second exhibitions in 1870 and 1872.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 January 1876
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, magistrate and vigneron, eldest son of Edward and Mary Peake, was given 'a classical education’ in England at D. Scott’s College, then became steward on William Leigh’s estate at Woodchester, Gloucestershire. In 1852 Leigh sent him to Australasia as companion to his son, another William Leigh , who was making a recuperative voyage. The pair visited South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, New Zealand and South Africa. Both were dedicated Catholics and William Leigh senior was a patron of the South Australian Church. At Adelaide in 1853-54, they stayed with Bishop Francis Murphy.
Peake returned to Adelaide as a settler in 1855. In July he rented one of the Franklin Street cottages owned by the Catholic Church. He brought with him drawings for a 'correct’ early English-style cathedral by the English architect Charles Hansom. On 29 March 1854, Bishop Murphy had sent him the foundation plan of the Adelaide Catholic Cathedral on which a local architect, Richard Lambeth, was proposing to erect a clumsy adaptation of Hansom’s earlier 'model plan for the new world’ (for which Peake’s employer had paid), which had been deemed unsuitable. Following the new drawings, the Cathedral of St Francis Xavier was partly erected on top of Lambeth’s foundations, and it would appear that Murphy’s ecclesiological education and change of architect owed much to Peake’s familiarity with the post-Puginian flowering of the English Gothic Revival.
At least two sketches by Peake were shown in the inaugural exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts at Adelaide in 1857. The Adelaide Observer described them as 'some interesting views of Australian scenery… [lent] by his Excellency’. Peake’s first encounter with Governor Sir Henry Young had occurred in November 1853 as a consequence of the wreck of the coastal steamer the SS Osmanli off Kangaroo Island when he was returning to Adelaide from Melbourne. Joining the volunteer crew that took off in a lifeboat to seek help, he immediately demanded to be taken to the Governor when set down at Port Adelaide. His exhibition sketches, View of Sydney Harbour and View in New Zealand , were drawn during less exciting moments of the voyage, perhaps inspired by young William Leigh’s indefatigable sketching.
No further artistic efforts are known after Peake settled in South Australia. Instead, he became MHA for the Burra and Clare districts (1857-59). Initially a land and commission agent in Hindley Street, Adelaide, he moved to Clarendon in 1858 as manager of Leigh senior’s 38-acre rural property (sketched by William Leigh junior in 1854). He turned the existing modest vineyard into a substantial winery and the original cottage into a charming Gothic Revival 'cottage orn?’ (both extant). By 1860 Peake was leasing the property from Leigh and possibly further extended the cottage. Later he purchased the estate for £4,407.
Peake became a gentleman of substance in South Australia and a foundation member of the Adelaide Club. He was appointed stipendiary magistrate for the local courts at Willunga, Morphett and Clarendon in 1860, then at Port Adelaide. He resigned in 1875, due to ill health, and died on 26 March 1876. He was buried in the Morphett Vale Catholic Cemetery. At Adelaide on 26 June 1867 he had married a widow, Elizabeth Newman, née Chambers, who survived him.
Writers:
Andrews, Brian
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1822
- Summary
- a sketcher, magistrate and vigneron. Peake's familiarity with aspects of the English Gothic Revival in architecture informed the construction of Adelaide's Cathedral of St Francis Xavier.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 March 1876
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- natural history artist, collector and curator, was born in Dublin, Ireland, on 22 October 1815, son of William Wall. According to his son, Wall studied anatomy under Professor Robert Harrison at Trinity College, Dublin, before coming to Sydney in 1840 with his brother Thomas where both worked as naturalists at the Australian Museum. W.S. Wall succeeded W.B. Clarke as curator in 1845 and continued in this position throughout the 1850s. His numerous curatorial duties included preparing and mounting the skeleton of a whale, a most popular attraction when exhibited outside the museum in 1849 50.
Wall lent a watercolour view by G.F. Angas to the 1854 Australian Museum Exhibition. It depicted Thomas’s grave, his brother having died on the 1848 expedition to Cape York under Edmund Kennedy . With it Wall exhibited the two lithographs after his sketches of whale skeletons as reproduced in his History and Description of a New Sperm Whale (Sydney 1851), 'printed, illustrated and bound in the colony’. He was awarded a bronze medal for his book and a silver medal for 'services’ by the commissioners to the following Paris Exhibition, where his book was again displayed. The Mitchell Library’s copy is from the library of George Bennett , the museum’s first curator, who had it rebound and retitled Macleay’s Sperm Whale , gluing to the front end-paper a lengthy review from the Sydney Morning Herald (26 April 1851) which hinted that the text was not Wall’s unaided work.
Whatever his inadequacies as a scientist Wall certainly contributed natural history drawings on a regular basis to the first series of the Illustrated Sydney News , his illustrations of harp and Australian seals, a duck and an Australian bustard appearing on 22 July, 29 July and 5 August 1854 respectively. Labelling natural history 'the most popular and attractive, perhaps, of the sciences’, the paper stated that Wall’s 'Ichthyological drawings continue to add new matter to physical knowledge’. Bennett also contributed to this series of 'Australian Natural History’ notes, and Frederick Garling to the drawings.
At the end of 1858 Wall was forced to retire. He moved to Rockhampton, Queensland, where he collected insects for the Australian Museum, for William Sharp Macleay in Sydney and for European museums. He was nominated a corresponding member of the Imperial and Royal Geographical Society of Austria in 1860 'in acknowledgement of his valuable contributions to the Mineralogical Museum at Vienna’. He was back at Sydney, living in Bridge Street, by 1867 but later devoted himself to local affairs at Randwick, the suburb where his son George (born c.1843) was later mayor. Wall died at Randwick on 5 October 1876.
Writers:
Henderson, Beryl
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 October 1815
- Summary
- curator of the Australian Museum from 1845 to 1858. Wall contributed natural history drawings on a regular basis to the first series of the Illustrated Sydney News.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 October 1876
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, migrated to Australia from England in 1842 and farmed in the Port Phillip district until 1846. He then became editor of the Argus newspaper until 1857, when he returned to England. To amuse his nieces in England he filled a sketchbook entitled Australia Felix: Cartoons from the daily life of an affectionate uncle (c.1842-46, State Library of Victoria; gift of the artist’s great grand-niece Miss Sheila Schon, 1997). Inscribed on the cover 'Dedicated to Miss A. Wilson/ Bushby’ (UK), it contains 28 watercolour, ink and pencil sketches of Wilson’s adventures in almost running form, e.g. 'The bees swarm’, 'The birds attack his cereals’, 'But by prompt measures, prevents serious consequences’, 'But comes to grief, & finds himself the object of derisions’, 'But declines to partake of their refreshments’, 'But is not proud’, 'But settle in an inconvenient place’, 'The dust is troublesome’, 'And finds himself getting on pretty well’, 'He buys a little beef, & decides that he will send it home’, 'He conveys a few peaches to the pigs’, 'He digs, but finds it hot’, 'He gives a little mangold wurtzel to the alderneys’ and 'He goes to see how the bull is, after the voyage’.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1813
- Summary
- Colonial Melbourne editor and farmer who, as an amateur cartoonist, compiled an illustrated book of his life on the farm as a gift to his niece.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1876
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, merchant and politician, was born in England on 11 October 1810, son of Samuel Bickley. He travelled to Western Australia via India, arriving aboard the Protector on 26 February 1830. Three years later he married Marianne Thomson. Despite being given several large land grants in the Avon and Rottnest districts, Bickley soon fell into debt. He left for India in 1835 and worked for the Bengal government and the East India Company. His second marriage, to Elizabeth Burke, née Tynan, took place in 1842. He and his first wife had a daughter and there were seven children of the second marriage.
Bickley returned to Western Australia on 6 November 1851, aboard the Isa , and settled at Kenwick Park on the Canning River. Throughout the 1850s he bred horses for export to India but later took up other business interests. In 1869 he was invited to tender for the Fremantle Harbour improvements, although ultimately the problems of this unrealised contract were inherited by 'Satan’ Browne ( Thomas Henry Browne ). Appointed to the Legislative Council in 1872, Bickley served until his death at Fremantle on 30 June 1876.
The only evidence of artistic work by Bickley comes from a hand-coloured aquatint View of Fremantle, Western Australia (from the Canning Road) signed 'W. Bickley fect’. It was published on 20 September 1832 by the London engraver J. Cross. Although the topography is rather inaccurate, it depicts the town’s chief landmarks and buildings and carries an identification key.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 11 October 1810
- Summary
- English-born Samuel Bickley spent five years in Western Australia before seeking unsuccessfull to make his fortune in India. Returning to Fremantle and settling permanently in 1851, only one of Bickley's drawings, showing a view of Fremantle, survives.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30 June 1876
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- photographic showman, house-painter and gilder, brother of John Saddington Plush , came to South Australia in 1839 and set up in Adelaide as a painter and gilder. In February 1847 Plush and 'Professor’ Robert Hall held a magic-lantern show in Adelaide, showing dissolving views and phantasmagoria.
Plush married twice. His first wife, Rebecca, died in 1845, leaving a surviving (namesake) son and a daughter from the five children of their marriage. The following year he married Catharine Hoskin, an Adelaide dressmaker; they had seven children. He died at Angaston on 27 October 1867 and was buried in the Congregational section of the Angaston Cemetery.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1809
- Summary
- Thomas Hall Plush was a photographic showman, house-painter and gilder. Plush and 'Professor' Robert Hall held a magic-lantern show in Adelaide, showing dissolving views and phantasmagoria in 1847.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 October 1876
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, architect, builder and pastoralist, was born in London, second son of Henry Jackson and Jane, née Paynter. Arriving at Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, with two of his brothers in the Lion on 7 August 1829, Samuel initially set up as a builder at Launceston but soon acquired a busy architectural practice as well, despite the lack of any formal architectural training. Known buildings of this period erected to his design are: Hythe (near Longford); the Georgian Gothick Methodist Sunday School in Paterson Street, Launceston (1835-36); and a house on the corner of Cameron and Charles streets. Albion House (c.1837), a pair of two-storey Regency townhouses at 153-55 George Street, has also been attributed to him.
Arriving at Port Phillip (Victoria) in the brig Chilli on 20 August 1835 with his brother William as members of a pioneering party of hopeful sheep farmers, the Jacksons spent four years farming at Sunbury, living in a rush hut on a site later sold to Sir William Clarke for his grand country residence. Samuel soon returned to Melbourne and established the town’s first private architectural practice. Between about 1840 and 1855 he designed many buildings in Melbourne and Geelong: Melbourne’s original Scots Church (1841-42) – Jackson’s pen and wash plan and elevation, dated 1841, is in the La Trobe Library – both the original box chapel (1839) and the succeeding Carpenters’ Gothic Roman Catholic Church of St Francis (1841-45), the Melbourne Hospital (1846-48), the Italianate Toorak House (1848-51) for his merchant brother (?) James Jackson, and an Italianate villa, Charnwood, at St Kilda (c.1855: demolished).
On 30 July 1841, seated inside a revolving barrel set on the unroofed walls of the Scots Church at the corner of Collins and Russell streets, Jackson drew a 'PANORAMIC Sketch of MELBOURNE Port Phillip from the walls of Scots Church on the Eastern hill’. Measuring 18 feet x 18 inches (5.48 m x 45.7 cm), this pencil view was done with the aid of a solar camera (camera lucida). Brushwork was added later. The resulting panorama was purchased by the Victorian government from Jackson’s descendants in 1888. In 1892 it was the basis for an oil 'cycloramic picture of Old Melbourne’, commissioned by the Victorian government from the scene-painter John Hennings for 500 guineas to adorn the Melbourne Exhibition Building. Both Jackson’s original and Hennings’s 120 × 13 foot (36.5 × 3.9 m) version are in the State Library of Victoria (the latter somewhat the worse for wear). Engravings after sections of Jackson’s picture appeared in the Australasian Sketcher on 15 December 1888 and 18 April 1889.
In 1841 Jackson and Robert Russell submitted an entry in the competition for a stone bridge over the Yarra River and won second prize. In 1845 Jackson moved to St Kilda where a few years later he built a new home, Wattle House. His estate finally comprised 200 acres. In 1847 he purchased Sandford, a 15 000-acre run near Casterton in the Western District of Victoria. He married Mary Ann Lowther in Melbourne in 1852; they had one daughter, another Mary Ann. Jackson appears to have largely abandoned architecture for farming and property development in the 1850s, although he continued to live in Melbourne until he and his family returned to England in 1862. Samuel Jackson died at his Georgian mansion, Yarra House, Enfield, Middlesex, on 7 May 1876 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery, London. He left a large estate, accumulated mainly from land dealings in Victoria. His Melbourne panorama was bequeathed to a nephew.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1807
- Summary
- Colonial era sketcher, architect, builder and pastoralist, he established Melbourne's first private architectural practice, and in 1841 drew an enormous 'PANORAMIC Sketch of MELBOURNE Port Phillip...' that the Victorian government later commissioned a scene-painter to adorn the Melbourne Exhibition Building with.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 May 1876
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude51.4149818 Longitude-2.5006001 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Keynsham, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, photographer, wax modeller and poet, was born at Keynsham near Bath, England, elder daughter of William Chauncy and his first wife Theresa, née Lamothe. She received little formal education, her father being chiefly responsible for teaching the family during her early years. After living in France with her father, stepmother and siblings, she returned to London in the early 1830s. Her only recorded art training was obtained there as a member of Edward Irving’s church and it was of short duration; its quality too is perhaps suspect. Theresa’s brother Philip Chauncy writing on the experience, however, stated that even then she was 'decidedly clever’ in the art of modelling.
Arriving at Holdfast Bay, South Australia on 14 February 1837, with her brother-in-law and sister Martha Snell Berkeley in the John Renwick , Theresa soon began to make the wax medallion portraits for which she is best known. As early as 1841 she exhibited two of a local South Australian Aboriginal couple at the Royal Academy, London (possibly those now in the National Gallery of Australia [NGA]) – the first resident Australian artist to be shown in that august institution. Over the next ten years she exhibited in Adelaide (1848), Sydney (1845, 1847 and 1849: medallions of two unnamed women, clergymen of the Church of England and Bishop Broughton in 1849) and Melbourne (1853 Sir Charles FitzRoy and an unnamed portrait medallion, 1854 Sir Charles FitzRoy and Bishop Broughton, and 1861 medallions of Burke and Wills). At Geelong in 1857 she showed portrait medallions of F.R. Nixon and Governor Sir Henry Young, 'from life’.
An incompatibility of sisterly temperament decided Theresa on visiting Van Diemen’s Land in 1837. On 17 May 1838 she married Lieutenant John Walker, harbour-master at Launceston. Then they returned to Adelaide and established a business. Excessive high living resulted in Walker’s bankruptcy and imprisonment in 1841. Theresa Walker’s only known two-dimensional artwork is a South Australian pastel drawing (c.1839, Art Gallery of South Australia) showing what is thought to be part of their property, Hayering, on the Upper Torrens River. After John was released the Walkers moved to Sydney then returned to Launceston at about the end of 1850. John died there in January 1855; Theresa’s wax portrait medallion of him is in the La Trobe Library (State Library of Victoria). In a letter to his sister dated 4 March 1855, the botanist William Harvey noted meeting the widowed Mrs Walker at Launceston soon afterwards. Describing her as 'a very odd person’ with an abrupt and self-opinionated manner, he nevertheless admitted:
She has considerable artistic talent – paints well, but particularly excels in modelling & makes wax medallions of heads &c. The likenesses are said to be very good. One of Mrs. Fereday [ Susan Fereday ] I can answer for, but I had not seen any of the other originals. She also had specimens of photographic seaweeds, remarkably well done & one of them which she had tinted in colour was so well executed that even I took it at first for a dried specimen.
All her photographs have disappeared but would presumably have been salted paper prints.
On 24 September 1856, Theresa married Professor George Herbert Poole, a Swedenborgian minister. They moved to Victoria seeking their fortune on the goldfields until 1861 when Poole was appointed manager of a vineyard on the Upper Murray. That year Theresa showed wax medallions of Burke and Wills at the Royal Society, Melbourne (examples NGA). In 1864, probably because of the failure of the vineyard venture, Poole returned to Mauritius and resumed his former post of professor at the Royal College of Arts. In April 1865 Theresa joined him. The following year she was awarded a certificate in a local exhibition for her wax 'Representations of Fruit’, which subsequently gained her a silver medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition. An epidemic was then sweeping the island and the Pooles temporarily moved to Calcutta. They returned to Mauritius then moved to South Australia in 1868. Poole’s health declined and he died on 29 July 1869. Shortly afterwards Theresa left Adelaide for Victoria, spent a few months with her half-brother William Chauncy at Wodonga, then became housekeeper to her widowed brother Philip and his children. For a short time she was lady superintendent of the Alexander College at Hamilton, but failing health caused her retirement to a house in South Yarra, Melbourne. She died there of breast cancer on 17 April 1876.
As a wax modeller, Theresa Walker links with a tradition that gained impetus as an art form during the sixteenth century, particularly in Italy. Its decline came in the late nineteenth century with the rise of cheap popular photographs. The Art Gallery of South Australia has a good collection of Walker’s medallions, most notably a set of twelve South Australian colonists executed in 1848. Other works are in the National Gallery of Australia (family donation 1992), including a youthful self-portrait, the Mitchell Library, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. All are competently modelled but there is great variation in quality when an overall assessment is made and it has not been established which were reproductions from other artists’ moulds. Although many are known to have been taken 'from life’, the evidence of the Hobart Town Courier (22 August 1849) confirms that her portrait of Sir John Franklin was reproduced work only (possibly remodelled on a smaller scale), possibly from Burford’s wax medallion shown in the 1846 Hobart Town Exhibition. A surviving large wax medallion of Franklin (ML) is probably Burford’s original rather than Walker’s copy.
Due to the constant environmental changes throughout her life, Walker’s output was spasmodic. She was a deeply romantic figure, expressing her feelings not only through her artistic practice but also through the poetry she often wrote. It was fortunate she chose wax modelling as her medium since it required little equipment and was extremely portable. Photography at the time was more cumbersome and she is not known to have practised it outside her relatively settled Tasmanian years. No surviving photographs are known. Her brother Philip’s biography concentrates on Theresa’s unconvincingly saintly character and does not even mention her taking photographs.
WORKS: Deutscher Menzies 1 May 2002, lot 112 (est. $9,000-12,000), had medallions of William Wills and four unidentified figures (one Governor Gipps, a bearded man, an elderly woman and a pair of children) – no provenance; entry by David Thomas claimed that of her 70 or so known figures, more than half have been identified.
Writers:
Roughley, JulianneDucker, Sophie C.Lennon, Jane
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 1807
- Summary
- Walker received little formal education, but as a young woman showed considerable talent in the art of modelling. She would become very well known for her wax medallion portraits and exhibited them around the world, including in Mauritius and Paris.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 17 April 1876
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude50.4164223 Longitude-4.045267398 Start Date1805-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Plymouth, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, lithographer, art teacher and writer, was born on 19 December 1805 in Plymouth, Devon, eldest child of John Prout and Maria, née Skinner. His father was the elder brother of the watercolour painter Samuel Prout (1783-1852) and Samuel Prout Hill was his first cousin. Little is known about his early life, but there is no evidence that his uncle had anything to do with his artistic training. Nevertheless, after moving to Penzance from Plymouth in 1827, Skinner Prout was listed in local trade directories as a drawing teacher. His earliest known work is dated 1824 (when he was eighteen) and has the ascribed title Alderly Mill, Buckinghamshire . His earliest known lithograph, dated 1831, was published by J.P. Vibert in Penzance.
On 19 June 1828 Skinner Prout married Maria Heathilla ( Prout ), daughter of John and Ann Marsh of Sidmouth. Their eldest child, Matilda, was born on 7 April 1829, their second, Anna Maria, on 25 October 1831. The family remained at Penzance until the end of 1831 then moved to Bristol; they lived there until 1838. During this time they had another two daughters, Rosa Heathilla (1833) and Agnes (1838), and three sons: Frederick (1834), Victor Albert and Edwin (1837). At Bristol Skinner Prout was a member of a local sketching club which included William J. Muller, Samuel Jackson, T.L.S. Rowbotham, William West and William Evans; he went on numerous sketching excursions throughout southern England, Wales and Ireland with Muller and Jackson. He showed paintings at the first annual exhibition of the Bristol Society of Artists in 1832 and at subsequent exhibitions, as well as in the Works of Living Artists Exhibition at Bath in 1836. During 1834 his first volume of lithographs, Picturesque Antiquities of Bristol , was published in London by C. Hullmandel. Three further volumes of lithographs— Antiquities of York , Antiquities of Chester and The Castles and Abbeys of Monmouthshire —were published while he was living in Bristol.
At the end of 1838 Skinner Prout and his family moved to London; their fourth son, Edgar, was born there the following year. Prout was elected a member of the New Society of Painters in Water Colours on 3 December 1838 and exhibited at each of its annual exhibitions from the fifth (1839) to the eighth (1842). He did not exhibit in London again until after his return from Australia in 1848.
Skinner Prout and his family left England for Australia on 1 August 1840. His uncle Cornelius was under-sheriff of the colony of New South Wales and his aunt Mary (née Prout) and her husband William Woolcott, a merchant, had also settled there, while Samuel Prout Hill came to Sydney soon afterwards. In June 1841 Skinner Prout was elected a member of the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts and that month delivered two lectures on painting to his fellow members. During December he gave a series of six subscription lectures as a preliminary to what he hoped would be the establishment of a society to hold annual exhibitions of paintings, a hope that was not immediately realised. A further two lectures on painting followed at the School of Arts in August 1843. His sketches of Sydney and its environs appeared in a four-part set of lithographed picturesque views, Sydney Illustrated , produced in collaboration with John Rae (q.v.). Three of the four parts, each containing four plates, were produced in Sydney, the first during August 1842 and the next two in November 1842 and March 1844; part four was published in Hobart Town soon afterwards.
Prout was employed as a scene-painter at Sydney’s Olympic Theatre in January 1842 but remained in this position for only four months. At the same time he was employed as drawing master at Sydney College. In July the Prouts’ ninth child, Mary Fredrika, was born. Soon afterwards Prout left on the first of the sketching tours he made in New South Wales, proceeding south from Sydney to the Illawarra district and then down the coast to the Broulee area. In January 1843 he went west to Parramatta along the Bathurst Road, through the Weatherboard Valley to the Jamieson Valley and on to the Hartley area. Other tours were taken north to Newcastle and Port Stephens and south-west from Sydney down the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers to the Camden area. After a final trip to the Wollongong area, where he drew his first recorded portraits of Australian Aborigines, he left with his family for Van Diemen’s Land in January 1844.
Before leaving, Prout had exhibited twenty oil paintings and watercolour drawings in October 1843 at Cetta & Hughes’s shop in George Street, but there were apparently few sales. Even so, his paintings and sketches continued to appear in Sydney exhibitions long after his departure, lent by various local owners, initially mainly fellow sketchers, especially John Rae, who showed a large collection of Prout’s works at the 1847 and 1849 exhibitions of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia (the art exhibition society which belatedly emerged in Sydney). The wealthy businessman Thomas Walker showed Tree Fern by Prout at the 1849 exhibition which the critic in the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 June 1849 called 'One of those wild and scattery bits, both in form and colour, which so nearly verge on the grotesque, that they stamp their authors as “genius run mad”’.
On the other hand, Prout’s Snow Piece in Ireland , owned by Frederick Garling senior, was considered 'One of the gems of the room: natural in the highest degree’, while Moonlight Scene in Wales (which Garling also owned) was judged one of the stars of the show, its 'really Rembrandt-like’ shadows giving it a most startling and scenic effect. Despite the fact that a local moonlight scene (owned by Rae) and the dramatic Burning of the Albion Mills, Sydney (owned by Garling) were included, no Australian subject was judged to have reached these heights.
After arriving at Hobart Town, Skinner Prout delivered two sets of lectures on art and began drawing a new lithographic series, Tasmania Illustrated . Consisting of twelve plates, this was issued in four parts between June 1844 and early 1845. He produced a second volume of six plates in 1847 and a six-part Views of Melbourne and Geelong later that year. He actively and successfully encouraged a group of friends, including J.E. Bicheno, G.T.W.B. Boyes, Peter Fraser, W.P. Kay, Bishop Nixon and Francis Simpkinson (qq.v.), to undertake the organisation of an art exhibition. Held in January-February 1845, the Hobart Town Art Exhibition consisted of loan collections of oil paintings, watercolour and pencil drawings and prints by local as well as British and European artists. A second exhibition, organised by the same committee, was held during May and June 1846.
Once the 1845 exhibition had opened, Prout, Fraser and Simpkinson took a sketching tour to Lake St Clair in the Tasmanian highlands. Prout and Simpkinson continued on to Flinders Island, where both produced numerous drawings, Prout’s contribution including at least twenty-one realistic and sensitive portrait sketches of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people in exile there, such as Queen Flora of Oyster Bay , Lallah Rookh [Trukanini] from the Huon , Methinna , Cranky Dick , Amelia & her Little Bobby, Cape Grim V.D.L. , Neptune, Circular Head, & his Son, Moriarty, Flinders , Agnes from Ben Lomond and Mary from the Hampshire Hills . These are now held by the British Museum (Natural History), together with Prout’s drawings of Victorian Aborigines made in 1846 and autographed portrait sketches of the five Maoris who were transported to Van Diemen’s Land during the New Zealand Wars, drawn by Prout in the Hobart Town penitentiary on 16-17 November 1846.
Prout undertook numerous sketching tours in Tasmania over the next three years, including one up the east coast through the Fingal Valley to Launceston and then back to Hobart Town. Accompanied by Simpkinson, he visited Victoria from mid-December 1846 until early February 1847. During this trip he sketched in the district around Melbourne, then set out to Tallarook and the upper Goulburn Valley, returning to Melbourne via Geelong and the Barwon River. On his return late in January he delivered his lectures on art at the Melbourne Mechanics Institute. He regularly travelled between Hobart Town and Launceston, the Examiner noting on 7 February 1846 that he had recently made 100 drawings of views and places between the two towns. The journey was taken more frequently in 1847 when Prout was engaged in distributing the second part of Tasmania Illustrated and was working on lithographic illustrations for Ronald Gunn; it was undoubtedly on one of these trips that he made the sketch of John Glover (q.v.) asleep in a chair at Patterdale Farm which was subsequently used to illustrate Glover’s obituary notice in the London Art Journal . A 'numerous list’ of 'Pictures, in Oils and Water Colour, by Mr Prout, the eminent artist’ was included in the Launceston Exhibition of January 1848.
During their stay in Hobart Town the Prouts’ eldest son was killed in an accident (March 1845) and their tenth and last child, Francis John, was born. The family left for England in June 1848 and settled in London. Over the next twenty-eight years they lived at different addresses in the Camden Town-Kentish Town area. In the summer of 1850 Skinner Prout produced a diorama called Voyage to Australia based on his Australian experiences. The views were painted onto glass lantern slides and shown by projection. After the discovery of gold in Australia in the latter part of 1851 he updated it to produce a 'moving panorama’ (on rollers) which was exhibited over 600 times in London during 1852 53, taken on a three-month tour of the Plymouth-Torquay area in April-June 1854, and shown again at Leicester Square in 1855.
In February 1849 Skinner Prout was re-elected to the New Society of Painters in Water Colours and exhibited in its annual summer shows until 1876 and in its winter exhibitions from their inception in 1866 until his death. He showed approximately 250 works with the New Society between 1854 and 1876 at prices ranging from 8 to 150 guineas. He died at Camden Town on 29 September 1876. At his studio sale in February 1877 over £1200 was realised for his remaining works. Hence, although most productive, his Australian visit was but a short interlude in a long painting career.
From 1854 until his death, Skinner Prout continued to make sketching tours in the summer months, annually alternating between England and Europe. As well as painting and sketching, he wrote articles and books based on his Australian experiences, illustrated articles on the colonies for other writers and undertook commissions for lithographs. His art and his teaching were remembered in Australia and reports on his European activities occasionally appeared, the Launceston Examiner reporting on 29 November 1862, for instance, that he had produced 'an ingenious instrument for helping young ladies to draw’. His numerous Tasmanian pupils and sketching colleagues continued for many years to imitate his technique of light pencil and wash drawing with white highlights and his original colonial works never quite disappeared from public consciousness. A retrospective exhibition travelled throughout Australia in 1986.
Writers:
Brown, Tony
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 19 December 1805
- Summary
- Prout was a painter, lithographer, art teacher and writer. An Australian critic once described his works as 'one of those wild and scattery bits, both in form and colour, which so nearly verge on the grotesque, that they stamp their authors as "genius run mad"'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 September 1876
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude50.3712659 Longitude-4.1425658 Start Date1794-01-01 End Date1876-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Plymouth, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, farmer and toll-gate keeper, was born on 28 February 1794. Migrating with his family from Plymouth, England, he arrived at South Australia on 26 December 1849 in the Harry Lorrequer ; the passenger list describes him as an agricultural labourer from Inverness, Scotland. Most of the family is believed to have immediately left for Victoria, where Taylor took up land in the Castlemaine district, built a home at Gowar (extant) and became toll-gate keeper on the Castlemaine-Maldon Road. In about 1853 his son-in-law Charles Talbot built Talbot’s Halfway House at Gowar, at first a general store but licensed as a hotel on 16 July 1864, which is the subject of a splendid naive watercolour by Taylor (CAG). Talbot’s licence was transferred to William Schofield on 20 November 1868 so, although undated, it can be assumed that the painting was done before then.
Taylor also appears to have been in Melbourne for a time. His only other known watercolour is Melbourne Hunt, Meeting at Spring Vale [sic] Dandenong , dated 1869. He died on 27 August 1876 and is buried in Muckleford Cemetery. His grave is close to the toll house (now the cemetery office) where he was once keeper.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 28 February 1794
- Summary
- Painter, farmer and once a toll-gate keeper, James Edward Taylor migrated with family in 1849 from Plymouth, England, and arrived in South Australia. Lived chiefly around Victoria and completed a number of naive watercolours.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 August 1876
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Southgate, London, England
- Biography
- illustrator, cartoonist, lithographer, lawyer, clergyman and journalist, was born in Southgate, London to a Dutch father and was educated in Britain and Holland. Before migrating to Australia he was a missionary to the French community in London. D’Emden came to Hobart Town on board the Columbus in June 1852, accompanied by his wife Emma, née Young, and their child, and was immediately appointed Congregational minister at Richmond. He resigned in about 1854, 'believing himself called to a different sphere of usefulness’.
After working on the Mercury as a parliamentary reporter D’Emden become editor and publisher of the Colonial Times , a venture that led to bankruptcy on 15 April 1857 and to a nine months’ sentence for fraud in July. He was released from gaol in November 1857 at the direction of the Supreme Court, Commissioner Fielding Browne having agreed to the remission solely on the grounds of consideration for several persons, including the creditors, who had signed a petition requesting leniency. D’Emden then petitioned the governor, urging that a bill be passed to protect anyone in his peculiar circumstances. Fox Young considered D’Emden’s 'disrespectful and unfounded imputation [against him] most reprehensible and declines to introduce a Bill … to meet Mr. D’Emden’s special case’, while D’Emden felt that because he was technically an undischarged bankrupt he could again be summonsed before the Insolvency Court and again suffer a too harsh sentence. However, another petition submitted in July 1858 was equally unsuccessful. D’Emden decided to become a lawyer.
In August 1858 he was articled to the Hobart Town solicitor C.B. Brewer. Having also served part of his articles with J.W. Graves he was called to the Bar on 19 February 1863. As well as following artistic and legal pursuits, D’Emden lectured, wrote and taught elocution. A lecture delivered at Launceston shortly after his arrival was described as 'a very able and eloquent one’. With the establishment of self-government in 1856 he wrote The Parliamentary Guide: A Manual for the Electors of Both Houses of the Parliament of Tasmania . His obituary also credits him with the authorship of two plays, Willy O’Meara (an Irish comedy) and A Fenian Plot (farce), both produced at the Hobart Town Theatre Royal and probably also in Victoria. On 19 May 1867 the Launceston Examiner announced that D’Emden was composing 'an Irish Sensation Drama for Mr Conway Spiller’ to be produced in Melbourne.
D’Emden seems to have published most of his lithographic work with R.V. Hood in January-May 1861, including portraits of Lady Augusta Young (TMAG) after Letitia Davidson , the Rev. Dr Nicolson and the Rev. John Watson praised in the local press. The interdenominational magazine Tasmanian Messenger (1861) published three D’Emden lithographs, including a portrait of Rev. J. Downes. He also produced a two-colour lithograph of R.V. Hood himself (SLT) and a portrait of Rev. Henry Dowling (ML) from a photograph by G. Cherry (publication dates unknown). He exhibited two watercolours and an oil in the 1862-63 Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition.
From January to July 1867 D’Emden edited Hobart Town Punch , a satirical magazine to which he contributed a number of cartoons. James Backhouse Walker stated that between 12 January and 18 May 1867 D’Emden was Hobart Town Punch 's major illustrator and at least three cartoons are signed with his cypher. He was also associated with another short-lived, serio-comic monthly magazine, We .
In June 1872 D’Emden was admitted to the Hospital for the Insane at New Norfolk after suffering hallucinations. Described as 'an inordinate smoker, drank a good deal and said to have committed great venereal excesses’, he had dark hair, eyes and beard, a sallow complexion and defective vision. There appears to been a background of mental illness; his mother died in Hanwell Lunatic Asylum in England. After a period of treatment, at the latter stage of which he amused himself by drawing, he was discharged in October 1872 but re-admitted in November 1873. His condition gradually deteriorated and he died on 12 September 1875, leaving a widow and five children.
Writers:
Glover, Margaret
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1824
- Summary
- Colonial era Tasmanian illustrator, cartoonist, lithographer, lawyer, clergyman and journalist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 September 1875
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude48.1777617 Longitude16.3307487 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Meidling, Vienna, Austria
- Biography
- landscape painter and lithographer, was born in the Viennese suburb of Meidling on 2 February 1824. He studied under Thomas Ender and Franz Steinfeld at the Vienna Academy. Winner of nine prizes and already known for his balanced landscapes and precise studies of trees and plants, Selleny was awarded the Rome Prize in 1854 by the Viennese Academy of Creative Arts and spent two years in Italy.
One of the many artistic protégés of Archduke Ferdinand-Joseph Maximilian (an Austrian admiral), Selleny was in March 1857 rated official artist on board the frigate Novara which sailed on a scientific circumnavigation of the globe between April 1857 and August 1859, docking in Sydney from 5 November until 7 December 1858. Like the five scientists aboard, Selleny lived on shore throughout the Sydney visit. During his stay at the Royal Hotel, his health was not the best; he suffered from a distemper possibly brought on by being bitten during a disastrous episode in the Pacific Ocean when, on 18 October 1858, the monkeys on board escaped from their cage and during Sunday Mass ran amok among his equipment. Nevertheless, he made several excursions, twice visiting Wollongong and producing—variously in watercolours, crayons, charcoal and pencil—studies of the bush near Camden Park, Appin and Sir Thomas Mitchell’s Pass. Australian public collections hold two pencil and wash views of Fairy Meadow farm near Wollongong (Dixson Galleries [DG]), two views of Mount Kiera (Wollongong City Art Gallery) and three watercolours of Illawarra Aborigines (DG).
He travelled north to the Hunter River ( Bush on the Hunter , pencil with wash, DG), where he stayed with the ever-hospitable Alexander Walker Scott and his two daughters, Harriet and Helena . Here he assisted with the design for the front cover of, and did several drawings of specimens for, the first part of Walker Scott’s Australian Lepidoptera (London 1864). The cover illustration was much admired, 'the whole picture [reflecting] the greatest credit on the artists for the taste and beauty displayed in the design’. There are two extant pencil drawings of scenes in Sydney, a 'beach promenade’ and a view of Darling Point, as well as a minutely detailed drawing of the interior of a naturalist’s cabin on board the Novara (DG). On a less artistic level, the Novara 's entomologist, G. Frauenfeld, named a new species of gnat in honour of 'the genial artist and his wonderful sketches’.
Known for his lightning speed in delineation, Selleny produced strongly linear, objective drawings which leaned heavily on his practical knowledge of botany and geology. His colours, invariably ochre, green, blue or red, were applied with thrift. When the Novara returned in triumph to Trieste in August 1859, Selleny’s bulging portfolios held over 2000 sketches. Over 30 artists were to work from these to illustrate the 8175 pages of the 18-volume Reise der Novara which appeared in Vienna from 1861 to 1875. The Dixson Galleries’ folder of 13 pencil drawings which had served as models in illustrating the New South Wales portion of K. von Scherzer’s three-volume description of the voyage (1861-62) was purchased in 1957.
Plans in Vienna to produce a chromolithographic album of Selleny’s most striking oils, watercolours and drawings never came to fruition. Selleny spent the last two years of his life in the darkness of a total mental collapse. When he died on 22 May 1875 in a private asylum at Inzersdorf near Vienna his heirs inherited the 946 Novara items still in his possession. A memorial exhibition which showed 540 of these was held in Vienna (Künstlerhaus) from November 1875 until January 1876.
Writers:
Fletcher, John
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 2 February 1824
- Summary
- Joseph Selleny was landscape painter and lithographer, known for his lightning speed in delineation. Selleny died in 1875 in a private asylum at Inzersdorf near Vienna.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 May 1875
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude52.7538673 Longitude0.3954774 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, writer and explorer, was born in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, on 27 November 1820 and died, a bachelor, at Durban, South Africa, on 8 May 1875. The eldest son of John Baines, a master mariner, and Mary Ann, née Watson, Baines was educated at Horatio Nelson’s Classical and Commercial Academy and at Mr Beloe’s school at King’s Lynn. At the age of 16 he was apprenticed to a coach-builder, and he learned heraldic art from William Carr.
In 1845 he set up at Cape Town as a marine and portrait painter. Although business thrived, his creativity was soon stifled by the pedestrian demands of his clients and in 1846 he hastened to the Front to make a pictorial record of the Kaffir Wars. Then he returned to England to supervise the publication of Scenery and Events in South Africa (1852) and organise the African section of an exhibition at the Lynn. During this period he worked at the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society on a map of Africa, in consultation with the cartographer John Arrowsmith.
Apart from occasional visits to England and two productive and eventful years in Australia, Baines spent most of his working life in Africa. His journeys with David Livingstone, J. Chapman, C.J. Anderssen, on his own account and on behalf of the South African Goldfields Exploration Company have been well documented. In March 1855 he was commissioned British government draughtsman and artist with the scientific team on the North Australian Expedition led by A.C. Gregory . Baines sailed from Liverpool to Port Phillip on board the Blue Jacket , then went on to join Gregory in Sydney.
The two men soon established a good rapport and Baines joined the land party which set out from the Victoria River base in January 1856. When Gregory and three others struck west to Sturt Creek, the artist remained in charge at Depot Creek. Later, on the way back to the main camp, he reproduced a number of Aboriginal paintings found on the sandstone rocks south-east of Roe Downs. Had it not been for an argument with the geologist J.S. Wilson, Baines would have accompanied Gregory overland to Brisbane. Instead, he was sent with the sea party to Timor for provisions. At Kupang the decrepit schooner Tom Tough was condemned and Baines hired the brigantine Messenger . Time was short and in a vain effort to keep his appointment with Gregory at the Albert River, he borrowed the Messenger 's longboat, in which he crossed the Arafura Sea.
Seldom without a pencil and sketchbook to hand and prodigious in his industry, Baines produced a graphic record of Gregory’s expedition unparalleled in contemporary Australian exploration. Virtually self-taught, his artistic sensitivity, innate skill as a draughtsman and eye for detail render his pictures pleasing to specialists as well as to the general public. Always an observant naturalist, his washes and sketches of plants were accurate enough to be well regarded by the eminent botanist Sir William Hooker. Likewise, his portrayals of unfamiliar animals and insects and the attention he paid to the differing features of the Aborigines he painted were appreciated by zoologists and anthropologists.
Seventeen plant specimens in the collection at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, bear his name, as does Bolbotritus bainesi , a new genus of beetle he discovered by the Mungone River. In Northern Australia Gregory named Mount Baines and the Baines River in his honour. Never daunted by uncomfortable conditions nor constrained by convention, Baines’s vivid colours were considered novel beside the soft tones favoured by the English school of the day. Both his land and seascapes have a characteristic vitality and historic integrity that command attention.
In July 1857 Baines departed from Sydney in the Newmarket , taking 24 oil paintings, a panoramic view of the Victoria River and 270 watercolours and sketches to England. Consequently, his work was comparatively unknown in Australia until the mid-twentieth century, when some representative pictures were acquired for national collections. Contemporary exhibitions were held in London (c.1853), Dublin (c.1853) and Cape Town (c.1865); retrospective showings were mounted at the London headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society (1973) and at the orangerie of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1973).
Eminently versatile, Baines also excelled as a diarist, writer and illustrator. In addition to his own publications such as Scenery and Events in South Africa (1852) and the Victoria Falls, Zambesi River (1895), he illustrated (with paintings, sketches and woodcuts) several others, e.g. C.J. Anderssen’s Birds of Damara Land (1864). Two lithographs after Baines were included in E.C. Booth’s Australia Illustrated (London 1873). The author of innumerable short articles, he contributed to such journals as the Illustrated London News , Leisure Hour , the Field and Nature and Art . Under the pseudonym 'Timothy Touchemoff’, he edited at different times two light-hearted magazines, the Blue Jacket Journal (1855) and the Desert News (Matabeleland, c.1862).
Writers:
Birman, Wendy
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 November 1820
- Summary
- John Thomas Baines spent most of his life in Africa, although he travelled to Australia to join the North Australian Expedition of 1855. Always an explorer and adventurer, he travelled with his sketchbook and a keen eye.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 May 1875
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude53.479444 Longitude-2.245278 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manchester, England, UK, Manchester?, England, UK
- Biography
- marine painter and mariner, was born in England, probably Manchester, but spent much of his life at sea. By 1853 he had settled in Melbourne and was working professionally as an artist at Alma Place, St Kilda. A committee member of the Victorian Fine Arts Society, founded that year, he exhibited eight oil paintings (including Ship Scudding before a Gale and Sun-Set in the Bay of Rio [de] Janeiro ) at the society’s sole exhibition in August. All were for sale. Captain Robertson combined his painting career with that of master mariner. As captain of the steamer Lady Bird , he made regular crossings between Melbourne and Launceston from January 1854 to July 1855; his oil painting of the Lady Bird (1855) is in the Mitchell Library. The Hobart Town Courier called him 'one of the best marine painters in the Australian colonies’ in October 1856.
Robertson was acting secretary at the first meeting of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts in October 1856 and he showed two paintings for sale at its exhibition the following year: The Red Bluff and Hobson’s Bay , the latter possibly the oil painting now known as The Red Jacket, Lightning and James Baines in Hobson’s Bay (Australian National Maritime Museum). Robertson’s painting of Citizen entering Corio Bay was lent by Captain J. McLean. Both the Argus (4 December 1857) and the Age (8 December) commended the detailed accuracy of his ships’ portraits, both criticised his difficulties with perspective. He also exhibited at the Geelong Mechanics Institute in 1857, then at Messrs Baird and McDonald’s exhibition room at Ballarat in 1858. The London Art Journal reproduced a review of the latter exhibition from the Ballarat Times which commented: 'One very clever picture (by Robertson) has a ship standing in for Port Philip [sic] Heads, under whole topsails and courses, jib and spanker … The pilot-cutter is about to heave-to to put a pilot on board his ship; and the correctness of the details, both of the large vessel and the small one, would tell us, if we did not happen to know otherwise, that the artist is also a seaman’.
In the Argus of 29 July 1858 Robertson was reported to be starting work on a painting 'commemorative of the late regatta’. Portland 1858 with the Ship Francis Henty (1858, o/c), Marco Polo (1859, o/c) and Aldinga (c.1865, o/c) are in the La Trobe Library, while the Royal Historical Society of Victoria has a watercolour painting, Sailing Ships of the Nineteenth Century (1858), seemingly signed 'E. Robertson’ but thought to be by the same artist.
As master of the barque Eli Whitney , Robertson left Melbourne for Otago on 8 January 1862, carrying passengers to the gold-diggings in New Zealand. The following year he held an art union at Otago in conjunction with an exhibition of his paintings. In 1865-66 he was secretary to the Marine Board and inspector of steamers at Port Chalmers. Several of his large oil paintings, chiefly of famous clippers and other ships of the merchant navy in New Zealand ports, were included in the 1865 New Zealand Exhibition where he was awarded a bronze medal. According to McCulloch, Robertson died at Yokohama, Japan, about 1873; Platts gives the year as 1875.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1819
- Summary
- The Hobart Town Courier called Thomas Robertson, "one of the best marine painters in the Australian colonies".
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1875
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude54.98 Longitude-1.61 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, UK
- Biography
- ornamental painter and decorator, was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. It is not certain when he arrived in Melbourne, but he seems to have been the 'Mr Croft’ who painted a transparency for the Albion Hotel in Bourke Street for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Melbourne visit in November 1867. The Argus , describing this in detail, noted that it covered the greater portion of the upper storey of the hotel. It showed an allegorical figure of the colony of Victoria welcoming Prince Alfred, who was descending from Neptune’s car on to a carpet spread at his feet by an Aborigine. The Galatea could be seen in the distance, although 'the car of the marine deity’ covered half the canvas.
Craft died on 23 September 1875 and was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery, his wife Sarah being buried in the same plot. On 29 September the Age reported that 'a few friends of the late Mr John Craft, decorative artist, met that night at the Trades Hall and decided upon appointing several gentlemen…to erect a monument to the memory of the deceased’. The resulting headstone has carved on it an artist’s palette with a flower drooping over it. The cemetery register gives Craft’s occupation as 'ornamental painter’ (i.e. painter of designs and murals on walls of houses and public buildings), one of the two professions then commonly symbolised by the oil painter’s palette, the other being that of scene-painter ( see W. Burbury and E. Winstanley ).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- Ornamental painter and decorator born in England. Resident of Melbourne, Victoria he was a painter of designs and murals on walls of houses and public buildings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 September 1875
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer(?) and journalist, was an Irish political prisoner transported to Van Diemen’s Land for fourteen years for treason. He arrived at Hobart Town in April 1850 on board the Neptune and was immediately granted a ticket of leave. He then lived at Bothwell with another Young Ireland patriot, John Martin (nicknamed 'Knox’ by Mitchel because he was a Protestant). Mitchel’s wife Jane Verner, of Newry, whom he had married in 1837, and their children joined him in June 1851.
Mitchel and Martin paid several (illegal) visits to Lake Sorell where some of the Tasmanian Young Irelanders gathered at the house of Thomas Francis Meagher, the most romantic of their number. According to the later Tasmanian photographer John Watt Beattie, on these visits Mitchel took many daguerreotypes of the lake (which he likened to the area near Killarney). All presumably left the colony with him and none has been identified.
He also sketched Tasmanian views. A drawing of Lake Sorell and Meagher’s Cottage is in the National Library of Ireland. In one of her letters Katherine Simson, née Officer, mentioned Mitchel’s sketch The 'Falls’ which was in her possession from at least May 1851. Later, in Victoria, one of 'two noisy, rattling Irish-men who were making many inquiries after yr rebels’ rapturously declared the drawing perfect, being qualified to make this judgement, she noted drily, because he had 'lately visited Rome, Paris &c … [and] seen all the paintings of the ancient and modern Fathers of the Art’.
Disguised as a priest, Mitchel escaped to New York in 1853 and resumed his career as a journalist. He became involved in the American Civil War on the Confederate side. In 1868 he published My Jail Journal; or, Five Years in British Prisons (including Van Diemen’s Land). He died in Ireland on 20 March 1875, survived by his wife, a son and three daughters.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- Sketcher, amateur photographer(?) and journalist, was an Irish political prisoner transported to Van Diemen's Land. He sketched Tasmanian views and took many daguerreotypes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20 March 1875
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude53.2141028 Longitude-2.471770086 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cheshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, caricaturist, litterateur, diarist and army officer, was the third son of Sir Henry Bunbury of Stanley Hall, Cheshire, a soldier and politician, and his first wife, Louisa Emilia, née Fox. Richard Bunbury was a brother. Their grandfather Henry William Bunbury (1750 1811), a friend of Goldsmith, Garrick and Reynolds, was well known in London as an amateur painter and caricaturist. After joining the army in 1830 young Henry was promoted lieutenant in 1833 and transferred to the 21st Fusiliers, then stationed in Van Diemen’s Land. He travelled to Sydney in the Susan in order to join his regiment but instead became extra aide-de-camp to Governor Bourke in October 1834 and remained in Sydney. A caricature of The Governor on Tour in Bunbury’s illustrated journal lost him the position. Mahood states that it is, in fact, a rather inoffensive drawing, hardly an explicit caricature, showing Bourke, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and holding up an umbrella, flanked by two other figures (probably the senior aide-de-camp and Bunbury himself); all are mounted on weary horses. But the journal also included, Bunbury wrote, 'some foolish caricatures of a new chain gang, a special hobby of the Governor’s. I took the idea from their instructions which I had the task of writing out six different times.’ The governor’s valet purloined the journal and showed it to his master, who was not amused.
Bunbury rejoined his regiment in Van Diemen’s Land and was posted to Eaglehawk Neck on the Tasman Peninsula. There he despondently gardened, read and sketched until volunteering to go to Western Australia. He arrived in the Maria on 6 March 1836 as officer in charge of a detachment of 150 troops sent to protect the settlers from attacks by Aborigines. This gave him the opportunity to travel around the country observing the native people and the land to be settled; Lieutenant-Governor Stirling named the town of Bunbury at Port Leschenault after him.
He departed on board The Hero on 8 November 1837. Back in England he was promoted captain and subsequently became aide-de-camp to Sir Charles Napier, commander-in-chief in India, whose daughter Cecilia he married in 1852. He became a colonel during the Crimean War, retired in 1862, was awarded a CB, and died on 18 September 1875.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1812
- Summary
- A caricature in his diary of Governor Bourke saw Bunbury demoted from his position as his aide-de-camp. He later volunteered for service in Western Australia, where he was in charge of 150 troops sent to protect settlers from the Aborigines. Lieutenant-Governor Stirling named the town of Bunbury at Port Leschenault after him.
- Gender
- Unspecified
- Died
- 18 September 1875
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and surveyor, son of Joseph and Mary A. Knapp, was born in England where he received a military education. Intended for Addiscombe, he enrolled instead as a cadet with the East India Company. At the age of 17 he migrated to Australia, arriving at Sydney on 18 March 1826 in the Sesostris , having come out with the ship’s surgeon Dr Dulhunty who had charge of his business affairs (and whose negligence, Knapp later claimed, deprived him of a large percentage of his capital and the possibility of a land grant). In September 1826 Knapp was employed as a government assistant-surveyor but was dismissed in 1830 following complaints of idleness from the irascible Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell , who wrote: 'I am convinced that further trouble with this young man would be useless, and whether he remains a dead weight in the Department or not, I despair of ever advancing the Survey of the Colony by his assistance’. The botanist and explorer Alan Cunningham, on the other hand, regarded Knapp as 'an esteemed friend’ and named Knapp’s Peak, Moreton Bay (Qld) after him.
After his dismissal Knapp went into private land surveying practice with Edward Hallen. The partnership was dissolved in June 1833 and he continued successfully on his own, being said to have surveyed all of W.C. Wentworth’s properties as well as Alexander Macleay’s Elizabeth Bay estate when it was being sold up in July 1841. He also advertised 'designs made in landscape gardening for the improvement of estates’. In the 1850s he was involved in a scheme for a 'Floating Bridge’ between Miller’s Point and Balmain (a sort of large ferry capable of transporting animals and carriages across Sydney Harbour). Three extant lithographed plans of the site and details of the bridge (Mitchell Library (ML)) are signed by him, although not necessarily as either its designer or artist.
Said to have been 'a crack shot, an excellent horseman, and a born bushman’, Knapp became something of a hero in the Bathurst district in 1830 when he led a party which captured 10 members of a gang of bushrangers. He was also a competent sketcher. Some of his drawings sent home from Sydney are in an album formerly owned by a member of the English branch of the family (ML). They include natural history subjects, a pencil view of Sydney Harbour and one of the eponymous Mount Knapp (1846), as well as pencil and ink portraits taken in 1853 of three of his children: Fanny Mary Ann, a namesake son and a sleeping Kate Laura Louisa. A drawing-book copy of Carisbrook Castle by Fanny, dated 1854, has been pasted onto the same page. Married to Rosina Aaron in 1841, Knapp stated in 1865 that they had five children then living but had 'lost four’. The family was living at Braidwood, NSW, when Knapp died in 1875.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1809
- Summary
- A surveyor and sketcher Knapp was known as 'a crack shot, an excellent horseman, and a born bushman'. His work is held in the Mitchell Library and include natural history subjects, landscapes and drawings of his children.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1875
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude51.2 Longitude0.7 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and public servant, was born in Kent on 27 September 1808, son of John Pelham. As a boy he was apprenticed to Charles Warren, the London engraver who had successfully introduced steel-plate engraving into England in 1818, but Pelham abandoned this career—presumably after Warren’s unexpected death—to work in a London legal firm. He came to Adelaide in 1853 and was employed as managing clerk for Andrews & Bonnin, solicitors at Darwin (Northern Territory), then part of South Australia.
In December 1862, when newly employed as judges’ associate and clerk of arraigns to the South Australian Supreme Court in the Northern Territory, Pelham drew a view of Martin’s house at Salt Creek, west of Lake Torrens, where the sensational murder of Jane Machananim had recently taken place. This was displayed in the window of J. Howell’s bookshop in Rundle Street, Adelaide. A local reviewer considered it 'beautifully done’ but naturally gave more space to the subject than to the drawing’s aesthetic qualities.
Pelham died at sea, near Darwin, in the wreck of the Gothenburg on 25 February 1875. He had been married twice: to Susannah Miller, then to a Mrs Holland.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 September 1808
- Summary
- Lionel James Pelham was a sketcher and public servant. He was born in Kent in 1808. In 1875 he died at sea, near Darwin, in the wreck of the Gothenburg.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25 February 1875
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1806-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter, explorer, army officer and pastoralist, was born in England on 11 June 1806, son of Andrew Loughnan. A captain in the 10th Bengal Cavalry, he served with the East India Company and was fort adjutant and aide-de-camp to Governor-General Lord Auckland. At Calcutta in 1836 he married Marion, daughter of Dr Ness and widow of Captain Robertson; they had seven sons and two daughters.
After retiring from the army, Loughnan and his family came to Van Diemen’s Land in 1837. By 1842 he had also taken up Lindenow Station, some 40-000 acres on the Mitchell River at Gippsland in the Port Phillip District (now Victoria). Here he grazed sheep and cattle and established an Arab horse stud. With his brothers he bought into other grazing properties in the district. The family’s main residence continued to be Marionburn, Hobart Town, but Loughnan was at Gippsland in July 1847 when challenged to a duel by Lachlan McAlister. Loughnan refused to fight and McAlister stuck a poster on the walls of the Tarraville Inn calling him 'a coward, a scoundrel and a liar’. Loughnan sued but McAlister was acquitted. Loughnan died at Richmond, Victoria, on 20 September 1875.
An undated oil painting, Three Aboriginal Figures at a Fire, Lake Victoria, Gippsland (photograph ML) has been attributed to Loughnan. According to an inscription on the back, he developed it from a sketch drawn by Captain 'Luffman’ (obviously a phonetic rendering of his own name). No other works are known.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 11 June 1806
- Summary
- An officer, Loughnan settled in Tasmania after a long career with the East India Company. Based in Hobart and Gippsland he was involved in various grazing and equine ventures.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20 September 1875
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1803-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- Sketcher, songwriter, surveyor, soldier and public servant, was born in New South Wales, son of Major Edward Abbott and his wife Louisa, daughter of Admiral Smith. Between 1789 and 1810 his father served with the NSW Corps and in 1815 was appointed the first Deputy Judge-Advocate of Van Diemen’s Land. By 1824 John was clerk to the Hobart Town bench of magistrates. Four years later, after applying for a position with the VDL Survey Department, John Abbott moved to Sydney and joined the NSW Surveyor-General’s Department under Thomas Mitchell . By 1832 he was assistant surveyor in charge of the approaches to the new Lennox Bridge at Lapstone in the lower Blue Mountains.
Abbott later returned to Van Diemen’s Land where he was registrar-general of births, deaths and marriages in 1840-57. In 1842 he acquired 640 acres at Gordon on the D’Entrecasteaux Channel and built a house that he named Rookwood. Abbott never married. He devoted considerable time to gardening and to his various cultural interests, including painting watercolour sketches and writing the words for the 'Song of the Fair Emigrant’, published as sheet music by the Hobart Town lithographer R.V. Hood in 1854.
Towards the end of his life Abbott sent three entries to the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition: a watercolour view of the locale of the coal on his property; a Book of Tasmanian Scraps, from an Australian Native ; and Busts of Tasmanian Natives . He certainly executed the first two, but was probably only the exhibitor of the third (possibly busts of Truganini and Woureddy by the Tasmanian sculptor Benjamin Law ). His Book of Tasmanian Scraps was awarded a medal and was subsequently shown at the 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibition where he also showed a watercolour of D’Entrecasteaux Channel (possibly the same 1866 view) and another of his drawings, Dogs , was exhibited by C. Barrer.
Abbott died in Hobart Town on 10 July 1875, aged 71. His only painting held in a public collection is a monochrome watercolour dated 1828, The Boat Harbour of Woollooderra [now Ulladulla, New South Wales], as seen from the S.W. , which was transferred from the Lands Department to the Mitchell Library in 1921. Other sketches survive with descendants.
Writers:
McDonald, Patricia R.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1803
- Summary
- This sketcher, watercolourist and songwriter became the registrar-general of births, deaths and marriages in Van Diemen's Land in the mid nineteenth century. His watercolours were exhibited in the 1866 Melbourne and 1870 Sydney Intercolonial Exhibitions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 July 1875
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1801-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- sketcher, colonial administrator and travel writer, was born in London on 30 March 1801, son of Christian Ignatius La Trobe, a second generation Moravian minister of Huguenot origin, and Hannah, née Sims, from Yorkshire. He appears to have been educated in Switzerland. After teaching at a Manchester boys’ school conducted by the Moravians at Droylesden, he went to Neuchétel at the end of 1824 as tutor to the family of the Count de Pourtalés, also of Huguenot stock.
La Trobe, an enthusiastic mountaineer and a pioneer member of the Alpine Club, published The Alpenstock; or, Sketches of Swiss Scenery & Manners (1829) and The Pedestrian: A Summer Ramble in the Tyrol (1832) based on his Swiss excursions. Between 1832 and 1834 he travelled in the United States and Mexico, accompanied on a journey across the prairie lands by the writer Washington Irving who published an account of their expedition which referred to his companion as 'a man of a thousand occupations’, including that of 'sketcher of no mean pretensions’. La Trobe in turn published his own account, A Rambler in North America 1832-33 . A gifted sketcher, he always recorded his travels; the illustrations in at least two of his four published travel books were based on his sketchbooks.
On 16 September 1835 La Trobe married Sophie de Montmollin, an aristocratic Swiss woman whom he had met when staying with her parents at their country home set on a hill called Jolimont near Lake Neuchétel. Two years later, possibly due to family influence, he was commissioned by the British government to visit the West Indies and prepare three official reports on the education of that country’s recently emancipated Negro slaves. This experience appears to have been the sole qualification for his appointment, in 1839, as superintendent of the fledgling Port Phillip (Victoria) settlement.
He, Sophie and their daughter Agnes Louisa left Gravesend in the barque Fergusson on 26 March 1839 and reached Sydney on 24 July. Despite his lack of suitable training or administrative experience, La Trobe spent fifteen years overseeing the development of the Port Phillip area from a ragged unofficial settlement populated by about 6000 Europeans to a self-governing colony with a white population of over 80 000. When he left in May 1854 the colony of Victoria was in the grip of gold fever and was developing at a rate unprecedented in British colonial history.
La Trobe, a cultured, amiable and modest man, maintained a somewhat precarious balance between the conflicting demands of ambitious and unruly settlers and his distant masters in Whitehall. Until the Australian Colonies Government Act of 1850 granted Victoria its own representative government he was directly answerable to the governor of New South Wales. He was attacked by his contemporaries in Melbourne for failing to press claims for self-government in either Sydney or London and for not protesting strongly enough against the proposed introduction of convicts. However, he became a hero when he refused to allow a shipload of convicts entry into the colony.
With self-government, La Trobe, promoted to the position of lieutenant-governor, controlled the elected representatives through a nominated Executive Council made up of officials who were, like himself, inexperienced in either legislation or politics. Despite all difficulties, he succeeded in maintaining a functioning government and civil order until he left the colony in 1854. Shortly before his departure he received word that his delicate wife Sophie, who had returned to Europe before him with their four children, was dead. He married her widowed sister, Rose de Meuron, in 1855. La Trobe became blind in the 1860s. He died in England on 4 December 1875. Rose and their two children survived him.
La Trobe was avidly interested in the exploration of the colony and its flora and fauna. He was an enthusiastic gardener who preserved and planted native plants in his own garden, combining these with imported European species, and he was personally responsible for the establishment of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens and the appointment of Ferdinand von Mueller as government botanist. He travelled extensively on horseback through both settled and newly discovered areas. Invariably he made sketches of the places he visited and his letters, especially those to his wife, contain occasional drawings.
All La Trobe’s Victorian sketches appear to have been intended as a private record and no available evidence suggests that his work was ever publicly exhibited or intended for another travel book, although surviving landscapes, such as Opening on the Upper Precipice of Mt William, Grampians. The Elephants in the Plains and Roses Gap. The Grampians (both sepia washes, March 1850), are more competent than most produced in the area at that time. He made numerous pencil, chalk and watercolour sketches of the family’s modest imported prefabricated home, Jolimont, such as Front Door Sep. 1853 (pencil and sepia wash) and Door of Papa’s Dressing Room Jolimont (1847, pencil and sepia wash). The La Trobe Library holds the only public collection of his drawings, many on loan from the National Trust, which now owns Jolimont.
Writers:
Jones, Shar
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 30 March 1801
- Summary
- A gifted sketcher, colonial administrator and travel writer, he always recorded his travels, and the illustrations in at least two of his four published travel books were based on his sketchbooks. La Trobe was responsible for the development of the Port Phillip area, from a ragged unofficial settlement of 6,000 Europeans to a self-governing colony with a white population of over 80,000.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 December 1875
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1788-01-01 End Date1875-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Amateur artist, sketcher, architect and civil engineer, was born in England, only son of Willey Reveley, an English architect who travelled in Rome, Egypt and, especially, Greece, making many competent watercolour drawings of his travels (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK) before dying suddenly in 1799 when Henry was only ten. A year later Henry’s mother Maria, née James, married John Gisbourne and the family went to live in Italy in 1799. While in Italy, Henry studied science and engineering at the University of Pisa, graduating to become a civil engineer. It was here he formed a friendship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. His chief claim to fame has always been that he was a close friend of the Shelleys—Mary and Percy Bysshe—and that he saved the poet from drowning in the Arno in April 1821 (to little avail; Shelley drowned the following year).
On his return to England later in 1821, Reveley travelled around the country looking at 'mines, machinery, manufactures, mineralogy’, according to his mother. In April 1822 the Society of Arts awarded him a silver medal for his paper describing improved methods of paving and for cutting millstones. In September he submitted a design for the new London (Waterloo) Bridge. The competition was won by John Rennie, who employed Reveley for a while. In 1826 he was appointed civil engineer and superintendent of buildings at Cape Town until unfairly dismissed in November 1827. He and his wife Cleobulina (apparently known as Amelia, whom he had married in 1824), sister of at least five painter brothers, including Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding and Frederick (Raffael?) Fielding, were still at the Cape in May 1829, with Henry unemployed, when Lieutenant-Governor James Stirling called en route to Western Australia. Henry was appointed Civil Engineer at Capetown, but the Reveleys joined the pioneering party on board the Parmelia and Henry was subsequently employed by Stirling as civil engineer to the new Swan River settlement. His first job after arrival was to erect huts at the temporary encampment on Garden Island, no trace of which now survives apart from a well.
Reveley was responsible for all public works at Fremantle, Perth and outlying districts, including the Perth Government Offices, ranging from five small wooden huts for offices, begun in 1829 (for which Reveley’s drawings survive), to the two-storeyed Public Office and Legislative Council building, completed in 1839 after his departure. The Commissariat Store (1834), the first modest Government House (1835), barracks (1833), gaol, court-house, jetties, tunnel, roads, bridges, drains, footpaths and other minor works were erected to his design and under his supervision. He prepared drawings and specifications for country gaols and barracks, in all cases having to contend with the penny-pinching attitude of Whitehall. He is best known for his first major building, the twelve-sided sandstone gaol now called the Round House (1830-1831) on its dramatic site on Arthur’s Head, Fremantle, the only major building erected at the port town during these years and the focus of many an early drawing and print. Its form (but not its planning) apparently owed something to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon which Reveley’s father had drawn up for Bentham in 1791. Reveley erected a temporary court-house at Fremantle in a complementary flat-roofed style and was responsible for excavating the tunnel under Arthur’s Head (1837, extant), mainly for the use of the Fremantle Whaling Company.
His other substantial public buildings were all at Perth, the sole survivor today being the Greek doric Old Court House (1836-1837), erected to serve the dual function of court and church. Although very plain, most of Reveley’s architectural designs, including St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church (doric) and St George’s Church (ionic) at Cape Town, display some evidence of his enthusiasm for the Greek neoclassical style in which his father had been a pioneer in England. (Reveley senior had edited volume 3 of James 'Athenian’ Stuart’s Antiquities of Athens , London 1794; his 1792 church, All Saints, Southampton, was Greek ionic in style.)
Henry Reveley’s only known art work is a charmingly informal pen and watercolour sketch of his home at Perth between St George’s Terrace and the river. His house was made from white Mt Eliza stone covered in brown sandstone from the same place. My House and Garden in Western Australia (National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT, Australia) was sent on 28 September 1833 to his brother-in-law, the painter Frederick Fielding, in London. The controversial two-storey water-mill where he ground flour commercially is shown on the right. (Unsigned, although clearly by a Reveley, it could equally be Cleobulina’s work.)
After resigning and having sold his collection of 'valuable books on architecture in Latin, French, Italian and English’, Reveley and his wife left for England in the American whaler Pioneer on 30 November 1838. He wrote a series of articles on Western Australia for the English Australian Record , according to the Perth Gazette of 9 October 1841. By 1844, when he published an article on Western Australian immigration policy, he was living at Sunny Hill, Parkstone, Dorset. He moved to Reading, Oxfordshire, about 1873 (when he published a paper on Western Australian timber). He lectured on the arts and sciences to paying audiences in mechanics institutes and schools of arts and seems not to have practised either as an architect or engineer in England. His later interests included photography; on 11 March 1853 he published an article on this topic in the London Journal of the Society of Arts in response to a letter from the leading London studio photographer Antoine François Jean Claudet. Reveley died at Reading on 27 January 1875. He and Cleobulina were both buried in Reading Cemetery.
Writers:
Staff Writer
nmian
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. c.1788
- Summary
- English born Henry Willey Reveley, sketcher, architect and civil engineer, was responsible for the design and supervision of public works at Fremantle, Perth and outlying districts, including the Perth Government Offices from 1829 to 1838. He is best known for his first major building, the twelve-sided sandstone gaol now called the Round House on its dramatic site on Arthur's Head, Fremantle.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 January 1875
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude51.5375786 Longitude-0.9050287 Start Date1840-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and surveyor, was born on 8 December 1840 in Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire. He was in Adelaide by 1862. On 25 September 1869 he married Harriette Isabel, née Woodcock; they had two daughters. When A.B. Cooper showed a watercolour copy of another exhibit, Dordt , with the South Australian Society of Arts in 1866, the South Australian Advertiser called it 'clever’ and noted that 'its only defect is a want of depth in the tone’. It received a prize. Cooper left Adelaide for England in 1874 but died on the voyage.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 August 1840
- Summary
- Painter and surveyor born in England. Resident of Adelaide, South Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1874
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, was born on 14 May 1837 in Bermondsey, London, second son of Francis Farndell and Mary, née Shorteu. His elder brother was Francis Farndell junior . Edward arrived at Adelaide in the James Jardine in 1859 and married Margaret Harrison there two years later. In 1865-66 he was working as a photographer in Kent Town, South Australia, advertising that he had 'no connection with any other establishment’ (especially his brother’s). Later in 1866 he occupied Robert Hall 's former studio at Hindley Street, Adelaide, and remained there until he died, on 29 August 1874. He was survived by his wife and seven children.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 May 1837
- Summary
- The photographer Edward Farndell took pains in his professional life to make clear that he had no association with his brother, who also worked as a professional photographer in Adelaide. Although only married for thirteen years until his death, Edward Farndell and his wife had seven children.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 August 1874
- Age at death
- 37
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter and architectural draughtsman, was born in Scotland, son of an Edinburgh piano-maker. He attended Dean’s School and William Cairn’s Academy in Edinburgh, after which he worked for a short time as an architectural draughtsman with his brother John. R.S. Anderson emigrated to Victoria in 1851 and there painted views of the Castlemaine district. An oil painting, Mount Alexander Gold Diggings (1851, Dixson Galleries), appears to be the original for the lithograph Mount Alexander Gold Diggings, Australia. Sketched on the Spot by R.S. Anderson Esqre., late of Edinburgh (Mitchell Library; National Library of Australia) which was published by Mackay & Kirkwood of Glasgow for subscribers to the Glasgow Examiner on 30 October 1852. The print also appeared in Anderson’s Guide to Emigrants to Australia , published the same year.
Anderson soon moved to Sydney and was employed as a clerk in the Post Office. He prepared the plans for extensions to Mortimer Lewis’s Post Office building. In 1856 he travelled to Wellington, New Zealand, in the schooner Ariel and worked in the Provincial Survey Office. He returned to Melbourne in April 1857 but went back to Auckland in July. After working with his brother on a farm at Otaki near Whangarei in 1858, he settled permanently in Auckland from January 1859 and again worked as a clerk and draughtsman. He died in the Provincial Hospital, Parnell, on 14 March 1874.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1833
- Summary
- Scottish architectural draughtsman who emigrated to Victoria in 1851. Anderson painted views of the Castlemaine district, including an oil painting, 'Mount Alexander Gold Diggings'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 March 1874
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude50.416667 Longitude-4.75 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cornwall, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and house painter, eldest surviving son of Robert Burnard and his first wife, Jane, came to South Australia with his father, step-mother and their children in 1840 and lived with the family in Plympton, Adelaide. He apparently inherited both the Plympton house-painting business and the painting and exhibiting of still-life easel paintings on his father’s death. Late in life, presumably when the step-brothers and step-sisters were self-supporting, he became a professional fine artist. He was listed as a portrait painter of West Torrens in the Adelaide Almanac for 1867 and 1869. He married a widow, Catherine Harvey, nee Rousevell on 4 July 1867. Robert Burnard died a widower on 31 August (?) 1874.
Two works by Burnard, Birds and a print of Fruit , were shown in Adelaide’s second exhibition of colonial art in 1848. Although these could still have been by his father (whose painting Fruit had been shown posthumously the previous year), they appear to have been the lender’s own work. In December 1855 Burnard was called 'an artist well known to the old colonists for his fruit and flower pieces’. He had then just completed a 6 × 4 foot (182 × 121 cm) painted silk banner for 'The Ancient Order of Foresters, Court Australia’s Pride, No 2308’, said to consist 'of the usual emblematical devices, which are portrayed in gorgeous colours and skilfully finished’.
In 1859 another Fruit was shown with the Society of Arts (catalogued as by 'Barnard’). In 1861 the exhibition committee awarded Robert Burnard the prize of 20 guineas (donated by George Fife Angas) for the best recently executed oil painting of a colonial subject in the society’s annual exhibition. It was an acquisitive prize, so Burnard’s work, another fruit painting, became the property of the society.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1825
- Summary
- He apparently inherited both the Plympton house-painting business and the painting and exhibiting of still-life easel paintings on his father's death.
- Gender
- Unspecified
- Died
- c.31 August 1874
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- sketcher, is known only for a slight sketch of Mount Kosciusko (Kosciuszko), said to have been done in about 1840 (copy in La Trobe Library). The artist may be Mary Macarthur, who married Hugh Gordon in 1841 and lived in Braidwood, southern New South Wales.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1822
- Summary
- McArthur was a sketcher, and is only known for a slight sketch of Mount Kosciuszko, said to have been done in about 1840. The artist may be Mary Macarthur, who married Hugh Gordon in 1841.
- Gender
- Unknown
- Died
- 1874
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, amateur photographer and settler, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, son of Captain Alexander Robert Kerr and great-nephew of Governor John Hunter . He left Leith Roads on 2 February 1839 and boarded the Midlothian for Port Phillip (Victoria). Kerr squatted about eight miles from Melbourne, but lost his land in 1841 and was forced to move farther inland. He revisited Britain for two years in 1847, then returned to the colony. With a partner, he purchased a station, Fernyhurst, in the Loddon district about 160 miles inland from Melbourne.
A keen amateur photographer, Kerr used his skills on one occasion to assist in a murder case. Like the murderer, Kerr noted, the suspect had 'dark hair, a short peaked American beard, and one of his eyes was blind… His dress, a blue serge shirt, and moleskin trousers, also corresponded fatally with the report.’ Believing in the possibility of the man’s innocence, Kerr photographed him in full face and profile and forwarded the likenesses to the police in the vicinity of the murder, some 80 miles away. A few days later the suspect was cleared.
Kerr was particularly interested in recording the local Aboriginal people. In 1872 his Glimpses of Life in Victoria by a Resident was published in Edinburgh. In it Kerr tells of his determination to obtain a photograph of a corroboree and how he prevailed upon the Aborigines to dance by daylight:
This was only done for the promise of a considerable present; but no arguments would induce them to allow the lubras to witness the exhibition at that unusual hour, and to complete my picture I was obliged to content myself with a group of young men, wrapped in their skins, to represent the absent ladies.
The lithograph of a corroboree in Kerr’s book appears to be after a print made (in the 1860s?) by Eugene Montagu Scott , apparently from Kerr’s 1850s salted paper print recording this occasion; the Royal Historical Society of Victoria has a photograph annotated 'Corroborie held at night. Fernyhurst, Australia Felix. J.H.K.’, which is conspicuously signed on the mount by Scott. Other Fernyhurst photographs in the same collection are also titled and initialled by Kerr and signed on the mount by Scott, so it would seem that other illustrations in Kerr’s book such as Jamie and his Friend (two Aborigines) and Group of Weapons had the same genesis. All are acknowledged as being taken from photographs.
Kerr was a painter and sketcher as well as a photographer. A lithograph survives after his drawing of a Loddon Aboriginal woman, the elderly Queen Jerrybung (1856, ML), and the 'T.H. Kerr’ catalogued as painting and exhibiting an oil Portrait of a Horse with the Victorian Society of Fine Arts at Melbourne in 1857 is also likely to have been him.
Kerr married Frances Grace Murphy in about 1862. He died at Melbourne on 6 February 1874.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1821
- Summary
- A painter and amateur photographer John Hunter Kerr was particularly interested in recording the local Aboriginal people. His book 'Glimpses of Life in Victoria by a Resident' was published in Edinburgh in 1872.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6 February 1874
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude-41.441944 Longitude147.145 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- natural history painter, architect and politician, was born in Launceston, Van Diemen’s Land, on 16 May 1820, third son of Thomas Archer of Woolmers, Longford (Tasmania), and Susannah, née Hortle. Educated locally, William was then sent to London to study architecture and surveying under William Rogers. After four years with Rogers he moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne to work with Robert Stephenson, the celebrated engineer. In 1842, while still in England, he designed a large stained-glass window for his family church in Van Diemen’s Land, Christ Church of England, Longford. This liturgical east window depicting Christ and the four evangelists in its five panels was manufactured by William Wailes of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Returning to Van Diemen’s Land in October 1842, Archer designed the window’s timber tracery and supervised its installation. The church was officially opened by Bishop F.R. Nixon on 6 October 1844.
William Archer spent most of the following five years on the family property, Woolmers, assisting his father in its management. He is believed to have designed a new Italianate wing for the house soon after his return and he certainly designed the kitchen wing of 1847 and various outbuildings. Known ecclesiastical designs include the Wesleyan Chapel at Patterson’s Plains (St Leonard’s)—'a particularly neat specimen of the Italian style’, according to the Launceston Examiner of 2 December 1846—and the former St Peter’s Church of England at St Leonards (1847, demolished), known only from a painting by Rev. Henry Plow Kane, its first incumbent. He also designed an Independent Chapel in 1847 for the Hunting Ground near Dysart (now used as a machinery store) and erected a temporary brick church at Hagley the same year. He designed an Anglican church for Deloraine in 1853 (disused) and he probably made alterations to the Church of the Good Shepherd at Hadspen in about 1858.
Archer’s experience in church designing – including a cathedral design while in England (unlocated) – soon led Bishop Nixon to appoint him Tasmanian diocesan architect. Most of his official ecclesiastical work was fairly minor, however, apart from the design of the Hutchins School at Hobart Town (1847 49), an important stone building of symmetrical plan and pattern-book Tudor detailing relating to English 'Commissioners’ Gothic’ ecclesiastical work of the 1830s. He may also have designed the first buildings for Horton College, Ross, in 1850 (built 1852 55, demolished), which were in a similarly plain Tudor style.
Archer’s domestic work in northern Tasmania included his own home, Cheshunt, near Deloraine, which he moved into in 1848. Having married his first cousin, Ann Hortle, in 1846, he needed a separate residence for his growing family. He built a new house on the property in 1852 and this became the family home until 1873. Many of his minor commissions were for the family: additions to his brother Joseph’s house, Fairfield (completed 1854), possibly Saundridge house and chapel near Poatina in north-east Tasmania for his cousin Robert (1850s), a wrought-iron portico on his uncle’s home, Brickendon (1857), a marble obelisk at Panshanger in memory of his uncle Joseph (1855), and a nursery wing for Panshanger House itself (1863). He designed a tombstone at Ross (carved by the convict sculptor Daniel Herbert for £12) in memory of his daughter Jessie (d. 1860). His most elaborate work was the design of Mona Vale at Ross for his brother-in-law Robert Quayle Kermode. This Victorian Italianate mansion, one of Australia’s largest country houses, took three years to build (1865 68).
Although best-known as an architect, William Archer was also a talented botanical artist. He assisted Dr Joseph Hooker at Kew Gardens with the Florae Tasmaniae when he and his family were living in England in 1856 58 and contributed many drawings to the volume. Hooker dedicated the book to Archer and his fellow Tasmanian R.C. Gunn when it was published in 1859, noting in the preface Archer’s contribution of 'a beautiful series of drawings of Tasmanian orchids, together with 100 pounds’. The original drawings are in the archives of the Linnaean Society, London. He collected further native plants for Kew and Hooker named several after him. While in England, Archer was elected a fellow of the Linnaean Society. He noted in his diary that, despite being a colonial, he was treated as a perfect equal by the English members.
After another English visit in 1859, the Archers mainly lived in Hobart Town. There William became secretary of the Royal Society of Tasmania and contributed several articles, mainly on botany, to its Papers and Proceedings . In 1866 he was elected member for Deloraine in the House of Assembly but resigned the following year. In 1871 increasing financial problems led to a move to Melbourne where William believed he could practice professionally as an architect and thus 'provide education and society for my family’ (which by then consisted of 13 children, 12 surviving). The move was not a success and they returned to Tasmania at the beginning of 1874, moving back into Fairfield. Archer died there of tuberculosis later that year, on 15 October. He was buried in the family vault in the Longford churchyard.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 May 1820
- Summary
- Although best-known as an architect, William Archer was also a talented botanical artist. He assisted Dr Joseph Hooker at Kew Gardens with the 'Florae Tasmaniae' when he and his family were living in England in 1856-1858.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15 October 1874
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude51.8680844 Longitude0.307489954 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Little Canfield, Dunmow, Essex, United Kingdom
- Biography
- sketcher and naval officer, was born at Canfield Hall, Essex, on 4 August 1814, eldest surviving son of Sir William Saltonstall Wiseman, Bt., a captain in the Royal Navy who came to Sydney in HMS Elizabeth in 1829, and his first wife Catherine, daughter of Sir James Mackintosh. William junior entered the Royal Naval College in 1827 and was on board Rattlesnake and Sparrowhawk in South American waters in 1831-33, remaining with Sparrowhawk until February 1837. He then served in various ships in British, Mediterranean, North American and West Indian waters, being promoted commander in 1846. On 1 July 1848 he succeeded his father as eighth baronet.
In 1863-67 Sir William was commander of HMS Cura ç oa , the flagship of the Australia Station. He arrived at Sydney on 22 September 1863 after visiting the Swan River Colony Western Australia, but stayed only a day, loading stores, troops and ordnance for the Waikato River, New Zealand, where he landed 365 men from the Cura ç oa , Harrier and Eclipse to man the flotilla of small colonial vessels established there. After a battle against a Maori force on the east coast, he left for Sydney in June 1864, keeping his headquarters in New Zealand until relieved in September 1866.
Wiseman defended British interests in the New Hebrides and Fiji in 1865 with a great deal of force and appears to have collected a vast number of 'souvenirs’ while doing so. In November 1865 he exhibited over 1200 'curiosities’ from the South Sea Islands at the Diocesan Book Repository in Phillip Street, Sydney. Included were eighty-seven photographs of natives, missionaries and buildings in the Pacific and Norfolk islands, as well as one of the Cura ç oa in Fitzroy Dock on Cockatoo Island, Sydney Harbour (NLA). They were probably all taken by Mr Kerr and/or Lieutenant Michael Guy .
Wiseman himself recorded the places he visited in ink and grey monotone wash drawings. His Sketches in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and New Hebrides (ML) contains fourteen unsigned and undated views, mostly of Western Australian, South Australian and New South Wales subjects. The drawings, extremely competent compositions according to picturesque principles, include the ink and wash Bunbury Western Australia and Tom Thumb’s Lagoon Illawarra District (NSW) and an atmospheric ink sketch, Mode of Disposal of the Dead in Australia . All have been given titles, some apparently in Wiseman’s own hand; others, according to the Mitchell Library, were possibly added by Mrs J.H. Connell of Melbourne who once owned them.
After returning to England from Australia, Wiseman retired on a 'good service’ pension and was promoted rear-admiral in 1869. He died on 14 July 1874, survived by his wife Charlotte Jane, only daughter of Admiral Charles William Paterson, whom he had married in 1838. They had two children, Eliza Frances Charlotte and William, who succeeded his father as ninth baronet.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 August 1814
- Summary
- British sketcher and naval officer who visited Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and New Hebrides in the 1860s. Wiseman recorded the places he visited in ink and grey monotone wash drawings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 July 1874
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, England, UK
- Biography
- engraver, stationer and bookseller, was born in Liverpool, England, where he served his apprenticeship as a bookbinder. On 21 July 1823 he was sentenced to seven years’ transportation for stealing tea, although it was not until July 1827 that he arrived at Sydney on board the Guildford . Stated to be single and literate, he was assigned to the Colonial Engineer’s Department as a clerk. In December 1829 he married Mary Anne Galliott, a 16-year-old free immigrant, and they had six children, three of whom survived infancy.
After the expiry of his sentence, Moffitt established a successful business as a bookbinder, stationer, engraver and copperplate printer, first at 8 King Street and then, from August 1833, at 23 Pitt Street. His business did well in the prosperous 1830s, capitalising on the increased market resulting from the rise in free immigration that supported a local, permanent and self-sufficient printmaking industry. In the 1830s and 1840s he was active as a bookseller, publisher and distributor of books, especially directories and almanacs. His Australian Sheet Almanack for the Year 1835 was embellished with several illustrations, a 'neatly engraved view of Darlinghurst, Sydney College (as completed), The Catholic Chapel and surrounding scenery’.
Moffitt was also a successful city businessman. His interests centred on city property and finance and for a time he was a director of the Australian Joint Stock Bank. Part of his printing business involved the design and engraving of trade cards, billheads and banknotes, although in many cases it is clear that he simply copied conventional designs used by English engravers to signify particular occupations. For instance, an advertisement he engraved for Edward Fagan’s Wellington Brewery in Sydney shows a Bacchanalian figure astride a barrel, a conventional English symbol for a brewery. Moffitt also did work for the Australian Grand Lodge of Independent Oddfellows of which he was a founding member (in 1836). He appears to have employed other engravers, including John Carmichael , for some of his commissions.
Moffitt was interested in the fine arts and helped promote them through his shop. He also had a private collection of paintings. In August 1842 he had on display a collection of oil and watercolour views of Sydney and neighbourhood to be raffled; a decade earlier he had sold tickets in some of John Lhotsky 's art unions, winning first prize in one. For five years he allowed his city rooms to be used to exhibit engravings from the Scottish Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts and sold tickets in their raffles. These art unions were immensely popular in the 1840s and he personally participated in them too, winning a major prize, R.S. Lauder’s oil painting, The Gow Chrom Reluctantly Conducting the Glee Maiden to a Place of Safety , from the London Art Union. Its arrival in the colony was an event, the Sydney Morning Herald of 16 March 1847 gave more than a column to describing it and declared it 'decidedly the best modern work of art we have seen in the colony’. Moffitt exhibited his trophy in his shop, apparently gratis, together with 'several other good oil paintings’ on view to 'respectable persons after 2 o’clock p.m.’.
In 1847 Moffitt lent his Glee Maiden and five other paintings to the first exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia. The others were rural landscapes by an unidentified artist named Smith, which he could have purchased in Britain, which he revisited in the early 1840s. He contributed nothing to the 1849 art exhibition but showed his Glee Maiden and another London Art Union prize, Plucking Ducks at the 1857 Fine Art Exhibition held at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts. (In the 1847 exhibition his contributions were the property of 'Mr. W. Moffitt’, but by 1857 they belonged to 'W. Moffitt Esq.’)
Early in 1874 Moffitt sold his business to Thomas R. Yeo, but he continued to live in Pitt Street until his death on 31 July 1874. Survived by his three daughters, he was buried in Camperdown Cemetery (now St Stephen’s, Newtown). His estate was valued at £230,000, an immense fortune at the time.
Writers:
Neville, Richard
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1802
- Summary
- Engraver, stationer and bookseller. After the expiry of his convict sentence, Moffitt established a successful business as a bookbinder, stationer, engraver and copperplate printer in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31 July 1874
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- miniaturist, still-life, animal and portrait painter, lithographer and art teacher, was born in Paris on 22 February 1802, daughter of the Dutch painter and engraver Alexander Liernur. She was also his pupil. In 1824 she married Benjamin Suggitt Nayler, a teacher of English and resident of Amsterdam, who later became a well-known writer and lecturer on spiritualism. She is recorded as having made portraits, miniatures, copies of Old Masters, lithographs and bird and still-life paintings while living in Amsterdam. In 1836 she exhibited portraits of Rubens and Sir Walter Scott together with her usual natural history subjects.
The Naylers lived in Britain for a period. They migrated to Victoria quite late in life, arriving at Melbourne from Liverpool aboard the Great Britain on 21 September 1865. At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition Maria Nayler filled a whole compartment with fifty-eight works. Most were fruit and flower studies or copies of Old Masters; one was a copy of an oil painting by William Dexter . There were six miniatures, eight 'experimental paintings’ on cloth, and some specimens of 'indelible painting’, an art form, she stated in the catalogue, that she was willing to teach. At the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition her husband exhibited three of her pictures: Napoleon the First, in Sepia, after Delaroche and two watercolours, Magdalen after Lebrun and Pembrokeshire Hedge .
Benjamin Nayler held a monster art union in 1867. Originally consisting of 1000 tickets at 10s each, the prizes were 718 European paintings and engravings (mainly engravings) plus forty watercolours by his wife, primarily English and European fruit, flower and bird subjects. Mrs Nayler’s only stated local titles were Victorian Figs and Victorian Grapes ; most, such as Branch of Apples or Bird’s Nest , were non-specific. Her painting of a lark’s nest was after Dexter. Through lack of support and changes in the law, the lottery was subsequently altered to offering the same number of prizes as tickets (i.e. 520; some lots contained more than one painting or engraving) and Mr Nayler proclaimed it was now 'A real Art Union’. Accompanying the publicity for this event was a notice announcing that Benjamin Nayler was recommencing his former profession as an English teacher. He claimed that he was well known in Europe as a teacher, elocutionist and literary figure, having refused a professorship at two 'renowned’ universities, and promised to teach 'an accurate and elegant Pronunciation … in less than twelve hours ' with the proviso that pupils attend one hour daily 'on consecutive days’.
At this time the Naylers were living in Holland Terrace, High Street, near Chapel Street, Prahran, but their affiliation with spiritualist groups later led them to Stawell where the sect apparently had a relatively strong following. Maria Nayler died there on 18 July 1874; her husband died in Melbourne in June 1875. No extant paintings have been identified.
Writers:
Watson, Michael J.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 February 1802
- Summary
- A painter,lithographer and art teacher. During her career she produced portraits, miniatures, copies of Old Masters, lithographs and bird and still life portraits.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 18 July 1874
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude55.25 Longitude-2.000559 Start Date1798-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Northumberland, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolour painter and politician, was born in Northumberland, England, son of John Gregson, squire of Lowlynn. In March 1821 he arrived at Hobart Town with his wife Elizabeth and they eventually settled at Restdown, East Risdon. In order to indulge his interest in politics, Gregson launched his own newspaper, the Colonist ('the Journal of the People’), in 1832. Appointed to the Legislative Council in 1843, he was particularly concerned with immigration, education and the abolition of transportation. He was Premier for two months from March 1857. Although characterised as 'turbulent and vituperative’, Gregson was continuously elected a member of the Legislative Assembly until 1872. He died at Risdon on 4 January 1874.
Risdon Cove, near his home, was the site of the foundation of European settlement in Van Diemen’s Land and Gregson painted a watercolour reconstructing the arrival there of Lieutenant Bowen and his party (Crowther Library). He showed his landscape painting 'after Hobbema’ in the Exhibition of Paintings, Engravings, and Watercolour Drawings held at Hobart Town in 1846. When a photograph of an equestrian portrait of Rev. Robert Knopwood, the first Anglican chaplain of Van Diemen’s Land, was exhibited at the Old Hobart Exhibition in 1896 the catalogue stated that the original was a composite work, the portrait of the parson having been done by Gregson, the dog and the pony by J.W. Graves and the landscape by Frank Dunnett , while the photograph had been taken by Morton Allport . Since Knopwood had died in 1838 and Dunnett was not in the colony until 1856, the background (at least) must have been added later, although Gregson’s portrait could have been done in the parson’s lifetime. Several versions of the painting survive (Dixson Galleries; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery; Bishopscourt, Hobart).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1798
- Summary
- Watercolour painter and politician, settled in Risdon Cove which was the site of the foundation of European settlement in Van Diemen's Land. Gregson launched his own newspaper, the 'Colonist' ('the Journal of the People'), in 1832.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 January 1874
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude53.9015775 Longitude-0.3827242 Start Date1797-01-01 End Date1874-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hull, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, surveyor and ship’s master, was born in Hull, Yorkshire, on 27 August 1797, son of Captain Thomas Fewson RN. He joined the Royal Navy on 10 February 1810 but later resigned his commission. In 1829 he transported a shipload of passengers, stock and cargo to the newly established Swan River settlement (Western Australia), where he acquired his own barque, the Hartley . In 1837 he set off for South Australia with another load of emigrants. Over the next few years he made regular voyages between Adelaide, Portland Bay (Victoria) and Launceston and charted the coastline. His surveys were published in London by Novies Charts. Fewson eventually retired to Launceston and wrote Memorandum of a Few Items of Thomas Fewson’s Life (Launceston 1857).
Captain Fewson painted a watercolour view of Kingscote, Kangaroo Island in December 1837 which shows the harbour and early settlement (Mitchell Library). This is the earliest surviving visual record we have of the inhospitable landing place of the first South Australian settlers in 1836 (a great contrast to the undisturbed Eden suggested in British promotion of the province). Fewson probably exhibited it under the title A Sketch of Kangaroo Island , a work shown in Adelaide’s 1847 Exhibition of Colonial Artists.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 August 1797
- Summary
- Captain Fewson's watercolour view of Kangaroo Island (1837) is the earliest surviving visual record of the first South Australian settlers' inhospitable landing place.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1 January 1874
- Age at death
- 77
Details
Latitude45.1960403 Longitude-63.1653789 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1873-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nova Scotia, Canada
- Biography
- professional photographer, son of Hugh McDonald and Grace née McDougal, was born in Nova Scotia where his father was a planter. He came to Melbourne in about 1847 and was in partnership with Townsend Duryea by 1852. Their daguerreotype portraits and views in the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition were awarded a medal (which McDonald was still citing in advertisements in 1866). At the end of 1854 Duryea and McDonald were in Tasmania announcing that they would open a daguerreotype studio on 11 December at 46 Liverpool Street, Hobart Town. Still enough of a novelty to require promotion and explanation, their daguerreotypes were labelled 'Curiosities as works of art – puzzles to the uninitiated – studies for the contemplative – pleasing reflections – historical records – pocket editions of the works of nature which “he who runs may read”’. The partners had gone their separate ways by the following July when 'Macdonald & Co., late Duryea & Macdonald’ began to advertise from Brisbane Street, Launceston. Archibald visited Launceston in July and again in November, in the interim making short tours to Deloraine (August), Longford (September) and Campbell Town (October).
Afterwards he continued the Melbourne firm of Duryea & McDonald possibly with Sanford Duryea , Townsend having relocated to Adelaide. By 1855 Thomas Adams Hill was the other half of the partnership at 3 Bourke Street, East Melbourne, but Hill soon left the studio to set up on his own. The young Charles Nettleton had joined the firm in 1854 and, according to Cato, then took over the outdoor work while McDonald concentrated on studio portraiture. The business flourished and by 1858 Duryea & McDonald had two Melbourne studios. McDonald set up a studio in his sole name in 1860 at 25 Bourke Street. In 1861 a case of his daguerreotype portraits in the Victorian Exhibition was awarded a first-class certificate and his photograph of the Albion Hotel received an honourable mention in the supplementary awards. Both his untouched and 'Mezzotinto’ portrait photographs gained honourable mentions at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition.
Having moved to St George’s Hall at 71 Bourke Street by 1864 McDonald was advertising extensive additions, including a new gallery, in 1866. His studio, he predictably claimed, was now 'second to none in Europe or America and far surpassing anything in the Colonies’. The fire of March 1872 that destroyed the Theatre Royal, located directly behind his studio, also damaged his premises, but they were soon repaired and McDonald was at this address when he died the following year. His death was reported in the Illustrated Australian News on 4 December 1873: 'On the 8th November, Mr. McDonald the well-known photographer of Bourke Street, met with a fatal accident… He was in the act of dressing himself when he by some means fell upon a basin which broke and inflicted a deep wound in his thigh about six inches long, severing one of the arteries… He died on the following day from an already impaired constitution and loss of blood.’ He was buried in the Church of England section of the new Melbourne Cemetery on 11 November.
Archibald McDonald and Clara Stanley née McManus, who had married at Melbourne in about 1857, had six children. After his death his widow continued the business, being joined by Archibald’s brother Alexander, who had been working as half the firm of Baxter & McDonald ( see Robert Baxter). The studio continued at the same address until about 1875, then Alexander McDonald ('of Duryea and McDonald, Melbourne’) worked in the New England district of New South Wales on his own, being at Uralla, Tamworth and Armidale in 1875-76. Alexander spent the rest of his working life at various locations in New South Wales, moving down from Tamworth to Newcastle in 1889. He was at Windsor in 1896-97.
Archibald McDonald’s photographs are well represented in the Victorian copyright collection (La Trobe), including 69 carte-de-visite portraits of Roman Catholic prelates and priests probably taken at the second Provincial Council in Melbourne in April 1869. He also took views and Aboriginal groups. Alfred Abbott 's album contains several of McDonald’s view photographs, all taken in 1870, including one of an Aboriginal camp. Portraits of local celebrities were naturally part of the business; another copyrighted carte-de-visite is of J.G. Harris, 'Champion Pedestrian of Australia’ (1870, LT). The Mitchell Library has a McDonald carte-de-visite photograph of a circus dwarf c.1870.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1831
- Summary
- McDonald ran a successful photography business in Melbourne - shifting location every few years as partnerships changed or he outgrew his premises. He produced numerous carte-de-visite portraits for Melbourne residents, group portraits of Aborigines, landscapes and pictures of local celebrities, and was particularly famous for his daguerreotypes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 November 1873
- Age at death
- 42
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1873-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- travelling photographer, scene-painter, architect, showman and actor, was born in England, son of Frederick Murlin, a chemist and salesman, and Ann Harriet, only daughter of Lieutenant Benjamin Beaufoy RN.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1830
- Summary
- Travelling photographer, scene-painter, architect, showman and actor. Merlin created painted and photographic 'panoramas', and extensively photographed the houses and public buildings of many regional areas of New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 September 1873
- Age at death
- 43
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1873-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and professional photographer, son of Henry Gritten, a London picture dealer, began to paint when he was fourteen years old. His obituary in the Argus claimed he was acquainted with the painters David Roberts, Clarkson Stanfield and Sir Edwin Landseer and 'enjoyed the favour of Prince Albert, the Duke of Norfolk and the Marquis of Westminster’. He certainly exhibited prolifically in London, showing sixty-two oil and watercolour paintings at the Royal Academy, the British Institute, the Society of British Artists (Suffolk Street) and various other exhibitions between 1835 and 1849. His subjects included townscape and landscape views in Northern France, London and other parts of England, seascapes and historic subjects as well as views painted in the Rhine and Moselle River valleys.
Extending his travels, Gritten moved to New York in 1850. He lived in both Brooklyn and Manhattan and exhibited with the National Academy of Design. Paintings from this period were shown at Melbourne in 1853, the year Gritten arrived from New York. They included views of Brattlebrough, Vermont and the Catskill Mountains on the Hudson. On arrival Gritten immediately went to the Bendigo diggings, but soon returned to Melbourne. By February 1854 he was offering to give lessons in painting and drawing in Sydney. He also married Charlotte Sims there. Surviving Sydney works include two watercolour views, The Harbour of Sydney from Harbour View Hotel and the unfinished Sydney Harbour from Harbour View Hotel, Showing West Side of Dawes Point (both 1854, ML) and oils of the Harbour dated 1855 (NGV), 1856 (Deutscher-Menzies, Australian and International Paintings, Sculpture and Works on Paper , Melbourne 22 November 1998, lot 278) and 1857 (Christie’s Melbourne 28 April 1992, lot 185). His view of Kiama, Illawarra, NSW (1860, o/c, NLA) was painted from a sketch that Robert Hoddle made in 1830.
Then Gritten went via Melbourne to Hobart Town. His Tasmanian paintings include several versions of the view of Hobart Town and Mount Wellington from Belle Rive. According to the Hobart Town Advertiser of 26 June 1858, his large oil painting of Hobart was (inexplicably) rejected by the organisers of the Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition. He seems to have set up a photographic studio at Campbell Town in 1860. In 1862-63 he was living in Launceston where, it was later said, he again took photographs (none is known). The Launceston Examiner of 8 July 1862 commented on the paintings he simultaneously exhibited in his studio and selected a forest view of Brazil as the best. He was listed as a 'landscape and architectural painter’ of St John Street, Launceston in Walch’s Tasmanian Almanac for 1863.
Later in 1863 Gritten was back in Melbourne. Several of his Melbourne views were lithographed for Troedel 's Melbourne Album of 1864. An article in the Illustrated Melbourne Post of 22 December 1864 entitled 'The Fine Arts in Victoria’ mentioned Gritten’s entry in the competition for a prize of £200 being offered by the Melbourne Public Library and Fine Arts Committee for the best painting on an Australian theme, the entries then being on display. Gritten had entered a view of Melbourne from the Botanical Gardens (at least two large watercolours of the subject exist, one dated 1864, the other 1865 (offered by Christie’s in April 1998, lot 52, and again by Christie’s Melbourne on 6-7 May 2003, lot 129). Only the winning painting, Nicholas Chevalier 's Buffalo Ranges , became part of the national collection, but in 1866 Archibald Michie presented the National Gallery of Victoria with Gritten’s View on Jackson’s Creek , that he had purchased with his pension as former minister of justice in the Legislative Assembly. Five of Gritten’s paintings were included in a Launceston art union that same year.
Gritten, a founding member of the Victorian Academy of Arts, showed three oils at the first exhibition in 1870: Melbourne from the Botanic Gardens (purchased by surveyor Robert Hoddle – possibly the 1865 version), Brighton Beach and Andermach on the Rhine . The Smugglers’ Cave and its companion piece, The Last Effort , were shown at Melbourne in 1872 as part of Victoria’s collection to be sent to the 1873 London International Exhibition. By then Gritten was no longer in Victoria. In 1871 he had written a sad letter resigning from the VAA and complaining of poor health and poverty. In a postscript he added that his two entries in that year’s exhibition had been removed from the line and hung out of sight. He and his family returned to St John Street, Launceston. Gritten died there on 15 January 1873, following an epileptic fit, leaving his widow and four children in near destitution.
Writers:
Phipps, Jennifer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1818
- Summary
- Henry Gritten was a painter and professional photographer. He 'enjoyed the favour of Prince Albert, the Duke of Norfolk and the Marquis of Westminster'. Gritten was a prolific artist in London and New York. In 1853 he came to Melbourne and was a founding member of the Victorian Academy of Arts.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15 January 1873
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude42.3554334 Longitude-71.060511 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1873-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Biography
- professional photographer, elder brother of Freeman , Benjamin and Nathaniel Batchelder , was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His surname was commonly spelt 'Bachelder’ and he was possibly a kinsman of R.G. Bachelder, a touring showman who brought several popular panoramas from New York to the Australian colonies in 1867-68. In the early 1850s P.M. Batchelder worked as an itinerant daguerreotype photographer on the Californian goldfields, organising a chain of studios on wheels that could easily be moved from site to site. A splendid quarter-plate daguerreotype showing him standing in front of his 'Daguerrian Saloon’ at Vallecito, California (Oakland Museum, California), was taken in the summer of 1853 by one of his pupils and agents, Isaac W. Baker, whom Batchelder had sent in a van that year to Murphy’s Camp, Vallecito and Mokelumne Hill. Meanwhile, brother Ben was at Jamestown and 'David’ and 'Patch’ (Freeman Batchelder?) were also on the payroll, one training to go to Mexico the other possibly at Stockton. On 2 September 1853 P.M. himself was (temporarily) at Sonora.
The Victorian goldrush inspired Perez to extend the chain to the antipodes. He opened a Melbourne branch of P.M. Batchelder at 57 Collins Street East in 1854 and exhibited two photographs of Toorak houses and a portrait of the town clerk at the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition. The firm was soon very successful. The photographer Walter Woodbury , who worked there for £4 week for a few months late in 1855, called it 'the head dagguerotype [sic] establishment in Melbourne’. The photographs he noted there included a portrait of the notorious dancer Lola Montez, displayed with 'all the [other] celebrated characters hung out at the door’. On 14 October 1855 Woodbury sent a small parcel of photographs to his mother in England, mainly his own but including a Batchelder stereoscope because it was 'I think the best thing in the photographic line I ever saw’.
Freeman, Benjamin and Nathaniel turned up in February 1856 and joined Perez. Batchelder’s showed portraits, two views of Melbourne and one of Geelong at the 1857 Victorian Society of Fine Arts Exhibition. Sands & Kenny’s Melbourne Directory for 1857 lists Perez and Freeman as joint occupants of the Batchelder daguerrean and photographic rooms at 57 Collins Street East, but later that year, after Daniel O’Neill had been taken on as a partner, Perez left Victoria. The Batchelder partner in 'Batchelder & O’Neill’s Daguerreotype and Collodion Portrait Rooms’ operating from P.M.'s former premises between 1858 and 1862 was Freeman.
In 1859 Batchelder & O’Neill announced that having recently added 'another large Operating Room to their former extensive premises, with an excellent Sky-light for the taking of Collodion or Glass Portraits, They are now prepared to execute either the Daguerreotype or Glass Pictures in a style surpassed by none in the Colonies’. They were offering: 'Correct copies taken from Paintings or other Daguerreotypes – The trade supplied with every description of Apparatus and Materials. – The goods imported by Batchelder and O’Neill are from the best houses in England and America. – The chemicals are prepared EXPRESSLY for photographic purposes and superior to those sold by Druggists – Price Lists…[and] Goods carefully packed and forwarded to any part of Australia and neighbouring Colonies.’
It is not clear how many of the photographs were taken by any name partner, but Batchelder & O’Neill exhibited portraits and photographic views at a number of exhibitions. Cato mentions that Batchelder’s sold cartes-de-visite of actors and actresses at a shilling each in local theatres between acts, surviving examples including Madame Carandini, G.V. Brooke (whose carte by Batchelder’s was reputed to have sold 50,000 copies), Mr and Mrs Charles Kean, George Coppin and many others (LT). Many were taken by the later firm, which had no Batchelder brother connections, although the initiative seems to have been theirs. Batchelder’s (and its successors) was exclusively a photography firm. When Rev. J. Buckland exhibited Portrait of a Gentleman by Batchelder & O’Neill in the watercolour section of the 1862-63 Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition it was doubtless a hand-coloured paper photograph or chromatype, presumably of Buckland himself.
Batchelder & O’Neill were awarded a first-class certificate for 16 hand-coloured portrait photographs of officers of the Metropolitan Volunteer Brigades when these were shown at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition. When sent on to the 1862 London International Exhibition, the collection was awarded an honourable mention. Freeman Batchelder may have accompanied the photographs to England; Batchelder & O’Neill’s photographs on sale at the 1863 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition included 40 views of Melbourne and vicinity, reproductions of paintings—and 12 views of the London International Exhibition.
By the end of 1864 Batchelder & O’Neill was at 27 (or 28) Swanston Street with O’Neill as sole partner. Perez had long returned to Boston; in 1860 he opened a studio there in partnerhsip with James Wallace Black (1825-96). He died in North America in 1873. By 1866 the old firm no longer existed, the Swanston Street premises having been taken over by their erstwhile manager, Charles Johnson, while the name 'Batchelder’s Portrait Rooms’ (and, presumably, the firm’s negatives) now belonged to F.A. Dunn , J. Botterill and J.N. Wilson . Listed at 41 Collins Street East in 1865, the latter operated as Batchelder & Co. from 1866 to 1895, mainly under W.J. Stubbs . Collections of photographs (mainly on paper) from the studios of P.M. Batchelder and Batchelder & O’Neill are in the La Trobe, Mitchell and other libraries.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1818
- Summary
- The eldest of the Batchelder brothers, Perez was undoubtedly instrumental in prompting his siblings to emigrate to Australia, arriving as he did several years before the others. A successful professional photographer, Batchelder was in partnership with his brothers briefly before joining forces with Daniel O'Neill.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1873
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1873-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- miniature painter, sketcher and novelist, was born and lived in England until 1840, when she came to NSW with her husband, the Rev. Francis Vidal, and their three sons. They spent five years at Penrith before returning to England. Considered Australia’s first woman novelist, Vidal wrote Tales for the Bush (Sydney, 1845)-which, despite the title, lacks any obvious Australian content-and The Cabramatta Store , published as part of Cabramatta, and Woodleigh Farm (London, 1849), a series of vignettes about life in the Nepean district of NSW. Her third and last 'Australian’ work is the full-length novel Bengala: or, Some Time Ago (London, 1860: later reprinted), which is set in a fictitious township north of Sydney. She never mentions painting but in 1995 the National Library of Australia acquired a series of items relating to Mary Vidal notably three miniature paintings – including a self-portrait and a portrait of her husband (c.1840s. oil on wood) – and a sketchbook of flower specimens painted 1871-72.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- A miniature painter and sketcher whose works are held in the National Library of Australia, Vidal is better known as a novelist and is considered Australia's first female novelist, despite only living in Australia for five years.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1873
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1873-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- painter, photographer (?) and art teacher, was said to have been a portrait and house painter from Nottingham, England when he arrived in Australia, although Lake and Mulford were unable to find any artist of this name in Nottingham. It may have been an alias assumed when he was tried at the Essex Quarter Sessions in Colchester on 22 June 1837 for breaking into and robbing Mr Craske’s grocery shop in High Street. The offender, who gave his name as 'Frederick Strange’ and was said to be 'a stranger to the town’, was sentenced to transportation for life for several robberies, having admitted to the capital crime of 'Burglary and stealing a Watch at Colchester’. His gaol report read 'Character and Connexions Bad’ but he behaved well in the hulks and he caused little trouble during the voyage to Australia and after he arrived at Hobart Town on 18 January 1838 by the Neptune . He was then said to be 31 years old, 5 foot six and a half inches tall, with dark brown hair, red whiskers, light brown eyebrows and dark blue eyes.
Henry Allport said that Strange worked in Hobart Town in the early 1850s for a man called Graves, who kept a paint shop, but Lake and Mulford point out that this could only have happened in the late 1830s when Strange was still a convict. (By the early 1850s John Woodcock Graves had long given up his paint shop.) Early in 1841 Strange was employed as a messenger in the government service. When granted a third-class pass later that year he moved to Launceston and set himself up as a portrait painter and drawing master in a small brick cottage in York Street. In Launceston he painted a portrait of the Scot John Nicolson, who worked for the Commissariat (c.1845, QVMAG), then a portrait of Nicolson’s wife (c.1845, QVMAG), as well as 'nearly life size’ portraits of Jonathan Stammers Waddell and Ann Waddell (1846 47, QVMAG). The Waddells’ nephew Henry Button had a smaller portrait painted about the same time (now lost). Later Button wrote of making progress in drawing under Strange’s tutelage until pressure of work forced him to discontinue.
Strange’s portrait of a Launceston boy, William Tyson (c.1843), was offered for sale by Deutscher Fine Art, Melbourne in 1988. A pair of unsigned and undated oil portraits of Mr and Mrs James Austin (of Austin’s Ferry) attributed to Strange (VDL Folk Museum) were probably also done about this time. Strange received his ticket of leave in 1845. This allowed him to travel farther afield, but he still had difficulties in making a living as a portrait painter. On 4 June 1846 William Williamson of Launceston wrote to Walter Davidson of Riccarton, Campbell Town:
…The person I have referred to is Mr. Strange a portrait painter, he is badly off and from the specimens I have seen of his abilities in his profession only requires to be known to be patronized. I do not consider Munday’s [ Henry Mundy ] paintings at £20 without frames superior to his at £5-5/- with frames – his unassuming deportment and extreme desire to give satisfaction has interested those who know him in his behalf – I wd strongly recommend you to have your own & your family’s likenesses’ by him.
Davidson took some years to patronise Strange, but other members of the Scottish community in North Tasmania commissioned portraits more rapidly, including surveyor James Scott who had portraits of himself and his wife done about 1846 (p.c.). Nevertheless, his support remained limited – largely confined to the Northern Tasmanian Scottish community – even after Strange added landscape painting to his repertoire in the late 1840s. He received his conditional pardon on 4 December 1849 and may have returned to Hobart Town for a short stay in the early 1850s – after participating in an 1851 Launceston exhibition and before the end of 1854. Hobart Town from Knocklofty (o/c, TMAG)
In 1851 Strange exhibited several local landscapes and views at the St John’s Bazaar and Exhibition of Pictures and was cited by the Launceston Examiner (15 March 1851) as among three 'artists long resident in this town’, the other two being J. W. Cook and [Philip] Barnes . On 11 January 1855 he advertised 'Lessons given in Landscape Drawing, Portraits painted in oil, or taken by Daguerreotype’ in his Paterson Street studio opposite Stewart’s coach-building establishment. No photographs are known, but during the next few years he painted many views of Launceston and its surrounds in oil and watercolour, from a studio in Launceston’s main thoroughfare, Brisbane Street, in 1856-58, where he also taught. His best-known works date from this period. Although rarely signed, identification is possible through consideration of style and provenance. Firmly attributed are Brisbane Street, Launceston, May 1858 (w/c, QVMAG), which includes the building he occupied with merchant David Murray, Tyson’s Saw Mill (c.1858, w/c, ALMFA) – his only known signed painting – and his largest work Launceston from the Westbury Road (1859, o/c, QVMAG), with a watercolour version in the Launceston Club, and Launceston 1860 (o/c, ML).
Public Buildings and St. John’s Episcopalian Church, Launceston are inscribed respectively as plates 9 and 11 in a collection of watercolours in an album (p.c., on loan QVMAG), a large portfolio completed in 1856 'to be published as soon as practicable, with a view of affording to the people of England, and the world at large, better information respecting this highly favoured colony’ ( Launceston Examiner ,22 May 1856, p.3). The collection also includes a large oval watercolour View of Launceston over the River Bar and the watercolour Upper St John Street, looking North. View taken from opposite the residence of H. Dowling . However, no publication eventuated. A two-colour lithograph, City of Hobarton. From Knocklofty (ALMFA; TMAG), published by Robin Vaughan Hood at some time before 1854, is his only certain venture into the field of printmaking. In 1859 he fell back on the then fashionable ploy of an art union to supplement his income, announcing in the Launceston Examiner (15 January 1859) that a raffle of an oil painting was to be held in his studio with 20 tickets at £1 15s each.
On Christmas Day 1861 Strange, aged about 50, married widow Elizabeth Campbell, another former convict who was aged about 57. In March 1862 his Cameron Street studio was taken over by the portrait photographer C. A. H. Williamson and although he may have continued working there for a time as colourist and retoucher of daguerreotypes for Williamson (perhaps this was also his role in his earlier foray into photography), he later joined his wife in shopkeeping. In 1867 he was listed in the Directory of Tasmania as a grocer of Charles Street, Launceston, modest rented premises where the couple also lived that can only have provided a marginal living. Strange died in Launceston on 31 March 1873 of rheumatic fever. His death certificate gives his profession as 'artist’. Elizabeth Strange continued the grocery store after his death.
Writers:
Kerr, JoanStilwell, G. T.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1807
- Summary
- Shipped to Tasmania for robbing a grocery shop, Strange established himself as a portrait painter in Launceston where he also painted a number of views of the town, many of which are now held in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston. After a time spent working as a colourist and retoucher of daguerreotypes for C.A.H. Williamson, Strange ironically turned to the grocery business.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 31 March 1873
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1873-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fleet St, London, England
- Biography
- ALEXANDER HORACE BURKITT was born in Fleet St London in 1807. By age 13 he was attracted to the art of drawing. He experimented with watercolours, oils, etching on copper-plate, glyphography (an electro-type process giving raised copy of engraved plate for use in letterpress printing) and lithography. He even tried wood carving. In his early 20s he became acquainted with George Cruikshank, a satirical draughtsman, who illustrated Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.
He married Jane Goldsmith of Sudbury in 1833 and was a clerk in the Bank of England for twenty-nine years. He was very interested in antiquities and his articles, sketches and etchings were published in both the British Archaeological journals and the publications of the Antiquarian Etching Club during the 1840s and 50s. He was one of the illustrators of the book, Life of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. by George Williams Fulcher, which was published in 1856. One of his etchings, Figure of a Satyr adduced against Henry III of France as a proof of sorcery, is held at the British Museum.
After his wife died and with his remaining children, he followed his eldest son, Horace, to Australia in 1854. For the next 10 years he worked and travelled around Victoria and south-eastern South Australia. He often sketched and painted what he saw. In August 1862, while he was an assistant at the Williamstown Observatory he painted a watercolour of it which is held by the Museum Victoria. Shortly afterwards he travelled with the priest Julian Edmund Tenison Woods helping him with his book, Geological Observations in South Australia (London, 1862). He made many sketches which were used to illustrate the book. With regard to these engravings, Woods noted in his preface:
The views are from photographs. The fossils, &c., are from drawings by Mr. Alexander Burkitt, of Williamstown Observatory, Melbourne… This opportunity is taken of returning very grateful thanks to that gentleman for his exertions in perfecting the illustration of the work.
Woods’s A History of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia (2 vols, London 1865) thanked Burkitt (who by then had left his position at the observatory) for the maps and sketches and “a terrible amount of copying”.
Other drawings by Burkitt now grace the shire offices and local museums in many of the places he visited. He also drew up a map showing explorations in Australia which was published in 1863.
In 1864, on his way to Queensland, his spent some days in Sydney visiting Botany Bay and Manly and doing sketches of the local scenery. He also painted a sketch of Spicer’s Gap as he journeyed from Warwick to Ipswich.
He settled in Ipswich, Queensland. Already a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians, he also became a member of various scientific and artistic societies as well as assisting with the publication of a small paper after the style of London Punch. In 1871 Alexander Horace retired to Cleveland where he died in 1873.
Writers:
Staff Writer
niknikjw
duggim
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 19 September 1807
- Summary
- Received thanks for his contribution to the illustrations of Woods's 'A History of the Discovery and Exploration of Australia' (2 vols, London, 1865). for the maps and sketches The map showing explorations in Australia was published in 1863.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 October 1873
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude51.1321498 Longitude-2.990817357 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1873-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bath, Somersetshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born on 5 August 1807 in Bath, Somersetshire, daughter of John West, an artist of Bath, and Anne née Calder. Her father worked as a painter and lithographer in Bath from about 1800 to 1830, specialising in miniature portraiture and scenes of the West Country and Wales. His landscapes have been described as 'relying on a few simplified outlines, sharply silhouetted forms, and a strong contrast between Indian ink shadows and areas of pale primrose or blue’, a description equally applicable to some of Eliza’s early drawings, although a great contrast to her later strong and colourful 'opaque’ works.
'J. West senior’ of North Parade, Bath exhibited a 3 feet 7 inch x 4 feet 8 inch (109 × 142 cm) painting of Berry Pomeroy Castle and Valley at London’s British Institution in 1824, using 'senior’ to distinguish himself from his son James Baugham West, a miniature painter and lithographer (later a surveyor at Cape Town, SA) who exhibited a miniature portrait of the Hon. Mrs Norton at the Royal Academy in 1856 from a London address. Another brother, Henry, was a well-known music teacher, conductor and composer at Bath. So it was hardly surprising that Eliza also became a painter, though she was not listed professionally as a 'Professor of Drawing’ in the Bath business directory until after she married John Noel Thurston in St James’s Church of England, Bath on 2 February 1830. Surviving pencil drawings from this period (p.c.) include one of a black and a white swan inscribed verso, 'Eliza Thurston. Teacher of Drawing. Bath’.
Eliza’s husband, an auctioneer at Bath, was the only child of Horatio Thurston of Kington House, Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and of Elizabeth, daughter of Rear-Admiral Holmes, but had clearly come down in the world since the Thurstons’ financial state was precarious. The Thornbury property had disappeared and John worked as a commercial traveller after their marriage. Any money Eliza earned from her paintings and drawing lessons was clearly welcome. The growing family, finally comprising three boys and three girls, moved between lodgings in Kensington New Town (now South Kensington) and Southampton. In 1845-46 they were living at Newington Green, Surrey; their sixth child, Emily Mary Ann , was born there.
However disadvantageous the circumstances, Eliza continued to paint. After John died of tuberculosis in May 1846 at St Helier, Jersey, leaving his widow and six children almost totally dependent upon a small legacy from Mrs Thurston’s grandfather, she decided that the future looked more promising in the colonies. The two eldest sons, John Bates and Horatio Thurston , reached Sydney in the Ann Holzberg on 4 September 1853 then John (a sailor on board) returned and collected the youngest son, Henry, who had stayed on to complete his schooling. Eliza Thurston and her three daughters arrived on 23 December 1853; John and Henry returned in 1855. On 16 January 1854, Mrs Thurston advertised as a 'Professor of Drawing and Painting in every style, Miniature Painter &c.’, stating that 'specimens and terms’ were available from the Bible Depository in Pitt Street and at Piddington’s, the stationers. She added that she would also accept orders addressed to her at the Glebe Post Office. In 1855 she was running a ladies’ seminary and teaching drawing at 59 Bourke Street, Woolloomooloo, but it was not a success; Eliza Thurston, widow, of 1 Horbury Terrace, Macquarie Street, was declared bankrupt on 13 December 1855. Her debtors included the booksellers Waugh & Cox who had supplied her with painting and sketching material valued at just over £13. She had another girls’ school at 62 Harrington Street in 1857 then disappears from Sydney directories.
In 1857 a Sydney artist catalogued as 'Miss’ E. Thurston exhibited with the Victorian Fine Arts Society in Melbourne, showing two paintings for sale at £20 each: Pont-ne-Valson, Glamorganshire and Snow Scene in the Highlands . There is no doubt that this was Eliza Thurston, the marital status simply a misprint; her large, rather gloomy painting of the Welsh bridge is still in family possession (and her daughter Eliza West Thurston was too young to have painted it). As well as similar landscape subjects, Mrs Thurston painted at least one historical work, The Retreat from Moscow . It too focused on the setting rather than the figures, depicting a soldier from Napoleon’s army lying exhausted in a wide expanse of snow with another bending over him.
Snow scenes were something of a speciality. Her Snow Piece, near Combe Teign Head, Devonshire , shown with the Society of British Artists at Suffolk Street in 1845 and awarded the society’s silver medal, apparently came to New South Wales with her since by 1869 it was owned by Mr Billyard. Thurston continued to paint such scenes in New South Wales, although she soon added colonial subjects to her repertoire. Most of her work is undated, although an inscription on the back of her watercolour The Town & Harbour of Sydney – N.S.W. Taken from the North Shore (ANZ Bank, Melbourne) includes the date 1857. Its viewpoint is similar to that in Conrad Martens 's well-known lithographic View of Sydney N.S.W. 1854 , but Thurston’s treatment is broader and more painterly; there is considerable variation in detail and it is by no means a simple copy. An undated oval Distant View of Sydney (w/c, DG) and other harbour views (p.c.) also survive, some in the coral and sea-shell frames she made for them.
In 1860 John Bates Thurston leased a farm, Rosedale, on the Georges River and set up house with his mother and his two unmarried sisters, Eliza and Emily. Less than two years later the river flooded and the family was ruined and forced to abandon the property. Mrs Thurston, Emily and Eliza lived with Horatio at Mudgee in 1865-67 and possibly earlier. Among the works singled out by the jurors as 'deserving of especial notice’ at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition were two watercolour views of the Blue Mountains by Mrs Thurston, described as 'a lady 84 years old’. Although then aged about sixty (and there were no senior Elizas in the family), she was undoubtedly the 'amateur artist of Hartley’ who was showing four 'opaque’ watercolours of New South Wales scenery. Sent on to the 1867 Paris Universal Exhibition (with no special pleading for her age), her paintings were awarded a silver medal.
In 1869 Thurston was said to be living at Miller’s Point, Sydney (presumably at 31 Crown Road with her eldest child, Anne Maria, who had married a wealthy cast-iron manufacturer, Simon Zöllner, in 1855). She showed several watercolours at the New South Wales Agricultural Society’s inaugural exhibition that year, including Mountain Scene on Bathurst Road , one of several gouaches she painted of Capertee Valley from Crown Ridge on the Sydney-Bathurst road, a dramatic mountain view on the way to Horatio’s home at Mudgee. Three are in private collections and a version dated 1868 is in the Mitchell Library. An 1867 gouache of a man and woman huddled in the snow is also in a family collection together with a preliminary drawing for it – evidence of her habit of painting new versions of earlier subjects.
Eliza Thurston died at the Zöllner’s home – now at 38 Macleay Street, Potts Point – on 3 February 1873 and was buried in the Balmain Church of England Cemetery. After Horatio’s death his widow purchased several of her mother-in-law’s paintings from a member of the Cox family at Mudgee to hand on to her children. Most remain in family possession.
Eliza’s husband, an auctioneer and commercial traveller, was from a landed family that had come down in the world. The Thurstons’ financial position seems to have always been precarious and the growing family, finally consisting of three boys and three girls, moved between lodgings in Kensington New Town (now South Kensington) and Southampton. Any money Eliza earned from her paintings and from giving drawing lessons was clearly welcome. After John died of tuberculosis in May 1846 at St Helier, Jersey, Eliza decided that the future looked more promising in the colonies. She reached Sydney with her three daughters on 23 December 1853, to join and be joined by her sons.
Just over three weeks after she arrived, on 16 January 1854, Mrs Thurston advertised as a 'Professor of Drawing and Painting in every style, Miniature Painter &c.’, stating that 'specimens and terms’ were available from the Bible Depository in Pitt Street and at Piddington’s, the stationers. She added that she would also accept orders addressed to her at the Glebe Post Office. In 1855 she was running a ladies’ seminary and teaching drawing at 59 Bourke Street, Woolloomooloo, but this was not a success; Eliza Thurston, widow, of 1 Horbury Terrace, Macquarie Street, was declared bankrupt on 13 December. She had another girls’ school at 62 Harrington Street in 1857 then disappeared from Sydney directories. However, she showed two paintings for sale at £20 each with the Victorian Fine Arts Society in Melbourne that year: Pont-ne-Valson, Glamorganshire (still held by the family) and Snow Scene in the Highlands .
In 1860 John Bates Thurston leased a farm, Rosedale, on the Georges River and set up house with his mother and his two unmarried sisters, Eliza and Emily. Less than two years later the river flooded, the family was ruined and forced to abandon the property. Afterwards Mrs Thurston, Emily and Eliza lived at Mudgee with her son Horatio.
Writers:
Symons, Berry
Note: primary biographer of DAA entry; co-biographer of Heritage entryKerr, Joan
Note: editor of DAA entry, co-biographer of Heritage entry; plus additions
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 5 August 1807
- Summary
- Despite having to raise a young family on her own in a country not of her birth, Eliza Thurston managed to become an established and recognised artist winning medals and awards for her paintings.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3 February 1873
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1806-01-01 End Date1873-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Holborn, London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and customs officer, was born on 23 February 1806 in Holborn, London, eldest of the four children of Frederick Garling and his first wife Elizabeth, née Spratt.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 February 1806
- Summary
- Earning his living working at Customs House, Frederick Garling only had early mornings and weekends to spend on his painting yet he was regarded as one of Sydney's most prolific marine painters, painting every ship that visited Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 November 1873
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude53.3767326 Longitude-1.1573759 Start Date1805-01-01 End Date1873-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Letwell, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and clergyman, was born in Letwell, Yorkshire, England. Orphaned when aged about thirteen, a few years later he decided to enter the Church of England. He studied at Queen’s College, Cambridge. On graduating in 1828 he was ordained deacon and appointed to the curacy of St Botolph’s, Cambridge. In 1830 he became vicar of Coveney and Manea on the Isle of Ely. The Church Missionary Society appointed him to New Zealand and he embarked in the Prince Regent in February 1836 en route to New Zealand via New South Wales. Accompanying him were his wife Caroline, née Fox, and their three children; another child was born in New South Wales in 1837. His diary for the voyage contains a few drawings of shipboard life, passing landmarks, fish and birds. Portrait sketches of a woman and child, presumably Taylor’s wife and one of their children, also appear in the journal, either drawn on the voyage out or in Australia. 'I took a likeness of Mr. Yate with tolerable success’, he wrote on 3 April 1836, but this must have been given to the sitter (or subsequently destroyed).
After arriving at Sydney, Taylor accused the Rev. William Yate, his fellow missionary who had helped him with his studies of the Maori language, of 'improper conduct’ with one of the officers on the voyage. Yate was suspended and recalled to England. Owing to this case and to the illness of the children, the transfer to New Zealand was delayed and Taylor was pressed to stay on in NSW and assist the old and ailing Rev. Samuel Marsden with parochial duties at Parramatta. Marsden found the family a cottage – 'in a most ruinous state, the water finding its way into every room’, Taylor wrote. In October 1836 the family moved to Liverpool where Richard had been appointed temporary chaplain. The following year he took up additional duties as minister to the Male Orphan School, the gaol, the hospital and the two local iron gangs at Liverpool and Lansdowne Bridge.
Taylor made several excursions to country regions of New South Wales (usually on foot as he was unable to ride a horse) and his diary is illustrated with drawings of the various churches and institutions where he officiated, as well as residences and views in Sydney, Parramatta and rural areas. Like many contemporary clergymen, he was a keen natural historian and wherever possible combined his rural duties with botanical and geological excursions. On a visit of approximately four weeks to Newcastle, for example, he regularly preached at the church, hospital and gaol and also made excursions to sketch geological formations and natural history subjects in the region, in particular descending a coal-mine to examine and sketch fossil impressions.
By August 1837 Taylor was very eager to continue on to New Zealand but Bishop W.G. Broughton, who was extremely short of clergy in New South Wales and not above poaching the occasional parson in transit (viz. Rev. W. H. Walsh ), advised him to remain until the proceedings against Yate had been concluded in England. Taylor resigned from his Liverpool duties in December 1838 then was immediately given temporary charge of the Campbelltown parish. The following month he finally escaped the bishop’s clutches, visited Captain Robert Marsh Westmacott on the south coast of New South Wales then left for New Zealand in February 1839 with his family. He remained in New Zealand until his death, apart from a visit to England in 1855 where he published his account of the Maori race, Te ika a Maui , with 100 illustrations from his own sketches. In later life he was absorbed in scientific studies, corresponding with many prominent colleagues and being elected a member of the British Geological Society. He died on 10 October 1873. The Alexander Turnbull Library holds numerous sketches and papers, including 453 pen, pencil and watercolour drawings dating from 1835 to 1860, including his Australian subjects.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1805
- Summary
- A missionary from England, Richard Taylor (1805 1873) documented his travels, excursions and acquaintances with many sketches, illustrations and watercolour drawings. His journal entries detail trips around New South Wales, New Zealand and England.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 October 1873
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude51.1371483 Longitude0.2673446 Start Date1801-01-01 End Date1873-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer and solicitor, son of John Stone, was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. He became a solicitor and at the age of twenty-eight decided to try his luck in Western Australia. He came out in the Caroline , which left Worthing in 1829 with sixty-five people on board. During the rough passage out Stone, who sported a large black moustache and must have been something of a raconteur, regaled his fellow passengers with long stories distracting them from their discomfort. The Caroline arrived at Fremantle on 12 October 1829, four months after the foundation of the Swan River settlement.
Alfred Stone settled into the antipodes quickly, and in December 1829 Captain Stirling appointed him a justice of the peace. The following year he was granted many acres on the Swan and Avon rivers. Some of his fellow Caroline passengers had difficulty settling in the new colony, but Stone prospered. By the end of 1830 he was also clerk to the Magistrates’ Court at £100 per annum. He married Sarah Maria Helms in 1835 and they had a son and two daughters. The family lived in the first house built on St George’s Terrace, accordingly named Alpha Cottage, of which Alfred’s ink plan survives (reproduced in J. Archer, Building a Nation , Sydney 1987). Later, Alfred was appointed the colony’s first Crown solicitor. He died on 7 March 1873. He and his youngest brother George Frederick Stone (later attorney general) founded a family whose descendants still live in Western Australia.
By the 1860s wet-plate photography had come to Western Australia. Alfred Stone became an enthusiast and recorded Perth and its development over the decade. He took photographs of the Old Government House, the Town Hall, the new Government House being built, garden parties and the leading citizens at play, his own house and family, the sandy streets of Perth, and other excellent views of the small but growing colony. He always kept his amateur status as a photographer, yet a great number of his photographs have survived, carefully preserved in family albums. Servants of Gov. John Stephen Hampton outside Govt. House (1868), for instance, is included in an album Stone made for his daughter, Fanny Anne Hampton (BL). His photographs give a valuable picture of Perth in the 1860s and 1870s, especially since the work of his professional counterparts has largely disappeared.
Writers:
Pheloung, Ann
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1801
- Summary
- Although an amateur photographer, Stone's work is a significant record of the city of Perth's development between the 1860s and 1870s in Western Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 March 1873
- Age at death
- 72
Details
Latitude55.836517 Longitude-4.5122831 Start Date1842-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Johnstone, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- Mark Watt Reid, Scottish sketcher and station manager, arrived in New South Wales in 1858. His drawing of Woodstock, the property he managed in 1865 beside the Haughton River, near Townsville, was bequeathed to the City of Townsville. Interestingly, Reid’s River was named after Mark.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
DAAO staff writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1842
- Summary
- Mark Watt Reid, Scottish sketcher and station manager, arrived in New South Wales in 1858. His drawing of Woodstock, the property he managed in 1865 beside the Haughton River, near Townsville, was bequeathed to the City of Townsville. Interestingly, Reid's River was named after Mark.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 December 1872
- Age at death
- 30
Details
Latitude52.9212617 Longitude-1.4761491 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Derby, England, UK
- Biography
- Amateur photographer, watchmaker and diarist, he was the elder son of Francis Abbott and Mary, née Woolley, of Derby, England. His father arrived at Van Diemen’s Land in 1844, having been sentenced to seven years’ transportation. He set up business as a clock-maker in Hobart Town and in 1850 his wife and family were granted free passage to join him. Alfred Abbott also worked as a watchmaker, produced 'view pictures’ and, with his brother Charles Abbott , accompanied John Mathieson Sharp on photographic excursions. His father loaned a collection of Alfred’s stereoscopic transparencies of Tasmanian scenery (with viewing apparatus) to the 1862 Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition.
Alfred Abbott’s important album of early photographs survives in the Crowther Library together with a transcript of his 1858 60 diaries. As well as numerous photographs by the Abbott brothers, many Tasmanian and a few Victorian photographers of the 1850s and 1860s are included: Morton Allport , George Cherry , Samuel Clifford , Edward Haigh , A. McDonald , Francis Russell Nixon , John Mathieson Sharp and Charles Alfred Woolley . Alfred’s own photographs are mainly views of Hobart, its buildings, and nearby scenery such as Grass-Tree Hill and Fern Tree Valley. Most are stereoscopic prints, a few are single half-plates.
Alfred Abbott married Georgiana Sophia Jane, daughter of James Fitzgerald, at Holy Trinity Church, Hobart Town, in October 1865. He died at Ashfield, Sydney, on 3 September 1872. His wife died three months later of consumption.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1838
- Summary
- Amateur photographer, watchmaker and diarist. Known for his stereoscopic prints of Hobart and its surrounds. He also produced an important album incorporating works by Tasmanian and Victorian photographers of the 1850s and 1860s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3 September 1872
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude-30 Longitude135 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, watercolourist and lithographer, was born in South Australia; his father, also named William (1804-1886 see ADB 2), and his mother Julia née Matthews, had migrated from Plymouth and arrived there in February 1837. The National Library has a sketchbook of pen and ink and pencil drawings by William Wyatt dated 1857, including five images of traditional Aboriginal figures camping, dancing and throwing spears. The National Library also has two watercolours by Wyatt, while an undated watercolour, Hindmarsh Island , is in the Mitchell Library. An ink sketch, South Australian Picnic , dated December 1859 and described as 'showing a picnic party of eighteen people seated around a cloth spread on the ground’ when offered for sale in 1927, has not been located. Two ink drawings, End of a Government Road surveyed in 1839 , drawn in 1859, and an Aboriginal man as 'Australia’ (a good-humoured parody of Britannia), dated 16 January 1857, appeared in an 1857 sketchbook of mixed South Australian drawings offered for sale by the Adelaide bookseller Michael Treloar in 1993.
Wyatt made several lithographs of the South Australian mines in the 1860s. In 1867 he drew a gently comic lithograph, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Welcome by the Natives , showing the young royal visitor in naval uniform being greeted by the animals of Australia (NLA). Wyatt was one of the two painting judges for the 1870 SA Society of Arts annual exhibition, the other being George Hamilton . It was probably another William Wyatt , [possibly related?] who won the sculpture prize at the Society’s exhibition the following year.
Adelaide’s Wyatt Benevolent Institution was founded by the senior William Wyatt (1804-1886) because his only surviving child (William Wyatt 1838-1872) had predeceased him without leaving an heir.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1838
- Summary
- Colonial era South Australian sketcher, watercolourist and lithographer.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28 December 1872
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude51 Longitude9 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Germany
- Biography
- travelling oil, house, sign and coach painter and professional photographer, was of German birth. In 1858 he travelled south-east from Sydney to Yass, New South Wales where he painted a large, 5 feet 4 inches x 2 feet 4 inches (162.5 × 71.1 cm), and detailed oil view of the town. Having provided the picture with 'a handsome cedar frame’ decorated with painted heraldic devices and hung it in Mr Colls’ Commercial Hotel, Grube announced in the Yass Courier on 3 July that it would be raffled on Monday 12 July with thirty tickets at £1 each. The painting is now in the possession of the Hall Committee of St Augustine’s Catholic Parish, Yass, previously on long-term loan to the National Library of Australia.
On 7 August 1858, Grube was soliciting work at Yass as a house, coach and ornamental painter and signwriter. In November he was involved in a master and servant’s court case and the following February a court case was expected over buildings he had worked on for Dr Blake. He abandoned the house painting and decorating business and within a few weeks was advertising as a photographer (March 1859). Then he moved on. When arrested by the police at Queenscliff, Victoria, the following year for stealing a bay gelding at Adelong Creek, New South Wales, John Grube was said to be 'a German Photographic artist’ who used the alias of Hobart. (No photographs are known under either name.) Described as 'fair complexioned, with light moustache and stoops a little when walking’, he was travelling with his wife and child.
Grube’s constant brushes with the law came to a head in January 1860 when he was convicted of forging a promissory note for £100 and, vigorously protesting his innocence, was sent to prison for two years. In June 1864 he was again in trouble, being accused of fraud at Geelong (Vic.). On this occasion he was described as a German ('but speaks good English’) about thirty years of age, 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm) tall and of smart appearance, habitually dressed in a 'light tweed suit, inverness cape, and deerstalker hat’. Presumably after serving another term in prison, he worked as a building contractor from Dorcas Street West, Emerald Hill (now South Melbourne) – his address in the Melbourne Directory for 1867.
The following year Grube was back at Sydney working as an oil and colour man and japanner (staining floors and furniture black in Japanese style). Another foray into the Fine Arts is recorded in 1870 when Grube’s Lithgow Valley, Zig-Zag (unlocated) was shown at Sydney’s Intercolonial Exhibition in the section reserved for oil paintings by amateurs. It was for sale at £55. In partnership with Frederick Speck, he had an ornamental sign-writing business at 65 Market Street, Sydney by 1871. Speck alone was listed in the business in 1873 and it seems likely that Grube died in 1872. A Mrs Ann Grube, possibly his widow, lived at Vinegrove, Darlington, from 1876 to 1880. He might, of course, have been back in gaol.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1834
- Summary
- Travelling oil, house, sign and coach painter and professional photographer of German birth. Grube had constant brushes with the law and used the alias John Edward Hobart.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1872
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude-34.5291019 Longitude150.3158824 Start Date1834-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Oldbury, Sutton Forest, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- watercolour painter, illustrator, writer, naturalist and taxidermist, is more famous as a botanist and writer than as a visual artist. This is perhaps not fair to her reputation for although she wrote six novels – the first, Gertrude the Emigrant , in 1857 (being illustrated by S.T. Gill and Edmond Thomas, apparently after her drawings) – and published many botanical articles throughout the 1860s in her column called 'A Voice from the Country’ in the Sydney Morning Herald and in the Horticultural Magazine , sketching and painting in watercolours was an integral part of her artistic life.
Atkinson was born at Oldbury near Berrima (NSW) on 25 February 1834, the younger daughter of two authors; her father, James Atkinson, published An Account of the State of Agriculture and Grazing in New South Wales in 1826 and her mother was Charlotte Barton, author of A Mother’s Offering to Her Children (Sydney 1841), the first children’s book written and published in Australia. Her father having died when she was two months old, Louisa was educated by her mother, who taught her to draw plants, flowers and animals. A devout Anglican, she became a dedicated church worker who assisted the poor. She was a friend of the poet, botanist and teacher Dr William Woolls and regularly corresponded with the eminent botanist Baron Ferdinand von Mueller. Her many accomplishments included being an expert taxidermist and she kept numerous stuffed animals to assist her in her work, according to her granddaughter. She wrote in her Herald column about a native cat’s skin she had been given when the animal was shot near Mt Tomah, and she made a vivid ink and watercolour sketch of the live animal from it (private collection).
On 11 March 1869 Louisa Atkinson married James Snowden Calvert. They had a daughter in 1872. Louisa died at their home in Sutton Forest 18 days later, on 28 April. She had always been in delicate health, despite her vigorous bush explorations. Woolls delivered a lecture in her memory in July and attempted to institute an annual prize in her name for the best collection of native flowers, but the project came to nothing.
Those of her works which have survived are mainly in the Mitchell Library, donated by her granddaughter, Miss Janet Cosh. Atkinson’s splendid large watercolour of a possum (varnished to look like an oil) was given to the National Trust (Old Government House, Parramatta) by Miss Cosh who also gave or bequeathed drawings to the National Library. Especially fine are the animal and bird pictures with the bushland background sketched in lightly with pen strokes while the animals are carefully drawn and fully coloured (ML and NLA). They are never stilted but appear to move naturally and are well grouped to form a balanced picture, e.g. a male bower bird and a blue wren full of character and movement (ML).
It is a tragedy that Atkinson’s fully illustrated book on the fauna and flora of New South Wales reputedly being prepared in Germany at the time of her death never appeared, more so that the paintings have vanished. She did, however, provide illustrations of animals and views for her articles in local journals. 'Notes on the Months’, signed L.A., which appeared occasionally throughout the first series of the Illustrated Sydney News was usually accompanied by engravings after her drawings: Magpies , for example, in the second issue (15 October 1853) and The Opossum (actually two) in January 1854, a subject very close to a surviving watercolour sketch (ML). Several were reprinted.
Some of Louisa Atkinson’s sketches were published in A Voice from the Country (1979) and Excursions from Berrima (1981). Louisa Atkinson of the Kurrajong , a booklet published by the Kurrajong Heights Garden Club in 1979 when a commemorative plaque to her memory was unveiled at Kurrajong, included two of her animal sketches: the eastern water rat and a delightful brush-tailed rock wallaby. Patricia Clarke’s revealing and sympathetic biography (1990) is well illustrated, but again the drawings are small black-and-white reproductions. Atkinson’s fine technique in both watercolour and pen-and-ink will only be fully appreciated when printed in facsimile. A beginning was made with Elizabeth Lawson’s book using Atkinson originals in ML.
Writers:
Crittenden, Victor
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 25 February 1834
- Summary
- Colonial-era NSW naturalist writer and illustrator. Caroline Atkinson was the daughter of Charlotte Barton, author of 'A Mother's Offering to Her Children' (1841), the first children's book written and published in Australia. Atkinson herself was an accomplished writer whose work appeared in numerous publications including the Sydney Morning Herald, often accompanied with a sketch.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 28 April 1872
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude-33.7511954 Longitude150.6941711 Start Date1833-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Penrith, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, only daughter of Phillip Parker King and Harriet, née Lethbridge, was born on her parents’ property, Dunheved, near Penrith, New South Wales. Libby, as she was known in the family, was given an album (p.c.) by her brother Charles in 1848, which she filled with sketches some possibly collected or drawn earlier. Those initialled 'R.L.K.’ are by her brother Robert ; others, typical picturesque pencil and wash views, are presumably her own work though unsigned. Attributed are a group of four views including one of Tahlee, the house at Port Stephens where the family lived when her father was commissioner of the Australian Agricultural Company (c.1839 49) and the wooden observatory erected by her father in the Tahlee garden. As P.P. King took Libby on a short trip to Britain in 1847 these views would have been made before then or soon after they returned the following year.
Elizabeth King’s own portrait was drawn by the fashionable Sydney artist William Nicholas before a second English voyage led to her becoming, in 1856, the second wife of Herman Ludolphus Prior, a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn. From then on England was her home. She died at her husband’s estate near Salisbury, Wiltshire, on 3 October 1872. There were no children of the marriage.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1833
- Summary
- An amateur sketcher, King kept a journal filled with picturesque pencil and wash views. It is presumed these are her own work though they are unsigned.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 3 October 1872
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude46.7985624 Longitude8.2319736 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Switzerland
- Biography
- sketcher, carpenter and gold digger, was born in Switzerland. According to shipping lists (cited Christie’s), he had been living in Canada as a carpenter and a British subject before coming to Victoria, aged 20, aboard the clipper ship Magnolia (Captain B.W. Tucker). It departed from New York on 27 July 1852 and arrived at Port Phillip on 24 November 1852. His sketchbook (sold Christie’s Australia in August 1996, lot 13) includes detailed views of Eureka and the rebellion, which for the first time unequivocally locate the site of the stockade. He also gives views of the Ballarat diggings and the Chinese diggers there.
The title page of 'Australian Sketches’, a manuscript signed 'Charles A. Doudiet’, is inscribed 'Begun in Melbourne in February 1855 – Finished on Ballarat in September 1855’. It comprises: a title page containing eight vignettes including two ships, Rio, and 'Home’ ('the Author’s Home – near Montreal, Canada East’); a drawing of 'Champion of the Seas off Cape Horn’ on the front past-down; a wash sketch 'The Ole Ten on Specimen Hill’ on the end paste-down; and 13 detached watercolour views. The manuscript list at the front gives 30 named and numbered drawings as well as detached paintings. Illustrated in the Christie’s catalogue were the title page 'Australian Sketches’, no.14 'Eureka Riot 17th October’, no. XIX 'Swearing allegience to the “Southern Cross”’, 1 December 1854; (detail of?) panoramic view locating 'The Battlefield Red Hill’ [from l.l.] 'Post Office Hill)’, Warrenheip and Buninyong Mountain; and no.18 'Eureka Slaughter 3rd December’. Others drawings are said to have been removed before the sale.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1832
- Summary
- Charles Alphonse Doudiet was a sketcher, carpenter and gold digger. Born in Switzerland, he arrived at Port Phillip in 1852. Christie's Australia sold Doudiet's sketchbook in 1996.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1872
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude52.6510216 Longitude-7.2484948 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kilkenny, Ireland
- Biography
- painter, amateur photographer, soldier and policeman, was born in Kilkenny, Cork, second son of Thomas T. Bookey and Florinda, née Trench. He was related to Lord Clancarty of County Galway and grandson of Dr Trench, archbishop of Tuam. After being educated at Rugby Bookey became an ensign in the 54th Regiment, subsequently exchanging into the 63rd. He served in India as adjutant to the regiment then returned to England, sold out and migrated to Victoria where he took up property on the Avoca River as a squatter. This venture was not successful and in 1853 he joined the Victoria Police Force, being promoted inspector after four days. In 1865 he was promoted superintendent first class and later inspecting superintendent, the second highest rank. He was noted as a stern disciplinarian and an efficient and impartial officer. Interested in natural history, he exhibited 'A Collection of Birds, Reptiles, &c.’ from Beechworth at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition, in conjunction with the Rev. C. Howard.
From about 1866 Bookey was stationed at Geelong. The Geelong Advertiser reported that he 'was a keen sportsman, both on land and water [and] exceedingly fond of yachting. As an amateur photographer he had few equals, and possessed no small talent as an artist, the taste displayed in some of his oil paintings on the broad leaves of the eucalypti fully entitling them to the name of artistic gems’. No further references to his photographs and gum-leaf paintings have been found. He did, however, exhibit five paintings in 1869, both in the Geelong and Ballarat Mechanics Institute exhibitions: Fishing Smack off Dover , Lock Tay , and Schnapper Point (all oils), St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall and Scene near Naples (medium unspecified).
Bookey’s first wife, Eliza Ann, née Pope died in 1864 and in the first half of 1867 he married Sarah Jane Dickson, née Watt, born in Quebec. She died in 1870 aged 30. There were no children from either marriage. Bookey died of an aneurism of the aorta at his home, Marine View, Bellarine Street North, Geelong, on 14 December 1872, having been ill for some five months. Both the Geelong Advertiser and the Geelong Times mentioned his interest in spiritualism in their obituaries, especially his belief that he had been visited by his second wife (to whom he had been devoted). Despite this, his will – made 12 days before his death – gave instructions that he was to be buried on the right-hand side of his first wife and that no memorial or tombstone was to be erected, but that his name, occupation and date of death be inserted under his wife’s details. This was done; the grave is located in the Church of England section of Melbourne General Cemetery.
Writers:
Harris, Helen Doxford
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1822
- Summary
- H. Power Le Poer Bookey was an accomplished amateur photographer and gumleaf painter and a respected police officer. Bookey's noted interest in spiritualism was undoubtedly encouraged by the premature deaths of both his first and second wives.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 December 1872
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1822-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- architect, decorator and scene painter, was born in the north of England, son of John Willson and Ellen, née Kerr. To judge by a set of signed watercolour designs for the interior decoration of the new Tasmanian Government House (1856, p.c.), he was an excellent draughtsman. On 31 May 1860, giving his occupation as gentleman, he married Hannah Elizabeth Davis at Lincoln Grange, Campbell Town; they had six children (one deceased). Willson was still in Tasmania in 1863 when he designed the largest transparency in Sydney for the marriage of the Prince of Wales in June (executed by Walter Renny 's firm) to be erected over the entrance of Government House, Sydney. It was said at the time to be by 'Mr Wilson [sic] of Tasmania’ in contradistinction to William Wilson , then working in Sydney as a scene painter.
J.H. Willson moved to Sydney after winning first and second prizes in the competition for the Sydney Town Hall (1866); the present facade (perspective drawing c.1866: photo ML) and vestibule (the original hall) follow his design (Town Hall Archives). As city architect Willson lived in his home “Norwood” in Petersham and designed a new Temperance Hall and the Woolloomooloo Fish Markets before he died on 7 April 1872, aged forty eight. Buried in Rookwood Cemetery which, at the time, was called Haslam’s Creek Necropolis, his funeral was organised by sculptor Walter McGill, of Ultimo Road Sydney, his executor and friend.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Willson78
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. c.1822
- Summary
- Architect, decorator and scene painter. As city architect he designed the present facade and vestibule of the Sydney Town Hall as well as the Woolloomooloo Fish Markets.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 April 1872
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, author and surgeon, was born in England on 3 May 1820 and trained and practised as a doctor there. He came to South Australia in May 1852 and soon settled in Gawler. By the 1870s the town had been labelled the 'Modern Athens’ (by some of its more optimistic citizens) and, Loyau reported, Nott had played a major part in it acquiring that character and reputation. Honorary founding member of the Gawler Humbug Society in 1859, a body which aimed to expose social pretension and hypocrisy, he began to publish the Gawler Bunyip in October 1863. This extremely successful local newspaper began life as the mouthpiece and chronicle of the Humbug Society, cheerfully exposing its victims and presenting local news with racy and opinionated stylishness. A facsimile set of its early issues, published in the 1960s from the continuing Bunyip office, still makes entertaining reading.
Nott was also a gifted public lecturer. One of his most memorable talks, delivered at the local Oddfellows’ Hall on 15 July 1865, was an appeal for funds to search for the lost explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. Loyau also noted that Nott’s 'tastes were botanical, and as an artist he excelled’. No original art works have been located and financial constraints meant that the Bunyip contained no illustrations apart from an occasional pictorial advertisement.
Survived by his wife and seven children, Nott died at Semaphore on 9 December 1872 and was buried in Willaston Cemetery. His portrait, commissioned by the Friendly societies, was hung in the Gawler Institute.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 May 1820
- Summary
- Nott was a sketcher, author and surgeon. None of his original artworks have been located nor were any published in his Bunyip publication due to financial constraints. 'As an artist he excelled' and he played a major role in the establishment of Adelaide as 'Modern Athens'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9 December 1872
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- James Adams, and his father, William , worked on a property at Dundas, New South Wales. It is unclear whether James or William was responsible for 145 drawings of Australian plants, insects and butterflies made between 1842 and 1848 and attributed simply to Mr. Adams.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1816
- Summary
- James Adams, and his father, William, worked on a property at Dundas, New South Wales. It is unclear whether James or his father are responsible for the 145 drawings of Australian plants, insects and butterflies made between 1842 and 1848 attributed simply to 'Mr Adams'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 August 1872
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer(?), lithographer and settler, was born in Scotland. He occupied the property Terrinallum, near Mortlake, Victoria, between 1839 and 1845. His original sketch (1845, private collection) of the sparsely-furnished interior of the original single-room hut at Terrinallum provided the basis for his lithograph, initialled on the stone Life in the Bush: The Squatter’s First Home and also issued as The Squatter at Home 1839: Bad News from the Outstations . It was published in 1847 by McLean & Co. of St Martin’s Lane, London, in aid of the Famine Relief Fund of the Highlands of Scotland ('and of Ireland’ in the variant), being one of a pair of coloured lithographs bound into a volume titled Scenes in the Bush of Australia. By a Squatter . Lang himself is in the image, seated in a chair reading a letter one evening after work. The second plate, An Exploring Party, Looking for a Sheep Run , is unsigned but is justifiably assumed to be Lang’s since he also appears in it, seated at a camp-fire with his travelling companion and a young Aboriginal guide. Wantrup calls the publication of this pair of images one of the two earliest illustrated books of Victorian subjects (the other being by John Skinner Prout ).
The La Trobe Library holds Lang’s sketchbook containing scenes at Terrinallum, while a pencil drawing, Scene at Terrinallum 1845 , is in a private collection. Another of his sketchbooks (private collection) contains a pencil drawing of Yeermany and Gorngminny, two Port Phillip Aborigines. Lang also compiled an album of photographs of Aborigines (La Trobe Library), at least some of which were taken by Richard Daintree and E. Montagu Scott .
Lang and his family later went to Fiji, where he died. He was survived by his wife Sophia, née Cooper, a son and two daughters.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1814
- Summary
- Lang was a settler originating from Scotland. His artistic exploits included sketching, photography and lithography. He occupied the property Terrinallum, near Mortlake, Victoria, between 1839 and 1845.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1872
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and pastoralist, fifth son of Rev. Julius Drake Brockman of Cheriton, England, married Frances Hamersley in 1827; their first child, Edmund Ralph, was born the following year. On 20 January 1830 Brockman, his wife and son arrived at Fremantle, Western Australia, on board the Minstrel . He had come well equipped with servants, livestock and a prefabricated home and settled at Herne Hill on the Upper Swan, part of his 20 160-acre land grant. Later he leased vast pastoral properties where he bred sheep and horses, the latter for export to India. He was a justice of the peace from 1831, an unofficial member of the Legislative Council from 1839 and an elected member for the Swan from 1872.
Brockman died on 28 November 1872 and was buried in the Middle Swan Church of England churchyard. He was survived by his wife and four children; five children predeceased him. A naive view of Middle Swan church and churchyard is attributed to him on an old inscription on the picture’s mount (ink and watercolour, AGWA).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1802
- Summary
- A sketcher, pastoralist and politician, Brockman settled in the Upper Swan region with his wife and nine children.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28 November 1872
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude54.57424325 Longitude-6.948159941 Start Date1798-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ulster, Ireland
- Biography
- amateur photographer, civil servant and squatter, was born in Ulster, Ireland. In 1829 he left County Kildare with his wife Sarah, née Alexander, and their children, travelling to Sydney in charge of convicts. In 1843 he took over the pastoral lease of Jimbour on the Darling Downs, Queensland (then still part of NSW) and placed a manager on the property until his sons, Joshua Peter and Alexander, were old enough to run it in 1847. His eldest son, (Sir) Joshua Peter Bell (1827-81), was soon managing Jimbour on his own while Thomas remained in NSW.
When Sarah died at Parramatta on 12 June 1853 Thomas Bell decided to move to Queensland too. Two months later he was advertising in the Sydney Morning Herald that he was 'a Gentleman about to travel into the interior’ who wished to purchase a daguerreotype camera, plates and cases. He preferred the equipment to be suitable for both views and portraits. Thomas Bell died at Waterstown, near Ipswich, on 5 September 1872, aged 74. No photographs are known.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1798
- Summary
- After emigrating from Ireland, Thomas Bell and his family lived on the land in New South Wales. After his wife died, Bell placed an advertisement announcing he was looking to purchase a daguerreotype camera before setting off to "travel into the interior". No known photographs exist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 September 1872
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.25 Longitude-1.916667 Start Date1793-01-01 End Date1872-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wiltshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher(?) and clerk, was born in Wiltshire. He worked for the British Commissariat as a clerk in The Netherlands, in London (the Treasury), in Canada and in the West Indies. As deputy assistant commissary-general, he served as senior audit clerk at Moreton Bay (now Brisbane, Queensland) from November 1830 to January 1835, then was promoted and posted to Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, arriving in the Guardian with his wife, child and two convict servants on 22 January 1835. Assistant Commissary-General Looker and his family left Van Diemen’s Land in the Wellington in January 1850 bound for London where Looker died on 8 July 1872.
A sheet of pencil drawings showing the public buildings of Moreton Bay as they looked in September 1832 (Mitchell Library [ML]) carries the name 'W.C. Looker’ on the right front wall of the Prisoners’ Barracks and on this basis has been attributed to him. Seventeen buildings are depicted individually on the sheet in a precise style closely comparable to that of an 1835 pen and wash view of the Moreton Bay settlement signed and dated by Henry Boucher Bowerman , the other deputy assistant commissary-general at Moreton Bay. Other pencil sketches attributed to Bowerman (ML) are apparently titled and inscribed in the same hand as appears on this sheet (one has the names of the buildings written in by another person, possibly Looker) and Susanna de Vries-Evans has convincingly argued that Bowerman drew the 'Looker’ sketch too.
There is no evidence in his service file (Public Records Office, London) that Looker, an accountant, attended topographical drawing classes during his military training in London, whereas Bowerman trained at Woolwich under Thomas Sandby. Looker may well have been required to make an official report on the public buildings of Moreton Bay which Bowerman illustrated, his name being added to the sketch merely to identify it as part of his report or, in view of its location, as a joke.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1793
- Summary
- Clerk and possible sketcher. Pencil drawings that carry Looker's name may have been drawn by Henry Boucher Bowerman.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 July 1872
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude51.897077 Longitude-8.4654674 Start Date1843-01-01 End Date1871-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cork, Ireland
- Biography
- political cartoonist, lithographer, publisher and printer, was born in Cork, son of John Baker Manly and Sarah, née Reagan. Manly drew the great majority of the lithographic cartoons which appeared fortnightly in the Tasmanian Punch (published from 21 July to 29 December 1866), being co-proprietor of the journal with Major Lloyd Hood. Mahood calls him 'an artist whose political sense and business enterprise were not matched by his draughtsmanship’. Generally signed with his cipher 'J.H.M.’, most of his cartoons are crude localised adaptations in both style and subject of the London parent magazine, including full-page illustrations of political figures in incongruous settings, for example, Charles Meredith, the Tasmanian Colonial Treasurer (husband of Louisa Anne Meredith ), in the role of nursemaid attempting to sooth a crying “Baby Tasmania” by offering it a nice 'railway sop’ (4 August 1866).
Hood and Manly parted company after the issue of 29 December 1866. Hood alone was listed as proprietor of what was renamed the Hobart Town Punch , where Manly’s cartoons apparently continued to appear although Manly had set up a rival journal, Fun; or, the Tasmanian Charivari , the first number of which appeared on 13 April 1867. It lasted only until 28 September and appeared spasmodically after the first two issues. Fun too, was modelled on the London Punch . Its cover, like that of Tasmanian Punch and its successors, retained the figures of Mr Punch and his dog but, unlike the others, replaced these as the central figures on the wrapper illustration with the head of a man (possibly Manly himself) wearing cap and bells. As “A Trumpeter”, Manly also illustrated two satirical pamphlets by “Barri Couta”, Railwayiana and Salmoniana (on the importation of salmon ova into Tasmania), both published in Hobart in 1866.
Subsequently moving to Victoria, Manly died of tuberculosis in his residence off Little Collins Street, East Melbourne, next door to the Colonial Bank Hotel, and was buried on 31 July 1871 in the Roman Catholic section of the Melbourne General Cemetery. He was twenty-eight years old. The best preserved and most complete sets of Fun and the 1866-67 Punch are in a bound volume in the Allport Library. No Victorian work is known.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1843
- Summary
- Colonial era Tasmanian political cartoonist, lithographer, publisher and printer. Manly died of tuberculosis. He was twenty-eight years old.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- July 1871
- Age at death
- 28
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1823-01-01 End Date1871-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- painter(?), professional photographer, bookseller and publisher, son of Richard William Dwight and Anne, née Meade, worked in the London book trade until he migrated to Melbourne about 1855. He brought with him a consignment of second-hand books and soon opened a bookshop at 234 Bourke Street West. Dwight used these premises as a photographic studio for a short time, advertising in the Melbourne Directory of 1858 as a 'Daguerrean and Photographic artist’. In 1856 he had photographed the Salle de Valentino at the corner of Bourke and Spring streets, a popular place of entertainment in the early 1850s but by then 'a dilapidated old shed covered with election bills … and other placards’. In 1870 he published copies of this photograph, commended by the Argus 'not because the picture is a good one, but that it revives memories of scenes that can never be forgotten by those who witnessed them’. The photograph reappeared in the Australasian in September 1909 alongside a contemporary view taken from the same position.
Dwight’s bookshop became a focus for Melbourne’s literary circle and he published several books there during the 1860s. He exhibited three watercolours – Mount Macedon, Victoria , Botany Bay, the Landing Place of Cook and Port Jackson, North Head from Inner Lighthouse – at the Geelong Mechanics Institute in 1869. No artist was acknowledged in the catalogue and they may have been his own work. He died at his bookshop on 13 June 1871, leaving a widow Elizabeth, née Aldis-presumably a relative of W.H. Aldis , the Sydney tobacconist, and/or Albert Edward Aldis , who exhibited with the Victorian Artists’ Society in the 1890s.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1823
- Summary
- Henry Tolman Dwight was a professional photographer, bookseller and publisher. In 1858 he advertised in Melbourne Directory as a 'Daguerrean and Photographic artist'. Dwight exhibited at the Geelong Mechanics Institute in 1869. He died at his bookshop in 1871.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13 June 1871
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1871-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK, UK?
- Biography
- painter and professional photographer, son of John Frith and Letitia née Gardiner, was presumably related to the celebrated British silhouette artist and photographer of the same name. In 1855 he stated that he had 'practised his profession in London, Brighton, Scotland, and Ireland’ before coming to Victoria. His exact date of arrival is unknown, but he advertised as a portrait painter from London in the Melbourne Argus on 12 April 1853, inviting visitors to his studio in Neave’s Buildings at the corner Collins and Swanston streets 'daily from 10 till 5’.
By 20 August 1853, when the Victorian Fine Arts Society’s exhibition opened in Melbourne, Frith was both a committee member and an exhibitor. He showed a number of portraits (including a self-portrait) and a large oil painting, Death of a Stag (presumably a copy of Landseer’s famous picture). A subsequent painting of the circus-owner Joseph Rowe’s famous horse Adonis was, according to the Armchair critic, done in partnership with James Anderson ; Frith probably painted the horse and Anderson the background. The critic noted that Frith’s painting had a natural freedom that compensated for its lack of finish. Included in the following year’s Melbourne Exhibition were four watercolour portraits by Frith and two oil paintings: Lady with her Favourite Horse and the previous year’s Death of a Stag .
Frith then moved to Hobart Town, where he advertised as a 'portrait and animal painter’. He charged 3 guineas and upwards for a watercolour and 15 to 50 guineas for an oil portrait (horses began at 10 guineas). A large watercolour portrait of an unknown man, signed and dated 'Hobarton 1854’, was formerly in the Clifford Craig Collection. After a brief trip to wind up his Melbourne business, he set up photographic rooms in Hobart Town, briefly in partnership with Duryea and MacDonald then with John Mathieson Sharp from July 1855. Sharp took the photographs and Frith coloured them. They signed and dated portraits such as those of William Robertson (1855) and J.H. Wedge (c.1856, Crowther Library), as well as views and panoramas (e.g. Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery).
In 1855 Frith brought a civil suit against a Hobart Town merchant, Samuel Moses, who refused to pay for several portraits Frith had painted of him and his family. Moses claimed he had been overcharged and, in any case, thought the likenesses poor. Newspaper accounts of the court case (which give a unique insight into contemporary commissioning procedures) suggest that Frith’s work was not always first-rate. Both Conway Hart and Alfred Bock testified that his drawing, colour and composition were defective and not of the standard expected of a trained artist. Nevertheless, Frith won the case and was awarded payment with damages.
The partnership with Sharp was dissolved in mid 1856 and Frith continued on his own. His small 1858 calotype (paper photograph overpainted with watercolour) of Edward Swarbreck Hall, house surgeon of the Hobart Town Hospital (Mitchell Library), is apparently an example of a Frith 'chromatype’, a process he claimed to have invented in 1856. Known examples suggest that these were usually thin matt paper prints subtly overpainted in oil or watercolour (often quite deceptively so), although in 1861 he was advertising that he could produce them on plates (china), ivory, paper or leather. With newly imported Voigtlander & Son apparatus, he also produced views such as a large panorama taken from the top of St David’s Church tower in Hobart. In March 1859 he was selling an album of photographs, Tasmania Illustrated , available both bound and unbound. Chris Long states that this was the first such album commercially produced in Tasmania. No complete album is known, but examples from the set of twelve plates are in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Allport Library.
Frederick Frith was joined by his brother Henry in 1857 and the firm became Frith Brothers. Frederick married Emma Golding in Holy Trinity Church, Hobart Town on 11 October 1858. Two months later the brothers opened a second studio at Launceston operated mainly by Henry. Fred continued the Hobart Town studio as well as advertising his abilities as a painter, but the firm’s painted photographs seem to have been far more popular with the public. This was hardly surprising given Frith’s painting prices, although his coloured photographs were also expensive; there were at least two further court cases over costs. He showed his Death of a Stag again in the 1858 Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition, together with a number of 'miniature portraits’ and photographs. The latter included Macquarie Street, Hobarton , View of Hobart and a 'chromatype portrait of Mr A.J. Marriott esq.’. In 1860 he painted a medium-sized oil, The Cattle of Mr William Field (Ballarat Fine Art Gallery) – obviously not from a photograph. Naive in style and content, it has an attached strip of canvas on the base inscribed with the names of all the animals. A view of Field’s house, Enfield, Tasmania, is in the background.
On 16 October 1862 the Cornwall Chronicle announced that Frederick Frith was moving back to Victoria. He lived at Emerald Hill (now South Melbourne) and worked in the city, advertising himself variously as 'Professor of Painting’, 'chromatype artist’ and 'photographer and painter’. For some months after his return he worked with Charles Wilson , the inventor of the popular and controversial sennotype process that gave a polished ivory finish to photographs. By 1863 he was again in formal partnership with Henry trading as Frith Brothers. While Fred remained in Melbourne, Henry kept up the Tasmanian side of the business. There, in 1864, his old enemy Alfred Bock, who had purchased the secret of the sennotype from Wilson, challenged Frith Brothers’ claim to be producing genuine sennotypes and published a letter from Wilson (who was vainly attempting to maintain his Australian monopoly):
On my arrival in Melbourne in 1862, I hired a certain Mr. Frith, not the one at present in Hobart Town [Henry], but his brother, to take photographs which I afterwards changed into Sennotypes; this Mr. Frith never obtained any of my chemical secrets, and the pictures which he and his brother, now in Hobart Town, palm off on the public are not true Sennotypes, but base imitations.
A genre painting of the 1865 Melbourne Cup by Frederick Frith is now known only through an engraving published in the Illustrated Australian News of 25 November 1867. He also painted an oil portrait of the governor of Victoria, Sir Henry Barkly, exhibited at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition by the Acclimatisation Society. Sands & McDougall’s Melbourne Directory lists him as a teacher of painting at Collins Street East in 1870 and 1871 – the year he died. Throughout his career he seems always to have been more interested in painting than in photography, yet his most memorable images are delicately overpainted and carefully composed portrait photographs that look like watercolours.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1819
- Summary
- Painter and professional photographer Frith's artistic legacy lies as a portrait and animal painter who pursued commercial success in Melbourne and Hobart.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1871
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude50.3720497 Longitude-3.816251991 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1871-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- South Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and musician, eldest daughter and second child of John and Mary Ann Marsh of Sidmouth, South Devon, seems to have received instruction in music (from whom and at what level is not known) and in later life worked professionally as both a teacher and performer, as did her brother Stephen Marsh. On 19 June 1828 she married the painter John Skinner Prout (q.v.) and went to live in Cornwall; their first child was born there on 7 April 1829. During the next ten years the Prouts had seven more children but Maria nevertheless continued to work as a music teacher, as well as moving house several times within Penzance and then to Bristol and London.
Maria Prout, her husband and children came to Australia in the Royal Sovereign , which left Plymouth on 1 August 1840 and arrived at Sydney on 16 December. On 24 March 1841 she held a concert in the Royal Victoria Theatre. The Australian reviewed her performance on the piano in glowing terms: 'It is as gratifying as it is astonishing, to find in this remote part of the British dominions, talents in the arts and the elegancies of life, which would meet with commendation and applause from the most cultivated society in the metropolis of the empire’. Early in 1842 her brother Stephen arrived at Sydney in the Sir Edward Paget and together they gave a concert at the same theatre on 9 March 1842. The following month the Sydney Morning Herald , writing mainly about Skinner Prout’s Sydney Illustrated , drew attention to Maria Prout 'whose professional talents in the sister arts of painting and music are well known’. None of her paintings nor any description of them, however, is known today.
Details of Maria Prout’s journey to Van Diemen’s Land in 1844 and her return to England in 1848 are the same as those given for her husband. She died at Camden Town, London, on 2 November 1871.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1807
- Summary
- On seeing Prout perform, one critic found it gratifying and astonishing 'to find in this remote part of the British dominions, talents in the arts and the elegancies of life, which would meet with commendation and applause from the most cultivated society in the metropolis of the empire.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2 November 1871
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude43.1257311 Longitude5.9304919 Start Date1805-01-01 End Date1871-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Toulon, France
- Biography
- naval draughtsman and marine painter, was born in Toulon, France, his date of birth being given variously as 1 June, 4 July and 5 July 1805, while his date of death at Carcès, Provence, is sometimes stated as 1875 rather than 1871. He was born into a middle-class family which had no previous naval tradition but which slowly developed one: Barthélemy, his son-in-law, his brother Hubert and his nephew all filled administrative positions within the French Navy. Barthélemy Lauvergne’s long and modest career (he retired in 1863 without having achieved any notable position in the hierarchy) was distinguished only by his skills as a draughtsman, which earned him passages on three great voyages to the Pacific, as well as involvement in a number of lesser scientific expeditions in northern Europe and the North Atlantic.
From 1826 to 1829 he served in the Astrolabe as secretary to Dumont d’Urville, visiting – like de Sainson – five points on the Australian coast. The commander had instructed 'young Lauvergne, my secretary, to take views of all the coasts and islands which we saw during the voyage, and his work fills three folio volumes of two hundred pages each’. Fourteen folios of his Australian coastal profiles are included in the collection now in the Archives Nationales. Dated views of Sydney (December 1826, ML) and Hobart Town ([December] 1827, ALMFA) and undated crayon and watercolour, pencil and sepia sketches of Sydney Harbour (ML) are further records of this expedition. He also recorded views and drew zoological specimens during the three months in 1827 that the expedition cruised the New Zealand coast. Yet from that voyage the only picture by Lauvergne which seems to have been contemporaneously reproduced is that of Midway-House, on the Way to Elizabeth-Town (Van Diemen’s Land) , lithographed by Bichebois and published as plate 164 in the Atlas Historique illustrating the voyage. The artist’s biographer Fontan, however, suggests that de Sainson may have made unacknowledged use of some of Lauvergne’s drawings.
Sailing under Laplace on board the Favorite from December 1829 to April 1832, serving both as the commander’s secretary and as the expedition’s official artist, Lauvergne revisited Hobart Town (July-August 1831) and Sydney (August-September 1831). The three aquatints of Australian subjects which appear in the Atlas to this voyage are all after his drawings. They comprise views of the Derwent River in Van Diemen’s Land, of Sydney Harbour and of Woolloomooloo ('Vooloo-moolo’) at Port Jackson. His third great expedition, on the Bonité under Vaillant, did not visit Australia but the Atlas for this voyage is reported to be almost entirely his work.
Like Louis le Breton and Charles Meryon , Lauvergne sought to turn his artistic skills and distant experiences to further advantage, exhibiting in the Paris Salon from 1838, when he showed Frigate Running before the Wind, Sea Study (Cape Horn) , until at least 1849. He was awarded a third-class medal at the 1839 Salon and became a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 1841. From 1841 to 1854 Lauvergne was in Paris, working in the Naval Ministry and in the Department of Maps and Charts where his colleagues would have included le Breton. He returned to Toulon in 1854 and retired in 1863.
Lauvergne’s earliest works are drawings in various media. Subsequently he tried his hand at lithography (many of his compositions were also lithographed by other artists), but in the later part of his life he concentrated on oil paintings of harbour scenes and maritime events. Recorded works include The Shipwreck of the Corvette the Astrolabe Commanded by M. de la Pérouse, on the Reefs of the Island of Vanikoro (Salon 1842), View of the Port and Town of Algiers Taken from the roadstead (Salon 1844), View of the Fort of Mers-el-Kébir at Oran (Salon 1848) and Shipwreck at the Entrance to Mers-el-Kébir (1868, Narbonne Museum).
Writers:
Collins, R. D. J.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1805
- Summary
- Lauvergne was from a family with no previous naval tradition. He first arrived in Australia on board the 'Astrolabe' for its 1826/1829 voyage of the Australian coast. His skills as a draughtsman helped him depict the landscapes and people he encountered.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1871
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude52.6285576 Longitude1.2923954 Start Date1803-01-01 End Date1871-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Norwich, Norfolk, England, UK
- Biography
- botanical artist, botanist and teacher, was born at Norwich, Norfolk (England) in April 1803. He came to Sydney in 1842 where he worked as a teacher, studying botany in his spare time and collecting specimens for overseas museums. He was a friend of the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt and is said to have helped prepare Leichhardt’s Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia (London 1847) for the press.
Phillips was a competent botanical artist, as is evident from the pictorial annotations in his copy of Brown’s Flora Novae Hollandiae . He is reported to have made the 'excellent’ botanical drawings which the government botanist, Charles Moore, used to illustrate a series of lectures he gave at the Sydney Botanic Gardens in the 1850s.
Phillips died at Sydney in June 1871.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. April 1803
- Summary
- William Phillips was a botanical artist, botanist and teacher. He was a friend of the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt. It is said that Phillips helped prepare Leichhardt's Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia (London 1847) for the press.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- June 1871
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude52.48 Longitude-1.9025 Start Date1784-01-01 End Date1871-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Birmingham, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, shopkeeper and landholder, was christened on 12 May 1784 in St Philip’s, Birmingham, third child and second son of Charles Tompson, gentleman, and Martha Louisa, née Webster. Nothing is known of his childhood, but on 23 March 1802 he was sentenced at Warwick Gaol Delivery to seven years’ transportation for stealing two books from a Mr Burrish of Birmingham. Because he could (obviously) read and write he was set to work as a clerk in the Sydney Commissariat Office under John Palmer immediately after arriving in the Coramandel II on 8 May 1804.
Tompson married Elizabeth Boggis, aged fourteen, of the Sydney Orphan School, in St Philip’s, Sydney, on 8 June 1806. On 26 June 1807 their first child was born – a son also called Charles who was to become a well-known poet. By then Charles senior was conducting his own business, a shop selling assorted goods. On 11 February 1809 he received his conditional pardon and was eligible for a 50-acre grant of land, which he took up on the Nepean River and called Birmingham. That year he drew two extremely competent pencil sketches of himself and his wife, still in family possession. These are his only certain drawings. An attributed pencil sketch of St Philip’s Church, Clydesdale (c.1846, Dixson Galleries) may be by Rev. W.H. Walsh .
Both business and family grew; there were finally five sons and two daughters. Elizabeth died in March 1822, leaving Charles with six surviving children. In September he married Jane Armytage, the widow of his business partner who had three children, and he decided to abandon shopkeeping for full-time farming. This was even more successful. He purchased 865 acres in the Bathurst district which he named Clydesdale, erected a splendid two-storey stone house and created beautifully landscaped gardens. A further eight children were born there—a grand total of sixteen to support. Purchases and leases resulted in extensive landholdings throughout the colony managed by his sons.
With the depression of the 1840s, however, Tompson lost Clydesdale and his other holdings. He and Jane and their three unmarried daughters moved to Sydney early in 1850 and spent the rest of their lives in modest houses in Church Street, Surry Hills, both called Clydesville. He died on 10 January 1871 and was buried in the family vault in Sydney’s Devonshire Street Cemetery (later transferred to the Church of England section of Rookwood Cemetery).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.May 1784
- Summary
- English born landholder and farmer whose two recorded sketches of himself and his wife are kept in possession of the family.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 January 1871
- Age at death
- 87
Details
Latitude51.25 Longitude-1.916667 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wiltshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, carver, gilder and frame-maker, was born in Wiltshire, England, eldest of the six children of Elizabeth and David Culley (1810-82), a carver, gilder, carpenter and frame-maker. The Culleys came to South Australia aboard the Macedon in 1849 and settled in Adelaide. There David Culley established a successful business in his various trades, his reputation being made in 1854 when he was paid £50 for the carved and gilded frame around J.M. Crossland 's portrait of J.H. Fisher, an unprecedented sum for colonial work. John Culley worked for him.
On 29 March 1853 John married Adelaide Robinson; they had two sons and three daughters, including Admella Eliza (who must have been born about August 1859 when the disastrous shipwreck of the Admella occurred). John seems to have worked professionally as a painter as well as carver, selling and exhibiting his paintings and drawings in his father’s shop. He was particularly fond of architectural subjects. Of his five works shown at the South Australian Society of Arts first exhibition in 1857, three depicted local buildings – St Peter’s, Marlborough , Post Office, Adelaide and Minal Church – the others being Slaughter of the Innocents and Head . At the 4th exhibition held (belatedly) in April May 1861, J.R. Culley showed Diomed (cat 80), Milden Hall Church (cat.122) and another Head (cat.71), all lent by 'Mr. Culley’, probably his father. He won a prize at the society’s 1866 exhibition for Christ Church, North Adelaide , but the picture was not universally acclaimed. The South Australian Advertiser commented that it looked 'as if he thought he had made a mistake (as well he might think) and had tried to rub the whole affair out’.
Culley died in Adelaide on 29 August 1870 and was buried in West Terrace Cemetery.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1831
- Summary
- Painter, carver, gilder and frame-maker born in Wiltshire, England. Resident of Adelaide, South Australia he was particularly fond of architectural subjects.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 August 1870
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude51.8339209 Longitude-4.916667 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK
- Biography
- painter and explorer, was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales on 31 January 1829, one of the six children of James Murphy, a businessman who was later mayor of Sydney (in 1860). John left for New South Wales with his parents, brother and three sisters in October 1841 on board the Sir Edward Paget . Ludwig Leichhardt was another passenger and the 12-year-old boy became an admirer attracted to Leichhardt’s dreams of exploring unknown parts of Australia. In 1844 Murphy was appointed one of the four European members of Leichhardt’s Port Essington (Northern Territory) expedition. On the journey the naturalist John Gilbert became a close friend and apparently advised the lad on scientific details in his drawings of birds. Although only fifteen, Murphy acquitted himself well on this exhausting expedition that so nearly proved fatal. As Alec Chisholm points out, Johnny Murphy had a hunch back, a characteristic which Aboriginal tribesmen used to identify the expedition to ensuing search parties.
Leichhardt named a lake and a range after Murphy and a few of his drawings (presumably views and a sketch of a grasshopper) were published, unacknowledged, as vignettes in Leichhardt’s Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia (London 1847). Reportedly, Leichhardt later stated that he had only included Murphy’s work in the book 'for the purpose of humouring him and at the request of some of his friends’ – but Leichhardt was no connoisseur, being said by one of his own party to be unable to 'distinguish one picture from another’. In fact, he needed Murphy’s sketches for no official artist had been appointed to the expedition. The full-plate views in his sparsely illustrated Journal were apparently provided by artists not on the expedition, chiefly Harden S. Melville .
Leichhardt begged the Murphy family to let John accompany him on his next expedition, but his mother sensibly refused to allow him to go. He remained in Sydney and for a time worked in partnership with his brother-in-law, J.O. Bradly. Later he became a portrait painter. In 1847 his Portrait of Lord Lyndoch was lent to the first exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia by E.H. Pollard Esq. Two years later, Mr J.S. Beach lent Murphy’s 'Copy after Hayter’ (very probably a portrait) to the society’s second exhibition, where his Napoleon was shown by Mr Nicholas (possibly the portraitist and engraver William Nicholas ). The Sydney Morning Herald 's reviewer thought the first had 'few pretensions but [is] far too good to be passed over without a note of admiration. A similar remark will apply to no. 267 – Napoleon – by the same author’. All sound like copies. At the 1854 Australian Museum exhibition, however, Murphy exhibited Portrait of a Gentleman , which is more likely to have been an original work. He was listed in Sands & Kenny’s Sydney directories for 1857-61 as an artist of 61 Hunter Street, where he apparently shared a studio with the portrait painter E. Thomas (listed at the same address).
John Murphy died unmarried, aged forty, on 9 January 1870. Some outline drawings of birds appear in his copy of John Gould 's first book on the birds of Australia ( A Synopsis , p.c.), which Leichhardt had given him, but no later works are known.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 January 1829
- Summary
- Painter and explorer, was born in Pembrokeshire, Wales on 31 January 1829. In 1844 Murphy was appointed one of the four European members of Leichhardt's Port Essington (NT) expedition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9 January 1870
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude50.5463385 Longitude-3.4957798 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Teignmouth, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- engraver, lithographer, professional photographer, cartographer and publisher, was born on 17 February 1821 at Teignmouth, Devon, eldest of the four sons of Rev. John Ham, a Baptist minister, and Ann Job né e Tonkin.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 February 1821
- Summary
- Engraver, lithographer, professional photographer, cartographer and publisher, arrived in Melbourne in 1842 and began to produce maps and other official documents for the Victorian government. From 1860, he did similar work in Queensland.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 March 1870
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- professional photographer, lithographer, newspaper proprietor and stationer, was born in London on 10 March 1816, seventh of the eleven children of Thomas Browne and Jane, née Rutherford. Educated at Christ’s Hospital school between 1824 and 1833, Browne emigrated to Van Diemen’s Land, probably in 1835 with his brother James, and settled in Launceston. There he apparently managed Henry Dowling’s printing and stationery business. With Dowling as a witness, Thomas married Sarah Spicer in St John’s Church, Launceston, on 10 March 1835; they had fourteen children. In 1844, after the birth of their third child, Eleanor, the family moved to Hobart Town. Thomas opened his own printing and stationery business at 34 Liverpool Street in July.
Thomas Browne is thought to have been the first resident professional photographer in Hobart. He opened a daguerreotype studio in his shop in 1846. With a move to new premises in Macquarie Street by 1848, he operated his photographic studio until 1853. He is only known to have produced portraits, which, he stated in 1852, could be taken 'in any but rainy weather … The early hours of the day are generally most favourable’. He offered 'Daguerreotype Miniatures for Lockets or Brooches’ as well as standard cased portraits.
A surviving daguerreotype of 10-ten year-old Charles Boyes (a son of G.T.W.B. Boyes ), taken on 24 December 1849, is at Narryna, the Van Diemen’s Land Folk Museum in Hobart. That of George Hull, father of the diarist Hugh Munro Hull , taken in 1850, is reproduced in Hugh Munro Hull’s Reminiscences . Late in life George Hull annotated this verso: 'The first or nearly the first Daguerotype [sic] or photo taken in Hobart Town by Mr. Brown (late of the Corporation) and before beards were in fashion’. Predating both, however, was a daguerreotype of three Tasmanian Aborigines (unlocated). This was coveted by G.A. Robinson , who wrote to John Skinner Prout on 16 March 1848: 'I should much like Mr Brown’s dgt. group of Walter, Mary Ann & David Brune’. Robinson doubtless acquired it, for Plomley points out that a daguerreotype of three Tasmanians was included in the collection of ethnographica sold by Robinson’s widow to Bernard Davis in 1866 for £30.
Browne simultaneously worked as a lithographer, printing 'plans of estates, circulars, bill heads, maps &c’. He published a Pictorial Alphabet in 1845, and known single lithographs include a tinted High School, Hobart Town (1848), after William Duke . T. Browne’s Hat Almanack for 1849 was issued late in 1848. Early in 1846 he was proprietor of the Spectator newspaper for a few months. Appointed city surveyor and director of Waterworks in January 1854 at a salary of £450 per annum, Browne remained in this position until a few months before his death on 23 December 1870. He was buried in St David’s Cemetery, Hobart Town, beside the two infant daughters who had long predeceased him.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 10 March 1816
- Summary
- Thought to have been the first resident professional photographer in Hobart, Browne had a daguerreotype studio in 1846 and is known only to have taken portraits. He also worked as a lithographer and published T. Browne's Hat Almanac in 1849.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 December 1870
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude51.1364714 Longitude-2.993782692 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bristol, Somerset, England, UK
- Biography
- as was his brother, William (1809-1895), a professional photographer; William was born in Bristol, Somerset, in 1809, which is probably where James was also born. They became associated with photography soon after the announcement by Daguerre of his process. James Freeman purchased the exclusive right to produce daguerreotypes in the county of Somerset from Richard Beard early in the 1840s, thereby becoming one of the first professional photographers in the world. When they decided to come to Australia both brothers were married with children; William had married Margaret Ann Dayrell, and James had married Louisa, whose maiden name is not known. William, his wife and five children arrived at Sydney on board the Elizabeth on 6 April 1853. They were joined on 22 October 1854 by James and Louisa Freeman and an unidentified Miss Freeman who had come out together in the Sovereign of the Seas .
The extent of William Freeman’s involvement with his brother’s English photographic business is not known. However, on arrival William apparently joined the existing Sydney Photographic Rooms in Bridge Street run by John Wheeler . In February 1854 Wheeler & Co. advertised their move to a suite of rooms at George Street and, following the arrival of James Freeman, it was announced in November 1854 that the firm would henceforth be known as Freeman Brothers & Wheeler. Under this name they exhibited 'Photographic and other Sun Pictures’ at the 1854 Australian Museum Exhibition and advertised portraits taken by the collodiotype, daguerreotype and talbotype processes as well as stereo views. James Freeman had brought the technique for producing collodiotype (wet-plate) photographs with him together with 'a first rate Artist from England to colour all kinds of Photographic Pictures with the highest finish’.
Early in 1855 the company became simply Freeman Brothers. In their advertising they stressed the quality of their coloured portraits and views of Sydney as being the result of the latest techniques. In March they announced the completion of a new studio which contained a skylight with 150 square feet (45 sq. m) of glass enabling 'brilliant’ portraits to be taken in any weather. Since this new studio was 30 feet (9 m) long the distortion hitherto inevitable because of inadequate distances between camera and subject was avoided. It also facilitated group portraits. Mirrors were used to solve the lateral reversal of images which otherwise occurred with the daguerreotype and ambrotype processes. There was also a special dressing compartment for ladies.
Freeman Brothers rapidly became one of Sydney’s largest and best-known photographic studios. In 1856 they received permission to photograph the first responsible government in New South Wales provided that the result was not shown in the colony: their rather pedestrian image of five gentlemen sitting around a table nevertheless became widely known. In 1858 they produced one of Sydney’s earliest photographic panoramas, ten linked views taken from the observatory tower. That December they exhibited at the first photographic conversazione of the Philosophical (later Royal) Society of New South Wales when James Freeman delivered a paper, 'On the Progress of Photography and its Application to the Arts and Sciences’. In this he expressed his preference for the talbotype or salted paper process (which produced a negative image on sensitised paper and then a positive image by contact printing onto another piece of sensitised paper).
Most of Freeman Brothers’ early photographs, however, were daguerreotypes (which produced an image directly onto a silver-coated metal plate), probably because of the ready availability of materials for that process in Sydney. But in his paper James Freeman had described the scientific applications of photography, from astronomy to pathology, and stated that he had experimented with micro-photography, using a microscope and an artificial light source, although no surviving examples are known. Indeed, his paper showed a most sophisticated knowledge of photographic technology, revealing, in particular, that he had been experimenting with the production of a workable dry plate (not commercially used in Australia until c. 1880), thereby overcoming the difficulties of the wet-plate (collodion) method where plates had to be sensitised and then exposed while still wet, thus requiring a photographer to have a portable darkroom when away from the studio.
The Freemans’ own portable darkrooms took various forms, one of the most unusual being a chamber erected in 1859 above the statue of Governor Bourke in the Sydney Botanic Gardens, 45 feet (13.7 m) above ground level, in order to take twelve collodiotypes showing the site and immediate neighbourhood of Sydney’s proposed new Houses of Parliament 'for the assistance of architects in Europe who may wish to compete for designs’ in the international competition being held by the New South Wales government. Their photographs, which they also sold locally, were praised in the Sydney Morning Herald on 13 May 1859: 'The most striking characteristics of the views are the brilliancy of the lights, the sharpness of the outlines and the clearness of the minutest points; thus accurately displaying not only the actual objects, but also the intense transparency of our Australian atmosphere. The remoter parts of the landscape, such as the North Shore and the harbour scenery, with the ships at anchor are remarkably distinct; while the architecture of the houses of Macquarie-street is produced with almost stereoscopic effect’.
The 1860s saw the great popularity of the carte-de-visite, a small card with a print attached, by which time Freeman Brothers were a large and prosperous commercial studio. They exhibited a collection of their work at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts in February 1861, then at the London International Exhibition of 1862. Their repertoire included the then technically-advanced 'composition photograph’ (produced by arranging and joining multiple separate photographs), the Sydney Morning Herald of 12 July 1862 noting that they had 'just completed a magnificent picture comprising fifty-four portraits of officers belonging to the Sydney and Suburban companies of the Volunteer force’ 6 × 4 feet (182 × 121 cm) in size and that a similar work was in progress of the mayor and aldermen of the city. In May 1864 Freemans were reported as having 'just imported an apparatus for the production of panoramic photographs on a large scale’—a Sutton Panoramic Camera with a water-filled 'globular’ lens with which they took a four-part view of Sydney from Observatory Hill and a view of Campbell’s Wharf (prints of both are in the Mitchell Library). A panoramic view of Brisbane, taken by an assistant, was advertised in Sydney on 28 September.
Freemans had been producing large albumen paper prints of Sydney for several years before they began to be used as the basis for newspaper illustrations. In June 1864 a wood-engraving of The Viaduct at Menangle by F. Cubitt, based on one of their photographs, appeared in the Illustrated Sydney News and from then on a number of their photographs of Sydney and its celebrities were engraved. They again improved their studio in 1864, announcing at its reopening in January 1865 that 'by a simple and beautiful arrangement, any kind of light can be thrown on the sitter to suit the varieties of dress or complexion, so that the sunniest effects of a Lawrence or a Reynolds can be obtained, varying down to the most sombre and effective tones of a Rembrandt’.
Several Freeman employees became photographers in their own right. When Barcroft Capel Boake started his own studio at Balmain in 1866 he advertised as being 'from Freeman Brothers’. Pierce Mott Cazneau began his career there, and met and married Emily Florence Bentley ( Cazneau ) when she was working for Freeman Brothers as a colourist and miniature painter. In 1866 the Freemans went into partnership with Victor A. Prout , promoting the firm as 'photographers to their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales [Prout] and His Excellency the Governor in Chief and Lady Young [Freemans]’.
Listed as photographers of George Street in Sands Sydney Directory for 1867, that February Freeman Brothers & Prout had actually opened new studios and gallery at Castlereagh Street North, a converted residence comprising a public reception and picture gallery, retiring rooms for ladies and children, a large and well-ventilated studio and a private painting room for finishing large portraits in oils. A unique feature, they stated, was an outdoor gallery for taking 'Equestrian Portraits, Groups, Horses, Dogs and Cats’. Newly imported 'enlarging apparatus’ offered superior results and one of the fastest lenses in existence eliminated long exposures when photographing children. On 12 June 1868 an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald announced the completion of major alterations to what had been Edwin Dalton 's Royal Photographic Gallery at George Street for Mr W. Freeman. The partnership with Prout had ended; he remained in Castlereagh Street. The brothers occupied the studio, purchasing Dalton’s collection of glass-plate negatives from the previous tenant, Thomas Felton .
Soon afterwards both James and William Freeman returned to England. After James died in 1870, William came back to Sydney and took over the Oswald Allen studios in George Street. During the 1870s and 1880s, from several locations in George Street, the Freeman studios produced many thousands of portraits, mostly cartes-de-visite and the larger cabinet-size photographs. After winning first prize for his photographs at the 1888 Centennial International Exhibition in Melbourne, William Freeman retired and went to live with his son, William Henry Freeman, a bank manager at Goulburn, then with his daughter, Lucy Beckles Logan, at Newcastle. He died in March 1895 and was buried in the Sandgate Cemetery outside Newcastle. When probate was granted on his will, his estate was worth £2041.
The Freemans are represented in most major public collections. The Society of Australian Genealogists (Sydney), which holds Portrait of David Houison 1865, carte-de-visite, and Portrait of Katie Dawson mid 1880s, cabinet photograph; the Mitchell Library, which holds Portrait of J.F. Mann 1850s, cased sixth plate tinted daguerreotype; and the Historic Photographs Collection (Macleay Museum, University of Sydney) have significant holdings.
Writers:
Robinson, Tim
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1814
- Summary
- As professional collaborators, James and William Freeman achieved great success with their quality portraits and innovative approach. Their unusually elongated studio enabled them to overcome some technical limitations of the day. James had a particularly sophisticated understanding of photography, and had experimented with microphotography using a microscope and an artificial light source.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1870
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, sketcher, architect, surveyor, engineer and public servant, was born in England, son of the architect Joseph Kay, a founding member of the (Royal) Institute of British Architects, and Sarah Henrietta, daughter of the distinguished Gothic Revival architect William Porden. He was a nephew of Sir John Franklin’s first wife, Eleanor Anne Porden. Kay travelled throughout England working as an architect for his father. Later he worked both for private firms and the British government in New Brunswick, then was invited to Van Diemen’s Land by Governor Franklin to be the colonial architect. He arrived at Hobart Town on 20 May 1842.
Kay’s official status was always controversial and insecure, partly due to charges of nepotism and the architectural tastes of succeeding governors, but mainly because his appointment had not originated in London. Nevertheless, he designed many public buildings in Hobart, including the extant symmetrical Tudor-style Lands Department Building (originally St Mary’s Hospital, begun 1847), the Supreme Court and the small but elaborate Gothic Revival Eardley-Wilmot memorial (1850). He erected several private houses, including his own Italianate home, Barrington Lodge, Newtown (c.1850). The asymmetrical Tudor-style New Government House, Hobart (1853-58), which Trollope called the 'best belonging to any English colony’, is undoubtedly his major work.
Kay, his wife Clara Ann Elwall, whom he had married on 3 April 1845, and their daughter visited England between March 1853 and November 1854, Kay being on half pay owing to deteriorating eyesight. In London he ordered many of the fittings for the New Government House before returning. His sight continued to deteriorate and on 31 December 1858 he was retired on a pension. On 3 February he sailed for England. The date of his death is unknown but is presumed to have been in the early 1870s; his pension was still being paid in 1870 and later in the decade his wife is said to have returned to Tasmania and resumed her profession of governess.
Along with G.T.W.B. Boyes , James Burnett , P.G. Fraser , Bishop Nixon , Francis Simpkinson and others, W.P. Kay was a follower of John Skinner Prout and belonged to a sketching club Prout had initiated. He was secretary of the organising committees for the 1845 and 1846 Hobart Town art exhibitions and on the committee for the Art-Treasures Exhibition in 1858. At the 1845 exhibition he showed Circular Head, on Entering Eastern Bay and Circular Head, Taken from the Park of the Commissioner of the Van Diemen’s Land Company (presumed to be the watercolour in Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts, State Library of Tasmania. Hobart). A review published in the Hobart Town Courier on 9 January 1845 commented: 'These views are well executed, and the perspective of that taken from the land very correct, the colouring true to nature, and both display much care and ability’. The Hobart Town Advertiser 's reviewer also stated that the views were 'truly and accurately given’.
Early in 1846 Kay was one of the 'party of gentlemen’ who accompanied Prout on a sketching tour up the east coast of Tasmania through St Mary’s Pass and Fingal Valley to Longford and back to Hobart Town. In that year’s exhibition he showed The Bishop’s Craig (The Schoutens) , produced on the trip, George Town Light House (Sunset) and Bellevue, Hobart Town , all watercolours, while his friend and fellow sketcher P.G. Fraser exhibited Kay’s drawing Land Storm . The Colonial Times of 26 June 1846 claimed that 'The water-colour drawings disappointed us with but a few exceptions … Amongst the best is … No 74, the Bishop’s Craig, W.P. Kay’, while the Hobart Town Advertiser commented more equivocally: 'The lighthouse and other scenes in watercolour, by Mr. Kay, evince talent, the colouring is rather florid, but the effect is rich and the shading is soft and produces good effect’. Kay showed Light House, Low Head, at the Entrance of the River Tamar, Tasmania in the 1858 Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition and also lent works by other artists from his collection, including a sketch by Simpkinson.
Writers:
Brown, Tony
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1809
- Summary
- Invited to the position of colonial architect by his uncle, the governor of Tasmania, William Porden Kay designed many of the public buildings in Hobart. He was also an accomplished watercolourist and sketcher, producing many landscape paintings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1870
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude52.408056 Longitude-1.510556 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Coventry England, UK
- Biography
- silk weaver and engraver, was in November 1831 one of a number of Coventry silk weavers involved in a riot of Luddites protesting against steam-powered looms that created unemployment and lower wages. Machinery was smashed and workers were arrested. The following March (1832) Burbury was sentenced to death, later commuted to transportation to Van Diemen’s Land. While waiting for his fate to be decided, Burbury engraved a medal token with his name and date of sentence on one side and on the other side the inscription: 'WHEN THIS YOU SEE THINK ON ME’. Burbury reached Hobart at the end of 1832. His life and career was thereafter a steady rise to wealth and respect. Sir Stanley Burbury, a former Governor of Tasmania, was a direct descendant.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. c.1809
- Summary
- Sentenced to death in 1832 for participating in a protest against automated looms creating unemployment for weavers such as himself, Burbury was sentenced to death before being commuted to transportation. While waiting for his fate to be decided, he engraved a medal token with 'WHEN THIS YOU SEE THINK ON ME'. On arriving in Tasmania Burbury's life and career was thereafter a steady rise to wealth
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1870
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude45.1960403 Longitude-63.1653789 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Nova Scotia, Canada
- Biography
- sketcher, military officer and governor, was born on 19 February 1809 at Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, eldest son of Major-General Henry Charles Darling and his wife, Isabella. Charles came to New South Wales in 1826 with the 57th Regiment and served, with Henry Dumaresq , as private secretary to his uncle, Governor Ralph Darling. He left Australia with the Darlings in 1831. After posts in Jamaica, Cape Colony and Newfoundland he returned to take up the governorship of Victoria, but resigned from the colonial service in 1867 after some fiery battles with former cabinet ministers and returned to England. Sir Charles Darling died on 25 January 1870 at Cheltenham, survived by his third wife, Elizabeth née Salter, a daughter and four sons.
A pen-and-ink sketch initialled C.H.D., drawn in Sydney in 1830, has been attributed to him. Titled View from the South Side of Woolloomooloo Bay, Sydney, showing Hyde Park Barracks, St James [Church] and Sydney Hospital , it is now in the Mitchell Library.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 19 February 1809
- Summary
- Military officer and Governor of Victoria in 1860s. A pen-and-ink sketch attributed to him is held in the Mitchell Library, New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25 January 1870
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1806-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- naval draughtsman, surveyor, and public servant, was born in London, son of John Tyers, a linen merchant, and Elizabeth, née Theobold. Tyers entered the Royal Navy in 1828; in 1837 his reputation as a first-rate marine surveyor led to his inclusion in the survey of the Port Essington (Northern Territory) region under Captain Gordon Bremer in the Alligator . A lithograph, The Settlement of Victoria from the Anchorage (1839), was published after his drawing, with a key identifying the major features of Captain John McArthur 's infant settlement: the battery, the hospital, 'Government House’ (a modest single-storey cottage), the store-house and, under a clump of trees on a cleared patch of ground, 'Fort & Blockhouse building '. The original watercolour from which the lithograph was taken may be that in the Mitchell Library with the Alligator in the foreground (omitted in the print).
In 1839 Captain Tyers left the navy and joined the New South Wales colonial service as a surveyor. He laid out the town of Portland (now in Victoria), surveyed the bay, and at the same time compiled a short dictionary of local Aboriginal words. In 1840 he was appointed leader of the Portland Bay expedition with Edmund Kennedy . He became Commissioner of Crown Lands for Portland Bay in 1842. Employed by Governor Gipps to fix the 141st meridian defining the boundary between Port Phillip and South Australia, his solution led to disagreements with J. Lort Stokes , Owen Stanley and his boss, Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell . In 1843 Tyers was appointed first Crown lands commissioner at Gippsland. He explored and mapped this district too (1844) and did a great deal to bring order to a hitherto uncontrollable area. He built a house at Eagle Point, on the Mitchell River near Bairnsdale, and in 1849 married Georgina Caroline Scott, daughter of a grazier. Retiring from the public service in 1867, he died at Melbourne in 1870.
Tyers’s field sketchbook for 1837-39 (Mitchell Library) contains pencil and watercolour landscapes and coastal views in the Port Essington, Geelong and Portland districts. All are drawn in typical surveyor-draughtsman style; several coastal profiles are included and the latitude has been added to landmarks in some sketches. Separate pencil, wash and ink sketches include views of Mount Abrupt, Mt Sturgeon , Lower Falls of the Wannon (12 May 1842) and an unfinished pencil and watercolour drawing, Portland Bay from Observatory 1839-40 . A letter from Robert Hoddle to Mitchell on 14 September 1842 enclosed two sketches by Tyers of the Wannon Falls and stated: 'these should have been forwarded to you with the plans but were accidentally left behind’. Only one now remains (Mitchell Library).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1806
- Summary
- Architectural draughtsman, main body of work contained in sketchbook 1837-39, containing typical surveyor-draughtsman style views of the coast and landscapes of Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1870
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1801-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, army officer and pioneer, is best known for his Sketches in Australia , a volume of eighteen tinted lithographic views each preceded by a short description of the locality pictured and some historical background. Several are of Sydney Harbour, two include Aborigines, one shows the Lapstone Bridge at Emu Plains and another the La Perouse Monument at Botany Bay while the rest are landscapes, mostly from the Illawarra district. The views were published in England, drawn on stone by W. Spreat and printed at Spreat’s Lithographic Establishment in Exeter. They were issued in three parts and sold to subscribers for 5s as well as being issued bound in a volume. Although not dated, the attributed date is 1848. Westmacott’s earlier (also undated) volume of six plates, Sketches in New South Wales , put on the stone by W. Gauci and printed by C. Hullmandel, was probably that offered for sale in the Australian on 15 May 1838. (Hullmandel, a well-known London lithographic printer, produced the lithographs for Elizabeth and Augustus Prinsep 's Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Van Diemen’s Land in 1833.)
Captain Robert Marsh Westmacott, second son of the eminent English sculptor Sir Richard Westmacott RA, and Dorothy, née Wilkinson, joined the British Army in 1823 and served his military career as ensign, lieutenant (1825) and captain (1828) in the Royal Staff Corps. In 1825-28 he was stationed at Mauritius, a place depicted in some of his surviving sketches (National Library of Australia). In 1829-31 he was aide-de-camp to Governor Richard Bourke at Cape Colony, South Africa. He and his wife Louisa Marion Plummer, from Devon, were married a week before sailing and arrived at Sydney in December 1831, having accompanied Governor Bourke to New South Wales on board the Margaret . In 1832 Westmacott was transferred from the 98th to the 4th (King’s Own) Regiment. From 1832 until 1837 he again officially held the position of aide-de-camp to Bourke and with him travelled all over the colony.
Westmacott and his family lived first at Sydney, for a time at Liverpool, then in the Illawarra district. They had a son in 1834, another in 1836 and a daughter in 1845; a fourth child was born in England. In 1837 Westmacott announced his retirement from the army and his intention to settle in the colony. He purchased land from Cornelius O’Brien in a pleasant valley at North Bulli, building a house there which he named Sidmouth after his home town on the Channel coast of England, south-east of Exeter, Devon. There he primarily bred horses. Early in 1839 Rev. Richard Taylor wrote in his diary of visiting Captain Westmacott and his 'very beautiful’ wife at their 'pretty villa on the seashore’, noting that 'he sketches in great taste & having travelled in most parts of the world has a very great number of [sketches]’. In May Jane Franklin described him as 'the person perhaps we have liked best in our tour, kind, sincere, active, energetic, religious’, and regretted that despite Westmacott’s long service, Governor Bourke had left the colony without giving him anything.
Westmacott appears to have been active in public life. He was appointed a justice of the peace, was elected trustee of the Illawarra Steam Packet Company and was involved in a public meeting in Wollongong to consider the establishment of a bank. He acted as the first secretary of the Illawarra District Agricultural Society and was steward at various race meetings at Wollongong, Campbelltown and Homebush, where he raced his horses from time to time. Granted additional land by Governor Gipps in the Illawarra district without the usual coal reservations, he attempted to open a coalmine in 1840 in competition with the Australian Agricultural Company (which had sole mining rights over the whole of the colony) but nothing came of the project. In October 1841 he was declared bankrupt and his estate and effects at Bulli were assigned for the benefit of his creditors.
Westmacott is said to have discovered and surveyed a new road up the mountain above Bulli in 1844, which became known as Westmacott’s Pass before being renamed the Bulli Pass. He was living at Woodland, Illawarra, when appointed a commissioner of Crown lands in 1846. He lived briefly at Parramatta after his Thirroul and Austinmer properties were sold, then returned to England. Unable to find suitable employment, he returned to Sydney, arriving on 8 February 1851 to take up the position of superintendent of the Australian Agricultural Company at Stroud. This was, understandably, an unpopular appointment given his previous conflict with the company and the local management mounted a campaign to discredit him. It did not succeed and he moved to the company headquarters at Tahlee, Port Stephens, in March.
At the same time Westmacott was having domestic problems. On 21 April he published a notice in the Sydney Morning Herald forbidding anyone to be given credit on his account unless orders were signed by him; in May the 'very beautiful’ Mrs Westmacott scandalised colonial society by eloping with the captain of the Tartar , the ship which had brought them back to Sydney. Westmacott resigned his position on 2 June with the explanation that he was obliged to return to England on business and departed with his three younger children in the Mountstuart on 25 August. He arrived in England to learn that his eldest son, Robert Horatio, at school at Hastings, had just died. Westmacott did not return to Australia again, dying at Augusta Villa, Twickenham, on 10 May 1870 of 'Inflammation of the Stomach’ and 'Exhaustion’.
The National Library of Australia holds three volumes of Westmacott’s sketches and watercolours, all formerly in family possession. Drawings from New Zealand contains eleven pencil, pen, wash and watercolour sketches, Drawings of New South Wales, 1840-46 contains thirty-two pen, pencil and wash drawings and watercolour paintings, and Drawings of South America, Mauritius and Other Places has thirty sepia wash, pencil and watercolour sketches. The last contains views of Mauritius (1825-26), Brazil (1858), Lisbon, Marseilles and Abyssinia, some with added notations referring to literary or historical events connected with the localities.
An Album of Drawings and Watercolours of New South Wales 1832-51 (Mitchell Library PXA 1760) contains sketches formerly attributed to Conrad Martens but since attributed to Westmacott by Bernard Smith because of their similarity to those in one of the National Library’s volumes. They may also be compared with another Album of Drawings of Sydney containing seventeen sepia wash, ten pencil and two watercolour drawings attributed to Westmacott (Dixson Library PX53), also undated and unsigned, but titled. Three appear to be the originals of plates published in Westmacott’s Views of Australia (1838). The subjects in all these albums are mainly topographical, including views of Sydney and Port Jackson, Botany Bay, Darlinghurst and Double Bay, the Nepean River, Dapto and Woronora creeks, a house at Kiama, and Green Point and the Five Islands, Illawarra. From a comparison with the polished and urbane published views, it is obvious that their aesthetic quality was greatly improved by their translation into lithographs which conform to accepted topographical conventions of the day. The original drawings are doubtless more historically accurate and often have a literal, naive charm, but the excellence of technique seen in the lithographs is nowhere apparent.
Writers:
Proudfoot, Helen
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1801
- Summary
- Sketcher, army officer and pioneer, is best known for his Sketches in Australia, a volume of eighteen tinted lithographic views each preceded by a short description of the locality pictured and some historical background.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 May 1870
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude57.15 Longitude-2.11 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- Born in 1800, James Marshall was a landscape painter and solicitor, he and his family came to Victoria from Scotland in 1853. He showed two Victorian oil views, one of Flemington and the other of Hobson’s Bay, at the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art in Melbourne. The following year Marshall showed two oil paintings, Edinburgh from Memory and Warrnambool Bay (for sale at 30 guineas each), with the Victorian Society of Fine Arts. The latter was described as a 'painful crudity’ in the Examiner . The artist was probably the solicitor James Marshall, who worked in Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, and lived in Napier Street, Fitzroy.
Marshall showed five oil paintings at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition: four coastal scenes from the area around Wilson’s Promontory and Bass Strait in southern Victoria, and The Junction of the Culterburn with the Dee, Aberdeenshire . From the evidence of his paintings, he kept travelling south. At the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition he exhibited eight Tasmanian oil landscapes, mainly coastal scenes from the rugged south-west area around Port Davey.
James Marshall died in 1870.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
JamesMarshall
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 19 March 1800
- Summary
- Scottish colonial landscape painter who partook in several prominent exhibitions and was a practicing solicitor in both Scotland and Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 August 1870
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude52.46018745 Longitude-6.606515459 Start Date1792-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- County Wexford, Ireland
- Biography
- painter, showed nine works in the 1849 Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia Exhibition at Sydney. His subjects were quite varied, ranging from two portraits of the poet Robert Burns and one of St Patrick to Diana and Endymion and a bird study. Another work, Fruit , displayed 'too great [a] sameness of colour, but [was] clearly painted’, according to the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 June 1849. The anonymous critic was even less complimentary about Devoy’s Child , describing it as 'a specimen of want of harmony and that necessary balance of parts which is the essence of a true picture. By the name, the child is looked for as the subject, but…the basket of flowers, the carpet, the sofa, and the looking glass, are equally prominent, and from five equally distinct studies. Of the five, the carpet or oil cloth decidedly predominates’.
Devoy was not listed as a practising artist in the catalogue and no further references have been located until 1864, when Sands Sydney Directory lists one Thomas Devoy, artist, of 5 Victoria Street, George Street South. Despite the lengthy gap this is undoubtedly the same person. His portrait of the late Father J.J. Therry was among those raffled at St Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church bazaar at Balmain in July 1870. Thomas Devoy, portrait painter of Ultimo, died on 9 October 1870, aged 78. His death certificate states that he had come from County Wexford, Ireland, and had been in the colony for 42 years. The informant was a neighbour; Devoy had no known family ties.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1792
- Summary
- Thomas Devoy is best known for his portraits, some of which were exhibited at the 1849 Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts Exhibition in Sydney. An Irish emigré, Devoy had been living in Australia for 42 years at the time of his death in 1870.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9 October 1870
- Age at death
- 78
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1790-01-01 End Date1870-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, carver, writer, army officer and administrator, was baptised in Clontarf, Dublin, son of John and Margaret Fyans. After attending school in County Louth he joined the British Army in England, serving with the 67th Regiment in the Peninsular War and in India and Burma. He was with the 20th Regiment in India until early in 1833, then joined the 4th Regiment in Sydney and was posted to Norfolk Island. He stayed, reluctantly, for two years, labelling this penal settlement 'a disgrace to England’. The following two years were spent as commandant of the Moreton Bay penal settlement (now Brisbane, Queensland).
Captain Fyans sold his commission in 1837 and moved to Port Phillip (Victoria) as first police magistrate of Geelong. He was appointed commissioner of Crown lands in the Portland Bay district in 1840. Having married Elizabeth Alice Cane (1816-58) at Geelong in January 1843, they settled at Bell-Bird Balyang on the Barwon River three years later. Fyans made the furniture for the house himself, reputedly including a desk in which concealed diamonds were recovered about a century later. Such concealments were but one of his eccentricities; 'A pretty place, but odd people’, wrote one woman visitor in 1854.
The lavish entertainments at Bell-Bird Balyang included regular balls with turbaned servants. Some were apparently held in fancy dress, for Fyans’s only known drawing depicts Miss O’Neil in the Character of Belvadera[?]/ now Lady Buckley (pencil and w/c, ML). Despite being an incomplete fragment, the head alone being finely finished in watercolour, this is a sophisticated, Regency-style drawing.
In 1853 Fyans began writing his memoirs (LT). They finally ran to 500 pages and are full of lively, opinionated incident. He lent many unattributed 'old paintings’ to the 1857 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition but none of his own work. Fyans died at Balyang on 23 May 1870.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1790
- Summary
- Although known more for his eccentricities and lively memoirs than his art, Fyans was a sophisticated watercolourist. He is known for a fine picture of a woman in fancy dress.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 May 1870
- Age at death
- 80
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- illustrator and engraver, arrived at Melbourne in the Martin Luther from Greenock, Scotland, on 3 January 1849. Employed by Thomas Ham as an artist and engraver, he contributed illustrations to Ham’s Illustrated Australian Magazine , first published in July 1850, the decorative paper cover of which was also drawn by Tulloch. His best illustration was a view, Orr’s Station Avoca. View of Young Hill – North Pyrenees, Victoria .
Following the discovery of gold Tulloch went to the Victorian goldfields in 1851, commissioned by Ham to make sketches of the diggers and the diggings. By January 1852 he had finished five sketches, which Ham published the following August as Ham’s Five Views of the Goldfields of Mount Alexander and Ballarat in the Colony of Victoria, Drawn on the Spot by D. Tulloch . They are among the earliest known views of the Victorian diggings. The decorative paper cover also carried a series of lithographed vignettes by Tulloch. Another of his goldfields’ sketches, Forest Creek, Mount Alexander , appeared as an engraving in The Gold Diggers’ Portfolio , first published by Ham in 1854 and subsequently re-issued by Stringer, Mason & Co. and by Cyrus Mason .
An unsigned, untitled and undated oil painting usually called Mining Camp near Bathurst (DL) is very much in Tulloch’s competent illustrative style. Sir William Dixson acquired the painting, gave it its title and attributed it to E. Tulloch, an otherwise unknown artist. There seems no reason to postulate a relative for this work, which is as likely to be a Victorian as a New South Wales goldfields’ scene.
In November 1852 Tulloch set up in business on his own account as engraver, draughtsman, copperplate printer and lithographer. St. Patrick’s Hall: The First Legislative House of Victoria, Opened Nov. 13, 1851 , which he drew and engraved, was published by D. Urquhart early in 1853. Tulloch took a map engraver, James Davie Brown, into partnership in March 1853; the several maps and specimens of commercial engraving they showed at the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition were awarded a bronze medal. That year Tulloch and Brown also received a silver medal at the Victorian Industrial Exhibition. The partnership was dissolved towards the end of 1856 and Tulloch then worked for a variety of firms: De Gruchy & Leigh , Fergusson & Mitchell , and Whitehead & Co. In 1860 he was employed for a short time by the lithographic branch of the Geological Survey of Victoria to lithograph hill hachures on geological maps of Elphinstone and Castlemaine. In about 1859 he contributed an engraved vignette for the title of Proeschel’s Map of Victoria .
Tulloch was declared bankrupt on 24 January 1862 but since neither creditors nor insolvent turned up at the meeting held on 25 February nothing seems to have resulted. From 1864 to 1866 he was listed in Melbourne directories as an engraver of 91 Cecil Street, Emerald Hill (South Melbourne). He died in Melbourne Hospital of phthisis on 17 September 1869.
In 1889 Herbert Woodhouse called Tulloch 'an excellent engraver on steel and copperplate of both artistic and mechanical subjects, besides being a good draftsman’.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
David Coombe
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2020
- Born
- b. c.1829
- Summary
- Illustrator and engraver, was commissioned by Thomas Ham in 1851 to sketch some of the earliest known views of the Victorian diggings. Tulloch contributed an engraved vignette for the title of Proeschel's Map of Victoria and was briefly employed by the Geological Survey of Victoria after his business partnership failed.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 September 1869
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude51.58607595 Longitude-0.80137568 Start Date1825-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, illustrator, etcher and drawing teacher, was born in Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England, fifth child of Henry Terry and Isabella, née Clark. Terry’s middle name is difficult to settle. In later life his son thought it was Clark, from his mother’s family, and Charles was also used, but Terry seems to have preferred the exotic Casemero or Cassinis. Educated in Switzerland, F.C. Terry came to New South Wales in about 1852 with his older brother Alexander and joined the gold-diggers in the Hunter Valley.
After Alexander returned to England, Frederic stayed on in Maitland for a time. He also visited Sydney where he attempted through the assistance of Marshall Claxton 'to get on as an artist’. Alexander wrote in his diary, 'He had dined a few days before at Claxton’s house and there he had given Fred all hope of success. However the poor fellow didn’t relish at all the idea of being left alone so far from home and told me that as soon as he could he would make his way again for old England’. Alexander also mentioned that Frederic was 'finishing a portrait he had to do in Sydney’ before returning to Maitland, indicating that he had already obtained at least one commission. His earliest known extant work, however, is a watercolour view of Point Piper dated 10 April 1852, by which time he seems to have been resident in Sydney. He was certainly living there by August 1853, when he exhibited View of Sydney Harbour, Taken from Ball’s Head at the Victorian Fine Arts Society’s exhibition in Melbourne.
Terry painted local watercolour views, such as King Street, Sydney Looking West, 1853 , and made occasional sketching tours to Newcastle. In 1854 he entered a design in a competition for the medal to be awarded at the Australian Museum Exhibition held in advance of the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition and won second prize of 5 guineas (after C.W. Andrews), and a bonus of a further 5 guineas 'for the exquisite finish of his design … a view of Sydney Heads, with a ship entering under a press of canvas, a flock of sheep, a gold digger at work &c. In the centre Australia is seated, while in the background the sun rises out of the ocean’. One of the medals as produced, with Terry’s design on the verso, is in the Mitchell Library.
Terry’s watercolour View of Botany Bay received little critical attention when shown at the Australian Museum Exhibition despite having been especially commissioned. Showing the bay, La Perouse’s column and the tomb of the naturalist Le Receveur, it prominently featured a tree-stump which bore an epitaph to the Frenchman. Both watercolour and uprooted stump were presented to the French government after being exhibited in Sydney and Paris. (The watercolour, now titled Tombeau du Père Receveur Botany Bay , is held at the Musée de la Marine, Paris; the tree-stump, returned to New South Wales in 1988 as a French bicentennial gift, is at the La Perouse Museum, Sydney.) Sir William Macarthur took the Terry watercolour, samples of the exhibition medal and works by Angas, Martens, Ironside and the sculptor Charles Abraham to Paris in 1855, the first time painting and sculpture by Australian artists had been included in a major overseas exhibition.
In 1854 the Sydney publisher John Sands commissioned a series of sketches from Terry, principally views of Sydney and the harbour. Thirty-eight were engraved on steel in London and issued at Sydney in 1855 as Landscape Scenery, Illustrating Sydney, Paramatta [sic], Richmond, Maitland, Windsor and Port Jackson, New South Wales (also known as The Australian Keepsake. 1855 , the title lettered on the front cover). Reviewing the album, the Sydney Morning Herald called it a work of genius by Terry, whose name, due to lack of editorial control over the English engravers, had unfortunately been printed throughout as Fleury.
Terry did a considerable amount of work for illustrated newspapers, journals and books during the 1850s, especially the Illustrated Sydney News . His view of the 1854 Australian Museum Exhibition showing in great detail the interior of the Museum Exhibition Hall with the exhibits in place was drawn after a daguerreotype (now lost) by James Gow, lithographed by John Degotardi and published as a separate print. As Mahood discovered, 'Fred Terry the wit’ was also a paid contributor to Melbourne Punch .
In 1857 Terry exhibited a watercolour in the Fine Art Exhibition at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts titled Pic-nic Party, Middle Harbour . By 1858 he seems to have won the support of several established artists, including O.R. Campbell, who called Terry’s work 'clear and characteristic in drawing and beautifully composed’ and thought it would be greatly prized in England. Throughout the 1860s he maintained his reputation as one of Sydney’s foremost artists and illustrators. As well as contributing to a lesser keepsake volume, The Parramatta River Illustrated , Terry sought other ways of making money, including designing the covers for popular sheet-music and taking evening classes in drawing at his residence, 4 Upper Fort Street. In February 1861 he exhibited several works at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, including Forest Scenery , described as in his 'best style’.
In 1863 the Sydney Morning Herald reviewed a large watercolour by Terry of a picnic at Captain Cook’s landing place (unlocated). 'The drawing is bold’, it stated, 'and the prominent features are strikingly and naturally portrayed … The sky, the foliage, and the gentle ripple on the bay will forcibly recall to those who were present the beauty of the day’. Several months later, four paintings by Terry were for sale in a raffle organised by J.R. Clarke. All were of country and coastal scenes in the Illawarra and Nepean districts, suggesting a previous sketching tour. With the assistance of John Allan he painted some 'small but brilliant’ transparencies for the celebration in June 1863 of the marriage of the Prince of Wales, illuminated on the premises of Allen & Wigley and J.R. Clarke in George Street. That year Terry moved his studio and residence to Alma Street, Newtown, and advertised that he would also conduct both day and evening drawing classes at the School of Arts, Balmain. In August 1864 he issued a series of eight copperplate etchings illustrating various views of Sydney Harbour, described as being so 'sketchy’ that they had the appearance of pen-and-ink work. Terry announced his desire to continue the series if he met with the 'requisite encouragement’ but no further views are known.
A lengthy review in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1866 stated that Terry’s watercolour of Port Jackson in an approaching storm reflected credit on all colonial art and artists. Calling the work striking and artistic rather than pretty and stating it was for the 'educated eye’, the reviewer went on to describe the painting in extremely romantic terms (an imitation, one suspects, of the influential John Ruskin): 'One can almost hear the soughing of the melancholy wind, that is not strong enough to rouse the sullen sea, sweltering fitfully about the feet of the beetling cliffs. The dun clouds hang like a pall over the scene, wrapping the foreground in dim shadows; while the vast expanse of ocean stretching away to the north-east lies hushed in funereal stillness before the coming storm’.
The Bush Track was exhibited at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1867, the year Terry was appointed drawing master at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts. The following March the committee decided that Terry had resigned 'in consequence of his non-attendance’ and took steps to find another teacher. By then he must have been ill as well as impoverished. On 10 August 1869 he died of 'effusion on the brain’ at his residence in Alma Street, Newtown, owing £65 to his landlord. Married on 14 July 1858, his wife Margaret had died three years earlier. Their son Henry, aged ten, survived them.
Terry’s obituary in the Illustrated Sydney News praised the contribution he had made to that paper and, somewhat ironically, boasted that his 'latest, and perhaps best efforts [in watercolour] were the Weatherboard Falls, now in the possession of H.R.H. Prince Alfred’. Despite Terry having dominated the exhibition scene (such as it was) throughout the 1850s and 1860s, together with Conrad Martens, the social standing and financial position of even the most hard-working and apparently successful Sydney artist at this time is exemplified by the fact that his large collection of paintings (including Sydney Heads by Moonlight ) and all his household goods were valued at only £45 for probate. His obituary noted that the paintings were to be disposed of by art union.
Writers:
Bruce, Candice
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1825
- Summary
- One of Sydney's foremost artists and illustrators in the 1860s, Terry was born in Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 August 1869
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, illustrator, journalist, sailor and farmer, was a relative of the popular English novelist Mary Russell Mitford. He married Eliza Sanders in England and they came to South Australia in 1839 on board the Katherine Stewart Forbes . There he had a varied career (and ten children), turning to farming and to professional illustrating in the 1860s.
Mitford made copious contributions to the Adelaide press, especially to Pasquin , a satirical weekly of which he was founder, editor, proprietor, publisher, writer and occasional cartoonist from January 1867 until he died. According to Stuart (122), this Adelaide satirical weekly (1867-70) was not illustrated, but NLA has Log Rolling , a lithograph 22 × 28.5 cm (#S10481) from the issue of 8 July 1868 (see file), while the 1882 reprint (with a Woodbury-type frontispiece after a photo of Mitford by Townsend Duyrea ) has a full-page lithographic cartoon inserted. (original copies SLSA, SLV only.)
Mitford, who adopted the name 'Pasquin’ as his nom de guerre , has been called 'South Australia’s first inspired graphic satirist’ by Mahood, exemplified in his pencil and watercolour parody of an elaborate classical monument, Design for a Trophy To Be Erected at Tipara in Honour of the “Tax upon Grass” by the Grateful Squatters (Mortlock Library, ill. DAA ), which was probably intended for a lithograph, though none is known. Dealing with accusations of corruption against Surveyor-General George Goyder , it brings wit and irony to the neo-classical fashion for erecting monuments to great men (the summit of Pasquin’s monument is a gallows) in a comparable manner to English satiric caricatures by Gillray or Cruikshank.
Another of Pasquin’s visual political satires, Priests of the Temple in Legislative Assembly (1864), incorporates references to Egyptian, Graeco-Roman and Persian mythology in its depiction of squatter-parliamentarians gambling away the future of South Australia. A published cartoon given to 'M.T. Mitford’, Satan’s Factory (1864), is doubtless also his, the initials a misprint. In 1993 Michael Treloar was selling two original albumen print photographs mounted on card of political satires by 'E.R. Mitford’ : Priests of the Temple and The Prophets who found Honor in their own country and none elsewhere (1864), each with a slightly damaged sheet identifying the caricatured men with chamber pots on their heads waiting for Satan to finish mixing his 'Honor’ mixture out of various vices, etc. As Mahood points out, 'The particular interest of these ingenious prints is that they show not merely the erudition of the artist, but also the cultural level of the colonists to whom they were addressed, and who, judging by Pasquin’s fame and popularity at the time, thoroughly appreciated them.’
Mitford died on 24 October 1869, aged fifty-eight. He was buried in St Mary’s Cemetery in the Adelaide suburb of Sturt, where a monument was later erected to his memory.
Writers:
Bruce, CandiceKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1811
- Summary
- Colonial era Adelaide cartoonist, illustrator, journalist, sailor and farmer
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24 October 1869
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and solicitor, was born in London, eldest son of John Want, a surgeon, and Mary, née Nott. On 8 May 1829 he arrived at Sydney where he became a prominent solicitor, shale-mining developer and member of parliament (MLC 1856-61). Four small signed pencil drawings by Want dating from about 1843 – Government House, Windsor, New South Wales , View of Encampment in George’s River , Riverside Encampment and a view of Cook’s River Lakes -were sold at auction in 1986 in a collection of watercolours, pencil drawings and documents relating to the Underwood and Want families of Ashfield Park, Sydney. Also included was the will of John Want the elder (1850), two folders of family correspondence, an 1838 portrait of Randolph Want by William Nicholas and a portrait signed H.J.W. presumably of his wife Harriette, née Lister, whom he had married on 28 September 1839, and one of their nine children. After his death in 1869, Randolph C. Want continued the legal firm of Want & Want.
Although otherwise unknown as an artist, R.J. Want was on the Committee of Management for the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia Exhibition at Sydney in 1849, was a member and later a councillor of the Australian Philosophical Society (subsequently Royal Society), a committee member of the Australasian Botanical and Horticultural Society and a trustee of the Australian Museum.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1811
- Summary
- Prominent solicitor and Member of Parliament (1856-61). Although relatively unknown as an artist, four small signed pencil drawings by Want dating from about 1843 are known.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1869
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude53.9825271 Longitude-1.385249993 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- framemaker, carver and gilder, was born in Yorkshire on 6 November 1810. In 1832, William Wilson, joiner, married Mary Megson at Christ Church, Sculcoates, Yorks. For about six years from 1835 he lived and worked in Castle Street, Kingston-upon-Hull as a carver and gilder or cabinetmaker. His emigration to Tasmania in 1841 or 1842 may have owned something to George Peck , also from Hull, who had emigrated in 1833, returned to exhibit his Hobart Town model 'to encourage emigrants’ in 1839 and lived in Hull in the 1840s.
Wilson produced decorative gilt frames in Launceston from his arrival in about 1842 until the mid-1850s. He worked as a carver, gilder, looking glass, picture frame and composition ornament manufacturer, upholsterer etc from his home in St John Street, then Welman Street for four years (an advertisement in the Cornwall Chronicle 2 November 1844 mentions his removal and states that orders could be left with Mr Couzens, Chemist, St John Street). He moved back to the business area of Launceston – Charles Street – in 1849. In 1852 he returned to Welman Street and no longer advertised as a carver and gilder but as a 'Wholesale Dealer in Wines’ and wine merchant in 1854-55, though in the latter year William Wilson Junior was listed as a carver and gilder. William Wilson junior exhibited 5 oil paintings in the 1860 Launceston exhibition (no artists’ name or title of works given). As well as his son William Wilson junior, his apprentices included Charles Allen, a family friend and later a relation by marriage. Both young men ceased making frames in their mid-20s.
In the late 1850s William Wilson senior moved to Cressy and became licensee of the Cressy Hotel. By 1861, however, he had returned to his Welman Street home in Launceston, where he died on 5 July 1869, aged 58. He and Mary had 9 children, five born in Launceston.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 November 1810
- Summary
- William Wilson, framemaker, carver and gilder, produced decorative gilt frames in Launceston from his arrival in about 1842 until the mid-1850s. John Glover, Joseph Mathias Negelen, Robert Dowling and Frederick Strange are the major painters who used Wilson frames.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 July 1869
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- amateur photographer and Anglican clergyman, was born on 15 December 1809, youngest son of Haygarth Hodgson, a London bookseller. Rev. William Hodgson came to Sydney in September 1856 with his wife, Mary Ann, and three daughters, to become principal of Moore Theological College at Liverpool. He remained in this position until the end of 1867. A keen amateur photographer, the Illustrated Sydney News published an engraving of the Liverpool Asylum for the Infirm and Destitute from one of Hodgson’s photographs in 1865. He returned to England in ill-health in 1868 and died at Clifton rectory, Westmorland, on 2 December 1869.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 December 1809
- Summary
- Amateur photographer and Anglican clergyman he came to Australia in 1856 where he was principal of Moore Theological College at Liverpool, NSW until 1867. He photographed local scenes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2 December 1869
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude50.3807863 Longitude-4.1633201 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stoke, Plymouth, England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- painter and sketcher, was born at Trafalgar Row, Stoke, Plymouth (UK), on 5 February 1808, daughter of John Loudon RN. Her given names appear as Eliza, Elizabeth, Eleanor, Helen and Emilie in various documents, but she is 'Eliza Helen’ in the family record of her christening at Mrs Grant’s, George Street Dock, on 15 August 1812. Some of her work is initialled 'E.H.E.’. Eliza and her sister attended finishing school in Paris. According to her great grand-daughter, she was making high quality copies of pictures at the age of 16. She and her sister’s pianoforte teacher presented them with a Nocturne for Two Treble Voices with Pianoforte Accompaniment inscribed ' pour Emilie, et Charlotte ( Loudon , struck out), rue de Clichy, Lundi 19 May 1828 F. Liszt '. In the margin of Liszt’s gift the words 'à Plymouth je vous le recopierai ' is also struck out. The families were evidently on close terms; Eliza treasured a portrait given her by Liszt’s widowed mother.
In 1838 at Plymouth Eliza married Captain Arnold Charles Errington (1806-1890), whose family is traced back to the mid-seventeenth century in Burke’s Landed Gentry. On 18 January 1843, the Erringtons and their son John arrived at Hobart Town, Tasmania, on the convict ship Duchess of Northumberland . Arnold Errington, who finally rose to the rank of General, was appointed Commanding Officer of the 51st Light Infantry Regiment at the isolated penal settlement at Port Arthur. The family was quartered in the military subaltern’s four-roomed weatherboard cottage, which is recorded both internally and externally in Eliza’s charming naive drawings, which include views of Port Arthur and Hobart Town. Our Home at Port Arthur – John on the Floor c.1843 depicts the main room of their house with great fidelity to detail. Included are the blue-green marbled chimney-piece, dark skirting-boards, woven patterned fibre-matting (sea-grass) and scatter rugs covering most of the white-painted floor; the cottage piano and bookcase; even the silhouette portraits flanking the portrait of Captain Errington’s aunt over the chimney-piece. Other works in the same style include a watercolour of John on the verandah of the Port Arthur house and pencil views of the exterior of the cottage and its surrounds, such as Our Cottage at Port Arthur and Signal Staff – John in the Garden .
In 1845 the 51st Regiment was relieved by the 96th and in May that year the Errington’s returned to Hobart Town and Errington was promoted Major. Their third child, Rowland, was born in June 1846, and baptised at St George’s, Battery Point, on 4 July. On 28 July their residence in Hampden Road 'opposite the residence of G. Butler, Esq’ was advertised for lease. A convict artist, probably T.G. Wainwright , painted an unsigned mixed media portrait of their second son, Charles Francis, who died of tuberculosis before the family left for India with Errington’s regiment. Although no record of Charles’s birth in Tasmania has yet been located, Errington senior and his son, Arnold John, both identified the subject of Wainwright’s portrait on its backing paper, the latter in 1902. Burke’s Landed Gentry provides the only known reference to an Errington daughter.
In Tasmania Mrs Errington apparently came under the all-pervading influence of John Skinner Prout , who was in Van Diemen’s Land in 1844-48 and whose lithographs of Tasmanian scenery were published by T. Bluett in 1844. Errington’s sketchy pencil and wash landscapes of 1846, very much in Prout’s style, are far less lively and personal than her earlier family drawings. Other works include a pencil view of the entrance to Port Arthur dated November 1845, a romantic and apparently imaginary watercolour landscape of a man and woman by the sea (9 February 1846) and an undated view seemingly of Hobart Town.
En route to India, Eliza drew Proutian views of Sydney Harbour from the back window of 7 Fort Street. By January 1847 she was painting in India: her works include one executed at Bangalore on 17 April 1847 and a colourful View of Our Bungalow Compound Boonamarlee . Returning later to England, Errington was posted to Cape Town as a brevet colonel of his own regiment. Eliza’s watercolour views of the Cape dated 1852-54 include a rear view of their farmhouse (6 July 1853) and a watercolour portrait of a 'native chief’ (11 May 1853). Errington served again in India during the mutiny, where their youngest son, Francis Henry Launcelot, was born in 1857 and where they acquired fine Indian furnishings. Arnold was later stationed at the Curragh in Ireland, where Eliza continued to paint. According to family records, she died in 1869.
Writers:
Serle, Jessie
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 5 February 1808
- Summary
- A painter and sketcher who lived in Tasmania where lithographer John Skinner Proust was regarded as a key influence on her work. She also spent time in India and South Africa.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- c.1869
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude52.2928116 Longitude-3.73893 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wales, UK
- Biography
- painter and sketcher, was the eldest daughter of George Meredith, pioneer settler of the Great Swanport district in Van Diemen’s Land, and his first wife, Sarah Westall Hicks. Sarah was probably born in Wales but she lived mainly in England. She came to Van Diemen’s Land with her father, step-mother and other members of the family, leaving from London in the Emerald on 8 November 1820. Her view of The Old Cottage at Red Banks (the original wattle-and-daub cottage built by her father at Cambria in 1821) was copied in 1846 by her half-sister Fanny Meredith . It is now known only from the copy.
After her marriage to James Peck Poynter in the 1830s Sarah lived at Bathurst, New South Wales, where James managed the local bank. Her brother Charles and his wife Louisa Anne Meredith , a cousin whom she had known all her life, visited in October 1839 and met the Poynters’ first surviving son, Charles, born in March. The Poynters finally had a family of three boys and a girl. James died in 1847 and Sarah returned to England. She apparently paid a visit to her Tasmanian relatives in the late 1850s and seems to have been staying with her father’s family at the grander Cambria, Great Swanport, in 1858 when she exhibited her oil painting, Lake St. Clair, Tasmania , in the Hobart Town Art-Treasures Exhibition (unless this was copied from a Prout drawing or engraving in England). She died in England in 1869.
Sarah Poynter’s original sketches are in the Crowther Library. In 1936 Violet Mace, the last of the George Meredith descendants to live at Cambria, made four crude pencil copies after Poynter drawings for the Royal Society of Tasmania. These depict Bothwell Church, two general views of Port Arthur and Sketch of Commandant’s House, Port Arthur Showing Point Puer in Distance (TMAG). The originals have not been located.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1807
- Summary
- Sarah Westall Poynter (née Meredith) was a painter and sketcher. Leaving from London in 1820, she came to Van Diemen's Land with her father, step-mother and other members of the family.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1869
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude47 Longitude2 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- France
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur photographer and army officer, was born in Verdun, France in March 1807, during the Napoleonic wars. Both his parents – his father, Lieutenant George Thomas Wingate from Stirling, Scotland, and his mother Tamzin/Thomasina (nee Devonshire) – were made prisoners of war when Lieutenant Wingate’s Royal Navy gun-brig The Biter was wrecked near Etaples in November 1805. He entered the British army as an ensign in the 78th Regiment in May 1826 and served in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) from October 1828 to November 1832, where he was promoted lieutenant in May 1830. In November 1833 he transferred to the 2nd or the Queen’s Royal Regiment of Foot, travelling to India on the transport ship Henry Tanner via Sydney where the ship landed 220 male prisoners in late October 1834. He arrived in Madras in late February 1835 and served with the Queen’s Royals in India and Afghanistan from March 1835 until he returned to Scotland on furlough in February 1842, having been made brevet captain in May 1841. He was appointed to the British army recruiting staff at Glasgow in April 1843 and remained in that post until November 1844.
Many small watercolour sketches of 'life in India’ and at least one sketch from Sri Lanka in 1831 are included in an album held in the Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection (CSL&RC). One drawing is closely related to an unfinished sketch in the Anne S.K. Brown collection of 49 drawings by Wingate held at Brown University Library in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1839 Wingate made a series of watercolour drawings of the opening campaigns of the First Anglo-Afghan War, the storming of the fortress of Ghuznee [Ghazni] in July 1839 and the subsequent assault on the fortress of Kelat [Qalat] in November 1839. He was awarded the Ghuznee medal for his role in the campaign. A volume of lithographs drawn from Wingate’s sketches was published in London in 1842, announced in The Art-Union issue for 1 January 1843 as a 'new work on Afghanistan’ titled 'The storming of Ghuznee and Khelat’. The advertisement in the Art-Union advised subscribers to the work that they could now have their copies.It was also advertised in the Naval and Military Gazette on 18 February 1843 as 'Thirteen views representing the storming of the fortresses of Ghuznee and Khelat, Shah Soojah’s entry into Cabul, &c, from sketches taken on the spot, by Lieutenant Thomas Wingate, of the 2nd or Queen’s Royal Regiment, with plans of both places, and the General Orders published on both occasions’. The newspaper listed all 13 plates, describing them as “vigorous and spirited views” with a breadth and force of style “highly creditable to Lieutenant Wingate as an artist”.
Wingate’s regiment went into new quarters at Deesa in the state of Gujarat in April 1840, after returning from Qalat, and within a fortnight of their arrival Wingate was reported as having “made a great number of sketches of the most interesting places, including a panorama of the Indus.” [Asiatic Journal, May-August 1840 p.333] Another Wingate panorama, more than 5 metres in length, depicts Bombay from the top of Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy’s house. It is now in the Royal Commonwealth Society Library collection in the University of Cambridge Library, having been originally given to the Mitchell Library, Sydney, in 1953 by Mrs Eileen Cadell, great-granddaughter of Eleanor Wingate.
Wingate was promoted to captain (without purchase) in April 1846 and retired from the army through the sale of his commission in May 1846. The Wingate album includes several drawings dated to 1843-1844 during the time that Wingate was stationed in Glasgow. Details of Wingate’s movements and employment in the late 1840s are elusive but they probably included a visit to Sweden where he seems to have made the acquaintance of expatriate English sportsman and writer Llewellyn Lloyd (1782-1876). His watercolour portrait of Lloyd (ML) is dated 1849. Wingate provided a number of illustrations for Lloyd’s memoir Scandinavian adventures published in London in 2 volumes in January 1854.
In early 1851 he was living in Newman Street, off Oxford Street in the centre of London, a street with a long-held reputation as an artists’ quarter. Wingate’s fellow lodging house residents included two artists and a portrait painter, and his near neighbours included another portrait painter, an historical painter and a landscape artist. In November 1851 he sailed for Sydney, arriving in February 1852. In January 1853 he was appointed as a magistrate and in 1854 he was commissioned as a major commanding the 1st New South Wales Rifle Volunteers.
Wingate’s earliest known Australian drawing, Bark Hut near the Murrumbidgee (ML), is dated September 1852, suggesting that he travelled around the country before settling in Sydney, perhaps visiting his sister Elizabeth Turner who was then living near Gundaroo. Other Australian pictures include a watercolour of a gentleman leaning on a piano beside an open door giving a view of Sydney Heads (CSL&RC), painted at Sydney in March 1853. This picture has previously been thought to be a self-portrait but this suggestion can be discounted by reference to Wingate’s depictions of himself in a number of drawings in the Anne S.K. Brown Collection. An undated watercolour titled Bush Fire Potts Point probably dates to the 1850s and his watercolour view of Morning, Woolomoloo [sic] Bay is dated 6 May 1855. In November 1854 Wingate exhibited two portraits, Charles Plummer (a shipwreck hero) and Professor [Isaac] Nathan (composer and musician) as well as a watercolour at an exhibition in the Australian Museum organised by the Paris Exhibition Commissioners. He was a member of the Sydney Sketching Club, formed in 1856 with Conrad Martens as president and was also a member of the Philosophical Society of NSW, several members of which were keen amateur photographers.
On 18 June 1856, at Christ Church, Sydney, Wingate married Eleanor Terry, seventh child and fourth daughter of Richard Rouse and Elizabeth, née Adams, and widow of John Terry who left her an independent income. They lived at Percy Lodge, 22 Wylde Street, Potts Point, the city home of Eleanor’s family. Wingate appears to have begun taking photographs there, producing salted paper prints. Two photographs of a family group posed in front of the Rouse family property, Rouse Hill House near Windsor, were taken in 1859 (ML & CSL&RC). His photographs of Sir James Martin and his wife and their adjacent Sydney property, Clarens (CSL&RC), were probably taken that same year. Other photographs by Wingate in public collections, including those in the Wingate album, range in date from c1858 to 1866. He exhibited a photographic panorama of the view from Potts Point in the London International Exhibition of 1862.
One of two photographs Wingate took of Government House, Hobart Town, is stamped with his initials, and other Tasmanian photographs are in the Wingate album. Eleanor’s sister Jane Kennerley lived in Hobart and the Wingates made several visits there. On one trip Thomas took a view of one of the tableaux vivants designed and produced at Government House by Louisa Anne Meredith on 18 January 1866. Charles Woolley took the others, and the set of eight original photographs was made into a souvenir book, published to accompany a second, public, performance. Rather too distant to be fully appreciated, Wingate’s No. 5, Second Tableau – Left Group is an outdoor photograph of five of the vice-regal set dressed up as Maoris.
Thomas Wingate died at Percy Lodge on 18 May 1869, aged 62.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Megan_Martin
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 9 March 1807
- Summary
- Retired army officer who came to Sydney in 1852. Wingate worked in the media of photography, painting and drawing. He exhibited a photographic panorama of Sydney taken from his Potts Point home in the 1862 London International Exhibition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 May 1869
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude51.0575 Longitude-1.3075 Start Date1801-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hampshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and clergyman, was born in Hampshire, son of Benjamine (according to his son’s death certificate). Trained in England for the Congregational ministry, he was ordained pastor of the Independent Church, Broadway, Worcestershire. Of delicate health, he was advised to seek a more suitable climate, so sailed for Australia as chaplain on board the Travancore . The ship left England with a select company of free tradesmen-settlers brought out under the auspices of Rev. Dr J.D. Lang of Sydney.
Cuzens, his wife and family arrived at Point Henry in the Port Phillip District (now Victoria) on 1 November 1849 and immediately settled in Geelong, where Cuzens gathered the second Independent Church of Victoria in February 1850. Despite the secession of those opposed to state aid in April, the severe recurrence of his illness which confined him to a chair as a cripple, and the arrival of another minister to succeed him, he remained pastor of the Ryrie Street Independent Church until his death on 18 September 1869.
While subjected to this 'long trial of suffering and inactivity’, Cuzens was able to develop his artistic talents. He specialised in flower paintings, exhibiting five at the Geelong Mechanics Institute in 1857 (poppies, arum lilies, camellias, geraniums and convolvulii), together with a miniature head of Christ painted on ivory and The Sisters . In 1863 he showed a flower painting and Crown of Thorns at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute.
Writers:
Gunson, Niel
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1801
- Summary
- Painter and clergyman, born in Hampshire, England. Resident of Geelong, Victoria.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 September 1869
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1799-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- drawing teacher, advertised 'Instruction, in every style of Drawing and Painting’ from her cottage at the Race Course [Hyde Park], Elizabeth Street, Sydney ('near the Normal Institution’) in July 1837. Her terms were 3 guineas a quarter for private lessons at the student’s home and 2 guineas at a school or in her home. General classes cost 32s 6d and were held at 9 a.m. on Mondays and Thursdays. In a similar advertisement in December she styled herself Mademoiselle Dubost from Paris and was proposing to open in the New Year 'an establishment for the Education of Young Ladies, in which the French language will be spoken’. Her day school for girls duly opened in 1838 and she continued her drawing classes on Saturday mornings.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1799
- Summary
- Sydney based Mademoiselle Dubost operated a school for young ladies and offered private art tuition.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1869
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude50.7241405 Longitude-3.660778816 Start Date1795-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, soldier and governor, was born on 21 July 1795 in Devon, England, only child of Samuel Gawler and Julia, née Russell. He had an active military career with the 52nd Regiment during the Napoleonic Wars, then, after a serious illness, became converted to evangelical Christianity. He and Maria, née Cox, whom he married in 1820, devoted themselves to good works. He resigned his commission as lieutenant-colonel in 1834. In 1838 Colonel Gawler was appointed governor of South Australia to replace Governor Hindmarsh; he arrived at Adelaide with his wife and family in the Pestonjee Bomanjee on 12 October. Recalled on 15 May 1841, he died at Southsea, Hampshire, on 7 May 1869.
A hand-coloured lithograph of J. Barton Hack’s farm, Echunga Springs, Mount Barker, South Australia, lithographed by J. Hitchen and published by J.C. Hailes in London about 1840, is stated to be 'From a sketch by Col. Gawler’ on the print although any sketch was worked up by G.F. Angas. Hack had spent some £17 000 on Echunga Springs and it was one of the showpieces of the colony, visual justification for Gawler of his increasingly criticised lavish spending of government funds to attract wealthy settlers. Nevertheless, despite there being every reason for such a sketch to be in his possession, it is unlikely that Gawler actually drew it.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 July 1795
- Summary
- After an active military career in the Napoleonic wars, Gawler was appointed governor of South Australia in 1838. It is thought he sketched a work representing the lavish residence of J.Barton Hack.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 May 1869
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude21 Longitude78 Start Date1795-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- India
- Biography
- sketcher, soldier, explorer, civil servant and ornithologist, was born in India, son of a judge at Bengal. He lived with relatives in England from the age of five, finishing his education at Harrow. Commissioned ensign in 1813, he served in the Peninsular War, with the army of occupation in France (1815-18) and in Ireland. Writing from Ireland to his cousin in 1820, Sturt reported drawing 'a most beautiful portrait’ of the Duke of Wellington which had made him 'much favoured at headquarters’, as well as a caricature of the brigade-major which had 'picked up a deuce of a dust’ when engraved and put in 'every ginger-bread shop in Dublin’.
Sturt came to Sydney in 1827 as a captain in his regiment. The following year he undertook an exploring expedition to trace the course of the Macquarie River. He sketched the main outlines of the northern river system, including the Bogan and the Castlereagh, and discovered the Darling near its junction with the Bogan. In the summer of 1829-30 he went down the Murrumbidgee River and discovered its junction with the Murray and that of the Murray with the Darling. He then proceeded down the Murray to Lake Alexandrina and the river mouth before returning to his base.
He served on Norfolk Island for about a year from August 1830, then was given leave because he was going blind. At the end of 1831 he returned to England, where his sight responded to medical treatment and where he published Two Expeditions into the Interior of South Australia (2 vols, London 1833). Some of the illustrations were made from his sketches. In 1834 he sold his commission, received a grant of land and married. The next year he returned to Sydney, located his grant near the present site of Canberra and bought more land at Mittagong, but financial difficulties prompted him to sell out in 1838 and overland cattle to South Australia. Earlier in the year he had been visited by the noted natural historian John Gould , 'who greatly admired Sturt’s large original collection of Australian Psittacidae in watercolour, for which he offered on the spot a large sum’, but Sturt would not part with the portfolio at any price. The collection was later stolen together with early journals and diaries, losses which obsessed him in his last years.
Governor Gawler offered Sturt the position of surveyor-general of South Australia in November 1838 and he moved to Adelaide with his family. The next year Lieutenant Frome arrived with an official London commission for the same position and Sturt was appointed assistant-commissioner for lands. He became registrar-general in 1842. In August 1843 he set out on a journey to Central Australia in an endeavour to discover an 'inland sea’. The party passed the Barrier Ranges and, despite great difficulties in torrid inhospitable country, discovered and crossed Sturt’s Sandy Desert and reached latitude 24o 30’ south but found neither an inland sea nor any mountain range. He did not reach Adelaide again until January 1846, when he was suffering badly from scurvy. On his recovery, he again returned to England.
Here he received a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society and published his Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia (2 vols, London 1849). He used some of his sketches to illustrate the book. He also lent his notebook to John Michael Skipper , who worked up some of these 'tiny and delicate sketches in pencil and water-colour’. Back at Adelaide in 1849 Sturt was appointed colonial secretary but had to retire after two years, again because of failing eyesight. Awarded a pension, he returned to England and lived quietly at Cheltenham until he died in 1869, just before he could receive the knighthood about to be conferred upon him.
Most of Sturt’s surviving Australian art work consists of pencil and watercolour sketches and maps made on his exploring expeditions. Some are in notebooks and pocket books in the British Library, Rhodes House Library and Mitchell Library. Rhodes House Library also holds a collection of gouaches on panels developed from sketches made on his expeditions. They include a view of an Aboriginal camp, probably in the Murray River region (c. 1829-30), Possum Hunt, Murrumbidgee Region, December 1829 and a view of the explorers’ camp on the Murrumbidgee River in December 1829. Two portraits of Sturt painted by John Michael Crossland in the 1850s are in the Art Gallery of South Australia and there is another in the National Portrait Gallery, London. An unidentified portrait of a much more youthful surveyor and explorer painted by Benjamin Clayton in the early 1830s may also be of Sturt.
Writers:
Shaw, A. G. L.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1795
- Summary
- Despite his reputation as an explorer, Charles Sturt was also a keen sketcher who drew early admiration from the Duke of Wellington, whose portrait Sturt drew while an ensign in the British Army. Many of Sturt's Australian sketches were later used as illustrations in his books about his inland Australian explorations. The noted natural historian John Gould was also an admirer of Sturt's drawings,
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1869
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude54.5242081 Longitude-1.5555812 Start Date1794-01-01 End Date1869-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Darlington, Durham, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, diarist, naturalist and Quaker missionary, was born in Darlington, Durham, on 8 July 1794. He spent six years in Australia, arriving at Hobart Town in February 1832 and departing from Fremantle in February 1838. During this time he travelled the colony extensively on foot, accompanied by his friend and fellow missionary George Washington Walker , and urged many improvements in the conditions of Aborigines, government convicts and assigned servants. In 1832-34 he was based in Van Diemen’s Land, but he travelled farther afield in 1835-38: through New South Wales, to Norfolk Island and Moreton Bay (1836) and to Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Backhouse died on 20 January 1869 in York, England.
Backhouse recorded his journeys in A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies (London 1843), an important source book for the period illustrated after his own and other people’s sketches. Entrance to Port Davey, Van Diemen’s Land and Ben Lomond VDL are stated to be after sketches by Backhouse but so is A Chain Gang (located in New South Wales in the first edition but subsequently corrected to Van Diemen’s Land), which is actually after an engraving by Charles Bruce . Hobart Town 1834 and other views are acknowledged to be after Charles Wheeler . The Mitchell Library holds 19 of Backhouse’s original journals, bound in three volumes, which certainly include original drawings, usually roughly drawn standard views. Other Backhouse material is preserved with the Walker Papers (TU).
Backhouse gave a valuable herbarium collected in Australia and two volumes of botanical data to the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. The Mitchell and National Libraries hold the microfilm index of his papers and published works in the archives of the Linnaean Society and the Society of Friends, London, two other major repositories.
Writers:
Prunster, Ursula
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 July 1794
- Summary
- Only in Australia for six years, Backhouse kept extensive records of his experiences, which were then posthumously published in London. His observations have proven to be an invaluable resource for information about life in early colonial Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20 January 1869
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude54.3289795 Longitude-2.747183 Start Date1839-01-01 End Date1868-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kendal, England, UK
- Biography
- sculptor, sketcher and illustrator, was born in Kendal, England, son of the self-taught sculptor Thomas Duckett senior and his second wife, Winifred Ellwood. Duckett worked in the Preston studio of his father and later in that of the London sculptor Thomas Thornycroft. He enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools in April 1860 and exhibited sculpture at the Royal Academy between 1861 and 1867. In September 1863 he married, settling not long afterwards with his wife Elizabeth (Lizzie) in Rome. Here he became friendly with the conservative neo-classical sculptor John Gibson and hoped at one time to work in his studio. However, in 1864, at the invitation of Thomas Thornycroft, he returned to his old employment in England.
Duckett, a consumptive, sailed for Melbourne in February or March 1866 in the Winifred , leaving his pregnant wife and their daughter Lucia (b.1864) in England. Several sketches of shipboard life survive from the voyage, and he was commissioned by the captain of the vessel to execute two wooden medallions and four watercolour decorations. Settling in Melbourne, he was befriended by the artist Eugène Von Guérard 'my best friend here’ – and by August had modelled his portrait medallion. Duckett’s surviving oval pencil drawing of von Guérard dated 10 July 1866 is likely to be a study for the work. It was possibly von Guérard who suggested to his friend, the librarian Augustus Tulk, that Duckett receive the commission to design a seal for the Melbourne Public Library, but the sculptor was disappointed to find that 'the trustees do not intend to have the expense of engraving it’.
Duckett’s medallion of von Guérard was exhibited at the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition in 1866 together with three photographs of sculptures evidently executed by him in England. Having found that the Melbourne market was dominated by Charles Summers , Duckett had by then abandoned his sculptural ambitions and was working for the illustrated press. His first assignment had been for a drawing of 'Volunteer Manoeuvres by Moonlight’. He found the subject dull and was inexperienced in drawing on wood, so requested assistance from von Guérard who 'worked on the trees for me putting in magical fairily delicate touches until they had a freedom and style quite exquisite’. According to Duckett the work was 'so mauled and metamorphosed’ by the engraver “F.G.” – probably Frederick Grosse – and 'such a “horror”’ in its published state that both his and von Guérard’s efforts were ruined. His next commission from the same editor was for a drawing of Chinese wood-carvers in their studio in Little Bourke Street. A surviving sketch showing Duckett observing the carvers at work is dated 28 August 1866, while another sketch of the same date shows Duckett sketching and displaying a drawing to the Chinese artisans.
Duckett found Melbourne society little to his liking writing to Thornycroft’s daughter Helen that an ape exhibited at a local circus had been promoted as 'the nearest approach to a human being ever seen in these colonies’: 'I have not seen the individual in question but I think it very possible’. This and similarly severe pronouncements on the Melburnians were doubtless inspired by his difficulties in finding employment and by the fact that a severe winter had adversely affected his health, which had been partially restored by the voyage out. On medical advice Duckett camped at Emu Creek, Mandurang, for two months in early 1867. On 23 February he wrote to his friend Mrs Pearson in England that he had not taken up either modelling tool or pencil for two full months: 'Certainly the longest abstinence in my life’. He added that he had recently 'resumed the brush – and have made one or two sketches in colour better as far as I can judge than anything I have yet done’. Two sketches of his tent survive from this period.
For reasons of both health and economy Duckett did not return to Melbourne. By May he was in Launceston 'modelling medallions, making drawings and nursing myself’. In June he arrived at Sydney, where he had been advised he would be better able to make a living. Here he received commissions for several busts, among them those of Governor Sir John Young and Sydney merchant Thomas Barker. The portraits were modelled in plaster, the sculptor intending to cut them in marble in England or Rome at a later date. He also received a commission from Government Architect James Barnet to design and model a number of angels for the Redfern and Haslem’s Creek termini for the funerary railway line. They included the Angel of Death (holding a scroll in her left hand and the end of the drapery of her robe in her right) and the Angel of the Resurrection (holding a trumpet), which were mounted on the cusps of the west arch of the Haslem’s Creek Receiving Station (now the chancel arch of All Saints Church, Ainslie, ACT). Due to Duckett’s declining health the figures were carved in sandstone by the stonemason Henry Apperly.
By November Duckett had had a severe relapse. He planned, regardless, to return to England but in December, on receiving news of his wife’s death, embarked on a suicidal course of overwork. In January 1868 he received a commission for a series of eleven, 10 × 5 foot portrait transparencies to be illuminated in honour of Prince Alfred’s visit to Sydney. Each was designed to represent a statue in a blue niche 'with greenish tints and warm reflects, to be as like old Greek marble (no black nor white ) as possible’. He made preliminary sketches for the works 12 inches high (30.5 cm), which he then divided into squares, a method of drawing which his father discouraged 'but Overbeck, Leighton & Herbert practice it & I could not have done without it!’ A sheet with Duckett’s rough sketches for six of the series survives: they comprise, in addition to Captain Cook, Sir Walter Raleigh, Christopher Columbus, Galileo, James Watt and Sir Henry Davy.
The figures are in historical dress and hold objects appropriate to their individual achievements (with the exception of Columbus, who crosses his arms). Although rendered in a slightly informal manner, they were obviously intended as depictions of statues rather than straightforward painted representations for they are represented with pillars or other structural supports. Duckett executed these large paintings at the rate of one a day, apparently fully aware that his feeble health could not stand up to the effort. By 1 February the canvases were finished but the feat had overtired him – he wondered whether it had any precedent, intending to look up Vasari’s Lives of the Painters for confirmation – and it hastened his death, which occurred only a few months later, on 26 April 1868 at the age of twenty-nine. He was survived by Lucia and her younger sister, born while Duckett was in the colony.
Duckett’s drawings are competent and lively. Indeed, he claimed that most of his Sydney sculpture commissions had been gained through his abilities in sketching. His Sydney obituarist praised his talent in modelling, notably in sculpturing children (as evidenced by his portfolio sketches): 'We rise from them with the impression that had he lived he would have excelled in these subjects in marble, as Sant and Cope have done in colour. But he is gone; and we are left to regret that one whose taste and culture would have refined and enriched us is taken away.’ His portrait busts are sensitively modelled, with a strong interest in displaying the character of his subjects, although, as his obituarist noted, his best works are his allegorical pieces, which display fine modelling skills and a strong compositional sense. His preference for children as subjects suggests the influence of Thomas Thornycroft’s wife, Mary Thornycroft, a well-known sculptor of children of Queen Victoria, although both the modelling and arrangement of Duckett’s figures indicate that he was more directly influenced by John Henry Foley, with whom he was apparently friendly.
Duckett does not mention selling any of his allegorical pieces while in the colony, though a copy of his Night and Twilight was exhibited by Henry Dowling at the Launceston Fine Art Exhibition in 1879. The design had originally been conceived and modelled for a client in London in 1861 – possibly Henry’s brother , Robert Hawker Dowling , with whom the sculptor was friendly. Duckett’s surviving sketches in the Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston (UK), include a drawing of kangaroos in a rainforest with a side vignette of two Aboriginal children drawn in Victoria in August 1866, a sketch of Rushcutters Bay dated 5 July 1867, and one of Government House and Farm Cove, Sydney dated 10 July 1867.
Writers:
Lennon, Jane
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1839
- Summary
- An artist of English origin, Duckett came to Australia in the 1860's. Despite befriending Eugène Von Guérard he found Melbourne hostile and moved to Sydney, where he produced a number of works before dying from consumption.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 April 1868
- Age at death
- 29
Details
Latitude54.8647255 Longitude-6.143637911 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1868-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- County Antrim, Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, policeman, gold commissioner and murderer, was born on 27 July 1832 in County Antrim, Ireland, son of John Loftus Griffin and Anne, née Thompson. He served in the Royal Irish Constabulary and the British Army and was decorated and commissioned for his Crimean War record. By April 1857 Griffin was in Victoria, where he married and rapidly deserted a mythically wealthy widow. He then had a reasonably successful career in the police forces of New South Wales (1858) and Queensland (Rockhampton 1859, Brisbane 1860-63 and Clermont 1863-66) until accusations of theft and embezzlement of public money surfaced at Clermont. Then, astonishingly, he was transferred to Rockhampton as gold commissioner. At the end of 1867 he robbed the Clermont gold coach, which he was officially accompanying, of £8151 in cash (less the £252 he had already stolen to pay an outstanding debt to some Chinese miners) and shot its two trooper escorts. He then began to spend the easily traceable notes. Sentenced to death on 18 March, he confessed his guilt and was hanged on 1 June.
Even in the condemned cell Griffin offended the Northern Argus , which reported somewhat belatedly on 10 June 1868 that he had abused the privilege of being allowed pen, ink and paper: 'we hear a letter was written and sent out which the governor did not see, and a sketch, or perhaps sketches, were made which never came under his notice’. The potentially inflammatory subject of the smuggled 'sketch, or perhaps sketches’ was not mentioned and is difficult to imagine.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 27 July 1832
- Summary
- Griffin was a sketcher, policeman, gold commissioner and murderer. He married and deserted a wealthy widow in Victoria in 1857. In 1867 Griffin robbed the Clermont gold coach, which he was officially accompanying. He was hanged in 1868.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1 June 1868
- Age at death
- 36
Details
Latitude50.416667 Longitude-4.75 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1868-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cornwall, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Cornwall, son of an Anglican clergyman, Rev. W.H. Davies. According to Mallalieu, Henry Casson (or Cassom) Davies was employed in 1851 as drawing master at Hull College in Yorkshire, although McCulloch states: 'After a roving life spent mostly in the U.K., he was commissioned by the British government “to record in words and pictures the colony of Victoria”’. He was presumably the H. 'Davis’ who exhibited two works with the Victorian Fine Arts Society in 1853, Thames, near Somerset House, by Night and Landscape . The following year (as Davies of Junction Street, St Kilda) he showed four works at the Melbourne Exhibition: Highland Snow Storm , An Australian Dust Storm , A Summer’s Day at Windermere and Wreck on the Fern Islands . All were stated to have been 'done in the colony, and are therefore, par excellence , Victorian’. Indeed, the Argus reviewer thought it improbable that, in comparison with Davies, Melbourne would ever 'be able to boast of undoubted and superior genius in an art like painting’. Two years later he contributed a large group of watercolour paintings of both Scottish and Australian subjects to the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art, Bridge over Saltwater River and Church and Schools, St. Kilda (a view of the proposed Protestant Church and schools) being jointly exhibited with the Melbourne architect and civil engineer Charles R. Swyer, their designer.
Between 1855 and 1868 Davies was represented at most of the major art exhibitions in Victoria although he is not always readily identified: it is likely, for example, that Lagoon Scene at Sunrise , exhibited by R.F. Norton at the Geelong Mechanics Institute in 1857 as the work of 'Davis’, was his. He showed views of Scotland, England and Tasmania with the Victorian Society of Fine Arts that year, most for sale from £25 to £80 each. The Tasmanian views were a product of a recent tour and he may have revisited the island on sketching trips. The five Tasmanian works he showed in the 1860 Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts, however – with the exception of The Punch Bowl, near Tasmania – had all been exhibited previously.
In February 1858 the Age noted that an art union of Davies’s watercolours was about to be drawn at Reed & Co.'s shop in Collins Street. A View of the Yarra was on view at Mr Maclachlan’s in Collins Street in May 1859 when three British works – St Michael’s Mount Cornwall , The Lost Track and Glen Athol in Perthshire – could be seen at Joseph Wilkie’s music shop. Other watercolours, including Fern Tree Gully , were shown at the 1863 and 1869 Ballarat Mechanics Institute exhibitions.
In 1858 Davies married Emily Frances Davis. Soon afterwards he was supplementing his income by working as a drawing master at the Church of England Grammar School, St Kilda Road, Melbourne, where by 1866 he was sharing the teaching with A. Dellas . Davies died prematurely in 1868 at his home in Bull Street, St Kilda. His view of St Kilda Beach (1854), probably the same as St Kilda from the Bay by 'Davis’ exhibited at Ballarat in 1863, was shown posthumously in the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition at which Samuel Calvert showed Davies’s River Scene and A. Fisher, Brogher Loch . Paintings catalogued as by 'Davis’ were probably also his. The Melbourne patron Dr J. Blair of Collins Street lent four of Davies’s paintings from his collection to the Victorian Intercolonial Exhibition Preparatory to the Philadelphia Centennial. The inaugural exhibition of the Victorian Academy of Arts in 1870 included five sketches of New South Wales, Toorak and Scotland by this 'young water-colour draughtsman, named Davis [sic], of great promise but unequal performance [who] gave numerous proofs of genius between 1855 and 1860, but died early, without fulfilling what he was capable of’.
Soon after his arrival in the colony Davies was regarded as the best watercolour painter in Victoria. Reviewing the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art, the Argus stated: 'This gentleman not only selects his views with great judgement, but he represents them under the most poetical aspects and agreeable atmospheric effects’. At the same time My Note Book extolled Davies as a 'poet-painter’ of colonial subjects: 'There is actual, visible, I was almost going to say tangible atmosphere in them’. He strove in his landscapes for evocative, picturesque and sublime atmospheric effects, painting in a broad style that was frequently contrasted to the detailed precision of Chevalier or von Guè rard. Undoubtedly he was influenced by J.M.W. Turner who, with Copley Fielding and other British artists, was said to have admired his work.
In 1856 the Argus summed up Davies’s style as 'characterised by great breadth, and even massiveness. His pencil is bold, vigorous, and free … The morning mist arising from a solitary lagoon—a heavy fog (suffused with a warm flush) brooding over the sea, which is slumbering in a dead calm—a glowing sunset, exhibiting grand contrasts of colour … a waterfall tumbling through a dark ravine, with huge masses of rock interposing their grim and rugged forms between the trees which grow in wild luxuriance from their fissures—mountains looming in misty magnificence through a driving storm of sleet and snow—these are among the subjects selected by Mr Davies for illustration … He seizes upon the broad and salient features of a landscape, and describes them (so to speak) vigorously, expressively, and poetically’.
Increasingly, however, critics felt that Davies’s painting was becoming too generalised. Combined with a non-literal use of colour – a 'chaos of beautiful prismatic extravagances’ – his landscapes were accused of bearing little relation to colonial nature. The Illustrated Journal of Australasia noted in January 1858: 'Mr Davies in colours, is as bold and broad as ever; indeed so much so that he will presently stand in need of an interpreter’. The Argus had previously remarked that he was in danger of 'his strength degenerating into a weakness and of his excellence being exaggerated into a defect’. By 1863 the Illustrated Melbourne Post was positively sarcastic, referring to his 'one indifferent sketch, which a strong imagination may presume to be a coast scene, but which is just as likely to be scrub, heath, scraped up mud, or anything else equally indeterminate and inexpressive’. When Davies showed oils as well as his normal watercolours in 1864, the Argus conceded his 'Turnerish’ aims but thought he had not been successful 'in catching the spirit of the great English master’.
Almost forgotten today, Davies is represented in the La Trobe Library by a watercolour, View on the Yarra, near Richmond , acquired for the Victorian National Collections in 1870. Other works occasionally appear at auction. Evening on the Yarra, Melbourne (1856, w/c) sold at Christie’s for $35 000 in April 1987. Neither watercolour explains his contemporary reputation, the latter supporting an 1872 criticism of 'his stereotyped failing of too much blue’.
Writers:
Lennon, Jane
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1831
- Summary
- Considered by contemporary critics to be a 'poet-painter' of colonial subjects. His Turner-esque technique nevertheless came to be considered overly stylised which may explain why, despite his contemporary reputation, he is not more widely recognised today.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1868
- Age at death
- 37
Details
Latitude52.215933 Longitude19.134422 Start Date1828-01-01 End Date1868-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Poland
- Biography
- painter, army officer and adventurer, was born in East Prussia on 15 February 1828.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 February 1828
- Summary
- Best known in New Zealand as the Prussian-born adventurer and daring guerrilla-type fighter, and for the intricately detailed watercolours recording the events of the Waikato and Wanganui Campaigns in the 1860s, 'Memoranda of the New Zealand Campaign 1863-1864'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 September 1868
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1868-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- portrait and house painter, was listed as a portrait painter of Rundle Street, Adelaide (South Australia) in Lewis’s Adelaide Almanack for 1862. He was presumably Robert Forbes, a Scot whose normal trade appears to have been 'painter’ (i.e. house painter). Robert Forbes arrived in 1860 aboard the Grand Trianon , accompanied by his wife Catherine and several children. He died at Port Adelaide on 6 June 1868.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1820
- Summary
- A portrait and house painter, presumably Robert Forbes, who worked in Rundle Street, Adelaide in the 1860s. Forbs died at Port Adelaide on 6 June 1868.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6 June 1868
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude46.7985624 Longitude8.2319736 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1868-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Switzerland
- Biography
- painter, lithographer and art teacher, was born in Switzerland. He came to Victoria in the Scottish Chief , arriving on 8 May 1858, and worked in Melbourne as a freelance artist, lithographer and drawing master. In 1859-62 he was employed by Frederick McCoy, director of the National Museum of Victoria, to draw and lithograph specimen plates for McCoy’s books Prodromus of the Palaeontology of Victoria and Prodromus of the Zoology of Victoria (published in the 1870s). He did similar work for Ferdinand von Mueller , Director of the National Herbarium of Victoria, drawing and lithographing plant specimens for the six volumes of Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae (1859-68), The Plants Indigenous to the Colony of Victoria (1860-65) and Analytical Drawings of Australian Mosses (1864).
For a time he was employed by Julius Hamel and may have lithographed several or all of the portraits in Hamel’s Men of Victoria (Melbourne 1859), although only the portrait of Frederick McCoy is signed by him. In 1860 he lithographed The Crucifixion (after Michelangelo), published by Hamel & Co. His best-known portrait is a lithograph (La Trobe Library) of Ludwig Becker , which he produced free of charge at the end of 1861 for the German Club, Melbourner Deutscher Verein. Exhibited at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition, the Melbourne Examiner praised its remarkable delicacy and high finish. Schoenfeld sent a print to Governor Sir Henry Barkly. His only other recorded work is View on Eastern Hill , published in 1865 by Charles Troedel in Souvenir Views of Melbourne and Victorian Scenery .
In the 1860s Schoenfeld was a paid drawing instructor for classes held by the Melbourner Deutscher Turnverein, but after the club’s premises burnt down in December 1866 he no longer seems to have held the position. In January 1868 he advertised his household effects for sale by auction and stated that he was compelled to leave the colony owing to lack of employment. He did not leave but became increasingly depressed about his circumstances and attempted to drown himself at Port Melbourne. A second attempt at suicide, in a water-filled quarry at Richmond on 21 April 1868, was successful. He was buried in a public grave after an inquest held in the name of Fritz Schonfield. His wife Philipine, née Phen, survived him.
When H.J. Woodhouse gave a lecture on early Victorian engravers and lithographers at Melbourne in 1889 he stated that Schoenfeld had produced examples of lithography so lovely, both in portraiture and still-life, as to render a considerable compliment to Victoria in being able to claim him as a pioneer.
Writers:
Darragh, Thomas A.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1810
- Summary
- Painter, lithographer and art teacher. In 1859-62 Schoenfeld was employed by Frederick McCoy, director of the National Museum of Victoria, to draw and lithograph specimen plates for McCoy's books.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21 April 1868
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1868-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist and sketcher, was born in England in the early 1800s, daughter of Charles Woodcock. In 1836 she became the second wife of Francis Russell Nixon ; they had eight children. Her husband was appointed first bishop of Tasmania and the couple arrived at Hobart Town on 18 July 1843 with their children and servants. Mrs Nixon sketched virtually everywhere she went, using her sketches as part of her prolific correspondence with her family and friends in England. She was a fine draughtsperson but underrated her own work, being always eager to defer to the bishop’s superior artistic talents. After a trip from home late in 1844 she wrote to her family: 'I have been very diligent in sketching for you, but I must wait to send you the result of my poor efforts to illustrate my tour till the bishop has seen and corrected the same’.
She often sent home copies she had made of her husband’s drawings rather than her own originals. For instance, she sent copies of the bishop’s views of the Derwent River (Tasmania) and of the approach to Cape Town made on the voyage out in 1843, although when the Cape was sighted she noted, 'the bishop and I and Mr. Godfrey [q.v.] sketched most vigorously till about one’. Since Frederick then fell and sprained his wrist, subsequent views were by her alone: 'The Bishop and I were quite delighted with the scenery, and it was a great mortification to us both that he was not able to sketch’. Her own sketches made when approaching Hobart Town were sent home to her father in a letter of 18 July 1843, to give 'some faint idea of the beauty and grandeur of the coast. No 1 is Bruny Island with the Friar Rocks at the extreme point; and No 2 is our first view of Mount Wellington’.
A student of the picturesque (like the bishop), Nixon did not always find the Tasmanian landscape to her taste, although at times she imagined that it resembled Italy, which she loved. Nevertheless, the vast majority of her Australian works are views, many unsigned and most undated. On a trip made up country without her husband in October-November 1844, she drew numerous scenes and passed discriminating comments on the local vegetation. The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery holds a number of these landscape sketches, including two pencil drawings of Entally , a pencil and wash sketch Near Entally , and a pencil drawing, Ben Lomond and Valley of the Esk . Most are stylistically indistinguishable from her husband’s work but an occasional example hints at a distinctive artistic personality, including an attributed watercolour and ink view dated December 1847 showing Bishop Nixon’s short-lived school, Mayfield Farm, on part of the Bishopsbourne endowment, with charmingly bonneted little orphan girls in the foreground (TMAG).
The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery holds Nixon’s pencil sketch of the Archer property Woolmers, dated 22 December 1847, and a view of South Esk. Another watercolour is found in the album of her friend Johannah Crear (NLA). It is also extremely likely that she is the mysterious A.M . who signed several watercolours of Norfolk Island and Port Arthur and made copies of Bishop Nixon’s views of the same places (DL) as well as filling a sketchbook with rough sketches of Norfolk Island (ML). Although Anna Maria normally used her full initials 'A.M.N’., Bishop Nixon referred to her as 'A.M.’.
Like other women artists, Nixon documented her domestic life. Drawings sent home to her family included a plan of their first residence in Davey Street, Hobart Town ('next door to Mr Bicheno’s’ [q.v.]), enclosed with a letter dated 29 September 1843: 'not very correct, I fear, as to the proportions, but perhaps the Bishop will send you a better one day’. A view of the one-roomed cottage at the bottom of their garden for their carpenter and odd-job man, Bailey, was enclosed with a letter dated 1 October 1843: 'I have made you a little sketch of this from our sitting-room window, though it can convey no idea to you of the beauty of the scene’.
Her most original and unusual work is The Drawing Room with Organ (1845, TMAG), a small pencil sketch highlighted with white which provides a rare and minutely-detailed view of a domestic interior. It has the added virtue of being accompanied by her plan and a description of each item of furniture: ’1. Organ (still without a case ) ... 13. Very pretty Huon pine bookcase – Bailey’s best job … 14. St. Sebastian [by Guido Reni, the Nixons’ most prized painting] ... 15. W.H.'s sofa table covered with the blue cloth given me in 1836 by Honoria – on this is my Indian desk & here is my Account drawer & here I write in the morning … 26. A round Table, at wh. I am now writing Good night. 11 o’clock p.m. Jan. 2. 45’. The Nixons’ art collection was described in a letter of 12 February 1845.
At first Nixon endured rather than enjoyed her Australian exile. There was 'the bitter sorrow’ of parting from her family and the death of her stepdaughter Fanny (Frances Maria) on the voyage out. Her letters tell of her feelings of cultural isolation: 'No one here seems to care a straw for the arts, or even for reading, with the exception of the Macleans, where one’s eyes and memory are always refreshed by views of Italy, etc., and new books.’ The long separations from her husband while he travelled around his extensive diocese were a cause of loneliness for her as well as worry on her husband’s behalf: 'I cannot bear that my poor husband should be deprived of the consolation he derives from his domestic ties.’ As one who felt so much empathy for her husband, she was also severely affected by the political and ecclesiastical disputes in which he became involved.
Even so, as a family friend wrote, 'Mrs Nixon works as hard as [the Bishop] and makes an excellent Bishop’s Lady’. As well as acting as her husband’s amanuensis, she taught Sunday School classes and played the organ in St David’s Cathedral, the latter being 'a great delight’ to her. She learnt to enjoy the Tasmanian landscape and made many friends and established numerous ties with the colony before returning to England in 1862. Because of her husband’s failing health, the Nixons moved to Vignolo near Stresa, Lake Maggiore, Italy, in 1866, but it was Anna Maria who died there on 26 November 1868. She was buried in the British Cemetery at Stresa.
Writers:
Brown, TonyKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1802
- Summary
- A watercolourist and sketcher who constantly sketched everywhere she went sending her works back to her family and friends as a form of correspondence.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26 November 1868
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude51.9925394 Longitude-2.156016959 Start Date1797-01-01 End Date1868-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tewkesbury, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist and surgeon, was born in Tewkesbury, England, son of James and Sarah Nind. At New South Wales in 1826 Scott Nind (as he was called) was appointed assistant surgeon to the proposed military settlement at King George Sound (Albany, WA), a British outpost formed largely to discourage the French from claiming any part of New Holland. With a small garrison force of eighteen troops from the 39th Regiment under the command of Major Edmund Lockyer and twenty-three convicts, he arrived at the Sound in the brig Amity on Christmas Day 1826. There he became friendly with the Aborigine Mokare, who had been sketched by de Sainson when Dumont d’Urville’s French exploratory expedition visited earlier in the year. Nind shared his hut and rations with Mokare and in return learned much about the local Nyungar people. Possibly partly because of this relationship, Nind did not fare as well with his white colleagues. He was said to have been on 'very unsociable terms’ with both Lockyer and his replacement, Captain Wakefield. By August 1828 he had decided to quit his post, but NSW Colonial Secretary Alexander Macleay refused to accept his resignation and he was forced to remain at the Sound for most of the following year. This unsatisfactory situation was exacerbated in April 1829 by Nind’s refusal to serve on a Board of Survey with Sergeant Hoop: 'I should be unwilling in any transaction to be associated with a Non-Commissioned Officer’.
The new commander of the 39th, Lieutenant Sleeman, complained to Macleay about Nind’s 'careless and reluctant manner in which he appears to discharge any duties however trifling, [and] the sullen opposition he shows on all occasions’. In September Nind suffered a serious mental breakdown witnessed by a shocked Sleeman in his (Sleeman’s) house. Nind had to be placed under restraint and 'every dangerous Article removed from his reach’. Sleeman now wrote to Macleay that what he had taken to be Nind’s 'Opposition and Sullenness was really occasioned by extreme dejection of Spirits and a morbid state of mind bordering on derangement, probably increased by his long residence here’. However distressing, this public episode did result in the desired repatriation to Sydney in October 1829 and from there to England. His health may not have immediately improved. In 1831 Robert Brown, the noted botanist who had visited King George Sound with Matthew Flinders in 1801, read Nind’s paper 'A description of the natives of King George’s Sound (Swan River Colony) and adjoining country’ before the Royal Geographical Society in London, Nind being unaccountably absent.
Nind returned to NSW in February 1833 to claim a land grant to which he had been entitled in 1825 but had postponed, he said, because of his appointment to the Sound. The system had changed in the interim, however, and he was deemed to have 'forfeited all claim to a grant’. He argued his case for several years, to no avail. Nevertheless, he remained in the colony. At the age of sixty-one, he married Maria Ann Thompson. He died at Campbelltown, outside Sydney, on 6 August 1868.
The five known Western Australian watercolour sketches attributed to Nind are very competent and careful delineations of the King George Sound landscape which, Nind stated, 'although of a barren nature, is very picturesque’. His View of Frederick Town. King George’s Sound (ML), dated 1828 and initialled 'I.S.N.’, is both picturesquely framed and geologically and botanically precise. It relates to Nind’s description in his paper: 'The hills behind the settlement are capped by immense blocks of granite, and are strewed with a profusion of beautiful shrubs, among which the splendid Banksiae grow to a large size, and the Kingia and Xanthorrhoea or grass-tree are abundant’. Four unsigned watercolours (AGWA), long thought to have been by Major Lockyer, were convincingly re-attributed to Nind by Barbara Chapman in 1979. (Three were drawn after Lockyer had left the settlement yet all are clearly in the same hand.) They depict the first camp, Mount Melville and Frederick Town, Princess Royal Harbour – King George’s Sound March 1827 , Entrance to King George’s Sound (1828), The Settlement King George’s Sound (1828) and a general view, King George’s Sound 1829 .
Nind pointed out in his paper that by 1829 Frederick Town, or Albany as it soon became, 'consisted only of eight or ten buildings, some of which were brick nogged, others of turf, and others of wattle and plaster. The roofs were thatched with coarse grass.’ Although his drawings of the settlement were appropriately modest, the last in particular conveys only the arcadian serenity of a place where the natives were friendly, the climate was healthy and the French had gone home. Conflict between the perfections of the natural world and 'vile man’ was, as with so many early landscape drawings, inexpressible within the conventions of the day.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1797
- Summary
- A watercolourist whose most well known works are of King George's Sound, Albany, Western Australia. His works are precise geologically and botanically of this region and are represented at various institutions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6 August 1868
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1784-01-01 End Date1868-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, author and traveller, was an ironfounder from the Cannon Foundry, London who promised to bring a large amount of capital and a steam-engine for government saw-milling to NSW. He reached Sydney in the Earl Spencer in 1813, shed his partner, abandoned any interest in commerce and took up with Rev. Samuel Marsden. From November 1814 to March 1815 he accompanied Marsden on his pioneer missionary visit to New Zealand, reporting on their travels in Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand (London 1817). It contains three engravings, presumably after Nicholas’s sketches, by Samuel Neele, an English engraver who specialised in the production of maps and plates for antiquarian works: A Chief of New Zealand , Three Kings (coastal profiles) and North Cape of New Zealand . An additional woodcut has the interesting annotation, 'A fac-simile of the Amoco or tattooing on the face of a New Zealand chief, as drawn by himself on board the ship Active, March 9th, 1815’ – the chief in question being one of the Maoris whom Marsden had brought back to Sydney.
No drawings are known from Nicholas’s Australian sojourn, although watercolour portraits of Maoris he allegedly painted could have been done in Sydney before he left for England in November after acquiring a 700-acre land grant (which he later sold to Marsden). But the putative drawings could equally have been painted in London. Nicholas mentioned meeting two Maoris there in 1818. Having settled into the comfortable life of a leisured English gentleman, he kept in touch with Marsden and supported Elizabeth Fry in her work for women convicts. He died at Reading, Berkshire on 22 July 1868.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1784
- Summary
- Nicholas was a sketcher who arrived in Sydney in 1813. With Rev. Samuel Marsden they travelled to New Zealand where he reported on their travels through his drawings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 July 1868
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude51.8333313 Longitude-2.1666674 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1867-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gloucestershire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and clergyman, was born in Gloucestershire, son of a Congregational minister. He came to New South Wales in 1853 and briefly taught at Christ Church of England parochial school at the southern end of Sydney. He was soon recommended to the Bishop of Newcastle and began training for a theological career in the Anglican Church. After teaching at country schools in Cassilis, Muswellbrook and Morpeth, Dove was ordained deacon in September 1855 and sent to the Darling Downs district (Queensland), then still part of New South Wales. He was priested in 1857. Two years later, Rev. W.W. Dove married and accepted the living of Jerry’s Plains in the Hunter River district. He contracted a hereditary disease in 1865 and, after suffering much pain, died on 23 March 1867, survived by his wife and children.
Halcombe states that Dove was 'very active’ while stationed at Cassilis and Muswellbrook and 'most useful in church decorations’. A letter to his sister Bessie in England dated 13 January 1855 (private collection, photoprint Mitchell Library) describes this period in some detail. It is embellished with numerous pen-and-ink sketches, including Church at Mt Dangar; East End of Chancel Decorated for Christmas , School House at Cassilis , St Alban’s Church School, Muswell Brook [sic] , Oleander Flower and Native Cherry Fruit and Christmas decorations. The style of the letter was, he said, inspired by the Illustrated London News . His larger ink drawing of St Alban’s Church, Muswellbrook is in the Mitchell Library.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1832
- Summary
- Colonial sketcher and clergyman, who was 'very active' while stationed at Cassilis and Muswellbrook and 'most useful in church decorations'. Inspired by the Illustrated London News, he made sketches of churches and flowers to embellish letters to his sister Bessie.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 March 1867
- Age at death
- 35
Details
Latitude-33.8263388 Longitude151.2009865 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1867-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Crow's Nest, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- painter and draughtswoman, was born in Sydney on 17 November 1831, the only surviving child of James Ironside, a commission agent from Scotland, and Martha Rebecca, née Redman.She was the first Australian born artist to travel to Europe, and William Moore credits her as being 'the first woman in this country who, gifted with a rare imagination, was able to express her ideals in art.’She was throughout her life supported by her mother, Martha Ironside, who encouraged her career at every step and who remained her closest companion.As was common with girls of her generation she was educated at home, well taught by her mother, at Crow’s Nest, North Sydney. She tentatively entered public life when she contributed pro-republican verses to various magazines.On 20 June 1855 she presented a banner she had designed to the Volunteer Forces of New South Wales as 'a memorial of her devoted attachment to the land of her nativity.’ The Ironsides were a Presbyterian family and she was baptised at Scots Church Sydney by the radical preacher, Dr John Dunmore Lang. Other friends included Sir Charles Nicholson, and Daniel Henry Deniehy. The latter realised that as it was not possible for her to be properly educated in art in Australia, and urged her to go to Europe. The two maintained a close correspondence until his death.In January 1856 she arrived in London with her mother and a letter of introduction from Lang to Sir James Clark, physician to Queen Victoria. As a consequence of this she met John Ruskin, who expressed an interest in her work and commented on the quality of her work in a number of letters. Ironside and her mother relocated to Rome where she established a studio while studying the great Italian masters. In 1861 was granted an audience with Pope Pius IX, who gave her permission to copy pictures in the Vatican. She also learnt fresco technique from a monk at Perugia. Her Australian friends wanted to continue to support her, but she rejected Sir Charles Nicholson’s offer of £500 as a means of support. She was not without clients. One painting was bought by the Prince of Wales, and another by William Wentworth. In the 1862 Great London Exhibition she exhibited in the New South Wales Court The Marriage in Cana of Galilee, and The Pilgrim of Art, both of which were favourably received. Few noticed that the heads of Christ and the bridegroom in The Marriage in Cana were modelled on Garibaldi.She had made a good start to her European career, and if she had more time could have become a well established artist, but she worked with frenetic energy because she knew her time was short. Adelaide Ironside died in Rome of tuberculosis on 15 April 1867 at the age of 35. Few of her works survive. There are some drawings and one major work, The Marriage in Cana of Galilee was transferred to the Art Gallery of New South Wales after languishing for many years in the dining hall of St Paul’s College at the University of Sydney.
Writers:
Staff WriterNote: additional information
Joanna Mendelssohn
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2013
- Born
- b. 17 November 1831
- Summary
- Adelaide Ironside was was the first Australian artist to leave home to advance her career in Europe. Her mature work earned her an audience with Pope Pius IX and the admiration of both John Ruskin and the Prince of Wales. However after her early death in Rome she was not appreciated in her home country and it took many years for her work to enter public collections.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 15 April 1867
- Age at death
- 36
Details
Latitude51.8995685 Longitude-2.0711559 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1867-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK
- Biography
- painter, lithographer and photographer(?), was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. He arrived at Port Phillip on 25 November 1852 in the Blorenge . Listed as a practising artist of 118 Collins Street East, Melbourne, Thomas showed four paintings (all for sale) in the Victorian Fine Arts Society’s 1853 exhibition: Going to Stable , Far, Far Away , View on the Yarra, near Richmond and View from South Side of Prince’s Bridge, Melbourne . The last was probably the original of the lithograph River Yarra Yarra from South Side of Princes Bridge, Melbourne , published by Huxtable & Quarrill about 1853. Some copies state that Thomas lithographed the work, others that Giles was the lithographer. Six further views of Melbourne drawn by Thomas and lithographed by Quarrill were advertised for sale at 5s the set in the Armchair in February 1854. F. Varley published Thomas’s Victorian Views that same year—the work by which Thomas is now best known. Its lithographed subjects include Collins Street, 1853 , Geelong-Corio Bay 1853 , St. Francis’ Roman Catholic Church—Melbourne 1854 and First Melbourne Exhibition, November 1854 .
Thomas was at Sydney by the end of 1854, the year he dated a lithograph of Manly Beach. By early 1855 he was in partnership with Scipio Clint as Clint & Thomas, Portrait and Landscape Painters, Lithographic and General Draughtsmen of Jamison Street. Between 1857 and 1861 Thomas was listed at 61 Hunter Street, an address shared by the painter John Murphy . He continued to produce his own lithographs, including Sydney Sailor’s Home (n.d.) for Allen & Wigley and Wooloomooloo [sic] Bay (1855). A calendar for 1856 containing eight inset views of Sydney is stated to have been lithographed by him and published by John Degotardi .
Thomas painted at least two watercolours in 1857 showing the wreck of the Dunbar : Entrance to Port Jackson (ML) and The Gap, South Head, NSW (DG). His lithographs, similar to his drawings of the scene, were issued by several Sydney publishers, including J.R. Clarke. Clarke also commissioned Thomas to design sheet-music covers. The Mitchell Library’s collection includes his lyre-bird with native plants for the 'Australian Album’ (1857), a view of South Head for the cover of 'The “Columbian” Mazurka’ and a view of the Sydney Domain for the cover of 'The Last Rose of Summer’ (1856). The La Trobe Library holds the sheet music of 'The Australian Masonic Waltzes’ composed by George Peck , a ballad with Thomas’s sketch of Madame Carandini and 'The Cricket Match Schottische’ by E. Boulanger of 1857 illustrated with his colonial cricket match.
Thomas is best known for his topographical prints of Sydney and Melbourne, but he also made portrait lithographs of well-known identities. Indeed, when first in Melbourne he had been listed back to front as 'Thomas Edmund, portrait painter’ and several original watercolour and pencil portraits are known: his drawing of Lucy Escott is in a scrapbook (LT) and an unknown woman’s portrait is in another album (ML). In 1859 the Sydney Morning Herald noted Thomas’s 'clever’ tinted lithographic portrait of the late Robert Campbell in masonic regalia copied from a photograph and published by C. Goddard. The several portraits he contributed to the Month newspaper included those of Archbishop Polding and Daniel Cooper. Both portraits and views after Thomas were engraved for W. Mason 's Australian Picture Pleasure Book , including a portrait of the singer Catherine Hayes which Thomas had previously issued as a single lithographic sheet (ML). He also appears to have provided the illustrations initialled E.T. in the Illustrated Sydney News , e.g. Review Troops of 3 March 1855 and Tasman Island of 10 March 1855. According to a TMAG card, Edmund Thomas drew the anonymous 'Prisoners in cell of military prison, Anglesea Barracks’, pencil (TMAG, #5608 a & b).
Edmund Thomas seems to be the Mr Thomas mentioned in a letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald in September 1857 from Joseph Dyer, editor of the Sydney Magazine of Science and Art , as 'an excellent artist in oils, who has from want of appreciation, laid aside the honourable palette and taken to the camera and its chemicals’. Yet no oil paintings have been located, nor was Thomas advertising as a photographer at this time. He was, however, working in association with the photographers Freeman Brothers , primarily as an artist and designer. On 18 February 1859, Freeman Brothers had a letter published in the Herald correcting an earlier report commending the scenery and background in the firm’s photograph of the Victorian cricketers, pointing out that this 'was not photographed from nature, but was designed and executed by Mr. F. [sic] Thomas, of Hunter-Street … The portraits and figures are pure photographs, the background being afterwards introduced’. In November 1861 Thomas designed and executed 'a tasteful ornamental border’ for a large, over 2 foot (60 cm) square, photographic montage of politicians which Freemans were sending to the 1862 London International Exhibition. He also decorated the mount for Freemans’ six portraits of officers from the Cordelia with their shi
Lady Cooper exhibited a watercolour by 'Thomas’ in the New South Wales Court at the 1862 London exhibition. Watercolours apparently signed 'C.’ Thomas, such as a view of early Sydney and a landscape with waterhole and two black swans (Joseph Brown Gallery 1971) are almost certainly by Edmund, and lithographs acknowledged as by F. or C. Thomas (as either sketcher or engraver) are also his work. In 1865 two 'Edm’ Thomases were listed in the Sands Sydney Directory , one a photographer of Liverpool Street West, the other an 'artist’ of 53 Crown Street. Both seem to be the painter. From then on, however, he was listed solely as an artist (i.e. painter) until his death.
In January 1861 Thomas began teaching drawing on Monday and Thursday afternoons at the Australian Ladies College in Brougham Lodge, Darlinghurst, and moved into lodgings in Brougham Street. In September, he gained the additional position of drawing master at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, replacing Joseph Fowles . His classes in 1861 comprised figure and landscape drawing, geometrical and model drawing 'as applicable to the arts and manufactures’ and theoretical and practical perspective. He had two pupils for figure classes, six for landscape and six for the combined geometrical and perspective class in the first year, then amalgamated the figure and landscape drawing classes. In January 1862 'Theoretical and Practical Perspective’ was merely being promised; it evolved into 'free hand drawing from copies’. His pupils included William Macleod, the future illustrator and manager of the Sydney Bulletin , but he was not a popular teacher. When examined by F.C. Terry in 1865 attendance at Thomas’s sole class averaged seven and he was teaching only figure, landscape and flower drawing, the engineer Norman Selfe having taken over mechanical drawing.
In May 1865 Thomas submitted a design for a tablet to be erected in the Mechanics Institute Hall to record honorary members and was requested to submit 'one or two more designs’. The following month he presented two designs with tenders for making and erecting them, but it is unclear if either was ever carried out. He also painted transparencies. In 1863 the Sydney Morning Herald commented favourably on those in the Sydney Municipal Council Chambers 'painted by Mr E. Thomas, and handsomely set off with amber coloured lamp’. He died at his home, 37 Botany Street, Surry Hills, on 19 February 1867, survived by his wife, Augusta Amelia.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1827
- Summary
- Painter, lithographer and possibly photographer, best known for his topographical prints of Sydney and Melbourne,and lithographic portraits.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 19 February 1867
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude57.15 Longitude-2.11 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1867-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, naturalist and author, was born on 18 December 1821 in Aberdeen, Scotland, eldest of the twelve children of William MacGillivray, an eminent British ornithologist. John’s first trip to Australia and the South Pacific as a naturalist was made under the patronage of Lord Derby; he spent 1842-45 on board HMS Fly which was surveying the Australian and New Guinean coasts under the command of Captain F.P. Blackwood . In September 1844 MacGillivray, inspired by his friend John Gilbert (the naturalist who was killed by Aborigines on 28 June 1845 during the Leichhardt expedition), left the ship at Port Essington and spent four months in the Northern Territory, re-boarding in January 1845 in the company of his Aboriginal friend Neinmal.
In December 1846 MacGillivray set off again from England for Australian waters, this time as naturalist on board HMS Rattlesnake commanded by Captain Owen Stanley , the other naturalists on board being T.H. Huxley and James Fowler Wilcox. The Rattlesnake arrived at Hobart Town in June 1847 and spent the next three years surveying the Great Barrier Reef and northern Australian coast. While at Sydney in 1848 MacGillivray married Williamina Paton Gray, also from Scotland; they had a son and two daughters.
After publishing his Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Rattlesnake (London 1852), MacGillivray sailed as naturalist in HMS Herald to South America and the South Pacific. An incomplete two-volume manuscript, 'Voyage of H.M.S. Herald under the command of Capt. H. Denham RN, being private journal kept by John MacGillivray naturalist’, is held in the Admiralty Library, London (microfilm copy, Mitchell Library). It contains a few competent diagrammatic sketches and coastal profiles (including Crater of Raoul Island ) annotated in McGillivray’s hand. A view of Ninepin Rock (St Paul’s Island) with a small manned rowing-boat nearby, however, is cryptically annotated 'drawn by the artist’ and it is possible that they were all by the Herald 's draughtsman (John Glen Wilson, q.v.). Certainly, the occasional rough sketch in MacGillivray’s natural history notebook (1855-66) suggests that he had few drawing skills. As Calaby notes, 'he enjoyed collecting and observing above all else’ and any sketching was purely to assist in the classification of his collections.
McGillivray apparently quitted the Herald at Sydney in 1855. He lived there with his family between collecting trips, finding employment with Dr James Cox, a well-known conchologist. In 1864 he moved to Grafton, New South Wales, and went into business with Wilcox, his old Rattlesnake companion. On 6 June 1867, when back at Sydney preparing a monograph on land shells for Cox and planning an expedition to Cape York, McGillivray had a sudden heart attack and died.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1821
- Summary
- Scottish naturalist who made partial sketches to accompany his writings while travelling to Australia, New Guinea, South America and the South Pacific.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6 June 1867
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1797-01-01 End Date1867-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, author and governess, was born in London, third of the four daughters of Albert Waring and Elizabeth, née Turner. Her father, a gentleman of means, apparently had trained as a lawyer but never practised; he amused himself, according to his granddaughter, rearing pet birds and animals and drawing, 'for which accomplishment he had great talent’. Their mother died two weeks after the birth of the youngest child and Charlotte and her two older sisters were brought up by their aunt, Mrs Charlotte Fisher. Their father later remarried and had a second family. When he died his daughters were left impoverished, so Charlotte, then aged 29, accepted the position of governess to the family of Hannibal Hawkins and Anna Maria Macarthur in New South Wales. On the voyage to Australia in the Cumberland in 1826, she met and became engaged to James Atkinson, a prosperous gentleman-settler of Oldbury, Sutton Forest, New South Wales. Hence her career as governess lasted only from 24 January until 29 September 1827, when the two were married in St Paul’s Church, Cobbity.
Four children were born to the Atkinsons: Charlotte Elizabeth , Jane Emily, James John and Caroline Louisa Waring . James Atkinson died on 30 April 1834, two months after the birth of Louisa. The widow and children were left in comfortable circumstances, with property valued at £4000, but their inheritance was dissipated by wicked and incompetent executors and guardians. On 3 March 1836 Charlotte married one of them, George Bruce Barton, who, according to his step-daughter Louisa, 'shortly became a furious maniac, and had to be kept under restraint’; his wife soon separated from him.
Charlotte then lived both in Sydney and in various country districts of New South Wales with her children, assisting in their education. Because of her delicate health the most talented child, Louisa, was entirely taught by her mother, who encouraged her to develop her artistic and botanical interests. For some years after the other daughters married and James inherited Oldbury, Charlotte and Louisa lived together at Fernhurst, Kurrajong. Charlotte established a small school there, advertising in the Sydney Morning Herald of 20 December 1861 for four resident pupils. Part of the education offered included 'drawing and sketching from life’ (probably taught by Louisa). When aged 67, Charlotte Barton had an accident which left her an invalid for two and a half years, until her death on 10 October 1867.
Her fame is due mainly to Marcie Muir’s discovery of her authorship of A Mother’s Offering to her Children , the first children’s book written and published in Australia. This was published in Sydney in 1841 by G.W. Evans and gives a splendid insight into Charlotte Barton’s tastes, interests and methods of teaching her children. She is said to have been 'clever at drawing and painting’ and a keen amateur naturalist. Unfortunately, most of her art work is thought to have been destroyed when Oldbury was sold after her son’s death. A single watercolour showing the Atkinson house and landscape at Oldbury (Mitchell Library) was attributed to her by her great granddaughter, Janet Cosh. It is extremely close in style to Louisa’s landscapes.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1797
- Summary
- Charlotte Barton came to Australia upon her father's death to work as a governess. Two of her daughters went on to become well-known artists but Barton is best known as the author of 'A Mother's Offering to her Children', the first children's book to be written and published in Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 10 October 1867
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude51.0575 Longitude-1.3075 Start Date1797-01-01 End Date1867-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hampshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Sketcher, engraver, editor and surveyor, born in Hampshire, England, was a teacher of surveying and drawing at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst before migrating to Sydney in 1829 to take up an appointment as a NSW government surveyor. He resigned from the position in 1833 after a disagreement with his superior, Surveyor-General Thomas Mitchell , and embarked for London, where he proposed to publish a fortnightly newspaper full of English news relating to Australia to be called The Surveyor-General . His ship, the Sarah , had to be abandoned in Cloudy Bay, New Zealand, and after waiting five months for another, he and Mrs Kentish returned to Sydney. On 15 August 1834 he purchased the Sydney Times , an independent apolitical bi-weekly journal full of poetry, which cost tuppence (2d). Its new masthead under Kentish was a crude wood-engraving of a hand labelled 'ED TIMES’ wielding a bunch of flagellants – to express his aim of flogging any critics of his paper – which he doubtless drew and engraved himself. This pro-emancipist newspaper survived until 1838, then Kentish briefly became an emigration agent before returning to surveying. He spent most of the 1840s in Van Diemen’s Land, then moved to Port Phillip (Victoria) in 1849, where he was gaoled for horsewhipping an editor. The rest of his life was spent in Sydney. He wrote many pamphlets attacking officialdom, two books on New South Wales (1835 and 1838) and several verse essays and miscellanies. The Question of Questions (1855) reprints the anthems he wrote as the self-styled 'Amateur Poet Laureate’ of Victoria to celebrate Separation in 1851.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1797
- Summary
- The self-styled 'Amateur Poet Laureate' of Victoria, Kentish owned and published the 'Sydney Times' from 1834-1838 which doubtless featured his own poems, drawings and engravings. In 1849 he was gaoled for horsewhipping an editor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1867
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1791-01-01 End Date1867-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and schoolmaster, a Londoner of Welsh parents, was a Wesleyan schoolteacher who came to Melbourne from England via Sydney in January 1839, having been appointed one of four initial assistant protectors to the Port Phillip Aborigines under Chief Protector G.A. Robinson . The most sympathetic and understanding of the officials within this system, Thomas drew many pencil sketches of the Aboriginal people in his districts – the Melbourne, Westernport and Gippsland areas – such as a portrait of Windberry (shot October 1840), Nerenunnin Throwing a Spear , the crudely executed Regular Row, or Fight Between Themselves (c.1840) and the more developed pen and wash Billy Billy – alias Urquor . His view of Robinson talking to a group of Aborigines in a bush camp is dated 5 April 1843.
Although his headquarters were officially at Narre Warren, Dandenong, Thomas moved around and lived (in a tent) with the local Aboriginal people, often accompanied by his wife and family. A bark-and-slab hut he had erected near the junction of Merri Creek and the Yarra River in 1845 became his school in 1846-51. After the protectorate was abolished at the end of 1849, Thomas was appointed guardian of the Aborigines. Having fought for reserves and supply depots, he was appointed official visitor when these were established in modified form in 1860, but his health failed soon after his appointment and he was only able to continue as adviser. He died on 1 December 1867.
A large collection of Thomas’s journals, reports and correspondence is in the Mitchell Library. Many drawings and other material are in the R. Brough Smyth Papers (La Trobe Library), some used in Brough Smyth’s The Aborigines of Victoria and Other Parts of Australia (Melbourne 1878).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1791
- Summary
- A sketcher who during the 1840s worked as a protector of Aborigines, who form the subject of his work.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1 December 1867
- Age at death
- 76
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1785-01-01 End Date1867-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and surveyor, was born in England; the family genealogist Sandra Florance convincingly suggests that he was the fourth of the six sons of Richard and Sarah Florance of East Grinstead, Sussex, and had various siblings in New Zealand. Thomas Florance spent his youth in Canada and worked there as a surveyor and engineer in 1803-6. He served as an assistant engineer in the American war of 1812 and, as he stated to Governor Macquarie when applying for a land grant and a job as surveyor in New South Wales, 'at the conclusion of the War I was employed in reconstructing bridges which had been destroyed in the District of Niagra [ sic ] near the Falls’. This undermined his health and he returned to England, but left for Sydney in 1817 on board the Duke of Wellington . Macquarie granted him land near Hobart Town and a job as surveyor in Van Diemen’s Land. On completion of this work in 1825 he returned to Sydney and set up in private practice until appointed assistant surveyor to John Oxley. Then he worked in the Kiama/Shoalhaven area in 1827, followed by AA Company boundary work, a Jervis Bay coastal survey and marking out farms in the Hunter River district, until he resigned ahead of dismissal in March 1829. He again set up a brief private practice in Sydney. On 14 May 1829, in St James’s Church, Sydney, he married Elizabeth Kendall, a daughter of settlers in the Ulladulla district of New South Wales, and they moved into the district.
Florance practiced (with little success) as both a government and private surveyor in New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land and New Zealand and most of his drawings would have been maps and plans. In fact, no extant pictorial work is known, but when he was at Hobart Town in 1818 and his 'Mahogany desk’ was stolen, the Hobart Town Gazette of 20 June reported that it contained 'Water colours with apparatus for drawing’, paper, wax and pencils, four framed landscapes by 'Holland’ and 'a pencil View in perspective of the Public Buildings in Sydney for the reception of Crown Servants’.
Florance had moved to New Zealand with his family in 1834, but Governor Gipps did not allow him to practice as a surveyor and he lived in poverty for some years. Despite constant ill health, he lived to 82, dying in Auckland on 28 March 1867. He and Elizabeth (who died in 1870) had 12 children, eight of whom survived their parents.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1785
- Summary
- A sketcher and surveyor who served in the American War of 1812 and lived for many years in New Zealand. Most of his drawings would have been maps and plans, though sadly none survive.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 28 March 1867
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1835-01-01 End Date1866-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and botanical illustrator, was born on 1 March 1835 in the residential quarters of the Merchant Taylors Hall, London, eighth of the ten children of John Bamber De Mole, clerk of the London Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, and Isabel, daughter of the renowned inventor and engineer, Henry Maudslay.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 March 1835
- Summary
- Nineteenth-century painter and botanical illustrator. Her book titled 'Wild Flowers of South Australia' contains twenty fine hand-coloured plates.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26 December 1866
- Age at death
- 31
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1866-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- watercolourist, surveyor and draughtsman, came from Ireland and worked in the New Zealand Department of Harbours and Rivers in 1857-59. In the early 1860s he moved to the north coast of New South Wales as chief draughtsman in the New South Wales Department of Harbour and River Navigation. He married the natural history artist Helena Scott in 1864 and the following year was instructed to survey the Darling River. His wife accompanied him and both collected and drew botanical specimens. In the vicinity of Menindee (New South Wales) they contracted fever. Although Helena recovered, Edward died at Balranald, aged thirty-seven, on 20 June 1866. A collection of his field sketches in the Mitchell Library includes The Macleay River. The Heads (watercolour), Mt. Arakoon. Trial Bay March 1861 (watercolour) and Pilot Station. East Ballina. Richmond River. Sept. 1860 (pen-and-ink).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1829
- Summary
- An Irish watercolourist and surveyor who arrived in Australia in the early 1860s and married the natural history artist Helena Scott. He died after contracting fever on an expedition to survey the Darling River.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20 June 1866
- Age at death
- 37
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1866-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher (?) and farmer, was born in England, fourth {fifth?} and youngest surviving son of Rev. John Burdett Wittenoom and his first wife Mary, née Teasdale. He accompanied his father and brothers to the Swan River settlement (WA) on board the Wanstead , arriving at Fremantle on 30 January 1830. He left Fremantle on 11 April 1837 in the Shepherd for school in England but was back in Western Australia by 1840. On 30 March 1853 he married Sarah Elizabeth Harding in Perth; they settled on a property east of York and had four children. Following the death from measles of his wife and youngest son in 1861, Wittenoom left for England in December. He returned to Western Australia in the Robert Morrison on 5 December 1863. Annie Fletcher Moore became his second wife at Perth on 25 February 1865; they had one daughter. After his brother’s death Charles inherited the family property, Gwambygine, at Beverley. He was honorary secretary of the York Agricultural Society in 1857 and on the York Board of Education in 1861. He died at Perth on 10 July 1866, aged forty-two.
Charles Wittenoom is only known as an artist because J. Henshall’s lithographic views of Perth and Fremantle in Nathaniel Ogle’s influential The Colony of Western Australia: A Manual for Emigrants (London 1839) were said to have been taken from sketches by C.D. Wittenoom Esquire, who is assumed to have been Charles. The watercolours for the book, which include View from the Court House, Arthur’s Head, Fremantle (Mitchell Library) and Sketch of St George’s Terrace, Perth (private collection, on loan to Art Gallery of Western Australia in late 1990s), must either date from before April 1837 – when Charles left for England – or have been drawn in London. The former is most probable since they appear topographically correct (and differ in details from the engravings), but they seem far too sophisticated for even the most talented youngster. The artist was far more likely to have been Charles’s uncle Charles Dirck Wittenoom , particularly since an 1832 sketch attributed to J.B. Wittenoom is clearly by the same hand.
Writers:
Chapman, Barbara
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1824
- Summary
- English born sketcher (attributed) who practiced in Perth during the late 1830s and again from the early 1860s, although it is probable that his uncle was the 1830s sketcher.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 July 1866
- Age at death
- 42
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1866-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Holloway, Middlesex, England, UK, Holloway, Middlesex (Greater London), England, UK
- Biography
- painter, sketcher and wood-engraver, was born in Holloway, Middlesex, on 8 February 1820, second son of the eight children of Abraham John Mason , a well-known London wood-engraver and lecturer, and Robinianna, née Bonner.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 February 1820
- Summary
- English colonial male wood-engraver and painter who studied in the USA and London. He was known to be generous for various causes, even though he was bankrupted three times.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 March 1866
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude48.0944459 Longitude-4.3311243 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1866-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Douarnenez, Brittany, France
- Biography
- draughtsman, lithographer and surgeon, was born in Douarnenez, Brittany, on 15 January 1818. He continued a family tradition by studying medicine although he combined this with a commitment to the sea by taking his initial training at the Naval Medical School, Brest (1836-37). Almost immediately after leaving Brest he joined the Astrolabe as 'Surgeon, 3rd Class’, but early in the voyage his considerable abilities as an artist came to the appreciative attention of the commander of the expedition, Dumont d’Urville, and brought him additional responsibilities, especially after the death of Goupil , the expedition’s official artist, at Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, on the second of the Astrolabe’s four visits to Australia or Australian waters (Raffles Bay and Port Essington on the northern coast, March-April 1839; Hobart Town, December 1839-January 1840 and February 1840; Torres Strait, May-June 1840).
In 1844-45 Le Breton was in the Indian Ocean as surgeon on board the Berceau , where his drawings earned further praise, but this voyage was interrupted by ill-health, a hasty return to France (1846) and a period of convalescence. Le Breton resigned from his medical functions in 1848 and transferred to the Department of Maps and Charts in Paris where he remained until his death on 30 August 1866. Barthélemy Lauvergne was one of his colleagues.
While on board the Astrolabe , Le Breton worked both in pencil and watercolour. An album of pencil drawings (Municipal Library, Saint Brieuc, Brittany) contains a number of works from the Pacific, although only two have been tentatively identified as being of Australian interest: a pair of studies of cannon appear to be the source of a detail in a view of Port Essington lithographed for the atlas of plates illustrating the voyage, while a sketch of a ship aground may represent the Astrolabe in Torres Strait. A collection of 174 watercolours recording the entire voyage—now (with two exceptions) known only from Le Breton’s own manuscript catalogue—contained two views each from Raffles Bay and Port Essington, eleven from Hobart Town, and nine from Torres Strait. One of the Tasmanian scenes, a competent watercolour of a coach crossing Bridgewater, survives in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston; the other is of a New Zealand subject. Twenty-five unspecified watercolours from this collection were shown at the Paris Salon in 1841 but no critic appears to have commented on them. It is also known that Le Breton made a number of natural history drawings during the voyage but no originals have been located.
Like Lauvergne before him and Charles Meryon after him, Le Breton sought to initiate a professional career as an artist by submitting works to the Salon, first in 1841 and again in 1843 and 1849. Among the pictures recorded in the catalogues only one is of an Australian subject, an oil painting showing the two ships on the reef in Torres Strait (Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts). This foray into the official art world was apparently unsuccessful and there is no evidence that Le Breton made any further moves in this direction. Meanwhile he had been actively associated with the preparation of the illustrations to the official account of the voyage; twenty lithographs and three engravings of Australian material (landscapes, a portrait, ethnographic subjects and natural history specimens) were included after Le Breton’s drawings.
From about 1849 to about 1865 Le Breton himself drew directly on to the lithographic stone. Among the more than 350 such sheets in the combined collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris) and the Mitchell Library only one, depicting the English corvette Fly in Sydney Harbour in 1853 (Bibliothèque Nationale), is of an Australian subject, although it should not be overlooked that in 1853 Le Breton was firmly settled in Europe and that, in any case, he had never visited New South Wales. He was a prolific illustrator, contributing to books on travel and geography and to the illustrated magazines which flourished in France from the mid 1830s. Forty-six wood-engravings of Pacific subjects after his drawings have been sighted, four of Australian interest: a mask from Torres Strait ( Magasin Pittoresque , 1841), a native from Torres Strait ( Illustration , 1847), Hobart Town harbour ( Illustration , 1847: reused in a travel book in 1850) and the monument to La Pérouse at Botany Bay ( Illustration , 1852).
Le Breton’s skills as an artist are seen at their best in his surviving pencil drawings. In those cases where it is possible to compare them with later more carefully and conventionally composed lithographed versions their greater freedom and spontaneity are immediately apparent. The three oil paintings known to survive (Salem, Quimper, Paris: Musée de la Marine) are epic in both theme and manner. His work, both as an illustrator-journalist and as a lithographer, reveals his considerable technical knowledge, recognised in one of the obituaries published in 1866: 'The Illustration has just lost one of its most assiduous draughtsmen … Le Breton was one of the few artists who specialised in nautical subjects, which he knew thoroughly, and in this field he rendered solid service to those publications with which he was associated’.
Writers:
Collins, R. D. J.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 January 1818
- Summary
- French painter, draughtsman and lithographer who served on board the Astrolabe (1839-1840), making paintings and drawings of Australian subjects.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30 August 1866
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude51.2715316 Longitude-0.341452351 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1866-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Surrey, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, surveyor, explorer and mine administrator, was born in Surrey, England. Introduced to survey and landscape study by his father, a teacher of military surveying at Sandhurst, Burr began survey work in about 1829. He was employed by the Tithe Commutation Commission in England when, on the recommendation of E.C. Frome , he gained the post of deputy surveyor-general of South Australia. Burr took office on 29 June 1839 and reached Port Adelaide on 18 December to begin active duty. That his early work in the colony was highly regarded is known from the protest lodged by Frome in 1841 against a proposed general reduction in public salaries.
In 1844 Burr accompanied Governor George Grey on an exploring expedition to the south-eastern parts of the colony. Mount Burr in the Rivoli Bay area commemorates his part in the exploit, of which Burr wrote an account for the Royal Geographical Society of London. He had already evinced scientific interests in a paper on the physical geography of the interior read at the Adelaide Mechanics Institute in December 1842 and published in the local press. His book, Remarks on the Geology and Mineralogy of South Australia , illustrated by line diagrams, was published in 1846.
Burr became a justice of the peace in September 1847. On 12 October he resigned from government service to accept the general superintendence of the Burra Burra copper mines. The engagement ceased abruptly in September 1848 with his dismissal by the directors of the South Australian Mining Association on the grounds of 'negligence and inattention’. Other sources, however, claim he had offended by putting the interests of miners above profit. Burr won an action against the company but was not reinstated. Thereafter he worked privately as a land and mining surveyor in South Australia until gold lured him to Victoria in July 1853. In September he joined the government service and was district surveyor at Ballarat at the time of the Eureka riot. As a witness to that disturbance, Burr gave evidence before the commission of inquiry.
Ambition to explore the inland led Burr to offer his services to the governments of Victoria (1856 57) and South Australia (1859), to no avail. Indeed, his regular government employment ended with his dismissal on 31 August 1857 for visiting Melbourne without leave. Nevertheless, it seems that severance was not complete. Survey Department records after that date list the receipt from Burr of map sheets and landscape sketches.
Late in 1860 Burr sailed for London where, by letter dated 9 February 1861, he was introduced to the eminent geologist Sir Roderick Murchison by Charles Sturt , who remarked that Burr was 'a man of considerable talent’ who had brought with him many notes and sketches of geological interest. What became of these papers is not known. Burr returned to Melbourne after seven and a half months in London and in 1862 gave evidence before a board inquiring into the possibility of amalgamating the Mining and Geological Surveys in Victoria. His last years appear to have been ones of failing health and growing intemperance during which friends helped find work for him.
At the inquest following the discovery of Burr’s body in the Flagstaff Gardens, Melbourne, on 25 September 1866, he was described as a draughtsman in the Crown Lands Office. He had married, for the fourth time, in the week before his sudden death. Some copies of Burr’s charts and survey sketches, which confirm the judgements of Frome and Sturt, are held by the South Australian Archives and there should be more of his work in Victoria (perhaps in the Public Record Office). No finished art works have been traced.
Writers:
Vallance, T. G.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1814
- Summary
- District surveyor at Ballarat at the time of the Eureka riot.
- Gender
- Unspecified
- Died
- 1866
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude52.6467447 Longitude-8.879412828 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1866-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Summerville, County Limerick, Ireland
- Biography
- botanical artist, lithographer and botanist, was born on 5 February 1811 at Summerville, County Limerick, Ireland. Educated at Ballitore School, County Kildare, he became an apprentice in his father’s business but spent more time on natural history, particularly botany, an interest further stimulated through his association with Dr William Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. As early as 1831 Harvey had come to the notice of Hooker, who commissioned him to describe the algae in the new edition of the British Flora and sent him algal collections made on expeditions to the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Harvey was colonial treasurer at Cape Town from 1836 to 1841 when ill-health forced him to return to Ireland where he was appointed curator of the Herbarium at Trinity College, Dublin. Awarded an honorary MD in 1844 by the college, he later undertook a tour of the United States as guest of the Smithsonian Institution and Harvard University. In 1853 he visited Australia, arriving on 7 January 1854 at Albany, Western Australia, and leaving Sydney for New Zealand and the South Pacific on 15 June 1855. He subsequently returned to New South Wales, spending some time in Sydney and Kiama. In April or May 1856 he sailed home via Valparaiso, reaching Dublin in October. Trinity College appointed him professor of botany on his return.
The first illustrations published by Harvey, dealing with marine algae of the British Isles, appeared in 1834. Later he depicted South African, North American, British and Japanese plants, mostly algae. Harvey illustrated all his publications on higher plants, particularly the algae, and made his own lithographs, some of which he hand-coloured. Each plate shows the habitat of the plant and includes fine drawings of the microscopic detail. All are well balanced and make a pleasing picture.
In a letter written when he was 16, Harvey described himself: 'My botanical knowledge extends to about thirty of the commonest plants. I am very fond of botany, but I have not much opportunity of learning anything … In lithography I broke a stone and a printing press’. His biographer, Praeger, continues: 'The reference to lithography is interesting, in view of the fact that he became later on one of the most exquisite delineators of plants, and with his own hand drew on stone the greater part of the splendid plates which enrich his works on Phanerogams and Algae’. Praeger further stresses the 'want of robust health which followed him through life, and brought about his premature death [he died of tuberculosis]; and in spite of which he performed such monumental tasks’.
It is surprising to see how much Harvey published in his short life, illustrations being found in all his published work. He worked exceedingly quickly, but his observations were most reliable – proved by investigations made with more sophisticated equipment. Shortly after his death at Torquay on 15 May 1866, Professor Asa Gray wrote: 'he was a keen observer and a capital describer. He investigated accurately, worked easily and readily with microscope, pencil and pen’.
Writers:
Ducker, Sophie C.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 February 1811
- Summary
- Botanical artist, lithographer and botanist, he travelled widely and between 1834 and 1863 published illustrations of South African, North American, British and Japanese plants, mostly algae.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15 May 1866
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude50.7241405 Longitude-3.660778816 Start Date1797-01-01 End Date1866-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Devonshire, England, UK
- Biography
- Cartoonist (?) and architect, was born in Devonshire. He came to Melbourne in August 1842 with his wife, Joanna Apperly, née Meade, and his sister-in-law, Susan. Although not listed as an architect in the Melbourne Directory until 1853, he apparently practiced from his arrival, opening an office in Flinders Street in 1844. His first known designs were executed in 1845, the economic depression having affected the establishment of a viable practice before then. From 1850 until 1864 Gill’s home and office were at 55 Spring Street, Melbourne; then he moved to Wellington Parade, East Melbourne. He was at 18 Collins Street East when he died, on 16 June 1866, aged sixty-nine. The Gills’ Spring Street house became a popular meeting-place for Melbourne’s poets, architects and artists, as was that of their friend Nicholas Chevalier when the Chevaliers arrived in 1855. John Gill had a successful practice, designing numerous houses, churches and commercial buildings, mainly in a Regency Classical style, including the Baptist Church, Collins Street. He was a member of the short-lived Victorian Architects’ Association, and he succeeded J.G. Knight as president of the Victorian Institute of Architects in 1861-65. Any career as a cartoonist was therefore pseudonymous.
The evidence that John Gill and 'Quiz’ of the Melbourne Punch were one and the same is not conclusive, but according to an entry in the diaries of the critic James Smith (who was to edit this comic and satiric magazine for seven years) in the first issues of Melbourne Punch (1855), edited by Frederick Sinnett ( see Sophia Sinnett ), 'nearly all the illustrations were supplied by Mr Gill-not the Bohemian of that name, and were as crude and ineffective as might have been expected from an amateur under those circumstances’ (James Smith, Punch Jubilee 1855-1905 , Melbourne, 1905).
Melbourne Punch 's first full-page cartoon, 'THE RIGHT MAN IN THE RIGHT PLACE’, signed 'Quiz’, depicts Governor Sir Charles Hotham carrying a cash-box about to depart with his wife for England, while his secretary Major Kaye follows up with eggs from the government farm and a keg of cheap beer, a reference to the mean food and entertainment allegedly offered by the Hothams at Government House. The governor’s cabin trunk is conspicuously labelled 'Not Wanted’. Gill’s friend Nicholas Chevalier was engaged as the major artist from the second issue, but Gill evidently continued to provide a few (unsigned) cartoons. Cartoons by 'Quiz’ include The Line (of Beauty and Grace) [a motley line-up of militia] vol.1 1856 (illus. Fabian, p.38). NLA has neg. of “Dog Registration: INSPECTOR: “That dog registered, marm?”/ ELDERLY LADY: “Registered-no-what does that man mean?”/ INSPECTOR: “Sorry to do it marm, but in that case I must kill him and take his tail to the Police-office.”/ (Sensation). In the background are two “Celestials” who have followed the Inspector on his rounds 'to pick up the game’ – signed “Quiz” and “G” (engraver, presumably Grosse).
Since the tone of Melbourne Punch was pointed, personal and opinionated and as offensive as only a small-town newspaper can be, it is hardly surprising if the architect John Gill, dependent for patronage on the very men it satirised, used a pen-name. Another point that helps substantiate the hypothesis that John Gill was the cartoonist 'Gill’ is that his sister-in-law’s husband, Charles Norton , is known to have been producing cartoons at about this time. The families were extremely close, at one stage living in the same street. Gill designed the Nortons’ house at 1 Spring Street and Norton appears to have taken some of the families’ photographs. An 1856 hand-coloured albumen print (SLV LT) shows John Gill with his niece, Joanna Kate Norton . The Gills had no children.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1797
- Summary
- Colonial era Victorian architect and attributed cartoonist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 June 1866
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude53.9825271 Longitude-1.385249993 Start Date1792-01-01 End Date1866-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, missionary and Methodist minister, was born in Yorkshire in March 1792. He arrived at Hobart Town in the Ann on 16 May 1823. In October he moved to Sydney to train as a minister, having converted to Methodism after being raised in the Church of England. Ordained in Sydney on 25 April 1826 and married at Parramatta eight days later to Mary Oakes, Hutchinson was sent as a missionary to Tonga. Returning after two years, he worked at Windsor, New South Wales, until sent to Hobart Town in 1830, apparently as minister to the Van Diemen’s Land Company.
Drawings initialled 'J.H.H.’ formerly in the possession of the company (State Library of Tasmania) are attributed to him. All date from about 1830 and include View from the West of the V.D.L. Co.'s Establishment at H. Hills in 1830 (pencil), Circular Head; from Brush Cottage (pencil and w/c) and V.D.L. Co.'s Establishment at Emu Bay, from East 1830 (pencil). An unsigned and undated sketch of the company’s holdings in the papers of G.A. Robinson is apparently also his.
In 1831 Hutchinson took up a land grant at Morven and retired from the ministry but was superintendent of the Hobart Town Female House of Correction in 1832-51. He died at Hobart on 7 May 1866.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. March 1792
- Summary
- A much travelled sketcher who originally travelled to Hobart, then converted to Methodism before becoming a missionary to the unfortunate Tongans, before returning to Tasmania. He was also a superintendent of the Hobart Town Female House of Correction.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 May 1866
- Age at death
- 74
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1791-01-01 End Date1866-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, builder and protector of Aborigines, was born in London on 22 March 1791, a son of William and Susannah Robinson. His was a family of artisans, both father and son being builders. He had little formal schooling and educated himself by reading; he was much concerned with the Methodist religion. On 8 February 1814 he married Maria Amelia Evans in London and they had seven children, five born in England and two in Hobart Town, where the family arrived as migrants in January 1824. He continued as a builder and developed a successful business. As well, he was involved in the foundation and early affairs of the Mechanics Institute, in the Seaman’s Friend and Bethel Union Society and in the Auxiliary Bible Society. He also visited the prisoners in the gaol to offer them religious help. In 1829 he began what turned out to be the most memorable period of his life – his association with a project for the conciliation of the Tasmanian Aborigines. Not only did he show himself concerned with their welfare, but between 1830 and 1834 he made a number of epic journeys through the Tasmanian bush in search of them, visiting many areas before any other Europeans did so. On these journeys he showed great endurance and a will to succeed in his objective.
Fortunately a day-by-day record of these tours exists in the form of field diaries. From time to time they are illustrated by sketches depicting events, and though of the crudest quality many have a liveliness which adds much to the written word. Robinson’s Van Diemen’s Land journal of 25 January-24 July 1830, for example, is illustrated with three sketches, including one of passengers in a raft being propelled across a river by two Aboriginal swimmers while other figures watch from the shore. Robinson’s accompanying entry for 20 June states: 'I and the white men went to construct a raft of drift wood and in about 3 hours had the whole lashed together, and at 10AM. loaded it and pushed off, myself, – Mr Kay – Wou[rre]dy, the dog Fly – 6 knapsacks and 2 women swimming and shoving it over, Wou[rre]dy paddled it back and came over with the other people’. The other sketches depict Robinson’s first interview with the sealers in the Western Straits (20 June) and Aboriginal women dancing at the sealers’ camp (21 June).
Benjamin Duterrau saw Robinson as a hero and made many portraits of him with his party of 'friendly natives’. John Glover was also an admirer and responded warmly to Robinson’s request for an illustration of the Tasmanian Aborigines in happier days, before the coming of the Europeans for the frontispiece of a book Robinson proposed to publish from his diaries, although neither book nor engraving eventuated.
Between October 1835 and February 1839 Robinson was commandant of the Aboriginal settlement of Wybalenna on Flinders Island where his work was administrative, but he still showed himself to be a friend to the remnant of the Aboriginal people gathered there. He then went to Port Phillip (Victoria) as chief protector of the Victorian Aborigines, accompanied by some of the Tasmanians. Here also he was largely concerned with administration, but he did make several field trips. Again his journals contain sketches illustrating events. The Museum of Mankind (British Museum) holds a sketchbook containing material relating to his field trips but this contains sketches by other hands as well and it should be noted that the initials 'G.A.R.’ on all the work indicate no more than original ownershi
On 31 December 1849 the Port Phillip Protectorate was abolished. Robinson’s wife had died in September 1848 and in 1852 he left for England, taking his youngest daughter Cecilia with him. On 4 June 1853 Robinson was married for a second time, to Rose, daughter of J.B. Pyne, a well-known painter; they had five surviving children. The Robinsons lived in Europe for many years, mostly in Rome and Paris, finally settling in Bath, England, about June 1858. Robinson died there on 18 October 1866.
Writers:
Plomley, N. J. B.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 March 1791
- Summary
- A sketcher and a builder George Augustus Robinson was also Protector of Aborigines. He also offered religious succour to prisoners in gaol.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 October 1866
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude52.9770408 Longitude-0.0239836 Start Date1821-01-01 End Date1865-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Boston, Lincolnshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and bank clerk, was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, son of William Ingelow, a wealthy banker, and his wife Jean. His eldest sister, another Jean, was a well-known poet with whom George corresponded throughout his life; a letter to her, dated 10 September 1857, describing the wreck of the Dunbar off Sydney Heads, is held in Mitchell Library. Jean dedicated her Poems (London 1867), written in 1863, 'to George K. Ingelow. Your loving sister offers you these poems, partly as an expression of her affection, partly for the pleasure of connecting her efforts with your name’. By the time they were published not only had George been absent from England for twenty-two years, he had been dead for over a year.
Educated at Ipswich, East Anglia, Ingelow was an intimate school friend of the future Punch artist Charles Keene. They moved to London together and shared lodgings for two years in Great Ormond Street. After Ingelow obtained an Indian appointment in 1845 he kept up a regular illustrated correspondence with Keene, who managed to get some of George’s Indian drawings reproduced in the Illustrated London News . Ingelow later moved to Singapore and thence to Sydney, where he worked for the Oriental Bank. In April 1855 he was reported to be a member of the Sydney sketching club of which Conrad Martens was president: 'the qualification for admission … is, that each member possess a certain degree of competency to sketch from nature’.
George and Catherine Ingelow had at least two sons and a daughter, Edith, born at Sydney in 1857. In January 1859 George was the Sydney treasurer of the India Relief Fund (for Calcutta). He died at his home in O’Connell Street, Sydney, on 10 August 1865. Fellow worshippers at St Philip’s Church of England, of which Ingelow had been a trustee for nine years, deeply regretted the death of this 'comparatively young man … removed from amongst them by … a sudden illness’.
Ingelow showed watercolours of the entrance to Sydney Harbour and of Manly Beach in the New South Wales court at the 1862 London International Exhibition. Existing watercolours confirm that he had more than average skill in the medium. He was primarily interested in the mood of the landscape, its atmosphere, rather than in any precise topographical depiction and, indeed, his weaker sketches are those in which he attempts a too literal translation of the local scene. He exploited the watercolour medium’s facility for skies with detailed studies of clouds and rain effects. Few of his paintings are in sunlight; his most impressive work is the sombre From Gibraltar Rock . His strong sense of composition is clearly displayed in works such as A Study of Rocks and Sand . These are not picturesque watercolours; instead they have a strong sense of the romantic in their sombre tones, dramatic effects and muted colours. The Dixson Gallery holds fifty-two of his watercolour landscapes, mainly taken in and around Sydney, and a few views of the Nepean River, Bathurst Plains and Sandhurst (now Bendigo). He is also represented at the National Library.
Writers:
Neville, Richard
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1821
- Summary
- George Kilgour Ingelow was a sketcher and bank clerk. He was born in 1821 in Boston, Lincolnshire. He lived in India, Singapore and Sydney. In 1862 he showed his work at the London International Exhibition. Ingelow's sister Jean dedicated her Poems (London 1867), written in 1863, 'to George K. Ingelow. Your loving sister offers you these poems, partly as an expression of her affection, partly for
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 August 1865
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1816-01-01 End Date1865-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- None listed
- Born
- b. c.1816
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3 March 1865
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1865-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom, United Kingdom?
- Biography
- painter, architect, engineer, author and entrepreneur, was probably born in Great Britain. He married Ann Taylor at some unknown date and place; they had two sons and two daughter. Nothing is known of his background and education until the late 1820s when he trained as a civil engineer in Bristol under G. W. Buck and Robert Stephenson then spent seven years employed as a railway engineer and surveyor. His most notable work was designing the greater part of the London to Birmingham line. He published two technical monographs called Railway Practice in 1837 and 1840 (three technical monographs on railway construction between 1837 and 1840, according to Minson in the New Zealand Dictionary of Biography) while resident in Birmingham, which recorded recent projects by Britain’s railway engineers. In 1830 he won the architectural gold medal of the London Society of Arts for a village church design. In 1863 he stated that he had been articled in 1824, mentioned his gold medal and published extracts from testimonials by 'The Celebrated Stephenson’ ('I have had frequent opportunities of witnessing Mr Brees’ architectural abilities, of which I have a high opinion’), Sir John McNeil, Edward Cresy, Sir William Cubitt and Locke.
Between 1832 and 1837 Brees exhibited 19 topographical works at leading London art exhibitions – from Birmingham in 1833, then from various London addresses. Seven were shown at the Royal Academy [RA] and 11 with the Society of Artists (Suffolk Street) [SS]. The latter included View at Dover (w/c, SS 1832-33), Interior of Rochester Cathedral (RA 1833), Chalk Church, Kent (w/c, SS 1833), Sketch at Bruges (RA 1834), Stone Cross at Rouen (RA 1835) and Interior of Salisbury Cathedral (w/c, SS 1837). From their titles it may be presumed that he made a traditional architectural tour of France and Belgium (and England) after completing his apprenticeship. In 1835 he and Joseph Griffiths entered the design competition for the new Houses of Parliament buildings, London (won by Charles Barry). Their entry was described as 'Gothic, of various periods, embracing the early castellated, palatial, and Tudor styles’. Then he seems to have tried to make a living as a designer of furniture and as an architect. In 1841 he published The portfolio of rural architecture, a series of drawings in the Italian style, for villas, &c. made out practically as working plans for the use of gentlemen building: with forms of contract, detailed specifications, estimates, and practical introductory remarks (London: printed for the author by J. Davy & Sons) – called by Hugh Pagan Ltd in 2000 'the rarest British colour-plate architectural pattern book of the first half of the nineteenth century’.
Having signed a contract with the New Zealand Company for a three-year appointment as a principal surveyor and civil engineer in Wellington at an annual salary of £600, Brees landed in the antipodes in February 1842, accompanied by his wife, Ann Taylor, née Jones, his son Harold, two other children and a servant. He laid out a route from Wellington to the Wairarapa and made some of Wellington’s best-known early maps. He found time to paint many watercolours, a selection of which, engraved by Henry Melville, was published in London in 1847 as Pictorial Illustrations of New Zealand . Eight editions appeared before 1849 and did much to encourage emigration to New Zealand. Eleven of the original watercolours survive (Alexander Turnbull Library), evidence that the figures in the published plates were greatly improved, presumably by the engraver’s son, Harden S. Melville .
By August 1844, six months before Brees’s contract expired, the NZ Company was in financial difficulties and no longer able to pay him but was allowed to keep the portfolio of views he had made as some recompense for his loss of salary. He also devoted much of his time to painting while settling his affairs, embarking for England via Sydney in the brig Caledonia on 8 May 1845 with his family, now comprising four children. In London he supervised the painting of a panorama of Wellington based on his Pictorial Illustrations as well as overseeing the production of his book. The panorama, first exhibited (possibly at Burford’s) on 24 December 1849, was commended for its 'topographical accuracy’ and for the fact that it would 'do more to promote emigration than a thousand speeches and resolutions’. Brees accompanied its exhibition with lectures on colonisation, thus publicising another aspect of the engineering and architectural agency he had set up in England, advertised as providing 'one department expressly devoted to the Colonies – procures Land for intending Colonists, and secures them Passages in sea-worthy Vessels and Outfits’.
Other panoramas of New Zealand towns and scenes followed over the next two years (though the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography suggests it was the same one revived) and Brees also developed some of his New Zealand sketches into more finished oil paintings. Port Nicholson, N.Z. (1846, oil on board, National Library of Australia [NLA]) belongs to this period and perhaps also the unsigned and undated Te Aro Flat, near Capt. Sharpe’s Residence, Wellington, New Zealand (oil on board, NLA). At some stage he was again practising as a civil engineer, at Croydon, and he is said to have also exhibited a panorama of Sydney in London. A young friend of the architect J.J. Davey 'came out in ’52 and wrote me that St Andrew’s Cathedral with portion of the walls only executed and not ready for roof was just as he saw it in Brees’ panorama’.
His continued promotion included the publication of A Key to the Colonies; or, Advice to the Million upon Emigration in 1851. Just after it was issued Brees announced in the Times (20 May 1851) that, having decided to close his panorama and return to the colonies, he was seeking capital from interested speculators to invest. It would appear that his first Australian port of call was Melbourne. His undated watercolour of Flemington, Melbourne (La Trobe Library) depicts a Chinese convoy en route to the Bendigo goldfields and he may well have spent some time on the recently discovered goldfields himself. Later he was appointed acting colonial engineer for Victoria, remaining in charge until 1853 when Charles Pasley arrived as colonial engineer and found the office 'undermanned and demoralized’. Brees was listed as an architect and surveyor in private practice at Melbourne in 1854. By 1856 he was at Bendigo. That year he produced, anonymously, How to Farm and Settle in Australia , illustrated with six engravings. Some time later, he moved to Sydney. J.J. Davey stated in his (unpublished) reminiscences that Brees set up practice as an architect in Sydney about 1858-59. He was certainly working there in 1860 for on 21 December 'Mr licensed surveyor Brees C.E., Architect’ announced that he had moved his office to 95 Elizabeth Street North. The following year, he exhibited 'two or three watercolour pictures’ at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts in February then decided to revisit Otago, perhaps enticed by the New Zealand gold discoveries.
The Sydney Morning Herald of 21 August 1861 reported that an exhibition of 60 of Brees’s Australian and New Zealand scenes was being held at his son’s rooms in the Commercial Chambers, New Pitt Street, presumably to raise money for the trip. The newspaper critic thought the drawings displayed considerable merit but noted that 'their value depends not so much on their qualities as paintings as upon their correctness as representations of well-known or romantic spots in these colonies’. The views of New Zealand were judged especially interesting, while his Victorian subjects were also praised:
A Scene at Bendigo is homely and characteristic; and the Mount Alexander Road shows very distinctly the jaded bullocks, the sly-grog shops that display nothing beyond lemonade, with its gay flags and embellishments and the tired and dusty diggers. Camping at the foot of Mount Macedon is a nice picture; as, indeed, are all the bush scenes. The sketch of the Gap is one of the best in the collection; it conveys a very correct and forcible idea of the bold rocks at the South Head. Amongst the scenes in the neighbourhood of Sydney, we may notice a view of Coogee Bay, which is very neatly drawn. Those who feel interested in seeing coloured pictures of familiar spots, should take an early opportunity of visiting Mr Brees’ collection previous to their dispersion, it being intended shortly to dispose of them by a distribution upon the principle of the English Art Unions.
Tickets cost a guinea each and there were nine prizes.
Brees was back at Sydney by December 1862, when he opened an 'Architectural Gallery’ in his son’s Commercial Chambers. Although J.J. Davey wrote that 'The back stone part of “Binnies” in George Street South off Hunter Street is almost the only instance of his work’, S.C. Brees was a great designer. He and Harold announced they had model plans available for all types of buildings: houses, churches and chapels ('ventilation studied first, an effect to command the mind second, expense third’) and public buildings ('suitable to the climate, elegant and inexpensive’). Harold would erect them at a 50 per cent saving:
Comfortable cottages built for £200 to £800. Italian Villas for £1000 to £2000; a palazzo, such that Sydney cannot image, from £7000 to £10 000. Old houses turned into good paying property at trifling expense … 100 plans for free inspection.
S.C. Brees took an active interest in local architectural issues in Sydney. In a letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald (May 1862), he wrote at length on the competition designs for a new Parliament House for Sydney won with a Venetian Gothic design by Lynn of Chester, England. Brees argued that the Gothic style was unsuitable for public buildings in Australia. In December 1863 he commented disparagingly on various city buildings, suggesting that 'covered ways, or piazzas, might be advantageously adopted in this country more frequently than they are’. By then, however, he was utterly disillusioned with local architectural taste and stated: 'it is of no use lamenting, no one feels or believes in architecture’.
Apart from Messrs Ashdown’s Chambers and a few 'other buildings now in progress’ cited in an advertisement at the end of 1863, patrons had clearly ignored Brees’s 'CONVENIENT PLANS versus makeshifts. Life rooms v. death rooms. Elegance v. humdrum. Economy v. waste’. At the end of December 1863 he moved his architecture gallery to other rooms in Pitt Street (opposite the Union Bank) and a year later handed the practice over to Harold and set out for England. On 3 May 1865, S.C. Brees died in the West Indian docks on board the La Hogue en route to London from Sydney.
More would be known about Brees’s life had not his diaries been destroyed many years ago at the express wish of his niece. An article in the Turnbull Library Record , which covered only his New Zealand career and admitted that 'Brees the man still eludes us’, dismissed his artistic efforts rather summarily: 'his paintings are reasonably accurate and rather charming, [although] he should perhaps be described as a dedicated amateur rather than an artist’. Perhaps a different assessment would be made if more of his architectural designs were identified and their influence on Sydney’s Italianate villas determined.
Writers:
Holden, RobertKerr, JoanLennon, Jane
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1810
- Summary
- Samuel Charles Brees moved between England the the antipodes at regular intervals and was an architect, engineer, author and entrepreneur of renown in the colonies. 1841 Census.Church Terr,St Pancras,London.Civil Engineer. 1851 census.Glebelands,Love Lane,Mitcham, Surrey, Born Bloomsbury,London. 1810/11.Surveyor. Died at sea 1860-1865.Death notice in the GRO marine deaths Archive.Certificate produced Poplar London in 1865.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3 May 1865
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1865-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Stepney, London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Stepney, London, son of John Short, formerly of the East India Company, and Susan, née Howard.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography .
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1807
- Summary
- Henry Short was a painter who came to Melbourne in 1852. His forté was still-life painting in a seventeenth-century Dutch style.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 July 1865
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude52.24100135 Longitude1.046683031 Start Date1805-01-01 End Date1865-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Suffolk, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, explorer and naval officer, was born at Ampton Hall, Suffolk, on 5 July 1805, son of General Lord Charles FitzRoy, second son of the third Duke of Grafton, and his second wife, Frances Anne, daughter of Robert, first Marquess of Londonderry. Robert was a nephew of Viscount Castlereagh and a half-brother of Charles Augustus FitzRoy, subsequently governor of New South Wales. He entered the Royal Naval College in 1819, when J.C. Schetky was drawing master.
FitzRoy accompanied Phillip Parker King on a hydrographic exploratory voyage along the coast of South America in 1826-30, replacing Captain Pringle Stokes as captain of the Beagle in 1828 when Stokes committed suicide. In 1831 he was instructed to complete earlier charts of the coastlines of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia and explore the coasts of Chile, Peru and several Pacific islands. The naturalist on board was Charles Darwin, who later said: 'The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined the whole of my existence’.
Three Tierra del Fuegian passengers were being returned home, FitzRoy having taken them to England and educated them at his own expense three years earlier. They were sketched by FitzRoy during the voyage, along with several other Fuegian inhabitants (Musée de la Marine, Vincennes), his most notable subject being 'before and after’ views of the 17-year-old Jemmy Button, an elegant dandy in 1833 and a 'thin haggard savage’ when re-encountered a year later. Mellersh quotes FitzRoy on his efforts to sketch an old Fuegian woman: 'She took out her red paint, and put some on her own cheeks as drawn on the paper, and then quite satisfied, sitting as still as a mouse, while I made another sketch. In return for the compliment paid to her countenance, she daubed my face, as well as my coxswain’s, with the same red mixture’. FitzRoy’s sketches of Jemmy Button, engraved by T. Landseer, were reproduced in FitzRoy’s published Narrative (London 1839) together with other portraits and views after his drawings, such as Fuegians Going to Trade in Zapollos with the Patagonians , Woollya (showing the construction of the missionary station there) and a view of Valdivia.
At Montevideo Conrad Martens joined the Beagle as official artist, replacing Augustus Earle . FitzRoy’s South American watercolours appear to have been strongly influenced by Martens in both subject and technique (e.g. Coquimbo , 25 May 1835, Royal Naval Archives). Martens, in return, may have benefited from FitzRoy’s weather studies. Once Martens was signed off at Rio there was no official artist for the remainder of the voyage. Hence the Beagle 's eight days at King George Sound (WA), from 6 March 1836, were commemorated in FitzRoy’s Narrative only by a small portrait engraving of a Native of King George Sound , despite encounters with the local people of the Sound and the more exotic 'White Cockatoo Men’. However, two competent watercolours – a West Australian Aboriginal hunter with a plume of red feathers in his hair and a woman with a child on her back – attributed only to 'a British sea captain’ (c.1835, University of Sydney) appear to be FitzRoy’s work.
The Beagle returned to England on 2 October 1836. Captain FitzRoy, who had been promoted during the voyage, remained in London while the ship continued under the command of John Lort Stokes , son of his predecessor. FitzRoy and Phillip Parker King’s two-volume Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of H.M.S. Adventure and Beagle between the Years 1826 and 1838 Describing their Examination of the Southern Shores of South America and the Beagle’s Circumnavigation of the Globe , published in 1839, was, unfortunately, eclipsed by Darwin’s third volume and subsequent publications. The Hydrographic Department of the Ministry of Defence at Taunton holds coastal profiles drawn on the voyage by FitzRoy, Martens, Earle, King and Captain John Clements Wickham.
FitzRoy married Mary Henrietta O’Brien on 8 December 1836. Elected a member of the British Parliament in 1841, he resigned to take up the appointment of governor of New Zealand in 1843. This was not a success and he served only a few months before being recalled. Promoted rear admiral in 1857, FitzRoy published a well-received treatise on meteorology in 1861. Always of a volatile temperament, he became increasingly embittered and mentally unstable, and at Norwold, Surrey, on 30 April 1865 he committed suicide by cutting his throat.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 July 1805
- Summary
- A sketcher, FitzRoy served as a naval officer on the Beagle with Charles Darwin and was later influenced by the work of official expedition artist, Conrad Martens. FitzRoy made sketches of the indigenous inhabitants of South America and Western Australia during his extended exploratory voyages. Always of a volatile nature, he became increasingly unstable and eventually committed suicide in 1865.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30 April 1865
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude51.1371483 Longitude0.2673446 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1865-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tunbridge Wells, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolour and scene-painter, was born in Tunbridge Wells, England, son of George Roberts, toymaker. Before his marriage to Caroline Jones in London on 5 November 1832 or 1833, George junior seems to have visited North America; a surviving sketchbook (c.1820-25, Mitchell Library) contains watercolour views of both American and English subjects. In about 1840 he came to Sydney with his family and worked there as a theatrical scene-painter and carpenter for the rest of his life. 'G. Roberts’ is listed in Low’s Sydney Directory for 1844-45 as a 'painter’ (i.e. house painter) off Bathurst Street, but he was painting scenery for Sydney’s Royal Victoria Theatre at this time; a playbill of 1845 advertises him as the scene-painter for the first presentation of the farce True Love; or, The Interlude Interrupted by 'a Gentleman in Sydney’, with Mr Healy as mechanist. In 1847 Roberts was more correctly listed as a scene-painter of 44 Bathurst Street. That July, 'under the superintendence of Mr Torning’ ( Andrew Torning ), he painted the scenery for the pantomime The Fairy of the Coral Cave; or, Harlequin and the Magic Peacocks at the Royal Victoria, said to have abounded 'with transformations and consternations’. A 'Grand Panorama! (Painted by Mr. Roberts) illustrating the Principal Events in the Glorious Career of the immortal Nelson’ was part of the pantomime Puss in Boots; or, Harlequin and the Miller’s Son , according to the Australian of 28 December 1847 (quote Colligan, p.100).
When Sydney’s new Prince of Wales Theatre opened in 1855 its act-drop was painted by C.W. Andrews , but 'the credit of constructing the scenery [belongs] to Mr Roberts’, reported the Illustrated Sydney News . 'We are assured that it is at once the best and the largest stock in Australia, though, to our view, it is defective in some respects. It consists of about 100 pairs of flats, each of which, in the construction and painting cost £12. The subjects represented are very various and interesting.’
Roberts also painted watercolour views and was listed as an 'artist’ (painter) of Paddington in Sands’ Sydney Directory for 1861. The earliest dated works in his album The Holes and Corners of Sydney As They Are and As They Were, 1836-1864 (Dixson Library) were done in 1844 ( Scene Showing Cave Dwelling ) and 1845 ( On Church Hill and The Punchbowl, Gloucester Street, Sydney ). The undated George Street and the Royal Hotel and Commercial Exchange was copied from an engraving by W. Wilson published in the Australian Almanack and Sydney Directory for 1834, while The Old Mill, Government Domain, As It Was in 1832 was taken from Robert Russell 's Lithographic Drawings of Sydney and its Environs , published by J.G. Austin in 1836. Several appear to be preliminary works for stage designs.
Later watercolours include Glenmore Tannery (1860) and a view of Paddington from behind the site of the present St Vincent’s Hospital (1863), apparently taken from Roberts’s home in Victoria Street. Watercolours dating from the 1840s to the 1860s in family possession include views of the Sydney Botanical Gardens, Mrs Macquarie’s Chair and the Military Barracks, Wynyard Square. Although Roberts normally identified himself only by the initials 'G.R.’, his mature work is quite distinctive. His scene-painter training remained dominant and he was particularly fond of architectural subjects and street scenes, setting his carefully drawn buildings in fluffy, frequently vertiginous, hilly landscapes with tiny out-of-scale figures. The City of Sydney Public Library holds nine of his watercolours of Paddington (1859-63), including View of Oxford Street, Leading up to Victoria Barracks, Portion of Glenmore Road, with Bellevue Hill and Rushcutter’s Bay in the Distance; and the Sand Hills in the Foreground (1863). Numerous watercolour sketches of the architecture of Sydney ( Old Mill, Gordon Street ) and its environs, particularly the eastern suburbs, are in the Mitchell Library.
While watching a performance at the Royal Victoria Theatre on 11 May 1865, Roberts collapsed with heart failure and died in the pit-passage. His 15-year-old daughter took his body in a cab to his residence in 'Woolloomooloo’ (his Victoria Street home where he had been living with his three surviving children: two daughters and a son, George William Roberts). The report of his death in Bell’s Life referred to him as 'one of the oldest scene-painters in the colony’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1800
- Summary
- George Roberts was a prolific scene-painter. When Sydney's new Prince of Wales Theatre was opened in 1855, the Illustrated Sydney News reported that "the credit of constructing the scenery [belongs] to Mr Roberts".
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 May 1865
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-37.814167 Longitude144.963056 Start Date1839-01-01 End Date1864-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Biography
- painter, cartoonist and illustrator, was born and worked in Melbourne, mainly as a painter. In 1860, when living at 171 Victoria Parade, he had two oil paintings, The Tempest and Scene from Sintram , and ten line illustrations to Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur in the Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts. Other paintings, including landscapes and literary subjects, were shown at the 1861 Victorian Exhibition of Fine Arts and the 1863 Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition, including Andromeda and The Departure of Ulysses at the former.
In a lengthy review of the 1861 exhibition, the Examiner stated that Death of Harold had 'triumphed over many of the graver difficulties of his subject’ (history painting). The pseudonymous 'Christopher Sly’ ( James Edward Neild ) thought it remarkable that Greig, with no opportunity to study the old masters, had been able to produce 'a picture which, as to its subject, must be classed in the very highest department of Art, and which in respect of whose execution, it is to be confessed, is infinitely beyond the average such productions’. Its most noticeable flaw was thought to be 'its want of compression … its elements are a little too much broken up’.
Greig was a major contributor to the fourth Annual Exhibition of Fine Arts at Melbourne in 1864, again being said to be an artist of 'considerable promise’. According to the Argus critic (James Smith):
the most attractive and the most successful is … an illustration of a scene in Anthony and Cleopatra … To make the scene thoroughly Egyptian … the artist has not been content with the peculiarity of the tints which the sky and scenery of Egypt offer, but has filled in the background with an unmistakable pyramid. It may also be objected that the voluptuous form of Cleopatra is but imperfectly drawn. As she reclines, with royal robe thrown over her limbs, the impression is left that the subduer of the Roman “pillar of the world” is … either limbless or possessed of nether extremities of dwarfish proportion. This, however, is perhaps somewhat hypercritical. The artist’s effect is ambitious. The picture, as a whole, is commendable and promises well for what the artist will accomplish hereafter.
Greig’s other exhibits were quite eclectic: a religious painting of the Virgin and St John titled The Crusader’s Return ; a scene from Tennyson’s Idylls of the King ; Saxby Weather on the Yarra ; Encampment of Banditti ; and In Vino Veritas . Of them, the Age commented: 'Mr. Greig has been more ambitious than successful either in conception or finish, though here and there we find hints of ability for better things’.
In 1864 Greig moved to Sydney to become principal cartoonist on Sydney Punch . Examples of his work include both political and social cartoons, e.g. What Photography may come to . 'STREET BOY – “Now then Hartis, for a ha’porth of beauty”’ (ill. King II, 69). His best-known and most powerful illustration for Punch is Reign of Terror , a good image of a villainous bushranger published on 2 July 1864, 45 (ill. King 54 and Coleman & Tanner 161). All are signed with the monogram 'EJG’ (in which the 'G’ looks rather like 'C’) and were engraved by 'M’ [Mason].
On 4 October 1864, only a few months after his arrival, Greig drowned in Sydney Harbour together with his wife, mother-in-law and two brothers. His final cartoon appeared on 8 October and an 'epitaph’ was published in Sydney Punch the following week. The auction of his effects took place (with what appears to have been considered unseemly haste) at his residence, 11 Crown Street, Millers Point, on 28 October. The lots in the unreserved sale included: 'Portfolio of Cartoon Engravings and Water Colours… Architectural Drawings, Artists’ Sketches from Life, Pencil Drawings, Unfinished Paintings, Artists’ Materials, Paints, Brushes, &c.’ and, especially, 'an immense collection of oil paintings, sketches from life by the late E.J. Greig, Esq., exhibited at the Melbourne Exhibition, one of which is a beautiful painting of Burke and Wills at the Gulf of Carpentaria’. By 1873 the last was owned by Charles Read, who showed it non-competitively at that year’s Agricultural Society of New South Wales Exhibition under the title The First Sight by Burke and Wills, of the Gulf of Carpentaria . It is now in the Mitchell Library.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1839
- Summary
- Colonial Victorian painter, cartoonist and illustrator.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 October 1864
- Age at death
- 25
Details
Latitude51.0000002 Longitude-109 Start Date1830-01-01 End Date1864-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- North America
- Biography
- painter, calligrapher and teacher, came to Van Diemen’s Land from North America and set up a studio in rooms over Kent’s tobacco shop in Murray Street, Hobart Town, advertising in 1853 that he was 'prepared to execute orders for likenesses in water-colours and crayons’. The following year he added writing, arithmetic, bookkeeping and drawing classes to his accomplishments. His artistic abilities were commended to the public in the Colonial Times of 9 June 1853, but the painting side of the venture does not seem to have been a great success. In September 1854 he re-opened in Barrack Street where, although requesting commissions for work 'in Water Colours and French Crayons’, he was primarily operating evening classes in the more practical arts of 'Plain and Ornamental Writing, Arithmetic, Book Keeping & Drawing’, claiming to have been for five years 'Premium Penman of America’.
Stacey apparently settled in South Australia in 1863. In October, after placing several notices in the local press and posting handbills around Adelaide, he gave a lecture at St Paul’s schoolroom on 'The History and Science of Writing, with Illustrations’; but the 'nominal charge’ of a shilling was not popular and the lecture had to be postponed because neither chairman nor audience turned up. In August Stacey had invited a reporter from the South Australian Register to his Adelaide studio in Currie Street to inspect a self-portrait done in a combination of watercolours and pastels. Its 'excellent effect’ was duly reported, and 'it was intimated to us that the visits of connoisseurs would be welcomed without formal introduction’. Entered in the South Australian Society of Arts’ annual exhibition that December his portrait was especially commended by the South Australian Register 's reviewer as 'possessing the depth of oil with the transparency of water-colour tintings, and the peculiar softness of chalk’. Minor examples of Stacey’s watercolours survive in an album containing work by S.T. Gill and other painters (Mitchell Library).
Stacey died of a heart attack on 12 January 1864, having collapsed while giving a private lesson in writing. He was buried in West Terrace Cemetery the following day. His obituary stated that he was a calligraphist who had recently arrived in the colony, 'a sober and steady man, of a very cheerful disposition’ who was earning a good living in South Australia. The last statement apparently arose from the misleading presence of a receipt for £100 among his effects, subsequently explained in a letter to the editor of the Register as merely a sample of the style of writing the son of the owner of the receipt was to be taught and in no way connected with Stacey’s income.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1830
- Summary
- Young artist and teacher who was regularly praised in the local press but like so many others found the artistic freelance life a difficult one to maintain. He died early leaving little work to remember him by.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 January 1864
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1864-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- cartoonist, was born in London on 23 August 1817, of Irish descent. After being educated at Charterhouse, where he was friends with Thackeray, he studied medicine at St Bartholemew’s Hospital and practised for a while as a surgeon. Meanwhile, at the age of 18, he had published Etchings and Sketchings (1835). In 1836 he contributed cartoons to Bell’s Life and in 1840 began to work for Bentley’s Miscellany . He sent his first contribution to London Punch in 1841 and from then on mostly drew cartoons for it; by 1861 it had published 720. ML has an original pencil sketch for the frontispiece of Punch’s Pocket Book 1854 (DG SSV*/GEN/7), annotated verso '[Copy?] Survey of the Antipodes’, like an interior scene in an English pub but set outdoors on the gold fields, i.e. it became 'Topsy Turvey – or Our Antipodes’ 1854, where an MA, 'Intellectual’ and gentlewoman serve beer to rough miners etc. (b/w print, DL uncatalogued cabinet; hand-coloured etchings in BFAG et al.). Its companion piece, 'Alarming Prospect, the Single Ladies off to the Diggings’ 1853 (copies NLA, BFAG and DL SLNSW acc. Oldfield).
Although best known for his black and while illustrations, Leech also painted. He had been taught to paint in oils by J.E. Millais, and he occasionally worked in gouache and watercolours too.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 23 August 1817
- Summary
- Mid 19th century English cartoonist whose work included references to the Australian Gold rush of the 1850s.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1864
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude52.52 Longitude13.405 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1864-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berlin, Germany
- Biography
- painter, lithographer and sculptor, was a native of Berlin, Germany, where his father was a bookseller.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1814
- Summary
- Painter, lithographer and sculptor. In 1849 Schramm migrated to South Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 November 1864
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude51.3883811 Longitude0.504925 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1864-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rochester, Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- portrait painter and professional photographer, worked in Victoria and Tasmania between 1850 and 1861. Nothing is known of his life before or after this time. In 1855, when testifying in a civil suit in Hobart Town brought by Frederick Frith , Hart stated that he was 'a portrait painter of twenty six or twenty eight years [experience]’. A portrait of Sir Francis Forbes (who died in 1841) signed by Hart (University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW) was apparently done in London. In 1849 Hart exhibited The Little Fyfe-Player at the British Institute from a London address and it apparently accompanied him to Australia, his painting of the same title being exhibited by G.E. Belcher at the Geelong Mechanics Institute in 1869. A Belcher descendant gave it back to the family and it remains with descendants, who also own a self-portrait and a portrait of his wife and child (there is some speculation the child is his daughter.)
Hart is first recorded in Melbourne at the end of 1850, when the Argus recommended that any of its readers who wished 'for a treat’ should call at Mr Harrison’s new shop in Collins Street
and inspect a most admirable portrait of an old friend [unidentified]... painted by Mr Hart, who intends practising his profession here, and to whom, while he can paint such portraits as these we wish all possible success.
He showed The Finding of Moses , Italian Peasant and nine portraits at the 1853 exhibition of the Victorian Fine Arts Society, of which he was a committee member. A local critic commented satirically that while The Finding of Moses was 'very effective, we must, however, blame the maid for her carelessness. In the catalogue we read, “And the maid was sent to fetch it”; but the maid certainly made a mistake, and instead of the Infant Moses, she brought Reynolds’ infant Hercules’. Of Italian Peasant the same critic commented that 'the mason who constructed the stonework in the background had very little notion of his trade’. The portraits were of Mr Condell, first mayor of Melbourne, members of parliament, family groups such as Portrait of Mrs. Symons and Children , and Mr. Justice Williams ; 'We do not like the dull heavy effect of most of them’, stated the Armchair . Nor did the Argus . In response, an advertisement was inserted in the Armchair on 3 September 1853: 'Portraits. Mr. Conway Hart is the best portrait painter in Melbourne, in spite of what the Argus may say. His studio is opposite the Criterion Hotel, Collins St.’
By February 1854, however, Hart’s studio was in Hobart Town. He had advertised his intended arrival some months previously, stating he was an artist of the London Royal Academy (unknown as an exhibitor, he presumably trained in the Academy Schools) and a member of the English Academy in Rome. Early in 1857 he was at Launceston and between these dates appears to have revisited Victoria. An oil portrait by 'Conway Hart, of Geelong’ was shown by Marcus Sievewright (presumably its subject) in the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition, together with several unsold pictures from the previous year shown by the artist himself. He had four paintings in the 1857 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition. Portraits painted in Tasmania include those of Adye Douglas MHA, Captain and Mrs Samuel Horton of Ross, Mrs L. Douglass and Mary Morton Allport . In particular, Hart received a £300 commission to paint a 9-foot (2.74 m) canvas of Sir Richard Dry, speaker of the Tasmanian Legislative Council, which Dry presented to Parliament House in 1855.
Yet although Hart succeeded in gaining commissions critical acclaim eluded him, the main complaint consistently being his faulty draughtsmanship. In a review of the 1858 Victorian Society of Fine Arts Exhibition, for example, a writer in the Journal of Australasia said:
Mr Conway Hart … has a very clever trick – and trick it is – of coloring; but his pictures are positively painful to contemplate, from the utter absence of anything like drawing. If he confined himself to drawing angels, like Mrs Davitt [q.v.], perhaps we might confess to some ignorance of the anatomy of those personages and of the perspective effects of the atmosphere in which they dwell; but, as it is, we can only recommend Mr Hart to prosecute a severe course of study in figure drawing.
In 1860-61 Hart was working from a studio at 60 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne, and apparently trying his hand at photography. He died in India.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 14 August 1814
- Summary
- Portrait painter and professional photographer, worked in Victoria and Tasmania between 1850 and 1861.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2 March 1864
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1864-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- teacher, was born in Edinburgh. She came to Van Diemen’s land from Sierra Leone after her husband, Staff-Surgeon David Law of the 2nd Queen’s Own Regiment, died there in 1834. At the end of 1835 she opened a seminary for young ladies in St John Street, Launceston, where she gave private instruction in music and drawing. In 1836 Mrs Law petitioned for a land grant in lieu of her pension, claiming in her application to be the (natural?) daughter of Lord Eldon of Edinburgh. (Since he did not live there, this must have been a slip of the pen for Lord Eldin.) She subsequently married Thomas Scott of Springfield, Launceston, and died, his widow, on 1 September 1864 at St Kilda, Melbourne. She was not connected with the Tasmanian sculptor Benjamin Law.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1800
- Summary
- Teacher, was born in Edinburgh. She came to Tasmania from Sierra Leone after her first husband died. At the end of 1835 she opened a seminary for young ladies in St John Street, Launceston, where she gave private instruction in music and drawing.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1 September 1864
- Age at death
- 64
Details
Latitude55.9725499 Longitude-3.1709492 Start Date1798-01-01 End Date1864-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leith, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, naval officer and police magistrate, was born in Leith, Scotland, on 21 November 1798, son of Lieutenant Samuel Wickham RN and Ellen Susannah, née Naylor. He joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1812 and later served as lieutenant under P.P. King in a survey expedition off the coast of South America. In 1831-36 he was second in command on board the Beagle under Captain Robert FitzRoy , becoming commander in 1837-41 for the Beagle 's survey of the north-west coast of Australia.
No official artist was on board, so Wickham helped provide the visual records of the voyage. An informal sketch of Clovelly, Watson’s Bay (ML), was made on 8 November 1838 while the ship was awaiting a favourable wind to leave Sydney Harbour. Another pencil sketch, Inscription Tree, Water Valley, Victoria River [Northern Territory] , was given to the Mitchell Library by Wickham’s son in 1905, together with his 'Description of the River Victoria on the N.W. Coast of New Holland’ (which his officers had discovered and he had named), but the rest of the large family collection of his drawings and papers (intended for publication) was unfortunately destroyed in a fire. Official coastal profiles from the voyage in the Hydrographic Department of the Ministry of Defence at Taunton, England, include several by Wickham. A collection of 94 detailed drawings of the great gallery of Aboriginal rock engravings on Depuch Island off the coast of Western Australia, which Wickham, J. Lort Stokes and possibly some of the other officers recorded in June 1840 in the belief that they were the first white viewers of these splendours, was sent by Wickham to Sir Francis Beaufort at the Admiralty, London, who submitted them to the Royal Geographical Society’s journal in 1841. A plate of details also appeared in Stokes’s Discoveries in Australia (London 1846). Stokes had examined 'the human figures, the animals, the birds, the weapons, the domestic implements, the scenes of savage life’ depicted in such profusion by the Ngaluma people and pondered on 'the curious frame of mind that could induce these uncultivated people to repair, perhaps at stated seasons of the year, to this lonely picture gallery … to admire and add to the productions of their forefathers’, while Wickham more pragmatically noted that it was 'difficult to conjecture’ what many were intended to represent.
Handing over the command of the Beagle to Stokes and invaliding himself out of the navy at Sydney on 24 March 1841, Wickham reported back to London then returned to New South Wales in the Fly , commanded by Captain Blackwood . On 27 October 1842 in St John’s, Parramatta, he married Anna Macarthur to whom he had been engaged for four years; they had two sons and a daughter. Anna died in 1852 and five years later he married Ellen Deering of Ipswich, Queensland, and had a further two sons. From 1843 to 1853 Wickham was police magistrate at Moreton Bay (Brisbane, Qld), then government resident. He lived in Newstead House on the Brisbane River (now a museum) which he had purchased in 1847 from his brother-in-law Patrick Leslie. Having refused the position of colonial treasurer when Queensland became a separate colony in 1855, Wickham subsequently retired to Biarritz, France, reputedly in straitened circumstances. He died there from a stroke on 6 January 1864.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 November 1798
- Summary
- English naval officer and police magistrate who would marry into the Macarthur family after serving on the Beagle for over a decade. In the course of his expedition, Wickham produced detailed drawings of Indigenous rock engravings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6 January 1864
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude50.725556 Longitude-3.526944 Start Date1796-01-01 End Date1864-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Exeter, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and printmaker, son of a builder and auctioneer, was born in Exeter, Devon.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a full biography.
Writers:
Staff writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1796
- Summary
- George Rowe was one of the most prolific topographical printmakers in England.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2 September 1864
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude53.479444 Longitude-2.245278 Start Date1832-01-01 End Date1863-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Manchester, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, scene-painter and professional photographer, was born in Manchester, England, eldest son of John Waln Guy, a painter, and Eliza, née Bottomly. The J.W. Guy who exhibited a large oil painting, 5 feet 2 inches x 7 feet 1 inch (1.57 × 2.15 m), Coast near Frankston , at the British Institution in 1849 when living at 72 Charlotte Street, London, could have been the father or the 17-year-old son. James Waln Guy junior came to Sydney about 1856. He provided two drawings of the wreck of the Dunbar from which engravings were made to illustrate a locally published report of the disaster in 1857. One was a portrait of the sole survivor, James Johnson, the other a purportedly on-the-spot view of The Gap, North and South Heads, and Johnson Being Rescued .
A younger brother, John Arthur Guy (c.1833-1866), migrated to Sydney at about the same time. Although it is impossible to be sure who was responsible for work attributed only to 'Mr Guy’, James seems to have been the theatrical artist while John was a house painter by trade. When he married Jane Seaney in a Presbyterian ceremony at Elizabeth Street, Sydney, on 9 December 1861, John gave his occupation as 'painter’, a term then used to signify a house painter (as opposed to 'artist’, which John gave as his father’s profession).
In November 1857 James Guy was identified as the artist of the 'illuminated diagrams’ for Henry Merlin 's lecture on 'The Comet’ at the Jamison Street schoolroom and possibly painted the backdrops for Merlin’s lectures on 'Celestial Phenomena’ the following year. In partnership with Merlin he produced a Grand Panorama of India , encompassing views of Calcutta by night, Delhi at noon, Benares in the morning, Moslem and Brahmin religious gatherings and scenes of the recent Indian uprising. The panorama was accompanied by vocal and instrumental music and a 'vigorously written discourse’. Despite the grand scale, it seems to have attracted little patronage, the Month writing with disappointment of its neglect.
One of the Guy brothers also painted theatrical scenery, presumably James since this was an activity closely associated with panorama painting. For the production of Rolla; or, The Conquest of Peru at the Prince of Wales Theatre, commencing 14 February 1859, the scenery was 'painted expressly for this piece by Messrs. Burbury, Guy, and assistants’. Guy was specifically credited with the sets Gardens of the Royal Palace (Act II, sc.i), Peruvian Landscape (Act III, sc.ii and Act V, sc.i), Prison in Fortress of Cuzeo (Act IV, sc.i) and Spanish Encampment at Night (Act IV, sc.ii).
In July, James Guy’s large oil painting of Bathurst NSW 'taken from the Kelso bank of the Macquarie’ was exhibited at Buist’s Pianoforte Warehouse, 254 George Street. It sounds like his first colonial venture into easel painting. The critic Joseph Sheridan Moore congratulated 'this young artist on his really respectable achievement’ and added: 'It possesses considerable breadth; its well-toned warm colouring reminds us of more than one Australian scene, while the mere manipulation is bold, but unaffected. We need not add that we wish Mr Guy success.’
In October 1858 James and John together opened a photographic gallery at 290 George Street ('opposite the White Horse’), and as 'Guy Brothers’ advertised portraits at 5 shillings each, with case, in October and November. But this soon broke up. James Guy was in partnership with the photographer Arthur Green at 381 George Street in 1858-59 then had his own studio on the corner of George and Liverpool Streets. The Mr Guy who was paid £1 on 12 April 1861 for 'Painting Diagram &c.’ in connection with a recent exhibition at the School of Arts was probably also James.
James Guy died of tuberculosis at 47 Botany Street on 15 October 1863, aged thirty-one, and was buried in Randwick Cemetery. John, who was then living in Campbell Street, provided the information for the death certificate and afterwards took over the photography business. John Guy was called 'Photographic Artist’ of 132 Riley Street, Sydney, when he too died of tuberculosis, on 28 July 1866, aged thirty-three.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1832
- Summary
- James Guy was a painter, scene-painter and professional photographer. He came to Sydney about 1856. In 1858 with his brother John he opened a photographic gallery in Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15 October 1863
- Age at death
- 31
Details
Latitude54.3518644 Longitude-5.961616475 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1863-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- County Down, Northern Ireland
- Biography
- landscape painter, naval photographer and surveyor, was the son of James William Wilson and Elizabeth, née Glen.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1827
- Summary
- James Glen Wilson was a landscape painter, naval photographer and surveyor. Irish born, Wilson was chosen to accompany the expedition to the South Seas. This expedition aimed to explore the area embraced by New South Wales, New Zealand, the Kermadec group of islands, Tonga, Fiji, the New Hebrides and New Caledonia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6 August 1863
- Age at death
- 36
Details
Latitude53.9015775 Longitude-0.3827242 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1863-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hull, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, carver, art dealer, art entrepreneur and musician, was born in Hull, Yorkshire. He arrived at Hobart Town in the Warrior on 27 June 1833. Eight days later the Hobart Town Courier referred to his musical talent and his ability to imitate Paganini’s style of playing the violin. His first concert was held at Hobart Town in July and in August he performed at Launceston, where his reputation had preceded him. For the remainder of the year he gave concerts in both places. In September he advertised that he would teach the 'Art of Transferring’ in one lesson costing half a guinea, to be held in clients’ own homes. Sample specimens were on view at various Hobart Town addresses, including Peck’s own at Mr Collie’s, next to the White Horse Inn, Liverpool Street. He also undertook to teach woodcarving 'in all its various branches’.
Early in 1834 Peck opened as carver, gilder, ornamental designer and binder in his newly erected shop in Liverpool Street, Hobart, which stocked stationery and art supplies. When an apprentice to learn carving and gilding was required, Peck advertised for pupils for violin lessons at the same time. In September Peck took part in a benefit concert at Launceston and from 13-20 October he exhibited his 'Artium Pecciano’ or 'Mechanical and Picturesque Theatre of the Arts’ in J.P. Fawkner’s Cornwall Hotel Assembly Room. The entertainment consisted of a selection of vocal and instrumental music followed by a mechanical portrayal of various events at Lake Maggiore and, in conclusion, 'a display of Phantasmagorical Representations of various celebrated men and various grotesque figures’ (magic-lantern slides). The Independent reported: 'Many of the subjects have been effectively copied from “La Belle Italie” by a Gentleman, whose talent in another department of Fine Arts is so well known as to render any eulogium superfluous; and who will not only continue his accomplished Crayon in furnishing a rapid succession of interesting Scenic Novelties , but also preside as Leader of the Orchestra, for the desirable purpose of solacing the Audience with appropriate and popular Music.’
In January 1835 Peck staged his Theatre of Arts spectacle (accompanied by an orchestra) in Hobart Town. Based on Thiodon’s Grand Mechanical and Picturesque Theatre of Arts shown in London from the 1820s (itself inspired by Philippe de Loutherbourg’s 'Eidophuskon’ exhibited at London in 1781), Peck used many of Thiodon’s exact phrases about its educational value in his advertisements, e.g. it was 'particularly recommended to the notice of those families whose religious tenets forbid their participation in Thespian amusements’ because of its 'innocent and highly moral character (being totally distinct from anything of a dramatic nature)’. At the 1 May 1835 performance of the Theatre of Arts, attended by the Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land Colonel George Arthur and his family, Peck introduced Australian views and figures for the first time: 'Mount Wellington, as seen from Sandy Bay, with the upper part of Davey-street’ and 'The Death of the Kangaroo’.
Peck also featured in other Hobart Town concerts later in the year. The 'numerous avocations’ that limited his Launceston performances to a week included a grand Hobart Town lottery. Advertised in November 1834, the prizes were 'a splendid collection of Pictures just arrived from Ackermann’s’ which could be inspected at his Liverpool Street shop. In April 1835 it was announced that the exhibition would close shortly and 'in order to give all classes an opportunity of witnessing it’ prices had been reduced.
In June 1836 Peck married Sophia Mildred Wilkinson in Trinity Church, Hobart Town. By September he had moved to new premises in Elizabeth Street, next to the General Post Office, which he called Peck’s 'Repository’ of Arts after Rudolph Ackermann’s famous London establishment. There he continued to sell stationery and musical instruments and do carving, gilding, bronzing, copperplate engraving and bookbinding. He seized the opportunity to capitalise on the arrival of a new Governor and called for subscribers for a lithograph of a portrait of Sir John Franklin 'by that eminent artist “Wageman” [Wegelin]’ to appear on 31 October, the subscription to the limited edition being 2 shillings. The lithographer appears to have been Thomas Norrington . Peck also raffled a view of the Australian Alps taken on John Lhotsky 's expedition, pointing out that four similar views had been raffled in Sydney. Lhotsky’s Journey to the Australian Alps was on sale to complement the drawing. He remained at Elizabeth Street for a year. In May 1837 a collection of paintings of native plant and animal life 'by that celebrated and eccentric genius, “Gould”’ ( William Buelow Gould ) were added to the usual goods advertised. His zeal and enterprise encompassed a production of Timour the Tartar at the Theatre Royal as a benefit for himself and fellow musician Taylor. Although advertised as including several real horses, only one equine performer actually made an appearance on the night.
In July 1837 the Hobart Town Courier praised 'our fellow townsman Peck, who has laboured so hard to promote a taste for the fine arts’ and mentioned that he was currently organising a Colonial Gallery of Arts to open on 7 August in the Argyle Rooms. In the event, the opening was delayed for two days – because of the great influx of privately owned paintings lent for the occasion, Peck explained. Paintings by British and European artists were included, together with steel and copper engravings, pencil and watercolour views of the colony, 'Busts, Bas Reliefs, and Medals – beautiful Specimens in Conchology, Geology, and Chrystallography’ (shells, rocks and minerals) and 'a complete series of all the Native Plants systematically arranged’. A catalogue was on sale for 6d, but no copy has been located and the full range of the work on display is unknown. There were at least 216 exhibits and local artists represented included Thomas Chapman , Thomas Lempriere and sculptor Benjamin Law with his busts of Truganini and Woureddy. It was the first general art exhibition held in any of the Australian colonies. As the Hobart Town Courier noted on 18 August: 'We are disposed to dwell very warmly upon this first exhibition… Something is wanting to refine and elevate a community above mere material delights, for if it be left to depend upon these it is likely to become grovelling and contemptible indeed.’
It was a final fling. At the same time Peck advertised his Repository of Arts for sale. He was in Brisbane Street, near Trinity Church, later in 1837. A major reason for the sale was that he was embarking on the production of a full-scale model of Hobart Town to be exhibited in London with a view to attracting settlers. To facilitate the work, Peck asked for public cooperation in allowing his surveyors to take measurements of all Hobart Town properties. In October he reported that over 300,000 square yards had been completed, covering the area between Liverpool Street and the harbour and between Murray Street and the Domain. Anyone with plans was asked to lend them to 'the artist’ Francis Low . After augmenting his finances with another benefit concert at the Theatre Royal, the model was complete enough to be shown in the Argyle Rooms in March 1838, together with a panoramic view of Hobart Town and its surrounding scenery 'painted by a very celebrated artist’. Locals were urged to attend if only to see how accurately their own homes had been represented. The Hobart Town Courier wrote enthusiastically of the model and expressed the hope that Peck would be remunerated for his expense and labour. However, by April 1839, before the model was finished, Peck and Low had a disagreement and Low proceeded independently to model a separate and, he claimed, 'more comprehensive’ view of the town. (Low also made a model of Government House, Hobart, now in the Tasmanian Museum.)
Peck hurriedly left for Sydney on board the Susannah Ann on 27 April 1839, the day after advertising his farewell concert – which is unlikely to have eventuated – to display his Hobart Town model and panorama (probably painted by Edward Shribbs ), ignoring Low’s claim that he, Low, was sole artist in the model’s construction. By 1841 he was exhibiting these works in London and Liverpool, together with 'a rough sketch on a small scale – of Sydney, which has a sort of Australindian appearance’. Peck had moved back to Sydney in 1838, engaged as a violinist at the Royal Victoria Theatre. In 1839 he either sold or leased his Theatre of Arts to Edward Barlow , who advertised it as the 'counterpart’ of Thodion’s original, claiming that the mechanical figures had been 'made by the same artist’ who had worked for Thodion (evidently Edward Shribbs ).
Later Peck set up in his hometown of Hull as an 'Artist in Figure and Ornamental Wood Carving’ and received the major commission of carving the poppyheads and pew elbows in the restoration of Holy Trinity Church, Hull. Then he went to California – presumably en route for Tasmania – where he promoted and participated in 'Promenade Concerts à la Julien’. He was back at Hobart Town by February 1848 (when he gave permission for his ward, Mary Ann Amelia Crumb, to marry a singer called John McDonald, though the marriage seems not to have taken place.) He then lived in Melbourne, teaching music when not travelling. From Melbourne he exhibited 'Cribbage boards’ at London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. The George W. (sic) Peck cited as author of Melbourne and the Chincha Islands, with sketches of Lima, and a Voyage round the World , published in New York in 1854 based on travels undertaken in 1853, seems to have been George Henry. 'For the truth of my pictures’, the author wrote, 'I can only appeal to the evidence of those who have visited the scenes described’. The illustrations, however, consist only of a few vignettes: two sketches of albatrosses, maps (including one of Port Phillip Bay) and some coastal profiles for which Peck proudly claimed 'correctness of outline’.
George Henry Peck took part in the inaugural meeting of the Victorian Society of Fine Arts at Melbourne on 29 October 1856. That year, as a resident of Lonsdale Street, West Melbourne, he showed two carvings in Huon pine at the Victorian Exhibition of Art: An Italian Peasant Water Carrier and a relief 'Emblematic of Christ and the Four Evangelists’. He won the Industrial Society’s silver medal for the latter, subsequently shown at the 1857 Geelong Mechanics Institute Exhibition by its owner, S. Higgott. Some of Peck’s woodcarvings were included in a Melbourne art union in 1856 and the following year he began holding art lotteries of his own. The drawing of prizes became a social event, usually preceded by a concert in which Peck featured. In mid 1858 he returned to Hobart Town as leader of the orchestra for a season by G.V. Brooke at the Theatre Royal, during which time he gave a solo violin recital in the ballroom of Old Government House. Many colonists 'will remember the skill, taste and ability formerly evinced by Mr Peck’, announced the Mercury , adding: 'it is but fair to presume, that his visit to Europe has added to his qualifications by the advantages derived from an association with the most celebrated artists of the day’. The concert, to include his celebrated solo on a single string à la Paganini, was poorly attended but 'with some exceptions’ was said to have given general satisfaction.
Later in 1858 Peck was operating a dance hall (The Rotunda) in South Head Road, Sydney, in conjunction with a Mr Jones ( see William Bradley ). Peck’s wife was also involved in the venture and acted as master of ceremonies on occasions. In press advertisements Peck described himself as 'late leader and musical director of the Prince of Wales Theatre, Sydney, and formerly Manager of the celebrated Promenade Concerts at the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, and many Theatres in Victoria, England and America’. He continued to produce occasional carvings. A surviving framed wood scene (21 × 102 cm, p.c.) depicting Act 3, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is dated 1858. By 1862 he had opened a Music and Fine Art Repository at 387 George Street, where he held art unions and exhibitions. He died in Sydney on 20 September 1863. His only known extant painting is an undated oil of Timsbury, Glenorchy, Tasmania (p.c.), reproduced in Michael Clarke’s 'Big’ Clarke (Carlton, Vic. 1980).
Writers:
Glover, Margaret
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1810
- Summary
- George Henry Peck was a painter, carver, art dealer, art entrepreneur and musician. He arrived at Hobart Town in June 1833 and in July had his first concert there. In 1837 he arranged the first general art exhibition held in any of the Australian colonies, held at the Colonial Gallery of Arts that he was also responsible for organising.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20 September 1863
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1863-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England , UK
- Biography
- sketcher, builder, farmer, postmaster and publican, was born in England on 29 January 1809, son of John Morrell, a pioneer farmer at Northam, Western Australia. Richard followed his father to the antipodes, arriving at Fremantle via Launceston and King George Sound in the Eagle on 19 January 1832. In August he drew View of Fremantle, Western Australia, from Church Hill, East of the Town (Art Gallery of Western Australia [AGWA]) in pen, ink and watercolour. This lively sketch inscribed with comments identifying landmarks is annotated: 'There are many houses up the side of the river which are not seen in this view’. He sent the drawing to his English friends, the engravers John and Charles Wilson, accompanying it with a letter to John praising the country and climate. John Wilson’s lithograph after Morrell’s sketch was published in London in December 1832 (Mitchell Library, AGWA, British Library).
By then Morrell had started farming near Fremantle and in the Karrakatta district. He married Susannah Summerland at Fremantle on 5 March 1839, and they had nine children. Morrell worked as a builder at Perth for some time, erecting a church there in 1840. He moved to Northam about 1845 after inheriting a share in his father’s property, Morby Farm. There he was variously tollkeeper on the York Road, licensee of the Northam Inn, builder and licensee of his own hotel, and postmaster. He died of rheumatic fever at Northam on 29 April 1863. No other drawings are known.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 29 January 1809
- Summary
- Sketcher, builder, farmer, postmaster and publican, from Western Australia. Morrell died of rheumatic fever at Northam on 29 April 1863.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 April 1863
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1862-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Islington, London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, sketcher, professional photographer and teacher, was born on 2 May 1818, second son and third child of Thomas Richardson and Sarah, née Fisher, of Islington, London. Richardson arrived in Victoria with his wife and children aboard the Swiftsure on 29 September 1858. He resided at Portland where his brother Thomas Elliott Richardson was editor of_The Portland Guardian._ In August 1859 Richardson exhibited twenty-three genre and history paintings he had brought from England in a large room above the office of the Portland Guardian. The works not sold were auction through an Art Union. In Portland he painted portraits in oil and hand coloured portrait photographs. He is listed by Sandy Barrie as having a photography practise in Portland in 1858-60. The Portland Guardian of 2 February 1860 p.2 declared 'By Mr. Richardson’s peculiar process, the great desideratum in Photographs has been achieved — that of preserving the exquisite coloring of nature without sacrificing any of the admirable details of the most elaborate Photographs”. Richardson’s brother sold the newspaper in 1860 and John moved to Melbourne.He took up residence at “Green Mount House”, Octavia Street, Saint Kilda. Little is known of his activities except that he became a “Drawing Master at the Denominational Schools
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
newtog
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 2 May 1818
- Summary
- John Richardson, painter, professional photographer and teacher, trained at the Royal Academy, London. He painted scenes from British history and literature, as well as copies after Old Masters such as Reynolds, Teniers, Cuyp, Van Dyck, Rosa and Guercino.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 May 1862
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1862-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, explorer, surveyor and squatter, was born in Scotland, brother of Alexander and James Archer . When Charles was 12, the family moved to Larvik, Norway, where he attended Laurvig Grammar School. He left in July 1830 to take up an office position in Tobago, one of the Windward Islands in the West Indies. He returned to England after almost dying of a tropic fever and recuperated in his Uncle John Archer’s home and with his mother in Norway. In 1840 he accepted an appointment with William Walker and Co. in Sydney. His brothers David, William, Thomas and John were among Queensland’s first settlers, taking up vast tracts of hitherto unexplored land north of Moreton Bay, an area then still part of New South Wales.
Tiring of office work and city life, Charles moved to the family property of Durandur, near Woodford, in 1843. The Archer brothers had occupied the place in 1841, and Charles made a sketch of the hut and out-buildings the morning after he arrived to send home to the family in Tolderodden, Norway (1843, RHSQ) and he continued to send sketches home from time to time 'to amuse and interest the young folks’, often accompanied by entertaining descriptions (see L. McDonald pp116-117). Charles and Alexander were the two artists of the family, Charles being proficient enough to be encouraged by brother David to send his drawings to a good lithographer, but Charles declined, believing it to have no interest beyond the family.
At the Durandur outstation of Wahroongundie he made a wash drawing, The Squatter Taking His Ease (John Oxley Library) – a self-portrait in his wooden hut. In 1848 he and Tom moved north to found new stations at Coonambula and Eidsvold in the Burnett district. Tom had 4,300 sheep belonging to himself and Willie, while Charles was in charge of 3,000 owned by David Archer & Co. Charles’s daily journal of their progress and problems has survived. In mid-June they formed the outstation they named Mundouran and erected their first primitive buildings, 'called Bandicoote gunyahs’, then moved on to reach their Eidsvold run in July. Charles, who had probably never used a construction tool before coming to Australia, erected all the buildings. The woolshed at Eidsvold, he wrote, was 'the most extensive we have ever raised, and I look on it as my chef d’oeuvre in bush architecture, both as regards solidity of construction and adaption to the purposes for which it was erected’ (McDonald 120). Two or three months later he built the dwelling hut, which became 'the best building, although I did most of the work myself. I begin to be very expert with the adze and saw and, by the time I have made the furniture, expect to be as good a cabinet maker as Willie’. As usual, he made a sketch of the new dwelling huts for the family. Tom Archer wrote of Charles: 'He had by nature the gift of making himself proficient in everything to which he gave his attention and as a swimmer, sketcher and caricaturist, chess-player and carver … he was difficult to surpass … He surveyed and made wonderfully correct and beautifully-drawn maps of much of the new country which we explored and occupied.’
Charles Archer proved an important Queensland pioneer in 1853 when, together with his brother William, he reached the Fitzroy River and located what is now known as Rockhampton. His watercolour The Sailing Ship Elida on the Fitzroy River (JOL) dates from about this time. The following year he explored Peak Downs and in 1855 assisted his brothers in establishing the still-surviving property of Gracemere, outside Rockhampton. He left Gracemere for Norway early in 1857 and died there about 1862 from the effects of a skiing accident. He had made numerous maps and drawings of Queensland and must be considered one of its major early artists, says de Vries. In 1846 he promised to make his brother William (Willie) a 'rustic armchair’ – what is now known as a Queensland squatter’s chair whose invention is credited to Charles.
Writers:
Vries-evans, Susanna De
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1813
- Summary
- Charles Archer made numerous maps and drawings of Queensland and is considered one of its major early artists. A member of the enterprising colonial Archer family, Charles built a number of buildings on the family properties and is credited with inventing what is now known as the Queensland squatter's chair.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1862
- Age at death
- 49
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1796-01-01 End Date1862-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- portrait painter, is now thought to be the person of this name born in London on 4 May 1796, third child of the painter Richard Read and his wife, Sarah. A connection between the two Richard Reads in Sydney has always been a matter of speculation; C.E. Greening’s research provides convincing evidence that they were father and son. Read senior was transported to the colony in 1813 but his son, about whose early years nothing is known, did not arrive in New South Wales until 1819 when he disembarked from the David Shaw on 15 November as a free settler. One of his earliest known works, most likely commissioned, is the splendid large watercolour Elizabeth Heneretta [sic] Villa (1820, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney), recording the visit of a boating party to Captain John Piper’s incomplete mansion at Point Piper. The architecture of the house is informatively detailed and the landscape surrounds convey the isolation of the property and its splendid siting on the harbour foreshores.
As 'Reid [sic] junior’, Read placed his first advertisement in the Sydney Gazette on 24 February 1821 describing himself as a 'Miniature, Portrait, and Historical Painter’ and giving his address as 59 Pitt Street. He offered to teach drawing as well as take portraits and miniatures and had for sale a 'most elegant collection of Drawings consisting of Natives of New Zealand and New South Wales, Views, Flowers, &c.’ (There is no firm evidence that he had visited New Zealand; Maoris are known to have been in Sydney.) The advertisement specifically pointed out that he had no connection with any other person of the same name in the profession, thus marking an apparent public estrangement of father and son. There is, however, a hint that the two had earlier worked together. Read senior’s advertisement in the previous week’s Gazette had offered drawings of very similar subject-matter to those now available from his son and employment with his father would explain the similarity of their extant drawings of Sydney Cove (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney; National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT). On 30 May 1821 Richard Read junior married Eliza Hitchcock who, as Buscombe notes, had come to Sydney in 1813 on board the same ship as his mother and sister, a fact which also implies that, initially at least, he acknowledged family connections. The marriage appears to have been childless.
In July 1821 Read was engaged by Mr Harper of George Street to prepare a full-length transparency of Governor Macquarie to celebrate the vice-regal party’s return from Van Diemen’s Land. Allowing for the haste of preparation, the Sydney Gazette of 14 July considered it to have been tolerably well done and the likeness immediately recognisable. The artist was one of the free settlers who signed the address of welcome presented to Macquarie on the occasion. By March 1822 he was advertising his Australian drawings from 39 Pitt Street and adding to his list of services teaching, copying, restoration and framing. He next appeared in the press when he advertised in the Sydney Monitor of 3 November 1826. The range of his business, now located at 61 Pitt Street (possibly just a re-numbering), was essentially the same except that he no longer specifically offered Australian views. Prices of his miniatures on ivory, 'warranted correct likenesses’, varied from £1 to £5.
In 1827 Read painted at least two of the three large masonic tracing-boards (private collection, NSW.) for his Sydney Lodge 260 – the first stationary masonic lodge in Australia. All were related to tracing-board designs introduced to England over 10 years earlier by Josiah Bowring: the first, inscribed 'Designed and Painted by Br. R. Read for the A.S.L. Lodge, no. 260, Sydney, N.S. Wales, 1827’, includes traditional allegorical figures of Faith, Hope and Charity on Jacob’s ladder, Faith apparently being a reproduction of the figure from the warrant issued to the Australian Social Lodge by the Grand Lodge of Ireland in 1820. The second board, depicting the entrance to the temple and its two guards above a landscape view of a battle-scene, is unsigned, while the third – a coffin adorned with symbolic signs closely comparable to Bowring’s 1817 board held by the London St. George’s and Cornerstone Lodge – is inscribed only 'Painted [not designed] by Br. R. Read…’ Read had been initiated into the Australian Social Lodge on 1 December 1823 and was intermittently mentioned in their minutes until 3 November 1828, as Linford points out. His only other recorded oil painting, a full-length portrait of Governor Bourke 'copied from a very fine painting’, was commissioned by a Mr Wilson in 1826 as a sign for his Governor Bourke Inn at Penrith.
Read’s earliest surviving authenticated portrait, Mrs Laycock (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney), also dates from 1826. This small oval watercolour is inscribed on the back: 'Sydney Sept 19th 1826. Painted by R Read Jnr No 61 Pitt Street Sydney New South Wales’ (he rarely signed the face of his portraits but often inscribed them in some detail on the verso). Mrs Laycock reveals basic differences between father and son. Whereas Read senior worked in a heroic style his son was much more prosaic in approach. The majority of his portraits are either half or three-quarter length against a plain background and use a sparse, elegant design with cool, matt colours. His sitters appear detached, almost solemn. The greatest attention is given to the face which is built up from strokes of watercolour or pencil. Occasionally Read used white body colour, something his father would never have done, to model costumes and details.
The majority of Read’s clients were respectable traders or military officers, the petit-bourgeoisie, who appear to have been attracted to Read’s simple, sympathetic manner just as the colonial elite sought out his father’s grand style. The greater naturalism of the younger Read was consistent with the early nineteenth-century’s rejection of the mannered idealised styles of the Georgian period, but Read had not forgotten his father’s lessons and could still produce miniatures in a smooth Regency style, such as Selina Tomlins (1828, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney), a watercolour on ivory miniature painted from 89 Pitt Street.
Although by no means the only portrait painter in the colony, Read’s career was one of the longest and most consistent. From the departure of Augustus Earle until the mid 1830s his main rival was the convict Charles Rodius, then from the 1830s onwards he had more numerous and varied competitors, including J.B. East , William Nicholas , Maurice Felton , Joseph Backler and H.R. Smith in Sydney and William Griffith in Parramatta. Against the more sophisticated and sentimental work of Nicholas and Felton, Read’s paintings appear somewhat primitive and old-fashioned. The young Samuel Elyard, who failed to establish himself as a portrait painter in the mid 1830s, noted in his diary on 8 February 1837 that Read’s women looked 'more like pieces of wood’ than real people: 'one would think that his breast is a stranger to love, and all the more beautiful feelings, or he could not help painting better than these wretched things’. To some extent his technique was determined by the client; for instance, Hon. John Blaxland (1845, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney), a pencil and wash drawing in the then popular vignette form, is more conventional in manner, its idealised overtones befitting Blaxland’s perceived social status.
Read remained at 89 Pitt Street until 1835 then began to advertise from 45 Pitt Street. He applied for a land grant but was rejected because the allotment he sought was in Sydney itself. In 1830 a tender he submitted for the government supply of pencils, papers and sealing wax was accepted by the colonial secretary. Elyard bought stationery from Read in 1837 and he seems to have always supplemented his painting income in this way. In 1833 a prominent pastoralist, Dr Bowman, commissioned a portrait for which he was charged £4; the frame, also supplied by Read, was invoiced at £1 5s. Read attached a note to the receipt requesting that if Bowman should 'wish the hand made smaller he will have the kindness to send the Picture per Bearer’.
Details of Read’s life become increasingly sketchy in the 1840s. Together with James Blackett, in 1840 he received a grant of 160 acres in the parish of Willoughby which had previously belonged to his sister-in-law, Maria Hitchcock. When he painted John Blaxland in 1843 and Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Anderson in April 1846 (La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Vic) he was living at Somerset Lodge, Dowling Street, Surry Hills, and this remained his address throughout the 1840s. Despite being included in the Heads of the People 's list of colonial artists on 28 August 1847, Read did not exhibit in the 1847 exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia. He contributed, however, at least four works to the 1849 exhibition and possibly as many as seven—if he was also the artist listed as J.T. Read. In addition, Read lent three works by other artists to the exhibition: River Avon, near Bristol, with the Tower of Cook’s Folly by H.B. Willis, Interior of Fruit Shop in Ghent by an unknown artist and, most interestingly, Portrait of Mr Read, Artist , unattributed.
The four works he definitely contributed to the exhibition were all portraits. One was an unidentified portrait, another a miniature of a gentleman, while Portrait of an Artist was possibly a self-portrait. The fourth, a portrait of Dr William Bland, was described by the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 June 1849 as 'a staring likeness, evidently daguerreotypist’, as was William Nicholas’s portrait of the same gentleman (judged 'several shades inferior’ to Read’s). While it is possible that Read and Nicholas had experimented with the new process (Nicholas’s friend John Rae was certainly exploring photography at about this time), these seem more likely to have been commissioned copies of daguerreotypes, watercolour still being the more permanent as well as colourful medium. A painting, however, was also more expensive than a photograph. In advertisements placed in the Herald on 29 August and 1 October 1849 from 'over Thurlow and Grant’s Chambers, no. 308, Pitt Street’, Read offered to take portraits at 2 guineas each, including the frame – twice the cost of a daguerreotype by Goodman, who charged the top price.
The Sydney Directory for 1851 lists Read as a portrait painter of Botany Street, Surry Hills. Apart from a reference in January 1855 to his 'grotesque’ figures on the music cover for the quadrille, Volunteer’s March (probably drawn earlier), Read then disappears from the Sydney scene. He moved to Victoria, possibly after visiting New Zealand, for he showed New Zealand Native in the 1861 Victorian Exhibition at Melbourne (which could, however, have been one of his 1820s portraits). The Melbourne Directory for 1859 gives his address as 204 Victoria Parade, East Melbourne. He died there on 16 January 1862, aged 65, and was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery. His death certificate states that he had lived in Victoria for eight years and gives his profession as artist. He apparently continued to deal in pictures, for an 1860 codicil to his will directs that two legatees were to share equally the first case in a shipment of pictures he was expecting from England.
Unidentified 'Crayon Portraits’ by Read were shown by A.F. Rowe at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute in 1863 and Sir Redmond Barry lent a watercolour portrait of an Old Man (N.S.W. 1836) by 'Reed’ to the 1869 Melbourne Public Library Exhibition but no extant portraits done in Victoria have been conclusively identified.
Writers:
Neville, Richard
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 4 May 1796
- Summary
- Richard Read junior was a miniature, portrait and historical painter. Although by no means the only portrait painter in the colony, Read's career was one of the longest and most consistent - most of his clients were respectable traders or military officers or members of the the petit-bourgeoisie.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 January 1862
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude52.5847651 Longitude-2.127567 Start Date1792-01-01 End Date1862-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wolverhampton, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, architect and engineer, was born at Wolverhampton, England, on 19 May 1792, son of Joseph Barney, artist, and Jane, née Chandler.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 19 May 1792
- Summary
- George Barney was an English military officer who rose through the ranks of the Royal Engineers to become one of the most regarded and pioneering engineers of his day. His contributions to early colonial Australia include work on Circular Quay, Darlinghurst gaol, the Wollongong shipping basin, Fort Denison and Sydney's original gas supply, roads, bridges and railways.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 April 1862
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1780-01-01 End Date1862-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher, mural painter, army officer and settler, was born in Ireland on 11 April 1780, son of William Meares. He joined the Cavalry Corps in 1795 and fought in the Peninsular Wars at Vittoria, Toulouse and Waterloo, then later transferred to the 2nd Life Guards (1809-18). Captain Meares arrived at the Swan River Colony (Western Australia) on board the Gilmore on 15 December 1829 with his wife Ellen, née Seymour, their eight children and three indentured servants. He was granted 15,500 acres on the Peel, where he lived for a time. By 1856 the family was offering their home, The Bower at Guildford, for sale. A justice of the peace in 1837, Meares was government resident for the Murray district in 1840-41, then for York until 1862. He died at his home, Auburn, in York, on 9 January 1862.
In his article 'Early days in Westralia’, written for the Cornhill Magazine in 1897, Edmund Du Cane recalled Meares in somewhat facetious vein as 'one who sold his commission in the Life Guards, and among other possessions brought his carriage out with him. Too late he realised that it might be a long time before there would be any roads on which this vehicle could figure; so, as the story went, he turned it to the best account by building a chimney up against one door and used it as a dwelling house’. Du Cane added:
The same gallant old officer was an accomplished draughtsman, and when in due course he built himself a house with walls of rammed earth, as the manner was, he found that they formed an excellent surface for pictorial purposes, and so adorned one of them with a large and striking representation of a charge of the Life Brigades at Waterloo, led by Lord Uxbridge – in which he had taken part; and on another he depicted the battle of Pinjarrah, in which the colonists, led by Governor Stirling, had engaged in a stand-up fight with the natives of the country – an important event in the history of the colony.
Meares’s house has long been demolished. A drawing (on paper) of the old mill at York (1840s, private collection) is his only known work.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 11 April 1780
- Summary
- Sketcher, mural painter, army officer and settler at the Swan River Colony (Western Australia). Captain Meares was known for his draughtsmanship and his depictions of battle scenes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9 January 1862
- Age at death
- 82
Details
Latitude-34.9275 Longitude138.6 Start Date1837-01-01 End Date1861-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Adelaide, SA, Australia
- Biography
- painter, professional photographer and civil servant, was born in Adelaide and subsequently worked in the civil service. He was a captain of the South Australian National Rifle Association in his spare time. According to Loyau, Strother was 'an artist of no mean order, and his oil paintings and pencil sketches were universally admired’. Presumably he was also the Henry Strother listed as working as a professional photographer at Stephens Place, Rundle Street, Adelaide, in 1858. Charles Henry died at North Adelaide on 26 November 1861, aged twenty-three. No examples of his work are known.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1837
- Summary
- Despite his death at a young age, and with no known examples of works available, Strother has been described as 'an artist of no mean order, and his oil paintings and pencil sketches were universally admired'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 November 1861
- Age at death
- 24
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1861-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- flower painter, was born in Sydney on 29 March 1836, second (and eldest surviving) of the four daughters of William Wilson and Jane Riddell Farquharson, née Cruden, pioneer Scottish settlers of Lismore in northern New South Wales. The Wilsons were close friends of Edward Ogilvie and his sister, Ellen Bundock , who had also settled in the Richmond River district. Ellen’s daughter Mary first became interested in painting in September 1853, when at the age of eight she went to Lismore to attend the wedding of a younger Wilson daughter, Teresa. While she was there Bessie gave her a small box of watercolours and some advice about painting flowers like Bessie’s admired examples.
Bessie Wilson lived with her parents all her life. She died, unmarried, on 22 July 1861, aged twenty-five. Her flower painting would be unknown were it not for Mary’s doubtlessly common story, one that now has value because it precisely documents the way women’s artistic practices were passed on through private social networks independent of the professional art world.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1836
- Summary
- A flower painter who died young.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 22 July 1861
- Age at death
- 25
Details
Latitude49.9770848 Longitude11.0343944 Start Date1823-01-01 End Date1861-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Schesslitz, Bavaria, Germany
- Biography
- sketcher and naturalist, son of Heinrich and Margareta Herrgott, was born in Schesslitz, Bavaria. He came to South Australia about 1853. In 1858 he was artist and collector on the Benjamin Herschel Babbage expedition to Lake Torrens and the following year joined Alexander Tolmer on an unsuccessful attempt to cross the continent from south to north. In 1859-60 he travelled as botanist with the explorer John McDouall Stuart.
The Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (SA) holds sketches made by Herrgott on Babbage’s 1858 expedition, together with other of his papers. His twenty-one comical pen-and-ink sketchbook drawings (8.5 × 14.5 cm) include a scene in the bush titled A Satisfactory Conclusion , showing Babbage concluding a report four times the size of the nearby tent from which a startled face (evidently Warburton’s) appears (ill DAA , p.360). His sketches made on the 1859 Stuart expedition are in the Mitchell Library.
Herrgott died in Victoria on 8 October 1861. An obituary noted: 'His general attainments in the arts and sciences were of no ordinary character, and he has left behind him many a trace of his mastery in nature and art’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1823
- Summary
- Colonial South Australian sketcher and naturalist. In 1858 he was artist and collector on the Benjamin Herschel Babbage expedition to Lake Torrens.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 October 1861
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1823-01-01 End Date1861-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- professional photographer, journalist and adventurer, second child of Julien Fauchery, a merchant, and Sophie Gilberte, née Soré, was born in Paris on 15 November 1823 and baptised at the Church of St Germain l’Auxerrois on 18 November. Little is known of his early years other than that he tried several of the arts, including architecture, painting (under the master Cogniet), wood-engraving and finally journalism. Following a chance introduction to Théodore de Banville he met a number of prominent writers in the bohemian circle, including Henri Mürger, Champfleury, Charles Baudelaire and Gérard de Nerval, and joined them in a literary career, contributing to the paper Le Corsaire-Satan and composing a number of pamphlets. Fauchery was immortalised in Henri Mürger’s Scènes de la Vie de Bohème (on which the opera La Bohème is based), being the model for the painter Marcel.
At this time Fauchery formed a close friendship with Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, the important and innovative photographer who used the pseudonym 'Nadar’. The two joined a group of French idealists and emigré Poles who left Paris in 1848 in order to liberate Poland. Beset by many difficulties, both financial and political, the would-be liberators returned to Paris, their mission aborted.
On 23 July 1852 Fauchery sailed from the Port of London on board the Emily bound for Port Phillip, having been attracted by the lure of the goldfields. The long voyage, the embryonic city of Melbourne and the Ballarat and Jim Crow fields were described in detail by Fauchery in a series of fifteen letters published from 9 January to 8 February 1857 in the Parisian newspaper Le Moniteur Universel . Later in 1857 these were published by Poulet Malassis et de Broise in Paris in a single volume with a preface by Théodore de Banville as Lettres d’un Mineur en Australie (translated by A.H. Chisholm and published in Melbourne in 1965). During his sojourn in Melbourne, Fauchery opened the Café Estaminet Français at 76 Little Bourke Street East where non-British immigrants could meet and play billiards.
Fauchery sailed from Melbourne for London on 5 March 1856 in the Roxburgh Castle . While homeward bound, his play Calino , written in collaboration with Théodore Barrière, was successfully staged at the Vaudeville Theatre in Paris on 12 March 1856. During the same year La Résurrection de Lazare , a drama in letter form which he had written with Mürger, was published by Michel Lévy. In Paris Fauchery married Louise-Joséphine Gatineau on 15 January 1857 at the church of St Pierre de Montmartre. Shortly afterwards he obtained official accreditation and funds from the Ministry of Public Instruction and Worship to allow him to return to Australia; he was to send home his written impressions and photographic details of the country and of India and China.
He and his wife sailed from the Port of London on 20 July 1857 on board the Sydenham . On arrival at Melbourne on 4 November 1857 he established himself as a photographer at 132 Collins Street East and advertised for sale photographs he had brought with him from Paris. In March 1858 Fauchery was awarded a gold medal for his photographic portraits on paper from collodion negatives shown at the Victorian Industrial Society’s eighth annual exhibition. One reviewer praising these 'exquisite portraits and other photographs on paper’, especially noted 'a remarkable fac-simile of an old print, which is placed beside it for comparison’. Soon afterwards the professional collaboration between Fauchery and the geologist Richard Daintree began. Together they opened a studio in Collins Street East.
The Fauchery-Daintree partnership produced some remarkable photographs for the time (La Trobe Library and John Oxley Library, Brisbane). They published an album of views and studies titled Australia which was favourably reviewed by the Argus on 13 August 1858 as 'the Sun Pictures of Victoria’, the reviewer noting that the series was ultimately 'to comprise fifty large photographs, in illustrations of our colonial celebrities, our landscape and marine scenery, and our private and public architecture … The collection under notice are admirable specimens of this branch of art, for art it is; as, irrespective of the skill requisite to manipulate successfully, the manipulators must also possess the artistic faculty in choice of subjects, in the selection of the most picturesque point of view, and in discerning the most favourable aspects or accidental dispositions of light and shade’.
There is no further evidence of Fauchery’s activities in Melbourne at this time other than his presence at the death-bed of his friend, the first French consul-general, Comte Lionel Moréton de Chabrillan. Fauchery sailed from Melbourne for Manila on 21 February 1859. Few details are available of the way in which he occupied his time there, and if he took any photographs in the Philippines their location today is unknown. Issued with a passport for China by Philippine officials on 23 March 1860, Fauchery joined the French expeditionary forces as war correspondent and official photographer, sending fifteen reports, as letters, to Le Moniteur Universel from 12 October 1860 to 3 February 1861. These were serialised in the newspaper as 'Lettres de Chine’ but the photographs he took in China have not been located. On 12 January 1861 Fauchery sailed for Japan from Shanghai. On 27 April 1861, only three months after his arrival, he died from a combination of gastritis and dysentery. Fauchery was buried in the Foreign Cemetery, now known as the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery.
Writers:
Reilly, Dianne
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 November 1823
- Summary
- Although the goldfields drew Antoine Fauchery to Australia, it is as a writer and photographer that he made most impression, eventually combining both of these skills to accompany French expeditionary forces in China as a war correspondent and official photographer. Perhaps more interestingly, though, he was the model for the painter Marcello in Puccini's 'La Bohème'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 April 1861
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude54.98 Longitude-1.61 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1861-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, amateur photographer(?), sculptor and medical practitioner, was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. He arrived at Sandhurst (Bendigo) with the first rush of 1852 and subsequently conducted a medical practice at the shop of 'Jones, the Chemist’ (possibly Henry Gilbert Jones ). Hutchinson was involved with the invention of the spirometer and researched respiratory diseases common among the diggers, both activities bringing him more than local celebrity. He was honorary curator of Sandhurst’s geological museum located in the Mechanics Institute building. His valuable collection of minerals was purchased when he left Bendigo to form the nucleus of the present museum (although he had originally intended it to go to the British Museum, London).
In the British courts at the 1855 Paris Universal Exhibition Dr Hutchinson exhibited a daguerreotype of the Melbourne Exhibition Building, an 'anatomical model’ and skulls and bones of Aborigines. While obviously only the collector of the last, he probably took the daguerreotype himself as he was active in various arts, being said to be well known locally as 'a conversationalist, violinist, draughtsman, painter, and as a sculptor working in bas-relief’. No examples of any of his various art works survive and he must have taken them with him when he left Bendigo for Fiji in 1861. He died there in July, aged 50. An obituary was published in the Bendigo Advertiser on 7 May 1862.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1811
- Summary
- Involved with the invention of the spirometer Hutchinson researched respiratory diseases among the miners and in 1855 exhibited a daguerreotype and a collection of Aboriginal bones at the Paris Universal exhibition.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- July 1861
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude50.1055002 Longitude8.7610698 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1861-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Offenbach-am-Main, Germany
- Biography
- painter, sketcher, botanical artist, engraver, naturalist and explorer, was born in Offenbach-am-Main near Darmstadt, Germany, on 5 September 1808, eldest son of Ernst Friedrich Becker, a civil servant. As a boy he attended the Ludwig Georg Gymnasium where teachers from the Darmstadt gallery taught him painting, and where he met Johann Kaup whose book Gallerie der Amphibien (1826), like Kaup’s three-volume Das Tierreich in seinen Hauptformen Systematisch Beschrieben (1835-37), he helped illustrate. From 1829 he worked as a painter for the publishing firm of Heinrich Ludwig Brönner at Frankfurt-am-Main. He studied lithography at the Städelesche Institut under Peter Vogel and later began to paint portraits; unfortunately, none from this period are known. From 1840 to 1844, when Becker went to Mainz, he was court-painter to the Archduke of Hesse-Darmstadt; in his spare time he collected many bronze and bone artefacts, Roman figures, medieval engravings and both Roman and medieval coins.
It seems that Becker supported the unsuccessful German liberal revolutions of 1848. 'Whenever I have indigestion I swallow something bitter, that is, I think of Germany’, he wrote to Kaup from Melbourne, and it was probably for political reasons that he moved to England in 1850. That summer he read papers to the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Edinburgh, then decided to move to the New World. In October he sailed from Liverpool for Australia. After a few weeks’ stay at Rio de Janeiro en route, he reached Launceston in March 1851.
'Paying his way by taking likeness-miniatures which he does very nicely’, as Lady Denison remarked, Becker remained in Tasmania for nearly two years, sketching, painting and indulging his scientific interests in botany, zoology and geology. A splendid miniature of Philip Oakden (NGA) was painted not long before Oakden’s death on 31 July 1851, and others, also of excellent quality, are held privately in Tasmania. He became an intimate of Lieutenant-Governor Sir William and Lady Denison, the latter labelling him 'one of those universal geniuses who can do anything; is a very good naturalist, geologist &c., draws and plays and sings’.
In November 1852 Becker moved to Victoria and spent two years on the Bendigo goldfields. On his return to Melbourne he held a one-man exhibition of his Bendigo sketches. These were shown again in Melbourne in 1854 along with 'specimens of Australian Algae and Fish designed to furnish new designs for paper hangings’. The Argus called the former 'remarkably clever’ and added: 'The view of the Seven White Hills is a gem, and the sketch of Golden Square Bendigo after sunset is highly characteristic and natural. Mr Becker is evidently an artist of no ordinary calibre; many of his pictures are most ingeniously contrived. The charred trunks of trees, in the outlines of which a resemblance to the human figure is sometimes detected by the fanciful, are made the subject of three or four admirably executed sketches. The idea is essentially German and is well carried out by the artist, whose Bishop of Bendigo, Monk and Lubra and Philosopher of Golden Gully are most comically devised and cleverly executed’.
Becker was active in the Melbourne German Club and in 1859 helped organise celebrations in honour of von Humboldt and Schiller. He took an active part in the Philosophical Institute, founded in 1855, which became the Royal Society in 1860. He also collected specimens for Professor McCoy, one of the four founding professors of the University of Melbourne, and prepared lithographs for him and for the government botanist, Ferdinand von Mueller . He studied the local Aboriginal people, sketched indefatigably, sent botanical drawings to Sir William Hooker at Kew, and prepared papers for publication in Germany and London as well as for the Philosophical Institute.
Drawing was an integral part of Becker’s life. His letters to Dr Kaup written in 1850-55, for instance, are studded with thumbnail sketches (including a probable self-portrait). He took an active role in the formation of the Victorian Society of Arts in 1856 and sat on several of its committees during the following three years. He also seems to have experimented with plaster casting, sending his Australian Lizards, Cast from Nature to the 1856 Victorian Exhibition of Art. He favoured a romantic light for many of his landscape subjects. Old Princes Bridge and St Paul’s by Moonlight (c.1857, LT) is a rare and dramatic night painting, as much a celebration of the recent installation of gaslight in the town as of the obscured moonlight.
In June 1860 Becker was appointed artist and naturalist to the Victorian Exploring Expedition to the Gulf of Carpentaria which, led by Robert O’Hara Burke, left Melbourne on 20 August. En route he sent five full reports and made some 70 sketches as well as carrying out meteorological observations and making notes on the Aborigines, including specimens of their songs. Unfortunately, the expedition’s organising committee failed to provide him with the proper equipment, while Burke, who was completely uninterested in scientific observations, refused to allow him to ride and made him work like a porter, loading and unloading the camels and carrying packs. The result of this was that he had to sit up late, without sleep, to complete his writing and sketching. As the party moved north from Menindie to Cooper’s Creek, Becker gradually succumbed to over-exertion, poor water and a diet which produced scurvy. He took his last readings on 1 April 1861 and died on the 29th at Bulloo in the south-west corner of Queensland.
The most gifted member of the Burke and Wills party, he carried out his work 'with much devotion and ability’ which his contemporary William Strutt insisted 'was not…suitably acknowledged’. His miniatures, his landscape sketches and his Aboriginal drawings have been numbered by Sayers as 'among the finest watercolours to be produced in Australia in the nineteenth century’. Those made on this fatal expedition (LT) are possibly his most important contribution to Australian art, in many ways the most significant product of the ill-managed affair. A watercolour, said to be a self-portrait, is in the La Trobe Library and he included himself as an incidental figure in several watercolours and sketches: for instance, Blowhole, Tasman’s Peninsula, Van Diemen’s Land (1851, w/c and gum arabic, NGA).
Writers:
Shaw, A. G. L.
ecwubben
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2012
- Born
- b. 5 September 1808
- Summary
- An undervalued member of the fateful Burke and Wills expedition, Ludwig Becker was an accomplished artist and naturalist whose contribution to the expedition has belatedly been acknowledged and praised.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 April 1861
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1861-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and surveyor, was born in England on 3 September 1800, son of John Wyatt Thompson, a miniature painter. In 1827 he was appointed principal draughtsman to the New South Wales Surveyor-General’s Department at Sydney under T.L. Mitchell . He married Annie Mary (Marie), eldest of the four daughters of Charles and Ann Mary Windeyer, in St James’s Church of England, Sydney, on 11 February 1830; they had two sons and seven daughters. In a letter from Sydney dated 30 April 1830, Annie wrote to her cousin of their six weeks’ honeymoon in a cottage in the bush, describing her husband as 'tall and thin’ and mentioning that he had received a land grant of 100 acres which he had selected near her father’s property, Tomago, on the Hunter River.
In November 1831 Thompson was writing home that Mitchell and 'self are very thick now—he does little without consulting me’, while in February 1834 he was telling his family that he was earning an annual salary of £445, 'a pretty good one’. Over the years, however, he became dissatisfied with his position. In late 1851 he wrote: 'I have the same salary I had fifteen years ago and I see no prospect of any change’.
Thompson’s book of views (Dixson Library), drawn in New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land between 1827 and 1832, contains nine pencil and four wash drawings. Most appear to be the products of leisure moments on official surveying expeditions, including those done on his 1829 visit to Van Diemen’s Land where he inspected the Van Diemen’s Land Company’s establishment in the north. An east view of Sydney and scenes of Botany Bay are included. Two watercolour portraits of the Tasmanian Aborigines Trukanini and Wourredy are either by Thomas Bock or copies. The Mitchell Library holds two pencil drawings and three watercolours of other rural scenes.
Sir William Dixson stated that Thompson drew views of the New England district but these were undoubtedly the work of Edward Thomson . John Thompson was having problems with his eyes in the early 1830s and attributed the improvement he noticed in January 1834 'to my not drawing or using them much at night’. He seems virtually to have stopped sketching after 1832 and few later sketches are known. As a colonial correspondent for John Claudius Loudon’s early magazines of architecture and gardening, he provided a plan of Alexander Macleay’s splendid garden at Elizabeth Bay for Loudon’s Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion (London 1838).
A letter to his father dated 26 January 1843 is headed with a pencil sketch of the harbour view from the windows of the Thompsons’ home at 110 William Street, Woolloomooloo (where they had moved in 1836), and a rough plan of the house and garden is enclosed. The design was based on an Italianate house illustrated in the 1842 supplement to Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture , the most popular pattern-book in the colony at the time and also used by Thompson’s friend, Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis, for the plan (although not the elevation) of Lewis’s own Richmond Villa. The Sydney architect brothers Ambrose and Edward Hallen were also known to his family at home; John retailed some gossip about them giving up architecture for commerce in an 1834 letter. He also knew the visiting English painter Marshall Claxton .
Despite his obvious competence in drawing, Thompson’s primary leisure interests were scientific and literary. In 1846 he was intending to publish his theories on the elevation of continents from the sea-bed, researched during his years in Australia, hoping that this would bring acknowledgement and financial rewards to free him from 'the vile drudgery and slavery which I still have to bear after a service of twenty years’. These hopes were not fulfilled but the following year he was granted a salary increase of £100 and appointed deputy surveyor-general. He occupied this position until 1859, then was forced to retire after refusing to survey the Port Curtis district because of ill-health. He died at his Woolloomooloo home on 9 May 1861, survived by his wife. His obituary stated that he had 'nearly completed, with a view to publication in the Herald , an elaborate essay on Colonial Architecture having especial reference to the competitive designs for our new Houses of Parliament and Government Offices, in which some novel principles as to ornamentation are embodied’ but, if ever published, this has not been located. A charcoal portrait of Thompson by Charles Rodius is in the Mitchell Library.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 3 September 1800
- Summary
- A competent sketcher, Thompson's book of views, drawn in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land between 1827 and 1832, appear mostly to be the products of leisure moments on official surveying expeditions.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9 May 1861
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude36.1285933 Longitude-5.3474761 Start Date1791-01-01 End Date1861-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Gibraltar
- Biography
- painter and military officer, was born on 19 May 1791 at Gibraltar, where his father, an army officer, was stationed. As well as the drawing instruction which was part of any army officer’s training, Thomas studied drawing and painting in England in 1818 and at Paris in 1822. He came to Sydney early in 1838, then went to Norfolk Island in January 1839 with the 80th Regiment. Between April and September 1839 he was acting commandant there.
In April 1840 Major Bunbury was sent to New Zealand in HMS Buffalo in charge of a detachment of his regiment, first posted to the Bay of Islands then to Auckland. At the end of the year Jane Franklin, wife of the governor of Van Diemen’s Land, visited him at Auckland and reported that his 'whare’ (house) was lined with his own paintings, one being a full-length self-portrait. At the beginning of 1844 Bunbury was deputy-governor of New Zealand, then he and his troops left for Sydney in May. They sailed for India in August. On the way the ship was wrecked on one of the Andaman Islands. The passengers and crew lost all their personal possessions, Bunbury presumably losing many sketches and paintings.
Artistic activities are occasionally recorded in Bunbury’s autobiography, Reminiscences of a Veteran , published anonymously in London in 1861. They include references to painting and sketching on Norfolk Island, although no examples painted there or in Australia have been located. He died at his home in Regent’s Park, London, on 26 December 1861.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1791
- Summary
- Bunbury's autobiography 'Reminiscences of a Veteran' was published in London in 1861, anonymously.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1861
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-42.5571184 Longitude146.8344 Start Date1836-01-01 End Date1860-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamilton, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Hamilton, Van Diemen’s Land, on 15 May 1836, eldest child of George Francis Huston, surgeon-superintendent of the Asylum at New Norfolk (1855-80) and subsequently MLA, and Sarah, née Hawthorn. George Hawthorn was her uncle. On her eighteenth birthday Amelia Jane married, from her father’s residence on Norfolk Island, Lieutenant (later Major) Francis Seymour Gaynor of the 99th Regiment, son of Bryan Gaynor of Killinea House, County Dublin. She died at her father’s house, Frescale, New Norfolk, on 29 April 1860, survived by her husband, a son and two daughters. Her only known sketch is a competent pencil drawing, Home at Norfolk Island , inscribed lower right 'A.J.G. 1854’ (ALMFA).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Stilwell, G. T.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 May 1836
- Summary
- Her sole known sketch is a pencil drawing of her home at Norfolk Island now held at the State Library, Tasmania.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29 April 1860
- Age at death
- 24
Details
Latitude40 Longitude-100 Start Date1827-01-01 End Date1860-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- USA
- Biography
- professional photographer, a younger brother of Perez Batchelder , came from Boston to Melbourne with Freeman and Benjamin Batchelder in 1856 to assist Perez. Nathaniel and his wife, Anna, moved to Sydney with Benjamin and the two men opened a studio in 1858 at 348 George Street. Batchelder Brothers advertised portrait photographs and sales of photographic equipment: 'cameras, lenses, chemicals, cases and every description of goods used in the photographic art constantly on sale’. Portraits could be purchased in the form of 'Coloured Collodiotypes, Calotypes, Melainotypes [tintypes] and Stereoscopic portraits taken daily’. For a brief period in December 1858 the firm advertised as Balk and Batchelder Brothers.
Nathaniel Batchelder died suddenly at Balmain of a heart attack on 22 March 1860; his son, Charles, also died that year. By December the portrait gallery, 'well known as Batchelders’, was to let.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1827
- Summary
- Along with his brothers, Nathaniel Batchelder arrived in Australia in 1856 and set up a successful photography studio in Sydney from 1858 to 1860.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 March 1860
- Age at death
- 33
Details
Latitude52.8228134 Longitude-1.4283564 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1860-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Melbourne, Derbyshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, was born in Melbourne, Derbyshire, son of William Bull Dexter, a lace-maker, and Jane, née Smedley. Apprenticed at the Derby China Factory, he became a painter of fruit, flowers and birds, excelling in oriental decoration. In 1839, and again in the early 1840s, he visited France where he worked as a vase painter. In July 1841 Dexter married the feminist Caroline Harper. They lived in Nottingham where, in 1847, William advertised as an artist 'in all the various branches of oil and water colour’ and as a teacher of enamel painting.
The Dexters later moved to London, where William produced watercolours of birds’ nests, flowers, dead birds and game in the manner of the then popular William Henry ('Birds’ Nest’) Hunt. Haslem described Dexter’s versions as 'slight’, but 'executed in a clever and pleasing manner’. He exhibited with the Royal Academy in 1851 and 1852 and with the Society of British Artists at Suffolk Street in the latter year. In 1855, while he was in Australia, his painting The Lark and Her Young was exhibited with the British Institution.
Dexter arrived at Sydney aboard the Bank of England on 8 October 1852. He taught for a time at Lyndhurst College, Glebe, but by mid 1853 was at the Bendigo diggings taking part in the demonstrations against the exorbitant fee for a miner’s licence. He was on the miners’ committee and designed the Bendigo 'Diggers’ Banner’. In Land, Labour and Gold (London 1855) William Howitt reported Dexter’s speech of Saturday, 14 August 1853, on the symbolism of his flag with its pick, shovel, cradle (labour), 'the Roman bundle of sticks’ (union), scales (justice) and kangaroo and emu (Australia). Howitt considered Dexter a contemptible 'Red Republican’ and noted with disgust that he was claiming to represent 'the French nation’.
Dexter returned to Sydney in December 1854 and was joined in the new year by his wife, by then a well-known Bloomer lecturer. Together they opened a 'Gallery of Arts and School of Design’ in Bathurst Street where he taught painting and drawing and she 'elocution, composition and literature, grammar, writing and conversation’. During the year William held an exhibition at his gallery of twenty of his paintings, prizes in an art union he was organising for 100 subscribers at 2 guineas each. In August he exhibited more than six paintings at Ross’ Australian Gallery, Bridge Street, at least two being of Australian subjects. In December he won first prize of £20 in a competition to design a gold vase to be executed by the jewellers Hogarth & Ericksen of George Street for presentation to W. Randle. He also worked as a decorator, specialising in painting imitation stonework. He gave painting lessons to his young cousin, John Smedley , who proved a precocious pupil.
In April 1856 the Dexters settled in the bush at Gippsland, Victoria, first at Stratford, later at Sale. An acquaintance of the respected pioneer settler Angus McMillan, Dexter nevertheless acquired a notorious reputation in the district. In November 1857 he stood for the Legislative Assembly as 'the working man’s candidate’; the result was humiliation. He then followed his wife to Melbourne where she had gone to work as a writer (she later set up a women’s clinic and dabbled in spiritualism). Dexter exhibited nine paintings and watercolours with the Victorian Society of Fine Arts in December 1857 when living in High Street, Prahran, but he sold none. He supplied illustrations for The Ladies’ Almanack 1858 , written and edited by his wife, including vignettes of Gippsland scenery, a view of McArdell’s steam flour mill at Gippsland, An Opossum by Moonlight , and a woman outside a slab hut, presumably Caroline. The frontispiece purportedly depicted Hothpathapatha, the Favourite Lubra of the Dargo Chief .
In September William Dexter returned to Sydney. There, on 16 October 1858, he advertised that he would execute anything 'with the brush, in any material and at any price’, but again had little success. Caroline remained in Melbourne, a separation that was to prove permanent and ultimately acrimonious. William lived in poverty at 224 Castlereagh Street and seems almost virtually to have abandoned any attempt to live by his art. Before he died, on 4 February 1860, he had been working for a few months as a painter and decorator in partnership with William Smedley, another Sydney relative.
Dexter alienated people with his political views, his irritating manners and his atheism. His unusual attire marked him as an eccentric. He does not seem to have been a prolific artist—according to Haslem, 'like some other talented men, Dexter was not at all times in the humour to work’—and contemporary critics were divided on the quality of his painting. The Melbourne Herald considered him one of the principal exhibitors with the Victorian Society of Fine Arts and the Age wrote of his 'inimitable Touch’, but the Argus was slightly cool and the Examiner ( James Neild ) insultingly hostile. Of his Lady’s Pet , a painting of Caroline’s Blenheim spaniel (NGA?), Neild wrote: 'Fifty pounds, quotha, for a stupid staring dog, and something like a muslin handkerchief! the artist will be dexterous indeed if he succeed in entrapping a purchaser; and if he sell, no. 1, a football in front of a dinner-plate, described as 'An Opossum by Moonlight’, he will deserve praise as a dealer he will never get as a painter’.
Dexter’s experience as a vase painter is evident in his surviving work, especially in his birds and nests, which are virtually enlarged motifs from pottery designs. The detail is extremely fine and the composition invariably limited. Nor was he above a little sentimentality, as is evident in his Blenheim spaniels, a superior specimen of which is in the Art Gallery of South Australia. Although now considered primarily a painter of English subjects, he produced several works with an Australian content. Paintings of Aborigines are recorded, while other colonial subjects were Fire at Tooth’s Brewery (c.1853, oil, Powerhouse Museum), Woolloomooloo Bay and Death of the Kangaroo (unlocated). The last, already under way in April 1855, was on a monumental scale (213 × 152 cm) but was never completed. Reviewed in the Sydney Morning Herald on 8 March 1861, after Dexter’s death, it was considered to have 'a raggedness of appearance, as indeed do all the paintings of this artist, evidently arising from a want of tact [sic] in finishing off that will always prevent his pictures from being favourites’.
As well as numerous bird and game pictures, paintings auctioned on 7 January 1863 in final settlement of his estate included Fish Caught off Garden Island , Illawarra Scenery , Australian Alps , Death of the Kangaroo , Ten Virgins and Portrait of Dexter . The Bendigo flag was also there. Australian collections mostly hold his bird and game pictures: Landrell [sic] and Lark (w/c, NLA), Wood Ducks (c.1857, oil, NGV), Game (oil, QAG) and Lark’s Nest (oil, Joseph Brown Collection).
Writers:
Watson, Michael J.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1817
- Summary
- William Dexter was a painter. He arrived at Sydney in 1852. Dexter and his wife Caroline opened a 'Gallery of Arts and School of Design' in Sydney where he taught painting and drawing. In 1857 he exhibited with the Victorian Society of Fine Arts.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 February 1860
- Age at death
- 43
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1860-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- cartoonist, sketcher, etcher, journalist and surveyor, was born in England. Appointed an assistant surveyor for South Australia in 1837, he arrived at Port Adelaide from London in the Trusty on 15 May 1838 and took up his duties in the Surveyor-General’s Office the following month. The appointment was brief. In a disagreement with Deputy-Surveyor George Kingston separate from that which saw most of the surveying staff resign, Nixon relinquished his post on 18 July 1838. Subsequently reinstated on 17 October 1838, he was appointed surveyor with the assurance of fieldwork, the issue over which he had resigned. On 16 March 1841 he became superintendent of emigrant working parties.
Nixon remained with the government for the rest of his time in Adelaide, applying to join the local police force in November 1845. He purchased land in 1841-45 on which in 1843 he constructed the second windmill in South Australia. Then, on 10 May 1846, Nixon and a 'female friend’ slipped quietly out of Adelaide in the Roseanna , bound for Mauritius. He published Sketches in Mauritius in 1848 and for about ten years (1850-60) worked there as a surveyor. In March 1853, when said to be aged thirty-six, he was appointed guardian of woods and forest. According to records in Mauritius, he died in 1860 while absent on leave.
While in South Australia F.R. Nixon took more than a passing interest in the Adelaide cultural scene. He contributed articles to local newspapers and magazines and was a friend of the influential citizen and art patron Thomas Wilson. A staunch opponent of convictism, he wrote in the South Australian Odd Fellows Magazine of January 1845: 'A society composed of men who have been criminals, and who mingle even with those who never have been transported, cannot ever be respectable in the highest sense of the word, or be anything else than what it is—low, suspicious and exclusive’. Nixon was known as a draughtsman in Adelaide, but he had had to teach himself etching techniques and skills. When the South Australian of 21 February 1845 noted the publication of his Views on Adelaide and its Vicinity (Adelaide 1845), it commented: 'As Mr Nixon is self-taught in his art and had to manufacture all his machinery for preparing and pressing his etchings, he deserves the greatest credit for his industry, perseverance and skill’.
The twelve views, which cost one guinea and included plates such as The South Australia Company’s Mill on the Torrens and Port Adelaide in 1845, Mount Lofty in the Distance , were initially favourably received. The South Australian felt the etchings to be superior works of art which 'accurately as well as pleasingly depict the scenes which they represent’. The South Australian Register of 28 January 1845 noted, however, that 'although not equal to what might be brought out in London, they are very creditable colonial productions’. However, he was injudicious in his comments on George French Angas ' exhibition, held in Adelaide on 17 June 1845, writing that Angas’ watercolours were 'essentially limited’. He thought it a pity that 'another artist of less celebrity but real talent’, S.T. Gill , had not undertaken the landscapes for the publication South Australia Illustrated . The next day the South Australian Register strongly rebuked him: 'Mr N.F.R. is known to be Mr F.R. Nixon who some time ago practised a gross imposition on the colonists by the publication of twelve views around Adelaide at a guinea, which were not intrinsically worth a farthing’.
This was not a justifiable attack. Of considerable historic interest today, the twelve views reveal skill in composition and an understanding of etching. His only other work in this medium is Ridley’s Reaping Machine, 1845 (AGSA). He was also a fine watercolourist, as evidenced in his striking Adelaide from the North West with Trinity Church in the Background (1845, NLA). Finally, he did lively comic drawings; an album signed 'F.N.’ (Mortlock Library) contains seventeen humorous watercolour sketches and caricatures of the local militia, including the b/w Leapfrog (ill. DAA).
Writers:
Cusack, Frank
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1817
- Summary
- Colonial era Adelaide cartoonist, sketcher, etcher, journalist and surveyor.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1860
- Age at death
- 43
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1860-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- lithographer, engraver, printer and surveyor, was the sixth son of Francis Ronalds and Jane, née Field.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1802
- Summary
- In 1849 Alfred Ronalds became one of Victoria's first lithographic printers. His brother Francis invented the electric telegraph in England.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- April 1860
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude50.938361 Longitude6.959974 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1860-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cologne, Germany
- Biography
- portraitist, illustrator, draughtsman, lithographer and singer, was born in Cologne, Germany. He spent several years in Paris where, according to Dr John Lhotsky , he was 'occupied by the French Government in engraving some of the edifices’. He moved to London in 1827. In February 1829 he was charged with stealing a reticule 'containing a handkerchief, a smelling bottle, an opera-glass, and two opera tickets’ from Lady Laura Meyrick as she was leaving the Royal Opera House and with being in possession of other articles believed stolen. The Times called him 'a young foreigner, dressed in a most fashionable style’, and he described himself to the court as 'a German … [who] taught music, painting, drawing, and languages in families of the first distinction, and also architecture … he had been a pupil at the Academy at Paris for eight years’. Despite his protestations that the 'handkerchiefs and Opera-glasses produced were presents made to him by ladies who had been his pupils’, Rodius was found guilty and sentenced to seven years’ transportation.
He came to Sydney on board the Sarah in December 1829 and was assigned to the Department of Public Works as 'an artist and architect’, being engaged as a draughtsman by the colonial architect to draw up plans of existing and projected buildings and to instruct civil and military officers in the art of drawing and perspective; William Romaine Govett is thought to have been one of his pupils. Rodius also taught drawing privately to the children of prominent Sydney citizens such as those of Chief Justice Forbes, James Laidley and John Manning. He received a ticket of exemption from government service in June 1832; it required him to remain in the Sydney district but allowed him to practise professionally as an artist. He gained his ticket of leave in February 1834 and his certificate of freedom in July 1841.
Rodius not only practised the visual arts at this time, he was a respected musical performer as well. His 'soft rich voice’ was said to have given 'universal delight’ with his rendition of a song by Weber at a concert held at the Royal Hotel on 31 August 1836. The following month, billed as 'an Amateur’ (a common designation for a gentleman) Rodius was a soloist in a performance of the Messiah in St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral; on this occasion, too, he was particularly commended for his 'most melodious tenor voice’.
In 1831 Rodius began issuing lithographic portraits of Aboriginal 'chiefs’ and their wives, completing the series in 1834. These portraits have a penetrating intensity which arises out of the artist’s wish to portray the natives exactly as they appeared – somewhat wretched after living side by side with white colonists. The Sydney Herald remarked on 'the extraordinary fidelity with which the characteristic countenances of these sable children of nature are delineated’, and added: 'It is the intention of the Artist to submit to the Public, a series of lithographic copies of the work, which he proposes to publish by subscription, at such charges as will place these interesting copies within the reach of all classes’. Rodius issued a second series of Aboriginal portraits in 1840.
Examples include Goosberry, One-Eyed Poll, Wife of King Bongarry 1844, crayon and wash, (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, illustrated in the Dictionary of Australian Artists, 1991, p 680). He drew similar portraits of prominent white settlers. But he also did a few cartoons, not so dissimilar in style, e.g. (after Augustus Earle) Uncle’s Intended: Scene in the Streets of Sydney , litho c.1830s. Another version without the caption is titled in ink Native Blacks, New S. Wales (both in the Mitchell Library).
In 1832 he sent a large view of Port Jackson taken from Bunker’s Hill to England where it was engraved by Ackermann & Co. of the Strand, London. The ensuing coloured aquatint (copies Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW; Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW) was commended by the Australian : 'This view surpasses in correctness of external objects and precision of drawing, anything we have yet seen of this kind in the colony’. Rodius’s pencil and watercolour views of Sydney are smoothly proficient, according to topographic conventions, and reaffirm his early training as a draughtsman. It was his 'crayon’ portraits, however, which were particularly acclaimed by contemporary critics. The Sydney Morning Herald called him a 'professed painter of heads’ and wondered why he exhibited 'nothing but landscapes’ at the first exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia in 1847. (He only showed two: a view of a church at Cologne and Sketch from Mitchell’s Pass – View of Emu Plains .) His portrait of the visiting musician Monsieur Gautrot , his sole exhibit in the second exhibition in 1849, was described by the same newspaper as 'a free, light, loose sketch, full of artistical talent, and a very striking likeness’. At the 1857 Fine Art Exhibition at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts he showed one of his many portraits of Doctor Leichhardt , the same or similar to that described as 'excellent’ by the Herald in 1847.
Rodius’s sketches of Leichhardt and other public figures, such as Henry Parkes (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW) and William Foster: A Barrister at Law (National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT), are characterised by their swift grasp of character, assured handling and economy of line and informality. He issued many of these as lithographs, 'in order that the public may have a copy of one whose name and fame are so familiar to the colonists’. It seems, however, that he felt this enterprise was threatened by the arrival of photography, as he advertised in 1855 that he guaranteed 'a correct likeness…at the same expense as a Daguerreotype or Photograph…and avoiding the stiffness which detracts so much from correct expression in the latter’.
Rodius supplemented his income by teaching drawing at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts throughout 1849 but at the end of the year the class sub-committee reported that the number of students had dropped and the survivors were expressing 'much dissatisfaction’. Although Rodius had been complaining about teaching conditions throughout the year, the blame was laid solidly on the 'absence of anything like a system of teaching on the part of the Master’, who was accused of concentrating on individual rather than group teaching. It was recommended that his class be disbanded and replaced with one 'for the study of Geometrical Architectural drawing’ under a different master. Once applications had been received from Messrs Janssen , Tulloch , Goyder and Smith , Rodius was informed that his services were no longer required. He went to Melbourne.
The following May (in his absence) his lithographic portrait of George Robert Nichols was issued at Sydney, while his continuing residence in Melbourne was reported in both April and December 1850. In June 1851 he announced in the Sydney Morning Herald : 'Mr Charles Rodius having returned from Melbourne, begs to offer his services to any lovers of Art desirous of obtaining correct Portraits in his style of French Crayon. Mr. Rodius’ stay in Sydney will be but for a short period’. He nevertheless remained in New South Wales. In 1854 he arranged for a Sydney bookseller to display a portrait in his window with an attached note stating that the subject could collect it when he paid the outstanding balance of 34s, the story being retailed in the Herald under the heading 'Novel Exhibition’.
When Rodius’s young wife Harriet died in 1838 she was buried in the old Sandhills Cemetery in Devonshire Street, Sydney. Rodius himself carved her headstone: 'Sacred to the memory of Harriet Rodius, who died on 14 December, 1838, aged eighteen years. After a short illness of four days. This inscription is sculptured by her afflicted husband; as a last tribute his affection can offer to her memory.’ Shortly afterwards, in 1839, Rodius suffered 'a paralytic attack’ but fortunately recovered. In 1856, however, the People’s Advocate reported that he was 'afflicted with paralysis which utterly incapacitates him from following his profession’. He died in the Liverpool Hospital (for paupers) on 8 April 1860.
Writers:
Hackforth-Jones, Jocelyn
Note: Dictionary of Australian Artists biographyCallaway, Anita
Note: Dictionary of Australian Artists biographyKerr, Joan
Note: additional information "Examples include Goosberry... New S. Wales (both in the Mitchell Library)."
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1802
- Summary
- Charles (Rhodius) Rodius was a portraitist, illustrator, draughtsman, lithographer and singer. He was sentenced to seven years transportation for stealing a reticule containing a handkerchief, a smelling bottle, an opera-glass, and two opera tickets from Lady Laura Meyrick as she was leaving the Royal Opera House in London.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 April 1860
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1838-01-01 End Date1859-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New South Wales
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in New South Wales, daughter of Arthur Campbell Baird and Isabella, née McIntosh. Her parents had come from Ayrshire, Scotland in 1832 and lived at The Springs, Dubbo. Kennedy was tutored by the stepdaughter of John Maugham, who owned the neighbouring property, Dundullimal, and her traditional cross-stitch Berlin wool on linen sampler incorporating the alphabet, numbers and motifs such as birds, baskets of flowers, hearts and a moral verse is signed and dated '26th October, 1852 Dundullimal’ (p.c.). Her detailed, naive watercolour of Dundullimal homestead probably dates from later in the 1850s. Both it and the wooden slab homestead it depicts are now owned by the National Trust (NSW).
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1838
- Summary
- An amateur artist, Kennedy Baird produced both textile and watercolour works.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1859
- Age at death
- 21
Details
Latitude50.7241405 Longitude-3.660778816 Start Date1826-01-01 End Date1859-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, public servant and explorer, was born on 4 August 1826, probably at Bideford, Devon, a son of Rev. Francis Harriman Hutton MA, headmaster of the Bideford Grammar School. The family soon moved south to Sidmouth where Francis was baptised on 16 March 1827. Educated at King’s College, London, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, on 2 June 1845. In October 1849 he left Plymouth for Australia; a fellow passenger Samuel Clutterbuck kept a diary of the voyage which frequently mentions his friend. In 1850 Hutton and his brother, William Stephen Moore Hutton (later under-treasurer for South Australia) were in Adelaide. In September (speculatively 1850) Francis accompanied Sir Henry Fox Young on a boating expedition from Goolwa to the junction of the Murray and Darling rivers in order to assess the suitability of the Murray for steam navigation, Hutton being described as the artist accompanying the party. Although his account of the journey does not refer to his undertaking any artistic pursuits (he did note that there was little opportunity for botanical research), his oil painting of the expedition, exhibited by Governor Young in 1858, was presumably worked up from a field-sketch.
In November 1850 Hutton was appointed to a clerical position in the Treasury, Adelaide, then retrenched in January 1852. He applied for compensation as neither notice nor reason was given but was told that a decrease in revenue had resulted in a reduction in the public service and that the action did not reflect on his ability or service. He seems to have spent some of the year travelling around South Australia making watercolour sketches. Four initialled watercolours of 1852 (AGSA) depict a property at the head of the Gilbert River: the front of the station buildings (with Aborigines), the rear, the woolshed and a nearby valley. An unsigned pencil sketch, said to be a portrait of Joseph Cope, and a lithograph of the same gentleman inscribed 'Drawn on Stone by S.T. Gill [q.v.] from a painting by F.F. Hutton Esqr. Adelaide May 1850. Printed by Penman & Galbraith [qq.v.]’ are in the same collection.
Clutterbuck noted in an 1852 diary entry that Hutton went to the gold diggings after he lost his job and worked there until he was 'accidentally shot’, which damaged his eyesight. Even so, Hutton was advertising as an artist and portrait painter in Melbourne in 1853-55. He showed five oil portraits in the 1854 Melbourne Exhibition, including that of Peter Snodgrass MLC, The Late Mayor . In 1855-56 he was in Sydney. In his diary entry for Friday, 7 December 1855, Captain Henry Thomas Fox noted: 'Evening party at Mr T[homas] W[oolley]'s Hereford House …met Hutton there who painted my portrait several years ago at Adelaide’. Fox then commissioned a new portrait, his diary entries for 11 December 1855 and 3-4 January 1856 detail its progress. Hutton’s oil portrait of Mrs Isobella Sherard (York, WA) is also dated 1856.
By July 1858 Hutton was in Hobart Town, a committee member, subscriber and exhibitor for the Art-Treasures Exhibition. The pictures, hung by R.L. Hood under Hutton’s direction, included five of Hutton’s own portraits, four said to be in his 'best style’. At the 1862-63 Hobart Town Art Treasures Exhibition three of his works were displayed, including Portrait of a Lady , described as a 'beautifully finished portrait by an amateur artist’. (Its frame, 'consisting of a wealth of scrolls and flowers, designed and executed by Mr. R.L. Hood’, was especially admired.) His oil portrait of Elizabeth, wife of Morton Allport , is now in the Allport Library. A watercolour view of Hobart Town and Mount Wellington from Kangaroo Point (1859) was exhibited at Hobart in 1931; Mrs Webb and Daughter , another oil portrait, is in a private collection.
Hutton remained in Tasmania until at least February 1859. He sailed for England on board the Royal Charter from Hobson’s Bay, Victoria, in August but was drowned when the vessel was wrecked off the Welsh coast on 26 October 1859, within a day of reaching Liverpool. An account of the wreck speaks favourably of Hutton: 'a great favourite on board… Among other accomplishments he had cultivated a taste for painting, and executed, while on his passage, an admirable likeness of Captain Taylor, also one of Mr. Pitcher’s eldest child’.
Writers:
Glover, Margaret
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 4 August 1826
- Summary
- Francis Hutton lived an adventurous life, cut short by shipwreck within a day's journey of Liverpool. He was an artist, portraitist, explorer and gold digger.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 October 1859
- Age at death
- 33
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1859-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, farmer and customs agent, was born in England, only son of Nathan Knight of Manchester. He arrived at the Swan River Colony (Western Australia) in the Advocate on 27 August 1841 and soon afterwards drew two sketches of Fremantle: Looking towards Arthur’s Head and Fremantle Seen from the Hill on the Canning Road (1841, unlocated). These were reproduced over 80 years later in the Western Mail and are his only recorded works.
In October Knight began farming at The Dale, York, in partnership with Henry Landor who also came out in the Advocate . The partnership was dissolved in 1845 when Landor returned to England. On 26 December 1847 Knight married Sarah Sophia Hester at York (WA); they had four sons. In 1850 he was back at Fremantle working as a Customs House agent. He died on 7 June 1859 and is buried in East Perth Cemetery.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- A sketcher, farmer and customs agent, Nathan Knight arrived at the Swan River Colony in Western Australia in 1841. His only recorded works are two sketches of Fremantle from about 1841 that were reproduced over 80 years later in the Western Mail.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 June 1859
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude46.7985624 Longitude8.2319736 Start Date1824-01-01 End Date1858-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Switzerland
- Biography
- lithographer, was born in Switzerland, son of Henry Locher and Ann, née Eugster. He was living in Melbourne when he was naturalised, on 11 August 1854. By 1857 he was in partnership with Julius Hamel. Locher made his will on 17 June 1858 appointing his wife Ursula his executrix and sole beneficiary and died six days later, aged thirty-four. The value of his estate was under £200. He was buried in the Church of England section of the Melbourne General Cemetery where his widow erected a modest memorial in his memory.
Writers:
Harris, Helen Doxford
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1824
- Summary
- Lithographer, was born in Switzerland, and moved to Melbourne, Australia. By 1857 he was in partnership with Julius Hamel. Six days after he wrote his will he died aged thirty-four.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 June 1858
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude55.6688632 Longitude-2.025040983 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1858-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bowsden, Northumberland, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Bowsden, Northumberland, on 9 September 1820, eldest child of Dr John Maule Hudspeth and Mary, née Lowrey. Dr and Mrs Hudspeth migrated to Van Diemen’s Land in the Minerva in 1822 leaving Elizabeth behind in the care of relations, including her grandfather Thomas Hudspeth. Some years later Elizabeth was sent to join the family at Bowsden, Jericho, Van Diemen’s Land (VDL), travelling in the care of Mr Barclay, a watchmaker, and his wife. During the voyage she fell and injured her knee and as a result, when she was 12, her father and Dr Robert Officer had to amputate her leg. The operation was performed without an anaesthetic, a bullet placed in her mouth to prevent her gnashing her teeth with the agony of the amputation. Elizabeth recovered from this horrifying experience and wore a cork leg for the rest of her life.
John Maule Hudspeth died on 5 August 1837 leaving Elizabeth, as the eldest child, taking on much family responsibility and it was probably at this time that her grandfather and her aunt, also Elizabeth Hudspeth, joined them in Van Diemen’s Land. In 1844 Elizabeth met Mary Braidwood Wilson, who after being orphaned in NSW had come to live with her uncle George Wilson at his property Mount Seymour, near Oatlands. The two young women became lifelong friends; Elizabeth was bridesmaid at Mary’s marriage to Stewart Mowle in May 1845 and most of what is known about Elizabeth Hudspeth is derived from their correspondence and from Mary’s diary.
Elizabeth Hudspeth had been sketching Tasmanian scenery for several years. She drew, in pencil or pen-and-ink, such views as Spectacle Island, Sorell, VDL and Messrs Grubb and Tyson’s Saw Mill Piper’s River , some being copied by Frederick Strange . After her mother died of consumption on 30 March 1853 and her brother John died (by poison, self-administered) aged 24 in July, Elizabeth, her aunt Elizabeth and her brother Frank determined to return to England. Elizabeth spent five weeks at the beginning of 1854 making a farewell visit to Mary Mowle at Twofold Bay, New South Wales, who found her friend 'much depressed in spirits & seemed almost stunned by the rapid succession of their domestic afflictions’. On 2 September Mary Mowle recorded in her diary, 'Sat outside with Elizabeth while she took a sketch of Mount Seymour for me’ as a memento.
Hudspeth sailed from Hobart Town in the Antipodes in March 1854. In journal letters to Mary Mowle written in 1854-55, Elizabeth described her visits to the tourist sights of London, to art galleries, the theatre, her relations with her married sisters, and her efforts to sell the lithographs she had made from her Australian drawings. She wrote to Mary from London that on 7 November she had visited the lithographers M. & N. Hanhart of Charlotte Street, leaving with them two of her sketches 'to be experimented upon with the view, if successful, of turning my drawings … towards some account’. On 23 February 1855 she paid Hanharts for the lithographs: 'an enormous sum & not at all likely to be liquidated by the sale of the impressions’. Print dealers proved reluctant to take them: 'one house only consented to take a few on trial, J.C. Heite Repository, Leaden-Hall Street’.
Although her drawings are competent views in the picturesque mode, their subjects were probably not exotic enough for the English market. Known examples include: Ben Lomond From Greenhill, Van Dieman’s [sic] Land ; View on the Derwent ; Boyd Town, Twofold Bay, Australia ; Eden, Twofold Bay, Australia ; and Custom House, Eden, Twofold Bay Australia (the Mowles’ home). Her pencil sketch of Rosedale at Campbell Town, showing the house after its remodelling by James Blackburn, was engraved on steel in England for the letterhead of John Leake (the owner), although the local press attributed it to John’s son Charles Henry Leake , who had ordered the engraving in London.
Elizabeth Hudspeth died on 29 May 1858 at Madeira in the Canary Isles where her brother Frank (later Canon of St David’s Cathedral, Hobart) had taken her for her health. Like her mother, she died of tuberculosis, the disease which killed her younger sisters, Mary and Catherine, that same year, aged 37.
Writers:
Clarke, Patricia
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 9 September 1820
- Summary
- Known as a sketcher, she was born in England but lived in Tasmania sketching the scenery during the 1830-1850s. Upon her return to England she tried to market prints of her work with little success. She died of tuberculosis aged 37.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 29 May 1858
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude53.6917422 Longitude-1.3105722 Start Date1817-01-01 End Date1858-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Pontefract, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and watercolourist, was active in New South Wales (NSW) between 1834 and 1858. She was the second daughter and fourth child of Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes (1787-1873), the Collector of Customs for NSW, and Elizabeth Gibbes (née Davis, circa 1790-1874). One of her younger sisters was the sketcher Fanny Gibbes .
Known also by her pet name of Minnie, Mary Gibbes was born in the borough town of Pontefract, Yorkshire, England, on 16 October 1817 and baptised at St Giles’ Parish Church the following January. At the time of her birth, Mary’s London-born father was serving as a brigade-major on the staff of England’s northern military district. Previously, Gibbes had fought in South America and the Low Countries during the Napoleonic Wars. His ancestors had been Barbados sugar planters during the 17th and 18th centuries although his natural father was rumoured to be Frederick, Duke of York (the second son of George III and Commander-in-Chief of the British Army). Mary’s mother came from a less bellicose environment; for she was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Davis, who had ministered to his flock in India before returning to England.
Mary and her seven siblings were raised indulgently by their parents, given the standards of the late Georgian era. From 1819 to 1827, they lived in and around the wealthy sugar port of Falmouth, Jamaica, where her father had taken up a government commission as Collector of Customs on a salary of approximately 1200 pounds a year. Mary spent an idyllic childhood at Falmouth, living mainly at a plantation house in the town’s immediate hinterland and enjoying, unwittingly of course, the tainted fruits of a slave-based economy. Jamaica’s tropical climate damaged the health of Mary’s father, however, and he was left with no choice other than to uproot his family and return to England, transferring (at a lower salary) to the customs’ collectorship at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Mary was aged nine or 10 at the time of her departure from the West Indies. She received a private education in England, as she had on Jamaica, and would mature into a lively, cultured and well-read young woman. As well as being able to sketch and paint, she could play several musical instruments and converse in French and other modern European languages. Mary also enjoyed dancing, flirting with handsome young men, and attending the theatre. Her parents were interested in the arts, too. Later, in Sydney, Colonel Gibbes would patronise artists such as William Nicholas and Frederick Garling and become acquainted with Conrad Martens and his daughter, Rebecca.
In 1833, Colonel Gibbes exchanged places with the Collector of Customs for the Colony of NSW and, on 19 April of the following year, Mary, her parents, and six of her brothers and sisters arrived in Sydney per the Resource . Colonel Gibbes’ new posting as the colonial government’s principal revenue-raiser paid a base salary of 1000 pounds per annum (plus a share of any profits raised from the sale of seized contraband) and merited a Crown nominee’s seat on the NSW Legislative Council. The Gibbes family dwelt initially in scenic Point Piper House, also called Henrietta Villa, on the southern shore of Sydney Harbour. Then, in 1843, the family moved north across the harbour to a new residence, Wotonga House, which Colonel Gibbes had erected to his own design on a five-acre site at the tip of Kirribilli Point. (Today, Wotonga forms the core structure of Admiralty House, the official Sydney home of Australia’s Governor-General.)
Since her arrival in Sydney, Mary had been an enthusiastic participant in the major events of the colony’s upper-class social calendar. She met a tall, dashing and erudite Irish settler named Terence Aubrey Murray (1810-1873) at a soiree held at Point Piper House in the late 1830s. They fell in love and were married at St James’ Anglican Church, Sydney, on 27 May 1843, after a protracted engagement. (The nuptials had been delayed by a disagreement over the size of Mary’s marriage settlement and differences arising from the bride and groom’s respective religious creeds: Mary was a Protestant and Murray a Catholic.) At the time of his marriage to Mary, Murray was a budding politician and an established pastoralist. His extensive rural landholdings centred on “Yarrowlumla” or “Yarralumla” (now the site of the Governor-General’s official establishment in the Australian Capital Territory) and Winderradeen, near Lake George, in the Collector Valley of NSW. Murray would go on to become, consecutively, a Member of Parliament, Chairman of Committees, Secretary for Lands and Works, the Speaker of the NSW Legislative Assembly and, finally, the President of the NSW Legislative Council. In 1869, he would be knighted for his services to the Parliament.
Following their wedding service, the Murrays honeymooned at Regentville House near Penrith, NSW. Regentville was the palatial country seat of the physician, agricultural pioneer and constitutional activist Sir John Jamison (1776-1844). Mary’s favourite brother, William John Gibbes (1815-1868), had been residing at Regentville since his wedding to Sir John’s daughter, Harriet, in 1837. (William was now Sir John’s right-hand man, effectively running the estate.) In June 1843, Mary’s husband was elected to the colonial legislature for the first time, representing the Counties of Murray, King and Georgiana. This development meant that he and Mary would not be able to travel to Yarralumla until October, and make it their maritial home. Murray used the interval to ensure that his manager planted an ornamental garden at Yarralumla and refurbished the homestead’s rooms in anticipation of Mary’s arrival.
The Murrays’ first child, Leila Alexandrina, was born at Yarralumla homestead in May 1844. On 5 August that year, Mary wrote at length to her friend Mary Wilson, a surgeon’s daughter from Braidwood, NSW. Her letter reads in part: 'Do you paint now? I finished the group which I commenced when you were here and I have sent to Sydney for some nice copies as I have taken rather a fancy to it, but I assure you I find I have not quite so much spare time since the arrival of my little Leila.’ Since William Nicholas did a joint watercolour portait of Mary and Leila dated 1846 (National Library of Australia), he was probably the Sydney artist that Mary commissioned to do the copies, which remain unlocated. Nicholas also executed a full-length watercolour likeness of Minnie prior to her marriage (National Library of Australia) as well as producing a locked-sized miniature portrait of Mary on ivory (private collection). Nicholas also drew Colonel Gibbes at least once during the 1840s and is likely to be the artist responsible for a pair of nuptial drawings of William and Harriet Gibbes dating from 1837 (private collection). He is known, too, to have done a group drawing of Mary Gibbes and her siblings which is now lost.
Mary found her daily existence at the isolated Yarralumla homestead to be dull and lonely after her gregarious way of life in Sydney. Not only did she miss her family but her husband was also absent from home on farming or political business for long periods. Sketching, reading and playing the piano were among Mary’s few diversions. Fortunately her sisters Fanny and Matilda were able to pay periodic visits to Yarralumla during the 1840s, while her youngest brother, Augustus, was sent from Sydney to act as her companion and assist with Yarralumla’s day-to-day administration. Mary’s incumbency at Yarralumla was blighted by the loss of three of her daughters as babies. They were Ayleen Elizabeth Murray, Constance Matilda Murray and Geraldine Bessie Jane Murray, and they died in 1847, 1851 and 1854 respectively. (Mary had been bedridden for most of her 1854 pregnancy.) Another daughter, Evelyn Fanny Matilda Murray – born September 1849 – was able to survive infancy, however, due to the timely availability of a wet nurse.
Mary’s health was clearly deteriorating. In 1855, she and Murray removed to Winderradeen in order to be nearer Sydney. It was at Winderradeen’s homestead that she gave birth to her final child, James Aubrey Gibbes Murray, in November 1857. But Mary’s body could not withstand the strain of parturition. She developed an internal infection and died, after enduring excruciating pain, of heart failure, on 2 January 1858. She was 40 years of age. Her husband buried her in an unmarked grave at Winderradeen. A year after Mary’s death, he sold Yarralumla to Augustus Gibbes (1828-1897), who had been managing the sheep station since the mid-1850s. Gibbes would occupy Yarralumla until 1881, when he sold it to Frederick Campbell for 40,000 pounds.
James Aubrey Gibbes Murray, Mary’s infant son, was raised for a short period by his maternal grandparents, who came to Yarralumla to live towards the end of 1859. The Colonel and Mrs Gibbes blamed Murray for Mary’s early death, which had happened far from what they considered to be proper medical care. In 1860, Murray’s son was returned to him. He had since married his children’s governess at Winderradeen. (Murray’s second wife, Agnes Edwards [1835-1891], a cousin of W.S. Gilbert, would produce two famous children: the Administrator of Papua, Sir Hubert Murray, and the most celebrated classical scholar of his generation, Professor Gilbert Murray, of Oxford University.) James, who preferred to be called by his middle name of Aubrey, grew up to be a gentle, introspective and rather unworldly adult. He worked as a public servant with the NSW Lands Department and married Marion Edith Lewis in Sydney in 1882. In later years, he moved to Victoria with his wife and children, dying at Ivanhoe in 1933. James’ elder sister, Leila Murray, was a fiercely independent spirit who never married. She travelled overseas with her uncle, Augustus Gibbes, during the 1880s before returning to NSW and acquiring a small country property. She died near Goulburn in 1901. Leila’s younger sister Evelyn Murray married a NSW squatter, Robert Morrison, in 1874. After her husband’s death, she sailed for England, where her daughter attended Girton College, Cambridge. Evelyn became a suffragette during the early 1900s and was arrested and jailed by the authorities on at least one occasion because of her protest actions outside the British Houses of Parliament. She died in London in 1928.
None of Mary Murray’s three children evinced any great artistic talent although her son was a good technical draughtsman. The Murray Family Papers are kept at the National Library of Australia. Included among them is a bound album or scrapbook containing sketches, other illustrations and handwritten notes by Mary Murray and others.
Writers:
Gibbes, Stephen
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 October 1817
- Summary
- A sketcher, Mary Murray arrived in Sydney in 1834, the daughter of Colonel Gibbes who designed Kirribilli's Wotonga House, which now forms part of Admiralty House, official home of the Governor-General. Murray's sketches and albums are held in private collection and the National Library of Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 2 January 1858
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1858-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- portrait painter, was born in England and studied at the Royal Academy Schools, London. He exhibited at both the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists (Suffolk Street) between 1832 and 1845, showing portraits and Italian subject pictures at the former in 1832, 1833 and 1844. Portraits of its secretary and chaplain were painted for the St Ann’s Society, London.
Crossland and his family arrived at Port Adelaide on 21 February 1851 and settled in Adelaide, where he soon established a local reputation. Working in the fluent traditions of Late Georgian-Early Victorian portraiture, he was the most accomplished portrait painter in South Australia at this time and, after Ludwig Becker and William Strutt , the finest in any of the Australian colonies. He made his name with a series of portraits of Captain Charles Sturt , the explorer and artist. At least three versions survive (Art Gallery of South Australia, Legislative Council Chamber of the South Australian Parliament and National Portrait Gallery, London), the commissioned version for Parliament House being reported as recently completed in the Adelaide Observer of 12 March 1853.
One of his Captain Sturt – the Hero of Australian Exploration portraits was shown at the first exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts in 1857, together with his Portrait of Thomas Gilbert (now owned by the City of Adelaide). His paintings continued to feature in the society’s exhibitions even after Crossland’s death at Encounter Bay in 1858. His oil portraits of the late Reverend Thomas Quinton Stow and Mr William Giles were also exhibited posthumously, at the Stow Memorial Church Bazaar held at White’s rooms in December 1863.
Other eminent South Australians who sat for Crossland included Governor Sir Henry Young, Lady Young, Chief Justice Sir Charles Cooper, George Fife Angas (father of G.F. Angas ) and the Very Reverend James Farrell, Anglican Dean of Adelaide. The South Australian Register praised several of these 'fine likenesses’ on 16 October 1854, as well as Crossland’s portraits of lesser lights: John Brown, emigration agent, Thomas Gilbert, colonial storekeeper, and an unnamed 'aspirant for literary fame’. His portraits of two women (conventionally anonymous) were described as: 'a fine likeness of a lady whose placid countenance assures us we may venture to describe her as an elderly matron; and another equally good likeness of a married lady, who has scarcely begun to look matronly’. Moses Garlick, an Adelaide builder, and William Giles, the second manager of the South Australian Company, probably had their portraits painted too.
Crossland’s full-length portrait of the first resident commissioner of the province, James Hurtle Fisher, painted in late December 1854 (Parliament House, Adelaide), was praised in the South Australian Register on 27 and 28 December 1854 and 7 January 1855. It had cost 70 guineas, paid by public subscription. Its 'magnificent’ carved and gilded frame by David Culley (father of John ), said to be the most ambitious ever produced in the colony, received almost equal attention, having cost the astonishing sum of 50 guineas.
The scale and accomplishment of Crossland’s full- and half-length oil portraits of European settlers were novel to South Australia and suited the new confidence of a growing community, reflecting its ambitions and increasing wealth. But it is the pair of Aboriginal portraits in the Rex Nan Kivell Collection (National Library of Australia) – Nannultera, a Young Cricketer of the Natives’ Training Institution, Poonindie and Samuel Conwillan (Kandwillan), a Catechist of the Natives’ Training Institution, Poonindie , now firmly given to his hand – that are without doubt Crossland’s major works. Both were commissioned in 1854 by Archdeacon Matthew Hale, who paid only £6 5s for the portrait of Conwillan. This seems to have been a special price for a generally admired churchman who founded Poonindie with the aim of creating 'a Christian village of Australian natives, reclaimed from barbarism and trained to the duties of social Christian life’. Samuel Conwillan’s grave portrait with Bible may be read as commemorating the achievements of the mind, whereas Nannultera’s displays the complementary quality of bodily recreation in its healthiest and highest form in Hale’s eyes – the game of cricket.
Writers:
Jones, John
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1800
- Summary
- Portrait painter, born in England. A resident of Adelaide, he was the most accomplished portrait painter in South Australia of the period.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1858
- Age at death
- 58
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1790-01-01 End Date1858-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- watercolour painter, daughter of John Greenell of Hertford and Marylebone, London, married the solicitor and art connoisseur Thomas Wilson on 12 October 1812. After serious financial reverses the Wilsons and five of their eight children left London in the Duke of Roxburghe on 3 April 1838, bound for South Australia. They spent their first weeks in tents until their prefabricated wooden house was erected in Finniss Street, North Adelaide, in December, moving into their second and more substantial home in East Terrace in 1846. By 1853 they were living in Barnard Street, North Adelaide. Although of delicate health, Martha Wilson supported her husband in his various roles as solicitor, mayor of Adelaide and art patron. In addition, Wilson and Borrow state that she was 'a skilled floral painter, and made many miniatures for her friends’ amusement, both in England and in South Australia’. She died on 26 January 1858 at her home at Childers Street, North Adelaide.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1790
- Summary
- Martha Wilson was a watercolour painter. Together with her husband and children she left London in 1838 bound for South Australia. Before their wooden house was erected in Adelaide the family spent their first weeks in tents.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 26 January 1858
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude51.897077 Longitude-8.4654674 Start Date1785-01-01 End Date1858-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cork, Ireland
- Biography
- painter and soldier, was born in Cork, Ireland, second son of James Wallis and Lucinda, née Hewson. Wallis joined the 46th Regiment as an ensign in 1803 and was promoted lieutenant in 1804. He fought with distinction against the French in the West Indies and was promoted captain in 1811. In February 1814 he arrived at Sydney in charge of a detachment of the 46th Regiment which was to relieve the 73rd as the military presence in New South Wales. The 46th sailed to Sydney in the convict transport General Hewitt ; also on board, as a convict, was Joseph Lycett . On 1 June 1816 Wallis was appointed commandant of the penal settlement at Newcastle where, coincidentally, Lycett had been sent to serve a secondary sentence for forgery.
Wallis set about reorganising the settlement, restoring discipline and erecting a hospital, gaol, and convict barracks, enlarging the wharf and beginning a breakwater. It has been said that both Elizabeth Henrietta Macquarie and Lycett had a hand in the design of Christ Church of England (1817), but its builder J.B. Clohesy in his evidence to Commissioner Bigge said that Wallis amended the original plan and supervised the erection. Relieved of his post in January 1819, Wallis sailed for England in March. Macquarie praised his 'zeal, ability and judgement’ in the general orders of 24 December 1819 and sent a glowing testimonial to Earl Bathurst. In 1821 he was promoted major and served in India until his retirement in 1826. In December 1836 he married Mary Ann Breach at Clifton, Gloucestershire. He died at Prestbury, Gloucestershire, on 12 July 1858.
That Wallis had an interest in art and drawing is evident from his publication, An Historical Account of the Colony of New South Wales … in Illustration of Twelve Views, Engraved by W. Preston, a Convict; from Drawings Taken on the Spot . The first edition, advertised in the Sydney Gazette of 9 January 1819 and the following two issues, was described as 'A series of original views in New South Wales’. The plates were engraved by Walter Preston , who had earlier engraved some of the plates in West’s Views . Two sets of six were offered: one of full-sized plates for £3 and one of half-sized plates for 30s, or £4 if all twelve were purchased. In the introduction to the later London edition, Wallis stated that because of a shortage of materials the plates had been engraved on 'common sheet copper which is employed for coppering the bottoms of ships’, and added 'the engravings … are curious and interesting, as being the first specimen of the graphic act which this infant colony has produced’.
This was not correct. The plates for John Lewin 's Prodromus Entomology and his Birds of New Holland , as well as West’s Views , all preceded Wallis’s. The Rienits state that 'no full set is known’ of the Sydney edition, the Mitchell Library having only ten of the twelve; but the library also has a complete set with an additional thirteenth plate of Newcastle not included in the London printing. Purchased for the library at the Strathallan sale of the Macquarie Papers on 14 February 1914, this set contains proofs and duplicates of five of the plates, three inscribed in Wallis’s hand, one with a dedication to Mrs Macquarie dated 18 December 1817 and another with 'View of Newcastle from an original drawing by Jas. Wallis’.
Following his return to England, Wallis arranged with the well-known print publisher Rudolf Ackermann to issue his plates in book form. The volume appeared in 1821 with text and preliminaries as well as a separate issue in wrappers without text – the first book published in England solely devoted to views of New South Wales. An interesting corollary can be found in the painted oil panels on cedar forming part of two collector’s chests (c.1820, DG & p.c.). Two of the views in the Historical Account , the kangaroos and the black swans, are reproduced on the panels of the chest in the Dixson Library, together with eleven other views. Seven are of similar composition, with pairs of birds native to the Hunter River estuary against backgrounds of Lake Macquarie and Newcastle, although not copies from a published source. The second chest, sold from the Strathallen family in 1989, bears a comparable relationship to Wallis’s Views .
For some years discussion has occurred as to whether Wallis was an artist or simply used drawings prepared for him by Lycett, then added his own name to the imprint of the published works. In the 1970s David Thomas reattributed a large oil on wood panel to Lycett originally thought to be by Wallis, Corroboree at Newcastle c.1820s (DG, presented by Sir William Dixson, June 1936), because it relates closely to plate VII in Historical Account . If developed in England by Lycett, the painting could still have been produced after (and following) the Wallis engraving.
Signed watercolour and pencil views with direct family provenance offered at Christies on 28 May and at Sotheby’s on 4 November 1987 leave no doubt that Wallis did draw in New South Wales. All the Sotheby’s pictures except for lot 113, a watercolour view of the Bay of Bengal c.1821, were watercolour views of New South Wales. Hawkesbury River and Blue Mountains from Windsor , interestingly annotated '[done] with camera lucida’, relates to the first illustration in Wallis’s Historical Account , while a view of Reid’s Mistake, near Newcastle, is a study for plate VII. Two oil paintings of Newcastle and the Hunter River (NRAG), initially attributed to Wallis, then to Lycett, tended to revert to Wallis once his status as a painter was confirmed, particularly as they bear the inscriptions, 'At one time in the possession of the rector of Newcastle Anglican Church’ and 'left to Captain Thos. Hilton by the late Major Wallis, Prestbury, nr. Cheltenham 6th December 1859’. In October 1991 a panoramic oil on board view of Newcastle offered at Christie’s (South Kensington) was attributed to Wallis by John McPhee on evidence of style, provenance and medium. Lycett, however, continues to have his advocates – currently in the ascendancy (2001).
Writers:
Ellis, Elizabeth
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1785
- Summary
- Captain Wallis, commandant of the penal settlement at Newcastle. Close association with convict artist Joseph Lycett. For some years discussion has occurred as to whether Wallis was an artist or simply used drawings prepared for him by Lycett. The painting 'Corroboree at Newcastle' was long attributed to Wallis, although there is now common agreement that it was painted by Lycett.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 July 1858
- Age at death
- 73
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1773-01-01 End Date1858-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and naval officer, son of James Sykes, naval agent of Arundel Street, The Strand, London, entered the Royal Navy at the age of ten as Captain Paul Minchin’s servant on board the Resource stationed at Halifax. In 1790-95 he served as master’s mate in the Discovery on its voyage around the world under Captain George Vancouver. In 1791 Discovery was for some weeks at King George Sound (Albany, Western Australia) and Sykes made some sketches, including a view of some Aboriginal huts which was redrawn in London by William Alexander and used as an engraving, Deserted Indian Village in King George III Sound, New Holland , in Vancouver’s published journal of the voyage (London 1798). Three of Sykes’s original watercolours are held by the Hydrographic Department of the Ministry of Defence (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich).
After Discovery left Western Australia the ship visited New Zealand, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and the north-west coast of America where Sykes saved his captain and other members of the crew from being killed by a party of Indians. After returning to England he was promoted lieutenant in 1795. He continued to serve aboard various ships, mainly at Halifax, and was promoted commander in 1800. After further service in British, Mediterranean and French waters he became a vice-admiral in 1848.
Sykes had married a daughter of Edward Earl, chairman of the Scottish Board of Customs, in 1811. They lived in Surrey, England, where he was deputy-lieutenant of the county. He died on 12 February 1858.
Writers:
Chapman, Barbara
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1773
- Summary
- Sketcher and naval officer, served as master's mate in the Discovery from 1790 to 1795 in its voyage around the world. In 1791 when Discovery was for some weeks at King George Sound (Albany, WA), Sykes made some sketches including a view of some Aboriginal huts which was redrawn in London by William Alexander and used as an engraving, Deserted Indian Village in King George III Sound, New Holland,
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 February 1858
- Age at death
- 85
Details
Latitude52.3455998 Longitude0.5127653 Start Date1813-01-01 End Date1857-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Mildenhall, Suffolk, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, naval officer, civil officer and pastoralist, was born in Mildenhall, Suffolk, in December 1813, fourth son of Sir Henry Bunbury and his first wife, Louisa Emilia, née Fox. One of his elder brothers was Henry William St Pierre Bunbury . Richard was a midshipman in the navy when, aged about fourteen, he lost his right arm at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. He was convalescing at Genoa when Colonel William Light arrived there in his yacht to spend the winter with the family (relatives of Light’s wife).
Richard Bunbury married Sarah Susanna Sconce on 19 December 1838. They came to Victoria on board the Argyle with their son Harry and his nurse, and with Sarah’s brother Robert Knox Sconce and his wife. Georgiana McCrae and her children were also on board and Richard and Sarah Bunbury are mentioned frequently in her diary, including a comment on their shipboard diversions: 'we played whist or looked at some capital landscapes painted by Captain Bunbury with his left hand, he having parted with his right one, so he said, “to feed the Turks, at Navarino”’.
On arrival in March 1841 Bunbury was appointed superintendent of Water Police at Port Phillip. Later he was harbour master at Williamstown. A member of the Melbourne Club from 1844, he owned a station at Mount William named Barton Hall after his ancestral home. He sketched this property, Barton Hall, Grampians, November 1844 (ink, National Gallery of Victoria [NGV]), as well as neighbouring homesteads, eg Bark Huts at Mr Cunninghame’s Station, Goulburn, April 1844 (watercolour, NGV).
Bunbury died in 1857. A footnote by Hugh McCrae in Georgiana’s Journal states that Hugh’s father, George Gordon McCrae , 'was present when he died at Murray’s Prince of Wales Hotel, Flinders Lane East, in Melbourne’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1813
- Summary
- As a midshipman, Bunbury lost right arm at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. He learnt to paint with his left hand and his ink and watercolours are held in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1857
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude52.634444 Longitude-1.131944 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1857-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leicester, England
- Biography
- sketcher and public servant, was born in Leicester, England, on 17 November 1807, eldest son of William Hurst and Mary Ann, née Stevenson. Believed to have arrived at Hobart Town on board the Lord Sidmouth with his mother, brothers and sisters in February 1823, Hurst was appointed to a clerical position in the Survey Department in July 1826, became a draughtsman in 1831 and was later chief draughtsman. He remained with the department until dismissed early in 1850. In 1829 he and his father had been accused of acting with great impropriety when they sold two suburban allotments, and throughout his career in the department Hurst certainly used his knowledge to his own advantage. His superiors, however, spoke of his invaluable services performed with integrity 'to the sacrifice of his health’ and he was especially commended for his success in coping with the increased work caused by an alteration to land licensing regulations in 1847. His dismissal followed the discovery that he had changed the boundaries of a neighbouring property to make up a deficiency in an allotment that he himself had purchased. He petitioned against his discharge, sending in supporting letters from several solicitors and magistrates, all testifying to his usefulness as a public servant, but the dismissal was upheld.
In June 1833 Hurst married Thirza Chipman in St David’s Cathedral; they had a large family. Hurst was elected to the Hobart City Council in January 1857 but died five months later, on 17 May. He was buried in the Wesleyan Cemetery, Hill Street, West Hobart. His obituarist spoke of his generosity to charitable causes and of his disposition and manner which had won the esteem of all. His only known art works are pencil portraits of members of his family. Those of his parents are in the Van Diemen’s Land Folk Museum; portraits of his sister Sarah Hurst, his niece Mary Ann Heath and his brother-in-law Henry Pearce are held privately.
Writers:
Glover, Margaret
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 November 1807
- Summary
- Henry Stevenson Hurst was a sketcher and public servant. Hurst was a chief draughtsman at the Survey Department.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 May 1857
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1806-01-01 End Date1857-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- engraver, printer, publisher and clerk, was born in Dublin, Ireland. He reached Sydney early in 1835 as an assisted emigrant and announced in February that he was starting business as an engraver, offering both lithographic and copperplate printing. Lack of business led to the acceptance of the position of clerk to the deputy inspector-general of hospitals. He resigned in 1845 after breaking his leg and being laid up for 12 months, but remained clerk to the medical board.
While officially employed at the hospital, Baker returned to publishing part-time. He became noted as a copperplate engraver and was commended in the Australian of 9 March 1841 for a presentation plate he engraved for the departing attorney-general, John Plunkett, being reported as 'well known to be a first rate engraver and therefore we need hardly say the inscriptions &c. are admirably executed and does the artist great credit’. On its formal presentation Baker received 'a valuable present’ from the attorney-general in return despite his social position as a tradesman (as was patronisingly noted).
In October 1840 Baker purchased E.D. Barlow 's lithographic apparatus and this enabled him to enter the market for views and portraits. Probably included were the plates or rights of use for several Barlow productions, although he did make unauthorised copies of Barlow’s work: disagreement over claims to a lithographic drawing of the Mayor’s Fancy Ball led to litigation in 1844. Also in October 1840, Baker published a series called Twelve Profile Portraits of the Aborigines . Despite being signed I.W.R. most were copied from William Henry Fernyhough 's original 1836 edition; others were very similar to Charles Rodius 's 1834 portraits.
A 'Cheap edition for the People’ of C.J. Lever’s Charles O’Malley: An Irish Dragoon (illustrated 6d, unillustrated 4d) was issued by Baker in 50 weekly numbers in 1842-43. These may have been partly illustrated by local artists since the Australian of 21 April 1842 understood that the lithographs were not to be confined to those of the original edition but extended to other scenes 'as may afford scope for the artists’ fancy’. Other works from Baker’s office include Fort Macquarie , Sydney Cove, N.S. Wales (c.1851) and Garden Island and the Domain from Lindsay , the last being 'Dedicated to Sir T.L. Mitchell [q.v.] by his obedient servant Mr. Baker’, Mitchell being the owner of this Darling Point house in 1841-45.
Like John Carmichael , Baker engraved scenes for advertisements. An example is his depiction of the Australian Brewery in Low’s Directory for 1844. Other productions included the Australian Atlas , charts, almanacs and the Australian Medical Journal (1846). Perhaps his most significant contribution was the illustrated journal Heads of the People (1847-48). Baker wrote his own biography in the 24th issue (25 March 1848) and illustrated it with his portrait. Sidelines at his business premises, 101 King Street East, included importing and selling books and prints and running a stationery warehouse. He established a general reading room above the printing office in 1844 and advertised a circulating library. This held newspapers and periodicals from Britain and Ireland as well as New South Wales. The subscription was 10s per annum after a 5s entrance fee.
In 1847 Baker lent seven paintings by such prominent local artists as Frederick Garling and Joseph Fowles (and the obscure W. Rider ) to the first exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia. He was a subscriber to George French Angas 's South Australia Illustrated . He also wrote undistinguished verse, the Sydney Morning Herald of 24 January 1849 publishing his pious tribute to his Irish uncle.
The last official listing of William Baker in Sydney is in an 1851 directory, then he moved to Victoria. Melthorpe remembered him as 'one of the best natured, most lively and genial of men’ and provided the derivation of Baker’s nickname, 'Go a head’: 'It arose from his preaching the Gospel of Go-a-headism to the then drowsy, moping and insouciant body politic of Sydney’. The nickname reappeared on the Victorian goldfields in October 1853, noted by William Howitt when visiting White Hills, near Bendigo: 'There is a lending library close to the camp with this emblazonment in great letters all along its side – “Baker’s gold-diggers’ Go-a-head Library and Registration Office for New Chums”. It must be American.’
Baker retained links with New South Wales and was stated to be the proprietor of the Hibernian Printing Office in Sydney when his corpse was discovered near Mount Vincent in the Maitland district in January 1857. Death by 'apoplexy’ on 16 January was certified by Dr Wilton, and the news conveyed to his widow, Jane. She was represented at his funeral in East Maitland by their 19-year-old son, eldest of their seven surviving children. An appeal for the widow and young family was placed in Bell’s Life in Sydney on 31 January 1859, which commented that during 25 years in Australia Baker had been 'a very persevering and industrious man; and a slight tinge of eccentricity, with a love for taking part in the formation of numerous friendly societies, have made him widely known and respected’. Jane Baker later erected a tombstone over his grave in St Peter’s Old Burial Ground, East Maitland, 'in remembrance of his many private virtues and in gratitude to his brother masons of Maitland by whom he was kindly interred’.
Writers:
Neville, Richard
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1806
- Summary
- A trained engraver, William Kellett Baker sold lithographic - often unauthorised prints of works by well known colonial artists including William Henry Fernyhough. As a publisher and printer who also imported and sold books, Baker established a reading room and library above his printing office in 1844, offering access to his collection of international periodicals for the annual sum of 10 shillin
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 January 1857
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1803-01-01 End Date1857-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK, Scotland, UK?
- Biography
- miniature painter, sketcher, art teacher, engraver and etcher, served his apprenticeship as an engraver with John Horsburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland, and reached journeyman status before emigrating to New South Wales.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1803
- Summary
- A painter, etcher, art teacher and engraver. Despite being 'deaf and dumb', a distinguishing handicap often mentioned in relation to his work, Carmichael was nevertheless regarded as one of the most competent engravers in Sydney. He is also notable for having been one of the earliest free emigrant artists to pursue a lifelong professional career in New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 27 July 1857
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude51.0612766 Longitude-1.3131692 Start Date1810-01-01 End Date1856-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Winchester, Hampshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, topographical draughtsman, explorer and soldier, was born in November 1810 at Winchester, Hampshire. He became an ensign in the 63rd Regiment of Light Infantry on 25 October 1827. On 8 June 1829 Dale arrived at the Swan River on board HMS Sulphur and was appointed temporary assistant government surveyor by Surveyor-General John Septimus Roe . He explored the country beyond the Canning River, the York district, the Helena Valley and the country to the north of King George Sound, selecting a 2,560-acre land grant for himself at York and other land at Helena.
Dale’s watercolour view near the mouth of the Swan River was the unacknowledged source of the lithograph A View in Western Australia, Taken from a Hill the Intended Site of a Fort, on the Left Bank of the Swan River, a Mile and a Quarter from its Mouth… published in the Foreign Literary Gazette (London) on 24 March 1830, the English lithographer being J.S. Templeton (copy Kerry Stokes collection, Perth). An acknowledged lithograph after his drawing was made by B. King and issued from the Quarter-Master General’s Office at the Horse Guards, London, while a further engraving, by I. Dodd, appeared in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction on 12 March 1831. Although competent topographical work, all versions of the view lack the human interest of Dale’s best-known work, Panoramic View of King George Sound, Part of the Colony of Swan River (18 × 274.5 cm).
Dale was stationed at King George Sound from about January to May 1832, possibly longer, when he drew this long narrow panorama, presumably another watercolour. It was issued as a hand-coloured aquatint and etching in October 1834 by Robert Havell of 77 Oxford Street, London, accompanied by Dale’s Descriptive Account of the Panoramic View &c. of King George’s Sound, and the Adjacent Country (J. Cross & R. Havell, London 1834). Both were souvenirs of the large panorama exhibited in London, an extremely lively image that shows Princess Royal Harbour, where the main settlement was established, King George Sound and Oyster Harbour. Included among its numerous, precise and rather naive details are small figures of soldiers and Aborigines returning together from a kangaroo hunt, going fishing, meeting and travelling along the track in the foreground. Nakinna, a friend of Dale’s who lived mainly at the settlement, is the Aborigine in European clothing 'standing amongst the party returning from the kangaroo hunt’. No original drawing has been located for comparison, but it seems likely that both soldiers and Aborigines were added as local colour in London, figures with narrative interest being common improvements in panorama displays in order to attract the crowds.
In 1832 Dale was appointed acting administrator of the colony to assist Captain Irwin (see Elizabeth Irwin ) during Governor James Stirling 's absence in England. He became lieutenant by purchase on 16 November 1832 then left Western Australia in October 1833 on board HMS Isabella when his regiment was transferred to India. He took with him the shrunken, smoked head of Yagan, Chief of the Swan River , an outlawed Aborigine (shot by an 18-year-old shepherd) whose head had been suspended over a fire in a hollow tree for three months by a servant of one of the settlers in order to preserve it. A drawing of Yagan’s head by the English caricaturist George Cruikshank became the frontispiece to Dale’s Descriptive Account , while the lengthiest section of the pamphlet (ostensibly about his panorama) was devoted to a phrenological reading by 'T.J. Pettigrew, Esq., F.R.S., F.S.A., and F.L.S.’, who discovered Yagan to have been of the 'Malay species’, of the lowest class, 'overwhelmed by vice’, cunning, proud, vain, with a violent temper, prominent sexual feelings and an animal attachment to his offspring, etc., etc.’
Dale sold his commission in November 1835. He had disposed of some of his landholdings while still at the settlement but retained Avon, which he advertised for lease in 1850. He died at Bath in 1856. Dale River (WA) is named after him.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. November 1810
- Summary
- A government surveyor, explorer and administrator in Western Australia from 1829 to 1833, Dale made a number of watercolour views of the Swan River Colony. Prints after Dale are held in public and private collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1856
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1801-01-01 End Date1856-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- natural history painter, teacher, architectural draughtsman, surveyor and Church of England clergyman, was sent to Van Diemen’s Land by the Anglican missionary Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Ordained just before his departure by the Bishop of London, Rev. Thomas Spurr arrived at Hobart Town with his wife, two daughters and a son in the Fortitude on 20 June 1840 and was appointed chaplain at Clarence Plains. He announced in the Hobart Town Courier of 19 March 1841 that he was running a school there in conjunction with his parish duties and advertised for four students, mentioning that he could offer references from Cambridge University. He was still living at Clarence Plains on 9 February 1844 when he advertised in the same newspaper that he was available for employment as an architectural draughtsman, land surveyor or private tutor in mathematics or classics, by then having been dismissed from his clerical duties. By 1848 he was living at North Hobart and again offering all the above expertise (including 'any description of ornamental Line, or watercolour pencilling’), as well as 'drawings of insects from life and native plants, flowers &c.’ He also offered to teach painting. At the same time Mrs Spurr was advertising lessons in knitting flowers.
Spurr finally found full-time employment with the government as a draughtsman in the Survey Department. By 1851 he had been promoted chief draughtsman, the former occupant of the position having been dismissed; but on 17 August 1851 he too was given the sack, for insolence, drunkenness and incompetence. On 14 August 1856 Thomas Spurr, aged 55, died of apoplexy and alcoholism. No surviving art works have been identified.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1801
- Summary
- Dismissed as a clergyman, Spurr advertised as a drawing and painting teacher before going on to become an architectural draughtsman. A position he was consequently also sacked from, this time for alcoholism, insolence and incompetence. No identifiable art works are known.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 August 1856
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude52.5310214 Longitude-1.2649062 Start Date1791-01-01 End Date1856-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England
- Biography
- sketcher, amateur architect, diarist, Church of England clergyman and farmer, was born in England on 23 March 1791. He came to Western Australia in the Henry with his wife Mary Amelia, née Gladstanes, on 20 April 1841. Three sons, William , George and Edward, and two daughters, Agnes and Sophy, accompanied their parents; John was already in Victoria and Henry turned up in 1843 after completing his medical studies in England (and being involved in some unspecified scandal).
Wollaston settled with his family on a 100-acre farm he purchased in the Port Leschenault district and called Charterhouse after the English school where his father, Edward Wollaston, had been a teacher and his mother daughter of the headmaster. He began to build a church at nearby Picton and was later appointed chaplain for the district. With only the assistance of his sons and a thatcher called Hymus, of Horseheath, he succeeded in building a wooden structure with a thatched roof (later shingled) which he opened on 18 September 1842 (now the second oldest surviving church in Western Australia). Wollaston designed it himself. His modest effort, which initially had oiled calico instead of glass in the windows, was hardly comparable with St Saviour’s, Leeds, a very large stone church in Commissioners’ Gothic style, as Wollaston ruefully admitted in his diary entry describing the opening. Nevertheless, Picton’s unusual liturgical planning may well owe something to this source. In 1843 Wollaston assisted in furnishing plans for Wannerup and Busselton churches, the architect of the latter, a Mr Forsyth, working under his direction.
The Wollastons moved to Bunbury late in 1843 then to Albany in 1848 where he completed a more substantial, stone, church building which had been in progress for some years. In 1849 he was appointed the first archdeacon of the Church of England in Western Australia and, as part of his archidiaconal duties, made five tours of Western Australia’s settled areas. He died at Albany on 3 May 1856.
Wollaston is known for the copious personal diaries he kept during his Australian years, part-published as Wollaston’s Picton Journal (Perth 1948) and Wollaston’s Albany Journals (Perth 1954). The originals (Royal Commonwealth Society, London), which were sent to friends in England and later returned to him, contain an occasional tiny sketched figure (e.g. an outline of the window-glazing proposed for Albany Church) more informational than aesthetic in aim and achievement. On 20 April 1842 he wrote in his journal that he was 'send[ing] to Tommy a drawing from life of the tail and claw of a kangaroo’ and on 4 September 1843 he included an elevation of Fremantle church, noting 'I am a very bad draftsman’. Several paintings of Western Australian scenes (p.c.) have been attributed to him but these may be by William, the acknowledged artist of the family.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 March 1791
- Summary
- Wollaston is known for the copious personal diaries he kept during his Australian years (1841/1856). These were sent to friends in England and later returned to him. They contained the occasional illustrated entry or tiny sketched figure.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3 May 1856
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude-29.0328038 Longitude167.9483137 Start Date1791-01-01 End Date1856-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Norfolk Island, Australia
- Biography
- topographical artist, sketcher and sailor, was born on Norfolk Island on 13 December 1791, third son of Philip Gidley King , the third Governor of NSW, and the only son of King’s wife Anna Josepha, née Coombe. He left for England with his family in 1796 to be educated then entered the Royal Navy in 1807. He returned to Sydney in September 1817 as commander of an expedition to explore 'the yet undiscovered coast of New Holland, and for completing, if possible, the circumnavigation of that continent’. He undertook four surveying voyages from Sydney before retiring to England in 1823. His journals along with his sketches and charts were published in England in 1827. Between 1826 and 1830 King took part in the South American Survey, charting the coasts of Peru, Chile and Patagonia as commander of the Adventure . Drawings made on these expeditions are in the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
King owned large estates in New South Wales granted to him by his father and by Governors Macquarie and Brisbane. In 1824 he became a shareholder in the Australian Agricultural Company and was appointed its resident commissioner in 1839, having returned to live in the colony in 1832. He continued to carry out exploration and survey work, visiting the Murrumbidgee River region in 1837 38 and New Zealand and Norfolk Island in 1838 and 1839. Between 1843 and 1855 he undertook further surveys, including ones to Port Stephens, Parramatta and Newcastle. He was a fellow of the Royal and Linnaean Societies, a member of the Royal Asiatic Society and a corresponding member of the Zoological Society.
In 1855 King was promoted Rear-Admiral. He died on 26 February the following year, survived by his wife Harriet, née Lethbridge, from Launceston, Cornwall, whom he had married in England in 1817; there were eight children of the marriage. Conrad Martens painted at least two splendid, highly finished watercolours of King’s naval funeral procession on Sydney Harbour (ML, p.c.). A plaster portrait medallion of King, made by Thomas Woolner in 1854 and still in its original frame, was presented to the Art Gallery of New South Wales by his son Philip Gidley King (the younger) in 1891.
King sketched throughout his life. A copy of a drawing by W.N. Chapman , View of the Town of Sydney on Norfolk Island (1804, ML), and a watercolour and pencil sketch of a lion dated 1805 were done when he was about 13. More professional efforts followed. In the preface to Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia (London 1826) he states:
the views with which these volumes are illustrated were engraved by Mr Finden from my own sketches on the spot; the charts, which are reductions of those in the Admiralty Atlas were engraved by Mr. Walker; and the three plates of Natural History by Mr. Curtis [q.v.], from drawings made from the specimens by himself, by Henry C. Field, Esq., and by Miss M. Field’.
According to his son, the frontispiece illustration of a Patagonian was 'drawn from my father’s sketches by Mr. Runciman, who married my father’s sister, Elizabeth King’ (i.e. Charles Runciman, brother of the better-known British painter Alexander Runciman).
Illustrations after King also appeared in his and Captain R. FitzRoy 's Proceedings of the First Expedition under the Command of Capt. P. Parker King (London 1839), the first volume of the Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle between the Years 1826 and 1838 Describing their Examination of the Southern Shores of South America and the Beagle’s Circumnavigation of the Globe . Other illustrations are after Conrad Martens and Augustus Earle , with one work stated to be by King 'with elements of’ Conrad Martens’ – an artist well patronised by the King family after he came to live in New South Wales. (King later copied landscapes by Martens, then some of his copies were re-copied by James Lethbridge Templer , King’s nephew.) The second volume of the Narrative contains two views of Valdivia after King.
Several of King’s sketchbooks and various separate works are in the Mitchell Library, many the originals for the engravings that appeared in his various publications. Ranging from topographical, natural history and ethnographical subjects to the occasional portrait sketch, they show that King was a prolific artist with some talent for landscape but with little grasp of figure drawing. Early caricatures, like The Quarter Deck with Admiral de Courcy and his daughter promenading on board the Diana (?) in 1809(?) and his ink portrait of Commodore Baudin (1802, ML), which has only a hint of caricature, are more successful than his more idealised portraits of young men. His son recollected that King 'in his early days was fond of caricaturing and got into scrapes, but the neatness of his pen marked him out as a marine survey[or] and w[atercolourist]’. Surprisingly, King’s watercolour of Bungaree, annotated 'Boon-ga-ree Aboriginal of New So Wales 1819 who accompanied me in my first voyage to the NW Coast’, appears to be an adaptation of the 1831 lithograph by Charles Rodius rather than an original work.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 13 December 1791
- Summary
- Phillip Parker King,an explorer, surveyor and sketcher, was commander of an expedition to explore the coast of New Holland. His journals, sketches and charts appeared in a number of publications. His sketchbooks and other works are held in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 February 1856
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude32.4957861 Longitude-116.9792413 Start Date1829-01-01 End Date1855-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Real del Monte, Mexico
- Biography
- sketcher and pastoralist, was born at Real del Monte, Mexico, on 13 October 1829, second son of the 12 children of Captain Charles Tindal RN and Anne Sarah, née Grant. He was a brother of Mary Tindal . Frederick seems to have studied engineering and carpentry and at one time thought of becoming a professional surveyor, but in mid 1850 he set out with capital of £1000 to join his brother Charles in New South Wales. The latter part of the voyage on board the General Hewitt was passed in some discomfort, Frederick wrote, all being 'rolling and pitching, shipping seas, wet cabins and sick beds, the experienced surgeon continually drunk, passengers and captain squabbling’. Nevertheless, he made several paintings and drawings of his fellow passengers, including one of the barrister Frederick William Meymott, later a well-known judge.
On arrival Frederick joined Charles on his property, Koreelah, on the Clarence River. Soon afterwards he was setting up a turning lathe and asking his father to send him some wood. It arrived in February 1853 accompanied by his portfolio of English sketches, which was 'very much admired’. Frederick enclosed several drawings with his letters home. For instance, early in 1851 he had sent back a sketch of the Koreelah homestead and, later in the year, a view of 'Mr Mylne’s home at Eatonswill’ and a drawing of 'a common parrot of our district’. In late 1851 he forwarded a coloured sketch of Wyangerie Plains and in July 1853, after a visit to a property on the Darling Downs, a view of the homestead 'with a fierce looking stockman supposed to be looking after cattle’.
In October 1851 Charles wrote to his father enclosing Frederick’s sketch of their Aboriginal servant Jacky, who had recently decamped. The following August Frederick, after attending a corroboree, wrote to England: 'The few sketches I have made are too large and important for an envelope’. On another occasion, however, he confessed to little success in his attempts at Aboriginal portraits: 'The sensitive creatures dislike standing still to be stared at’. Frederick also copied sketches some of which were apparently published in London. A letter home dated 3 January 1854 notes: 'The drawings I sent home are copies of sketches by an artist [possibly Conrad Martens ] who would have been surprised to have found them in the Illustrated London News '.
When the lease of Koreelah expired in April 1854, the cattle were transferred to Ramornie (also on the Clarence). By June Frederick was making an exploratory expedition to Queensland looking for pasture. On his return, he found that his younger brother, Arthur, had drowned when coming to the Clarence from Sydney. Frederick shared his fate. While managing Ramornie when Charles was in London he drowned when attempting to cross the Clarence River at Smith’s Falls on 22 June 1855. (Two years later the youngest Tindal brother, Francis, was drowned when the Dunbar was wrecked off Sydney Heads.)
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 October 1829
- Summary
- Pastoralist who sketched various subjects including Aboriginal portraits, homesteads and Australian fauna. Tindal drowned aged 25 while attempting to cross the Clarence River in NSW. By unfortunate coincidence it was the same fate that met his younger brother two years earlier and the same fate that would meet his other brother two years later when the Dunbar was wrecked off Sydney Heads.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 June 1855
- Age at death
- 26
Details
Latitude50.407478 Longitude-4.6678178 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1855-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lostwithiel, Cornwall, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and military officer, was born in Lostwithiel, Cornwall on 5 February 1815, ninth of the ten children of Captain John Hext and Elizabeth, née Staniforth. He joined the 4th King’s Own Regiment in 1835 and, after training, sailed to NSW where the regiment was stationed. He arrived at Hobart on 12 November 1836, went on to Sydney then left for India with his regiment in August 1837.
Captain Hext returned to Hobart Town on 24 November 1842, having fortuitously escaped the infamous wreck of the convict transport Waterloo in Table Bay, Cape Town on 28 August (he was on shore at the time). In December he visited Port Arthur and sketched the penal settlement and two views of Eaglehawk Neck. One showed the ferocious guard dogs stationed at precise intervals across this narrow neck of land (to prevent convicts escaping) as harmless, chubby pups. Early in 1843 Hext rejoined his regiment in India. He served there intermittently until his death from 'apoplexy’ at Attock in the Punjab on 26 January 1855.
At Liverpool, England in about 1845 Charles Hutchins published lithographs from seven of Hext’s sketches as Views in Australia and Tasmania . Along with the four Tasmanian views were two Aboriginal subjects and a scene of a cricket match in progress in the military barracks’ square, Sydney. One English and two South African scenes and a view of the wreck of the Waterloo make up Hext’s eleven known prints. The original of the last survives (private collection).
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 5 February 1815
- Summary
- Sketcher and military officer, he was stationed in Australia twice and sketched local scenes. In about 1845 Charles Hutchins published lithographs from seven of Hext's sketches as "Views in Australia and Tasmania".
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 January 1855
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude51.4534889 Longitude-1.031872959 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1855-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- blacksmith, gold prospector and sketcher, son of George Hiscock, was born in Berkshire, England. He arrived at Geelong in 1841 on board the Caroline and worked as a blacksmith at nearby Buninyong. There, on 8 August 1851, Hiscock (using 'crowbar and milk-dish’) made the first significant discovery of gold in the Port Phillip District (Victoria), thereby winning the substantial reward offered by Melbourne businessmen for the first gold find. Hiscock’s sketch, Gold at Buninyong (La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria), although dated 8 August 1851, was apparently drawn later as a record of the event. Not too much later, however, as he died at Buninyong in 1855.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1809
- Summary
- Blacksmith, gold prospector and sketcher, born in England, he arrived at Geelong in 184. In 1851 he made the first significant discovery of gold in the Port Phillip District, Vic and drew a sketch to commemorate the event.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1855
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude55.75 Longitude-2.5 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1855-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Berwickshire, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and surveyor, was the eldest child of George Scott and Betty, née Pringle, of Earlston, Berwickshire, Scotland.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1800
- Summary
- Sketcher and surveyor. Scott made numerous surveying expeditions throughout Tasmania, laid out the town of Bothwell and published a chart of Tasmania.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1855
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude56.0873647 Longitude-3.9067537 Start Date1792-01-01 End Date1855-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, surveyor and military officer, was born in the parish of Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland, on 15 June 1792.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 June 1792
- Summary
- Painter, surveyor and military officer. A resident of Sydney, he made topographical sketches and surveys and painted portraits.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 October 1855
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude52.5623089 Longitude-1.8239794 Start Date1790-01-01 End Date1855-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sutton Coldfield, England, UK
- Biography
- portrait painter, engraver and professional photographer, was born at Sutton Coldfield, England in 1790, according to Alfred Bock , whose biographical notes on Thomas Bock are not entirely reliable. The convict records state that he was born at Hammerwich, near Lichfield, in 1793 (by calculation). The burial registry of Holy Trinity Church, Hobart, however, gives his age as 65, which points to 1790 as being the correct year.
Bock’s artistic life began with his apprenticeship to an engraver in Birmingham, probably Thomas Brandard (1779-1830). This apparently finished not long before he married Charity Broome at Birmingham on 2 January 1814; they had five children. Bock was in business as an engraver in Birmingham in 1814. Atkin has identified the premises where he worked as an engraver and miniaturist as: Upper Temple Street (1815), Duddeston Street (1816-17), then Hull Street (1823). Little else is known about his career in England, except that he was awarded a silver medal by the Society of Arts in 1817 for a portrait engraving, after which he set himself up as an engraver and miniature painter at 24 Great Charles Street, Birmingham. (Atkin notes that a trade card exists from this address.) A copper engraving of the Good Samaritan done after a picture by J.V. Barber for the cover of the programme for the Birmingham Musical Festival in October 1820 is held privately.
In April 1823 Bock and Mary Day Underhill were tried at the Warwick assizes for administering a drug to Ann Yates with the intention of bringing about an abortion. Both were sentenced to 14 years’ transportation, Underhill being sent to New South Wales and Bock to Van Diemen’s Land. He arrived in the Asia on 19 January 1824. Neither wife nor children followed him to the colony. Little is known of his personal life in Hobart Town until the early 1840s, by which time he appears to have been living with Mary Anne Cameron, the widow of a seaman, who had two children: Henry George, born July 1832, and Alfred, who adopted his stepfather’s name.
Bock’s first wife died at Birmingham on 28 June 1844. On 23 July 1850, he married Mary Anne Cameron in Holy Trinity Church, Hobart Town. The eldest of their five sons, born between 1843 and 1853, Edwin Morland Bock, was said to have shown great promise as an artist before his early death in 1853, aged 11. Afterwards Thomas Bock was said to have been a broken man, never fully recovering from the blow. His post-mortem sketch of Edwin is in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.
On arrival at Hobart Town in 1824 Bock was assigned to Dr E.F. Bromley, a naval officer. In November 1832 he was granted a free pardon for his exemplary conduct. He appears to have introduced engraving to the colony and his talents were soon put to use. In December 1824 he engraved a plate for a $4 banknote to be issued by the Bank of Van Diemen’s Land, the first of several plates he executed. Over the next few years, however, Bock’s engraving work seems to have been largely confined to letterheads and similar commercial productions, together with some illustrations for the almanacs issued by James Ross and Henry Melville in 1829, 1830 and 1834. His real work in the colony was portraiture, in which he built up a widely-spread clientele.
The directory in Andrew Bent’s Tasmanian Almanack for the years 1825 to 1829 lists Thomas Bock as a 'portrait painter, historical and writing engraver’ at various addresses, so his colonial career in portraiture appears to have begun then. The gallery where he exhibited his work and gave lessons in painting in 1831 was at 1 Liverpool Street, then he moved to 22 Campbell Street. He worked mainly in watercolour, pastel and pencil and combinations of these, little being executed in oils. His work is of a high standard and his pictures of colonial notables have not only considerable artistic merit but personal and social interest.
He is probably best known for the series of portraits he made for G.A. Robinson of 14 Tasmanian Aboriginal members of Robinson’s missionary party during the period 1823-35. Copies were commissioned by Lady Franklin and, with her permission, Bock also painted copies for Henry Dowling. With those painted by Nicolas-Martin Petit , these are the most useful pictures we have of the Indigenous Tasmanian population. Bock replicated them many times; the outline sketches which appear to have been used in preparing the various copies are now in the collections of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery. In 1842 Lady Franklin commissioned him to copy a portrait of Mathinna, the Aboriginal girl she adopted during the period she lived in Van Diemen’s Land, which she intended to send to London to be lithographed in order to show the English a 'degree of civilization’ as compared with Bock’s prints of 'wild natives’. However, no prints of the 7-year-old Mathinna in her favourite red dress are known to have eventuated. One of Bock’s watercolours of Mathinna is in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery; the other is represented in a private collection (UK).
On 30 October 1838, Bock arrived at Sydney in the Mary Ann Watson . At the request of Sidney Stephen he soon began work on a portrait of G.A. Robinson, undertaken in three sittings at the premises of the printer Raphael Clint , presumably so that Bock could copy it directly on to the lithographic stone. Robinson ordered 10 copies of the finished portrait, but no one in Clint’s workshop was able to pull the prints and the portrait is believed to have been sent to England to be lithographed. An attributed oil portrait of an unknown man in the Art Gallery of New South Wales may also have been made during the Sydney visit, but Bock rapidly abandoned Clint and returned to Tasmania.
The 1845 Hobart Town Exhibition included five works by Bock, all portraits of Hobart Town citizens and their families. He also sketched condemned prisoners both before and after death, a series of pencil portraits of bushrangers (ML) being of particular interest. A thorough study of Thomas Bock’s portraiture was made in 1991 in conjunction with a major travelling exhibition mounted by the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.
Having become interested in the newly-invented photography after being shown English daguerreotypes by Bishop F.R. Nixon , Bock announced his intention to take daguerreotypes 'in a short time’ in the Hobart Town Advertiser of 29 September 1843. Threatened with legal action by George Baron Goodman , his venture into commercial photography was publicly delayed five years, then he included photography as part of his business. He introduced painted backdrops to his studio portrait daguerreotypes from about 1850 and most of his dozen or so surviving daguerreotypes have these, a characteristic feature being, as Newton points out, a piece of trailing ivy. His price list and some notes he compiled on various photographic processes also survive (Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts). He produced portraits by the daguerreotype process until his death, when Alfred took over the studio.
Thomas Bock died in Hobart Town on 18 March 1855. A posthumous exhibition of his paintings and drawings was held at Hood 's Gallery from late April to early May. Catalogues were sold 'at the door’ for sixpence, but none are known to have survived.
Writers:
Plomley, N. J. B.Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1790
- Summary
- A first-class engraver and photographer, Thomas Bock was transported to Van Dieman's Land for assisting in an abortion. He stayed on in Australia after his release and made a career of printmaking, portrait painting and photography.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 March 1855
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude42.7719102 Longitude2.6995277 Start Date1790-01-01 End Date1855-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Estagel, France
- Biography
- watercolourist and marine draughtsman, was born in Estagel, near Perpignan, France. He, Taunay and Pellion were the artists and draughtsmen employed on Louis de Freycinet’s officially-sponsored French expedition around the world aboard the Uranie in 1817-20. Arago wrote a series of letters to a friend giving an account of the voyage, published as Promenade autour du Monde (Paris 1822), which included three plates on Australian subjects and an atlas. The introduction by M. Gérard to the English translation, Nar rative of a Voyage round the World (London 1823), stated that Arago’s collection of drawings was 'one of the most remarkable that has been seen, both for the number and variety of the subjects. It offers the strongest proof of the unwearied zeal and remarkable intelligence of M. Arago, the draftsman to the expedition. It consists of about five hundred drawings representing landscapes, views of the coasts, the subjects of zoology and botany, also a considerable series of drawings of the natives of the different islands at which the expedition touched, their costume, their habits and weapons’.
The Uranie left France in September 1817 and sailed via the Cape of Good Hope to Shark Bay in Western Australia, arriving on 12 September 1818. Arago’s Encounter with the Natives depicts a member of the ship’s company offering trinkets and clothing to the Aborigines while Arago himself performs on the castanets. Leaving Shark Bay on 27 September, the ship sailed via Timor and the Sandwich Islands to Sydney, where it remained from 19 November to 25 December 1819. Saying he had no absurd national prejudices, Arago accepted all offers of entertainment and sightseeing and enjoyed the physical beauties of the town.
His watercolour taken from behind a stone fence above Campbell’s store, Une Vue du Port de Sidney, prise de l’Observatrice (Croquis d’apr é s nature) , dated 13 December 1819 (sold at Christie’s, South Kensington, on 28 May 1987), is a competent but oddly telescoped view of the east side of the harbour, including Government House and stables. It may have been done with the help of a camera lucida. Local excursions included a visit to John Oxley at Kirkham, Camden, resulting in A View when in the Interior of New Holland near the Torrent of Kinkham [sic] in his Narrative . Arago’s Les Sauvages des Environs de Sydney was included in the official Atlas volume of the voyage.
The expedition returned to France via Cape Horn and Rio de Janeiro, arriving in November 1820. As well as his official sketches, Arago had made marginal drawings (including sketches of Aboriginal dwellings in Western Australia) in the manuscript journal kept by the Uranie 's assistant surgeon, Joseph Paul Gaimard. In Paris he drew illustrations and political caricature for the journal La Mode (1835) but later went blind, publishing his autobiography as Memoires d’un Aveugle . He died in Paris at the age of 65.
Bernard Smith characterises Arago’s work as being 'highly coloured by romantic attitudes. He delighted in the portrayal of scenes of native prowess and violence … His View Taken in the Interior of New Holland afforded him the chance of combining his interest in native combat with that geological curiosity, the natural arch’. While he presented the Australian Aborigines as physically splendid and not undignified in battle, they compared unfavourably with his conception of the Polynesians as happy and free, 'romantic exemplars of the hard primitive life. The New Hollanders and Fuegians were by contrast little better than beasts’.
Writers:
Dixon, ChristineCallaway, Anita
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1790
- Summary
- Watercolourist and marine draughtsman. Arago was employed on Louis de Freycinet's officially-sponsored French expedition around the world aboard the Uranie in 1817-20.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1855
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1789-01-01 End Date1855-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, England, UK
- Biography
- natural history artist, illustrator, lithographer, naturalist and commissary, was born in Liverpool, England, on 8 October 1789, eldest surviving son of John Timothy Swainson, a customs officer, and his second wife Frances, née Stanway. William served in the British Army’s Commissariat Department in Malta (1807) and Sicily (1808-15) and attained the rank of assistant commissary-general. Swainson collected and sketched the indigenous plants and animals of virtually every place he visited, making extensive collections (especially of fish) in Sicily.
Retiring from the army on half-pay in 1814, he began pursuing his interest in natural history more seriously. He joined an Austrian scientific expedition to South America in 1817-18 but, receiving little encouragement, prepared only a brief note of his travels on his return. In 1828, according to Platts, he spent six months making sketches in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, then came back to London and taught himself lithography in order to make his own illustrations for his book, The Birds of Brazil and Mexico . The lithographs in his two volumes (finally published in London in 1834-35) were of fine quality and technically important pioneer efforts, but publication had been so long delayed that the book’s contents had been superseded. Largely from financial necessity, Swainson published prolifically in the 1820s and 1830s, including contributing the sections on farm and garden pests to John Claudius Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Agriculture (4th edn, London 1839) and Encyclopaedia of Gardening (new edn, London 1834). He always provided all his own illustrations.
After suffering financial losses and the death of his wife Mary, née Parkes, whom he had married in 1823, Swainson migrated to New Zealand with his five children and his second wife Ann, née Grasby, in 1837. He arrived at Wellington in the James in 1841 and was granted land on the Hutt River which he farmed and where he continued to collect and sketch. He had a broad knowledge of botany and zoology and a wide circle of scientific acquaintances. His five volumes of correspondence (Linnaean Society, London) include letters from Sir Joseph Banks, who nominated him for election as a fellow of the Royal Society; from Allan and Richard Cunningham, the Sydney botanists; from John Gould and from the Sydney collectors Alexander and William Sharp Macleay. According to Nora McMillan in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography , it was Swainson’s pertinacious adherence to W.S. Macleay’s absurdly convoluted 'quinary system’ of classification which resulted in his scientific work being largely dismissed. On 11 September 1840 Swainson wrote to the British Museum offering to sell his plant collections, but the museum declined the offer.
In 1850 Swainson (called 'the “Quinarian” of New Zealand’) was invited to Australia to carry out surveys of timber trees for the Victorian and Tasmanian governments. Travelling extensively, he stayed approximately eighteen months in each colony. A paper he delivered at Hobart Town was published in the Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Van Diemen’s Land , vol. 3, and appears to have been politely received but, according to Michael Hoare, his Victorian Botanical Report (1853) was a disaster.
Australian sketches by Swainson were made both in watercolour and pencil, the majority being finely worked pencil drawings. Some, such as Bealby’s Range, near Dandenong, Port Phillip (1853, TMAG), have white highlights. They are usually inscribed with place and date, making it possible to trace his whereabouts with accuracy, eg Spotted Gum, Ferntree Valley, Port Phillip, 10th May, 1853 (p.c.). Several public institutions hold examples. There is a small collection of sketches of Tasmanian ( In the Public Gardens, Port Arthur ), New South Wales ( Melia azadaric—Parramatta Bridge 1850) and New Zealand subjects in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Another set of pencil views of New South Wales and Tasmanian subjects (1853-54) is in the Mitchell Library, and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew holds ten pencil sketches of Australasian, chiefly New Zealand, trees (1847-52). The Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, has the major holding of his Australasian drawings, again primarily of New Zealand subjects. Nobbie [sic] Island, Newcastle, Australia , two views of Australian trees at Port Phillip dated 1853 and other Australian drawings, including a view of the Scott family’s barn on Ash Island, near Newcastle (see Helena and Harriet Scott ), were sold in 1979-80. Numerous scientific papers are listed in the Royal Society’s Catalogue .
Swainson returned to New Zealand from Australia in 1854. He died on his property, Fern Grove, in the Hutt Valley, on 7 December 1855, survived by his second wife, their three daughters and the four sons of his first marriage. McMillan considers that 'His botanical work is unimportant; his claim to remembrance rests upon his zoological work and upon his fine zoological illustrations’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 8 October 1789
- Summary
- Natural history artist, illustrator, lithographer, naturalist and commissary. McMillan considers that 'His botanical work is unimportant; his claim to remembrance rests upon his zoological work and upon his fine zoological illustrations'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 December 1855
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1789-01-01 End Date1855-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, teacher and clergyman, son of Thomas Wittenoom of London, was educated at Winchester and Oxford, then ordained minister of the Church of England. He became, in turn, rector at Southampton, lecturer at Brasenose College, Oxford, and headmaster of Newark Grammar School, Nottinghamshire (1813-28). His first wife Mary, née Teasdale, died in 1828. The following year Wittenoom was appointed chaplain to the new Swan River settlement (WA). Arriving at Fremantle in the Wanstead with his mother, sister and four sons on 30 January 1830, Wittenoom was the only Anglican clergyman in the colony from the middle of the year until 1836. He held services at Perth, Fremantle, Guildford and as far afield as Albany. During his travels he found time to make pencil and wash sketches of local scenes, including Front View of the Artist’s House (1832, Art Gallery of Western Australia).
Wittenoom established a Classical School in Perth and became a willing patron and participant in the cultural life of the colony. Mary Watson Helms became his second wife at Perth on 3 January 1839; they had two daughters and a son who died in infancy. Wittenoom died in Perth on 23 January 1855. After his death his widow and daughter ran Perth Girls’ School (1856-58).
Writers:
Chapman, Barbara
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1789
- Summary
- A sketcher, teacher and clergyman, he established a Classical School in Perth and became a willing patron and participant in the cultural life of the colony. Wittenoom was the only clergyman in the colony between 1830 and 1836.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 January 1855
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude-33.816667 Longitude151 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1854-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parramatta, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- embroiderer, poet, teacher and musician, was born on 16 January 1831, one of the twelve children of John Foreman and Mary Staff. In 1846 she began to teach at the school at Parramatta, NSW, which her parents had established in 1827. Eliza’s journal (1846-53) reveals that she was deeply religious. Her creative talents included writing verse, playing the organ, sketching and needlework. Apart from her large needlework picture of the triple-decker pulpit in St John’s Church of England, Parramatta, no other examples of her needlework have been found, despite references in her diary to them. Eliza died prematurely in 1854, aged twenty-three.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Toy, Ann
Note: Heritage biography.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1831
- Summary
- An accomplished young colonial woman, made use of her talents in practical ways during her very short life.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1854
- Age at death
- 23
Details
Latitude53.9825271 Longitude-1.385249993 Start Date1818-01-01 End Date1854-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yorkshire, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, author, naval officer and administrator, was born in Yorkshire on 16 May 1818, fifth and youngest surviving son of Rev. Thomas Cutler Rudston Read and Louisa, née Cholmley. He entered the Royal Navy in 1831 and first visited Australia as a young naval officer in 1838, his career later taking him to China, Brazil and the Pacific islands. On resigning his commission in 1849 he spent some time travelling in New Zealand; a pencil sketch of Government House, Wellington (Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW), dates from this period.
The lure of gold brought Read back to Australia in the brig Halcyon which docked at Newcastle in 1851. He spent a few months mining at the Turon, then an attack of sandy blight caused him to return to Sydney. From Sydney he went by ship to Melbourne where in May 1852 Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe appointed him an assistant commissioner of Crown lands on the Victorian goldfields. His duties, which included the issuing of mining licences, took him in turn to Mount Alexander, Castlemaine and Bendigo, until a new appointment as police magistrate sent him to Myer’s Creek in August. Forced to resign in January 1853 because of ill-health, Read returned to England and published a record of his experiences, What I Heard, Saw and Did at the Australian Goldfields (London, 1853). The book was illustrated with chromolithographs and uncoloured engravings of scenes of goldfields’ life indebted to both S.T. Gill and G.F. Angas , such as Junction of Pegleg & Sailor’s Gully. Bendigo and Chief Commissioner’s Camp Castlemaine, Escort Leaving for Melbourne , drawn by Read and lithographed in England by W.L. Walton. Read died in London the year after its publication.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 May 1818
- Summary
- Charles Rudston Read first visited Australia as a young naval officer in 1838. His career enabled him to travel to China, Brazil, the Pacific Islands and New Zealand. He captured the essence of the Victorian goldfields in the 1850s and the gold-digger's life in his illustrated book, "What I Heard, Saw and Did at the Australian Goldfields".
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1854
- Age at death
- 36
Details
Latitude53.4075 Longitude-2.991944 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1854-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Liverpool, Lancashire, UK
- Biography
- drawing teacher, surveyor and squatter, was the sixth and youngest child of Benjamin Smythe, surveyor and civil engineer, and his wife, Annie, from Liverpool, Lancashire. Henry arrived at Launceston, Van Diemen’s Land on board the Kate with his parents and sisters, on 3 March 1831. They had come from the Swan River settlement (Western Australia) where his father had been employed as surveyor to Thomas Peel but, never having been paid a salary, arrived destitute and without Henry’s older brothers, who remained in Western Australia to work off the debts. Henry and his father set up in Cameron Street, Launceston, as 'Land Surveyors, Civil Engineers, Architects and General Measurers’. For a time both were teachers too, Benjamin conducting a school while Henry advertised 'lessons in drawing’ at Launceston in April 1834. Since Henry was simultaneously announcing the continuation of his surveying and planning business, now an independent enterprise located in Brisbane Street, it seems certain that the classes he was offering were primarily of a technical nature, including cartography. H.W.H. Smythe’s map of Launceston was announced as being 'ready for the engraver’ in the Cornwall Chronicle of 8 August 1835.
Henry’s sister Martha married Captain William Lonsdale in 1835 and the following September Lonsdale was appointed first resident police magistrate at Port Phillip (Victoria), an event that changed the Smythe family’s fortunes. Known as 'Long Smythe’ (he was 198 cm tall) Henry moved to Port Phillip in 1837 and worked as a surveyor at Westernport, later being appointed commissioner of Crown Lands for the Murray district. He married Jessie, youngest daughter of George Allan of Allan Vale near Launceston, on 19 February 1841, and they settled on a property, Gowangardie, on the Broken River, 15 miles from Shepparton, Victoria. He subsequently became a founding member of the Melbourne Club, a justice of the peace, and a police magistrate. Then the wheel of fortune spun again. Smythe was drowned in the Broken River in 1854.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- Colonial artist, primarily skilled in cartography, originally arriving in the Swan River Settlement with his family. As a result of dishonesty surrounding his father's employment, the Smythes moved to Launceston where better fortunes awaited their business and teaching enterprises, including a judicious marriage for Smythe's sister with Captain William Lonsdale which was followed by auspicious off
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1854
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1854-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, etcher and lithographer, was born in Camberwell Grove, near London. William Dixson thought that his London etchings and mezzotints (now lost) showed that he was 'evidently apprenticed to a good firm of engravers and lithographers and attained a very high standard’. An entry in Ormond’s Early Victorian Portraits indicates that he was probably trained by or worked with A.M. Huffam, an English line and mezzotint engraver and lithographer, and that an 1830 engraving of William IV (British Museum) is his work. He arrived at Sydney on 25 February 1836 in the Roslyn Castle , commanded by Captain Richards, a relative. Years later sketches and sketchbooks that Nicholas left with Richards were restored to the family but have since been lost, probably dispersed.
According to Dixson and Lionel Lindsay , the collection showed that Nicholas was fond of depicting Shakespearian and mythological subjects. The erotic tendencies and 'effeminate temperament’ Lindsay found in Danae , Leda and The Family Group drawn in Sydney (which depicted the artist, his wife and children nude) were evidence of the influence of 'Fuseli, Stothard and the “keepsake” artists’. Lindsay referred to 'the rustle of skirts [Nicholas] drew for a livelihood’ and Dixson also noted his English fashion-plate illustrations. A sketch for a large picture of Venus Victrix was described by Dixson, while Lindsay referred to an 'etching’ of the Jamaican boatman Billy Blue (see East ), the only evidence that Nicholas etched in New South Wales.
Nicholas certainly made lithographs and he apparently used an anastatic press which produced prints from zinc plates. In November 1838 Edward Barlow 's Repository of Arts announced that it would publish 'A FAITHFUL PORTRAIT OF Sir Richard Bourke, a Full length Portrait of Mrs Taylor in the character of Don Giovanni / Also a full length portrait of MARY, a Native Black of Sydney … [and] the whole are drawn upon Zink by Mr W. Nicholas … who claims the sole right to use the art of Zincography in N.S.W. and Van Diemen’s Land’. By November 1840 Nicholas was reported as 'conducting Mr. Barlow’s business’. He produced plain and coloured lithographs of the boy Forbes (then recently rescued from 16 years of slavery on the island of Timor Laut) and a set of Profiles of Australian Aborigines which were largely reworkings of William Fernyhough 's Profiles of Natives . A lithograph after John Skinner Prout 's New Government House and Macquarie Fort, As Seen from the Domain (which Lionel Lindsay considered a 'brilliant translation…to the stone’) was recommended in the Australian of 30 January 1841 to those who wished 'to convey some idea of Sydney to their friends at a distance’.
Nicholas was best known as a portraitist. His large watercolour of Hannah Tompson, daughter-in-law of Charles Tompson senior , is dated 1839 (Mitchell Library [ML]). A smaller watercolour of John Dunmore Lang (ML) was made in 1841 for the wife of Robert Russell , while a miniature of Ellen McDouall Fitzgerald (Mrs John Crichton Stuart) in her wedding-dress (p.c.) was obviously painted the same year – when she married. In January 1842 Nicholas set up on a grander scale, advertising as a 'miniature painter on ivory and in watercolours, lithographer and draughtsman’. He provided an attiring room for ladies to change into their best clothes at his studio-residence, 6 Elizabeth Street South, and charged from 1 to 3 guineas for his portrait miniatures.
Samuel Elyard recollected that Nicholas was in demand from soon after his arrival and surviving portraits prove that he soon attracted the colony’s social and professional élite. Several versions of Anna Maria Macarthur’s likeness (private collections) and portraits of Mary Murray , Bishop William Grant Broughton (ML) and Major T.L. Mitchell are dated 1843. His portrait of Benjamin Boyd Esq was reported as having been published by Arden’s Sydney Magazine that year. Nicholas’s portrait of John Rae , which J.S. Prout lent to the 1845 Hobart Town Exhibition, would also have been drawn in 1843. Despite such commissions, by August 1843 Nicholas was in debt for the huge sum of £1,422 8s 4d (said, however, to have been incurred years earlier). Further misfortune was visited on him in 1844 in the form of a 'large ball of fire, about two feet in diameter descending perpendicularly through the gable end of Mr. Nicholas’, the portrait painter’s house… A valuable collection of books and paintings were totally consumed, the furniture destroyed… the grate was forced from the fire place, and the very fire irons and fender melted down.’
During 1847-48 Nicholas drew and lithographed most of the portraits in William Baker 's Heads of the People and was mentioned in the journal as a watercolour and miniature painter. In 1847 the Sydney Morning Herald stated that he had 'more heads offered to him for decapitation than he is able to take care of’. His portrait of W.C. Wentworth, lithographed by J. Allan , was issued gratis with the Sydney Daily Advertiser of 2 September 1848. W.H. Ford included his drawing, Infant Piety , in that year’s lottery of 30 art works to be distributed among 200 subscribers paying a guinea each, while both first and second prizes offered in Joseph Grocott’s third art union in 1850 were a 'Water Colour Portrait of the winner to be painted by Mr. Nicholas, Sydney, neatly framed’.
Nicholas took an active part in Sydney’s early art exhibitions. The seven pictures he entered in the first exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia in 1847 received a lengthy critique in the Sydney Morning Herald , the reviewer calling Nicholas 'one of those quiet unobtrusive men of genius who work their way into notice and distinction without any assistance from the newspapers…He endeavours to make his backgrounds harmonise with his figures and is generally successful in the sketches of scenery he occasionally throws in.’ Nicholas also lent two contemporary English paintings from his collection to the exhibition: Italian Landscape by J. Dearman and Dancing Dolls by H. Montague.
His contributions to the society’s second exhibition in 1849 were less flatteringly reviewed, one of his 23 entries, Passiflora , being described as 'Full in size but deficient in quality’, while Death of Surveyor Kennedy was called 'a horrible detail, totally unfitted for public gaze’. Lady and Child was said to be 'in this artist’s best style except the drapery which is stiff and overdone’ and a portrait of Dr Bland was labelled 'daguerreotypist’ and 'several shades inferior’ to a portrait of the same sitter by Richard Read junior . The reviewer thought that 'miniature painters seldom become great artists, but when if as the one they strive to reach the other, a long course of study is requisite’. Nicholas had, however, been one of the three self-promoting artists comprising the hanging committee (the others were Conrad Martens and James Wilson ), all of whom were criticised for including excessive numbers of their own works and hanging them in the best places, a 'gross injustice against all other exhibitors’. This doubtless coloured the critique.
At this time Nicholas’s studio was at 197 Elizabeth Street but by April 1851 he was at 93 King Street, in the same building as the portrait painter Henry Robinson Smith . He last advertised as a portrait and miniature painter in July 1853, giving his address as Jamison Street. By then many miniature painters were being affected by the advent of photography, yet late portraits by Nicholas ('the society artist’) are not uncommon. Existing examples include a miniature of Hon. George Thornton (1852, ML) and at least two watercolour portraits of Sarah Morton Wentworth (wife of William Charles), thought to date from 1853 when she was about to leave for England and commissioned Nicholas to paint portraits of all the family as mementos. On 24 December 1853 the printers Woolcott & Clarke issued a steel engraving by Loftus of Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand 'from a pencil drawing by Mr Nicholas adapted from an imperfect daguerreotype’ taken when the bishop was visiting Sydney earlier in the year. So he may initially have profited from the new process, transferring daguerreotypes to the then more stable medium of watercolour.
Shortly before his death Nicholas purchased a farm at Kurnell, a possible indication of a change of career, but died aged 48 on 23 June 1854. Even in death nature was unkind, his corpse being almost washed from the open boat taking it from Kurnell across Botany Bay during a storm. He was buried in Sydney on 26 June. His widow and young family moved to New England leaving a number of unfinished portraits with H.R. Smith. Later Nicholas’s son alleged that a portrait of Lieutenant-Colonel George Johnston which Smith had signed (ML) was actually one of his father’s paintings Smith had merely touched up, offering as proof sketches for the portrait in one of the lost sketchbooks.
In Gleanings from My Scrap Book (1874), John Rae called Nicholas 'a clever but neglected artist’ and selected a photolithograph after The First Fancy Ball in Australia as his frontispiece. Dixson described him as 'clever, witty and rather caustic’ with a fair knowledge of the 'Italian, French and Spanish languages’. Numerous watercolour portraits of prominent European colonists, Aborigines and even Maoris (probably drawn in Sydney) survive in both public and private collections. Although apparently leaving the field of oil portraiture to James Wilson, Nicholas was generally considered, as the Sydney Morning Herald stated, 'the best portrait painter in watercolours in the colony’ in the 1840s.
Writers:
Johnson, Heather
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1807
- Summary
- A watercolourist, etcher and lithographer who liked to depict Shakespearian and mythological subjects. He was best known for his portraits and actively took part in various exhibitions around Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 June 1854
- Age at death
- 47
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1854-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- lithographer and public servant, son of James Boteler Wood, arrived at Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, in the Lang on 27 July 1824. Leaving his parents, brother and sister there, he continued on to Sydney where he worked as clerk to the registrar of the NSW Supreme Court. By 1826 he had returned to Tasmania and taken up an equivalent position in Hobart Town. During a visit to England in 1828 he married Eulalie Lambelet ( Wood ). The couple landed at Hobart Town in the Vibilia on 13 June 1829, bringing with them a lithographic press. James is said to have operated it with his wife, despite continuing his full-time position with the Supreme Court for at least another year.
He was described as a wine merchant in the baptismal register of his daughter, Isabella Eulalie Maria, in February 1831. By 1833 he had a bookshop in Liverpool Street, from which address he published Charles Atkinson 's lithographic Views through Hobart Town in September. In 1837 he began to publish Wood’s Almanacks . They continued to appear until 1857, although James died on 26 April 1854, so perhaps Eulalie Wood continued to play a major (unacknowledged) role in the business.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1802
- Summary
- Lithographer and public servant, son of James Boteler Wood, arrived at Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land, in the Lang on 27 July 1824. After marrying in England he returned to Australia with a lithographic press, which he operated with his new wife.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 April 1854
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude52.8606394 Longitude-1.1353704 Start Date1799-01-01 End Date1854-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bunny, Nottinghamshire, England
- Biography
- sketcher and traveller, was born in Bunny, Nottinghamshire, youngest son of Captain Joseph Boultbee and Sarah Elizabeth, née Lane. He worked in a merchant’s office during 1817, then embarked on a life of extensive travel. He apparently sketched wherever he went and kept a regular journal despite his rough itinerant existence. In 1821 Boultbee came to Van Diemen’s Land in the Woodlark , via Brazil and Barbados. There he hunted seals in Bass Strait. He then went to Sydney and Port Macquarie in New South Wales, sailing for New Zealand in 1825 and remaining there for the next three years. Between 1828 and 1830 he was based in Sydney, working as a fisherman. He sailed on a whaling ship to Perth and found a job with Mr Trigg on 7 February 1830. He then applied for a position as a clerk. Instead, on 11 September 1832, he was employed by Mr Morgan, the government storekeeper, to help transfer stores from Garden Island to the mainland. Tried in January 1833 for larceny, he was acquitted and spent the last part of his three years in Perth as a Swan River boatman.
Boultbee left Western Australia on a whaler bound for the Timor Sea. He died at Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1854. His manuscript 'Journal of a Rambler’ illustrated with rough sketches is now in the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington. It was published in 1986 with a selection of the sketches, none of an Australian subject.
Writers:
Dixon, Christine
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1799
- Summary
- Leading a peripatetic life, John Boultbee frequented a number of British 19th century outposts throughout his travels, including Australia and kept a journal of his adventures that would late be published. Illustrated with rough sketches, there are no drawings of any Australian subject.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1854
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude52.2928116 Longitude-3.73893 Start Date1792-01-01 End Date1854-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wales, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, surveyor and soldier, was born in Wales and spent much of his youth in London. Little is known of his family or education but he was accomplished in Latin, Greek and French. Appointed ensign in the Royal Staff Corps in June 1809 at the age of seventeen, he was promoted lieutenant in 1811 and later captain. He served in the Peninsular War under General Sir George Murray at Badajoz, Nivelles and Nive. With Captain William Dumaresq (later also of Sydney) he was responsible for returning to Venice the four bronze horses of St Mark’s which Napoleon had removed to Paris.
On 12 April 1817 Perry married Caroline Elizabeth Johnson of Baker Street, London, in St Paul’s, Hammersmith. Between 1819 and 1823 he held the appointment (on half-pay) of professor of topographical drawing at the Royal Military College. Then he went to the West Indies as private secretary and aide-de-camp to Governor Major-General William Nicolay, recording the place in a number of sketches and watercolour views (p.c.). The family returned to England in 1827 due to Perry’s ill-health and lived at Ampfield, Hampshire. Appointed deputy surveyor-general of New South Wales, he travelled to Sydney with his wife, their six children, Miss Julia Thomas (a member of his wife’s family) and a servant, Ann Barnett, in the barque Sovereign , arriving on 3 August 1829. In Sydney he lived mainly at Birchgrove until moving to his own home, Bona Vista, Darlinghurst, in about 1832. In 1835 he purchased the 100-acre Spring Cove estate (now Leichhardt North) and built Austenham House, 'a good brick stuccoed cottage with out offices, stable and garden’. He sold this in 1840 and erected another 'large brick house’ closer to Iron Cove, initially also called Austenham but later known as Kalouan.
Often sorely tried by his superior officer, Perry nevertheless remained Major Thomas Mitchell 's deputy until 1853 and frequently acted as surveyor-general during Mitchell’s absences from the office. In September 1836 he accompanied Colonel George Barney to assist in choosing a site for settlement in northern Australia (Port Curtis, the present Gladstone in Queensland). Perry resigned due to ill health on 1 October 1853 and he and his wife moved to Kiama (NSW). He died there on 15 January 1854, his wife having predeceased him by only a few weeks. Buried in Marden Hill (Kendall’s) Cemetery, Kiama, they were survived by nine children.
Perry’s artistic skills are evident from his appointment to teach topographical drawing to the young officers at the Royal Military College. His works were mostly watercolour landscapes, ranging from open countryside to waterfalls, including scenes on the Spanish Peninsula and in the West Indies. In New South Wales he painted a view of the original Austenham House and a scene showing the Perry and Marlay families at Government House (p.c.). A member of the committee of management for the second exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia held at Sydney in 1849, he also showed several paintings, including The Hawkesbury River, from Holiday Pass and Woolomombi [sic] in New England . The Sydney Morning Herald considered all to be 'of the same excellent character’, describing the former as 'the production of an artist who has studied nature intently, and, strictly adhering to his model, has succeeded in producing a striking portraiture of it’. His Wollomombi view was thought 'even better’. Scene in New England was shown posthumously at the 1854 Australian Museum Exhibition, View in Mauritius at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts in 1857.
Unfortunately, most of Perry’s paintings held by his great-grandson, A.S. Gill, were destroyed in a flood at Walcha in the 1930s. A few survive with other family members, including watercolour landscapes such as one of the Hawkesbury River, pencil sketches and prints. Some are mounted in a family album that includes sketches by other hands, possibly by Perry’s wife Caroline, and/or their daughter-in-law Selina Rose Perry, née Marlay. The National Library owns an untitled watercolour (c.1835) thought to be a harbour view near his Iron Cove home, while H.A. Moore 's sepia watercolour of Government House (1857, ML) is stated to be after a sketch by Captain Perry. Perry’s panoramic watercolour view of Sydney Harbour from above Blackwattle Bay was offered at auction in 1985. The Dixson Library holds a photograph of a chalk drawing believed to be a self-portrait.
Writers:
Oppenheimer, Jillian
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1792
- Summary
- Samuel Augustus Perry was a watercolourist, surveyor and soldier. Appointed deputy surveyor-general of New South Wales, he arrived in Australia in 1829. Perry, with Captain William Dumaresq, was responsible for returning to Venice the four bronze horses of St Mark's which Napoleon had removed to Paris.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15 January 1854
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude52.6024977 Longitude-1.8800139 Start Date1788-01-01 End Date1854-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Aldridge, Staffordshire, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, art teacher and property agent, was born on 6 February 1788, son of William Allport, a land surveyor and schoolmaster of Aldridge, Staffordshire, England, and his second wife Hannah, née Curzon. He was a contemporary and pupil of John Glover . With Glover’s sons John and William , he is believed to have set up as an art teacher in Birmingham in 1808. A letter from Sir William Denison to Allport’s son in 1861 on returning several of his father’s sketchbooks noted that they recalled scenes depicted by Glover and showed there was a great similarity of style between the two artists in the choice of subjects and their treatment.
Allport exhibited three local landscapes at the Royal Academy in 1811 and 1812. Between 1813 and 1820 he exhibited some 22 works with the Old Watercolour Society, mostly views of stock subjects in North Wales and the Lake District and ruined abbeys in Yorkshire. In 1818 he was elected to the Old Watercolour Society to fill the vacancy caused by Glover’s resignation. Having accompanied Glover to Europe that year, in 1819 he exhibited the first of some half-dozen Italian views, nearly all of Tivoli.
Allport painted with great delicacy and high finish, an eye for atmospheric gradation and some largeness in general detail. An 1816 drawing of Conway Castle, exhibited in 1819, was purchased for the British Museum in 1890. He last exhibited with the Old Watercolour Society in 1823, as an associate member, at which time his address was given as Lichfield. Little is known of his activities during the following 15 years. A catalogue now in the British Museum notes: 'he is believed to have given up art for commerce, and to have been engaged in the wine trade’. His surname was one to give colour to the rumour.
With his second wife Bertha, née Betts, and six children, Allport sailed from London in the Augustus Caesar on 17 November 1838, reaching Sydney on 1 April 1839. His younger brother, Joseph Allport, had earlier settled in Van Diemen’s Land with his wife Mary Morton Allport , who had received drawing lessons from Henry Curzon Allport while a pupil at the school conducted by his parents in Aldridge. John Glover and his family had also settled there. Despite the good wishes of friends in England such as Rev. Charles Kingsley, who provided letters of introduction to acquaintances in Australia attesting to Allport’s artistic talents, it is unlikely that local patronage was sufficient to provide a secure livelihood.
Following their arrival, the Allports settled at Botany and visited Port Macquarie before establishing their residence at Concord Point on the Parramatta River. For a time Allport was employed by the Australian Agricultural Company at Goonoo Goonoo. Later he was agent to Edward Macarthur at Elizabeth Farm, Parramatta; an inventory of the furniture and library of this house was prepared by him in 1854 (Mitchell Library). Despite these activities he was able to devote some time to his painting and appears to have travelled throughout New South Wales for his subjects, although much of his work depicts the environs of the Parramatta River.
As early as 1847 Allport was recognised as a valuable member of the artistic circle which met regularly in Sydney, being described by Heads of the People as an 'old talented friend from Concord’. He is recorded as having provided art instruction to members of the Blaxland family of Newington, including the flower painter Anna Frances Walker . Walter S. Campbell, whose family lived at Parramatta, later recollected Allport’s weekly drawing lessons at his father’s home.
Allport died suddenly on 2 December 1854, aged 66, and was buried in St John’s Cemetery, Parramatta. Several of his children – Alice , Bertha Betts , Catherine Davison , Clara Lucilla , Henry Curzon junior and John Ireland Allport – are known to have sketched. In 1872 two of Henry Curzon’s watercolour landscapes were included in the first exhibition of the New South Wales Academy of Art and judged to be in a distinctive style of 'unquestionable merit’.
Writers:
Fahy, Kevin
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 6 February 1788
- Summary
- Watercolour painter. He was a contemporary and pupil of John Glover and brother to Joseph Allport, sister-in-law to Mary Morton Allport. Member of the Old Watercolour Society who painted mostly landscapes.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2 December 1854
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude51.9035432 Longitude-8.4781471 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1853-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Shandon, Cork, Ireland
- Biography
- oil painter, scene-painter, lithographer and carpenter, was baptised on 16 July 1815 in St Anne, Shandon, Cork, son of Charles Duke, a carpenter, and his wife Catherine. With his wife Lucy, a dressmaker whom he had married on 16 February 1840, and their infant son Charles, born on the voyage out, William Duke arrived at Sydney in the Lady McNaughton as an assisted immigrant from Cork, on 16 December 1840. Originally a carpenter by trade like his father, he found employment as a scene-painter and mechanist at Sydney’s Royal Victoria Theatre. Then he went to New Zealand.
On 7 May 1845 the Sir John Franklin , with Duke aboard, arrived at Hobart Town from Auckland. There he set up as a portrait painter. His earliest dated work is a portrait, believed to be of Mrs Wilkinson, née Eldridge, signed and dated October 1845 (private collection), but two portraits of Maoris, The Celebrated Chief Hone or John Heke and Portrait of Mekata [Maketu] (1846, oil on canvas, National Library of Australia, Canberra), were presumably begun in New Zealand. Duke’s wife and two children joined him from Sydney in September, by which time he was established as a scene-painter at the Hobart Town Royal Victoria Theatre in Campbell Street.
After a benefit in July 1846 for which he painted the scenery, Duke left this position to work on a series of grand-scale panoramic and dioramic views. In August 1847 he and the mechanist Richard Johnson exhibited 'A Grand Moving Panorama’ at the Royal Victoria Theatre, which showed views of Constantinople, Florence, Jerusalem, Venice and Auckland 'for the gratification of the juvenile portion of the audience, especially those who may have entered upon the study of Geography’ ( Colonial Times and Tasmanian Advertiser 20 August 1847: cited Colligan, page 42). It was accompanied by an 'entirely New Dramatic Spectacle’, Antony and Cleopatra: or, The Serpent of the Nile , starrring Mr. Young and Mrs Mereton. The Hobart Town Diorama, again with Duke and Johnson as joint proprietors, opened in November 1847 at the Collins Street Music Hall and was pronounced superior in scenic exhibition to anything yet attempted in the colonies. Duke supplemented his income from it with scene painting for other theatrical productions. An advertisement for Mr Lee’s benefit in the Hobart Town Herald and Total Abstinence Advocate of 13 February 1847 is illustrated with a woodcut, signed by Duke, showing the canine hero of the drama, and all the scenery in the production was advertised as his.
Duke’s lithographs of the Hobart Town High School and the local whale fishery were published in 1848. The four whale fishery lithographs met an enthusiastic reception in the local press, despite the fact that at least one, The Flurry , was a copy of a painting by the English artist William John Huggins. Robin V. Hood printed and published the first edition of these whaling prints in September 1848 (and after Duke’s death issued a second edition omitting Duke’s name). At a time when the prosperity and enterprise in the industry was coming to its peak, Duke went on to specialise in views of the Hobart Town whale fishery, producing oil paintings such as Offshore Whaling with the 'Aladdin’ and 'Jane’, October 1849 (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart) as well as lithographs. The artist’s handling of distance and light in the paintings was particularly admired. Duke’s efforts continued to receive favourable reviews when exhibited in 1850 in Robin V. Hood’s establishment and in Charles Gaylor’s long room at the Custom House Hotel.
Duke also painted landscapes and views of properties. His view of New Town (1848, oil on canvas, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart) was described as an 'exceedingly well executed specimen of colonial art’ in the Hobart Town Britannia of 13 June 1850. His versatility is evidenced by the fact that he also painted portraits, gave illustrated public lectures and, by August 1849, had completed the carving of the figure head of the barque Derwent . However, despite this range of talents, he sustained losses and, like many fellow Tasmanians, emigrated with his family to Victoria.
In the Melbourne Directory for 1851 Duke is listed at Bellerine Street, Geelong. There he continued his portrait, landscape and scene painting, e.g. Geelong from Mr Hiatt’s, Burrabool Hills (1851, oil on canvas, Geelong Art Gallery, Geelong). Under Edward Opie , he helped decorate the Queen’s Theatre. At the time of his death from heart disease, on 17 October 1853, he was painting several portraits, including one of Mr C. Young, and was in the middle of painting and decorating the American Circus for Mr Rowe. His early death at the age of 38 left his wife and six children almost destitute.
Writers:
Von Oppeln, Caroline
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1815
- Summary
- Painter of Irish origin, Duke produced numerous portraits, landscapes and lithographs. He also worked extensively as a scenery painter for various theatrical companies in Australia and New Zealand.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 October 1853
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude50.733785 Longitude-2.7589005 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1853-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Bridport, England, UK
- Biography
- oil and house painter, arrived at Hobart Town on 5 August 1831 aboard the convict transport Argyle . He had been tried and convicted at the Dorset Assizes on 12 March 1830 for stealing £5 from a dwelling house. His sentence was life. Stevens, from Bridport, England, was described as twenty years old and 5 feet 5½ inches (166 cm) in height. His background was apparently respectable and he had received some education. His brothers were both established in trade, Shadrach as a cabinet maker and Abednego as a heraldic painter. Presumably baptised Meshach and the second son, Stevens was always called Meshack in convict records.
The behaviour of Stevens while a prisoner was generally good and he received a conditional pardon on 24 May 1839. Just before this, on 27 March 1839, he married Margaret Miller, née Taylor, a 32-year-old widow, in Saint David’s, Hobart Town. His age was given as twenty-seven. In the same year he became licensee of the Rob Roy Hotel, though not listed thereafter. The 1842 census records him as living with his wife and five children at 120 Liverpool Street, Hobart Town. Stevens’s first child, Georgina, had been born on 28 April 1839 and a son was born in 1841, so presumably the other children were from his wife’s first marriage. They had three more children, the last in 1847. He is not mentioned after 1847 when the Hobart Town General Directory identifies him as a painter (i.e. house painter) of Liverpool Street. No further record of the family has been discovered after this date and it is probable that they left the colony. He is thought to have died in 1853.
The only known art work by Stevens is an oil painting showing an Arctic whaling scene (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, Tas.), which is a fairly competent copy of an aquatint after William John Huggins ' Northern Whale Fishery , published at London in 1829. The Van Diemen’s Land whaling industry was at its height in the late 1840s and colonial vessels were then venturing into polar waters, so it may have been a commission. On the back of the canvas in the artist’s hand is inscribed: 'A View of the Wale Fishing at Greenland and Davis Straits the Mode of Taking and Killing Sperm Wale Seal &c. / Painted by M Stevens / Hobartown Vandiemans Land’.
Writers:
Oppeln, Caroline Von
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1811
- Summary
- Meshach Stevens was a convict, arriving in Australia aboard the Argyle in 1831. His only known art work is an oil painting showing an Arctic whaling scene. The Van Diemen's Land whaling industry was at its height in the late 1840s and the work may have been a commission.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1853
- Age at death
- 42
Details
Latitude51.0575 Longitude-1.3075 Start Date1786-01-01 End Date1853-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hampshire, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, diarist and public servant, was born on 16 December 1786 at Stubbington in Hampshire, England, son of a Hampshire gentleman and property-owner, Thomas Boyes. His mother Ann, née Blamey, died a month after his birth and Boyes passed an unsettled childhood, moving from household to household and from school to school. By his 13th year he had attended six educational establishments in or near Portsmouth. Whatever the effects of this diverse education (Boyes later complained of his lack of an 'elementary education’) it nevertheless kindled in him a thirst for learning and self-improvement.
Early artistic influences came from the Hampshire school of landscape and marine painters, including John Livesay, professor of drawing at the Portsmouth Naval College, with whose son he walked and sketched in Wales, and possibly from the painter, engraver and former pupil of Benjamin West, Richard Livesay (1750-1823), who also taught at the college. Boyes was a friend of another teacher there, John Christian Schetky, later marine painter to the King and collaborator with J.M.W. Turner on some of his marine paintings. One of Boyes’s letters suggests he himself may have taken tuition from Turner in 1819; his influence has been remarked in the water and light effects of some of Boyes’s watercolours. Such 'marine’ influences were perhaps countered by William Shayer (1788-1879) who achieved a national reputation for his landscapes of rural Hampshire. But perhaps the young Boyes was inspired most by the grand pastoral vision of Claude which had affected the early Turner as well as Boyes’s future artist-colleague and mentor, John Glover ; there are frequent references in Boyes’s early letters to 'Claude-like’ landscapes he has seen.
In 1809 Boyes joined the Commissariat Department as a treasury clerk and served there throughout the Peninsular Wars, seeing action at Walcheran and Vittoria. He was promoted deputy assistant commissary-general in 1813. As with other English artists at the Peninsula at this time (notably the Schetky brothers, John and Alick), Boyes was impressed by the Iberian mountainscapes; his sense of what he described later as 'their rugged and grotesque outlines stressing in intelligible language the power of time and the elements’ not only is present in many of his surviving sketches but also can be discerned in his later work.
Boyes married Mary Ediss (1800-81), daughter of a Portsea pawnbroker, on 3 September 1818. They lived in the picturesque village of Southwick, not far from Portsea, while Boyes indulged his taste for rural landscape. Retired on half-pay supplemented by a modest legacy, Boyes found his means increasingly inadequate to sustain both his growing family and his aesthetic pursuits. His interests included not only his watercolour painting, which never seems to have been profitable, but also violin lessons from the celebrated Paolo Spagnoletti. By November 1822 what he termed his financial 'embarrassments’ were such that Boyes was obliged to leave his wife and two sons and withdraw to Coutances in Normandy. Here he discovered further landscapes reminiscent of Claude, and indeed one of his most successful efforts in that style, Coutances 1823 , dates from this time. He could not prevail upon his wife to join him, so it was alone and in a mood of desolation that Boyes made the first entry in his voluminous and famous diary on 17 April 1823.
Boyes’s financial and familial difficulties were resolved shortly afterwards by another financial debacle—in the New South Wales Commissariat. There a substantial defalcation by the head of the commissariat had led to the establishment of a new department to prevent the recurrence of such derelictions. Boyes, who had achieved and was to sustain a good reputation as a meticulous accountant, was ordered on active service and posted to the newly separated auditorial accounts division under the direction of Assistant Commissary-General William Lithgow. He was in no position in 1823 to refuse this posting, but in accepting it Boyes intended only a brief separation from his family, imagining they would soon join him in Australia. In the event they were parted for nine years, a separation which yielded for posterity Boyes’s rich harvest of letters home which are a vivid evocation of his cultural reaction to the new country and its landscape.
In December 1823 Boyes arrived at Hobart Town as a passenger in the convict transport Sir Godfrey Webster . He stayed briefly in Van Diemen’s Land where, like other colonial artists after him, he found such settings as hitherto 'were to be found nowhere but in the imagination of the painter’. He was then posted to Sydney where initially he was repulsed by the 'stunted, ragged and frightful’ appearance of the trees, again echoing the reaction of painters and immigrants before and after him. Shortly after his arrival Boyes announced his intention of giving a 'systematic account of this place’ both in his letters and in watercolour; 'in the meantime I have plenty of subjects for the pencil … and am most busily employed in getting some sketches ready for England’.
In his letters, which supplement his growing diary, there is an invaluable account of the early colonies, while his watercolours of the period, such as Mt. Nelson 1823 and On the Grounds of D’Arrietta Esq, Morton Park. February 1824 , show a remarkable adaptation to the Australian landscape within a few days of arrival in the country. In Sydney, Boyes was also treasurer of a committee formed in November 1825 to commission a portrait of Governor Brisbane by the roving artist Augustus Earle . While there are no references to Earle in Boyes’s surviving letters and diaries, perhaps it is possible to detect some trace of Earle’s romantic landscapes in his paintings, particularly his cliffscapes of the scarps and contours of Mount Wellington in Van Diemen’s Land.
Boyes was posted to Van Diemen’s Land as its colonial auditor in October 1826. He had always preferred its landscape to that of New South Wales and, indeed, it was here that he made his major contribution to Australian art, although it is arguable whether this lay more in his writing than his painting. Perhaps the colonial reviewer was too severe when he wrote, over 40 years after Boyes’s death, that 'He seems to have so revelled in the delight of seeing the beautiful and in the wonderful facility that he possessed of rapid delineation and interpretation of Nature’s most fugitive phases, that instead of making any of his sketches into a picture, he preferred recording any new impression his sensitive eye received’. Nevertheless, it is true that most of Boyes’s work shows delicate promise rather than substantial achievement and, with some notable exceptions, indicates a lack of fulfilment. He acknowledged this himself in his diary when lamenting his inadequacy in 'the task of putting the forms on paper … of a most beautiful sky such as would have established a man’s fame for ever to paint’, or when he quoted John Glover’s opinion in 1831 that 'industry must make me a great artist here’.
Although Boyes’s work had its limitations, it was supplemented in a very real sense by his diary which not only contains evocative 'pen pictures’ of the antipodean landscape as he saw and tried to capture it but invaluable commentaries on other colonial artists, their work and their techniques of painting. He is particularly enlightening on Glover, whose influence is seen in Jamestown St. Helena, 1832 , as well as on Bock , Skinner Prout and Simpkinson , among many, and his diary abounds with details of great historical value, even to listing the mix of colours he and other artists used.
Boyes returned to England in 1832 on leave of absence to re-unite himself with his family after a separation of nine years. There he busied himself with art matters, conferring particularly with Shayer and making numerous technical notes on his work, as well as taking examples for circulation and copying among fellow Van Diemen’s Land artists such as Thomas Bock. He brought his wife and four sons to Van Diemen’s Land in 1834, in the convict transport Moffat , and resumed his colonial auditorship. He was appointed legislative councillor in 1840. Under the administration of Sir John Franklin he was made colonial secretary in 1842-43, appointed in the place of Montagu who was dismissed by Franklin for insubordination. Thus Boyes was second only to the governor and able to exercise his influence on behalf of art in the colony.
His close association with his successor as colonial secretary, J.E. Bicheno , led to the formation of a sketching group which included the Colonial Treasurer and amateur painter Peter Fraser and Bishop Francis Russell Nixon , a remarkable aggregation of 'Art and Government’ in Van Diemen’s Land. Their informal Sketching Club included such major colonial artists as Simpkinson de Wesselow and John Skinner Prout, and Boyes’s diary has much useful detail of their activities. While Boyes and Bicheno also indulged their joint musical enthusiasms by promoting soirées and instrument quartettes, undoubtedly their most important cultural alliance was in the promotion of the Hobart Town Art Exhibition of January 1845 – regarded as the first Fine Art exhibition in Australia – at which Boyes exhibited Cottage Scene, after S. Prout .
Boyes retained his colonial auditorship to the end, discharging meticulously and honourably that duty which Governor Arthur had deemed one of the most 'laborious and responsible’ in the colony. He also maintained his pursuit of art, continuing his watercolour painting until his last weeks. One of his last diary entries is rich with evocative colour in the reporting of a local event. Over a period of 30 years, in his painting and perhaps even more in his writing, he had recorded the cultural accommodation of English immigrants to Australia and its landscape. Boyes died on 16 August 1853. He was survived by his wife, Mary, and six of their eight children.
Writers:
Chapman, Peter
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 December 1786
- Summary
- Like many early colonists in public service, George Boyes was able to pursue leisurely hobbies, such as watercolour painting; he preferred the landscape of Tasmania to New South Wales and spent most of his life in Australia in Hobart.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 August 1853
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1783-01-01 End Date1853-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- portraitist, engraver, art teacher and silversmith, was the eldest of the three sons of the Dublin engraver Benjamin Clayton and his first wife. All three Clayton sons were trained as engravers by their father and worked in Dublin. Prints by Samuel were included in Anthologia Hibernica (Dublin 1793-94) and he is known to have painted miniatures. Samuel was transported to New South Wales from Dublin for seven years, reputedly for forgery, arriving in the Surrey in 1816. He first advertised his services in the Sydney Gazette on 4 January 1817, offering to take likenesses 'either in full or in profile’. Ten days later he was proposing to give instruction 'in ornamental painting and drawing’ as well as engraving and miniature painting. On 15 August 1818 he was stating that he had 'A variety of jewellery and silver work on hand’ and was buying old silver.
Clayton had engraved the banknotes for the Bank of New South Wales when it opened its doors on 8 April 1817, having been directed in February to prepare the copperplates needed for the bank’s five denominations (ranging from 2s 6d to £5). He also engraved the first banknotes for the Van Diemen’s Land Bank and the $1 and $2 notes for the Lachlan and Waterloo Mills Companies in 1822. Another of his multifarious activities was making silhouette portraits. On 4 November 1820 he advertised in the Sydney Gazette that he now had 'ready for practice, a much improved machine for taking likenesses, in profile, on a most correct principle, and in a few minutes, at ten shillings each, on Bristol Card, such as is now the London style, and particularly portable, as they may be conveyed in letters to relatives or friends, without injury, to any part of the world’.
When visiting Australia en route to China in about 1818, Charles Izard Manigault of the Charleston, South Carolina, family, wrote: 'I had some of my visiting cards engraved by one of those talented convicts, S. Clayton of New South Wales, by placing my signature with its usual flourish in his hand, he imitated it and engraved it perfectly, for he was sent here from England for forging the name of another … too tricky to remain at home. He also did several hundred of my Coat of Arms, now my book plates’. (Manigault later had the coat of arms copied onto a porcelain plate, or dinner service, in China.)
Clayton received his ticket of leave on 1 October 1824, and married Jane Lofthouse by special licence two weeks later. This was his third marriage. In Ireland he had married Jane Maguire, then Emma Johnson (in 1807). His colonial wife also predeceased him, in 1829. Two years later Clayton was offering his business for sale, including 'a brass machine for taking profile likenesses, and a camera obscura’, yet he continued to work in Sydney. An advertisement in July 1832 detailed a lithographic press 'with a set of very superior German stones (many of which are 16 × 22 inches [40 × 55 cm])’ which Mr Clayton, engraver and jeweller of 24 Pitt Street, had for sale. He was still working as an engraver at this address in December 1833 and possibly in 1834. He moved to Windsor in 1835, presumably to be near his son by his first marriage, Dr Benjamin Clayton . That he had prospered in the colony is evident by the fact that in 1839 he was one of the proprietors of the Bank of New South Wales. When he died at Gunning in 1853 he left an estate worth £1000 to Benjamin.
Apart from an oil profile portrait of the engineer William Roberts (1851, QVMAG) and his stamp designs (including the original 'harbour bridge’ stamp of 1849), most of Clayton’s surviving work is on silver. Attributed to him are two trowels (ML), one engraved for Lieutenant-Governor Erskine in 1823 as a present from the Sydney Masonic Lodge, the other presented to Governor Macquarie after he laid the foundation stone of the Sydney Roman Catholic Chapel with it in 1821. Both incorporate masonic details in the engraving. Three medals presented to students at the Sydney Grammar School between 1822 and 1824 are also known, the first inscribed to Francis Lord by his schoolmaster, Laurence Halloran, the second to Henry Halloran and the third to Charles Driver. Spoons marked 'S.C.’ with an anchor are in private collections. It has been suggested that an Irish two-handled cup presented to Mr Emmett as owner of the winning horse Rob Roy in the Hyde Park race of 1819 was engraved by Clayton, but this remains unproven.
Clayton gave evidence at the trial of the silversmith Alexander Dick in 1829, stating that he 'rather thought’ the dessert spoons Dick was accused of receiving had been made locally. The trial records include a letter from James Garfield, a London silversmith transported for forging hallmarks, who stated that neither James Robertson (another witness) nor Clayton ever manufactured silver plate, that they were dealers only. Yet Clayton was certainly an active engraver, and as he was buying old silver in 1818, he possibly made some pieces.
Writers:
Houstone, JohnNeville, Richard
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1783
- Summary
- Portraitist, engraver, art teacher and silversmith born in Ireland. Transported to NSW, reputedly for forgery, he prospered in the colony.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1853
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1772-01-01 End Date1853-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- painter, manufacturer and agriculturist, came to Sydney in March 1832 aboard the Marianne . Soon afterwards he was commissioned to paint the Decalogue boards for Francis Greenway 's St Luke’s Church of England, Liverpool (ie. boards bearing the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer). On 9 August 1833 they were inspected by Charles Cowper and/or Bishop Broughton at Hipkiss’s rooms in Goulburn Street, Sydney, and were rejected for unstated reasons. Perhaps their decorations were somehow too democratic for these Tory clergymen. As a member of the Birmingham Political Union, Hipkiss had been an active reformer in England before worsening economic circumstances made him decide to emigrate. He rapidly became active in Sydney’s public affairs and in 1833 was an inaugural committee member of the Mechanics Institute. The following year he helped found the Australian Union Benefit Society (one of the first steps towards trade unionism) and in 1835, the Patriotic Association. He formed a short-lived architectural partnership with James Chadley in March 1835.
Hipkiss was appointed secretary of the Floral and Horticultural Society in 1839. He showed a selection of his fruit and flower paintings at its 1842 meeting with the recommendation that they be awarded as minor prizes at the forthcoming exhibition. The society dismissed the suggestion, so Hipkiss decided to raffle them. This possibly inspired his more ambitious art union conducted between November 1848 and April 1849, the 120 prizes on offer all being his own paintings. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that some were 'certainly most exquisite, and stamp Mr. Hipkiss as an artist of great ability’, although finding their style and character 'somewhat monotonous’. Again they were mainly of fruit and flowers, plus 'several pretty landscapes’ and 'Australian scenes’. Despite a generally favourable press, subscribers were few and Hipkiss was obliged to move the exhibition from King Street to James T. Grocott’s better-known premises in George Street. At the end of March 1849 a disappointed Hipkiss announced that 'a large number of tickets are undisposed of, as he received much commendation but little support’.
When the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia was mooted, Hipkiss proved an enthusiastic supporter. Of more than 200 people who attended the meeting which founded it on 22 June 1847, Hipkiss was the only artist, amateur or professional, recorded as speaking. (He seconded Alexander Macleay’s motion that the society be formed.) His Painting of Fruit shown at the second exhibition of the society in 1849 was praised in the Sydney Morning Herald of 2 June, as 'a very excellent effort of art in this peculiar line, and evidently painted by one who had carefully studied his subject’. At this exhibition, however, the hanging committee ( Conrad Martens , James Wilson and William Nicholas ) dominated the show, and afterwards disgruntled artists resorted more frequently to art unions as an effective method for selling their work. Hipkiss entered several organised by James Grocott in 1850.
When the short-lived Australian Society of Artists, a mutual benefit group, was formed in March 1850, Hipkiss was a foundation member. He exhibited paintings at their conversazione in July although by then seventy-eight years old. He died at Ryde, Sydney, on 25 April 1853, survived by his wife. No paintings in any public collections are known, but some of the unsigned flower and fruit oil paintings attributed to William Buelow Gould might repay closer investigation.
Writers:
Darby, GarryKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1772
- Summary
- Painter, manufacturer and agriculturist, came to Sydney in March 1832. He rapidly became active in Sydney's public affairs and initiated several associations, some of which are considered the first steps towards trade unionism in the colony.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25 April 1853
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude53.1823034 Longitude-0.203120854 Start Date1772-01-01 End Date1853-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lincolnshire, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, wife of explorer Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), her father had been a captain in the merchant navy and died of illness at sea. Her mother remarried, to Rev William Tyler, and had another daughter, Isabelle. Ann and Matthew had both grown up in the mid-east Lincolnshire fens, she in Partney and he in Donnington. They met when they were very young and married on 17 April 1801. Three months later Matthew departed on the Investigator as captain to circumnavigate New Holland; Ann had initially joined him on board but this was disapproved by the Admiralty and she did not see him again for 9 years. After his return in 1810 they had one child, Anne Flinders Petrie (born April 1812), Ann being aged 40; she also had a later miscarriage.
Ann was described by eugenicist Sir Francis Galton as 'blinded in one eye by lancing due to smallpox, with above average mental powers, considered clever, with a sweet and perfect temper, beloved by all who knew her, witty, generous, nervous, with aptitudes for poetry, literature, singing, verse, and painting flowers from nature’ (Gertsakis, p 15). After Matthew died in 1814, Ann lived with her stepsister Isabelle and Matthew’s sister Anne (sic) Flinders until her death in 1853. Sometime after his death she destroyed all her letters to him. Both Gertsakis and Brunton featured her watercolours of flowers in their exhibitions.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1772
- Summary
- The wife of explorer Matthew Flinders, she was blind in one eye from smallpox lancing but had an aptitude for painting flowers from nature. Most of her married life was spent without her seafaring husband and she outlived him by almost forty years.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1853
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1814-01-01 End Date1852-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- painters, were brothers. John Clarke, came out from England in the Harvey , a 300-ton ship captained by Daniel Peach, which arrived at Hobart Town on 2 May 1825 'in deplorable condition, her fine and valuable cargo ruined’ because of being detained a month by bad weather. He signed a watercolour view captioned Mount Wellington and Part of Hobart Town with Government House, the Court House, Church, Jail &c. taken from the Deck of the Ship Harvey, Captn Peach (Mitchell Library). On 1 June 1825 the Harvey arrived at Sydney, where Clarke apparently remained. He may have been the ship’s carpenter. One John Clarke, builder, is recorded in the 1828 census at George Street, Sydney. On 27 August 1827, John was joined in Sydney by his younger brother, James (1814-52), aged thirteen. James (sic) Clarke has three unsigned watercolour views of Sydney in the 1830s attributed to him: Balmain , Rushcutters Bay from Darling Point, NSW and Tempe on the Cook’s River NSW (National Library of Australia [NLA]). Only an unsigned and undated watercolour view of the Parramatta River (c.1840, p.c.) has been attributed to John.
The Sydney Morning Herald of 28 March 1852 reported the death of one James Clarke, aged thirty-seven, at his residence at Old South Head Road, leaving a widow and two children. A later, unidentified and undated newspaper cutting (NLA) states that James Clarke 'was noted as a musician, followed the profession of architecture and painted many pictures. One of the latter is now in the possession of the Mitchell Library. It is known that several pictures denoting scenes of old Sydney were presented to residents of Balmain’. The writer of this article, however, seems to have conflated James and John or possibly confused them both with the Sydney architect Francis Clarke (1801-84). The latter, who arrived at Sydney in 1832, sang in St Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral choir (although a Protestant) and had a wife who was a professional singer. He later settled in Bowen, Queensland, and became the town’s first mayor. It is, however, unlikely that Francis Clarke painted these Sydney watercolours and there is no convincing evidence that James did. John alone seems to have been the Sydney painter among this clutch of Clarkes, unless the real author was John James Clark .
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1814
- Summary
- Painters and brothers. Residents of Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- March 1852
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude55.422564 Longitude-2.7866951 Start Date1804-01-01 End Date1852-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hawick, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- portrait and figure painter, born at Hawick, Scotland and drowned off Broken Bay, New South Wales in 1852, would be almost unknown but for the memoirs of his surviving daughter, Anne Hale Chapman, written in old age at Summer Hill at the turn of the century. She records that Wilson studied medicine but could not stomach dissection and became a portrait painter. After drawing classes, reputedly at Oxford and Cambridge colleges and (more convincingly) at Miss Graham’s boarding-school in London, he was said to be making about £400 a year when he married a French pupil, Aimée Louise Grandovinet, in 1829. The convict-ship’s surgeon and Braidwood pioneer Dr Thomas Braidwood Wilson, who had wedding portraits taken on a marrying trip to England, persuaded the artist to improve his prospects by migrating to Australia.
The Wilsons sailed in the Fairlie in 1836 with 'a great many passengers and 300 emigrants’, as well as Sir John and Lady Franklin going out to govern Van Diemen’s Land. In Sydney there were no more land grants and colonial life was a shock. Anne Chapman, recalling her mother’s fears, stated: 'it was such a disappointing change for well-bred young ladies’. Some attempts to keep up appearances and educate the children were made-a watercolour by Anne is in one of the albums of the nearby Coghill family of Bedervale, Braidwood (National Trust), with whom the children may have shared a tutor-but pioneering life on Dr Wilson’s estate at Braidwood proved 'too severe, so my father left his cattle etc. to go back to Sydney and resume his profession’. Arriving back in Sydney in October 1838 by bullock-dray, with four shillings, Wilson rented a house in Princes Street at The Rocks near Conrad Martens , whom Chapman recalled as her father’s greatest friend. He was introduced to Sydney society by Colonel George Barney , Colonial Engineer, and soon 'did well’. During her stay in Sydney in 1839 Lady Franklin visited Wilson’s studio and was presented with an oil painting of a 'pretty young aboriginal girl’ and some drawings of the Cape. She noted that Wilson charged 10 guineas for an oil and 5 guineas for a 'beautiful’ coloured chalk portrait, and that he had painted a portrait of Martens.
Later that year, Lady Franklin offered a grant of land in Van Diemen’s Land and the Wilsons moved to her Huon River settlement. Anne Chapman recalled more hardships. Wilson decided to return to painting in Sydney: 'he was not strong enough for farm work or management in this colony’. Back at Sydney he rented a house in Cleveland Street, Surry Hills, then known as the Sand Hills. He took pupils, possibly including Adelaide Ironside , but he also secured the position of first clerk at Robert Dunlop’s large store on the Quay at £400 a year with 'fringe benefits’ of provisions to the value of another £100. In 1842 he built a house at Balmain. His daughter recalled him as 'an educated man who could converse on any topic’ and moved in the highest social circles, a regular at Government House.
In 1844 Wilson took his family back to England and rented a large house in Soho Square for portrait painting, but his hopes for the patronage of the Franklins were disappointed when Sir John failed to return from his expedition in the Arctic Circle. Wilson also found the London climate too cold so the family returned to Australia, leaving the two eldest daughters apprenticed to Paris fashion houses. In New South Wales Wilson took up land on the Macleay River; Annabella Boswell recorded him as 'growing raisin grapes and figs but unsuccessfully, in preference to following his profession’. In 1848, when Anne Chapman rejoined the family, her father was living at 97 Hunter Street, Sydney and walking every morning in the Botanic Gardens with the director Charles Moore. A keen naturalist, he sent many new native plants to the gardens and rare birds to John Gould .
At the end of 1849, however, T.S. Mort auctioned thirteen of Wilson’s 'beautiful crayon [pastel] drawings and oil paintings’ and the family moved back to East Kempsey, though Wilson made frequent trips to Sydney to paint portraits. A commission to paint the portraits of Governor Sir George FitzRoy and his daughter, the Hon. Mrs Stewart, decided him to return to Sydney again. Before leaving the Macleay River district he apprenticed his eldest son, James, to a surveyor and married Anne to the son of William Chapman of Yarrabandini. The rest of the family embarked for Sydney in the Rose of Eden . Off Broken Bay, on 23 June 1852, the schooner was caught in a storm and sank. Wilson, his family and all his books, papers, possessions and paintings went down with the ship. ( Richard Noble received the vice-regal portrait commission.)
A classic example of how art can be buried by history, Wilson was claimed by his daughter to be the 'first painter in Sydney’, having painted the portraits of nearly all the people of note. Because Wilson’s society portraits were not signed and perhaps because of the high turnover of Sydney society in the boom and bust of colonial enterprise, none of these are now known. With but one certain exception, extant works come from the Macleay River district, attributed by the sitters’ families. The Mitchell Library holds pastel portraits of Captain Francis Allman and Mrs Anne Chapman of Yarrabandini, somewhat wooden but uncompromising likenesses with an impression of character. Still in family possession, but recorded by the Mitchell Library, is a Mother and Child in oils: a romantic portrait of Elizabeth Cheers, née Chapman, and her small son, posed beside a fishing boat on the seashore. Portraits of the architect John Verge and his wife Mary, who lived for a time on the Macleay, have been attributed to him, while an unsigned oil portrait of Conrad Martens (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW) may be that referred to by Lady Franklin in 1839, a date which fits the apparent age of the subject.
Anne Chapman recalled that romantic portraits of Wilson’s children in shepherdess mode were given to Lady Franklin in Tasmania and presumably taken back to England (where she is recorded as having Tasmanian pictures with Huon-pine frames). The titles of the large number of his own portraits which Wilson, as a member of the hanging committee, included in the second exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in 1849 have an equally romantic flavour suggestive of Gainsborough’s 'fancy pictures’ (but by then evolving into a stereotypical exoticism): Neapolitan Girl , Savoyards , The Two Sisters , Devotion , The Reaper , A Reverie . The Sydney Morning Herald 's art critic praised A Reverie but, appalled by the hanging committee’s self-promotion, severely criticised the 'Wilson Gallery’ of nineteen paintings (twenty-seven altogether are catalogued) for being 'wearisome and suicidal, through the monotonous exhibition of a row of unmeaning faces, occupying the whole line on the left hand as you enter’.
Ironically, the society artist may be rehabilitated into Australian art history by an Aboriginal 'fancy picture’. Found by a London dealer in about 1975 and acquired by the Australian National Gallery in 1979, this is signed lower right and inscribed on the back 'Gunbal Alias Judy Third Gin of Moravanu Chief of Wigwigly Tribe County St Vincent NSW Sept 1 1838’, and seems likely to be the painting given to Lady Franklin in 1839. It is an oil portrait (35.2 × 30.4 cm) of a young Aboriginal woman in 'whiteface’ against a generalised and diminished landscape, as in conventional European portraiture. Belying the ethnographic title, it presents a romantic vision of the Aboriginal woman as a lady of fashion – silk turban, hair dressed in bangs, lips and cheeks rouged, gold necklace and décolletée possum-skin cloak – and as such is unique in Australian art.
Writers:
Parbury, Nigel
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1804
- Summary
- James Armstrong Wilson was a portrait and figure painter born in Scotland. A resident of Sydney and surrounding areas he drowned in a storm with members of his family, and all his books, papers, possessions and paintings. Claimed by his daughter to be the 'first painter in Sydney', Wilson painted the portraits of nearly all the people of note.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 June 1852
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1801-01-01 End Date1852-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter and public servant, was born in Edinburgh, son of James Neill, a printer, and his wife Ann. Neill senior dissolved his partnership with his cousin in the family printing business in 1818 and the two operated rival establishments until the Neill family migrated to Van Diemen’s Land. Robert arrived at Hobart Town in the Skelton on 27 November 1820 with his parents, brother James and sister Ann. He spent his working life as an employee of the British Army’s Commissariat. In 1826 he was offered the position of assistant surveyor but continued in the Commissariat because of the pressure of work, a course of action which he later claimed was greatly to his disadvantage. His salary was lower and he had to sell a land grant to meet financial commitments entailed in providing for his parents.
The Neill family had a long-standing interest in natural history, an interest mentioned in his father’s obituary after he died in April 1829. Robert was a member of the Van Diemen’s Land Society, a body formed in 1829 to promote the publication of local and scientific information and establish a museum and botanic garden. He maintained a lifelong correspondence with his father’s cousin and former partner, Patrick Neill, a respected naturalist, and sent specimens back to Edinburgh.
Neill served at Hobart Town, Launceston, Maria Island and Port Arthur. The salt diet at the two latter places adversely affected his health, and he returned to Hobart Town in June 1833. He was posted to Launceston about 1835 and promoted deputy assistant commissary-general in January 1837. In August 1839 he left Launceston to go to the Swan River settlement (Western Australia). By 1842, when stationed at Albany, King George Sound, Neill was anxious to be relieved, yet was forced to spend over five years more in Western Australia, being promoted assistant commissary-general in December 1846 as some compensation.
Having collected fish and reptiles at Albany in 1841 he proceeded to make a series of paintings from these. 'The outline of nearly every specimen was taken from actual profile , by laying the fish upon the paper’, he stated. At the suggestion of Sir George Grey , Governor of South Australia, Neill in 1845 presented these watercolours and accompanying manuscript notes to the British Museum (now Natural History Museum, London). There were 58 paintings of fish, eight of reptiles and one of a mammal. Sir John Richardson’s 'Catalogue of reptiles and fish found at King George’s Sound by Deputy Assistant Commissary General Neill’ was included as an appendix to E.J. Eyre’s Journals (London 1845) and Richardson used Neill’s collection for further work published in 1850 and 1851.
Neill also provided illustrations for Eyre’s Journals , including views of both Eyre’s departure from Adelaide in June 1840 and his arrival at King George Sound over a year later: a portrait of Wylie, the Aboriginal boy who accompanied Eyre for a large part of the journey, and Kangaroo Dance of King George’s Sound . However, when Neill’s drawings were engraved for Eyre’s publication, John Edward Gray, keeper of zoology at the British Museum who wrote the introduction to the Journals , misread the signature as John Neill and the engraver compounded the error, the plates acknowledging the artist as 'J. Neil’.
In both Van Diemen’s Land and Western Australia Robert Neill took a particular interest in the Aboriginal people. He collected Aboriginal artefacts (later presented to the University Museum, Edinburgh) and sketched Aboriginal subjects. In his diaries George Augustus Robinson refers to an 1828 portrait of an Aboriginal woman which Neill presented to him at Port Arthur in March 1833 (unlocated), and Robinson also owned a 'coloured drawing of Cape Barren Geese’ inscribed R. Neill delt. July 1830. Neill’s Indigenes des Deux Sexes, Van Diemen was published as a lithograph in Dumont D’Urville’s Voyage de la Corvette Astrolabe , while a small vignette, Natives of Van Diemen’s Land appeared in Ross’s 1830 Hobart Town Almanac (hand-coloured proof, National Library of Australia). Three pencil drawings of Tasmanian Aborigines are in the Mitchell Library; a drawing titled Aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land was exhibited at Hobart Town in March 1851.
An oil on board painting showing 'Natives Unloading the Catch’ by 'R. Neill’ (22.5 × 30 cm) dated 1828 was sold by Phillips, the London auctioneers, in 1989. Four watercolour views of the Maria Island penal settlement (two Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, two Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts) are now considered his work although formerly attributed to Jane Brownell, daughter of the surgeon on the island in 1831 when Neill’s brother James was storekeeper there (she was far too young to have drawn them). Neill also painted stage scenery on at least one occasion. The Hobart Town Courier of 4 July 1834 noted that at a concert at the Freemason’s Hotel the scenery had been painted 'in a bold and pleasing style by Mr Offor and Mr R. Neil [sic]’.
In November 1834 Neill married Helen Story in St David’s, Hobart Town. By April 1842 their sixth child was expected but only Robert, born 17 December 1836, had survived infancy. Neill was recalled to Britain in 1848 and appointed to the Windward and Leeward islands in the West Indies. He served as assistant commissary-general until September 1852 when he, his wife and four children, died at Barbados of yellow fever.
Writers:
Glover, Margaret
GeorgiaRogers
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2017
- Born
- b. 1801
- Summary
- A public servant, Neill lived alternatively in Hobart and Western Australia, according to his work commitments. He was also an artist who painted a series of works on fish and reptiles and who produced illustrations for Eyre's Journal.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1852
- Age at death
- 51
Details
Latitude53.55 Longitude10 Start Date1796-01-01 End Date1852-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hamburg, Germany
- Biography
- painter, decorative artist and government official, was born on 11 January 1796 at Hamburg, Germany, where his father, Thomas Lempriere, a Norman-Jersey banker and merchant, was working. An adventurous early life included being imprisoned (with his father) by Napoleon at Verdun in 1813, although the 7-year-old boy was soon returned to his mother, Harriet née Allen, in England. Lempriere came to Van Diemen’s Land on board the Regalia in 1822. Following a short and unsuccessful period as a merchant, he joined the Commissariat Department and remained in its employ until his death at sea on 6 January 1852 en route to Aden, having been invalided home to England from a post in Hong Kong.
In 1823 Lempriere married Charlotte Smith (1803-90) whom he had met on board the Regalia ; they had twelve children. He was a devoted and at times somewhat imperious husband and father who played an active role in the education of his family. His sterling worth was documented by the exiled Canadian Linus Miller, a tutor in the household: 'Mr Lempriere was one of those rare specimens of humanity whom nature has endowed with a soul so much larger and more noble than we generally meet with’. As well as working in Hobart Town, Lempriere’s duties took him to posts at the major penal settlements in Van Diemen’s Land: Macquarie Harbour, Maria Island and Port Arthur. He served at the last in 1833-48 and there wrote his account of the penal settlements which was published in parts in the Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science (Hobart Town 1842-46).
An educated, intelligent, witty and urbane man, Lempriere’s record of his Tasmanian life, including his artistic endeavours, is known through his surviving diaries (ML). These cover the years 1834-36, 1837-38 and 1847-48, the earliest being written in both French and English. His interests were many. At Port Arthur he pursued the study of natural history, drawing and recording details of the flora, fauna and climate of his surroundings. He noted the solstices, made a tidal gauge, kept a meteorological journal, engaged in taxidermy, and in January 1838 despatched to England 'a bottle specimen…a native rat with nine young ones in the pouch’.
His interest in painting was not developed until comparatively late in life (he was nevertheless painting before he was thirty-eight) and he displayed an almost childlike pleasure when the sculptor Benjamin Law commended his efforts in January 1837: 'He was greatly astonished that anybody at such an age had begun to paint, a compliment to my abilities, but alas showing how much I have aged’. (The fact that his portrait of Affleck Moodie was considered 'very bad – what a slap’ was not so pleasing.) His 1834-35 diary begins with the first known reference to his painting, when he records having made a sketch for a portrait and another sketch for a miniature in oils.
Portraiture was Lempriere’s forte and comprises the major part of his work. His best-known portraits are probably the early rather wooden ones of his commandant at Port Arthur, Captain Charles O’Hara Booth , and his wife Elizabeth Charlotte, née Eagle (1834?, o/c, TMAG), but Lempriere’s diaries document many others, a good percentage of which survive, largely with the families for whom they were painted. Mrs Murray’s portrait was exceptional, having been begun on 28 April 1834 'as an experiment in Water Colours’, his normal medium being oil paint. Between May and June 1834 he painted Captain Kinghorne’s portrait (p.c.) and was working on paintings of Mr Young, William Thomson, Rev. John Allen Manton and others. He and George Fleming Armstrong were painting portraits of one another in August.
On 29 October 1835 Lempriere wrote that he had completed a self-portrait and noted good humouredly that there was a division of opinion over its resemblance to him. This is probably the large self-portrait in oils presented to the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts by a descendant in 1986. Lempriere possibly painted other self-portraits, a detail being added to one on 30 November 1837, but since he tended to rework paintings from time to time if they remained in his possession it was more likely the same picture.
Other portraits painted in 1835 included those of William Butters and Sarah Smith, the latter promising to pay the first half of Mary Lempriere’s school fees in return. Betsy Carter, Mrs Simpson and Mrs Wilkinson ('such an ugly woman’) were painted in 1836-37. In January 1838 he 'made a bargain’ to paint a small portrait of Mr Cruickshank of the 21st Regiment in return for the sitter’s double-barrel precision gun, Lempriere also being a keen hunter. On 29 August 1838 Governor Sir John Franklin called at Lempriere’s house on an official tour of inspection of Port Arthur and 'was pleased with the Portraits – promised to sit for me’. A preliminary pencil sketch of Franklin survives in a sketchbook (DG).
Lempriere’s artistic inclinations were not restricted to one genre and diary references to other types of art work proliferate. There were still-lifes, as noted on 15 August 1834: 'began to paint a plate of fruit’. There were transparencies, including one for Captain Kinghorne (completed May 1834) and one bearing Lempriere’s own coat of arms. There was a sketch of a native sparrow, which was to be the first of a series, and there were landscape sketches made by moonlight and on walks. On 20 June 1837 he noted, 'This evening began colouring a sketch of Cape Raoul for Lady Franklin [q.v.]’, and on 13 July he 'Received a pretty note from Lady Franklin to thank me for the views I sent her’. On 2 December 1835 Lempriere noted, 'Evening etched a small view of Pt. Arthur’ (which undoubtedly referred to a pen-and-ink sketch rather than a print). The Dixson Galleries (ML) hold watercolour, pencil and ink sketches of scenes in Tasmania, portrait sketches, a watercolour of a bird and various copies. A sketchbook of views on Macquarie Harbour is in the Allport Library, which also holds one of Lempriere’s several finished watercolours of this penal settlement.
History and narrative paintings are also mentioned. Maid of Athens (presumably Byron’s) was begun in August 1834 just after Lempriere had completed a painting of a knight swearing to avenge his father’s death over the paternal tomb in the presence of his mother. For Lieutenant Steele he undertook to paint 'one of his engagements with the French’. At the 1837 Hobart Town Art Exhibition Lempriere 'Found [George] Peck [q.v.] had stuck my Abraham in his exhibition much annoyed at seeing my name blazing at full length in the catalogue’. This presumably was the large painting of Abraham and Agar begun in November 1835, then accidentally damaged by Lempriere ('fortunately in the dark part’) and subsequently repaired. As painting number 7 in the (lost) catalogue of Peck’s exhibition, it was described in the Hobart Town Courier of 18 August 1837 as exhibiting 'all the want of finish of an untutored Artist; but it bears the mark of a genius which with cultivation would do much’.
There were also more practical decorations. A landscape was added to a firescreen for his sister-in-law, Patience Roberts, the glass in the parlour window was painted, and the blue colouring of a room was changed to yellow because blue was 'unsuitable’. Other applied art works included painting a woman’s head on the stern of a boat for Lieutenant Steele, the ordnance arms on the ordnance store’s boat and a trompe-l’oeil snake on the seat of another boat. It is likely that Lempriere was also responsible for the painting on the internal fanlight in the hall of the Port Arthur cottage now known as the Junior Medical Officer’s house.
More technical were his maps, one of which was used in Elliston’s Hobart Town Almanack and Van Diemen’s Land Annual for 1837. There is also a reference to his making a map of the environs of Verdun, France. On 24 August 1834 Lempriere drew two plans of the church 'for our small town’ and on 16 September 1835 he recorded: 'Monday and last night busy in drawing an elevation for our new Church’. It is not, however, possible to ascertain if this had any influence on the design for the original St David’s at Hobart Town.
Writers:
Glover, Margaret
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 11 January 1796
- Summary
- Self-taught portrait painter and decorative artist of Tasmania during the mid 1800s. Linus Miller said about him: 'Mr Lempriere was one of those rare specimens of humanity whom nature has endowed with a soul so much larger and more noble than we generally meet with'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6 January 1852
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1851-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland
- Biography
- illustrator, engraver and clock-maker, was born in Edinburgh, son of William Bruce, a shoemaker. After serving his apprenticeship with an engraver named Douglas, Charles Bruce was convicted of housebreaking and transported to Van Diemen’s Land. He arrived at Hobart Town aboard the Georgiana on 18 April 1829. The following year he was assigned to Dr James Ross, the then editor of the Hobart Town Courier . Between 1831 and 1837 he worked as an illustrator and engraver on Ross’s Hobart Town Almanack . Clifford Craig lists Bruce’s engravings in the almanacs for 1831, 1832, 1833, 1836 and 1837; they include maps, views and vignettes and are, as Craig notes, of a consistently high standard.
Records show that Bruce committed several offences during this period but he was nevertheless granted his freedom on 15 December 1841. The following year he set up as a clock and watch maker, later establishing an engraving and copperplate printing business in the Argyle Buildings, Argyle Street. Billheads with vignettes of the premises being advertised are known, such as one advertising the home-brewed ale and beer of the Jolly Hatter showing Bacchus overlooking hatters at work. In 1847 he had the convict engraver Thomas Robinson working for him, but the following year Robinson was found guilty of robbing his master and sent to Maria Island. In an 1847 advertisement Bruce offered a wide range of services, including clock and jewellery repairs, visiting and trade cards, bookplates and metal engraving.
Bruce died at his home in Argyle Street, Hobart Town, on 1 November 1851, aged forty-four. His best-known print is undoubtedly Hobart Town Chain Gang (c.1831), subsequently re-engraved in London and mistakenly reproduced in James Backhouse’s Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies (London 1843) as a chain-gang in New South Wales after a drawing by Backhouse (the location error was corrected in a later edition). However, several of Bruce’s independent prints are known (ML, Crowther Library, p.cs). One is annotated: 'This is not otherwise curious than as a specimen of the first efforts at Engraving in Van Diemens Land’ and 'Sent home from Vandiemen 1831’ (p.c. Tas.), the annotated date confirming that it was produced years before Backhouse , Walker and Wheeler came to Tasmania.
As government convicts were rarely depicted this chain-gang image has since been well circulated, but its artist-designer has never been identified (it is usually given to Backhouse). It is most improbable that it was Bruce. Even his minor engravings were normally after sketches by other artists. Natives of Van Diemen’s Land , engraved in France, was acknowledged as after a sketch by Robert Neill , who seems the most likely candidate for authorship of this quite different subject drawn in a comparably sharp outline style.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1807
- Summary
- William Bruce led a full life. Apprenticed as a engraver, transported as a housebreaker to Van Diemen's land, he established himself as clockmaker and engraver.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1 November 1851
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude51.4020243 Longitude-1.3242212 Start Date1785-01-01 End Date1851-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Newbury, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, natural historian, economist and colonial secretary, was born on 25 January 1785 in Newbury, England. He wrote works attacking the severity of the Poor Laws and the penal system, was elected a member of the Linnaean Society in 1812 and its secretary 13 years later, and became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1827. He published papers on the natural sciences, particularly botany, a book on the economy of Ireland, and assisted Sir William Jardine with Illustrations of Ornithology (Edinburgh 1830).
Bicheno was called to the Bar in 1822, but in 1832 went to Wales to become a partner in some iron-works. The venture failed, doubtless leading to his soliciting the appointment of colonial secretary in Van Diemen’s Land. After his arrival in April 1843 Bicheno defended the lieutenant-governors, rejected the colonists’ claims for control of Tasmania’s revenues and wrote a report on the colonial press for Earl Grey.
In 1844 he was president of the committee formed to plan the Hobart Town Art Exhibition which took place in the Legislative Assembly rooms the following year. With G.T.W.B. Boyes , P.G. Fraser , John Skinner Prout and other leading Tasmanian artists, he was a member of the Hobart Town Sketching Club established in the late 1840s. After his death in Hobart on 25 February 1851 Bicheno’s art collection was exhibited (for sale) in a fine arts exhibition at R.V. Hood 's gallery in Liverpool Street, along with the collection of the late John Glover . No drawings by Bicheno himself were mentioned in the incomplete listings given in local newspapers and no extant examples of his work are known.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 25 January 1785
- Summary
- James Ebenezer Bicheno arrived in Van Dieman's Land for a position as Colonial Secretary. Active in the artistic community of Hobart in the 1840s and early 1850s, Bicheno was president of the committee formed to plan the Hobart Town Art Exhibition in 1844.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25 February 1851
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1781-01-01 End Date1851-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- natural history artist, was born in Paris on 26 July 1781 and died there on 18 April 1851. A student of P.P. Barraband, she specialised early in painting birds, an occupation which absorbed her entirely. She led a very quiet, almost monastic life, spending many hours at her desk dedicated to the production of wonderful velum folios of birds. She exhibited in the Salons from 1808 to 1814 and was awarded a gold medal in 1810. From 1805, with the publication of the first volume of her book on Tangaras and Todiers (1805-7), she was able to support herself and her mother.
In 1808 Pauline de Courcelles married the Dutch painter Joseph Knip (1777-1847) who had also studied with Barraband. The marriage was a disaster. The life of the small, dainty and quiet Pauline was thoroughly disorganised by the hale and hearty robust fellow, whom she soon sent off with a pension to travel and paint in Italy. The couple had one daughter, the painter Henriette Ronner (1821-1909) who later specialised in painting cats. In 1824, when her daughter was three years old, Pauline divorced her husband and thereafter signed her pictures 'Pauline De Courcelles femme Knip’. She lived at Rue Censier-Saint-Victor, 2, Paris. There is but one portrait of her, done by her husband in chalk during the last months of her pregnancy (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris).
De Courcelles’s earliest work was on American birds. Later she made a special study of pigeons for books by the Dutch ornithologist C.J. Temminck. In 1811 when she had finished one volume of pigeons, she published it straight away, much to the annoyance of Temminck who did not publish his own three-volume work until 1813-15. He stated with much gall that she had rushed in and 'stolen’ his text on pigeons of the world and published it with her illustrations before he was ready with his (for details of the theft see Cowes, 1878).
In the 1811 edition of Madame Knip’s book, three Australian pigeons are illustrated: the Common Bronzewing ( Phaps chalcoptera ), the Brush Bronzewing ( Phaps elegans ) and the Wonga Pigeon ( Leucosarcia melanoleuca ). Many more Australian birds were illustrated in her second publication, her pictures again being painted from mounted birds in the Muséum D’Histoire Naturelle.
The title page of her publication reads:
Les Pigeons, par Madame Knip, nèe Pauline de Courcelles, premier peintre d’Histoire Naturelle de S.M. l’Impèratrice Reine Marie-Louise. Le texte par C.J. Temminck, Directeur de l’Acadèmie des Sciences et des Arts de Harlem etc. À Paris. Mme Knip, Auteur et Editeur, Rue de Sorbonne, Musèe des Artistes … 1811.
I have given this in full because it is important to understand her standing within the artistic establishment, her position under the new queen, and that she acknowledged 'stealing’ Temminck’s text. In 1838-43 Pauline Knip’s bird book was brought out in a second edition of two volumes. Apart from a new title page, the first volume is identical to the first edition. The second volume, one of the rarest and most beautiful ornithological publications, contains new bird illustrations with text by F. Prèvost.
Pauline did not restrict her art to vellum or paper. She collaborated with the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres in producing china, specially dinner ware, decorated with birds. From 1817 to 1826 there are exact records of all the pieces she painted for the factory and what she was paid for each piece. All ended up in the Royal household; only they were able to afford the exorbitant prices she commanded. On special request she added, where possible, the plants the birds ate.
Writers:
Ducker, Sophie C.
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 26 July 1781
- Summary
- A natural history artist, born in Paris 1781. She specialised in painting birds and illustrated many ornithological publications. While she never visited Australia her books feature illustrations of a number of Australian birds and her work is held in the National Library of Australia.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 18 April 1851
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1767-01-01 End Date1851-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- painter, engraver, sculptor and art lecturer, was born in London of Huguenot descent. His father was a watchmaker. After apprenticeship to a London engraver, possibly Thomas Dean, he worked as both an engraver and painter. He had six portraits hung at the Royal Academy between 1817 and 1823, when living at 64 Warren Street, including Portrait of an Artist (RA 1819), perhaps a self-portrait, and Portrait of an Arabian Child (RA 1821). Three genre paintings were shown with the British Institution: The Basket Maker (1820), The Beggar Reproved (1824) and The Fruit Girl (1825). The Children in the Wood and Portrait of a Lady were shown at the Suffolk Street galleries of the Society of British Artists in 1824 and 1827 respectively. Benjamin married Miss Perigal, a daughter of the family with whom the Duterraus were in partnership in a watch- and clock-making firm in New Bond Street.
The positions of drawing master and music teacher at Ellinthorp Hall in Van Diemen’s Land were offered to Duterrau and his daughter, Sarah Jane, respectively but were filled instead by Henry Mundy before Duterrau, aged sixty-five, his daughter and his sister-in-law belatedly disembarked at Hobart Town from the Laing on 17 August 1832. According to Sir William Dixson they had stopped off at the infant Swan River settlement, certainly then no place for an artist to gain a livelihood. A 'Thomas W. Dutterau’ is listed as having arrived at Western Australia in the Egyptian from London on 28 December 1831 and in June 1832 he applied for a civil service post, giving as his reason that he could not find enough work as a watch repairer to support himself; but this man was younger (born 1814) and did not leave for Van Diemen’s Land until November 1834. Benjamin was probably delayed in London; the watch repairer sounds like a relative.
Having lost his teaching position, Duterrau opened a studio in Hobart Town. He advertised in the Hobart Town Courier that, 'having arranged the paintings which he recently brought with him from London, he will be happy to exhibit them to such ladies or gentlemen as may wish to view or to purchase any of them, as well as to follow his profession of portrait painting. Campbell Street, opposite Mr. Bisdee’s, Nov. 7, 1832’. The advertisement belatedly appeared on 21 December 1832, by which time Lieutenant-Governor Arthur had visited Duterrau’s studio (in October) and engaged Sarah as governess to his children. She married a merchant, John Bogle, in February 1838 and returned to Britain the following year. Moore states that after her father’s death his best work was sent to her at her request.
For more than ten years from about 1833 Duterrau’s major concern was the depiction of Tasmanian Aborigines, in particular their 'conciliation’ (transportation) by the Methodist 'protector’ George Augustus Robinson . A large finished oil study of The Conciliation is dated 1840 (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart). The artist revered Robinson, seeing him as the man who had stopped the warfare between the white and black races attendant on the European colonisation of Tasmania and Aboriginal resistance to the seizure of their lands. In April 1836 he presented Robinson with 'a splendid full-size portrait’ of Woureddy as a token of gratitude. By using intermediaries such as Trukanini and Woureddy who were fluent in several languages, and by learning some himself, Robinson persuaded many Aborigines to be taken to an island and thus isolated from white settlement.
In Duterrau’s painting the white races are symbolised by Robinson in his 'bush dress’ (depicted complete with rhetorical gesture), while the black races are represented by Aborigines in 'native’ dress posed around and below him, the conciliation of the title being equally manifest in the mutual tolerance of the dogs (introduced to Tasmania by Europeans) and kangaroo. This was the first history painting attempted in Australia, this heroic genre being seen by Duterrau as the most appropriate way to record such a 'favourable’ course of events. Although a life-size version of the painting was begun (recorded at the auction of his works on 27 August 1851 but now lost), it seems never to have been completed.
Duterrau investigated the theme in at least four media: pencil drawings, etchings, plaster reliefs and oils. Most were studies for the proposed 3.04 × 4.26 metre 'National Picture’ and included large individual portraits of notable figures such as Truggernana [Trukanini] and Woureddy (1834, oils, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart). These with two others were purchased for the colony by Lieutenant-Governor Arthur after a petition was sent to the Executive Council in June 1837. The colonial secretary noted that 113 inhabitants of Hobart Town had recommended that 'four likenesses of aborigines which have been painted by Mr. Duterrau should be purchased from that artist to be preserved in some public place as a memorial of the original inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land … The Lieut. Governor has great pleasure in authorising the purchase of these pictures at our expense of 80 guineas, the sighting sum asked for them by Mr. Duterrau’.
Other oil portraits of single Aboriginal figures are in the National Library of Australia, (and/or the National Gallery), the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Museum of Mankind, London. Duterrau also depicted Aborigines engaged in traditional occupations and amusements, such as Native Catching a Kangaroo (1837, oil, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra), announced as the first of a new series by Duterrau in the Hobart Town Courier of 23 June 1837 as if in preparation for a large companion painting depicting Aboriginal life before European settlement, a subject then also being painted by John Glover . Duterrau stated that two Port Phillip (Melbourne) Aborigines, Derah-Mert and Bait Bainger, would be included in his new series. His oil of The Chief Derah Mat of Port Philip [sic] , dated 5 October 1836, is known (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney). In the Hobart Town Courier of 29 November 1833, James Ross said that Duterrau’s portraits of the Aborigines revealed their inward passions as well as their external appearance
Although probably without training as a sculptor, Duterrau modelled a bas-relief in plaster depicting G.A. Robinson and his group of 'friendly natives’ (c.1833 35, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney) which appears to be among the first sculptures produced in Australia. He also offered for sale in the Hobart Town Courier of 5 August 1836, at 30s apiece complete with cedar frame, a series of thirteen painted plaster casts of life-size heads in high relief set on tablets measuring 13 × 10 inches (33 × 25.4 cm). Again the subjects were Robinson and the Aborigines, 'wherein various expressions of some particular passions, &c., are delineated which Mr. Duterrau has carefully observed in those interesting people’. They included: 1 Mr. Robinson, in his Bush Dress , 2 Manalargerna, the Chief , 3 Tanleboueyer, Wife of the Chief , 5 Truggernana, Wife of Wooreddy , 6 Credulity , 7 Anger , 8 Surprise , 9 Suspicion , and 13 The Manner of Straightening a Spear . Duterrau’s initials and the date, 1835, appear on the back of each work. Ten of the thirteen are now in the Tasmanian Museum at Hobart; numbers 1, 3 and 6 have disappeared. The Tasmanian Museum also has a larger relief of Timmy (1835), not part of the advertised series.
Duterrau delivered a high-minded lecture on art (possibly the first to be given in any of the Australian colonies) at the Hobart Town Mechanics’ Institute on 16 July 1833. He also presented a portrait he had done of the British philosopher Dr Joseph Priestley (put on display in the lecture room), which Ross in the Hobart Town Courier (19 July 1833) again said portrayed the mind rather than the mere physical appearance of the subject. His lecture topic was the importance of the cultivation of the fine arts to the right development of the colony, in particular the encouragement provided by such organisations as the Mechanics Institute. Ross reported him as saying: 'Those who countenance art and science are setting an example to the rising generation, who no doubt, will be grateful for putting in their way as they arrive at maturity, the means to become a truly civilized people’. Similar themes were chosen for other lectures, his views on poetry and painting being summarised in the Hobart Town Advertiser of 18 July 1848. The most developed of his lectures, 'The School of Athens [both Raphael’s painting and the philosophers of ancient Greece], as it Assimilates with the Mechanics’ Institution’, was delivered at the Hobart Town Mechanics Institute in 1849.
Some of the earliest etchings known to have been executed in the Australian colonies were produced by Duterrau in 1835. The subjects were, predictably, the same group of Tasmanian Aborigines, mainly individual studies subsequently used in The Conciliation , and a rough (reversed) sketch of the composition itself. In March 1836 Duterrau designed, etched and published Wild Native Taking a Kangaroo, his Dog Having Caught It, He Runs to Kill It with his Waddy and A Kangaroo Caught by a Wild Native’s Dog. The Native Then Seizes the Kangaroo & Kills It with his Waddy . In August he produced A View of Hobart Town Taken from Kangaroo Point , Hobart Town as Seen from the Top of Mount Nelson and Storm Bay as Seen from the Top of Mount Nelson . Three of the copperplates and 'Engravings from his Oil Paintings’ were included in his posthumous studio sale.
Several oil portraits of European settlers done in the 1830s and 1840s are also extant, including Eliza, Lady Arthur and Governor Arthur (c.1830, National Library of Australia, Canberra), The Walker Children (1839, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart), Portrait of Emmely Frances Watchorn (1830s, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide) and the attributed Portrait of Caleb Tapping (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart), and a confident if literally ham-fisted self-portrait showing Duterrau holding a book of engravings, Raffaelle’s Cartoons and School of Athens (1837, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart). He drew pencil and watercolour views in and around Hobart Town, including the busy and lively New Town Racecourse (1830s, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart). Duterrau died on 11 July 1851 and was buried in the Presbyterian section of the Hobart Town General Cemetery.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FROM JOAN KERR’S BLACK AND WHITE FILES:
Painter and printmaker, included a comical drawing in his very high-minded sketchboook 'Duterrau Aborigines of Tasmania Etchings and Drawings’ (SLNSW ML), inscribed 'Hobart Town 1834-5’ on the title page, above 'The Small Outline of a National Picture described… On Mr. Robinson’s right side is a woman, who is warned by her husband, not to listen quite so readily./ …The man sitting on the ground below the group, is a wild native making & straightening a spear… size of the picture, 11 feet by 8’. On page 9 is a note that the last 12 sketches in the book are 'From the National Picture’ whole length with Natives in blacklead drawings. No.13 to No. 24 – 12 figures 'All taken from life in the year 1834 AD’.
No.1 – the comic example – shows a black man and is annotated 'Arms too short’. It is titled verso 'Wild Native singing while engag’d in frolicsome Dancing’.
Produced Australia’s first known etchings. His etchings related to The National Picture , e.g. 'A Group of Natives Surrounding G.A. Robinson’ 1835, etching, BFAG (ill. Hansen, cat.90), are historically significant for subject and medium. Duterrau Aborigines of Tasmania: Etchings and Drawings (bound volume ML Px A2004) includes the title page 'Hobart Town 1834-5’; 'The Small Outline of a National Picture described’ (p.9), i.e. notes on last 12 sketches in book 'From the National Picture’, e.g. 'On Mr. Robinson’s right side is a woman, who is warned by her husband, not to listen quite so readily’ ... 'The man sitting on the ground below the group, is a wild native making and straightening a spear’... 'size of the picture, 11 feet by 8’; whole length with Natives in blacklead drawings.. No.13 to No.24—12 figures £18.00/ All taken from life in the year 1834/ BD.’ A comical drawing of black man is annotated No.1 'Arms too short’ and (verso) 'Wild Native singing while engag’d in frolicsome Dancing’. Individual etchings include: 'Woureddy/ A wild native of Brune Island one of Mr Robinson’s most faithful attendants attach’d to the mission in 1829’ and 'Truggernana/ A native of the southern part of V.D. Land & Wife to Woureddy was attach’d to the mission in 1829’, both 'Design’d, etch’d & publish’d by Bn Duterrau Augt 24th 1835 Hobart Town Van Diemen’s Land’; 'A Kangaroo caught by a Wild Native’s Dog’ and 'A Wild Native taking a Kangaroo, his Dog having caught it, he runs to kill it with his Waddy’ (both have W.D. in a circle on l.h.s. of pic. and are dated March 23rd 1836):
Writers:
Dixon, Christine
Note: Dictionary of Australian Artists biographyKerr, Joan
Note: additional information
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1767
- Summary
- Duterrau arrived in Australia when he was 65. Already an established artist, he produced many Australian 'firsts' including 'The Conciliation' - the first history painting attempted in Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 July 1851
- Age at death
- 84
Details
Latitude-42.880556 Longitude147.325 Start Date1845-01-01 End Date1850-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hobart Town, Tas., Australia
- Biography
- child artist, was born on 16 August 1845 in Aldridge Lodge, Hobart Town, a son of Joseph and Mary Morton Allport . His mother taught him to draw from infancy and examples of childish flowers dating from about 1850, either sketched from nature or copied from her drawings, were preserved in her Book of Treasures (ALMFA). Gordon Allport drowned on 10 November 1850, aged five. His mother’s small pencil sketch of him is on the same sheet in her album as one of a dead baby called Dudley – possibly another brother.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 August 1845
- Summary
- Child artist, son of sketcher Mary Morton Allport whose artistic skills were sadly not fully realised because he drowned aged five. Examples of early drawings can be found in his mother's 'Book of Treasures'.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 November 1850
- Age at death
- 5
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1811-01-01 End Date1850-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and naval officer, was born in England on 13 June 1811, eldest son of Rev. Edward Stanley, rector of Alderley and future bishop of Norwich, and his wife Catherine, daughter of Rev. Oswald Leycester, rector of Stoke, Shropshire.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 June 1811
- Summary
- With his 'passion for the sea', Stanley joined the Royal Navy, which lead him to produce numerous watercolours of Port Essington, the Swan River settlement, Sydney, New Zealand, and Tasmania. These images provide a comprehensive and personal record of the antipodes and its inhabitants.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 March 1850
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1808-01-01 End Date1850-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- sketcher (?), journalist, lawyer and farmer, was born in Dublin, eldest son of Rev. Richard Herbert Nash, Church of Ireland rector of Ardstraw in the Londonderry diocese. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1824, then was admitted as a lawyer to Gray’s Inn, London, on 7 November 1829, aged 21. Soon after his marriage to Miss M. Schoales, the Nashes migrated to Western Australia, arriving at Fremantle in the Hindoo on 20 April 1839.
Apart from the law, Nash’s major interests were farming, journalism and the Anglican Church. He was an active member of the West Australian Agricultural and Horticultural Society to which he had been elected a member three months after his arrival, editing its journal in 1842. He published Manual for the Cultivation of the Vine and Olive in Western Australia at Perth in 1845. He was secretary of the General Board of Education, and in 1846 briefly edited the Perth Inquirer newspaper. In 1841-43 and in 1846-48 he was acting advocate-general of Western Australia. William Wade remembered that he was 'reckoned a great lawyer, and was nicknamed “Noddy” from a nervous habit of shaking his head when addressing the Court’.
Nash had no contemporary reputation as a sketcher and his status as an artist remains unclear. A sketch of some kind was noted by Honoria Lawrence in a letter to Mrs (or Miss) Irwin quoted by M. Diver: 'The said budget contained Mr Nash’s sketch of Swan River, which interested us much’. It has also been suggested that he filled a sketchbook, now held with the Irwin Papers in the Battye Library, inscribed 'Elizabeth C. Irwin, from her friend Mr/Mrs Nash’, but since blank sketchbooks were commonly given as presents Elizabeth Irwin is the more likely artist. In any case, from examination of the inscription, the donor appears equally likely to have been 'Mrs’ Nash. Silhouettes of a high quality were cut by Miss Katherine Schoales, apparently a Dublin aunt of Mrs Nash’s (WA Museum), but no authenticated works by any of the Western Australian Schoales – Mrs Nash, her brother John and her unmarried schoolteacher sister – are known.
On 9 January 1849 Richard Nash left Western Australia with his family in the Emperor of China , bound for England, where he became manager of the Colonization Assurance Corporation established to promote emigration. He published Stray Suggestions on Colonization in 1849 and died at Norwood, near London, on 22 December 1850.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1808
- Summary
- With well developed careers as a journalist, lawyer and farmer, it seems that Nash's reputation as an artist, in particular as a sketcher, remains unclear. Nash migrated to Western Australia with his wife in 1839 only to return to England 10 years later.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 December 1850
- Age at death
- 42
Details
Latitude51.7957409 Longitude-0.078521 Start Date1781-01-01 End Date1850-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hertford, England, UK
- Biography
- William Westall, landscape artist, was born in Hertford on 12 October 1781, youngest of seven children of Benjamin Westall, a Norwich brewer, and only surviving child of Benjamin’s second wife, Martha Harbord. William’s early drawing lessons were given to him by his half-brother Richard (1765 – 1836), a Royal Academician popular with contemporary taste and instructor in drawing and painting. In 1799 William was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. Early in 1801, on the recommendation of Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy, he was appointed landscape artist on Matthew Flinders’ “Investigator” expedition to Australia (then called New Holland). This appointment had originally gone to William Daniell (1769 – 1837), who withdrew from the voyage to marry Westall’s half-sister Mary. The voyage via Madeira and South Africa arrived in Western Australia on 6 December 1801 and completed a circumnavigation of the island between that date and mid 1803. Westall produced pencil and watercolour sketches of coastal profiles, landscapes, Aboriginal cave art, Aboriginee portraits and a few natural history subjects. When the “Porpoise”, which replaced the “Investigator” deemed unseaworthy, ran aground on Wreck Reef on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, Westall’s drawings were “wetted and partly destroyed” but were nevertheless forwarded to the Admiralty as part of the official record of the voyage. On their receipt in London, Sir Joseph Banks had them sent to Richard Westall to be “restored to a proper state” and made a list of 145 sketches and a further 12 finished drawings. Fifteen pictures were returned by Richard Westall restored two of them finished drawings.. William Westall, meanwhile, had gone from Wreck Reef to Canton in China arriving in December 1803. Whilst there he wrote at the suggestion of Banks’ representative David Lance, to Sir Joseph saying that he was intending to go to Ceylon and India to obtain picturesque views which he found absent during the journey around Australia’s “barren coast”. It is possible that the artist exaggerated his lack of enthusiasm for Australian scenery in order to more justify his decision. He also stressed that he had expected to travel to the South Seas after leaving Australia. This was an unwise letter. On strictly artistic grounds we are to be thanked for Westall’s illustrations of China and India (one of wich was compared to the work of Turner by a contemporary critic). His assertion that he had anticipated travelling to the South Seas is not in line with his signed contract, altough it is possible that those who encouraged him to go on the voyage may have suggested such an eventuality. In any case the Admiralty ceased Westall’s remuneration from this time, treating the further travel a private matter. Westall travelled to Bombay in India under the auspices of the East India Company, arriving on April 30 1804. He never visited Ceylon. He then returned to London, calling at St Helana and arriving in London early in 1805. He subsequently visited Madeira again and Jamaica and showed watercolour views of these places in a Brook Street gallery and at the Associated Arts’ Exhibition in 1808. Ten engravings after his drawings appeared in “The Naval Chronicle” between 1799 and 1816 where he was described in 1808 as a “rising young artist”. In 1810 he exhibited an oil painting of Australia and a further two in 1812 at the Royal Academy after which he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. Early in 1811 Flinders, who returned to England after imprisonment on Mauritius, collected Westall’s sketches from the Admiralty and, in conference with Westall and Sir Josph Banks, chose nine subjects for oil paintings, commissioned by the Admiralty to be engraved as illustrations, together with 28 coastal views. for Flinders’s “Voyage to Terra Australia” (1814). The oil paintings are now the property of Britain’s Ministry of Defence. Westall married Ann Sedgwick (1789-1862), daughter of the Rev. Richard Sedgwick, vicar of Dent and sister of Professor of Geology Adam Sedgwick, teacher and disputant of Charles Darwin. The Westalls had four sons: William entered the church, Thomas the navy, Richard appears to have had severe learning difficulties and Robert who became an artist and engraver like his father and exhibited a few paintings at the Royal Academy. Westall retained his Australian sketches and after his death on 20 January, 1850 they passed to William and Robert. In 1899 Robert sold most of them to the Royal Colonial Institute (which became the Royal Commonwealth Society). He and his brother William presented further paintings and the collection was sold subsequently to the National Library of Australia. This collection now constitutes the major part of Westall’s Australian work. A small number of drawings remain in private hands, a few with Westall’s descendants. After completing the oil paintings for the Admiralty, Westall worked largely in watercolour, producing views to be reproduced in aquatint in topographical and travel books. Some of his best views are those in “A Picturesque Tour of the River Thames (1828), while some of his best known appeared in Rudolf Ackermann’s histories of Oxford, Cambridge and some of the better-known public schools. Westall’s watercolour and drawing style lent itself well to aquatint and engraving, some of which he executed himself. He was in constant demand by publishers, but he himself found the work unsatisfying and considered that he had given “hope of fame for a trade”, although family responsibilities may well have determined the course of his career. He showed 70 pictures in Royal Academy exhibtions and 28 at the British Institution (several the same as the Royal Academy pictures but usefully including their measurements. Some 700 engraviings after his drawings are known. Westall’s friend and critic, fellow engraver John Landseer maintained his work was always “justly valued by the judicious few”. Bernard Smith’s assessment of his oil paintings based on his Australian experience is that “they reveal greater fluency and keener desire to render the truths of light and atmosphere than in the sketches made upon the “Investigator”“. Rex Reinits maintained that “Westall was a thoroughly competent, thoroughly professional artist who drew what he saw straighforwardly and honestly to the best of his considerable ability”. Others have commented on his artistic licence having been stretched to breaking point at times. There is no doubt that Westall did experience a tension between topographical accuracy and notions of landscape and the picturesque, especially in the oil paintings completed for the Royal Academy as well as the Admiralty. Here we have more finished but less fresh pictures of Australia. Most of these oils have been hidden away far too long in Admiralty House, the residence of Britain’s Minister of Defence who over the years have not perhaps been outstanding connisseurs of art. However these paintings, truly a British vision of Australia, are now gaining wider circulation and greater appreciation.
Writers:
Westall, Richard J.
Note:
Date written:
2008
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 12 October 1781
- Summary
- William Westall was the appointed landscape artist on Matthew Flinders' 1801 "Investigator" expedition which was the first maritime circumnavigation of Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 January 1850
- Age at death
- 69
Details
Latitude53.8 Longitude-2.6 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1849-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Lancashire, England, United Kingdom
- Biography
- painter, sketcher and silhouette artist, was born in Lancashire, eldest son of William Winstanley . With his parents, sisters and brothers he came to Sydney in the Adventure , arriving on 2 May 1833. Although William Moore called Winstanley 'self-taught’ as a painter, he was presumably taught by his father. Even so, his artistic precocity was such that his skill in taking profiles was reported in the Sydney Monitor just two weeks after the family reached Sydney:
With a pair of scissors, and a small piece of paper, he cuts the features in the same way as an artist would apply himself with his pencil. When the profile is completed by the cutting, that of shading with Indian Ink is resorted to, to throw the prominent parts of the features into relief , and the likeness is then fixed on a card with gum … His terms are very moderate. He appears about eight years of age, but we believe he is older.
He was still reportedly taking 'the best likenesses in profile we ever saw’ in July. By October 1834, however, he had joined his father in partnership: 'Mr. Winstanley & Son’ were scene-painters at Sydney’s Theatre Royal.
At the age of twenty-three, Edward Winstanley painted the original watercolours for a set of four lithographs put on the stone by Thomas Balcombe , The Five-Dock Grand Steeple-Chase, 1844 , and established a new reputation as a sporting artist.
He drew and lithographed Don Quixote’s Remarkable Adventure with the Cattle and Don Quixote Returning Home Again c.1844 (on squatters defeating Governor Gipps’s land regulations), inscribed 'on stone by E.W./ R.Clint lith. 36 Hunter St Sydney’.
In 1846 he painted a watercolour portrait of Nazeer Farrib, an arab stallion owned by Sydney’s first postmaster-general, James Raymond of Varroville, near Minto. In 1847 his painting of the famous colonial racehorse Jorrocks, with John Higgerson in the saddle, was reproduced in Bell’s Life in Sydney . A later watercolour portrait of Jorrocks (1848, National Library of Australia) is annotated: 'This Veteran of the Turf though now nearly 18 years of age still retains his racing qualities/ Between the years 1840 and 1848 he won 44 races realizing for his owners the sum of £2688. Sydney Nov. 1849.’
Winstanley’s watercolour Race Horses and his oil painting A Hunting Scene (both then owned by the prominent solicitor, sportsman and amateur rider, Charles Cooper Turner) were shown with the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia in 1847. The Sydney Morning Herald described the former as 'neatly coloured and drawn with some spirit in the style of English coloured engravings’, but thought 'the oil showed much more genius’. Winstanley’s address was given as care of J. Grocott, the stationer and bookseller of 476 George Street. He was represented in the society’s 1849 exhibition by Grimaldi , another horse portrait, lent by Mr Samuel.
Winstanley was the principal artistic contributor to the New South Wales Sporting Magazine . He designed its decorative cover, which featured saddlery and riding gear, rod and fishing net, gun and game, bow and arrow, kangaroos and greyhound, and cricket bat. The first issue (October 1848) had his lithograph of Jorrocks as its frontispiece, the second (November) a lithograph after his portrait of the racehorse Cassandra, while the December issue included his illustration of the start of the famous race between Slasher and Highflyer run in 1845. The fourth and final issue (January 1849) featured his The Leap, Block and Highflyer . Other Winstanley illustrations included a yacht (after Frederick Garling ), landscapes and portraits. Like other sporting artists, particularly Joseph Fowles , he also painted marine scenes, eg. The Barque Honduras off Fort Macquarie (1848, watercolour, Mitchell Library [ML]). He contributed to a lithograph of the new Sydney Post Office dating from the end of the l840s, the architectural detail being drawn by F.G. Lewis, son of Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis – designer of the building – the figures and horses in the foreground by Winstanley (copies Dixson Galleries and Northern Regional Library, Launceston). From stylistic evidence a lively sketch of Mortimer Lewis Out Riding (ML) seems certain to be Winstanley’s work too.
Winstanley died of consumption at his mother’s residence in Phillip Street, Sydney, on 4 August 1849. His headstone in Camperdown Cemetery is carved with a painter’s palette. Bell’s Life stated that 'as an animal and marine painter the deceased possessed talents of the highest order’.
Writers:
Laverty, ColinKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1820
- Summary
- Winstanley was an artistic contributor to the New South Wales Sporting Magazine during the late 1840s. He is best known for his images of racehorses and sporting scenes. During the 1830s Winstanley formed a partnership with his father as a scene painter. He was a competent silhouette artist.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 August 1849
- Age at death
- 29
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1819-01-01 End Date1849-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- sketcher and engineer, was born on 15 June 1819, younger brother of Owen Stanley .
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 15 June 1819
- Summary
- Stanley was posted to Van Diemen's Land by the Royal Engineers in 1846. Though he was to survive in the colony only two years, a victim of gastro-enteritis, he spent time sketching picturesque views with John Skinner Prout and Simpkinson.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13 August 1849
- Age at death
- 30
Details
Latitude52.7589402 Longitude-1.9362042 Start Date1809-01-01 End Date1849-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Rugeley, Staffordshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, silhouette artist, lithographer and draughtsman, was born in Rugeley, Staffordshire on 17 March 1809, third and youngest son of Captain Thomas Fernyhough, a military and county historian and a governor of the Military Knights of Windsor, and his first wife Susannah, née Masters. William appears to have worked as a professional armorial painter in Staffordshire. His father was employed by William Salt FSA to help catalogue his Staffordshire collection and William’s sketches appear throughout Captain Fernyhough’s notes and transcripts. A zincograph of Stowe and a pen-and-ink sketch of a tomb at Uttoxeter (William Salt Library) suggest that he was also encouraged to share his father’s local history interests.
William married the daughter of the quartermaster of the Ceylon Rifle Corps, a misalliance which may have led to the couple’s emigration soon afterwards in mid 1836, a move financed 'at very considerable expense’ his father later stated. In Sydney Fernyhough soon found work with J.G. Austin 's lithographic printing firm. His technical abilities in lithography and zincography enabled him to produce prints in both media judged by the Sydney Times of 17 September 1836 to be much superior in quality to those previously available in the colony and promising well 'to embellish our colonial literature’. He seems to have introduced zincography to New South Wales, a technique only commercially viable in England from 1830.
The original pencil sketches for Fernyhough’s first production for Austin, A Series of Twelve Profile Portraits of the Aborigines of New South Wales , survive (Dixson Library). The collection was released in September 1836 as a set in covers for 10s 6d. Later that month a new series Ombres Fantastiques was published, of which two sheets of vignetted silhouettes crowded with local scenes and characters are known (Mitchell Library). In early October Austin issued Fernyhough’s Military and Editorial Sketches , black full-length profile portraits of well-known military officers and civilians such as Rev. J.D. Lang, Thomas Mitchell and Bishop Polding. The set became known as the Sydney Characters . The Dixson Library holds a humorous print of the same silhouette type illustrating the course of a marriage, Matrimonial Thermometer . All sold for a shilling each.
The Sydney Characters provided gently humorous but ephemeral reportage of Sydney personalities, but the Profile Portraits of the Aborigines was aimed at a different audience – 'a pretty present to friends in England as characteristic of this country’. Nowhere were these profiles seen as caricatures but rather as striking likenesses. The series was successful, remaining in print until the 1840s, and both E.D. Barlow and William Baker published emulations. Silhouettes were a cheap form of portraiture that became especially popular once Lavater’s publications were known, being used to analyse racial and personal characteristics supposedly perceivable in the shape of the head. Aboriginal profiles by Fernyhough and his imitators would have provided English buyers, in particular, with another racial type to which they could apply current phrenological and physiognomical theories.
Fernyhough illustrated W.E. Brockett’s Narrative of a Voyage from Sydney to Torres Straits in November 1836 with what the Sydney Herald of 21 November 1836 considered to be 'very excellent drawings’. A few weeks later, Austin printed his Piper, the Native Who Accompanied Major Mitchell in his Expedition to the Interior . The subject was notorious in Sydney for his dress of army redcoat and cocked hat and, Mitchell wrote, 'His portrait, thus arrayed, soon appeared in the print-shops; an ingenious artist (Mr. Fernyhough) having drawn his likeness very accurately’.
After disappearing from the print market for some months, Fernyhough announced in October 1837 that he was resuming lithographic printing and drawing and was available to take likenesses. On 3 February 1838 the Sydney Times , noting a move to George Street, regretted that the 'respectable and talented artist Mr. Fernyhough… does not devote himself to portrait painting in its various styles, as no other artist in the Colony succeeds so well in profiles, or is so happy in his likenesses, which are ever striking… a group of children now in his window is highly creditable to him.’ It was also stated that he had designed the 'very beautiful ornaments which decorate the roof of the recently erected Roman Catholic chapel’ (the original St Mary’s Cathedral), a government job that may help explain the interruptions in his commercial career.
Moore suggests that Fernyhough was appointed a 'surveyor and architect’ under Mitchell and he certainly worked as a governmental architectural draughtsman, drawing up the original plans for St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, Church Hill, Sydney for Bishop Polding in 1840, possibly from the Surveyor-General’s Department. In 1842-43, at the onset of the economic depression, both he and his father wrote requesting that he be re-employed. Fernyhough senior’s letter to Mitchell (1843) stated that his son had been 'induced to resign his situation… at the instigation of a friend who held out delusive hopes to him’. It also gives the interesting artistic information that William’s series of pen-and-ink heraldry drawings for Captain Fernyhough’s proposed publication on the Military Knights of Windsor had been done in Sydney. Their pleas, however, appear to have been in vain. Fernyhough was listed as a private surveyor and draughtsman of Pitt Street in 1844. He died on 15 August 1849, at the age of 40, 'leaving a wife and six children to lament his loss’. Moore attributes his death to injuries sustained after falling down in a fit (suspiciously like Joseph Fowles ) and states that Fernyhough’s family established his widow in business in Sydney – which does seem likely.
Writers:
Neville, Richard
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 March 1809
- Summary
- Fernyhough produced silhouette portraits of Sydney personalities and of Aborigines. He is believed to have introduced zincography to New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 15 August 1849
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude50.92765415 Longitude-2.761030284 Start Date1801-01-01 End Date1849-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Balham Hill, England, UK
- Biography
- bird painter, amateur photographer and ornithologist, third son of William Cotton and Catherine, née Savery, was born at Balham Hill, Clapham Common, near London. He went to school in Richmond, then was for a time articled to a solicitor, although inclined to art, literature and natural history. Cotton’s notebooks containing his wash and ink copies of well-known paintings, his Journal of a Tour to Milan by way of Paris, Lyons etc. 1824 and his Journal of a Tour down the Rhine etc. 1830 , survive. By 1835-36 he had published The Resident Song Birds of Great Britain containing Delineations of Seventeen Birds and The Song Birds of Great Britain containing the Delineations of Thirty-three Birds . These rare and bibliographically complex works were followed by another book, Beautiful Birds , published after his death.
In 1843 John Cotton, his wife Susannah, née Edwards, and their nine children followed his younger brother, Edward, to Australia and leased Doogallook, a run of about 30 000 acres on the Goulburn River between the King Parrot and Muddy creeks. From the time of his arrival Cotton showed intense interest in local bird life; by 1843 he was making sketches of birds. In 1848 John informed William, his eldest brother still in England, that he had 'upwards of a hundred drawings of birds found in this district’ and was seeking encouragement and help to publish Ornithological Sketches by a Resident of Port Phillip, NSW . He also sent home many bird specimens (skins) to sell. Various factors mitigated against the success of these projects; zoological specimens were already being sent to England in great numbers, and John Gould was established as the dominant figure in Australian ornithology. Encouragement was not forthcoming. Frustrated and disappointed, Cotton died in December 1849.
About 120 pages of Cotton’s bird drawings are extant, including two sketchbooks and forty loose sheets. These came at last into the caring hands of his great-granddaughter, the Baroness Casey of Berwick, and are now in the La Trobe Library. That Cotton possessed genuine artistic talent is clear from his drawings, whether copies or originals, of scenes, landscapes and figures in his various notebooks, especially the drawings of birds. The hand-coloured copper engravings and engraving/etchings of his Song Birds have a simple Regency charm and often catch the life of the species, while his drawings of Australian birds and their settings in pencil, pen and watercolour are outstanding. Most are preliminary sketches and therefore have spontaneity and freshness. There are also several finely finished drawings done with the brush alone.
Cotton was also one of Australia’s earliest resident photographers, apparently acquiring an interest in taking daguerreotypes from the pioneer dilettante painter and photographer George Alexander Gilbert whose brother Frank Gilbert was a tutor to Cotton’s children. There are various references to daguerreotypy in Cotton’s correspondence edited by G. Mackaness.By October 1846 he had received daguerreotype apparatus from London and was planning to sell portraits of the Aborigines in London, although brother William Cotton doubted if photographs of 'ugly natives’ would be a commercial proposition. In June 1848 John informed William that he had taken 'several portraits … of my sons-in-law and their wives, some of the blacks &c.’ Cotton died in 1849 awaiting a new batch of daguerreotype plates. No examples of his plates are known.
Writers:
McEvey, Allan
newtog
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2022
- Born
- b. 1801
- Summary
- Bird painter, amateur photographer and ornithologist born in England, UK. Resident near Goulburn, NSW his drawings of Australian birds and their settings in pencil, pen and watercolour are outstanding.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- December 1849
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude52.0553813 Longitude-2.7151735 Start Date1797-01-01 End Date1849-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hereford, England, UK
- Biography
- lithographer, engraver, printer and surveyor, was born in Hereford, second of the five artist sons of George Clint ARA, a popular English miniature painter and engraver. Like his father and brothers, Raphael Clint exhibited at the London Royal Academy, showing mainly casts of intaglios from 1817. These included a self-portrait (1826) and a portrait of Horne Took after the bust by Chantry (1827). Raphael Clint migrated to Western Australia in 1829, arriving at King George Sound in the Calista on 5 August. Initially employed as a clerk in the Survey Department, he became an assistant surveyor in 1832. On 21 January he left on an overland expedition under Lieutenant Robert Dale , accompanied by three soldiers and the Aboriginal guide Nakina.
A Roman Catholic, Clint apparently married while in Western Australia. Later in 1832 he and his wife left for Van Diemen’s Land. While he was surveying at Bridgewater in 1834 Mrs Clint was accused of illegal trafficking in sly grog with the soldiers and Clint was dismissed from his government post. They went to Sydney and set up an engraving shop. It was probably at 36 Hunter Street since an advertisement in the Sydney Times of 14 February 1835 states that Clint was quitting this address for 12 King Street. Initially business prospered and Clint played an active role in the social and public life of Sydney. In 1836 he announced that he had recruited an engraver from London and early the following year he was advertising 'a complete lithographic establishment, which will be put in operation forthwith under the conduct of an Artist of eminent talent’. In March he was offering lithographic portraits 'full length £1, half length 10s. 6d, and as many copies as they may require at 1s. each’.
Clint, however, did little original drawing or printing himself. He always employed assistants, including John Carmichael and Josiah Allen , with none of whom he managed to establish long or harmonious relationships. Nor did offensive public insults endear him to his colleagues. E.D. Barlow , who shared premises with Clint before taking over J. G. Austin 's lithography business in 1837, accused him a few months afterwards of having pirated the technique of zincography (for which Barlow had the exclusive patent) and making dishonest claims to have purchased all Austin’s lithographic presses. (Barlow said he retained two.) He took out advertisements in which he labelled Clint a 'Quack??? Quack??? Quack???’.
On 30 October 1838 Thomas Bock came to Sydney, apparently having been invited to join Clint as artist and lithographer. But, after lithographing G.A. Robinson 's portrait at Clint’s rooms (presumably directly onto the stone), Bock abruptly returned to Van Diemen’s Land on 7 December and the lithograph, Robinson noted, 'could not be printed, none to do it’. Bock’s reason for leaving Sydney is undocumented, but in 1840 his employee J. Price publicly accused Clint of being unqualified as an engraver and printer, of not paying him anything for three months when he was ill, and of assaulting another of his printers and driving him 'almost to madness’ when he refused to reveal trade secrets. Price also claimed that Clint had petitioned the Governor to close down a competitor’s shop. In spite of such imperfect industrial relations, numerous prints were issued from Clint’s premises, particularly maps, charts and plans of Australia and New Zealand. Tom Darragh states that the first published map of Melbourne, issued in October 1839, was drawn by James Williamson , a local surveyor, then sent to Sydney to be engraved and printed by Clint. In the early 1840s, however, Clint fell victim, first to illness then to the general economic depression. He moved several times until reopening his old Hunter Street premises in November 1842, where he advertised: 'Lithographic Printing in all sizes from circulars to large charts or maps. Copper-plate engraving and printing. Seal engraving on stone or metals. Every description of mercantile forms on hand. A collection of the most recent heraldic works, &c.’
In December Clint had a specimen book on view which, he claimed, contained 1000 lithographic plans of estates he had printed and proved his superiority to the 'bad work and smeared lines, and obscured figures’ of 'the inferior tradesmen of the city’. To no avail. Nine months later he was forced to close the Hunter Street shop and work from his home in George Street. He announced in December 1843 that he had been 'almost totally unemployed’ for the previous two years and was going back to England. He may even have carried out this threat, for he did not advertise again for three and a half years. He published a chart of the recent Barrier Reef survey in 1844 and his undated caricatures of Gother Kerr Mann and Governor Gipps, the latter titled Don Quixote’s Remarkable Adventures with the Cattle and Don Quixote’s Returning Home Again , probably date from then too, but nothing else is known until May 1847. Then he advertised that he had 'resumed his business in all its branches … To meet the still continuing depression of the Colony in the taste for art, he has reduced his charges 50 per cent’. In June he claimed to have dropped his charges by 80 per cent and was again threatening imminent departure. It certainly did not eventuate. In August, presumably in order to reduce costs, Clint was sharing premises with the engraver and printer Henry Cooper Jervis but, as usual, the arrangement was brief. Later that year Clint was declared insolvent. He died in Sydney on 13 September 1849, survived by his wife, whom he left in penury unable to cover even the burial costs. She publicly solicited 'a little aid to enable her to continue her own support’ and by April 1850 had opened a millinery and dressmaking sho
At the 1849 Sydney exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia, Clint exhibited two of his intaglio seals: heads of Lord Byron and von Weber. He had shown a sketch of the latter at the Royal Academy in 1828, described as Impression from an Intaglio . According to Nancy Gray, he designed and engraved the first signed armorial bookplates produced in New South Wales. More than twenty survive (Mitchell Library [ML]). He would undoubtedly have been directly involved in the firm’s engraving of gems, seals, silver, copper plaques for cornerstones of buildings, tombstones, doorplates and sundials. (Several of the last are known, one in the garden of Lindesay, Darling Point.) Clint’s father’s obituary in the July 1854 issue of the London Art Journal noted that Raphael had been a gem-cutter of considerable talent – a talent unfortunately in little demand in penal Sydney.
Clint signed a version of Ways and Means for 1845 (ML SV*CART 14). Edward Winstanley also signed a version of the same print (ML SV*CART 16)
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1797
- Summary
- Lithographer, engraver, printer and surveyor born in England. Resident of Western Australia, Tasmania and NSW he designed and engraved the first signed armorial bookplates produced in New South Wales.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13 September 1849
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude-42 Longitude147 Start Date1831-01-01 End Date1848-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Van Diemen's Land, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
- Biography
- sketcher, was born in Van Diemen’s Land on 12 September 1831, second daughter of Edward Dumaresq (1802 1906) and his first wife Frances Blanche, née Legge. She died of tuberculosis in her home at Illawarra on the Norfolk Plains (Tas.) on 11 October 1848, aged seventeen. A wash view of a romantic castle on a mountain above the sea (1848, private collection), annotated 'One of our angelic Amelia’s last Drawings’, is a conventional, but unusually competent, young lady’s drawing book copy. She is buried in the family plot in the churchyard of Christ Church of England, Illawarra, near Longford.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 12 December 1831
- Summary
- Daughter of Edward Dumaresq, surveyor, public servant and landowner, Amelia died an untimely death at the age of seventeen. Described as angelic, her drawings show talent.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 11 October 1848
- Age at death
- 17
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1848-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- watercolourist and draughtsman, was born in Paris on 26 April 1800, according to his personal service file. He began his naval career in a secretarial position at the French Atlantic port of Rochefort, working there from 21 August 1825 until 6 January 1826, then volunteered to join the Astrolabe as a draughtsman. He was recommended to the expedition’s commander Dumont d’Urville by Quoy, one of the naturalists, and joined the ship at Toulon on 7 February 1826. Until the ship returned to France on 1 April 1829 de Sainson earned his monthly salary of 100 francs by producing a total of nearly 500 drawings.
The Astrolabe first visited Australia from early October to late December 1826 (King George Sound, Westernport, and Jervis Bay, Sydney). It made a second visit from mid-December 1827 to early January 1828 (Hobart Town). A large collection of de Sainson’s drawings is on deposit in the French National Archives. A small collection of watercolours (Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris) includes two Australian subjects: View taken in George’s Street at Sydney and an untitled work corresponding to the published lithograph of the view of the clearings at the foot of Mount Wellington, Van Diemen’s Land. There is no independent evidence that he ever painted in oils and for this and other reasons the traditional attribution to de Sainson of an unsigned, undated oil painting, Inauguration du Monument Élevé par L’Astrolabe á La Pérouse é Vanikoro, 14 Mars, 1828 (NLA), was questioned in 1984. The identification, description and analysis of the vast number of lithographs, etchings and engravings after de Sainson are extensive and still almost virgin areas of investigation.
From 11 June 1829 to 31 December 1834 de Sainson was a member of the editorial team preparing the official account of the expedition for publication. One engraving of five Aboriginal portraits after de Sainson appeared in the Zoological Atlas : one engraving and 36 lithographs of Australian artefacts, landscapes, townscapes and further Aboriginal subjects were included in the Historical Atlas . Careful though de Sainson’s portraits are, as Bernard Smith has said, they 'veer occasionally towards the ignoble and comic savage when he depicts Australian aborigines, as they err on the side of the romantic when he depicts the Maori. But his drawings do mark a considerable advance upon the work of his predecessors.’
In November 1829, at Dumont d’Urville’s request, de Sainson was promoted commis de marine 3e classe . He became a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in August 1831 and a commis de 2e classe in September 1833, having applied for promotion a month earlier. Some time before this he began editorial work on the Album Historique illustrating the voyage of La Favorite and in June 1835 applied for three months’ leave from his regular service to bring this to a conclusion. Several of the aquatints in this volume are after drawings by de Sainson, none of an Australian subject. On 21 May 1836, he was appointed to a position in the central administration but resigned on 1 June. The following year (1837) found him as secretary to a French scientific mission travelling in southern Russia and in that context his portrait was lithographed by Raffet in 1848. No reliable biographical details have yet been discovered beyond this, although guesses about his year of death have been made.
Writers:
Collins, R. D. J.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 26 April 1800
- Summary
- A watercolourist and draughtsman, Louis Auguste de Sainson was born in Paris on 26 April 1800. He began his lengthy naval career in a secretarial position in France which enabled him to travel to Australia and create hundreds of drawings and engravings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1848
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1798-01-01 End Date1848-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and art teacher, was probably a child of John and Mary Mundy baptised on 2 January (2 February according to the International Genealogical Index of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints) 1798 in St Marylebone Parish Church. London. A report of his death in the Britannia (30 March 1848) stated that he had visited France, Italy and other continental countries to 'add a knowledge of the Masters to a sound artistic training’ (précis in Stilwell and von Oppeln). Mundy or Munday (both spellings were used although the former only by the artist) may have been the 'H. Mundy’ who exhibited an oil painting of Swiss peasants at the British Institution in 1831, his address being given in the catalogue as 12 Crawford Street, Portman Square. His earliest known surviving works are pencil sketches dating from the early 1820s, when he was still a student, owned by a Tasmanian descendant who has lived in England for many years. The most notable is a head of a young woman, the only work known by him to be signed. {It is unlikely that he was the London engraver and lithographer in the firm of Dean & Munday (sic) that lithographed Prize Ram and Ewe, Exhibited at Parramatta, October 1828, from the Electoral Saxon Flocks of Raby after a drawing by William Edward Riley, the other partner undoubtedly being one of the sons of Thomas Dean, proprietor of the well-known printing works in Threadneedle Street, London.}
Henry Mundy most likely arrived at Hobart Town as a steerage passenger in the Vibilia on 22 August 1831, having been engaged by Charles Richard Clark of London on behalf of Mr and Mrs George Carr Clark of Ellinthorp Hall, a private school for young ladies near Ross, to teach drawing, music and French after Benjamin Duterrau and his daughter Sarah Jane, who had been offered the positions in London, had not taken them up. While at the school Mundy composed quadrilles and waltzes, the scores of which were dedicated to his pupils. They were published in London in 1838-39 and sold in Hobart and Launceston. He was commissioned to paint the portrait of at least one of his former students, Mary Ann, daughter of William Effingham Lawrence, a prominent Launceston colonist (c.1840, private collection [p.c.]), and of her mother, Mrs Lawrence née Smither (La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria). Lavinia, eldest daughter of Major Thomas Daunt Lord of Okehampton, Spring Bay, whom Mundy married on 28 January 1834, had also been a pupil at the school. Portraits of his parents-in-law, evidently painted in the late 1830s (p.c.), which for many years hung at Entally, near Launceston, are his earliest known portraits.
Mundy left Ellinthorp Hall in the latter half of 1838 and settled in Launceston, where he established himself as a portrait and landscape painter. The business initially prospered. Although he never seems to have signed or dated his Tasmanian paintings and identified works rely largely on provenance and style, he is known to have painted oil portraits of several well-known residents of northern Tasmania. One fully authenticated surviving portrait is his portrait of James Denton Toosey of Richmond Hill, Cressy, an early benefactor of Christ College, Hobart, which used to hang in the college (now Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery). Others include a lost portrait of Mrs Reiby (Richarda Allen), described by Ann (Clark) Weston in an 1839 letter to her sister as 'done to the life most splendidly dressed in black velvet, blond lace and pearls’; and extant portraits of Susanna Vivares Tabart (p.c.), merchant Thomas Williams (p.c.) and Thomas Archer of Woolmers, Longford (at Woolmers). A portrait of Thomas Archer’s eldest son, Thomas William Archer, also at Woolmers, is attributed to him. At the 1862 Launceston Exhibition Sir Richard Dry lent Mundy’s portrait of his father and Mr Weedon lent a portrait, neither of which has yet been convincingly identified.
Mundy painted landscapes as well as portraits, but no extant examples have been firmly identified. On 6 February 1840, the Launceston Advertiser mentioned four scenes of the Norfolk Plains area painted for W.P. Weston: 'One of them in particular attracted our notice, in which the artist’s skill must have been put to the test. The locality chosen for this subject was merely a post and rail fence, a little cultivated land, and the surrounding bush, with Ben Lomond in the distance; out of which, by the introduction of cattle, rustics etc., has been produced a beautiful, and at the same time faithful picture. A view of Longford from the residence of G.P. Ball, Esq., is also a most beautiful picture’. An unsigned oil painting (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery), although neither of the above, is possibly by him and he probably did other views. In October 1840 Lady Franklin wrote to Mundy inviting him to paint a picture of the Rossbank Observatory with Captain Ross, Captain Crozier and her husband Sir John (Governor of Van Diemen’s Land) in the foreground. She stated that she was proposing to exhibit the resulting work at the Royal Academy, London. Mundy replied that he was, unfortunately, in the middle of moving and so unable to accept the commission; instead, it was carried out by a Hobart Town artist (evidently Thomas Bock ). Mundy was removing his family to Seaford, near Okehampton, on the east coast of Tasmania. The census taken in January 1842 described him as head of its household of eighteen, including five convicts.
Yet in March 1842 Mundy was in Hobart Town advertising as a portrait and landscape painter and art teacher from Temple House. In April 1843 the local press reported that this 'justly celebrated’ artist had opened 'a school of Painting…in connection with the Mechanics’ Institute’. On 31 August 1844 he was offering special terms for portraits (£6 for a 'Head size’) and for drawing and music lessons (2 guineas a quarter) at his studio and residence, 51 Argyle Street, corner of Brisbane Street. He painted his brother-in-law Lieutenant Francis Aubin, aide-de-camp to Governor Arthur (Van Diemen’s Land Folk Museum, Hobart), previously attributed to Robert Hawker Dowling . The painting by Mundy listed in James E. Bicheno 's posthumous sale of paintings at R.V. Hood 's Hobart Town gallery in 1851 was possibly Bicheno’s portrait. Portraits of Captain George Sinclair and Mrs Sinclair (p.c.) are attributed to him. His work was well regarded at this time. Two portraits exhibited in the upstairs dining room of the Victoria Tavern, opposite St David’s Church, in September 1844 were considered 'another proof of his excellent taste and professional ability, and especially in his development of light and shade of the drapery’. When his portrait of Thomas Harbottle (Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts [ALMFA]), a local businessman, was shown at the 1846 Hobart Town Exhibition, the Colonial Times of 26 June had modest reservations but was generally complimentary: 'The likeness is not quite so good as the colouring, although both are excellent. Our fellow-townsman is rather too full in the face, but the man is there. We like Mr. Munday’s style, which is warm and vigorous’. He painted Mrs Harbottle (ALMFA) at the same time.
The severe economic depression of 1844 reduced Mundy’s clientele, and early in 1845 he retired to Seaford. By temperament unsuited to life in so isolated a community, he sank into alcoholism. During frequent visits to Hobart Town his embittered state and mental deterioration were observed with distress by his friends and it was no surprise when, on 24 March 1848, Mundy was found dead at the Ship Hotel, Hobart Town, having killed himself by drinking a tumbler-full of laudanum. The resulting inquest returned a verdict of death while in a state of temporary insanity.
Writers:
Stilwell, G. T.Oppeln, Carolyn von
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1798
- Summary
- Painter and art teacher. painted landscapes as well as portraits. On 24 March 1848, Mundy was found dead at the Ship Hotel, Hobart Town, having killed himself by drinking a tumbler-full of laudanum.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 24 March 1848
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude55.7084782 Longitude-4.7200896 Start Date1793-01-01 End Date1848-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dalry, Ayrshire, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, lithographer and astronomer, was born in Dalry, Ayrshire, Scotland, on 31 October 1793, son of John Dunlop, a weaver, and Janet, née Boyle, a friend of the poet Robert Burns. Dunlop educated himself at night school in Beith after days working in a thread factory; he was building telescopes when he was seventeen. Later he met Thomas Brisbane and developed his interest in astronomy. Dunlop arrived at Sydney on 7 November 1821 as assistant astronomer to Brisbane, the new governor. Before setting sail for the colony he appears to have worked as a lithographer in London. In 1890 his family had in their possession a copy of Burns’s Caledonia , 'written and transferred to stone by James Dunlop, at R. Ackermann’s, no. 101 Strand, 27th March 1821’.
Brisbane imported a lithographic press from Ackermann’s as part of the equipment for the observatory in Sydney. When he left in November 1825 he gave it to Dunlop, who in turn had passed it on to Augustus Earle by August 1826. It is not known what lithographic art, if any, Dunlop may have printed in the interim. His official work for Brisbane does not seem to have included pictorial prints.
In 1827 Dunlop returned to Scotland to work with Brisbane in his private observatory at Makerstown. Four years later he was appointed superintendent of the Parramatta Observatory and returned to New South Wales, working there until August 1847 when, due to ill-health, he retired to his property on Brisbane Water (Gosford, NSW). He died, childless, on 22 September 1848, survived by his wife Jean, née Service, whom he had married in 1816.
As well as being an indefatigable astronomer, a poet, and a collector of geological, anthropological and natural history specimens, Dunlop clearly had some sketching ability. He made many astronomical drawings during his colonial years and Service stated: 'I knew also, from a few drawings of classical subjects bearing his signature, that he was a fair hand at a pen and ink sketch’. When Rev. J. McGarvie visited Dunlop at Parramatta in October 1826, the local Aborigines were invited into the house and, said McGarvie, Dunlop 'took the portraits of the blacks’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 October 1793
- Summary
- Nineteenth-century astronomer, a poet and a collector of geological, anthropological and natural history specimens. Dunlop clearly had some sketching ability.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 September 1848
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1794-01-01 End Date1847-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter, journalist and convict, was born in London on or about 11 October 1794. Wainewright’s parents died soon after his birth and his upbringing and education were provided for by his maternal grandfather, Ralph Griffiths, founding editor of the Monthly Review (est. 1749), a periodical devoted to literary criticism. Griffiths associated with such revolutionary thinkers as Tom Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Josiah Wedgwood, Henry Fuseli and William Blake, and the intellectual atmosphere of Linden House, Griffiths’s London home in Turnham Green, was to be a major influence in Wainewright’s life. Family connections included the novelist Fanny Burney, the musicologist Charles Burney and his son Charles junior, the classical scholar in whose Greenwich Academy Wainewright was educated. His interests developed in both literature and painting, although his upper middle-class background inclined him towards a leisured and dilettante approach to the arts.
While still a young man Wainewright began to collect gems, books, prints and objets d’art . In 1813 he began a brief apprenticeship with the portrait painter and Royal Academician Thomas Phillips (1770-1845). Wainewright’s first known works, a lost portrait of Byron (a friend of his great-uncle) and a sepia and wash Amorous Scene (British Museum) showing affinities with Fuseli, date from this time. John Linnell also claimed Wainewright as a pupil in an unpublished autobiography – a likely enough connection given Wainewright’s later subject-matter. From 11 April 1814 until 15 May 1815, Wainewright served with the Bedfordshire 16th Regiment of Foot, having purchased a commission for £400 later relinquished by sale. From 1816 dates a watercolour copy (private collection [p.c.], England) of Murillo’s Infant St. John the Baptist with the Lamb (National Gallery, London). Six portraits of relatives and friends dating from about 1820 25 are also known, one of which, John T. Payne (New York Historical Society Collection), shows both the conservatism of Phillips and the stylised patterning and linearity of Blake.
In 1820 Wainewright began writing under the pseudonyms 'Egomet Bonmot’, 'Cornelius van Vinkbooms’ and 'Janus Weathercock’. Under the last, he wrote his most important articles for the London Magazine between 1820 and 1824: reviews of exhibitions and literary criticisms which were published collectively as Wainewright: Essays and Criticisms by W.C. Hazlitt in 1880. Wainewright’s colleagues at the London Magazine , Carlyle, Hazlitt, Hood, Lamb, Mary Russell Mitford and de Quincey, had a considerable influence on his literary taste and, consequently, on his choice of subject-matter for the narrative paintings he exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1821 to 1825.
All these paintings are now lost but their titles and accompanying literary quotations indicate that while Wainewright was working in the eighteenth-century genre of 'Historia’, or narrative style, he used this manner to express nineteenth-century romantic ideas. They include Subject from the Romance of Undine (1821) from the German fairytale; Paris in the Chamber of Helen (1822) from Homer’s Iliad ; An Attempt from the Undine of de la Motte Fouqu é and How They Fared at Castle Ringstetten (1823); The Milkmaid’s Song (1824) from Christopher Marlowe’s poem 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’; and Sketch from La Gerusalemme Liberata and First Idea of a Sketch from Der Freischutz (1825) from Tasso. In 1825 both Wainewright and Linnell were rejected in their bid to become associates of the Royal Academy and Wainewright never exhibited there again.
In 1821 Wainewright had married Eliza Frances Ward, a daughter by a previous marriage of Mrs Abercromby. Little is known of his activities until May 1831 when he fled to Boulogne, France, leaving behind his wife and son, his reputation ruined by the suspicion that he had murdered his uncle, George Griffiths (d.1828), his mother-in-law Mrs Abercromby (d.1830) and his sister-in-law, Helen Frances Phoebe Abercromby (d.1830), since he stood to gain financially by all three deaths. It was later discovered that by means of forgeries committed in 1822 and 1824 Wainewright had availed himself of the £5000 capital left to him in trust by his grandfather. A few weeks after his return to London in 1837 he was arrested for forgery, tried, convicted and sentenced to transportation. He sailed from Portsmouth on 29 July 1837 in the convict transport Susan , arriving at Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, on 21 November.
These facts have been the subject of continuous publications on Wainewright since 1853. He was the perfect scapegoat for Victorian moralising, semi-fictional literature and as such inspired Charles Dickens’s Hunted Down , Oscar Wilde’s Pen, Pencil and Poison and many other works, including in more recent years Hal Porter’s The Tilted Cross . Dickens had met Wainewright when visiting Newgate Prison and later saw one of his Tasmanian portraits, Miss Power (now lost), when it was owned by Lady Blessington, the sitter’s aunt and a well-known author. Even the more objective biographies by Curling, Lindsey and Crossland are speculative or exaggerated. An interesting theory – that he spent some time in New South Wales in the 1820s and 1830s before his transportation – is the subject of Thomas Kenny’s Wainewright in New South Wales (1975) and may offer an answer to the blank years in his life story.
Wainewright’s colonial oeuvre has made him well known in Australia as a portraitist but some surviving subject paintings form a link with his English works. In Hobart Town his reputation as a model prisoner (reported in his convict dossier) enabled him to work as an orderly in the Colonial Hospital and this relative freedom allowed him to paint. No works can be dated with certainty earlier than Edward Lord (April 1839, Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts [ALMFA]) and Frederick George Brodribb and his sister Frances Maria Brodribb (both 1840, Art Gallery of South Australia); indeed, any attempt at cataloguing his works is difficult as most are unsigned and undated. However, from then until his death, Wainewright completed at least fifty-six portraits and three (possibly eight) subject works. He rarely departed from a modest scale and the use of pencil and watercolour on paper stretched over fine-grain canvas. The quality is inconsistent, possibly due to his declining health, and his style fluctuates between the conservatism due to his background and a strong tendency to romantic sentiment.
His portrait of the Reverend William Bedford (ALMFA) shows the influence of his academic training, while a more romantic influence is present in Portrait of Mrs F.A. Downing (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery) in which maudlin sentimentality and a weak image support the widely held opinion of Wainewright as a painter of affected portraits of women. Portrait of Eleanor Fitzgerald (p.c., Sydney), on the other hand, is among his best works and justifies a more positive appraisal. The oval-framed, small and direct work, mainly in white, has a Regency discretion and simplicity. A matching pair of small watercolour portraits, Edward Paine Butler and Martha Sarah Butler (p.c., Launceston), are more fully worked and finely draughted than other portraits. They also retain the delicate tincture of flesh tones, whites, violets and, particularly, blues, which have partly or fully faded in the remainder of his paintings.
Wainewright’s Tasmanian sitters came from a section of society which represented officialdom and the clergy. Of his fifty-three known sitters (three others being unidentified) thirty-three were related and this fact, together with the implied rationale of group portraits such as Jane and Lucy Cutmear ( The Cutmear Twins , daughters of James Cutmear, gatekeeper at the Prisoners’ Barracks, National Gallery of Australia), Ellen, Georgiana and Maria Butler ( The Three Graces , p.c., Tas.) and Three Daughters of George McLean ( The Three Sisters , now lost), suggests that his portraits and their style served to satisfy sentimental family yearnings of the colonists in the isolation of early Van Diemen’s Land. Part of their value today is the pictorial documentation of personalities in Hobart Town history before 1850: Governor Sir John Franklin (University of Queensland), Dr. William Crooke (p.c., Qld), Matilda Jessie Dunn (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery), James Maclanachan (p.c., Qld) and Julia Elizabeth Sorell (p.c., Hobart).
Two small subject paintings emphasize Wainewright’s distinct individuality in colonial painting and represent an antipodean continuation of the type of works he had exhibited at the Royal Academy. They are Lothaire of Bourgogne Discovers the Amour of his Wife with the High Constable (p.c., England) and The Reunion of Eros and Psyche (p.c., England) based, respectively, on Barrault’s Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne and Apuleius’s Golden Ass , chapter 9. Both sources allow for Wainewright’s romantic interpretation working within the genre of narrative painting. More important, however, is the fact that both genre and style reaffirm his connection with Fuseli and the early English romantic movement, retained in his exile from the urbanity and sophistication of London. Not only is this evident in the simply drawn, elongated figures and the mysterious eroticism of these works, but Wainewright’s slavish devotion to this master was explicitly stated in his petition of 1844 to Governor Sir John Eardley Eardley-Wilmot for a ticket of leave in which he referred to Fuseli as 'the God of my worship’.
Before his death Wainewright had become known in the colony as an eccentric but talented man. Four of his portraits were lent by their owners to the exhibitions of paintings in Hobart Town in 1845 and 1846, although they received no critical attention. Wainewright died of apoplexy on 17 August 1847 in St Mary’s Hospital, Hobart Town.
Writers:
Anderson, Tony
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.11 October 1794
- Summary
- Painter, journalist and convict from a well connected family. Transported to Hobart Town in 1837. His many portraits provide pictorial documentation of personalities in Hobart Town before 1850.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 August 1847
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude40.712778 Longitude-74.006111 Start Date1779-01-01 End Date1847-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- New York, NY, USA
- Biography
- topographical painter, author and army officer, was born in New York, son of a Royal Artillery officer serving in the lower colonies during the American War of Independence. On 19 March 1793 he entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, England, where he received drawing lessons from the eminent topographical artist Paul Sandby. Commissioned second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery in 1795, Cockburn served at Malta, Copenhagen, the Cape of Good Hope and the East Indies, sketching incessantly. He published several illustrated accounts of the various places he visited, including Malta and Sicily (1811), Voyage to Cadiz and Gibraltar (1815, with 30 colour plates), Swiss Scenery (1820, with 62 plates), Views To Illustrate the Simplon Route (1822) and Views of the Valley of Aosta (1822).
From about 1826 to August 1832 Cockburn was stationed in Canada, mainly at Quebec, as artillery officer in the second battalion of the 60th Regiment with the rank of lieutenant colonel. His official duties were light and allowed him time to make numerous watercolours of Quebec, the St Lawrence River, Lake Ontario and the Passaic River in New Jersey. He published Quebec and its Environs: Being a Picturesque Guide to the Stranger in 1831 and a folio of prints of Niagara and Quebec in 1833.
Said to have used a camera lucida to ensure accuracy, Cockburn painted with a broad technique and a light palette. Lady Aylmer, the governor’s wife, called him 'one of the most accurate and Elegant Artists I have ever met’. As Reid points out, his field sketches are mere notations, stiff and awkward, but the large watercolours worked up from these are often extremely accomplished. He is particularly admired in Canada for his lively topographical urban scenes, particularly Corpus Christi Procession, Quebec (1830, Ontario Museum), the rural watercolours, such as Pont é Pinceau, Qué bec (1831, National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa), being more conventional.
Although well represented in Canadian collections, Cockburn has had but a single (unsigned) Australian view attributed to him—a large, competent watercolour of the convict stockade near Hartley, New South Wales, on the Great Western Road over the Blue Mountains titled The Fort on the Cox’s River near Bathurst (formerly Raven Collection; photograph, Mitchell Library). Its architecture and road-making activities indicate a date of 1837-38, at which time Cockburn had left Canada and was en route for England. Convict rural quarters were seldom depicted contemporaneously in colonial New South Wales, especially in large, picturesque watercolours, so this view, which shows the complex of wooden buildings on a tongue of land above the river-crossing in detail, is quite exceptional. Beyond the stockade a distant gang of convicts under escort can be seen leaving for the day’s work (probably road-making), while a red-coated sentry is prominent in the foreground. The feathery style and the light greeny-ochre and pale blue tones seem typical enough of Cockburn, and in marked contrast to Conrad Martens , the major watercolourist working in New South Wales at the time.
Cockburn was back in England by October 1838, when he took up the post of director of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich, remaining in this position until he retired on 31 December 1846. Major-General Cockburn died at his residence on Woolwich Common on 18 March 1847. Although New South Wales seems an excessively lengthy detour on a voyage from Toronto to London, it is not inconsistent with the legendary energy and enterprise of this indefatigable traveller in search of the picturesque.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1779
- Summary
- Topographical painter, author and army officer born in New York, USA. Resident of England and Canada he visited NSW en route between the two. Dursing his time in the army he also served at Malta, Copenhagen, the Cape of Good Hope and the East Indies.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 18 March 1847
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude41.1448178 Longitude-73.863469 Start Date1812-01-01 End Date1846-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sparta, New York, USA
- Biography
- sketcher and draughtsman, son of Thomas and Hannah Agate, was born on 14 February 1812 in Sparta, New York, where he studied art with his brother Frederick and the painter Thomas Cummings. Agate was appointed 'portrait and botanical artist’ on the United States’ world expedition of 1838 42 led by Lieutenant Charles Wilkes. Travelling with the scientific team on board the USS Relief , he reached Sydney in December 1839 and stayed there until March 1840 with the other 'civilians’ while Wilkes continued on to the Antarctic with the naval members of the expedition.
In New South Wales Agate drew views of Sydney and its environs. Several were published as engravings in Charles Wilkes’s Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition for which he prepared over half the illustrations. The second volume contains four engravings of Australian subjects after Agate’s sketches – Sydney, View from Kirribilli looking South , Corrobory New Holland , Settler’s Cottage and Forest, Illiwarra [sic], N.S.W. – as well as several vignettes.
Agate married Elizabeth Hill Kennedy of Alexandria in 1845, but died of tuberculosis at Washington DC on 5 January 1846. His sketches from the voyage are in the Natural History Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 14 February 1812
- Summary
- American male colonial botanical and portrait sketcher who visited Australia as part of the 1838-1842 USA World Expedition. Agate remained in Sydney drawing NSW landscapes while the rest of the team toured Antarctica.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 January 1846
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude50.416667 Longitude-4.75 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1846-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cornwall, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and house painter, was born in Altarnun, Cornwall, son of Richard Parnell Burnard and Elizabeth, née Westlake. He married Jane Chapman at Altarnun on 8 October 1822; they had four children. His wife and eldest son died in 1831 and the following year Robert married Eliza, née Stodden; they had ten children. The family came to South Australia in 1840 in the Java . They lived at Plympton, Adelaide, where Burnard worked as a house painter and painted still-life pictures.
Burnard must have been dead by 1847 (although Statton states that he died on 13 April 1876). When his painting Fruit was shown in Adelaide’s first colonial art exhibition in 1847 the South Australian Register identified him with the late Colonel Light , noting that their two paintings were 'not only beautiful in themselves, but to old colonists most valuable as relics of departed friends’. In this context departure was permanent. However, Robert Burnard’s eldest surviving son, another Robert Burnard , lived an apparently identical life to his father and continued to produce exactly the same sorts of paintings. Eliza Burnard outlived both, dying on 17 July 1886 at Bowden, South Australia. Her youngest son, Richard, lived until 1940.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1800
- Summary
- Robert Burnard's eldest surviving son, another Robert Burnard, lived an apparently identical life to his father and continued to produce exactly the same sorts of paintings.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1846
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude-33.0331697 Longitude151.6585586 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1846-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Belmont, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- Biriban or Johnny McGill was born circa 1800 at Bahtahbah (now Belmont), NSW into the Awabagal language group centred on Newcastle and Lake Macquarie. He acquired his name from an army officer, Captain John McGill who brought him up at the Military Barracks in Sydney where he learnt to speak English.
By 1819 Johnny was in Newcastle, where he was caricatured as 'Magill’ with his body 'painted-up’ for ceremony, in a watercolour portrait by the convict artist Richard Browne . According to the Rev. L.E. Threlkeld in a report to the London Missionary Society, it is likely that Johnny acquired his totem name Biriban (Eaglehawk in Awaba) when he completed his initiation rites at the age of about 26 during 1826. In 1821 McGill and two other Aborigines, Boatman (also known as Boardman or Jemmy Jackass) and Mongoul or Bob Barratt, were taken to Port Macquarie on the northern coast on NSW by Captain Francis Allman of the 48th Regiment, who commanded the convict settlement. As 'bush constables’ they tracked and captured runaway convicts.
At the 1830 Parramatta Conference, Biriban was presented with a brass breastplate or gorget by governor Sir Ralph Darling. As reported in the Sydney Gazette on the 12th January, 1830 the breastplate was engraved with the inscription: Barabahn, or Mac.Gill, Chief of the Tribe of Bartabah, on Lake Macquarie; a Reward for his assistance in reducing his Native Tongue to a written Language. James Backhouse wrote in A Narrative of a Visit to the Australian Colonies published in London in 1843 that Biriban wore the gorget with his “red-striped shirt, not very clean, a pair of ragged trowsers, and an old hat” when he and Boardman guided the Quakers James Backhouse and George Washington Walker through the bush from Newcastle to Lake Macquarie in April 1836.
Biriban joined the Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld, a Congregational Minister and linguist, who in 1824 established a mission to the Aborigines at 'Ebenezer’, (Toronto), at the entrance to Lake Macquarie as an interpreter when Aborigines appeared in court and a language informant. Biriban accompanied Threlkeld to Brisbane Water five times for the annual distribution of blankets to the Walkeloa or Brisbane Water 'Tribe’ which Threlkeld supervised and recorded. In 1836 'Beerabahr’ was described by the Colonial Secretary in 'Return of Aboriginal Natives’ as “Chief of the Lake Macquarie Tribes”. In Threlkeld’s Preface to the Gospel of St. Luke (1857), which Biriban and Threlkeld translated into Awabagal, Threlkeld wrote 'McGill spoke the English language fluently’. He also described Biriban as 'a noble specimen of his race, my companion and teacher in the language for many years’.
According to Threlkeld, Biriban was also a clever artist. “When the first steamboat arrived in the colony, the 'Sophia Jane’, I requested him to give me a description of it. This he did verbally, and when I required of him a representation, he drew with a pencil on a sheet of paper an excellent sketch of the vessel.” Threlkeld sent Biriban’s drawing to the Bishop of Sydney, Reverend W. G. Broughton, who sent it to 'one of the [religious] societies in London’. Biriban’s drawing has not been located, but it could turn up one day in a British archive. It might have resembled the image of the 'Sophia Jane’ a woodblock print now in the collection of the Wollongong City Library. The 250 ton 'Sophia Jane’, a sea-going paddle-wheel steamship rigged with sails as a schooner, arrived in Sydney on 15th May, 1831 and went into service as a passenger ship between Sydney, Newcastle and Morpeth on the Hunter River. Biriban probably saw the steamer when it arrived at Newcastle in June that year. Alfred T. Agate, a botanical artist in the United States scientific expedition commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, made a portrait of Biriban at Lake Macquarie in 1839 and recalled that “it was very evident that McGill was accustomed to teaching his native language, for when he was asked the name of anything, he pronounced the world very distinctly, syllable by syllable, so that it was impossible to mistake it. “Threlkeld recorded the name of Biriban’s wife as Patty or Ti-pa-mah-ah and their son Francis or Ye-rou-wa (born in 1823).
Biriban died in Newcastle on 14th April, 1846.
Writers:
Smith, Keith
Date written:
2007
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1800
- Summary
- Biriban or Johnny McGill was best known as a language informant for the Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld a Minister and linguist in the 1830s. Threlkeld thought of Biriban as a 'clever artist' and in 1831 Biriban drew a representation of the steamboat,'Sophia Jane', the location of which is currently unknown.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 14 April 1846
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude49.4938975 Longitude0.1079732 Start Date1778-01-01 End Date1846-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Le Havre, France
- Biography
- natural history artist, naturalist and explorer, was born at Le Havre, France, on 1 January 1778, one of the numerous children of Jean-Baptiste-Denis Lesueur, an officer in the Admiralty, and Charlotte Génévieve, née Thieullent. Sent to the Ecole Royale Militaire at Beaumont-en-Auge, he was not interested in military activities but pursued his two passions, the study of the natural history of the local marine foreshore and the reproduction of it on paper. From 1797 to 1799 he was under-officer in the National Guard at Le Havre.
At the turn of the nineteenth century a lavishly equipped scientific expedition was prepared by the Institut de France, with the blessing of Napoleon, in order to explore the southern parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. Two corvettes, the Géographe and the Naturaliste , were equipped in the port of Le Havre with the most experienced officers in the navy. The Institut de France selected no less than twenty-three scientists, the positions being coveted by a large number of applicants. Among those selected was François Péron , a brilliant young medical botanist and anthropologist. Lesueur was taken on, not as an artist or scientist, but as an assistant gunner. The expedition sailed from Le Havre on 19 October 1800 under the command of Nicolas Baudin, who soon discovered the talents of the young gunner and employed him as an illustrator for his private journal.
At the Ile de France the chief zoologist of the Naturaliste , Bory de St Vincent, himself an eminent naturalist and illustrator, endorsed the high opinion of Lesueur’s talents as an artistic and exact illustrator and after Bory’s departure Péron was appointed chief zoologist. He worked as illustrator with Lesueur. Not only were they co-explorers and co-workers, but they so well complemented each other in their work and interests that they became inseparable friends until Péron died on 10 December 1810. Ten days earlier, Lesueur made one of his most beautiful drawings of his friend.
Baudin’s voyage was not a happy one, being dogged by sickness and disputes. The two ships first charted the Western Australian coast before heading towards Van Diemen’s Land. Surveying work was carried out in D’Entrecasteaux Channel, towards Bass Strait, and along the coast between Wilson’s Promontory and Nuyts Archipelago. Sickness among the crew forced Baudin to head for Sydney, where he arrived in June 1802. After resting, he took his fittest crew members back down towards Van Diemen’s Land, across to Kangaroo Island, then up the western coast, surveying as he went. The sadly depleted expedition reached Mauritius in August 1803.
During their four years of exploration with the Baudin expedition in Australian waters Péron and Lesueur went ashore together on nearly all occasions. Most of the 100,000 specimens of marine and land natural products which were collected – of which an astonishing 2,500 were previously unknown – carry the label 'Péron and Lesueur’. On the voyage a large number of sketches and full-scale drawings were also made by Lesueur. Some of the coloured illustrations are very vivid, obviously observed from living or recently killed Australian animals, as the colours of the coelenterates and some of the skins of birds and marsupials would have faded on preserved specimens. At a time when coralline algae were regarded as animals, Péron and Lesueur were the first Europeans to collect Australian representatives of these, on King Island in Bass Strait. They were subsequently described with other Australian marine animals by Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744 1829) whose classic descriptions were based on the zealous endeavours of these two French collectors. Lesueur has been commemorated with an algal genus, Lesueuria (Woelkerling & Ducker 1987).
Péron and one of the officers of the expedition, Lieutenant Louis de Freycinet , combined to produce the published account of the voyage, Voyage des Découvertes aux Terres Australes… . The first volume and its illustrated atlas appeared in 1807. After Péron’s death in 1810, Lesueur helped Freycinet bring out the second part of the atlas in 1811 and the second volume of the voyage in 1816 (the frontispiece of which is Lesueur’s portrait of Péron). The first volume was published in English in 1809. The majority of the illustrations in the work were after drawings by Lesueur and Nicholas Petit . Petit provided much of the portraiture, while Lesueur’s work was used for the natural history studies, views, coastal profiles (thirty of which relate to Australia) and sketches of native huts and implements. He provided only two purely landscape views, one of the entrance to Sydney Harbour and the other a view of the Harbour taken from Government House, Vue de la Partie Meridionale de la Ville de Sydney (commonly known as 'Mrs King’s View’). Understandably, his landscapes were very topographical; even his vignettes of native life and customs carefully delineate the surrounding scenery. Lesueur located his subjects very specifically in a manner quite unlike that of a picturesque landscape painter.
Most of the 1500 drawings Lesueur took back to France were of zoological and marine subjects. The majority of these were never published, but those that were, such as Le Wombat Nouvelle Hollande, Ile King , were worked into beautiful engravings with a fine sense of detail, environment and light. These are still commonly reproduced, frequently without any acknowledgment of the artist. However, on the occasion of the Australian Bicentenary in 1988, Bonnemains, Forsyth & Smith published the magnificent Baudin in Australian Waters: The Artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands 1800 1804 which for the first time brought, at least partially, the superb artistic skill of Lesueur and his co-workers (hitherto confined to the museum at Le Havre) to a wider public. Lesueur’s illustrations show a most impressive and natural understanding of Australian vegetation, especially the gum-trees. Many of the marine organisms not in the original atlas are reproduced, and Lesueur has drawn these animals with care, skill and obvious enjoyment. In particular, the illustrations of the pelagic organisms convey a beautiful translucency, the wonder of the marine biologist.
In 1815 Lesueur accompanied the wealthy Scottish geologist William McClure to the United States. After a visit to the West Indies, they sailed to New York and from there to Philadelphia, New England and the Great Lakes of North America. From 1817 to 1825 he was curator at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences where he completed his great work on the fish of North America and gave art lessons. While there, he had his portrait painted by Charles Willson Peale; it alludes to Lesueur’s scientific and artistic abilities. At the eighth annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Lesueur exhibited a painting of a cassowary, Casoars de Nouvelle-Hollande , probably one of the intricate watercolours on vellum he painted in France from his Australian sketches. Between 1826 and 1834 he illustrated three major scientific publications: Goodman’s American Natural History (1826 28), Say’s American Entomology (1828) and Say’s American Conchology (1830 34).
After an absence of more than twenty years, Lesueur returned to France and became curator of the newly established Musée d’Histoire Naturelle at Le Havre. His last work was a lithograph depicting the geology of the nearby cliffs. He died at Le Havre on 12 December 1846.
(ADD: At Christie’s Australian and European Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, Part 1, Melbourne, 26 August 1997, lot 27 – Animaux de La Nouvelle Hollande 1807, watercolour, goldleaf and silverleaf on vellum, 21 × 25.5 cm – catalogued by John McPhee as a unique edenic fantasy in Lesueur’s work, was purchased by Denis Savill for a record price: see T. Ingram in file)
Writers:
Ducker, Sophie C.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 January 1778
- Summary
- Natural history artist. Leseur travelled to Australia with a French expedition at the beginning of the nineteenth century, his drawings and etchings of local flora and fauna were of major significance.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 December 1846
- Age at death
- 68
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1806-01-01 End Date1845-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK
- Biography
- watercolourist and merchant, came to the Swan River Colony, Western Australia from London in the Warrior , arriving on 12 March 1830. He was granted 2,400 acres near Fremantle in the 1830s and more land near Northam in the early 1840s. His business interests included a directorship of the Bank of Western Australia and partnerships with his brother Robert Mace Habgood and with Lionel Samson. Habgood’s niece Sarah later married John de Mansfield Absolon , a partner in the Habgood firm during the 1870s. Habgood died of consumption in Perth on 29 January 1845. His only known painting, Scene on Melville Water near Perth, Western Australia (National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT), was painted in 1842 and later retouched by C. Grellet. It shows an Aboriginal family around a campfire.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1806
- Summary
- Watercolourist and merchant, came to the Swan River Colony, WA from London in 1830. His only known painting was painted in 1842 and shows an Aboriginal family around a campfire.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 January 1845
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude47 Longitude2 Start Date1765-01-01 End Date1844-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- France
- Biography
- Meurant was born in France and was trained as a jeweler, silversmith and watchmaker. During the French Revolution of 1789 he escaped to Belgium. He travelled from there to Dublin, Ireland. He then used his skills to forge bank notes and was tried at Kilmainham, Dublin, Ireland in 1798. He was convicted, along with the Irish seal engraver, John Austin, of forging bank notes. He was sentenced to life and ordered to be transported to Australia.
Ferdinand Meurant is reputed to be one of the first two working jewelers in Australia (alongside W. Moreton in Sydney, Australia). A snuffbox made from gold and turbo shell, the making of which is attributed to Ferdinand, was acquired by the Powerhouse Museum in 1987. It was commissioned by Walter Stevenson Davidson, a merchant of London, England and early landowner and banker in New South Wales, Australia as a gift for his father Reverend Patrick Davidson in Scotland. The box is inscribed “Walter Stevenson to his honoured father, N.S. Wales 1808”.
Writers:
Rose
Date written:
2021
Last updated:
2021
- Born
- b. 1765
- Summary
- None listed
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 November 1844
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude-33.816667 Longitude151 Start Date1815-01-01 End Date1843-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Parramatta, Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was the youngest daughter and eleventh and last child of the merchant and settler John Blaxland and Harriott, daughter of a Calcutta merchant, Jean Louis de Marquet. The Blaxlands had arrived in New South Wales with five children on 3 April 1807 on board The Brothers , and six more were born after they settled at Newington, an estate of 1290 acres on the Parramatta River granted to John Blaxland by Governor William Bligh . For 20 years the Newington homestead remained a modest colonial cottage, until 1829 when Mary’s parents began building a grand two-storey Regency style stuccoed brick house with cedar joinery and slate roof, one of the grandest houses in the colony at the time; Rachel Roxburgh suggests that Henry Cooper may have been the architect.
Mary’s pencil view of Newington, signed 'M. Blaxland 12 Jany 1834’ (Blaxland Papers, ML) was probably drawn to commemorate the house’s completion. Two unsigned pencil and watercolour views of Newington also exist in the family papers, both done after the verandah had been added. Certainly by a member of the family, they too seem likely to have been Mary’s work, although all the girls sketched and these and other unsigned watercolours in the Blaxland Papers could be by Mary or any of her five sisters: Harriott Mary, Mrs Arthur Macdonald Ritchie (m. 1816), then Lady Dowling (m. 1835); Anna Elizabeth, Mrs Thomas Walker (1804-89); Jane ; Louisa ; or Eliza Maria, Mrs Henry Breton (m. 1832). Numerous grandchildren also stayed at Newington and were encouraged to sketch by their grandmother and aunts, so some of their efforts may also be in family collections. The most notable artist of the next generation was Anna Frances Walker .
Mary Blaxland married William Macquarie Molle on 25 February 1836 at St John’s Church of England, Parramatta, having met him when he was visiting Newington from India. Annie Walker repeats the family story that Molle had vowed to marry the first Miss Blaxland he saw and Mary, aged seventeen, was at home alone doing the flowers when he arrived. She went to India with him, returning home to have her first child. She died in Sydney on 16 January 1843, soon after her son George was born.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1815
- Summary
- The youngest of merchant and settler John Blaxland's 11 children, Mary Ellen Blaxland and her sisters were all encouraged to sketch by their mother and the drawings of Mary Ellen, that depict the renovated family estate Newington at Parramatta, are held in the Blaxland Papers at the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 16 January 1843
- Age at death
- 28
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1805-01-01 End Date1843-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK, UK?
- Biography
- sketcher, surveyor and soldier, resigned his commission as a lieutenant in the Horse Guards, London, after thirteen and a half years service in order to emigrate to South Australia.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1805
- Summary
- A sketcher, surveyor and soldier. There is only one known work of his and the extent of his artistic career remains unknown.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 April 1843
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude52.5410591 Longitude-1.3729379 Start Date1803-01-01 End Date1842-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hinckley, Leicestershire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and surgeon, was born in Hinckley, Leicestershire. He received his medical qualifications from Glasgow, but no art training is known although he obviously had some. He and his wife Amelia were married at Hinckley in 1831; they were living in Liverpool when their daughter, Louisa, was born in 1834. Myra was born the following year, then a son, Maurice, and a third daughter, Ellisara. Accompanied by Amelia and the children, Felton sailed from Liverpool to Sydney as ship’s surgeon aboard the Royal Admiral , arriving late in September 1839. On arrival he registered as a doctor, but he soon impressed the colony with his talent as a portraitist, exhibiting some paintings at Lamb’s shop in George Street in January 1840. This led to an acquaintance with Alexander Brodie Spark, a prominent Sydney patron of the arts. Spark’s diaries (Mitchell Library) mention his involvement with Felton during 1840: the artist’s visits to Spark’s rural property, Tempe, his sketching in the area, and a commission to paint a large oil portrait of the newly-wedded Mrs Spark (Art Gallery of New South Wales) followed by one of Spark himself (unlocated). Felton was also acquainted with the then most important landscape painter in the colony, Conrad Martens , and he possibly painted two unsigned oil portraits of Martens (ML). That dated 1840 seems likely to be his; the authorship of the other has been disputed ( see James Armstrong Wilson).
Felton’s portraits were mentioned on several occasions in the Sydney papers and always with enthusiasm, those of Captain Archibald Innes and Mrs Innes being thought particularly striking by a Sydney Herald reporter on 23 July 1841, except that 'the present ugly fashions’ of hair and clothing were considered injurious to the beauty of the latter.
'Another very excellent likeness is Mr. Morgan, of Pitt-street; and one of Mrs. O’Brien [ Sophia O’Brien ], daughter of E.S. Hall, Esq., drawn partly from a cast taken after her death and partly from an engraving said to resemble her [now ML]. The gem of the whole collection, however, is Her Majesty Queen Victoria in her robes of state, which with other pieces, is to be disposed of by an ART-UNION.’
The lottery, held at Felton’s Hunter Street home, was conducted with the assistance of Thomas Henry Braim, principal of the Sydney College. Tickets cost £1. Felton’s prize paintings included a second portrait of Queen Victoria, which, by way of contrast to the formal copy, presented a 'simple and domestic’ image of Her Majesty (Old Government House, Parramatta). There was also 'a Newfoundland Dog, after the celebrated Edwin Landseer, a fancy portrait (Meditation), and several views in this Colony, and one or two in North Wales’. Landscapes of Sydney, Illawarra, Wollongong and other nearby places were, in fact, by far the most numerous part of the collection on offer. Included were a waterfall at Illawarra, A Sunset View of Sydney, from the South Head Road , A Sunset View of the New Government House from the Botanical Gardens and 'some fine views of the elegant Church at Newtown’ (all unlocated). 'In conclusion’, stated the Herald , 'we would venture to assert there has never been such a large and good collection by an Australian artist exhibited before’.
Unfortunately, Felton died shortly afterwards, on 30 March 1842, from causes unrecorded. He was buried the following day in the Anglican section of the Sydney Cemetery (now the site of Sydney Town Hall). Two of his paintings were shown in the 1847 exhibition of the Society for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Australia: Portrait of a Distinguished Member of the Humane Society after Landseer (the Newfoundland dog, then owned by George Miller) and Portrait of the Queen (after Tully) , 'The property of Mr Walker-(For sale)’. A self-portrait in fancy dress (ML) was shown in 1849. On both occasions appreciation of Felton’s prowess was reiterated in the local press.
The Mitchell Library also owns Felton’s oil portraits of Lieutenant J.J. Peters, 28th Regiment, Mr Thomas Chapman and Master Robert Cooper tertius (both 1840) and the stonemason and Goulburn publican Thomas Brodie (1841). Others remain in private collections.
Writers:
Pearce, Barry
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1803
- Summary
- Records are uncertain as to whether Maurice Felton practised as a surgeon after his arrival in the colony. However, it is on record that he painted a significant number of well executed and enthusiastically received portraits, as well as landscapes. His untimely death would have denied a number of his contemporaries the opportunity for one of his excellent likenesses.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 30 March 1842
- Age at death
- 39
Details
Latitude53.449444 Longitude-7.503056 Start Date1802-01-01 End Date1842-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Ireland
- Biography
- Natural history painter and medical practitioner James Stuart was born in Ireland circa 1802. Stuart arrived in Australia in 1834.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a full bio.
Writers:
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1802
- Summary
- Natural history painter and medical practitioner James Stuart was born in Ireland circa 1802. Stuart arrived in Australia in 1834.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 May 1842
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude-33.867778 Longitude151.21 Start Date1820-01-01 End Date1841-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sydney, NSW, Australia
- Biography
- sketcher, was the third daughter of Edward Smith Hall, founder of the Sydney Monitor , and his first wife Charlotte, née Hall. She married Francis O’Brien, who purchased the Monitor newspaper from her father in 1839. Two of Sophia’s drawings are in the Mitchell Library. A pencil sketch of a wall beyond which lies a castellated building and a nearby cottage, both buried in bushland, has a pasted inscription on the back of the mount which reads: 'One of Sophia’s sketches of the [Wentworth] “Mausoleum” from inside of the wall. I told her that the trees looked very like “flames” and asked her if the place was insured. The cottage is that little place that you pass as you come near our Gate’. A coloured crayon sketch is titled Sophia’s Waterfall, Rose Bay. Below [Tivoli] the Residence of Capt. [William] Dumaresque .
Sophia O’Brien died on 7 February 1841 at North Dapto, New South Wales, aged twenty-one. Francis O’Brien, widower, married her sister, Georgiana Elizabeth Hall, at North Dapto on 15 March 1843. Her portrait, attributed to Maurice Felton , is held at the Mitchell Library.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1820
- Summary
- Sophia O'Brien was a young drawer who took to sketching a number of views from her surrounding landscape and residences in the early to mid 1800s.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 7 February 1841
- Age at death
- 21
Details
Latitude55.6867243 Longitude12.5700724 Start Date1780-01-01 End Date1841-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Biography
- painter and (in his own words) 'monarch of Iceland, naval captain, revolutionist, British diplomatic agent, author, dramatist, preacher, political prisoner, gambler, hospital dispenser, continental traveller, explorer, editor, expatriated exile, and colonial constable’, was born in Copenhagen, Denmark on 7 April 1780, second son of Jorgen Jorgensen, a mathematical instrument-maker, and Anna Lette née Bruun. In 1817 Jorgen altered the spelling of his surname to Jorgenson.
Jorgenson went to sea at the age of 15. In 1801 he joined the Lady Nelson which carried out surveying work on the Australian coast as tender to Matthew Flinders’s Investigator . In 1803 the Lady Nelson sailed to Van Diemen’s Land to assist in the formation of a settlement there. After further surveying expeditions, Jorgenson left the navy to work as a whaler and sealer in Tasmanian and New Zealand waters, returning to England in February 1805. He subsequently went back to Copenhagen and commanded the privateer Admiral Juul during the Anglo-Danish war, surrendering to the English in March 1808. In June 1809, having visited Iceland with a shipload of provisions for the settlers, Jorgenson arrested the Danish governor and declared Iceland independent of Denmark with himself head of government. Two months later he sailed for England, where he was arrested and confined to a hulk at Chatham.
After his release Jorgenson fell into a life of gambling and drinking, varied by adventures at sea, a period spent as an agent for the British (1815-17) and intermittent confinements in prison. Finally he was sentenced to transportation for life and arrived at Van Diemen’s Land in April 1826. He worked first as a convict-clerk, then as an explorer for the Van Diemen’s Land Company. He received his ticket of leave in June 1827 and the following year was appointed a convict-constable of the field police in the Oatlands district. He gained his conditional pardon in June 1830. The following year he married Norah Cobbett (Corbett), an illiterate and alcoholic convict with an Irish farming background. Jorgenson continued to pursue a variety of careers, including those of farmer, constable, scribe and journalist. He and his wife were granted absolute pardons in 1835. Norah died in 1840, Jorgen on 20 April 1841 in the Colonial Hospital, Hobart Town.
Jorgenson wrote prolifically throughout his life, publishing religious works, travelogues, histories, autobiographical material and pamphlets on colonial affairs. Five volumes of unpublished manuscripts (Egerton Collection, British Museum) include his allegorical and partially autobiographical The Adventures of Thomas Walker , dedicated to Sir William Hooker and composed during Jorgenson’s confinement in London after his return from Iceland. This is illustrated by his own crudely drawn, yet highly imaginative, black and white neo-classical sketches. The most prosaic, A Floating Prison , shows the prison hulk Bahama in which the author was confined at Chatham; Incidents at an Iceland Ball depicts a bald society lady, her wig having been swept from her head while dancing. Two allegorical sketches, Jorgenson in Captivity and Jorgenson Free , illustrate a dream in which the former monarch saw himself bowed down before the altar of Tyranny and Oppression and subsequently released by the Goddess of Liberty who, armed with a thunderbolt from Jove, destroys the altar and its priest. Hogan suggests that this was intended to inspire efforts by Hooker and other friends to secure his release. His strangest allegorical image depicts Sir Joseph Banks (with whom Jorgenson had dealings on Icelandic affairs) plucking naked children from the sea, symbolising the botanist’s rescue of the arts and sciences forced by revolution to flee from the Continent.
No drawings are known from Jorgenson’s period in Australia but there is some evidence that he continued to take an interest in the visual arts. In a letter to Hooker dated 4 December 1840, Jorgenson wrote with contempt of the naturalist and explorer John Lhotsky who, he claimed, had commissioned drawings of fish from a Port Arthur convict (probably William Buelow Gould ) then pretended that they were his own work. Jorgenson’s manuscript History of the Black War in Van Diemen’s Land – an ignominious event in which he played a prominent part – was presented to (Archdeacon) Thomas Braim, who subsequently gave it to James Bonwick to assist him in compiling The Last Tasmanians (which quoted from the text). It is possible that this manuscript, now lost, included some sketches.
A small and peculiar self-portrait in oils, perhaps intended as a bitter caricature with allegorical overtones, is in the National Museum of Iceland, Reykjavik, while a more conventional oil portrait of Jorgenson by C.W. Eckersberg, thought to date from 1808, is in the National Historical Museum, Hillerød, Denmark. Portrait heads of Jorgenson and his wife are believed to be among the keystones carved by the convicts Daniel Herbert and James Colbeck on Ross Bridge, Tasmania.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 7 April 1780
- Summary
- Colonial-era sketcher, painter, naval officer, and author, among other things, he lived in Van Diemen's Land variously as a convict and a free man. He illustrated books with his own crudely drawn, yet highly imaginative, black and white neo-classical sketches.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 20 April 1841
- Age at death
- 61
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1774-01-01 End Date1841-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- botanical artist, engraver, printer and farmer, son of Bartholomew Doyle and Bridget, née Nugent, was baptised in St Catherine’s, Meath Street, Dublin, on 29 November 1774.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.November 1774
- Summary
- Andrew Doyle was a botanical artist, engraver, printer and farmer. He was convicted of having in his possession paper carrying the watermark of the Bank of Ireland. With his brother James, he was transported from Ireland to Australia for life. Doyle died in 1841.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 2 September 1841
- Age at death
- 67
Details
Latitude59.938732 Longitude30.316229 Start Date1786-01-01 End Date1840-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- St Petersburg, Russia
- Biography
- painter, was born in St Petersburg, son of an actor. He entered the Russian Imperial Academy School in 1795, winning a gold medal in 1807. In 1815 he was elected to membership of the Russian Imperial Academy of Fine Arts for his portrait of Count Tolstoy. Mikhailov was official artist on board the Vostok when it travelled to Antarctica and the Pacific in 1819-21 under the command of Captain Thaddeus Bellingshausen (whose diary of the voyage was translated into English in 1945). The Vostok put in at Port Jackson in April-May and September-November 1820, visiting Hawaii, Fiji and Van Diemen’s Land in the interim. Governor Macquarie was well-disposed towards the Russians and welcomed their visit. When they visited his country residence at Parramatta, Captain Bellingshausen wrote: 'He received us most cordially, led us through the garden, showed us the house, and then took us to the upper storey, reserved for the use of guests; he assigned separate rooms to … [the officers] and myself and a double room to our astronomer, Mr Simanov, and to our artist, Mr Mikhailov, observing that science and art should be closely allied’.
While at Sydney Mikhailov drew natural history and ethnographic subjects as well as views of the harbour. After returning to Russia he produced an album of watercolours (1823) based on the sketches he had made on the spot. These formed the basis of I.P. Fritrits’s lithographs produced the following year and subsequently used in the Atlas volume of Bellingshausen’s official account of the voyage (St Petersburg 1831). The only Australian lithograph, View of the Town of Sydney in Port Jackson , was taken from the North Shore where the Russians were camping. Three Aborigines are emerging from the bush in the foreground, there are numerous ships in the harbour and the distant view of the town is precisely and accurately detailed, closely following Mikhailov’s original watercolour. The second of his three known views of Sydney Harbour is a pen, ink and watercolour drawing taken from almost the same spot but closer to the shoreline and focusing on the family of Aborigines in the foreground rather than on the distant town. The third, a panoramic view from Kirribilli Point with no humans in sight, emphasises the natural setting of Sydney. He also painted extremely competent and naturalistic watercolour portraits of the Aboriginal people themselves. His original portfolio is in the Russian State Museum, Leningrad; the State Historical Museum, Moscow, holds his 1823 album.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1786
- Summary
- Official artist on board the Russian vessel Vostok when it travelled to Antarctica and the Pacific in 1819 21. He drew natural history and ethnographic subjects as well as views of Sydney harbour.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1840
- Age at death
- 54
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1801-01-01 End Date1839-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and collector, was a daughter of Sir John (later Lord) Stanley of Alderley, Cheshire, and Lady Maria Josepha, née Holroyd. In October 1826 Isabella married the Arctic explorer William Edward Parry, knighted in April 1829. On his appointment as commissioner for the Australian Agricultural Company in May, Isabella accompanied him to New South Wales on board the William . They landed at Sydney on 23 December 1829 and Sir Edward recorded in his diary: 'Went with Lady Parry to Cummins’ Hotel, the only tolerable accommodation in Sydney’.
Sir Edward, whose principal duties were the readjustment of the company’s land grant and the reorganisation of the coal mines at Newcastle, left on 6 January 1830 for their headquarters at Port Stephens. Isabella, pregnant and too ill to travel, was left in the care of Eliza Darling at Government House where, on 14 January, her twins – Isabella and Edward – were born. The Parry family moved to their new home, Tahlee, at Port Stephens on 31 March 1830, which her husband had described in a letter to Isabella: 'The house, a long, low building with a verandah in front, is on the side of a steep grassy slope, with lemon and orange trees interspersed, reaching down to the water’s edge. The front windows command a beautiful view of the harbour, and of several thickly-wooded islets with which its surface is studded’.
The family stayed in Sydney at the end of 1831 when Isabella was awaiting the birth of their second daughter, Lucy. (She had 'another little Australian baby boy’ on 21 October 1833.) On 19 October she took the twins to have their portraits drawn by Charles Rodius , 'a Prisoner, who had been recommended to us as the best to do it. He has succeeded very tolerably with dear Teddy, but Myttie is a failure.’ Isabella herself had no talent for figure drawing, as she bewailed in a letter home in 1830 when describing the exotic appearance of the Port Stephens Aborigines painted for a corroboree. She did, however, make a collection of local Aboriginal artefacts, which she enclosed inside a large carved New Zealand canoe ('an exact model of the Canoe in the frontispiece of Cook’s Voyages’) sent home to Alderley accompanied by her sketch identifying the objects: _Bo_m_r_ng_ (an 'instrument of amusement … though sometimes turned into a Weapon of War’), Nulla Nulla , Waddie and _Throwing Stick or W_m_r__ . Also included were 'three spears, the one with 4 prongs is called a Mooting and used to spear Fish with at Night, the points are made of Kangaroo bones’, and other objects.
A perfectly conventional gentlewoman, Isabella’s normal artistic activities consisted of drawing watercolour and pencil views from nature. Some of her Australian sketches, dated 1832, are now in the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge. Unsigned copies dated April 1833 were made either by Aunt Kitty or her sister-in-law Matilda Parry, both of whom Isabella urged to indulge in this activity in order to allow wider circulation of her sketches within the family circle. (She expected Aunt Kitty to improve on her work.) An architectural elevation of Tahlee Cottage in the collection was 'kindly made by Mr Armstrong’ (to show the wings the Parrys had added to the house) but several of Isabella’s more picturesque views include this 'long, low building’ and its 'beautiful view of the harbour’. View of Port Stephens from the Verandah at Tahlee House shows the twins’ little pull-along cart: 'the Verandah is delightful for the Piccaninnies to play in, as they can be turned loose in it, without danger’, she noted. View of Port Stephens Harbour from a Seat at the Back of Tahlee House is inscribed, 'a favourite play place of the children’, while another view from the front of the house includes the edge of the New Zealand canoe.
Soon after her arrival Isabella wrote that she longed to paint – ie in oils – for she found the colours of the Australian countryside unexpectedly varied and beautiful. Yet, because of her family commitments, it is doubtful if more than an occasional watercolour wash ever eventuated. When sending home a pencil view of Tahlee house and gardens drawn from a rowing boat 'on our lake’ (the artist, as usual, being accompanied by her 'two darlings’), she complained that it was 'impossible to do justice to the View in pencil’ but had no time to do more. This sketch used the device of adding tiny birds flying above particular features as a key to the annotations added verso. One bird can be seen over 'Hill, where we have made walks; one way to the Garden’. Two identify the Bathing House; there are three over Jones’ and Mrs Ivey’s cottages; four show the 'Way to the Garden’. Two tiny 'Blacks in a canoe’ near the 'Cottage where Mr Ebsworth lives’ provide local colour. Her drawing of the settlement at Carrington, which she mentioned finishing on site on 14 March 1832 while the twins 'visited’ a long-suffering villager, is annotated in the same way. She also sent home a simple architectural elevation and plan of the Agricultural Company’s chapel of St John at nearby Stroud. The Parrys built it in 1833 as a gift to the settlement and it appears to have been designed and drawn up by Lady Parry herself in consultation with her husband. (The bricklayer was a man called Saville who, Isabella complained, was often too drunk to work.) While in Sydney awaiting Lucy’s birth she sketched La Perouse’s Monument at Botany Bay on 11 August 1831, later making a copy for an English friend wanting to have a memento of the place where Sir Joseph Banks had landed. Of all 'Bella’s pretty drawings’, her father preferred Coal Works at Newcastle, New South Wales , it being most closely connected with Sir Edward and the Agricultural Company’s business interests.
Despite her children taking up so much of her time and energy, Lady Parry was also an enthusiastic landscape gardener and animal and plant collector. (She proposed taking a collection of live native animals home when they left, including some of the black swans they had on their 'lake’.) All the Parrys’ artistic, architectural and collecting activities seem to have been her initiatives, but she deferred to her husband’s superiority in these as in all other aspects of her life. On 13 October 1830 she wrote to her mother: 'I have begun to make a collection of dried plants, and hope I shall succeed well with them under the dear Man’s tuition, but they are more difficult than Arctic plants to preserve, being very juicy and the colors soon fly, being so very delicate and bright’. With the help of James, a young English manservant they had brought out, she completed a collection of insects and butterflies to send home a few months after arrival at Port Stephens, but mice got to the box and ate them all. She persevered and the following year was able to send home some flowers, although now having successfully managed their preservation Isabella was having trouble identifying her specimens. Many, she said, were not in Loddige and everyone in the neighbourhood was 'dull about flowers, excepting Dr Stacy, who knows more of flowers I am sorry to say than Medicine '.
When Sir Edward’s commission with the Australian Agricultural Company expired in March 1834, the Parrys all went home to England on board the Persian , leaving in June and arriving in November. Edward became assistant Poor Laws commissioner for a time and, from 1837, comptroller of steam machinery at the Admiralty. They lived in Norfolk and London and attended the coronation of Queen Victoria in Westminster Abbey on 28 June 1838, a major event noted in Isabella’s ever-diminishing diary entries. On 11 May 1839 at Norfolk she gave birth to still-born twin boys, the last of her ten children. She died two days later. The directors of the Agricultural Company erected a tablet to her memory in her church at Stroud.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1801
- Summary
- Isabella Louisa Parry was a sketcher and collector. She arrived in Sydney with her husband in 1829. It appears that Parry, in consultation with her husband, designed and drew the plan of the Agricultural Company's chapel of St John at nearby Stroud. She also had a collection of insects and butterflies which she intended to send back home to England from Port Stephens, but mice ate them all.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 13 May 1839
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1786-01-01 End Date1839-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK, UK?
- Biography
- painter, soldier and settler, trained at the Royal Military Academy and entered the British Army as an ensign in the 73rd Regiment on 12 April 1809. The army gives his initials as W.H. and he himself signed his marriage register with these, indicating a possible additional baptismal name (Hamilton?), but afterwards he always seems to have used 'W.T.’. Gazetted lieutenant on 15 November 1810, he retained that rank until he retired in 1824. Lyttleton came to Sydney in December 1809, where he is thought to have painted a watercolour view of the town and harbour still in family possession (photograph in Mitchell Library). The following February his company was posted to Port Dalrymple (Launceston), Van Diemen’s Land. He was briefly attached to the Commissariat Office at Launceston until appointed naval officer by Governor Macquarie in 1812.
Lyttleton married Anne Hortle, daughter of Ann and the late Private James Hortle of the New South Wales Corps, in a civil ceremony at Port Dalrymple on 4 January 1812. They had seven children of whom at least three painted and sketched. Indeed, William’s work has often been confused with that by his son Westcote , while two watercolours now believed to be by Maria were originally attributed to her father.
With a detachment of the 73rd Regiment, Lyttleton arrived at Ceylon (Sri Lanka) on 28 October 1814 in the Windham . He remained there with his family for the next seven years, being appointed deputy assistant-commissary at Ruanwella on 6 February 1815 after serving with the expedition against Kandy earlier that year. Edward Orme of London published six aquatint views of Kandy and its environs after Lieutenant Lyttleton’s originals, engraved by M. Dubourg and advertised for sale in the Ceylon Gazette of 2 October 1819 for 100 Rix dollars (£7 10s) the set; the Allport and Mitchell libraries have complete copies. The scenes depicted are: View from Amanapoora , View on the Balani Mountain , The King’s Palace at Kandy , Scenes at the Ferry of Wattepalogoa , Town of Kandy and Tombs of Kandyan Kings , Lyttleton being one of the earliest artists to depict these royal tombs, destroyed in 1850.
Two aquatints and a line-engraving after Lyttleton were included in John Davy’s Ceylon (1821): A Kandyan Disave and Priest of Boodhoo (the frontispiece), View of Part of the Palace, including the Pateripooa and of Part of the Nata Dewale from the Great Square and Front of the Palace in Kandy . Watercolours done at Trincomalee survive in private collections and the Mitchell Library holds two watercolours, Fort Frederick from The Esplanade. Trincomal é in the Island of Ceylon (annotated 'Drawn on the spot by W. Lyttleton’) and View in the Inner Harbour with Admiralty House, Trincomal é in the Island of Ceylon , both apparently intended for aquatinting.
After Ceylon, the family returned to Britain (Moore states to Dumbarton Castle, Scotland), William having been granted two years’ sick leave from February 1820 to January 1822. He then rejoined his regiment, now back in England, but in November 1824 he sold his commission and left the army with the retirement rank of captain. He sailed from Leith to Van Diemen’s Land with his family, arriving in the Triton on 4 October 1825. Capital of £2000 and 500 head of cattle entitled him to land grants which he took up near Westbury and in the Meander district. In partnership with William Archer of Brickendon, he also leased 2560 acres on the Norfolk Plains. He was appointed police magistrate and deputy chairman of the Launceston Quarter Sessions on 30 November 1829 and remained in this post until resigning on 14 January 1836 in order to return to England. The Lyttletons left on 9 February. On 7 June 1839 William died at 45 Cambridge Terrace, Hyde Park, London; he was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.
Lyttleton was interested in architecture and erected the house now known as Pinefield at Longford, subsequently the local Anglican parsonage where Maria and her husband lived. Although continuing to be a keen sketcher, few original Tasmanian works are in public collections. The Mitchell Library holds a watercolour, Scene at Port Dalrymple [Launceston], Van Diemen’s Land (c.1830), and an attributed pen-and-ink sketch of the town of Launceston in 1830. He is best known as the original artist for the lithograph Panshanger. The Seat of Joseph Archer Esquire , published in London in 1835 after 'Lyttleton’. The original watercolour of this serene rural vista was probably taken to London to be engraved by the 16-year-old Westcote, thus somewhat confusing its authorship, but it seems far too sophisticated to have been by the son and is perfectly compatible in style with the father’s Singhalese prints. The original painting is lost. William’s third son, Thomas , may have exhibited it (or a copy) in the 1860s.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1786
- Summary
- Early 19th century painter and soldier who lived and painted in Van Diemen's Land and Ceylon. Lyttleton was also interested in architecture and he erected the house now known as Pinefield at Longford.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 7 June 1839
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude49.7822104 Longitude33.2740646 Start Date1780-01-01 End Date1839-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Khorol, Ukraine
- Biography
- painter, was born in Khorol (Ukraine), son of a merchant. After training at the Russian Academy of Arts he won several gold medals at exhibitions from 1799 to 1880. He was on board the Russian naval sloop Otkrytie (Discovery) when it arrived in Sydney Harbour on 2 March 1820. Having gained permission from Governor Macquarie, Korneyev, together with the botanists Dr Stein and Alan Cunningham, made a trip to the Blue Mountains. Cunningham noted in his journal that on 9 March the party camped on the King’s Tableland near the cliffs of the Regent’s Glen, and Mr Korneyev made sketches, 'particularly of a cascade or cataract originally discovered by Lt. Lawson’. Korneyev also sketched a wide variety of flora and 'romantic spots’. The Otkrytie left Sydney on 26 March 1820.
During the three weeks of their stay Korneyev sketched Sydney and its more immediate environs. The drawings from the entire voyage, by the artist’s own account, numbered over 300 and, according to a diary kept by Captain Gleb Shishmarev, Korneyev intended publishing an art album on his return to Russia. The Naval Ministry, however, insisted that the illustrations should accompany the official description of the expedition by Vasilyev, commander of the expedition and captain of the Otkrytie , so 171 drawings were submitted to naval headquarters in 1830—where they disappeared. The expedition was considered by the navy to be an expensive failure and no government assistance was recommended to publish accounts of it.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1780
- Summary
- A member of a Russian expedition, Korneyev visited Sydney for three weeks in 1820. During the visit he sketched Sydney and its environs and accompanied a botanical excursion to the Blue Mountains where he made sketches of a variety of flora. There were over 300 drawings of the entire journey many of them lost by the Russian Naval Ministry.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1839
- Age at death
- 59
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1800-01-01 End Date1838-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and lithographer,was born in London, daughter of John Ford of Hampstead. In 1826 she married Matthew Curling Friend (1792-1871), a retired naval officer, inventor and nautical scientist. Three years later they left Portsmouth on board the Wanstead , a merchant ship of which her husband was master, transporting settlers to the new Swan River settlement in Western Australia. They arrived on 30 January 1830 – eight months after the first British settlers had embarked. In March, Mary Ann made a drawing of the camp at Fremantle on the banks of the Swan River where she, her husband and her husband’s brothers, Daniel, Charles and George, were living (two of the brothers, her husband and the artist herself can be seen in the image). Later published as a lithograph, her View at Swan River. Sketch of the Encampment of Mattw Curling Friend, Esqr. R.N. Taken on the Spot & Drawn on Stone by Mrs M.C.F. March 1830 (Mitchell Library) shows the unusual core structure of her temporary home and studio (supplemented by tents and tarpaulins)-a 'horse house’ from the ship converted into what she herself called a 'cottage orné’.
Mary Ann Friend achieved a wider English audience for her drawing than the usual family circle. After returning to London so that Matthew could obtain permission from the Admiralty to settle in Tasmania, she converted her initial sketch 'taken on the spot’ into a lithograph, redrawing it onto the stone herself. Although her drawing transformed the place into an amusing and easily comprehensible late eighteenth-century picturesque conceit – a 'rural cabin’ in which to play at pioneering life – more than her male relative’s carpentry did, the prospect is still not particularly enticing. The dry and infertile landscape shows only dead or straggling trees, one of which alone offers any prospect of shade-and it leans dangerously-a few logs on the ground for cooking (on dry days) and a general sense of desolation.
Since Mary Ann’s husband was the ship’s captain, this was apparently a pick site! It’s no wonder that the Wanstead departed for Van Diemen’s Land with all Friends aboard only days after the drawing was made. As well as being a memento of antipodean wilderness à la Salvator Rosa (but sunny), the drawing explains the Friends’ failure to settle in West Australia. Friend was not attempting to convey precise information about the still largely unknown antipodes but confirming prevailing assumptions about the peculiarities of life in this strange, primitive land. This was the sort of image that gave gumtrees a bad name. Yet because her romantic distopian view slotted the alien landscape-along with the 'horse house’-precisely yet dismissively into an aesthetic category known to all educated gentry, it had more appeal in England than Jane Currie 's detailed, naturalistic panorama faithfully depicting the struggling European Swan River settlement did. Friend’s image was published and widely circulated; Currie’s was not.
In March the Wanstead sailed on to Van Diemen’s Land, reaching Hobart Town in April 1830. The Friends decided to settle there and Matthew applied for a grant of land then had to return to England in May to clear his migration with the Admiralty. They returned in July 1832 with Mary Ann’s mother, on board the Norval of which Matthew was again master. He was appointed port officer at Launceston in September. A house, Newnham, was erected on their land grant of 250 acres near Launceston, but this fertile scene was not made into an English print. Matthew was subsequently appointed landing waiter, police magistrate and port officer at George Town as well as retaining his Launceston job. In both places he was unrelentingly attacked by W.L. Goodwin , his rival for the Launceston port officer position, and from 1838 proprietor of the Launceston Cornwall Chronicle . The strain, coupled with Goodwin’s attacks on their private lives, is said to have hastened Mary Ann’s death at George Town, on 27 September 1838. Her husband, who remarried in 1840, erected a large neo-classical marble mausoleum to her memory in the George Town Cemetery.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. c.1800
- Summary
- Though she travelled extensively with her husband, Mary Ann Friend captured early impressions of her new homeland, Australia, often depicting dry landscapes which highlighted the struggles of the early pioneers.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 27 September 1838
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1793-01-01 End Date1838-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and lithographer, was born in London on 1 June 1793, son of an American Tory portrait painter who fled to England in 1778, James Earl (Augustus added a final 'e’ to the family name), and his wife Caroline, widow of Joseph Smyth, another American Tory. Augustus’s uncle, Ralph Earl, was an eminent American portrait painter; his older sister, Phoebe, became flower painter to Queen Victoria, while her husband, Denis Dighton, was a printer who later lithographed some of Earle’s watercolours. In the light of this artistic background it is perhaps not surprising that young Augustus displayed a precocious talent for painting. He exhibited Judgement of Midas – Ovid’s 'Metam[orphosis]’ at the Royal Academy at the age of thirteen. It was one of seven paintings he had hung there between 1806 and 1815, others being Caius Marcius Taking Possession of the City of Corioli (1809), two canvases of Banditti (1811, 1812) and View of the Harbour and Part of the Town of Calais (1815).
In 1815 Earle gained a passage on a storeship bound for Malta and spent the next two years exploring and painting in the Mediterranean. Part of the time he travelled in the gunship commanded by his half-brother Captain (later Admiral) W.H. Smyth, a friend of Thomas Brisbane, subsequently Governor of New South Wales. Earle’s view of Valetta was engraved and published by Smart & Sutherland of London in 1818 after he had returned to England at the end of 1817. Almost immediately he set off again, this time to North America. He embarked in March 1818 and in July exhibited two paintings at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1820 he visited Chile and Lima, then settled at Rio de Janeiro. In South America he began work on a series of watercolour drawings recording his travels. Gate of Pernambuco, in Brazil, with New Negroes , subtitled 'The police ordered the slaves to be housed, on account of an attack made on one of the outposts by the Patriots in 1821’, was shown at the Royal Academy in 1824, Earle being catalogued ( in absentia ) as an honorary exhibitor who had painted the picture in Brazil.
In 1824 Earle left Rio for the Cape of Good Hope then for Calcutta. En route, his ship the Duke of Gloucester was forced to anchor off the remote island of Tristan da Cunha. As the captain was intending to purchase potatoes from the island’s six adult inhabitants, Earle decided to go ashore and sketch. While thus engaged, the sloop 'tacked and stood out to sea!’ leaving Earle (and his dog Trim) stranded in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean for the next eight months (several views National Library of Australia, one MU Grimwade Col.). On 29 November he was rescued by the Admiral Cockburn on its way to Hobart Town. Arriving on 18 January 1825, Earle noted the 'perfect park scenery’ of the place in a watercolour, Cluny Park, Van Diemen’s Land (1825, NLA). He apparently painted a few oil portraits of local citizens in Tasmania (at least three have been attributed to him – a pair depicting G.A. Evans and his new young wife, and a shooter with Australian birds also said, more convincingly, to be a later – 1830s – portrait of John Gould , possibly by Henry Williams ). He certainly did a series of 8 detailed, linked watercolour views of Hobart Town (Dixon Gallery), developed into a large London panorama at Robert Burford’s in 1831. To Earle’s Arcadian view of this sedate British outpost, Burford’s artists added some local colour, including a chain gang and a group of convicts.
After four months, Earle left Van Diemen’s Land in the Cyprus , reaching Sydney on 14 May 1825. There he quickly established himself as the colony’s leading artist, replacing the less sophisticated portrait and miniature painter, Richard Read senior . Commissioned to decorate the dining room of Nash’s Inn at Parramatta with a transparency for the emancipists’ farewell banquet in honour of retiring Governor Thomas Brisbane on 7 November, Earle took as his subject 'Diogenes in Search of an Honest Man’, a topic indicative of the artist’s wit if not tact. Afterwards, the stewards of the dinner presented the transparencies to Brisbane. As reported in the Sydney Gazette :
“The largest, which was placed immediately to the rear of His Excellency, exhibited Diogenes in search of an honest man, and the philosopher is conducted, by Fame, to the shores of Australia, when, the moment he lands, by the aid of a lanthern, he discovers the likeness of Sir THOMAS BRISBANE: – the cynic then completed his arduous investigation, accomplishing what he conjectured to be a fruitless task. The 'infant empire’ of Australia is represented by the kangaroo ( that spirit of Australia !!!) as well as the woolsack, together with an exuberant cornucopia, illustrative of the flourishing state of the Country. Immediately under the figure of Sir THOMAS, an altar is presented, on which TRUTH is inscribed; – on this is consuming a ghastly right hand severed from the body, pourtraying discord . In its grasp, which even death has not been able to loosen, is seen an ensanguined dagger, on which calumny is written; thus the whole fabric of falsehood is faithfully exhibited in a perishing condition.”
It’s no wonder that Brisbane’s small daughter was said to have screamed when she saw it!
Far more lucrative portrait commissions from wealthy, non-convict Sydney society ('Exclusives’) followed, including Colonial Secretary Frederick Goulburn, Captain and Mrs Brooks and Dr Robert Townson. In particular, Earle painted a life-size oil portrait of Governor Brisbane (Government House, Sydney) commissioned by the civil officers of New South Wales, for which he was paid £50. Also attributed to him are two full-length oils, one of Captain John Piper and the other of his wife and children (Mitchell Library), as well as oil heads of Piper and his wife (National Gallery of Australia), a child (Art Gallery of South Australia – also attributed to Read senior, J. F. Lewin and Anon) and some preliminary sketches for the paintings of Piper and family (NLA). In 1826, for a concert given by the Sydney Amateur Concert Society, Earle painted classical statues (Apollo, Minerva and Melpomene) on three boards temporarily blocking the windows of an upper room in Sydney’s courthouse in Castlereagh Street (to improve the acoustics), adding ornamental coats of arms of Britain and Australia between the panels. He was a committee member of the host society and one of the four 'Directors of the Evening’.
On 8 July 1826, Earle advertised the opening of his art gallery at 10 George Street, Sydney, where he was offering painting lessons and 'a large assortment of every description of articles used in Drawing, Painting &c.’ as well as his own pictures. Rev. John McGarvie visited the gallery and made a valuable list of the paintings in his diary (ML), recollecting the visit in the Sydney Gazette of 28 and 30 July 1829. Frederick Garling may have been one of his pupils.
By August Earle had been given a lithographic press by the astronomer James Dunlop and was issuing a portrait of the Sydney Aborigine Bungaree (ML), 'the first attempt of Mr. E. in lithography’, he proclaimed. In November he published the first part of his Views in Australia , comprising two hand-coloured lithographs: Sydney Heads and View from the Sydney Hotel . The second and final pair made their appearance the following month – Sydney from Pinchgut Island and a view of the Macquarie lighthouse – though a more extensive series had initially been proposed.
Earle had reverted to travelling. As always, he sketched the scenery and the indigenous people encountered along the way. Towards the end of the year he made several journeys inland to sketch the Blue Mountains, Wellington Valley and Bathurst, then travelled north as far as Port Stephens and Port Macquarie. In January 1827 he applied for a land grant. He stated that he wished to settle in the colony, though not 'as a Man of business; business is quite foreign to me’. Predictably, his petition was unsuccessful. Later in the month, he wrote from outside Sydney requesting that the convict Edmund Edgar , who had assisted him with the production of Views in Australia , be re-assigned to Andrew Allen . He was about to embark on a series of eight detailed watercolours of Sydney for another grand Burford panorama. They were painted in February 1827 'under the inspection of Lieutenant Colonel Dumaresq [q.v.], by whom they were brought to England’ and the panorama was shown at Leicester Square in 1829-30. Earle’s original watercolours have not been located, but a published description and key survive. As was normal, in the process of enlarging the drawings were enhanced by Burford’s artists (advised by Dumaresq) with 'many European figures, [and] several groups of Natives, employed in their exercises and sports; and that useful animal the kangaroo is likewise seen playfully sporting on the turf’, Blackwood’s magazine noted (reprinted Sydney Gazette , 9 May 1829).
Earle travelled and made sketches in the rainforests of the Illawarra district early in 1827. He broke his leg on the return journey and recuperated at S.O. Hassell’s home at the Cowpastures, where he wrote a long letter to Mrs Ward describing in doggerel verse his adventures and present predicament. On 20 October 1827 he sailed for New Zealand on board the Governor Macquarie , with a view to recording its landscape and inhabitants. Thought to be the first professional European artist to take up residence in that country, he stayed for six months, returning to Sydney on board the same vessel on 5 May 1828.
On 12 October he left New South Wales forever, embarking in The Rainbow bound for the Caroline Islands. He then sailed to Guam, Manila, Singapore and Madras, making watercolour sketches at each port of call. Back at London in 1829 Earle published his set of lithographic Views in New South Wales, and Van Diemen’s Land (1830). A Narrative of a Nine [sic] Months’ Residence in New Zealand in 1827; together with a Journal of a Residence in Tristan d’Acunha, an Island Situated between South America and the Cape of Good Hope followed in 1832. Impatient to be off again, he accepted the offer of artist supernumerary with victuals on board the Beagle . The ship sailed from Plymouth on 27 December 1831, bound for Tierra del Fuego and Rio de Janeiro under Captain FitzRoy ; Charles Darwin was another passenger. Earle’s view of 'H.M.S. Beagle, January 1832, Porta Praya, Island of St Jago’ is in the Grimwade Collection, MU (acq. 1996). Continued ill health eventually forced him to leave the Beagle at Rio on 19 August, his place being taken by Conrad Martens . He returned to London some time after November 1833.
Earle exhibited Life on the Ocean, Representing the Usual Occupation of the Young Officers in the Steerage of a British Frigate at Sea and Divine Service, as it is Usually Performed on Board a British Frigate at Sea at the Royal Academy in 1837. The following year he showed A Bivouac of Travellers in Australia, in a Cabbage Tree Forest – Daybreak , an oil developed from a watercolour of his ill-fated Illawarra expedition (both versions NLA). He published his Sketches Illustrative of the Native Inhabitants and Islands of New Zealand (London 1838), provided Bay of Islands watercolours for another Burford panorama, which was also shown in New York (in 1840), and managed a little more travelling and writing as well as painting; but his health continued to deteriorate. He died of 'asthma and debility’ at 9 Diana Place, London, on 10 December 1838.
Earle’s portraits of white Australians are of great social interest, while his undated oil portrait of Bungaree (NGA), possibly painted in Sydney, depicts him as a dignified individual with a tragic awareness of his dispossessed and ragged state. It is possibly the first 'high art’ oil painting of an Australian Aborigine (a possible Lewin portrait may have preceded it). His major artistic contribution, however, is the collection of watercolours he painted during his travels (many NLA). He seems to have been the first freelance travel artist to tour the world, and he proved personally and artistically capable of adapting to whatever fate offered. His restless curiosity, his desire to explore and record unknown lands was matched and complemented by an essentially naturalistic, empirical vision, tinged at times with a somewhat sardonic sense of humour. The underlying narrative content of his art and his interest in the people who so often form an integral part of the painting reflect the enthusiasm and gregarious personality of the artist himself.
Writers:
Hackforth-Jones, JocelynKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1 June 1793
- Summary
- Augustus Earle travelled extensively during his lifetime, producing paintings and lithographs of his travels in the Mediterranean, North & South America, the Pacific and Atlantic islands, New Zealand and the eastern states of Australia. Earle's enthusiasm and gregarious personality is reflected in his work.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 December 1838
- Age at death
- 45
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1792-01-01 End Date1838-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, military officer and pastoralist, was born in England, son of Colonel John Dumaresq and Anne, née Jones. Trained at the Royal Military College, Great Marlow, where he probably also learned to draw, he served in the Peninsular War and in Canada. Eliza Darling , Henry’s sister, had married Ralph Darling, and when Darling was appointed governor of New South Wales in 1825, Henry accompanied them as his brother-in-law’s private secretary. Darling later appointed him clerk to the Executive Council but, owing to charges of nepotism from some sections of the local press, neither position was ever officially confirmed.
Henry was back in London in 1827/1829, where he assisted the celebrated entrepreneur Robert Burford to produce a panorama of Sydney (from eight watercolours painted by Augustus Earle ), shown at Burford’s in 1829. Henry and Elizabeth Sophia Butler-Danvers married in 1828, then sailed for New South Wales to settle on Henry’s land grant in the Hunter River district, near Muswellbrook, called St Helier’s.
Dumaresq was a talented amateur artist. The Sydney Gazette of 30 July 1829 reported that he sketched 'with great beauty in black lead and Indian ink’, while the diarist G.T.W.B. Boyes wrote in 1825: 'He is a first rate Artist and paints from nature in a style that I have never seen equalled. Positively he is far superior to John Varley the London artist and draws figures with as much facility and truth as any Dutchman of old. If I stay here [in Sydney] we are to make some excursions together – in search of the Picturesque’. Although highly complimentary, the comparison with Varley, as Chapman points out, seems extravagant. Few drawings on which to pass judgement are known, however. His only art works in a public collection are those letters in his private correspondence illustrated with sketches, including views of country-house life in New South Wales (ML). Other sketches apparently remain in family possession.
Said to run 'one of the best managed stations on the Hunter’, Dumaresq moved to Port Stephens in 1833 to manage the Australian Agricultural Company’s properties, succeeding Sir Edward Parry (husband of Isabella Parry ). He died there on 5 March 1838 as a result of an old war injury. A kind and just man, he was popular with all classes. Informed contemporaries, such as the Quakers James Backhouse and Charlotte Anley, the Presbyterian Rev. Dr. J.D. Lang and the explorer E.J. Eyre, all stated that he established model conditions for his workers at St Helier’s.
.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1792
- Summary
- Early nineteenth-century military officer and talented amateur artist, brother-in-law of Governor Darling.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 5 March 1838
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1786-01-01 End Date1838-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- engraver, teacher, editor and printer, was baptised on 4 January 1787 in Aberdeen, Scotland, third son of Alexander Ross, a 'writer’, and Catharine, née Morrison. Educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, he graduated Master of Arts in 1803, Doctor of Laws in 1818 then conducted schools at Sevenoaks, Kent and Sunbury, Middlesex. Dr Ross married Susannah Smith at Sunbury. Poor prospects and a growing family led to migration to Van Diemen’s Land; the family reached Hobart Town on board the Regalia in December 1822.
Discouraged by bushrangers and fire from farming his property on the River Shannon (inappropriately called The Hermitage), Ross briefly became tutor to Lieutenant-Governor Arthur’s children in 1825. In May he was appointed joint government printer and editor of the Hobart Town Gazette with G.T. Howe, the first issue of the newspaper appearing in June. The partnership was dissolved in January 1827 and Ross continued alone as government printer and publisher of the Gazette (now restricted to official announcements). In October 1827 he simultaneously began to publish the weekly independent Hobart Town Courier and in 1829 brought out the first annual Hobart Town Almanack . Both contained occasional illustrations.
The Almanack survived until 1838, all but the two last volumes being produced by Ross. The first five were the best illustrated, carrying (small) full-page engravings, mainly etched with a little line-engraving, and having tiny woodcut vignettes interspersed throughout the text. Thomas Bock was the engraver for the 1829-1830 and 1835 volumes and Charles Bruce for those of 1831-1833 and 1836-1837. These professionals undoubtedly etched all the full-page illustrations, but Ross himself designed and cut some of the vignettes, stating in a letter to a friend (published in London’s Penny Magazine in April 1832): 'I write my articles, engrave my vignettes, set the types, adjust the press. Sometimes I set up a few lines myself and dictate at the same time to one or two of my compositors etc.’.
Bock appears to have etched all 15 of the full plates in the 1829 and 1830 editions of the Almanack and cut the two vignettes in the 1829 volume after drawings by George Frankland . Captain M. Dalrymple , Thomas Scott and T.J. Lempriere contributed a few drawings for the following year’s vignettes (engraved by Bock), but most of these small illustrations are unsigned and appear to have been drawn and engraved by Ross. In particular, those of St David’s Church, Hobart Town (originally published in Ross’s Hobart Town Courier on 29 August 1829), and St John’s Church, Launceston, are almost certainly his. Other vignettes in the 1829 Courier , all unsigned, were: a skit on the dog tax entitled The Dogs’ Petition (26 September 1829), a heading to an article on drunkenness called A Lecture on Mechanics (3 October 1829) and The Making of a Coracle Which Was the Means of Saving the Lives of the Crew and Passengers of the Brig Cyprus… (12 September 1829). The last vignette and its lengthy caption is said to have inspired a similar incident in Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life . Odd unsigned vignettes in later almanacs, such as a skull, scythe and hourglass titled Finis for 1831 or a hayrick and a diagram about fencing for 1832, are also presumed to be Ross’s.
Energy (or finance) for illustrations had evaporated along with the professional engravers by 1834. There was no engraver whatsoever for Ross’s 1834 Almanack and the volume contained just one vignette, Frankland and Bock’s title-page of two cockatoos used in all previous editions. Bock was back signing the two known illustrations in the 1835 Almanack (three were promised in the 'instructions to the binder’), while the only vignette was a collection of simple line-drawings to explain signals. All these vignettes look like woodcuts and Craig believes that most were but points out that the sole surviving block (Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, TAS) – Ross’s own vignette of St John’s Church at Launceston in the 1830 Almanack – is of thin metal fastened to a wooden backing that produces a 'blackline relief’ very similar to a woodcut. Ross had used this block in the Launceston Advertiser of 30 November 1829, however, before it appeared in the Almanack , so it may not be typical; it was later republished as an advertisement in Hugh Munro Hull 's 1859 Royal Kalendar and Guide .
In 1836 Ross sold his printing, bookbinding and stationery business to G.W. Elliston, who took over as government printer and issued the 1837 and 1838 Almanacks. Ross retired to Carrington in the Richmond district, where he died of apoplexy on 1 August 1838. He was buried in St Luke’s Cemetery, Richmond, survived by his wife and 13 children. To make ends meet (Ross atypically having given more energy to his job than to enriching himself in Australia) Mrs Ross conducted a boarding school at Carrington (1839-1842), then at Paraclete, until she married Robert Stewart, a local solicitor.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1786
- Summary
- James Ross was an engraver, teacher, editor and printer. He was appointed joint government printer and editor of the Hobart Town Gazette in June 1825. Ross was also responsible for publishing the Hobart Town Courier (1827) and the Hobart Town Almanack (1829-1836).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1 August 1838
- Age at death
- 52
Details
Latitude51.2 Longitude0.7 Start Date1773-01-01 End Date1838-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kent, England, UK
- Biography
- portrait and miniature painter, decorator and drawing teacher, was born in Kent, England. Nothing is known of his early life, but he probably received some form of artistic training. After marrying (Mary) Anne Nicholls, they moved to Lancashire, where the baptisms of their first four children are recorded. In 1816 Allen was tried in the Lancashire courts for making and having in his possession a frame for forging banknotes and was sentenced to transportation; his wife received a similar sentence for having banknotes in her possession.
Allen reached Sydney aboard the convict ship Fame on 4 March 1817 and his wife and children followed in the Lord Melville later that year. On 11 October, he advertised in the Sydney Gazette as a portrait painter of 47 Pitt Street, offering 'Striking likenesses from One Guinea to Ten’ and 'Drawing taught on reasonable terms’. Since there appear to have been few opportunities for portrait painters or art teachers in Sydney at this time, his advertisement went on to list other accomplishments, including 'Coach, Sign and Ornamental Painting: all kinds of Wood and Stone accurately initialled … Guilding [sic] &c. Rooms done in imitation of papering in a superior style’.
A son, Benjamin, was born in 1820 and a daughter, Harriet, the following year. In November 1821 Allen and his wife were granted absolute pardons. Allen apparently continued as a general painter and decorator. In September 1832 he painted 'a very appropriate sign’ showing Lords’ cricket ground in London for the Cricketers’ Hotel in Pitt Street, Sydney. He was listed in the New South Wales Calendar and General Post Office Directory as a miniature painter of Castlereagh Street in 1832, at 35 Upper Pitt Street between 1833 and 1837, but no miniature paintings have been identified.
Allen died at his home in Cumberland Street, Sydney, on 16 November 1838, aged about 65.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1773
- Summary
- Portrait and miniature painter, decorator and drawing teacher, Allen arrived in Sydney as a convict, having been arrested in England for forging bank notes. Upon reaching Sydney he advertised his skills as a portrait painter and drawing teacher.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 16 November 1838
- Age at death
- 65
Details
Latitude51.0690613 Longitude-1.7954134 Start Date1768-01-01 End Date1838-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Salisbury, England, UK
- Biography
- natural history painter and naval officer, was born in Salisbury, England on 13 December 1768, second of the six sons of James Tobin, a merchant and plantation owner on Nevis in the West Indies, and Elizabeth, née Webb. Tobin entered the Royal Navy in June 1780, aged eleven, and was present at naval action in the West Indies on 12 April 1782. After serving in England and Nova Scotia, he travelled to India and China in an East India Company vessel, then returned to duty and was commissioned third lieutenant. In 1791 he joined the Providence under Captain William Bligh who was making a second expedition to the South Seas (the first having led to mutiny) to obtain breadfruit. It was Tobin’s first posting as an officer and, as he later wrote to a friend, 'I joined full of apprehension… [but] I soon thought [Captain Bligh]...was not dissatisfied with me…it gave me encouragement and on the whole we journeyed smoothly on. Once or twice indeed I felt the unbridled licence of his power of spe ech yet never without receiving something like an emollient plaister to heal the wound.’
The official artist appointed to the expedition, W. Kirkland, had withdrawn, ill, at the last moment, and this left Tobin, a keen amateur naturalist and sketcher, as the major visual recorder of the voyage, although, Tobin wrote, 'this obliged us all to work with our pencils as well as we were able’. The other significant sketcher on the voyage was Bligh himself. Providence and her tender Assistant arrived at Adventure Bay, Van Diemen’s Land, in February 1792 and Tobin became the first European to record the echidna or spiny anteater, Tachyglossus aculeatus . His charming watercolour, like Sydney Parkinson 's drawing of a kangaroo, shows the artist grappling with the difficulties of drawing a previously unencountered animal. 'Of what species , or to what genus they belong, I am entirely in the dark’, Tobin wrote, describing this unfamiliar beast in his journal as 'a kind of sloth, about the size of a roasting pig with a proboscis two or three inches in length’. When roasted, it was found to be 'of a delicate flavour’. The crew also hunted kangaroos, but they proved too fleet of foot to be sampled.
Other watercolours from Tasmania include Bird’s Eye View of Adventure Bay … From near Fluted Cape and Native Hut (or Wigwam) of Adventure Bay, Van Diemen’s Land ('where we messed’). Tobin documented fish and birds of the area in other drawings, including black swans which, he admitted, he had not seen during their fortnight’s stay. His naive assumption that black swans and 'partridges’, however invisible, must inhabit any place labelled New Holland seems typical of his work: earnest, lively and well-intentioned but sometimes misleading through ignorance.
Tahiti was reached in April 1792 and the crew remained three months to collect breadfruit trees. The Dixson Galleries holds Tobin’s watercolour View on Matavai River, Otahytey [Tahiti] . On the return voyage the expedition passed through Torres Straits and Tobin added to his collection of watercolours, e.g. Torres Straits. The General Order of Sailing , Torres Straits. The Meeting of the Cutter and Canoes (both dated September 1792), and further drawings of birds and coastal profiles.
The expedition arrived back at England in September 1793. A letter Bligh wrote to Tobin on 9 March 1795 indicates that both were still hopeful of having some of their illustrations published in Bligh’s official account of the voyage but decreasingly so. Bligh wrote: 'I regret very much that I cannot positively say when my voyage will be printed, this some time past my drawings have been done, but I do not know if I shall be able to get the Admiralty to assist me, if they do I shall be ready to comply with your wish in introducing as I promised those I marked when you requested me to look at the original sketches’. The work never appeared. As Bligh also stated: 'At present Books of Voyages sell so slow that they do not defray the expense of Publishing, and unless the Admiralty will indulge me in paying for the engravings it will be out of my power to introduce anything but what is absolutely necessary’.
Perhaps Tobin then had hopes that his own journal might be published for he wrote to his brother in 1797 that he was putting his notes in order. His journal and Providence drawings (and some sketches from later voyages, mainly watercolours) are now in the Mitchell Library. Those drawings selected by Bligh for his intended publication are initialled W.B. in red ink. The Tasmanian view with black swans is not marked but the comical echidna is.
Twelve watercolours by Tobin were sold by Deutscher Fine Art in 1985. Six were made on the Providence voyage but none is of a Van Diemen’s Land subject. They include The Corpse of Moworoah, a Chief of Otahytey… and The Brothers – Small Islands off the Coast of New Guinea . The rest depict the Thetis engaged in various actions on North American waters, Tobin serving on this frigate under Captain Cochrane from soon after his return until about 1797 mainly in North American waters. He was promoted captain in 1802, made a Commander of the Bath in 1831 and attained the rank of Rear-Admiral of the White in 1837 but did not again serve at sea after July 1814. He died at Teignmouth, Devon, on 10 April 1838. In 1804 he had married Dorothy, daughter of Captain Gordon Skelly RN and widow of Major William Duff of the 26th Regiment; they had a son and a daughter. A box fish, Ostracion tobinii , was named after Tobin in Donovan’s Naturalist’s Repository (London 1824).
Writers:
Phipps, GraemeKerr, Joan
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 13 December 1768
- Summary
- Naval officer and natural history painter who sketched on various voyages, including Captain William Bligh's voyage to Van Diemen's Land. Tobin became the first European to record the echidna or spiny anteater.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 April 1838
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude-32 Longitude147 Start Date1807-01-01 End Date1836-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- NSW
- Biography
- pastoralist and sketcher, was a son of the pioneer pastoralist Alexander Riley who had come to New South Wales as a free settler in 1804. After serving as government storekeeper, then deputy commissary, at the Port Dalrymple (Launceston) settlement in Van Diemen’s Land from 1809, his father ran sheep on his property, Raby, near Liverpool, New South Wales, exporting wool to England from 1812 onwards. Determined to rival John Macarthur’s Spanish merinos, Alexander Riley imported a flock of Saxon merinos. The first shipment arrived in 1825 in the care of his nephew Edward Riley junior, the second in 1828 with William. The Riley merinos won every possible gold medal awarded by the New South Wales Agricultural Society between 1827 and 1830 and William sketched two of the prize specimens with proprietorial pride. His drawing, Prize Ram and Ewe, Exhibited at Parramatta, October 1828, from the Electoral Saxon flocks of Raby , was published in London as a lithograph by Dean & Munday (possibly the later Tasmanian painter Henry Mundy ).
William Riley married Honoria Rose Brooks on 28 February 1833. They lived both at Raby and Cavan in the Argyle district of New South Wales. Riley died suddenly on 4 December 1836, the day fixed for the wedding of his wife’s sister, Maria, to Lieutenant Zouch . To celebrate the occasion, the groom’s friend Lieutenant Waddy fired a decorative cannon which exploded taking off Waddy’s hand. Waddy survived but Riley, who witnessed the accident, collapsed and died, presumably of shock. Among his papers (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW) is a signed drawing in pencil and sepia wash of a horse and carriage.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1807
- Summary
- William Edward Riley, pastoralist and sketcher, was a son of the pioneer pastoralist Alexander Riley who had come to New South Wales as a free settler in 1804. The Riley merinos won gold medals awarded by the NSW Agricultural Society between 1827 and 1830.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 4 December 1836
- Age at death
- 29
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1798-01-01 End Date1836-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- cartoonist, worked in London. His hand-coloured etching, 'Cousin Thomas, or, the Swan River job’ in the series 'Plucking and Peeling’, was published by McLean, 26 Haymarket, London, 1 June 1829 (NLA PIC S8030 and 2nd copy. Another copy ML). See also ' Sharpshooter '.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1798
- Summary
- Early 19th century London cartoonist whose work satirised the Swan River settlement (Perth).
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1836
- Age at death
- 38
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1793-01-01 End Date1836-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- watercolour painter, naturalist and philanthropic worker, was born in England on 9 November 1793, eldest of the six daughters of Alexander Macleay and Elizabeth, daughter of James Barclay of Fleet Street, London. Fanny’s father was descended from a County Ross family noted for its intellectual achievements and community service; he served as colonial secretary of New South Wales from 1825 to 1837. Fanny learned painting and drawing from an expensive 'drawing master’ in London. Examples of Fanny’s flower and fruit paintings were hung in London’s Royal Academy Summer Shows in 1816, 1819 and 1824 – in the category of 'honorary exhibitor’. Two surviving large watercolours of flowers survive (owned by Mr and Mrs Peter Hely, England: photographic facsimiles Elizabeth Bay House [EBH]). One was a lavish collection of English flowers, painted and shown at the RA in 1824; the other, which incorporates Australian flowers, including the waratah, was painted at Sydney in 1830, judging from her self-depreciating comments about its progress in surviving letters to her elder brother, William Sharp Macleay. Both are elaborate academic works, very much in the seventeenth-century Dutch manner of artists such as Rachel Ruisches, despite the watercolour medium. (In 2000 the Friends of EBH purchased a mezzotint flower piece c.1800 by Boydell, possibly owned by the Macleay family and believed to be the basis for these paintings; it now hangs in EBH library.)
Fanny Macleay grew up in eminent scientific circles and was profoundly influenced by the scientific interests of her father, a fellow of the Royal and Linnaean societies, and of her brother William, a well-known naturalist. Robert Brown, one of the foremost English botanists in the scientific world in the first half of the nineteenth century, who accompanied Matthew Flinders on his expedition to and around the coast of Australia, was in love with her, but all she returned was an interest in botany. Early in 1830 she wrote to William that she had sent Brown ’12 Drawings or daubs as you would call them … in case one or two things may be worth copying into the Bot. Mag.’ (the London Curtis’s Botanical Magazine , edited by Brown).
The Macleays and their daughters had come to New South Wales in 1826, and several members of the family worked as collectors and recorders, compiling Australia’s earliest natural history collection. This interest took Fanny beyond the conventional female role of recording only the formal appearance of flowers in ignorance of their scientific interest. In a voluminous and lively correspondence with William spanning twenty-four years, she drew him numerous examples of English and Australian insects, animals, plants and fossils, as well as local views. An unsigned and undated watercolour sketch of Sydney showing St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral under construction (c.1833, Mitchell Library) has been attributed to her father, but it is clearly by Fanny and must have been intended for William from the tone of the inscription on the back. It provides a key to the major buildings in the picture, apologises for omitting many buildings – 'it would be difficult to manage them all in so small a sketch’ – and concludes: 'Admire my liberality in sending you so beautiful a thing!’
Fanny died in 1836, six weeks after her marriage to Thomas Cudbert Harington. There is a large monument to her memory in St James’s Church, Sydney, where her work as a philanthropist is publicly acknowledged. Few, however, were aware of the important role she had played as amanuensis to her father in the accumulation of one of the finest and most extensive natural history collections owned by an individual family in the nineteenth century, material which is now housed in the Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney.
Two extant ambitious flower paintings prove that Fanny Macleay was a most gifted watercolourist (facsimile reproductions Elizabeth Bay House, Sydney, from originals held privately in England). One, a large elaborate composition of English flowers, was shown at the Royal Academy, London, in 1824, two years before Fanny came to Australia with her parents and five younger sisters. The companion piece, illustrated here, was painted at Sydney in 1830 and incorporates twenty-one varieties of flowers, sixteen being Australian natives. Five are introduced species from Europe or South Africa.
All are massed in a terra-cotta urn set on a marble slab located in a Greek Revival setting that is more evocative of the as-yet-unrealised garden at the Macleays’ Elizabeth Bay property than of either classical antiquity or Regency England. The Elizabeth Bay gardens had been planted with a similar profusion of plants from all over the world, as well as many Australian natives, and a comparable ionic colonnade was proposed to encircle three sides of the house designed by John Verge. Equally lavish imported statuary, garden ornaments and follies were proposed to ornament the garden.
Sadly, there was never enough money. Despite an exuberant, excessive commencement soon after the family arrived, Alexander Macleay’s dreams were never fully realised. Fanny herself did not live to see the house completed (minus the colonnade), but she certainly participated in planning it and the garden. Even in its infant state, the garden aroused wonder and envy in many a visiting natural scientist’s breast. This painting is no nostalgic dream of what had been left behind but a foreshadowing of its realisation in the antipodes-the equal, even the superior, of the most lavish English aristocratic country estate.
Fanny’s surviving letters to her elder brother in Cuba, William Sharp Macleay, occasionally contain wryly self-disparaging comments on her painting. On 2 December 1830, she wrote: `I am very busy drawing a large piece of Native Plants-& it is not very ugly tho’ of course full of faults.’ Perfectly aware that it was actually something special, she cannot quite confess her pride in it to the long absent older brother who had made patronising comments on her art, or `daubs’ as he had called them (as she was fond of reminding him).
This is a surprisingly elaborate, academic work to have been produced in Sydney in 1830. Despite the watercolour medium, it belongs within the seventeenth-century Dutch manner of renowned still-life oil painters such as Rachel Ruisches, a style continued in the finely-detailed English work of flower painters such as Fanny’s much admired Mary Lawrance (1794-1830). As such, it is a quite exceptionally sophisticated example of early Australian colonial art of any kind.
Writers:
Windshuttle, ElizabethKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
1992
- Born
- b. 9 November 1793
- Summary
- Philanthropic colonial female painter whose detailed watercolours of flower arrangements included European and Australian flora. Her art was influenced by a lifelong association wih scientific thinkers.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1836
- Age at death
- 43
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1741-01-01 End Date1835-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Wapping, London, England, UK
- Biography
- embroiderer, was born in Wapping, London, the only child of Samuel Batts, a publican, and his wife Mary, née Smith. She is known to history only as the wife of the renowned navigator-explorer Captain James Cook whom she married at St Margaret’s Church, Barking, on 21 December 1762. They lived in the East End of London, near the Docks. According to Sinclair, of their 17 years of married life Elizabeth and her husband spent only four (in total) together. The Cooks had six children, three of whom grew to maturity. All three sons died young; like her husband, her children long predeceased her. Elizabeth lived on for 56 years after Captain Cook was killed at Kealakekua Bay in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in 1779.
Unlike her husband, Elizabeth Cook never visited Australia. However, the embroidery long attributed to her which depicts her husband’s voyages makes her an appropriate founding mother for Heritage: the National Women’s Art Book . Another embroidery, an elaborate waistcoat she was making for her husband to wear when he was to be presented at court after returning from his third voyage, remains poignantly unfinished (Mitchell Library). The only known portrait, a formidable view of her in old age, is held by the Mitchell Library.
Writers:
Callaway, AnitaKerr, Joan
Date written:
1995
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1741
- Summary
- Embroiderer. Elizabeth Cook is best known to history as the wife of the renowned navigator-explorer Captain James Cook. Despite never joining her husband on his journeys, her embroidered work includes depictions of Captain Cook's voyages to Australia and the Pacific.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 1835
- Age at death
- 94
Details
Latitude39.568631 Longitude2.6482482 Start Date1764-01-01 End Date1834-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Palma, Majorca
- Biography
- sketcher, hydrographic draughtsman and naval officer, was born on 19 February 1764 at Palma, Majorca. Nothing is known of his parents, except that his mother’s maiden name was Canas; it is possible, however, that he was a member of the same family as the fifteenth-century painter Gregory Bauza and the late nineteenth-century painter Juan Bauza, both of whom were Majorcan by birth. Bauza entered the Royal Spanish School of Navigation on 10 February 1779 and subsequently took part in naval actions against the British and Algerians. Early in 1789 he was appointed drawing master at the Marine Academy, Cadiz, but was almost immediately seconded as hydrographer and chartmaker to the great scientific and exploratory expedition which left Cadiz on 30 July 1789 under the command of Alejandro Malaspina. Two ships, the Descubierta and the Atrevida , had been provided for the expedition; Bauza, holding the rank of ensign, sailed on the former. During the next five years of voyaging in the Pacific region, Bauza mainly executed hydrographic charts but also some topographical views and figure studies.
Although the expedition’s itinerary concentrated on the Spanish colonies in the Americas, Micronesia and the Philippines it also included the new British settlement in New South Wales. As Britain and Spain had recently been at war, the Spanish felt that the settlement at Port Jackson (or, as they believed, at Botany Bay) posed a potential threat to the security of their colonies on the western coast of South America and even of those on the Californian coast. Malaspina’s ships arrived at Botany Bay on 12 March 1793 but rough weather prevented them from entering. The following day they sailed into Port Jackson instead, where they found, not the expected armed British naval base, but a far more relaxed settlement, albeit a penal colony. Here the ships anchored for a month.
Bauza continued his hydrographic work during his stay in Sydney. Malaspina wrote to Antonio Valdes, minister for the navy, that the British allowed them 'to verify any geodesic measurements we want’, subsequently noting in his log that all hydrographic soundings, both inside and outside Port Jackson, were completed by the afternoon of 3 April. Bauza also charted part of the Parramatta River during a trip to Parramatta on 7 April. Their observations complete, the Spanish ships left Sydney on 12 April. On his return to Spain in 1795 Bauza was promoted to lieutenant. He was posted to the Hydrographic Institute in Madrid, acting as deputy to his former shipmate Jose Espinosa and replacing him on his death. After his retirement Bauza settled in London, where he died in 1834.
In the meantime, Malaspina had been charged with treason, imprisoned and finally exiled, and all official records and reports of the expedition had been confiscated. Bauza’s own collection (gathered unofficially and perhaps secretly during the voyage) somehow escaped this fate: two large albums containing over 200 drawings and 16 charts were passed on to his heirs. The collection was offered for sale in 1962; most items were purchased by a Spanish collector and benefactor but a few which relate to Australia were bought by the Dixson Galleries. Two of these were the sketches, English in New Holland and Convicts in New Holland —described in the Sydney Morning Herald at the time of their purchase as 'Australia’s first fashion pictures’—which have been widely accepted as the work of the figure painter on the expedition, Juan Ravenet . In 1982, however, these were re-attributed to Bauza by the Spanish art-historian C. Sotos Serrano. The drawings are unsigned and are certainly less finished than most of Ravenet’s other Australian work but Sotos Serrano gives no evidence for her attribution other than the drawings’ provenance. For the same reason she also attributes some of the expedition’s topographical views, previously attributed to Fernando Brambila , to Bauza, although none of the views in question are Australian.
Writers:
Callaway, Anita
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 19 February 1764
- Summary
- As part of the Spanish navy, Felipe Bauza sailed to New South Wales in 1793 to observe the British settlements. He made several sketches during the trip, which have been dispersed to various collections in Spain, Argentina and Australia.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1834
- Age at death
- 70
Details
Latitude45.5353844 Longitude9.5636109 Start Date1763-01-01 End Date1834-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Fara di Gera d'Adda, Lombardy, Italy
- Biography
- painter and travel artist, was born in the small settlement of Fara di Gera d’Adda in Lombardy, Italy, son of Francisco Brambilla and Antonia, née Ferrari.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1763
- Summary
- Artist appointed to the Spanish expedition(1789/1794) under Alejandro Malaspina. He painted views of the Sydney area during their stay in 1793.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 23 January 1834
- Age at death
- 71
Details
Latitude49.0677708 Longitude0.3138532 Start Date1755-01-01 End Date1834-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Normandy, France
- Biography
- sketcher, naturalist and collector, was born of a middle-class provincial family in Alençon, Normandy on 23 October 1755. In 1791 he renounced his family name, Houtou, and adopted Labillardière as his sole surname. He studied botany and medicine at Montpellier, completing his studies and graduating as a doctor of medicine in Paris about 1780. After working at the Jardin du Roi with his friend Desfontaines and their patron Le Monnier, Labillardière was sent to England for two years in 1782 to study the plant collections in Kew Gardens. There he met Sir Joseph Banks. Afterwards he collected in the Alps and the Mediterranean, then made a botanical voyage to the Levant in 1786-88 which resulted in the publication of his Icones Plantarum Syriae Rariorum Discriptionibus et Observationibus Illustratae (Paris 1791-94).
Labillardière was appointed naturalist aboard La Recherche , taking part in Admiral Bruni d’Entrecasteaux’s voyage to the Pacific with L’Esp é rance in 1791-94 in search of the explorer La Pérouse. They spent a month charting the coast of Van Diemen’s Land in 1792. On 6 May Labillardière first saw the blue eucalyptus ( Eucalyptus globulus ) subsequently to prove highly adaptable to European conditions when the seeds he had collected were planted in the Empress Josephine’s Malmaison gardens in 1804. Other new eucalyptus species and a little kangaroo, Thylogale billardierii (the Tasmanian pademelon), were also collected on this first visit to Tasmania. On the second, in January-February 1793, the French crews made friendly contact with the Aborigines. The expedition also visited the Western Australian coast, collecting the first Western Australian eucalypt to be described, Eucalyptus cornuta . During the voyage Labillardière collected more than 4,000 plants, as well as animals, fish and birds.
When he returned to France after two years’ confinement at Java between 1793 and 1795, Labillardière discovered that his plant collections had been sent to England as a prize of war. After intercession by Banks they were returned and he set to work on two publications in connection with the voyage. The first was his unofficial 'republican’ version of the expedition, Relation du Voyage à la Recherche de la P é rouse (Paris 1799), comprising two volumes of narrative, including descriptions of the Tasmanian Aborigines, and an atlas containing forty-four plates, mainly ethnographic and natural history illustrations after Piron , and botanical drawings by the young P.J. Redouté (who was to become one of the most famous flower painters of all time). Labillardière’s Voyage appeared nine years before Rossel’s official account and was extremely popular. Four English editions were published in 1800.
Labillardière’s other Australian publication, Prodromus Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen (2 vols, Paris 1804, 1806), contains 265 full-page plates of Australian plants said to have been engraved after Labillardière’s own drawings. The Carrs state that 'In practical terms, this was the first general flora of Australia’, although Labillardière’s accuracy and reliability have long been questioned. His artistic contribution to the work must also be, since any sketches would undoubtedly have been worked up for publication by a professional artist using the specimens collected as the primary source. The illustrator in this case was possibly the prolific French botanical illustrator Pierre Jean François Turpin, known to have produced 6000 botanical illustrations in his lifetime. The library of the Royal Horticultural Society in London (originally the Horticultural Society of London founded by Banks in 1804) holds a copy of Labillardière’s Sertum Austro-Caledonicum (Paris 1824) in which eighty original watercolours of New Caledonian flora by Turpin have been interleaved with the plates.
Labillardière had been made a corresponding member of L’Institut de France Académie Royale des Sciences in 1792 and in 1800 he was elected a full member. A lifelong Republican and anti-Bonapartist, he lived on the outskirts of Paris in retirement until his death on 8 January 1834. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery. His name was given to the Australian shrub Billardiera by the English naturalist Robert Brown.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 October 1755
- Summary
- A naturalist and collector, he came to Australia aboard La Recherche on a voyage to the Pacific with L'Espérance in 1791.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 January 1834
- Age at death
- 79
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1777-01-01 End Date1833-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- Campbell, Sophia, 1777-1883. Formerly regarded as a watercolour painter and sketcher and as Australia’s first woman artist. A sketchbook of unsigned drawings, 'Sketchbook of scenes of Sydney, Broken Bay, Newcastle and region, New South Wales, 1817-1840’, held by the National Library of Australia, was attributed to Sophia Campbell until 2009 on the basis of family tradition and a letter written to Sir John Ferguson. The letter, from Sydney barrister V.J. Rundell Miles and dated 21 November 1922, offered the sketchbook to Ferguson for 60 pounds. It noted “I believe the painter was the wife of merchant Campbell of Duntroon. The book came from there” (National Library of Australia MS3200 Box 86 Folder 37). A second sketchbook, held in a private collection in the United Kingdom until 2009, had also been attributed to Sophia Campbell; it contained The costume of the Australasians as well as Sydney in all its glory, an untitled drawing of the Philo Free trial and drawings of the voyage of the Matilda in 1817. In 2009 both sketchbooks were re-attributed to Edward Close, the husband of Sophia Campbell’s niece. The trigger for the re-attribution was the availability for examination in Australia, prior to auction at Sotheby’s Melbourne in May 2009, of the second sketchbook. Comparison with works by Edward Close held at the State Library of New South Wales revealed a very similar style. The inclusion of drawings from the voyage of the Matilda also supported the re-attribution to Close, who accompanied his regiment to New South Wales on the Matilda in 1817. In that year, Sophia Campbell was recorded as living in Sydney i.e. she could not have created eye-witness drawings from the voyage of the Matilda. The provenance of the album auctioned at Sotheby’s was through the Campbell family, but this can be readily explained by the fact that Edward Close’s daughter Marrianne married a Campbell. The re-attribution of the album auctioned at Sotheby’s in turn led to the re-attribution of the sketchbook in the National Library, which has the same size, binding, watermark and stationer’s label as the Matilda sketchbook and is very similar in style. Other evidence for the re-attribution of the sketchbook in the National Library included the presence of a painting of Morpeth which shows a completed St James Church in the distance. Building of the church commenced in 1837, three years after Sophia Campbell’s death. Edward Close is recorded as resident in Morpeth from 1821-66; he funded the costs of building St James’ Church. The album auctioned at Sotheby’s was acquired by the State Library of New South Wales. These re-attributions removed all known evidence that Sophia Campbell was an artist.
Writers:
Groom, Linda
Note:
Date written:
2009
Last updated:
2011
Status:
peer-reviewed
- Born
- b. 1777
- Summary
- Until 2009 regarded as a watercolour painter and sketcher and as Australia's first woman artist. This entry, written in 2009, outlines details of the re-attribution of Campbell's work to Edward Close.
- Gender
- Female
- Died
- 5 May 1833
- Age at death
- 56
Details
Latitude50.8036831 Longitude-1.075614 Start Date1758-01-01 End Date1833-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Portsmouth, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, diarist, cartographer and naval officer, may be identified with one William Bradley, son of John and Elizabeth Bradley, who was baptised at Portsmouth, England, on 14 November 1758. He entered the Royal Navy on 10 April 1772, where his training probably included topographical draughtsmanship as well as cartography. Appointed first lieutenant in the Sirius on 25 October 1786, he sailed with the First Fleet the following May. All his authenticated drawings belong to the period 1787 to 1792. After reaching Port Jackson in January 1788, Bradley and John Hunter , also of the Sirius , began a series of surveys. They completed that of Sydney Harbour on 6 February; Bradley’s Head (which appears in his journal as 'Bradley Point’ and in his chart as 'Pt. Bradley’) was named after him. On 2 October 1788 he left Sydney with Hunter in the Sirius , bound for the Cape of Good Hope to obtain provisions for the colony; they returned on 9 May 1789. For the rest of the year Bradley was occupied in taking observations, supervising the repair of the Sirius and pursuing his interest in the Aborigines. On 19 February 1791, Bradley and the other officers and crew of the Sirius , under Hunter, left Norfolk Island in the Supply for Port Jackson from where they returned to England, reaching Portsmouth on 23 April 1792 in the chartered Dutch ship Waakzaamheyd . His career after leaving Australia encompassed the battle of the Glorious First of June 1794; a promotion to captain then rear-admiral in 1810; a trial for forgery in 1814, disgrace and exile. He died at Le Havre on 13 March 1833, having received a free pardon in 1822.
Bradley’s contemporary reputation was owed to his surveys and charts. His place in Australian history is ensured by the very full and precise journal, 'A Voyage to New South Wales’ – kept between 1786 and 1792 – which also provides the context for his charts and watercolours. Of the 31 works included in the journal (ML) 15 refer to Australia, such as Entrance of Port Jackson 27 January 1788 , Taking of Colbee & Benalon [sic] and Part of the Reef in Sydney Bay, Norfolk Island, on which the Sirius was wreck’d, 19th March, 1790 . A special artistic distinction is that he executed the first known view of Sydney, the watercolour Sydney Cove, Port Jackson. 1788 . (He also drew the first chart of Sydney Cove, on 1 March 1788.) His attempts to convey the character of the scenery, in particular his painstaking portrayals of the vegetation, must be rated unsuccessful, although his Norfolk Island pines are more convincing than his eucalypts. While his journal shows a considerable concern with the Aborigines and native wildlife, the drawings show the former merely as distant figures and the animals and birds not at all. Ships and their flags, boats, buildings and other scenic landmarks, on the other hand, are rendered with minute particularity and naturally give a great historical and topographical significance to his work. Bradley cannot be credited with any original vision, however; his scenes are little more than elaborated coastal profiles, well within the conventions of his training as an observant naval officer.
Three of his watercolours were exhibited in Warwick Hirst’s (assistant curator of mss), Painting the Pacific in the Picture Gallery (SLNSW exhibition guide, 2002): two of Norfolk Island (1790) and ' A View in the upper part of Port Jackson, where the Fish was Shot 1788 (PX*D 311b). The latter refers to a curious incident recorded in Bradley’s journal on 17 August 1788: 'As we were coming down the Harbour the Master short a fish of 1½ lb wight in a branch of a high tree which we got & eat, this fish was in the claws of a large Hawke when fired at, drop’d the fish & flew away’.
Writers:
Hine, Janet D.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1758
- Summary
- First Fleet naval officer and draughtsman, noted both for his excellent journal and for executing the first known view of Sydney.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 13 March 1833
- Age at death
- 75
Details
Latitude55.9725499 Longitude-3.1709492 Start Date1801-01-01 End Date1832-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter and drawing master, youngest son of John and Anne Thomson of Leith, Edinburgh [according to Paffen], Scotland, arrived at Hobart Town with his wife, widowed mother, sister (Ann Young) and two brothers on board the Urania in January 1823. The following year he was installed as drawing master at his brother James’s Hobart Town Academy in Melville Street (established in February 1823) and was also advertising his availability as a private portrait painter and teacher in the Hobart Town Gazette (1 February 1823) – the first documented portraitist to publicly solicit patrons in Van Diemen’s Land, according to Paffen.
Thomson died at Hobart Town on 29 June 1832, aged thirty-one. The Hobart Town Courier (6 July 1832, 3) stated that although of delicate constitution he 'was possessed of very superior talents as an artist, and has done great justice to several of our characteristic views in this island some of which we have had the pleasure to commemorate into our Hobart Town almanack. His loss will be long and sincerely felt in those families that have been in the habit of enjoying his visits and the benefits of his experienced talents as a teacher.’
A print of the first greyhound imported into Tasmania, Gelert , lithographed by Henry Button after a drawing by Thomson, was published as a supplement in the Tasmanian on 6 August 1887. The accompanying letterpress stated that many oil paintings by this 'accomplished artist’ remained in the possession of his relatives and friends but none are now known. The original drawing for the greyhound, also unlocated, was then owned by Thomson’s nephew, the Launceston police magistrate H.T.A. Murray. Copies of the print are in the Archives Office of Tasmania and in the National Trust (Tas.) house, Clarendon.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. c.1801
- Summary
- Colonial painter, the first documented portraitist to publicly solicit patrons in Van Diemen's Land.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 June 1832
- Age at death
- 31
Details
Latitude51.0575 Longitude-1.3075 Start Date1790-01-01 End Date1832-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Hampshire, England, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, surveyor and architect, son of John Hellyer and Betsy, née Maine, of Porchester, Hampshire, arrived in Van Diemen’s Land on 4 March 1826 as architect and surveyor to the newly formed Van Diemen’s Land Company. In October the company set up its headquarters at Circular Head, from which base Hellyer set out on various surveying expeditions. Watercolours such as The Lawn Front, Highfield Circular Head , signed 'Henry Hellyer Surveyor V.D.L. Co. August 1832’ (State Library of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania), were done as visual information for his employers and were formerly in the company’s possession. Although officially transferred to the Government Survey Department in May 1832, Hellyer never took up this appointment. He committed suicide at Circular Head in September.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 1790
- Summary
- Watercolourist, surveyor and architect, arrived in Van Diemen's Land in 1826 as architect and surveyor to the newly formed Van Diemen's Land Company. Painted watercolours on surveying expeditions as information for his employers.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- September 1832
- Age at death
- 42
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1803-01-01 End Date1830-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, writer and civil servant, eighth son of John Prinsep and Sophia Elizabeth, née Auriol, was born on 31 March 1803 in London. Educated at home, he entered Haileybury College in 1819 to train for the Bengal civil service and in April 1821 was appointed legal 'writer’ (clerk) to the East India Company. He arrived at Calcutta in July 1822 and during the next five years made rapid progress within the civil service, being appointed commissioner of Pergunnah Palamow in 1827. Five of his brothers were also in India: William, George, Henry Thoby, James and Thomas; signed and unsigned drawings by various members of the family are in the India Office Library. Augustus Prinsep married Elizabeth Acworth Ommanney ( Prinsep ) at Calcutta on 6 June 1828. On medical advice, he left Calcutta in March 1829 on a recuperative voyage to Singapore, where his wife and baby daughter, Augusta Emily, joined him.
After another bout of illness and two months in Batavia (Indonesia), Prinsep and his family left in the Flora on 17 August, travelling via the Western Australian coast to Van Diemen’s Land. They landed at Hobart Town on 22 September. Prinsep applied for a land grant but was unsuccessful and left the colony on 17 March 1830 in the Medway bound for Calcutta. He died at sea on 10 October later that year on yet another recuperative voyage in the Duke of Lancaster . His letters written during the voyage to Van Diemen’s Land and his six months’ residence there were edited by Elizabeth Prinsep and published posthumously in 1833 as The Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Van Diemen’s Land . The first edition carried the notice: 'should these letters be approved, the Editor may be induced to publish a Series of Views, taken on the spot, illustrating most of the scenes described in the foregoing pages’.
The Views were subsequently issued in two parts, the first containing six plates, the second four and a Panoramic View of Hobarton . They were reviewed most favourably in the Atlas in 1833: 'Mr. and Mrs. Prinsep have united their powers in the production of these drawings, which are extremely well lithographed. They are all delightful subjects, delightfully treated’. At least two were taken from sketches by Elizabeth Prinsep but the remainder – apart from two sketches of Indian scenes drawn by Captain Thomas Prinsep, Augustus’s brother -were apparently drawn by Prinsep (not all are signed). The original wash drawing for Hobart from the Hotel , probably by Augustus, is at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. In one of his letters from Hobart Town published in the Journal , Prinsep wrote: 'If I can persuade myself to commence sketching, I must send home some attempts to enable you to judge of a landscape, second only to that of Switzerland’.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 31 March 1803
- Summary
- Augustus Prinsep was a sketcher, writer and civil servant. He is known from his work, The Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Van Diemen's Land which his wife published posthumously.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 October 1830
- Age at death
- 27
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1785-01-01 End Date1829-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- UK, UK?
- Biography
- painter and military officer, arrived at Sydney on 9 August 1817 in the convict transport Matilda with the 48th (Northamptonshire) Foot Regiment which was replacing the 46th as the official military force in New South Wales. Little is known of his background. He entered the 48th Foot Regiment as an ensign in 1804, was promoted lieutenant on 25 April 1805, captain on 4 June 1807, brevet-major on 21 September 1813, major on 26 July 1822 (after his return from New South Wales) and lieutenant-colonel on 8 June 1825, succeeding Erskine as commander of the Indian detachment. He died at Bellary near Madras, India, on 10 August 1829.
In 1808 and 1809 the 48th Regiment had served in the Peninsular Wars, taking part in the battles of Douro, Talvavera, Albuera, Badajos, Salamanca, Vittoria, Pyrenees, Nivelle, Orthes and Toulouse. In comparison, the posting to New South Wales was peaceful, disturbed mainly by a dispute about the government windmill. This had been lent to the regiment and Major Taylor presided at the court of inquiry into its operations. He also presented a long memorandum to the royal commissioner, J.T. Bigge, about the defences of Port Jackson, favouring South Head rather than Governor Macquarie’s choice of Bennelong Point.
The incident apparently had no effect on Taylor’s relations with the governor as he accompanied the Macquaries’ official party on their tour of Van Diemen’s Land in May and June 1821; some of the Tasmanian views in Joseph Lycett 's Views were probably after Taylor’s drawings made during this visit. Shortly afterwards Taylor was granted two years’ sick leave and left for England with his son on 15 February 1822 as members of the vice-regal party returning to England in the Surry . Taylor rejoined his regiment in 1825, sailing for India with Colonel Erskine in May. Erskine died within a few days of their arrival and Taylor assumed command, retaining this position until his own death.
Taylor would have received some training in draughtsmanship as part of his military studies. Like other military and naval officers sent to distant parts of the world he was interested enough in his surroundings to record them as visual images, although now only very few watercolours remain to testify to his talent as an artist. Four are attributed large works (about 56 × 113 cm), bold and assured. Three (one ML, two p.c.) are believed to be the originals from which the plates of Taylor’s best-known work, a three-part panorama of Sydney, was engraved. The watercolours are signed with what appear to be later inscriptions, the only work apparently signed contemporaneously being a view of Sydney from the North Shore. This watercolour, with a set of the engravings and Taylor’s small watercolour of Erskine Park near Penrith (NSW), was presented to the Mitchell Library by a descendant of the Erskine family.
Also in the Mitchell Library is another view of Sydney attributed to Taylor on stylistic grounds, found among Governor Macquarie’s personal papers . John Oxley 's Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales (London 1820) includes three engraved plates by Robert Havell after drawings by Taylor taken from field sketches by the surveyor G. W. Evans . The only other known works that could have some connection with Taylor are three sepia watercolours in the Mitchell Library. One of Arbuthnot’s Range relates to the engraving in Oxley’s Journals ; the other two show coastal scenes in northern New South Wales.
Taylor seems to have arranged the engraving and printing of the three-sheet panorama based on his watercolours immediately upon his return to England in July 1822. He was fortunate to acquire the services of the foremost London engravers and print publishers, Robert Havell and Colnaghi’s. In 1823 Colnaghi’s issued a single-sheet prospectus announcing its publication, and the date of publication on the imprint of each view is given as August 1823. The arrival of the prints in the antipodes was marked by a notice in the Sydney Gazette of 3 June 1824: 'J. Paul has just received several sets of beautifully executed coloured prints forming a panoramic view of Sydney, from designs by Major Taylor of the 48th, and now exhibiting in London at Barker’s Panorama’.
As presented at Barker & Burford’s Panorama Building in Leicester Square, the panorama would necessarily have been a full 360-degree view, since at such entertainments visitors stood in the middle of a circular room embraced by an enlarged, continuous painted scene. It is not known if Taylor himself completed the extra painting necessary to achieve the full circular view of Sydney from his single fixed point in the grounds of the Military Hospital (the present National Trust Centre) but the unusual perspective certainly suggests that this was his intention. In the event, when his Sydney panorama was published Taylor’s fourth (known) part, depicting the controversial windmill, was omitted, probably because it did not show much of the town and lacked human interest. Havell apparently worked from the large watercolours but amended them with additional details, new buildings (such as St James’s Church) and decorative elements (such as flower gardens and other vegetation).
Combined with the delicate and precise tints of the English colourists—different from the predominant browns and greens of the watercolours—the resulting aquatints have a more refined appearance than the originals, or than the place itself. These London 'improvements’ and the absence of any indication that the three prints need to be appreciated as part of a circular vision exonerates Taylor of the charges levelled against him by G.T.W.B. Boyes , a fellow sketcher and deputy-assistant-commissary in Sydney, who scathingly remarked in a letter written in May 1824 that 'nothing in the shape of Drawings has yet left the Colony except a few by Major Taylor of the 48th and they have very little merit. I have the prints made from them and they are so deficient in perspective and local character that they lose all effect’.
Boyes’s opinion was not general, for the panorama proved popular. It was copied in reduced single-sheet size for a French edition issued later in the 1820s (Powerhouse Museum, Sydney) and two English lithographic editions after the French version appeared before 1830. Unusual survivors in the history of nineteenth-century Australian printmaking are the original copperplates (Dixson Galleries).
Writers:
Ellis, Elizabeth
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1785
- Summary
- Military officer, James Taylor, arrived in Sydney in 1817 with the 48th Foot Regiment aboard the Matilda. Taylor produced a number of paintings and prints throughout his tours and his panoramic works of Sydney were particularly popular.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 August 1829
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1803-01-01 End Date1828-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- painter, was born in Paris, son of the well-known painter Nicolas Taunay. Adrien and his brother Félix, also a painter, accompanied Nicolas and their uncle Auguste, a sculptor, to Rio de Janeiro in 1815 at the invitation of King John VI of Brazil to assist in the establishment of a Royal Academy of Science, Literature and the Arts. This never eventuated. When Louis de Freycinet arrived at Rio in command of the Uranie in December 1817, he and his wife Rose were provided with accommodation by the Taunays. Jacques Arago, chief draughtsman on the voyage who was also befriended by them, wrote in his Promenade autour du Monde (Paris 1822) that 'a whole family, all members of which cultivate the arts with success, lives unknown, and rather despised, in a half-savage country, where it hoped for patrons, and where it has found nothing but humiliations’. 'O Taunay!’ Arago later exclaimed, 'What could have induced you to come to Rio?’
When the Uranie left Rio in January 1818 Adrien Taunay was on board as assistant draughtsman. Arago noted that on 12 September when the ship was coasting alongside Dirk Hartog Island (Western Australia), Taunay was set ashore with three other crew members to make observations. An engraving after Taunay, Nlle Hollande: Baie des Chiens Marins Nid Gigantesque Trouv é sur l’Ile Dirck-Hatichs , appeared in the Atlas Historique par Messrs. Js Arago, A. Pellion &c. (Paris 1825), the plate volume of the official narrative of the expedition. This also included Taunay’s illustration of a native woman of Guam. Most of the other plates after Taunay in the Atlas were taken from his coloured drawings of Mollusca and other marine invertebrates, including examples found at Port Jackson when the Uranie was there in November-December 1819.
Taunay was also responsible for the transparencies of George III and Louis XVIII painted for a dinner on board the Uranie to thank Sydney for its hospitality. These were noted by Rose de Freycinet as being by 'a young man on board who knew how to draw’, the adjective clearly indicating the 16-year-old Taunay. As well, two plates in Rose de Freycinet’s published Journal (1927) are after Taunay’s drawings.
On the return journey to France, Taunay disembarked at Rio in July 1820. While in port Arago repeated his charge of local indifference to the arts: 'if [the Taunays’] pictures and statues are not appreciated there, so much the worse for the Brazilians!’ After Auguste Taunay died at Rio in April 1824 Nicolas returned to Paris, but Adrien Taunay stayed on. He died at Brazil in 1828.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1803
- Summary
- Painter, was born in Paris in 1803, son of the well-known painter Nicolas Taunay.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1828
- Age at death
- 25
Details
Latitude54.0822372 Longitude-0.880794755 Start Date1785-01-01 End Date1828-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Kirkham Abbey, Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, engraver (?), surveyor and explorer, was born at Kirkham Abbey, Yorkshire, eldest son of John and Isabella Oxley. John junior joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1799 and was aboard the Buffalo 's surveying voyage in Australian waters in 1802-06. In 1806 he commanded the Estamina on a voyage from New South Wales to Van Diemen’s Land. Back in England in 1807 he was commissioned lieutenant, returning to Sydney in November 1808 to serve as first lieutenant on board HMS Porpoise .
Oxley retired from the navy in 1811 and was appointed surveyor-general of New South Wales the following year, returning to Sydney in the Minstrel . Having previously received a land grant, he took this up near Camden and erected a substantial house and stables on his property, Kirkham, presumably with the assistance of 'Pain[e]'s Plans of Architecture, 2 vols folio’, listed in the sale of his library in 1828 (the stables survive).
In March 1817 Oxley led an exploratory party, which included the botanist Allan Cunningham and the sketcher-surveyor George William Evans , along the Lachlan River and into the area south-west of Bathurst in quest of Australia’s mythical 'inland lake’ (in which Oxley continued to believe). The government awarded him £200 for 'meritorious services’ on this expedition. The following year, the same party followed the course of the Macquarie River on a journey which lasted six months; they were the first recorded Europeans to see and name the Castlereagh River, the Liverpool Plains and the Hastings River.
The illustrations in Oxley’s Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales (London 1820), the first published descriptions of the Australian interior, are mainly after Evans, together with a portrait of A Native Chief of Baturst [sic] after John Lewin . Unattributed precise and carefully sketched topographical views (somewhat generic as regards the vegetation), in particular Field Plains from Mount Amyot (near Forbes), may be after Oxley’s own sketches. A letter dated 2 September 1822 confirms that A. Arrowsmith’s map in the volume was compiled from Oxley’s survey drawing, and that same day Oxley wrote to John Macarthur stating that he was working on a further map. His papers contain a few rough landscape profiles in topographical tradition, but no finished sketches.
An 1842 review of J.S. Prout 's Sydney Illustrated noted that, when surveyor-general, Oxley 'drew, and if we recollect rightly also engraved in the line manner, or etched (we forget which) a few of the more interesting views around Sydney; and it was considered to be rather an extraordinary production to be published here under the circumstances – Mr. Oxley having had to prepare his own copper-plates and do all the artist’s work besides. They were far from being good, though they were much better than might have been expected, when the difficulties of execution were taken in to consideration’.
Nothing further is known with regard to such art work, apart from the existence of a competent pencil sketch of Vaucluse, dated 1824, attributed to him (ML). The catalogue of Oxley’s library in 1828 included a Course of Lithography but other relevant technical treatises do not appear. (A sketch by Evans and copies of the published Transactions of the Society of Arts for 1815, 1816 and 1817, of which he was presumably a member, are also listed.)
Oxley’s survey work along the east coast of New South Wales resulted in the establishment of the penal settlements of Port Macquarie and Moreton Bay (Brisbane, Queensland). He drafted regulations for the sale of land and in 1825 was appointed one of the three commissioners to carry out the survey of the colony and its division into counties, shires and parishes. He played an active part in the public and cultural life of the colony, becoming one of the members of the original New South Wales Legislative Council in 1824.
He had become engaged to Elizabeth Macarthur in 1812, but this was broken off when her father discovered that Oxley was deeply in debt. Despite generous land grants, fees for external work and considerable mercantile and property interests, Oxley remained a poor financial manager. After his death at Kirkham, Narellan, on 26 May 1828, his widow Emma, née Norton, whom he had married in Sydney in 1821, was so impoverished that the government was asked to assist. Grants of land were made to the two sons of his marriage but no pension for his widow eventuated. Before his marriage, Oxley had two daughters with Charlotte Thorpe and one with Elizabeth Marnon.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1785
- Summary
- Sketcher, engraver (?), surveyor and explorer. Oxley's 'Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales' (London 1820) are the first published descriptions of the Australian interior, but the illustrations are mainly by his associates, Evans and Lewin.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 May 1828
- Age at death
- 43
Details
Latitude52.8246942 Longitude-2.007454672 Start Date1775-01-01 End Date1828-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Staffordshire, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and forger, was convicted of forgery at the Shropshire Assizes on 10 August 1811. Transported to NSW for 14 years, he arrived at Sydney in the General Hewitt on 7 February 1814. The ship’s records describe him as a portrait and miniature painter from Staffordshire and give his age as 38. Also on board the General Hewitt was Captain James Wallis in charge of his regiment, the 46th, coming to Sydney to relieve the 73rd. On arrival Lycett was granted a ticket of leave and employed as a clerk in the Police Department. Some 15 months later, in May 1815, Lycett was taken into custody when a friend tried to pass false bank notes that he had manufactured. He was again convicted of forgery and sent to the secondary penal settlement of Newcastle. He left for Newcastle in the Lady Nelson in July 1815 and worked in the coalmines until Captain Wallis arrived as commandant in June 1816.
According to the evidence of the convict builder James Clohasy, testifying to Commissioner Bigge in 1820, Lycett drew up the plans for the settlement’s church while a prisoner at Newcastle (c.1817). In his report Bigge stated that Lycett had also painted the altarpiece, presumably the two 'bad large pictures’ in the chancel of Christ Church noted by Lady Franklin in June 1839 as having been 'done by a prisoner’. One was a Descent from the Cross 'with Virgin fainting’, the other a Resurrection. In 1839 the vicar was about to replace them.
On 8 November 1817 Lycett was sent to Sydney on business for the commandant. The journey included a visit to Port Stephens where Lycett was wounded in a confrontation with Aborigines. It is unclear whether he remained in Sydney following his trip or returned to Newcastle, but by 1820 he was living in Sydney; Bigge said he was earning a living as a painter through the patronage of Sydney’s residents. He also worked for Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie . In a despatch to London, Governor Macquarie drew Lord Bathurst’s attention to a view of Sydney painted by 'Lysaught’, which he had forwarded, together with pictures of Government House at Parramatta and the Government Cottage at Windsor, as records of the settlement. Lycett’s North View of Sydney (1820, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library, London) is most probably the Sydney work. Elizabeth Macquarie employed Lycett to draw up the plans for at least one (unexecuted) Sydney building and he possibly drew up the Newcastle church plans to her design.
On 28 November 1821 Lycett received an absolute pardon. He left for England in the Shipley in September 1822, accompanied by two daughters, and it was here that he produced most of the Australian pictures for which he is known. On 8 September 1823, when living at 17 Jubilee Place, Chelsea, he engraved, printed and published two large separately issued, hand-coloured lithographs of Sydney and Hobart Town after his own paintings. In 1824 John Souter, also the London publisher of Evans’s views, issued the first of Lycett’s Views in Australia . This was to appear in 12 monthly parts each to contain two views of New South Wales and two of Van Diemen’s Land with descriptive letterpress and a supplement containing maps of both colonies. The parts were on sale at 7s uncoloured and 10s 6d coloured. The first six plates were printed as lithographs, but Lycett and his publisher realised that aquatint would be preferable and the views were re-issued in the latter medium with the remainder following in the same form. The 13 parts, published between August 1824 and June 1825, were afterwards made available in a single volume. The series was dedicated to Earl Bathurst and on the title-page Lycett grandiosely described himself as 'Artist to Major General Macquarie’.
Lycett’s text took much from earlier publications on British settlement in Australia, being particularly indebted to W.C. Wentworth’s Statistical, Historical … Description of the Colony of New South Wales (London 1819) for both the point of view and the information it presented. The pictures also seem to have owed much to drawings by other artists. Despite claims to the contrary made in the volume, it is unlikely that Lycett travelled extensively while in Australia. The subjects he chose for his Tasmanian views correspond to the places Macquarie had visited during his tour of inspection in 1821. George William Evans and James Taylor had both accompanied the governor and it is likely that Lycett used drawings by one or both of them when he came to work on his own views.
Whereas the landscapes Lycett painted in Australia follow topographic and picturesque principles of composition, the 49 English engravings (including the title-page) show that Lycett had greatly developed his style since his earlier work. Watercolours which appear to have been done in the colony, views of the settlement at Sydney taken from various perspectives around the harbour, are close in style to watercolours by his colonial contemporaries, Evans and John Lewin . But in England Lycett added landscapes which were more romantic in conception. His views of Beckett’s Falls and Bathurst Cataract, for example, use the sublime mode to describe the awe and terror of the explorers’ landscape. In some of the views which show private estates he made reference to conventions associated with the pastoral, introducing the idea of leisure into Australian landscape description for the first time.
Despite being called a portrait and miniature painter at the time of his conviction, all Lycett’s extant subjects are topographical or botanical. Few of his paintings are signed but some are initialled and inscribed on the reverse. With a few (unproven) exceptions, all are watercolours. Perhaps the single finest collection of his original drawings is a portfolio of 13 watercolours from the Earl of Derby’s library (Dixson Galleries). Nine of these have the same subjects as some of the printed plates in Views in Australia and these are repeated in other watercolours, thus confirming that Lycett produced copies of his own works. Other sales in which collections of Lycett watercolours related to the aquatints have appeared are Maggs’s (catalogue vol. 4, no. 795, pt. 5, 1950), Lawson’s sale of the Marcus Clarke Collection (January 1954) and Sotheby’s, Belgravia (July 1962 and May 1972). The Nan Kivell Collection (National Library of Australia) includes a set of watercolours of Aborigines in the landscape around Newcastle (mistitled as Van Diemen’s Land) engaged mainly in traditional tribal activities, especially fishing, as well as a collection of botanical drawings. Another group of botanical works, sold separately in 1983, may be the originals from which Lycett intended to produce his unrealised volume, 'The Natural History of Australia’.
Little is known about Lycett’s last years. A pencilled note in a copy of the Views in the Mitchell Library states that he was living near Bath in 1828 when he was again arrested, cut his throat and while recovering in hospital, tore open the wound and died. He is buried in Handsworth Cemetery, Birmingham.
Writers:
Hoorn, Jeanette
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1775
- Summary
- Joseph Lycett was a painter. In 1811 he was convicted of forgery and transported to New South Wales for 14 years. Despite being called a portrait and miniature painter at the time of his conviction, all Lycett's extant subjects are topographical or botanical. In 1828 he was living near Bath when he was again arrested, cut his throat and while recovering in hospital, tore open the wound and died.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- c.1828
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude50.7633176 Longitude-1.2985186 Start Date1782-01-01 End Date1826-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cowes, Isle of Wight, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, author and naval officer, was born in Cowes, Isle of Wight, on 16 October 1782, son of Ninian and Mary Jeffreys. He entered the Royal Navy aged eleven and was commissioned lieutenant in March 1805. Jeffreys came to New South Wales with his wife Jane Gill of London, whom he had married in August 1810. They arrived in January 1814 in the brig Kangaroo , of which he was commander, and the ship was immediately commissioned to transport convicts from Port Jackson to Van Diemen’s Land. It did not return to Sydney for over a year (in February 1815) and Jeffreys’s dilatoriness and disinclination to obey orders raised the ire of Governor Macquarie, who labelled him 'a Vain, Conceited, Ignorant Young Man and totally unfitted for such a Command’. While in His Majesty’s service, Jeffreys indulged in illicit rum smuggling, turned a blind eye to convict stowaways on board and accepted an escaped government debtor (Garnham Blaxcell) as a paying passenger. While engaged in these activities en route for England, he assaulted and imprisoned the commander and several crew of a patrol boat on the Derwent River on 9 May 1817. Back home, Jeffreys was removed from the naval list but legal impediments were found to prevent prosecution.
At the Derwent Jeffreys had apparently found time to draw a sketch of Hobart Town (unlocated). It was subsequently lithographed and captioned 'Drawn by Lieut. Chas Jeffreys R.N. / Hobart Town in 1817’. Frequently reproduced in later years, no copy of any lithograph made contemporaneously with the purported drawing was known to Clifford Craig in 1961, although Craig thought one was likely to have been produced about the time Jeffreys’s book Geographical and Descriptive Delineations of the Island of Van Diemen’s Land was published in London (1820), perhaps in conjunction with it. The book, after all, was devoted solely to Van Diemen’s Land, the first such monograph published. The lithograph inserted into the Mitchell Library’s copy, however, has an attached manuscript note stating that it was copied 'from an old drawing of Capt. Jeffreys, by Frank Dunnet [ Dunnett ]’ and it seems that subsequent reproductions derive from this, that no lithograph was made in Jeffreys’s lifetime. Several copies of the Dunnett lithograph survive, with the names of buildings annotated in the print; Kangaroo appears in the foreground.
George William Evans later claimed that Jeffreys’s book was written from a manuscript Evans had with him when travelling from Sydney to Hobart Town on board the Kangaroo, which Jeffrey’s clerk had stolen. As with his other scandals, Jeffreys appears to have had little trouble in shrugging off this accusation despite its probable truth. Full of propaganda intended to encourage emigration to Van Diemen’s Land, the book gained at least two converts. The year it was published Jeffreys and his wife turned up again (in May 1820), this time as settlers. His roseate vision of the colony proved no fable; they were granted a property of 800 acres at Pittwater near Hobart Town, which they called Frogmore. Jeffreys died there on 12 May 1826 'of a liver complaint’ and was buried at Sorell. After his death his widow received a further 500-acre grant.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 16 October 1782
- Summary
- Jeffrey's was a sketcher and naval officer whose life was regularly filled with profit-making scandals, much to the ire of Governor Macquarie. Jeffreys is best known for a sketch he did of Hobart Town, Tasmania in 1817.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 12 May 1826
- Age at death
- 44
Details
Latitude47.810155 Longitude13.2844834 Start Date1760-01-01 End Date1826-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Feldberg, Austria
- Biography
- natural history artist, was born on 20 January 1760 at Feldberg, Austria, third son of Lucas Bauer and his wife, Theresia. He was the younger brother of an equally celebrated botanical artist, Franz Andreas Bauer (1758-1840), who from 1788 onwards spent most of his life at Kew portraying cultivated plants, some from Australia. After their father’s early death the two boys were cared for and educated by Norbert Boccius (1729-1806), prior of the monastery of the Barmherzigen Brüder in Feldberg. Boccius was a fully qualified and esteemed physician with strong botanical interests who founded a botanic garden in the monastery and assembled a collection of 2,750 botanical drawings ultimately occupying fourteen volumes. Making drawings for this collection under Boccius’s careful supervision taught the boys the art of botanical illustration and developed their skill.
From Feldberg, both Franz and Ferdinand went to Vienna about 1780 to work for Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin (1727-1817), professor of botany and chemistry and director of the botanic garden of the University of Vienna. Jacquin was himself a skilled botanical artist and the author of superbly illustrated folio botanical works. He employed the Bauer brothers to illustrate his Icones Plantarum Rariorum (1781-93), thereby fostering their extraordinary talent for observing and accurately portraying minute detail. Ferdinand also studied landscape painting under J.C. Brand.
The arrival of John Sibthorp (1758-96) in Vienna in 1784 altered the whole course of Ferdinand Bauer’s life. Sibthorp was the Sherardian professor of botany in Oxford and, on the recommendation of Boccius and Jacquin, he induced Ferdinand to accompany him as 'my painter’ on a trip to study plants in Greece and Asia Minor. They passed through Italy to Naples in the spring of 1786, then took ship to Crete and, in the company of John Hawkins (1761-1841), Sibthorp’s brother-in-law, visited many Aegean islands, Cyprus, mainland Greece, Smyrna (Izmir), Mount Athos, Bursa and Constantinople (Istanbul). Sibthorp, with Bauer and his numerous drawings of plants, animals and places, returned to England in December 1791.
At Oxford Bauer set to work to produce perfected drawings suitable for engraving as illustrations to the Flora Graeca planned by Sibthorp. When Sibthorp revisited Asia Minor and Greece in 1794, he left Bauer in Oxford. It was a fatal venture, for Sibthorp contracted tuberculosis and died in 1796, having made provision in his will for the preparation and publication of the Flora Graeca with John Hawkins as an executor. This was published in 10 volumes between 1806 and 1840, with 966 plates by Ferdinand Bauer and text by James Edward Smith and John Lindley. Bauer’s original drawings are at Oxford. They not only include plants but landscapes, fish, birds and snakes (which have never been published). The parts of plants on his uncoloured drawings made when travelling are annotated with numbers, from which it is evident that he employed a private colour chart with at least 217 hues and tones of colour: numbers 180-3, for example, refer to yellows, 130-4 to greens. He used the same system on Flinders’s voyage.
Ferdinand Bauer’s second opportunity to travel came when he was appointed natural history artist for Matthew Flinders’s surveying voyage to Australia aboard the Investigator in 1801. Bauer was now 41, supremely attuned by ability and experience to delineate the little-known plants of Australia. Flinders, the captain, and Robert Brown (1773-1858), the naturalist, were 27. The Investigator reached Western Australia in December 1801; it stayed for 24 days in King George Sound, an area floristically so rich that Brown and Bauer gathered some 500 species. After passing eastwards along the Great Australian Bight and making landings whenever possible, the Investigator arrived at Port Jackson in May 1802. A stay here of 12 weeks gave Bauer and Brown the opportunity to study plants of New South Wales. The Investigator then sailed northward along the eastern coast of Australia, rounded Cape York, and coasted the Gulf of Carpentaria, which Flinders carefully surveyed, thereby providing Bauer with more plants for illustration. The dangerously rotten state of the ship, so damp as to damage specimens, paper and drawings, then caused Flinders to discontinue his survey and return to Port Jackson, reached on 8 June 1803.
On his return voyage to England, Flinders was interned by the French at Mauritius and did not get home until October 1810. Fortunately Brown and Bauer had stayed in New South Wales. In 1804-05 Bauer visited Norfolk Island, collecting many specimens and making drawings, some of which Endlicher used for his Prodromus Florae Norfolkicae (1833). He and Brown returned to England late in 1805, bringing home botanical specimens of about 3,000 species, together with about 1,500 drawings of plants and 230 of animals. While Brown stayed in London studied the specimens, Bauer perfected his drawings. Original uncoloured sketches in Vienna reveal by their annotation with numbers that when an Australian locality yielded too many plants for immediate painting he used his elaborate personal colour chart to record their colours accurately. In 1813 Bauer published three parts of Illustrationes Florae Novae Hollandiae , but the disappointing sales caused him to abandon the enterprise. His work on the Flora Graeca completed, Bauer returned to Austria in 1814 and settled at Hietzing, in Vienna. He continued his artistic work, portraying both wild and cultivated plants and, ever with a zest for travel, made excursions into the Alps until he became seriously ill in 1825. He died on 17 March 1826 at Hietzing.
For their elegance, their meticulous accuracy and their wealth of exquisite detail, Ferdinand Bauer’s illustrations of Australian plants are the most beautiful and informative that have ever been made. Only 15 were published in colour in his Illustrationes (1813) and a further 25 in Stearn & Blunt, Australian Flower Paintings (1976). Comparison of these Australian drawings with his earlier Flora Graeca plates done for Sibthorp, a botanist of the Linnaean tradition which emphasised the number of flower parts, reveals the strong influence of Robert Brown. Brown’s penetrating interest in flower, fruit and seed structure led Bauer to portray not only microscopic embryonic details but even pollen grains. Other published illustrations are in A.B. Lambert, A Description of the Genus Pinus (1803-24), J. Sibthorp & J.E. Smith, Flora Graeca (1806-40), M. Flinders, A Voyage to Terra Australis (1814), J. Lindley, Digitalium Monographia (1821), S. Endlicher, Prodromus Florae Norfolkicae (1833) and Endeavour , vol. 19 (1960). In 1989 the British Museum (Natural History) published Dr Marlene J. Norst’s Ferdinand Bauer: Australian Natural History Drawings and in 1998 the Historic Houses Trust (NSW) mounted an exhibition with accompanying book by Peter Watts on Bauer’s Australian work.
Bauer’s original drawings for the Flora Graeca are in the Department of Botany in Oxford and those of Australian and Norfolk Island plants and animals are in the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna. 236 perfected drawings of plants and 49 of animals are in the British Museum (Natural History), London. The National Library of Australia owns a gouache, Stuartia malachodendron . Bauer’s unpublished drawings of Greek landscapes are in Oxford and Göttingen (Universitäts Bibliothek). Two volumes of watercolours of forty species of passion-flowers (including an Australian species, Passiflora cinnabarina ), evidently done after 1814, were in the possession of the Horticultural Society of London until sold in 1859, then in the Preussische Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, until 1941, and now in the Jagiellon Library, Cracow. The generic name Bauera (Banks ex Andrews) for a small group of Australian shrubby plants commemorates the two Bauer brothers, Franz and Ferdinand.
Writers:
Stearn, William T.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 20 January 1760
- Summary
- Ferdinand Lucas Bauer never emigrated to Australia, but as part of the 1801 Flinders's expedition team, he captured some of the most detailed and beautiful botanical drawings ever produced of Australian flora and fauna.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 17 March 1826
- Age at death
- 66
Details
Latitude53.35 Longitude-6.260278 Start Date1776-01-01 End Date1824-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Dublin, Ireland
- Biography
- watercolour painter, was convicted at Dublin in February 1810 and transported to New South Wales. Some of his earliest colonial drawings are the illustrations in a manuscript on the natural history of Australia prepared in 1813 for Lieutenant Thomas Skottowe , then commandant at the Newcastle secondary penal station where Browne served most of his sentence. The artist may have been related to the Irish natural historian Dr Patrick Browne (1720-1790), as the expert way in which the birds, reptiles, fish and butterflies are delineated in the Skottowe manuscript suggests some professional association with a natural history circle. Browne’s animal studies, perhaps because of the strangeness of New Holland mammalia , are less expert, while his early Aboriginal figure subjects are ill-formed and amateurish compared with the natural history subjects.
Richard Browne arrived at Sydney in July 1811 in the Providence . In October he was sent to Newcastle for committing a second offence and remained there until 1817. At some time during this period he married, or more likely formed a liaison with, a convict named Sarah Coates who had been transported in the Wanstead in 1814. Sarah Coates had been sent to Newcastle for a year in July, afterwards presumably remaining as Browne’s wife. At least two daughters were born in Newcastle: Mary P. (born c.1815) and Eliza (born c.1816). Two engravings of Newcastle scenes in Absalom West’s Views in New South Wales , acknowledged as after 'I.R. Brown’, are dated November 1812. The paintings in Skottowe’s Specimens from Nature use the initials 'T.R.’.
Other views of Newcastle which belong to this period are also ascribed to Richard Browne, although apparently signed 'I.R.’ and 'J.R.’ Brown or Browne. No Brown(e) of these initials is listed among the Newcastle convicts and the additional initial may have resulted from Browne using two strokes for the upright part of the initial R or have belonged to an additional baptismal name. Richard Browne remained in government labour at Newcastle until his sentence expired in February 1817. After this he ceased to use the extra initial.
The remainder of Richard Browne’s life was spent in Sydney, where he was designated 'free by servitude’. The one work known to have been painted in 1817 is simply signed 'Browne’ and all later signed work bears the single initial 'R.’, with the significant exception of an 1820 painting of Coola-Benn which is signed 'Richard Browne, no. 27 Phillip Street, Sydney N.S.W.’—a final proof that convict and artist were one and the same.
Richard Browne died at Sydney on 11 January 1824, as mentioned in the burial register of St Philip’s Church. Three more daughters had been born after they moved there: Ester (c.1819), Ann (c.1821) and Sarah (c.1823). There was also a posthumous son called William (b. 1824). In 1828 Mrs Browne and her children were living in Clarence Street, and she was apparently still at Sydney in 1837. No work is signed by Browne after 1821 but some of the unsigned work may have been done then. Authorship is not certain as William seems to have later made copies of his father’s drawings, or at least had copies in his possession. Drawings scarcely distinguishable from Richard Browne’s in the Petherick Collection (NLA) are ascribed to William.
Richard Browne’s most characteristic work belongs to the years 1817-1821, coinciding with the emancipist part of his life. Sydney addresses found on several signed works inform us that he lived at 9 Macquarie Street in 1818, at 27 Phillip Street in 1820 and at 41 Phillip Street in 1821. Along the edge of one watercolour is an unsigned note (in a hand not unlike that of Rev. William Walker, Wesleyan missionary to the Aborigines) stating that 'Mr Leigh knew them [the Aborigines] and had them taken from life by a convict’. Seven watercolours by Browne painted on letters written in November 1821 by Samuel Leigh (another Methodist missionary) are now on long-term loan to the Australian National Gallery from the Methodist Church in London (Overseas Division). Five depict Browne’s stock Aboriginal subjects: Wambella, Burgon, Cobbawn Wogi, Hump’d Back Maria and a family group returning from fishing. One is a drawing of Aboriginal weapons and implements, and the last is a drawing of a Maori, a subject believed unique in Browne’s oeuvre . (Maoris were living in Sydney at this time and it is not suggested that Browne visited New Zealand.)
The evolution of Browne’s figure work is revealing. He obviously became increasingly fascinated by the local Aboriginal people. An 1817 study of Broken Bay Jemmy, although still surrounded by the black and yellow frame with which he encased his natural history illustrations, already shows a growing maturity in figure drawing from the earliest work (1812-1813) which bears a very close resemblance to the 'historical scenes’ depicted by the Port Jackson Painter . Yet, while an anthropologist might safely depend on the Port Jackson Painter’s eye for detail in his portraits of Aboriginal people, particularly in regard to tribal markings and corroboree dress, Browne employs a more exaggerated caricature style. W.H. Fernyhough and Charles Rodius later followed this way of drawing notable Aborigines 'from life’. The style owes much to the silhouette portrait tradition, and recent research suggests that Browne’s simplified repetitive figures may have resulted from his use of stencils, a technique that would account for his son’s apparent replicas. Apart from the studies of Bungaree and his wife Gooseberry by Rodius, Browne’s Hump Back’d Maria , alias Pussey Cat, alias Ginatoo, is probably the best known of these local images.
Writers:
Gunson, Niel
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1776
- Summary
- A convict artist of the early nineteenth century. His early works are of natural history subjects; later he turned to figurative work, particularly of Indigenous Australians.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 11 January 1824
- Age at death
- 48
Details
Latitude52.4590735 Longitude1.566058 Start Date1782-01-01 End Date1818-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Beccles, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- watercolourist, naturalist and naval surgeon, was born on 28 December 1782 in Beccles, Scotland, son of a tanner. Apprenticed to a surgeon, he received his diploma at Edinburgh in 1807. The following year he entered the Royal Navy and served aboard HMS Victory . In March 1809 he was transferred to HMS Hindostan , the ship accompanying Governor Macquarie to New South Wales with soldiers from the 73rd Regiment. Arriving at Sydney on 28 December 1809, Hindostan departed for England with Arnold on board on 12 May 1810.
Unfortunately, Arnold’s diary for the voyage out no longer exists; the extant parts (ML) begin on the voyage home. Nevertheless, it is known that he was an indefatigable sketcher, producing 244 watercolour sketches of coastlines while outward bound, including views of Port Jackson, Botany Bay, Van Diemen’s Land and other parts of Australia (NLA, ML). These are described in Dawson Turner’s Memoir of Arnold: 'The handling and colouring of the sketches is coarse; their whole execution what might be expected from one untaught in art. But, on the other hand, they are effective and characteristic, and well calculated to answer their object’.
Arnold revisited Sydney as the first officially appointed surgeon-superintendent on a convict ship, the Northampton , which arrived on 18 June 1815 with a consignment of female convicts. His second sojourn in Sydney was much less enjoyable than his first and he received a very inhospitable reception from Macquarie. His diary does not record any sketching activity at all before he left the colony on board the Indefatigable on 13 July 1815. On 24 October the ship burnt in Batavia, resulting in the loss of many of Arnold’s papers and natural history specimens. He finally reached England on board the Hope in 1816. In 1817 he went with Sir Stamford Raffles to Sumatra, not as a surgeon but as a naturalist. He died there on 26 July 1818.
Writers:
Holden, Robert
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 28 December 1782
- Summary
- Naval surgeon who accompanied Governor Macquarie on the voyage to Sydney in 1809. Arnold produced 244 watercolour sketches of coastlines while outward bound, including views of Port Jackson, Botany Bay, Van Diemen's Land (Tas.) and other parts of Australia. In 1815 he revisited Sydney as the first officially appointed surgeon-superintendent on a convict ship, the Northampton.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 July 1818
- Age at death
- 36
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1756-01-01 End Date1818-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- painter, drawing teacher, naturalist and settler, was born and educated in Scotland. He came to Van Diemen’s Land in 1803, on board the Ocean , as a member of Lieutenant-Governor David Collins’s party to establish the first European settlement on the island. The ship’s first assistant surgeon, Matthew Bowden, described him as a 'limner’, a term still in use in Britain for professional portrait painters. In Van Diemen’s Land Littlejohn taught drawing to the children of his neighbours at Glenorchy where he lived on a property called Montrose. His greatest passion, however, was for botanical research, and he devoted considerable time to collecting and classifying rare indigenous plants (which he presumably drew). Littlejohn died on 26 November 1818, aged sixty-two. No surviving works are known.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1756
- Summary
- Painter, drawing teacher, naturalist and settler, was born and educated in Scotland. He came to Van Diemen's Land in 1803. His greatest passion was for botanical research, devoting much time to collecting and classifying rare indigenous plants.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 November 1818
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude53.2141028 Longitude-2.471770086 Start Date1756-01-01 End Date1818-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cheshire, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, cartographer and naval officer, was baptised on 7 December 1756 in Woodchurch parish, Irby, Cheshire, son of Lucy and George Ball, 'gentleman’. He entered the Royal Navy and served for many years in American waters. Commissioned lieutenant in 1778, Ball commanded HMS Supply in the First Fleet. In February 1788 he left Port Jackson to convey the first settlers to Norfolk Island, on the return voyage exploring a small island which he named in honour of Lord Howe. Ball has had attributed to him an ink and watercolour coastal profile, A View of Lord Howe Island Discovered in His Majesty’s Brig 'Supply’ on the 17th February 1788 / Lieut. Henry Lidgbird Ball, Commander (Dixson Library), and a small sketch of Lord Howe sent to England by Governor Philli
In 1790 Ball contracted fever in Batavia, where he had taken the Supply to purchase provisions for the colony at Port Jackson. In March 1791 he requested permission to return to England, 'having laboured under a violent illness for these several months past, and my life greatly despaired of’. There he recovered. In 1792 he was promoted captain and returned to active duty. He married Charlotte Foster in 1802 but she died the following year. In 1808 he applied unsuccessfully for the governorship of New South Wales; in 1814 he was made rear admiral of the Blue. Ball died at Mitcham on 22 October 1818 of 'an apoplectic fit’, survived by his second wife, Ann(e) Georgina, and evidently by Ann Maria, born at Sydney in 1789, the natural daughter of Ball and Sarah Partridge, a convict.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1756
- Summary
- A naval officer, Ball commanded a ship in the First Fleet. He discovered and named Lord Howe Island and made an ink and watercolour work to commemorate the occasion.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 22 October 1818
- Age at death
- 62
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1754-01-01 End Date1817-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- natural history painter, naval cartographer, officer and governor, is best known for the controversy which surrounded the mutiny of his crew on HMS Bounty on 30 April 1789 and the rebellion on 26 January 1808 which resulted in his removal from the governorship of New South Wales. For neither event was he solely, or perhaps even primarily, to blame, but his brusque, abrasive, forthright manner, as well as the policies which he pursued in New South Wales, certainly contributed to his misfortunes. Although his reputation is built on his work as seaman and governor, he was practised in both cartography and drawing. He accompanied Cook on his third voyage and, as master of the Resolution , was frequently employed in 'constructing charts … and in drawing plans of … bays and harbours’.
From the standpoint of the art historian, the most important surviving record of Bligh’s achievements is a manuscript titled 'Drawings by William Bligh, Commander of His Majesty’s Ship Providence’ (Mitchell Library). It contains 58 illustrations drawn by Bligh while in charge of a mission to transport bread-fruit from Tahiti to the West Indies between 1791 and 1793. There are views of the island of St Paul, a sketch of two natives in a canoe and another of the Canoe of Whytootackee. Most of the paintings, however, are of snakes, birds and fish seen in the vicinity of a number of islands, including Van Diemen’s Land. All are watercolours, although some are more in the nature of sketches than finished works. Some, for example those of the birds of Van Diemen’s Land, are most lifelike and colourful. Others are rather stilted and lack depth and movement, but all appear accurate and are painstakingly presented – closely comparable with watercolours by George Tobin , the other sketching member of the crew, who drew some of the same subjects. Cumulatively they show Bligh to have been a competent draughtsman who was not without skill in depicting simple images of natural history subjects. His best known, if not his most accomplished work, is his small watercolour of a platypus, sent with an accompanying description to Sir Joseph Banks , who had it engraved for the Royal Society Journal (1802).
Writers:
Fletcher, Brian H.
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1754
- Summary
- Despite being a competent natural history painter, Bligh's artistic activity has been completely overshadowed by several unfortunate controversies including the mutiny of his crew on the HMS Bounty in 1789 and the 1808 rebellion that saw him ousted him from his role as Governor of New South Wales. Bligh's greatest artistic legacy is his manuscript of drawings, held by the Mitchell Library, that do
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1817
- Age at death
- 63
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1781-01-01 End Date1815-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- painter and convict, was transported to New South Wales from England aboard the Surrey . By 1814 he had received his ticket of leave and was working 'off stores’ (independently) as a 'limner’ (portrait painter), according to the New South Wales General Muster taken that year.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1781
- Summary
- A convict, Thomas Blayde had received his 'ticket of leave' by 1814 and was recorded as working as a 'limner' or portrait painter by the New South Wales General Muster taken that year.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1815
- Age at death
- 34
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1734-01-01 End Date1815-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK, London, England, UK, or Hesse-Cassel, Germany.
- Biography
- Surveyor and sketcher, drew a pen and wash view of Early Sydney in 1796 (National Library of Australia). Australia’s first land surveyor and Surveyor-General. Arrived with First Fleet on Prince of Wales transport ship. Gentleman, career soldier and engineer, son of Minister for Hesse-Cassel in London. Designed first three towns under Governor Phillip: Albion (Sydney), Parramatta and Tongabby (Toongabbie). Drew up these and other layouts of surveyed lands until retirement, though there is only one map signed by him. His pen and wash view of early Sydney of c1796 (NLA) is similar to a view by Watling and an image in Collins and is the only known topographic sketch signed by him.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1734
- Summary
- A surveyor and sketcher, whose view of Early Sydney in 1796 is in the collection of the National Library of Australia in Canberra.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 9 January 1815
- Age at death
- 81
Details
Latitude47.8663369 Longitude4.4955761 Start Date1775-01-01 End Date1810-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Cerilly, France
- Biography
- naval draughtsman and natural scientist, was born on 22 August 1775 in the French town of Cerilly. His family was of modest background, his father a saddler. He studied theology in 1791-92 before travelling to Moulins in August 1792 where he enlisted in the 2nd Company of Volunteers formed in September to fight in the revolutionary wars. Made a corporal in the 7th Company, he was promoted sergeant shortly afterwards. He was a Prussian prisoner of war at Kaiserslautern from 26 December 1793 until released on 30 August 1795 and during this period became blind in the right eye. On his return to Cerilly a local notary sponsored a three-year period of study at the School of Medicine in Paris where he studied anatomy with Georges Cuvier at the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle. When a vacancy occurred on the expedition to the South Pacific under the command of Nicolas Baudin, it was largely through Cuvier’s influence – and a clever self-promoting memorandum Péron himself submitted titled 'Observations on Anthropology’ – that he was appointed student zoologist to the voyage. After the expedition returned to France on 25 March 1804 Péron delivered some plants and live animals to the Château of Malmaison and remained there as a tutor to the Empress Josephine.
The achievements of the voyage were assessed by the Institut National and its report, delivered in 1806, made fulsome reference to Péron: 'supported by his unflagging energy, and the efforts of his co-worker Lesueur [q.v.], a zoological collection was made, the extent and importance of which becomes increasingly obvious. There are more than 100,000 specimens of animals, several of which will constitute new genera; and the new species, according to the report of the professors at the Museum, number upwards of 2,500. If we remember that Cook’s second voyage, fruitful as were its discoveries, made known not more than 250 new species, and that the united voyages of Carteret, Wallis, Furneaux, Mears, and even Vancouver, did not produce so great a number – it follows that Péron and Lesueur alone have discovered more new animals than all the travelling naturalists of modern days.’
In June 1804 the members of the museum asked Napoleon to confer 'la bienveillance du Gouvernement en faveur de Péron et Lesueur’ and on 21 August Napoleon awarded them annual pensions of 2000 francs and 1500 francs respectively 'in consideration of their zeal shown during the voyage of discovery to the Southern Hemisphere from 1800 to 1804’. Reappraised of the benefits of the voyage, in August 1806 Napoleon decreed that an account of it be published. Written by Péron and Louis de Freycinet, with illustrations after Lesueur and Nicolas-Martin Petit , Voyage des D é couvertes aux Terres Australes was published in six volumes between 1807 and 1816 (2nd edn, 1824). This is one of the most impressive travel accounts of the century. Marie-Louise, Empress of France, and Joseph Banks owned copies. Combining scientific precision and a lively narrative (coloured somewhat by an obvious dislike of Baudin), the text reveals a romantic love of landscape and a fascination with the Aborigines. Writing in generous terms of the English settlers, Péron was fascinated by colonial Sydney where 'we found united, like one family, those banditti who had so long been the terror of the mother country’.
A frontispiece after Lesueur’s drawing made fifteen days before Péron’s death shows him rugged up against a chill, proofreading his memoirs with a map of Australia lying on the table, while on the mantelpiece are displayed some molluscs, scientific instruments and books. Péron and Lesueur had been living near the museum in the Rue Copeau (now Lacepede), but Péron had long been ill. In the hope that his health would improve with a warmer climate, they left Paris in January 1809 for Lyon. They reached Péron’s family town of Cérilly in August; Péron died of tuberculosis on 10 December 1810. He bequeathed his papers to Lesueur.
Péron was a product of the Revolution, a man of little social position who could rise through the ranks because of science. Able but not very likeable, his only real friend was Lesueur. He intrigued against his commander, and self-serving remarks made later in Mauritius contributed to the imprisonment of Matthew Flinders. Despite what Cuvier called 'an infinity of searching observations’, his refusal to deposit his records with the museum led to many discoveries going unreported. Nevertheless, he published at least seven scientific papers (three jointly with Lesueur), was a correspondent of the Institut de France and a member of several scientific societies. A monument to him was unveiled at Cerilly in June 1842. In Australia he has been geographically commemorated in Peron Island (NT) and Peron Peninsula (WA). Péron’s notebooks and papers are held at the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, Le Havre.
Writers:
Terry, Martin
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 22 August 1775
- Summary
- Naval draughtsman and natural scientist. Appointed student zoologist on the expedition to the South Pacific under the command of Nicolas Baudin which returned to France on 25 March 1804.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 10 December 1810
- Age at death
- 35
Details
Latitude57 Longitude-4 Start Date1755-01-01 End Date1810-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Scotland, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, natural historian, collector, soldier and lieutenant-governor, was born in Scotland on 17 August 1755. As a boy Paterson became an enthusiastic botanist, an interest retained all his life. In 1777 he made four journeys into the interior of South Africa and later published his account of these expeditions, Narrative of Four Journeys into the Country of the Hottentots and Caffaria . The book, dedicated to Joseph Banks, contained seventeen plates after his drawings (nineteen in the second edition), all except two being botanical. Also interested in zoology, he is said to have been the first person to take a live giraffe to London.
In 1782 Paterson was corresponding about botanical specimens with Banks while serving as an ensign with the 98th Regiment in India. Promoted lieutenant in 1783, he returned to England when the regiment was disbanded in 1785. He married Elizabeth Driver there in about 1787. In June 1789 he was gazetted captain in the New South Wales Corps, very probably through the influence of Banks, and arrived at Port Jackson in the Gorgon in October 1791. He was immediately put in charge of the military detachment on Norfolk Island, where he served from November 1791 to March 1793, during which time he continued to correspond with Banks and send him botanical specimens. He also sent Banks numerous drawings, the majority acknowledged as the work of his convict servant, John Doody , although 'I have taken great pains in drawing some of them’, he wrote. Unfortunately, the book he intended to publish on the natural history of Norfolk Island, discussed with Banks in 1794, never eventuated.
Back at Sydney in 1793 Paterson led an unsuccessful attempt to cross the Blue Mountains. He acted as administrator of the colony from Major Grose’s departure in December 1794 to Governor Hunter 's arrival in September 1795. After sick leave in England, when he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, he was sent back to Sydney in 1799 to investigate Hunter’s administration (of which he became increasingly critical). In 1800 he was appointed lieutenant-governor under Governor King . At first he kept up his interest in exploration and natural history, leading expeditions to the Hawkesbury River in 1799 and 1800, and to the Hunter River in 1801. But his health failed after he was injured in a duel with John Macarthur in September 1801 and administrative duties seem to have required all his energy from then on. In 1804 he was ordered to found a settlement at Port Dalrymple (Launceston), Van Diemen’s Land, where he remained until the end of 1808, having procrastinated for almost a year over returning to Sydney after Governor William Bligh was overthrown. When he finally assumed office as acting governor in January 1809 he proved ineffectual. Once Governor Macquarie had arrived, Paterson left New South Wales in May 1810. He died at sea off Cape Horn on 21 June.
Only Paterson’s botanical collections are preserved in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington (London). Over 300 original drawings of Aborigines, scenery, animals and plants attributed to him were for sale at London in 1929. Some were probably those now in the Dixson Library’s Paterson-Doody Collection, the rest have disappeared. He is therefore mainly known artistically for his friendships with John Lewin , G.P. Harris and G.W. Evans . The Rienits suggest that a miscellaneous collection of paintings and sketches containing works by these three artists as well as some unsigned, less competent drawings (Mitchell Library) could have belonged to Paterson.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 17 August 1755
- Summary
- William Paterson was a sketcher, natural historian, collector, soldier and lieutenant-governor. He was interested in zoology and is said to have been the first person to take a live giraffe to London.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21 June 1810
- Age at death
- 55
Details
Latitude55 Longitude-3 Start Date1750-01-01 End Date1810-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- United Kingdom
- Biography
- cartoonist, worked in London where he drew Non commission officers embarking for Botany Bay , pub. H. Humpheys & E. Hedges, London, 1 November 1786 (Rex Nan Kivell Collection, National Library of Australia) and Landing at Botany Bay 16 November 1786, a big coloured etching, same pubs. (RNK, NLA PIC S8639 & ML V*CART 19), reproduced NLA News , November 1997, 7.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Kerr, Joan
Date written:
1996
Last updated:
2007
- Born
- b. 1750
- Summary
- Late 18th century London cartoonist who published cartoons about the imminent departure of the First Fleet to Sydney in 1786.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1810
- Age at death
- 60
Details
Latitude50.6365062 Longitude-4.3604432 Start Date1758-01-01 End Date1808-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Launceston, Cornwall, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, naval officer and governor, was born in Launceston, Cornwall (UK), on 23 April 1758, son of Philip King, a draper. King sailed with the First Fleet to Botany Bay as second lieutenant in the Sirius , later transferring to the Supply under Captain Arthur Phillip. In February 1788 he was appointed superintendent and commandant of Norfolk Island and sent to establish a settlement there. In March 1790 Phillip sent him to England as his emissary. He returned to New South Wales the following year in the Gorgon as lieutenant-governor of Norfolk Island. Before leaving England, King married Anna Josepha Coombe. Six weeks after their arrival on Norfolk Island she gave birth to a son, Phillip Parker , the first of their five children and his only legitimate son. He and the convict Ann Innett, with whom he had lived during his previous Norfolk Island appointment, had had two sons, Norfolk and Sydney; they formed part of the King household. On the grounds of ill-health, King returned to England in 1796. He came back in 1800 as governor of New South Wales, succeeding John Hunter . William Bligh took over in August 1806 and the Kings sailed for England in 1807. Philip Gidley died in London on 3 September 1808.
No signed drawings are known but it seems certain that King sketched. Attributed originals, however, are mostly quite crude. They include a pen, ink and wash View of the Entrance of Port Jackson Looking down the Harbour from Maskelyne’s [Dawes] Point (private collection) (with the title in King’s hand), a pen and wash view of Sydney Cove (c.1800, Mitchell Library [ML]) which shows the incomplete drawing-room at Government House, Sydney, and a pen, ink and wash view of Sydney in 1802 (Dixson Galleries). In addition, two ink drawings attributed to Governor King were lent by his namesake grandson, Philip Gidley King , to the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition. One was 'a view of Sydney Cove, looking from the present site of the city, and showing the flagstaff which once occupied the position of the Macquarie Lighthouse, and also showing Sirius Cove (now Mossman’s Bay) with the ship Sirius lying there’.
The La Trobe Library holds a crude drawing of Norfolk Island also attributed to King by his descendants, which appears to have been copied from a sketch by William Neate Chapman . Another copy (1804, ML), however, is by King’s son Phillip Parker , done when aged about 13, perhaps the more likely artist. In particular, four fluent watercolours of Aborigines in the Banks Papers (ML) have been attributed to King on the basis that one of them appears to be the original sketch for A Native Family of New South Wales , an engraving by the legendary English painter and engraver William Blake for Hunter’s An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island … (London 1793), which is inscribed 'From a sketch by Governor King’. But, as the Rienits point out, the assured line of the Aboriginal watercolours reproduced by Blake is stylistically inconsistent with the poor draughtsmanship of the topographical works and Bernard Smith has suggested that they are more likely to have been redrawn by a professional English artist (after King’s lost rough sketches). The practice of making finished drawings for the engraver to work from when making his plates was normal at the time.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 23 April 1758
- Summary
- King sailed with the First Fleet to Botany Bay in 1788. He established the settlement in Norfolk Island and later became governor of New South Wales. Sketches attributed to King are held in public and private collections.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 3 September 1808
- Age at death
- 50
Details
Latitude48.856667 Longitude2.352222 Start Date1777-01-01 End Date1804-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Paris, France
- Biography
- painter, was born in Paris, youngest son of Nicolas Petit, a fan-maker, and Marie-Nicole, née Minglet. He signed on as gunner’s mate on the voyage to Australia of Le Géographe and Le Naturaliste , a naval and scientific expedition sponsored by Napoleon under the command of Nicolas Baudin and departing from Le Havre in October 1800. The three artists assigned to the expedition left at Mauritius, and Petit and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur were appointed in late April in their stead. Petit, who had studied in David’s studio at the Louvre, was to concentrate on what the eminent scientist Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu later called 'all that which may be of interest for the history of Man’. The results are a series of impressive portraits of Tasmanian Aborigines in the published account of the expedition, Voyage des Découvertes aux Terres Australes (Paris 1807 16). His original drawings and finished watercolours for the book are in the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle, Le Havre.
After the expedition returned to Lorient in March 1804 (without their quarrelsome commander who had died in Mauritius), Petit began preparing his drawings for publication, but he died on 21 October when gangrene set in following a fall. He seems to have had an engaging, amiable personality. Péron describes how, for example, Petit 'displayed before the natives some feats of sleight of hand, which diverted them very much’. However, in what seemed to the French an inexplicable display of violence, he was nearly killed by an Aborigine whom he had been sketching and subsequently carried a gun on field trips, contrary to Baudin’s orders.
Petit’s depictions of the Aborigines, close to the picture plane, have an immediacy and directness unlike any previous images of them, while the full-length figures have a silky, rather mannerist elegance. Before their publication in France, four prints were issued in London in 1803 by George Riley. Several fine examples of Petit’s work appeared on the art market in 1988.
Writers:
Terry, Martin
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 1777
- Summary
- Petit was the artist for a French voyage to Australia, whose job, according to the eminent scientist Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, was to record 'all that which may be of interest for the history of Man.' His depictions of the Aborigines have an immediacy and directness unlike any previous images of them.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 21 October 1804
- Age at death
- 27
Details
Latitude53.9825271 Longitude-1.385249993 Start Date1769-01-01 End Date1797-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Yorkshire, England, UK
- Biography
- natural history painter and naval officer, son of Henry and Catherine Raper, was probably born in Yorkshire though baptised in St Swithin’s, London, on 18 October 1769.
This entry is a stub. You can help DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1769
- Summary
- George Raper was a natural history painter and naval officer. In 1783 he entered the Royal Navy. His artistic legacy is his record of the natural history of Port Jackson and of Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands. Raper died on board his ship in 1797.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1797
- Age at death
- 28
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1744-01-01 End Date1797-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England, UK
- Biography
- painter and sketcher, was born in London on 28 October 1744, only child of Charles Hodges, a smith, and Ann, née Richards. He had drawing lessons two days a week at William Shipley’s school, then in 1758 was articled for seven years to one of London’s leading landscape painters, Richard Wilson. While apprenticed to Wilson, Hodges won second prize for a chalk drawing shown with the Society of Artists in 1762, third prize in 1763, and first prize in 1764. He left London in 1765 to work in the country, including working as a scene-painter at Derby, returning to the capital in 1771. During this period his work was strongly influenced by that of his former master; Waterhouse calls Hodges 'probably the most accomplished painter of fake Wilsons’.
In 1772 Hodges was appointed to James Cook’s second expedition in the Resolution . It had originally been intended that Joseph Banks and his entourage, including the artists Johann Zoffany, James Miller, John Frederick Miller and John Cleveley, should accompany Cook on this voyage but when Banks abandoned this plan Hodges was appointed landscape painter by the Admiralty Board instead, on or before 27 June. The orders sent to Cook on 30 June read: 'Whereas we have engaged Mr William Hodges, a Landskip Painter … in order to make Drawings and Paintings of such places in the Countries you may touch at in the Course of the said Voyage as may be proper to give a more perfect idea thereof than can be formed from written descriptions only; You are hereby required and directed to receive the said Mr William Hodges on board … taking care that he does diligently employ himself in making Drawings or Paintings of such Places as you may touch at that may be worthy of notice in the course of your voyage and also of such other Objects and things as may fall within the Compass of his Abilities’.
The Resolution left Plymouth on 13 July 1772. Hodges’s work during the voyage shows the influence of Joshua Reynolds, whose Fourth Discourse (Joppien and Smith suggest) Hodges would have heard in London in 1771 or read in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1772. Smith notes that because of this, Hodges’s Resolution paintings succeed admirably as generalised landscapes in the Grand Manner but fall down somewhat as accurate topographical records. (He did, however, produce exact coastal profiles when required to do so by Cook, as well as individualised portrait sketches of the native people of the Pacific Islands.) His views of New Zealand scenery and Antarctic icebergs, in particular, seem to have anticipated the nineteenth-century romantic interest in the sublime.
This voyage did not include continental Australia or Van Diemen’s Land. On 10 October 1774, however, Cook and a landing party explored an uninhabited island which he named Norfolk Island. Presumably Hodges made sketches at this time, but none are known. The Resolution returned to Plymouth on 29 July 1775. Hodges was retained by the Admiralty 'to finish the drawings and paintings he has made during the Voyage’; with reworking they became more and more classical. His sketches, watercolours and oil paintings of the voyage, some of exquisite beauty, are held in various collections in Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Hodges exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1776 and 1777, then annually from 1785 to 1794. He spent the years 1780-83 in India, publishing his Travels in India in 1793. He married three times and had six surviving children. He died on 6 March 1797, his third wife Ann Mary, née Carr, dying three months later.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 28 October 1744
- Summary
- Painter and sketcher, Hodges was born, educated and worked in London. From 1772-1775 he travelled the Pacific and to Norfolk Island as the official landscape painter with James Cook's second voyage.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 6 March 1797
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude52.561928 Longitude-1.464854 Start Date1743-01-01 End Date1796-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher, architect, naval officer and provost-marshal, was, according to his shipmate Edwin Spain, 'bred a House Carpenter and having learnd Architecture he was Clerk to some great concern in the building line’. In October 1778 Brewer entered the Royal Navy as a volunteer. He served for several years under Arthur Phillip, and 'being a good scholar was a very great assistant to the Lieutant in copying his Journals, writing out Watch and Quarter Bills’. Spain described Brewer in his early forties as the possessor of 'coarse harsh features, a contracted brow which bespoke him a man sour’d by disappointment; a forbidding countenance, always muttering to himself … and wearing … a blue coat of the coarsest cloth, a wool hat about three shillings a piece, cocked with three sixpenny nails, a tolerable waist coat, a pair of cordurry breeches, purser’s stockings and shoes, a purser’s shirt, none of the cleanest’. He was also a heavy drinker.
Brewer sailed with the First Fleet to Botany Bay as a midshipman in the Sirius . He was employed by Phillip as building superintendent during the first two years of settlement and probably designed Sydney’s first permanent Government House. His appointment as provost-marshal was confirmed in 1792; the following year he was granted land at Concord. By late 1795 Brewer’s health had failed. He was relieved of his duties in February 1796 and died a few months later, on 8 July.
According to Spain, in about 1783 Phillip had presented Sir Edward Hughes, Admiral of the Fleet in India, with 'a couple of Joanna bullocks and some original drawings of places he had visited, done by Henry Brewer’. Spain observed that Brewer was the ideal assistant to Phillip at Port Jackson due to his competence in drawing 'excellent plans, drafts and views of places’. Bernard Smith has plausibly suggested that Brewer 'possesses the strongest claims to being the Port Jackson Painter ' although, as he indicates, a firm attribution is difficult as almost nothing is known that is undoubtedly from Brewer’s hand, apart from a map containing a few vignettes of trees and rocks.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1743
- Summary
- A sketcher and architect who arrived with the First Fleet. Nothing is known that is undoubtedly from Brewer's hand.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 8 July 1796
- Age at death
- 53
Details
Latitude51.507222 Longitude-0.1275 Start Date1752-01-01 End Date1793-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- London, England
- Biography
- painter and draughtsman, was born on 6 October 1751 in London, second son of Abraham Webber (Wéber, 1715-80), a sculptor and native of Berne, Switzerland, and his wife Mary Quant, a Londoner. At the age of six, John was sent to Berne to be educated by his aunt, Rosina Ester Wéber. Ten years later, in 1767, he was apprenticed to the Swiss landscape artist and engraver Johan Ludwig Aberli (1723-86) for three years. Then Webber left Berne for Paris to study at the Académie Royale and with the draughtsman and engraver Jean-Georges Wille (1715-1808), an influential teacher and a champion of plein air drawing. Webber’s earliest surviving drawings derive from sketching tours made with Wille on the outskirts of Paris.
In 1775 Webber returned to his native London to study at the Royal Academy while working as an interior decorator. The first public exhibition of his painting was at the Academy in spring 1776 when he showed Portrait of an Artist (a portrait of his brother, the sculptor Henry Webber) and 'Two views of the environs of Paris’. These aroused the interest of Daniel Carl Solander (1733-1782), librarian to Sir Joseph Banks and Banks’s companion on Captain Cook’s first Pacific voyage (1768-71). Solander suggested Webber to the British Admiralty as accompanying artist-draughtsman on Cook’s third voyage, which left England on 12 July 1776. The primary tasks of the voyage were to return the Tahitian Omai to his native island and to explore the possibility of a northwest passage along the North American continent. Webber’s appointment required that he should make drawings and paintings of such places in the countries visited as to 'give a more perfect idea thereof than can be formed by written description’, as well as recording 'other objects and things as may fall within the compass of his abilities’.
The Resolution sailed via the Cape of Good Hope, visiting Van Diemen’s Land, New Zealand and several Pacific Islands before striking out for north-west America and Alaska, and Webber drew landscape views and people of different lands and climates, coastal views, ethnographic objects, plants and animals. His oeuvre from the voyage was the most comprehensive record of sights in the Pacific region ever produced. Webber excelled in watercolours, wash, pencil and chalk drawings, but he also produced a number of oil paintings during the voyage. He submitted the finished works, about 200 in number, to the Admiralty on his return to London in 1780. From these the motifs for the illustrations of the official account of Cook’s third voyage were chosen.
From autumn 1780 until summer 1784 Webber redrew many of his drawings from the voyage and supervised the engravers and printers, while also working on a second contract for the Admiralty, who commissioned a number of finished paintings of noteworthy scenes and landscape views from the voyage. From 1784 until his death he exhibited drawings and paintings of third voyage subjects at the Royal Academy; in 1785 he collaborated with Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg on the Christmas pantomime Omai; or, a Trip around the World (Covent Garden) which, as a popularisation of Cook’s voyages, proved immensely successful.
Another outlet for Webber’s stock of Pacific imagery was a series of finely hand-coloured softground etchings, published as Views in the South Seas , of which sixteen sheets appeared between 1789 and 1792. Being mostly of a romantic character, these showed a care-free, luxurious life in the Pacific Isles. The series was so popular that it was continued after Webber’s death by the firm of J. Boydell.
Webber remained preoccupied with Pacific scenery for the rest of his life despite a successful career as a topographical artist travelling in the British Isles and Europe between 1786 and 1792. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1785 and a full member in 1791 on the basis of his landscape work. When he died, on 29 April 1793, he left a substantial fortune and made generous donations to his friends, including Joseph Farington and Thomas Hearne. His large collection of ethnographica from Cook’s third voyage he gave to the Library of Berne (now housed in the Historisches Museum, Berne.)
Webber was among the most travelled artists of his age. He thus was instrumental in the dissolution of the traditional concept of European landscape art. His art, which provided much interesting information from hitherto unknown quarters of the world, was considered factual and reliable and helped to pave the way for an increasing artistic realism. Webber’s illustrations remained popular and were still being used in the nineteenth century. His Australian subjects consist of four drawings of Tasmanian Aborigines and studies of a possum and a lizard drawn during Cook’s sojourn at Adventure Bay, Van Diemen’s Land (24-30 January 1777). A view of 'the S.E. part of Adventure Bay’ by Webber is recorded but untraced.
Writers:
Joppien, Rüdiger
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
1989
- Born
- b. 6 October 1752
- Summary
- Artist-draughtsman on Cook's third voyage. Webber was among the most travelled artists of his age. He was instrumental in the dissolution of the traditional concept of European landscape art.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 29 April 1793
- Age at death
- 41
Details
Latitude50.7351532 Longitude-3.9115331 Start Date1768-01-01 End Date1790-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Blackhall, Devon, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and/or art collector, letter-writer and naval officer, was born on 30 July 1768, second son of John Fowell and Mary, née Digby, of Blackhall, Devon. He entered the Royal Navy on 1 March 1781, aged twelve, as midshipman on board HMS Ocean . In 1786, determined to go 'where there are some hopes of Promotion’, Fowell asked his father to use his influence to have him appointed to the First Fleet. John Fowell had enough connections (through Lord Nepean) to have young Newton transferred to the Sirius by 25 February 1787. On the voyage Phillip wrote to Nepean describing Fowell as 'a very good young man, & improves very much’.
From the new colony at Sydney Cove Fowell sent home to Devon several letters, a stuffed lorikeet and sketches of Aboriginal weapons. When Philip Gidley King left Sydney in February 1788 to establish a settlement at Norfolk Island, Fowell was appointed acting second lieutenant in his place; the promotion was confirmed on 28 December 1789. Fowell survived the wreck of the Sirius at Norfolk Island in March 1790 but lost most of his effects, as his last letter to his father, written on 31 July 1790 from Batavia, indicates: 'I have sent a Plan of Botany Bay & Port Jackson / I had them all Complete to send you but they were lost in the Sirius with a very valuable collection of birds which cost me a great Deal of Trouble’.
Fowell was in Batavia by chance. He had sailed with King from Sydney in the Supply intending to land at Norfolk Island but the weather being too rough for landing, the ship had continued on to Batavia where the Waaksaamheyd was hired to replace the Sirius . Fowell was appointed to sail it back to Sydney – his first command. This was not to be. He caught the fever which was rife in Batavia and died at sea on 25 August 1790. His letters were preserved by his parents, who added the following: 'Universally lamented He excelled most young men of his age both in Body and Mind which made his Death an inexpressible grief to his Parents’. Fowell’s letters were acquired in December 1987 by the Mitchell Library but no surviving sketches are known.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 30 July 1768
- Summary
- Fowell joined the Royal Navy at 12 and arrived in Australia on the First Fleet. He made sketches of birds and Aboriginal weapons, none of which survive. He died of fever at sea at the age of only 22.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 25 August 1790
- Age at death
- 22
Details
Latitude51.76248665 Longitude0.79048306 Start Date1750-01-01 End Date1790-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and naval surgeon, was born in Tolleshunt D’Arcy, Essex, England on 23 August 1750, son of Thomas and Mary Smyth. He came to NSW with the First Fleet in 1787 as surgeon aboard the Lady Penrhyn , keeping a journal from March 1787 to August 1789 which included an account of the voyage and the first weeks of settlement. In February 1788 he recorded sketching the 'Yellow Gum Plant’ or Grass Tree. He also described bird life at Port Jackson, and at Lord Howe Island where the ship called on the way to China, and his journal contains two pen drawings of birds – one, A New Species of Bird – Shot at Botany Bay New South Wales (1788) being an early portrait of an emu. The one of an emu is a copy after a drawing by Lieutenant John Watts (q.v.) , an officer on board; the other presents three views of a bird 'of the Coot kind found at Lord Howe Island’ and is the earliest known drawing of the now extinct white gallinule. Smyth observed four other birds on Lord Howe Island now also rare or extinct and collected various specimens and curios.
Arthur Bowes Smyth died soon after his return to England. He was known in the colony as Arthur Bowes, the name in which he kept his journal. A contemporary copy is in the Mitchell Library.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 23 August 1750
- Summary
- Naval surgeon with the First Fleet. Acute observation of birds and plants during his travels led to a collection of journal entries and sketches, including the earliest known drawing of an emu and the now extinct species of bird, the white gallinule.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1790
- Age at death
- 40
Details
Latitude50.3712659 Longitude-4.1425658 Start Date1735-01-01 End Date1781-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Plymouth, England, UK
- Biography
- sketcher and naval officer, was born on 21 August 1735, near Plymouth, England, and joined the navy. He was commander of the Adventure on Cook’s second voyage which visited Van Diemen’s Land in 1773. There Captain Furneaux made a rough drawing of the Adventure . He was the first person to circumnavigate the globe in both directions.
This entry is a stub. You can help the DAAO by submitting a biography.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. 21 August 1735
- Summary
- Made a sketch of the vessel 'Adventure', on which he sailed with Captain James Cook to Van Diemen's Land in 1773.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1781
- Age at death
- 46
Details
Latitude55.953333 Longitude-3.189167 Start Date1745-01-01 End Date1771-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Biography
- natural history and topographical painter, was born in Edinburgh, younger son of Joel Parkinson, an Edinburgh brewer and a Quaker, and his wife Elizabeth, brother to Stanfield and Elizabeth. In the preface to Sydney’s posthumous Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas (1773) Stanfield provided most of the known information concerning his brother’s early life. Their father, reluctant about insisting upon the payment of debts owed to him, left the family in straitened circumstances at the time of his death. Sydney was apprenticed to a woollen draper, but chose rather to develop his talent for drawing 'flowers, fruits, and other objects of natural history’. There is no direct evidence that he received any formal art training; if he did, it is surprising that his brother, who certainly sought to place him in as favourable a light as possible, makes no mention of it.
Given his growing interests, however, it is quite possible that Parkinson had seen something of the work of William de la Cour, who ran a school of drawing and design in Edinburgh from 1760, even if he did not take lessons. It is likely too that he saw something of the landscape watercolours of Edinburgh artists active in the 1760s, such as John Clark, Alexander and John Runciman and Jacob Moore, and he was possibly influenced by Paul Sandby who worked extensively in Scotland from 1747 until the early 1750s while employed on Colonel David Watson’s great topographical survey of the Highlands. Sandby was also active in London during the early 1760s when Parkinson was living there. Indeed, they were fairly close neighbours in Soho, Sandby living in Broad Street, Carnaby Market during the 1760s, and the Parkinsons in Windmill Street off the Tottenham Court Road.
It is not known precisely when the Parkinsons settled in London, but Sydney exhibited a painting of flowers on silk at the Free Society of Artists’ exhibition in 1765, giving his address as Queen’s Head Court, Windmill Street. The following year he exhibited two more flower pieces on silk and a drawing in red chalk from the same address.
Scottish friends assisted the family. One of the most influential was Dr John Fothergill, son of a Yorkshire Quaker, who had established himself in London after graduating in medicine in Edinburgh and is likely to have known the Parkinson family in Edinburgh Quaker circles during his student days. Certainly both Sydney and Stanfield looked upon him as an old friend. Fothergill developed a great interest in botany and was well known for his philanthropic activities. It may well have been Fothergill who first introduced Sydney Parkinson to the London circle of natural historians.
Shortly after his arrival from Edinburgh, Parkinson also came into contact with James Lee, another Scot, from Selkirk near Edinburgh; he drew plants on vellum for him and taught his daughter Ann to draw and paint flowers. She was then fifteen and he about twenty-one and he seems to have grown rather fond of her, for in his will, made before his departure in the Endeavour , he left her his painting equipment. Lee was the proprietor of the Vineyard nursery, Hammersmith, and it was probably Lee who introduced Parkinson to Joseph Banks early in 1767.
Parkinson worked continuously for Banks until embarking in the Endeavour in August 1768, making drawings of birds and insects collected by Banks during his visit to Newfoundland and Labrador in 1766. About this time too, he copied a number of paintings which had been executed for Gideon Loten, a former governor of Ceylon. Several were later used to illustrate Thomas Pennant’s Indian Zoology . When Banks joined Cook on the Endeavour voyage to the Pacific (1768-71) he took Parkinson with him as his natural-history draughtsman. Parkinson not only made drawings of plants and marine life encountered on the voyage but a great number of coastal views and drawings of native peoples and landscapes. Indeed he was responsible, apart from charts, for most of the visual documentation associated with the voyage. He died of fever and dysentery at sea, at the age of twenty-six, on 26 January 1771.
In his will, made on 10 July 1768, Parkinson described himself as a painter residing in the parish of St Anne, Soho. An engraved portrait of the artist appears as a frontispiece to his Journal , and a self-portrait, which research by Dr Lysaght suggests is authentic, was presented to the British Museum (Natural History) in 1896, apparently by a descendant of the family. Another branch of the Parkinson family, also Quakers, lived at Newcastle-on-Tyne. It included his cousin Jane Gomeldon, to whom Sydney wrote from Batavia on 6 October 1770. A woman of considerable spirit and intellectual accomplishment, she appears to have been assembling a private natural-history museum at the time of Parkinson’s death.
Parkinson was indefatigable. Apart from the many drawings of coastal views, natives and landscapes made on the Endeavour 's voyage, now held in the British Museum (Department of Manuscripts), he made 955 drawings of flora – 675 sketches and 280 finished drawings – and 377 drawings of fauna. The latter are housed in the British Museum (Natural History), London.
Writers:
Smith, Bernard
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1745
- Summary
- Sydney Parkinson was a natural history and topographical painter. Joseph Banks took him on Cook's Endeavour voyage to the Pacific (1768-71) where he was a natural-history draughtsman. Parkinson died of fever and dysentery at sea in 1771. He was only twenty-six.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 26 January 1771
- Age at death
- 26
Details
Latitude59.6749712 Longitude14.5208584 Start Date1733-01-01 End Date1771-01-01
Description
Extended Data
- Birth Place
- Sweden
- Biography
- natural history draughtsman and clerk, was born in Åbo, Sweden (now Turko, Finland), where his father, also Herman Diedrich, held the chair of medicine at Åbo University. Trained in medicine at his father’s university from 1748 to 1753, he initially practised as a surgeon in Stockholm, then, curiously, became a watchmaker in London for eleven years until employed as personal clerk to the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander at the British Museum. On Solander’s recommendation Spring was enlisted by Joseph Banks as his personal secretary on Captain James Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific. On board the Endeavour he worked as clerk and amanuensis to both Banks and Solander, transcribing notes, making annotations and, inevitably, repairing the ship’s instruments when necessary. The two artists employed for the voyage were Sydney Parkinson and Alexander Buchan , for it had been Banks’s intention that while Parkinson drew the natural history specimens he and Solander collected, Buchan would depict views of the landscapes they saw. His hopes were dashed when Buchan died four days after the Endeavour reached Tahiti. The additional burden of topographical work then fell to Parkinson, but because Spring was a competent draughtsman he was able to relieve him.
According to Banks, Spring was 'a grave thinking man’ whose description of a 'most strange bird’ encountered in New Zealand must be accurate as he was 'not at all given to telling wonderful stories’. Most of his drawings, all in pencil, are of coastal views and fishes; a few of the natural history specimens have watercolour washes. There are some neat, careful and rather pedestrian pencil landscape sketches of some of the places where the Endeavour called, and equally precise visual documentation of native costumes, artefacts and dwellings. In particular, Joppien and Smith draw attention to 'his scale drawings of a large Maori canoe and his fine, painstaking series of drawings of the carvings on Maori canoes’, one of the subjects 'too large to collect and bring home’ for which his clear linearity and meticulous detailing were especially valuable.
Spring’s sketches, together with those by Parkinson and Buchan, are held in the British Library. Most are unsigned and attribution is often difficult. Indeed, it was not until about 1960 that Averil Lysaght and Alwyne Wheeler first distinguished Spring’s drawings from those by Parkinson with which they had previously been confused. Only some pencil sketches of fish and crabs relate to Australia.
On the way home to England Cook put in at Batavia Bay on the island of Java (Indonesia). There 'Batavia fever’ (dysentery and malaria) struck, which quickly began to decimate the crew. Almost becalmed, the ship made its way slowly back through the Sunda Straits hoping for the trade wind. On 24 January 1771 Spring died at sea, followed by Parkinson two days later.
Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1992
Last updated:
2011
- Born
- b. c.1733
- Summary
- A studious man with a talent for detail, he became through default one of the artists aboard Captain Cook's Endeavour. He died young, at sea. Sadly none of the artists survived this voyage.
- Gender
- Male
- Died
- 1771
- Age at death
- 38
